Do you remember the early days of the Internet? Well in the beginning, only a few companies and individuals controlled how we communicated online. But that's no longer the case with the eventual rise of social media. Let's start by talking about how to best define what social media is, and what it means to market a business on these channels. Social media is an online platform, website or technology that allows individuals and companies to communicate and share information either publicly, privately or both. The term social network, social channels, and social platforms all mean the same thing and can be used interchangeably to describe the different mediums found on social media.

The different types of social networks out there are vast. For example, Yammer is a chat tool different companies use to internally communicate with employees across departments which makes it a social network. While Pinterest is a larger public platform primarily used by consumers and businesses to share images, another example of a social network. There's no perfect set of rules for what makes a space online a social network. A good rule of thumb though is if there's an active community, and they're able to talk with one another in some way, then that's a social network.

Social media marketing is the process of using these channels to reach your target audience with relevant information and promotions, building trust, interaction and sales. A mom and pop restaurant regularly sharing how they make their best-selling dishes on their Facebook page is social media marketing in action. General Electric running ads on LinkedIn to promote what their company culture is like to attract more applicants is also an example of what social media marketing looks like. These companies are reaching out to members of these social channels to capture their attention and expose them to their message, product or service.

Marketing on social media is an opportunity to reach a vast audience like never before. According to Statista, they're almost two billion users on social media worldwide today. The shift to social media marketing from traditional marketing wasn't done overnight though. It occurred as social media came about as part of an evolution of communication on the Internet over time. At first, a few voices dominated the medium through sharing information on their websites. But there was no conversation between consumers with other consumers or consumers with companies at this early stage of the web.

As technology progressed, websites like AOL Instant Messenger, MySpace and Friendster came about allowing consumers to communicate with one another. The next wave came about with Facebook, Twitter and other leading social networks allowing consumers to communicate with each other at scale as well as allowing for consumers to more easily reach businesses publicly. Finally, communicating online with the use of social media became a dialogue as opposed to a monologue which is a benefit to both consumers and brands alike.

For consumers, they are able to more easily reach organizations that matter to them, keep them accountable, get customer service and actively take part in how these brands evolve over time. For a business, social media provides learning opportunities from customer feedback, and market research to better understand who their customers are and what they want. Not to mention, social media can cut down on customer service costs, increase the visibility of your marketing campaigns and coordinate with your messaging across channels. Social media will continue to evolve in the future but one thing is for sure, wherever there are online communities where consumers are communicating and spending time, this is where marketers will need to go in order to reach them.

- It's true, there are many businesses active today that thrive without using social media. However, they'd be able to take their success with marketing to the next level if they did invest in social media for a variety of reasons. And that's what we'll discuss today. Why focusing on social media marketing is worthwhile for your business. First off, your audience is already active on at least one social media channel, and you have an opportunity to reach them. Facebook, for example, has over a billion daily active users on average, as of December 2016.

Now, your audience is only a small portion of those users. But it's clear that social media is where your customers spend time online, and provide information about who they are, where they live, and more. Another reason social media marketing is worth it: it's a gold mine of data. Marketing campaigns thrive when backed by good information. Better yet, this data can be used to reach your customers in a non-disruptive way. With social media, you've got the ability to target the demographics you're after, with the right messaging or ads, based on the data they provided about themselves.

Unlike TV commercials, where the message has to be broad enough to be relevant to a vast audience, as it's served to everyone watching a particular show. One of the main reasons social media is effective at achieving your company's goals is because your communication with consumers is personalized at scale. In addition to the data and audience, social media is far more cost effective than other forms of marketing. To be clear, social media is not free. It doesn't cost anything to start a YouTube channel or open a Facebook page, but there are expenses in terms of the time and talent it takes to run your accounts, as well as the costs associated with design and running advertising.

Comparatively, though, you can reach a thousand people with social media for a fraction of the cost of a radio spot or a billboard. Also, unlike traditional advertising, you can know if your messaging was worthwhile by using the analytics social media provides. That's not to say marketing on other channels is useless. In actuality, your advertising efforts will reach peak performance when you've coordinated all of your channels for one streamlined approach across social media, email, event marketing, and more. For instance, social media can add an online component to any event your company is hosting, by driving more awareness and conversation even after the event is over.

Besides enhancing your efforts on other marketing channels, it's important to be active on social media to understand what your competitors are doing to reach consumers. I'm not a fan of jumping on any channel just because your competitors are active there, because that often leads to copycat behaviors without any purposeful strategy. But at a minimum, it is important to monitor the competition so you can ensure what you're sharing provides more value. Lastly, social media marketing offers undeniable business results when you're purpose driven with its use over time.

Instead of rushing to share on social media, take a step back and think about why you like to be active there in the first place. With an understanding of what direction you're going for, your brand is in a better position to have a meaningful conversation with your audience that drives results. Using social media to market your business isn't easy. But if your organization truly commits to using these channels with purpose, you'll be able to take your marketing to new heights.

Many organizations fail to see results from social media. Why? Because they leap first and ask questions later, diving into the medium without any plan of action. That's why it is so important to learn how to build out a strategy to ensure use of social media aligns with your goals from the start. So what is Social Media Strategy? A social media strategy is a written document that maps out how your organization plans to use certain social networks on a regular basis to achieve results. The document acts as a roadmap for the overall step by step process your company will take when using social media as well as specific details of how to best use each channel.

These details outlined in your strategy should be informed by research you conducted on your industry, target audience and how these channels operate. Your pre-existing goals, available data, resources and experience with your organization will also impact how your social media strategy comes together. Company leadership and your marketing team should agree on the details of this strategy to ensure all stakeholders are aligned with your direction with social media. Developing and documenting your strategy is important because it will help your team collaborate on social media, be clear about priorities, and focus on established goals.

The strategy serves as a conflict resolution tool. When issues arise or different opinions are voiced, you'll stick with the original plan of the document or reassess your approach as a group and update the strategy accordingly. This is where your strategy helps prevent your team from going off in different directions by staying focused on the right priorities with social media. The strategy is also a working document that adjusts as you experience successes and failures. If you experience a success, you'll be able to continue to follow the path you laid out with your strategy and add to it.

When your use of social media produces a failure, you'll be able to return to your strategy to remove what didn't work and adapt it accordingly to avoid the same mistake in the future. Most of all a social media strategy is an educated guess backed by research and careful planning as to what will drive results on these platforms. A comprehensive social media strategy should not only include the goals you're after but also cover who your customer is, the channels you'll focus on, and what types of content to share with them. This way your organization is clear on who you're trying to reach on social media with what message and which social platforms.

I also recommend including how frequently you'll be publishing on social media, what resources will be needed, how you'll address paid advertising, and any processes for managing your customer service needs on social media. As you're creating a social media strategy to guide your efforts, remember what your organization's purpose is in the first place. Every business has a reason to why it exists beyond making a profit and employing people. Maybe it's to make the skincare industry more eco-friendly or help empower small businesses to become more tech savvy.

Regardless, your purpose as a company should be reflected in your goals and messaging on social media to ensure it has a meaningful impact on your audience. Think of your company's purpose as a destination you're trying to reach and your social media strategy as the GPS to help you navigate that path. Having a meaningful strategy is the difference between companies that make an impression with social media and those that don't. Don't rely on luck alone or feel pressured to jump on social media right away. Instead take your time and start planning your original, carefully researched, and detailed approach to social media.

- If you're trying to reach everyone on social media, you'll end up reaching no one. Instead, define who your audience is to better direct what your company is doing on social media in the first place. Is your ideal customer a single male in his 20s renting an apartment in Chicago and making more than 100,000 a year? Or are they a couple in their 30s with no children living in Austin dealing with unemployment. Who your ideal customer is may vary drastically. The more information you know about them the better, where they live, what problems they face, their education level, their shopping preferences, and more can help inform who you're targeting on social media and why.

With a clear focus as to who you're trying to reach, you'll be able to prioritize which social channels to spend time on as well as what topics and types of content to share with them. A client of mine wanted to reach mothers in the Philadelphia region hoping to generate awareness of their product line and drive sales. With this audience in mind, they decided Facebook ads would be their best chance at success. Since they know who they were talking to, they were able to customize the messaging and create the views in this Facebook campaign to target the right people with relevant ads.

As a result the campaign was a major success, driving significant sales and brand awareness due to the quality of their products but also because they knew who they were targeting. These kinds of decisions can make or break your social media strategy. Making these decisions becomes easier when you know who is on the other end of your campaign. To establish who your audience is, start by relying on what you know from your existing experience with your company and its customer base. For whom are your services or products created? What feedback have you received from customers both positive and negative? Have you met your customers in person? How would you define who they are and what motivates them to purchase? Where do they hang out online? You may not know how to answer all of these questions, and that's okay.

Start with what you know and proceed from there. Next, look through any existing data you have about your audience's interactions with your website, social media, retail location, CRM, or other contact points. Review analytics tools your organization is using to see what data you have on your customer's demographics. If you're already active on social media, the native analytics tools provided by the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and others, also give you data of what kinds of people comprise your audience.

Access to more data isn't always better though. That's because it's easy to make the wrong conclusion if you're only looking at one source of information. This is why it is so important to take note of the most consistent attributes your audience has across several channels and use those to further clarify who your ideal customer really is. Another way to define your audience is by conducting a survey or running a focus group. Share a questionnaire with your existing customer base over email or send one out to respondents publicly with a tool like SurveyMonkey.

Consider asking questions about what jobs they have, their values, income level, product preferences and more. Hosting a focus group or partnering with a vendor that specializes in focus groups can provide you with an understanding of what your customers think, but also how and why they think that way. This qualitative research will help paint a clearer picture as to who you're trying to reach on social media. Defining your target market is tough, but with ongoing persistence and the use of these techniques, your company will be more equipped to use social media with purpose.

- The more organized you are with social media, the more likely you'll see results. And one major key to getting organized is maintaining your schedule. Alongside your social media strategy, you'll want to develop an editorial calendar to manage all of your messaging in one place. An editorial calendar is a document that can live on a spreadsheet or within a marketing software to organize what you're sharing on social media on which channels and when. Similar to organizing a calendar for your work week, an editorial calendar should outline all the content that's supposed to be shared on your company's social media accounts in the future.

Every editorial calendar is different depending on the company. But most plan their social postings about a few weeks or a month ahead of time while leaving room for spur of the moment content to be added to the schedule. You might be asking why is it important to have an editorial calendar? The reason is this. It keeps your social media efforts goal-focused and organized. By documenting when your social posts will be shared you save a significant amount of time. It is much easier to see all the campaigns your organization has running in one place.

This also means adjustments are more fluid, ahead of schedule and can be made in terms of the larger strategy which is much easier to see from this bird's eye view. Not to mention, an editorial calendar is essential for team collaboration as most will people work together on the company's social media efforts from the same document living online. To create a social media focused editorial calendar, start by selecting a tool to manage this document. This could be Google Sheets, CoSchedule, or Trello.

Choose a tool that's best suited to the number of contributors you need to collaborate on a calendar, what functionality you're looking for, and how complex your calendar is going to be. Once you've selected the right tool, it is important to be able to look at your calendar and quickly understand what social posts are scheduled on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. This way, you can jump between looking at the granular daily details and the larger picture. Next, outline on which specific social networks you'll be sharing content.

It is important that you're able to differentiate the message you'll plan to send on one channel versus another on your calendar. Maybe you'll label all of your upcoming Facebook posts in blue. And then all of your Pinterest posts in red to make the difference clear to all contributors. When mapping out what content will be shared some organizations like to include the exact copy and media they plan to post on the calendar itself. This way you can copy what information is listed on the calendar and share it when you're ready to publish.

Other companies, in contrast, simply make a note of when a social media post is going live and on which channel. Some tools with calendar functionality, like CoSchedule or Hootsuite, allow you to schedule your social media posts directly within the calendar itself for more stream-lined publishing. Regardless of what options you decide to go with just make sure your calendar remains highly actionable as a resource for your team. That is, your calendar needs to be one that facilitates an efficient process rather than creating more questions or confusion.

If at any point, your calendar becomes a burden, then it's time to reassess how you're using it and consider changing the format to align with your teams workflow. There you have it. Start building out your own editorial calendar and become faster, more organized, and more effective in reaching your objectives.

- We've all heard this myth before, you have to be active on every channel to succeed with social media. This is not true. The right approach to social media starts with investing in a few of the right channels, as opposed to trying to be everywhere aimlessly. By trying to be everywhere on social media, many businesses spread themselves too thinly with a lackluster presence. What does this lead to? Limited results and wasted time. In order to have a meaningful impact on a social channel, a significant investment of time and resources is required, which is why you've got to be strategic about your channel choices.

If you're a large enterprise business like Red Bull or General Electric, it is more common to be active on every channel. They may have the resources to spend time everywhere and still make a true impact on their brand. But at the same time, even a large brand should take a look at where they choose to be active and understand that they actually have a strategic plan for success on each channel. Otherwise, they might just be using a particular channel because it's trendy and that's what their competitors are doing. This should not be the sole reason you're on social media.

Instead, take your time and research a few channels that make the most sense for your organization. This way, your company can make small investments on two or four social networks instead of haphazardly trying to spend time on eight different platforms. Even though it's rarely beneficial to be active on every social network, I do recommend that you set up a profile on each social network as they emerge to reserve your company's user name. You gain control of you brand name and URL on each channel and this prevents others from taking it.

Give yourself the option to revisit this social network if you decide to be active there in the future. On the flip side, you don't want to have too solid of an approach to social media as it's likely your audience is active on a few different channels. This gives you an opportunity to reach them with different types of messaging and at a new stage of the buying process. If you're feeling pressure to be active on a new social network, I recommend slowly testing out the channel with recycled content you've used elsewhere first. This way, you can start to be active there but with less of a commitment at first.

In the end, it comes down to striking a balance between being on enough channels where your audience spends time without trying to be everywhere and overextending yourself. Don't get confused by the hype but instead, take the time to figure out which particular social networks will drive the most value for your organization.

- Which channel is better for your brand? Facebook, YouTube, or both? The short answer is, it depends. In this video, we will learn how to research and use a channel's demographics to determine if it's the right social netwwork for your company to invest in. Selecting only a few social networks to be active on is difficult, but the point of this process is you determine if your audience is actually active on a particular social channel or not. Most of the social networks themselves provide data on their audiences' demographics, in terms of size, composition, and their activity level on a platform.

Start by searching for this information on their website, press page, or elsewhere, and review this data to inform your platform choices. For example, Snapchat's advertising guide on their website indicates that 41% of 18 to 34 year-olds, use the platform on a daily basis in the United States. If your organization is trying to reach a younger audience than this data helps indicate that the platform is probably a good fit at first glance. For a brand targeting new retirees, they should probably skip Snapchat in their overall social media mix.

Make sure to verify audience data supplied by the social networks with third-party sources as it's always a good practice to rely on multiple data sources to see the full picture. Speaking of multiple data sources, review research studies and audience demographic data about social media provided by high-quality, third-party sources. These could include, eMarketer, Social Media Examiner, and Business Insider Intelligence. These organizations regularly share actual data with analysis as to why social media is useful, how consumers use these channels, and the most common demographics on each network.

For instance, Pew Research recently released an article and PDF report on the use of different social media networks by American consumers, broken down by gender, age, location, education level, salary, and more. A significant amount of third-party social media research, like this, is free. You can also pay a one-time fee or subscribe for more in-depth reporting on demographics and user trends. Depending on the source of the data you're referencing, you may discover other useful information, like learning that your leading competitors tend to spend time on the same three platforms, likely, because it works, further informing your channel choice.

Remember, that reporting on a particular social network will vary, as some research is based on user survey's, while others, on data analysis from a third-party tool. Both data sources have their pros and cons. To account for this, always consult with multiple data sources before making a decision as to where to spend your time on social media. It takes time to learn who's active on what social channels but far less as compared to wasting your time on the wrong platforms. Research channel demographics and use third-party research.

It will provide a stronger foundation for progressing with social media.

- You'll never learn to ride a horse simply by reading a book about it. Same goes for learning what makes each social network unique, you've got to see it for yourself first hand. In this video you'll lean how to identify the various nuances of each social network to inform where, and how, your organization spends time on social media. From LinkedIn to Twitter every single social network is a different beast with unique ways of connecting their users through various formats of content and platform specific features.

The companies that tend to see the most success in social media understand what makes each social network distinct. They continually adapt to these creative limitations. For instance, Twitter only allows 140 characters within their tweets. Vertically aligned visuals perform best on Pinterest. And snaps on Snap Chat disappear in 24 hours. Knowing these differences is essential to using each platform in a meaningful way. For starters, identify the types of content users tend to share most per channel, and which are more prominently featured by each network.

Like how GIF's are prominently shared on Tumblr, over other types of content by it's audience, which is worth noting. While video is widely shared on Facebook, the social network's algorithm actually gives priority to this type of content to help make the platform more of a destination for video. Organizing each network by content type can help simplify the differences between channels. Pinterest and Instagram are highly visual networks. So images are primarily shared there. While YouTube and Snap Chat are mainly used for sharing video, Facebook and LinkedIn are used to share all different types of content.

However, recognize that you've got to dive deeper than basic content types to understand the unique feature sets of each platform. Even though video is primarily shared on both YouTube and Snap Chat, the length of the video shared on each channel varies significantly. Most You Tube videos tend to be two to four minutes on average, while videos shared on Snap Chat can only be up to ten seconds long because they're meant to be viewed as a series of multiple short clips. This completely changes the focus of the videos on each channel, requiring your organization to take a different approach even though the same type of content is being shared.

Take note of the specific feature sets like these, to both guide which channels you'd like to be active on and to understand how to best package the types of content you'll share there. Next, pay attention to how each platform is used as the context differs. Although links and images are widely shared on both Facebook and LinkedIn, content shared on LinkedIn is mainly focused on business and professional topics, as the network is widely used by users to find their next job, network, and connect with recruiters. While Facebook is used by people to consume the news, keep up with family and friends, and share content on any subject of interest.

A far less professional and serious network than LinkedIn. Keep this context of use in mind as users expect to see different types of messaging on each platform, and are using each network to complete different kinds of tasks, which should alter your approach. An important rule of thumb for understanding the nuances of each social network, is to be active on these channels yourself. Again, you don't have to be everywhere to be successful with social media. But, you do need to personally use the channels your company plans to be active on to see whose spending time there and what activity is actually taking place.

This way you can continue to clarify which social channels offer the best chance of reaching your audience, and impacting your bottom line. If your company plans to be active on Pinterest, you, as a marketer, should be spending time there too. No survey or research study on social media can give you the full picture. You have to mix research with experience. Get active on social media yourself to learn the in's and out's and see what's really happening.

- The undisputed leader in social media is Facebook. Associated with bringing social media to the mainstream, Facebook is a platform that most businesses use to reach their customers. In this video, you'll learn what Facebook is, why it is important and what it takes to use it effectively. Facebook is a social media platform with over a billion daily active users. It allows consumers and businesses to express themselves in a variety of ways from sharing videos, events, news, and more.

In many ways, the network is the social layer of the web. What I mean by this is that many websites allow visitors to quickly log into their site through Facebook. Also, there's widespread inclusion of the Like button and other Facebook plugins on millions of websites. This social network is a powerful asset to businesses for two reasons. It provides high-quality user data and it offers a variety of advertising options to target the right people. With the largest and most active audience in social media to date, most businesses are able to find their customer base on the Facebook network and reach them across devices.

Facebook is the best bet you can make on social media today. Here's what your company should do to see the results on the leading social network. Success on Facebook comes down to monitoring what types of content resonate most on the platform amongst users as well as what is prioritized in the news feed. The news feed is where most content is engaged and it's operated with an algorithm to ensure relevancy for every user. Use this information to share valuable content with your audience that solves their problems, educates them and relates back to your offerings and expertise.

Audience participation is another pivotal way of gaining traction on Facebook as your following could help generate more awareness and interaction from others. Reaching more people organically on Facebook is best achieved by getting users to share your content with their personal network. Creates posts that involve your audience in your brand's story. Ask them what they think. Ask them to share their experiences. Ask them to provide their opinion in a meaningful way. For example, some companies have hosted contests and provided incentives to their following.

This can generate discussions and encourage the sharing of their content. However, it is important to note that paying for ads has become more of a necessity to see results on Facebook as organic reach for businesses has been greatly diminished in recent years. This is why investing in Facebook advertising is necessary to compete in the network and ensure you'll be seen and that your audience takes action. To start running ads on Facebook, match the goals you're trying to achieve with the right ad formats and include relevant messaging and creative.

Reaching your customers is more difficult than ever as the number of messages we are exposed to every day is increasing. Facebook is an unparalleled platform that provides advertisers with rich data about their ideal audience and the ability to reach them in real time in a nondisruptive way. There's no social network quite like Facebook, making it an essential part of your toolkit.

- A single image can tell an impactful story, sometimes far more effectively than text. Sharing images at scale has led to Instagram's wild success. Let's take a look at why Instagram is an important platform to consider and how to use it effectively for business. Instagram is an online community, centered around sharing beautiful images and video to your account or to a stories feed that disappears after 24 hours. It is similar to Facebook and Twitter, as everyone has a profile and discovers content in a news feed.

In a sense Instagram leveled the playing field for its users making it easier to edit, apply filters, and share high quality photos from their mobile devices. This in turn encourages more people to participate. Owned by Facebook it's one of the fastest growing social networks. Even more important for our purposes, 70% of Instagram users are following a business. Instagram is worthwhile because it has a large, highly active audience, as well as a low barrier to entry for companies.

It is easy to generate brand awareness without committing too many resources. Simply put, Instagram provides your customers with a visual reference of what your company offers, making it easier to share your brand's message. Ads on Instagram can help you encourage customers to take action like visiting your website, or it can drive conversions like mobile app installs, or sales. There are two downsides to Instagram. First, you can only update an account from a mobile device. Also, it isn't possible to drive your following to a website outside of Instagram, unless you pay to do so with an ad or you've got a verified account which then allows you to send your audience to visit a web page of your choosing within your Instagram Stories.

This isn't the end of the world but it is a frustration when you're trying to connect a photo you shared on Instagram with a product or resource available on your website. Retailers tend to find the most success marketing with Instagram since it is easier to encourage a person viewing a photo on the network to purchase a low cost product like clothing, food, makeup, or home goods. There's less consideration time needed for these types of products which makes Instagram an effective channel for both showcasing and selling these items.

However, there are certainly success stories from companies in every sector from General Electric to Panera Bread. To get started first create a bank of high quality images and decide on some relevant hashtags to assign to them. To get the images organize a photo shoot, curate from customers, recycle lifestyle or product photos from another campaign, or hire graphic designers. Imagery and videos with high production value resonate the most on Instagram so take the time to understand what visuals represent for your brand and how to compose them into an appealing image.

To further your reach include a few strategic hashtags with your image and consider partnering with leading influencers to help encourage discovery of your content. Influencers are Instagram users with a large following that reach the audience your after. Browse on Instagram's Explore Page to see if there's any relevant accounts to reach out to and partner with by paying them, featuring them on your account, or sending them some free product to encourage them to share photos about your company and its offerings.

In addition to managing your own profile experiment with advertising. Coordinate with the ads you're running on Facebook with those on Instagram for one integrated campaign. Coordinating your advertising across channels allows you to reach customers at different touchpoints in their shopping experience. Instagram is the right tool for brands to capitalize on visual presentations of their unique values and offerings. If your company can translate its brand into a visually appealing display, Instagram will be a worthwhile time and financial investment.

- Social media has completely changed the way we communicate today. Snapchat is no exception. This network introduced the concept of disappearing messaging, at first, a shocking feature but turned out to be quite attractive. In fact, the platform sees 10 billion video views daily. In this video, we'll discuss what Snapchat is, why it's important, and how your organization should consider using the platform. First, let's go over the unique features of Snapchat.

Snapchat is a mobile-only social network that allows users to share time-limited images and videos as messages with their friends and publicly to their stories. These messages, known as snaps, only last for a few seconds. The author can select how many seconds. The messages can be viewed again for only 24 hours, afterwards this content is erased for ever. Geofilters can be added to the content as well. Geofilters are filter overlays that go over top of images and videos that correspond to the message creator's location.

Another popular set of features are Snapchat's lenses. The lenses use face-tracking technology to put a mask or another type of animation over a person's face as they're taking a selfie or a video. There are all kinds of lenses. They can, for example, make the user look like a dog, a zombie, or have extra-large eyes. The lenses that are offered are changed periodically. Snapchat is different from other social networks because most of its audience is under 25 years old and the content shared there is meant to be more raw, unscripted, and immediate.

Because Snapchat's audience is dominated by a younger demographic, it doesn't make sense for every type of business to be active there, and that's okay. This is why it is so important to review your options and see which social networks make sense for your company. Snapchat's benefit is the temporary nature of its content. This leads to a more relaxed atmosphere and more authentic expressions. Content shared to Snapchat is the opposite of the flawless photo posted on Instagram or the well-written post shared to LinkedIn.

Instead, you'll likely see updates from behind the scenes. Now, if you're looking to use Snapchat for business, here are the three keys to success. First, establish a unique perspective that reflects what your brand stands for. Since Snapchat is mobile-focused, highlighting your brand from the first person perspective can help your organization feel more like a friend on the network as opposed to a brand. Birchbox does this well, as they often give different members of their team control of the company's Snapchat for 24 hours to provide a day-in-the-life coverage of each employee.

Next, create an original content series that educates, entertains, and uses Snapchat's unique features, quick and temporary content. Post content match the medium, like Entertainment Weekly's Ten Second Review Series on Snapchat, that shows binge-worthy movies and TV in under 10 seconds. Lastly, boost your reach on Snapchat by partnering with influencers to share content with their audience. For example, Taco Bell hired an influential Snapchat artist to draw a bunch of snaps for them on their account and on the influencer's account to reach more people.

Is Snapchat the right fit for you? It's your call. Figure out if your audience is active there and if the platform's unique features help you achieve your goals.

- Can you name the second largest search engine in the world? Surprisingly, it's YouTube. Owned and integrated with Google, YouTube is the premiere destination for watching videos online on any subject, from makeup tutorials, to movie trailers, and more. Let's walk through what makes YouTube valuable and how your organization can find success on the platform. Think of YouTube as a community-driven version of Netflix but where anyone can upload a video and start their very own channel.

Every day people watch millions of hours of YouTube videos across the web and these videos generate billions of views. Filming a worthwhile video that others are willing to watch is far more difficult for a consumer than sharing an image on Instagram or sending out a Tweet. Therefore, the amount of content shared by consumers on YouTube is far less than you'd see on other leading social networks. YouTube is highly beneficial for brands and creators because the network not only hosts their videos but helps get them discovered by a larger audience.

If viewers subscribe to your company's YouTube channel, they're alerted when you publish new videos. Videos are also ranked in YouTube and Google search results which is more exposure for your videos in the long term. A significant amount of YouTube content is viewed off the network as well because YouTube videos can be embedded anywhere, including your blog or company website. Think of success on YouTube similarly to your favorite channel on TV. When you like a particular channel's programming you come back again for the same shows or one similar to what you've enjoyed in the past.

That's what you're looking to achieve on YouTube. You want to build ongoing interest in your video content that your audience wants to come back and watch again, and again. Here are three ways to get the results you're looking for as a business active on YouTube. Start by developing a consistent content series to live on your YouTube channel. Like a TV show have an overall theme with individual videos highlighting different topics. Establish how often you'll be sharing these videos and stick with this frequency to build a viewing habit with your audience.

For example, Taco Bell publishes a new video every Thursday for their YouTube series called the Taco Bell Clip Show. This series highlights content shared by their fans on social media with added commentary and comedy skits from their host. Next, don't neglect the production value of your videos. You don't need a multimillion-dollar recording studio to create stellar videos but you do need to do your research. Invest in affordable beginners tools to focus on the right framing, stability, lighting, and audio for all of your videos.

Lastly, focus on an original angle for your YouTube series that's educational. This doesn't mean you've got to reinvent the wheel in terms of the focus of your videos but it does mean you've got to present your own perspective on a subject. Often, marketers freeze up when they see someone else already covered a particular topic of interest. Don't let it stop you from covering that subject just be sure to add more value to your videos as compared to what's already out there today. Consider using a camera to showcase what your company has to offer and sharing it with the world on YouTube.

It is one of the few social networks where your content has an extended shelf life

- LinkedIn is more than a listing of your resume online. This social channel allows users to build and maintain a professional network, showcase their expertise, and learn from others in their industry. Let's discuss why LinkedIn is beneficial, and how to use it for your business. For starters, LinkedIn, unlike other leading social networks, is a community of professionals in different industries. Users are looking for a job, to network with like-minded people, or hire someone to fill in a role at their company.

This sets a far more serious tone for the activity, and content shared there. LinkedIn is important to both professionals and businesses alike. Individuals use LinkedIn to share their experience and expertise with others, to establish themselves in their industries. Businesses can share relevant messaging with their audience on the network, as well as highlight their work culture and values. Most organizations use LinkedIn to recruit talent, by reviewing user profiles. LinkedIn can help any type of business market themselves as an attractive employer for potential applicants, but not all organizations will find success marketing their offerings there.

If your company sells laundry detergent and other consumer goods, LinkedIn isn't the right place to do so. However, if your focused on the business to business market, and your selling software to help retail stores manage their workflow, then LinkedIn is a perfect fit. Driving measurable results on LinkedIn for a company, starts with outlining your marketing and hiring goals separately. To succeed in both areas, develop meaningful content of a professional nature that resonates with each audience you're trying to reach from your LinkedIn company page.

From a marketing perspective, this could be sharing a blog post explaining how to address a common challenge in your industry. Content aimed at achieving your recruitment goals, might be an interview of an existing employee, or sharing an article highlighting the causes your company supports. For instance, Tesla recently shared a video on their LinkedIn about how their technology helped an island in America Samoa run almost entirely on solar energy. A potential employee may see this and learn not only about the company's offerings, but their stance on positively affecting the environment.

To specifically address your recruitment goals, use ads on the network to target specific professionals, based on their job title, job seniority, skills, and more. The targeting criteria you're able to choose on LinkedIn, is based on a professional's profile, which offers information about their career, and current position unavailable anywhere else on social media. Don't forget to leverage the reach of your current employees on the network as well, to market your organization's content, services, and employer brand.

Provide training, guidelines, and encouragement on the best ways to share company content and news from their profiles, but don't force them to share. Getting employees to share company messaging on LinkedIn can significantly increase your reach on the network, as 100 employees with 250 connections each, could potentially reach 25,000 people. At a minimum, LinkedIn is one of the few social networks where your organization should maintain a company page, even if you don't intend to use the channel for marketing.

Your employees on the network will list your company on their profile as their employer. No matter your industry or your company goals, you certainly want that LinkedIn page to reflect the right information.

- 140 characters of text can have a surprisingly large impact. From a President connecting with voters to breaking news of a plane crash, Twitter has become a vital, up-to-the-minute news source for the world's current events. Often referred to as society's megaphone, here's why Twitter is important and how it can be leveraged to achieve your company's goals. Twitter is a social network where users post, interact with messages known as tweets that are restricted to no more than 140 characters.

Users can share images, GIFs, videos, and other types of media with their tweets, but most tend to be text-focused. Many also include links to drive users offsite to an article or another resource. Celebrities, the media, and the tech industry are some of the most active voices on Twitter, but the audience includes a vast mix of demographics from consumers to companies of all sizes. A benefit to this mogul-focused channel is that you can tweet to anyone from a celebrity to an executive on the social network.

Twitter opened up a new level of accessibility between high profile individuals or companies and regular users. The advantage of this is that consumers now have the ability to hold governments and companies more accountable. Unfortunately, there's a large number of spam, bot, and trolls active there as well which can sometimes lead to harassment. One of the best ways to use Twitter for business is to provide customer service on the platform. Make it clear your organization is listening on Twitter to customer service complaints by addressing questions and concerns on the platform, then moving them offline when needed.

Actively communicating with consumers on Twitter is the difference between a brand willing to address customer needs and one deliberately ignoring their customers' feedback. Twitter also acts as an outlet to comment on what's happening in the world in real time, especially around live events like the Oscars, a conference, or a TV show. Known as live tweeting, your brand should add valuable dialogue to the conversations happening on Twitter around events that are both mainstream and industry-specific. By adding your company's perspective to an event, you're increasing the likelihood that others will discover your tweets and learn about your business for the first time.

Using Twitter to discover what your audience is talking about is another best use case. Listen to what users are saying about your business, competitors, and the industry at large. It can provide valuable insights. Tools like Brandwatch and Sysomos help companies sift through the massive amounts of data shared on Twitter everyday to deliver reporting on the opinions of relevant consumers. Beyond sharing content from your company's profile, the ability to have one-to-one dialogue with users on Twitter is one of the network's most unique aspects for business.

In many ways, Twitter can help humanize your brand. You're able to address an individual as a company at a public forum for all to see, illustrating how your organization chooses to interact with its customers. Every public interaction on Twitter is a marketing opportunity. Compare this to interacting with a customer over email or on the phone where no one gets to see your skills at work. Visit Twitter to see how other businesses in and out of your industry are using this social media network to make a lasting impact on their customer base.

You can pick up some great tips to help you get started today.

- What's similar to both a scrapbook and a bulletin board, but lives online? Pinterest. In this video, we'll learn why and how Pinterest can help you reach your marketing goals. A catalog of ideas represented with images known as Pins, Pinterest is a visual network helping millions of people find new ideas, recipes, style inspiration, and more. Pinterest is dominated by women. 45% of all U.S. women online have used the network, compared to only 17% of men. Users and businesses alike upload Pins, images with a link and a caption, to their accounts, and organize them on different boards.

Each board is a themed collection of Pins. Whole Foods, for instance, has a juice and smoothies board, while REI has a board for outdoor hacks and one for trail running. Pinterest is an important social media channel, because 93% of users are using it to plan their purchases, while 96% use it to gather product information. Users on Pinterest tend to be in a shopping mind frame and closer to making a purchase, leading to a higher likelihood that activity there will lead to a conversion.

Unlike other networks, the discovery of content on Pinterest occurs in the short term and the long term. On Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, posts are often lost in 24 hours, due to the massive amounts of content being shared there. But because Pinterest users search for Pins, your content might be found months later and continue to drive interaction for the long term. To get your content on Pinterest, start by ensuring the images on your website are optimized for sharing. All uploaded Pins are vertically oriented for accessibility across devices, so cater your content to the platform.

Make it easy for visitors to add your images to Pinterest by adding the network's save button to your website. This way, someone can easily Pin an image of yours to their Pinterest account. To increase interactions with your content once it's shared to Pinterest, use Rich Pins. Rich Pins are meta tags on your website that provide more information on any mobile apps, movies, recipes, articles, products, or places featured as images. When these Rich Pins are discovered by a user, they are shown more details, like specific recipe information, for example, but also links to download items, purchase products, or visit sites.

Rich Pins provide context and help users decide to like, share, or save content. With Pinterest, it's important to keep in mind that more content is shared by its users than businesses. Encourage consumers to distribute your content on Pinterest by hosting a contest or showcasing their shopping lists. You'll also want to experiment with paid-for Promoted Pins. This can help reach a wider audience with your most engaging Pins. With Promoted Pins, you can get top placement on the network and target specific audience demographics.

A recent study by Pinterest found that people who saw Promoted Pins had a 40% greater awareness of new products and 50% higher purchase intent. It's time to ask yourself if Pinterest is right for your organization. Consider how the visual network might fit into your social media mix, and start exploring what similar companies are doing there to inform your decision.

- Your customers don't like promotional messaging, and they really don't like advertising disrupting their entertainment. Instead, you need to learn why creating valuable content for social media is a more viable option. Social media works because your audience can check out what you're sharing, and then choose whether or not to follow, and opt into receiving your messaging. This is more effective than being interrupted by a tv commercial, banner ad, or being forced to watch an ad before viewing a YouTube video. Because your audience is given agency over the experience they're having.

Producing valuable content on social media can help your company not only earn the permission to message your customers again, but also builds trust and rapport with them. By valuable content I mean sharing a blog post, video, or another form of content that educates, entertains, or convinces your audience to take action. Instead of being overly promotional, which most consumers know how to tune out at this point, teach them something new, make them laugh, or maybe change their opinion. It's all about telling a worthwhile story that provides a person with more than what they started.

For instance, Patagonia, the clothing retailer, shared an article on their Facebook page about their CEO's plan for protecting national parks, and what their customers can do to help. The brand is known for being adamant about conserving and protecting the environment. By sharing their beliefs, they'll likely attract customers that share similar values, and differentiate themselves from competitors. When creating content for your customers think about the problems they face on a regular basis as they relate to what you offer as an organization.

Your unique experience, expertise, and beliefs as a company should be the focus of the content you're putting out there. What questions is customer service regularly receiving? Consider answering some of these most commonly asked questions with your content. What challenges does your ideal customer face as they move closer to making a purchase? These considerations when customers first come in contact with your organization are different from when they are close to deciding on a purchase. For example, at first, a person might be looking for different ways to solve a problem, which they might learn about from a blog post you've written.

Then, as they continue to research, they might want to understand the competitive landscape in your industry, and a whitepaper on the subject is the best resource for them to reference. As their needs change during the buying process, the content they receive must adapt to serve their changing interests. Sharing content on social media, or elsewhere, is a long term play. You can't build trust overnight. This is why it may take months, and multiple interactions with different content, to build a rapport with your audience. With that said, start creating and sharing on social media to begin establishing your organization as an expert, slowly building a long lasting connection with your customers.

- Repetition helps our brain form memories. You want to build a positive memory of your business with your customer base by regularly reaching them on social media. Let's discuss how to craft an ongoing content series for your audience that establishes a long term connection with your business. A content series is similar to a TV show, as it's addressing the same overall theme from the same source, but each episode tackles something different. This might be a series of articles on your blog, a photo series on Instagram, or a video series.

A series allows you to set a schedule with your audience. It sets expectations. So they'll begin to form a memory that say, every Tuesday, you publish a new video. Regularly sharing engaging content on social media is easier said than done. It can be time consuming and resource intensive. Establishing a content series can help because it sets a schedule for when content will be published. It keeps your team on track and you won't want to let your audience down. It also saves you time, as it's easier to come up with new topics to cover when there's a specific theme to inspire you.

When choosing the theme of your series, select a subject broad enough to pull a variety of related topics for each episode, but specific enough to be relevant to your audience and company offerings. For instance, a project management software company Asana, created an ongoing youtube series called How To Asana, which showcases the variety of ways companies can use their product. By providing practical advice on how to better manage projects with Asana, they helped new customers learn what the product does, and existing customers achieve the results they want.

The best part about creating a content series, unlike a TV show, is that it's highly adaptable. As you're producing content as part of a larger series, you're able to monitor its progress in real time to determine what aspects are working and which are not. You can also alter parts of the series to improve how it's performing, as compared to a TV show that has to film months in advance of airing. By continually testing and measuring your progress with a series, you can ensure it continues to drive results, or if it isn't, you'll be able to quickly pull the plug, or focus elsewhere.

Think strategically about which social channel or channels the series will live on, as it may impact the topic choice, frequency of publishing, and formatting of the content. Consider focusing on a series you can adapt into a couple different formats of content for different channels. Let's say you develop a video series for Facebook. Consider sharing trailers for these videos on Instagram to encourage a wider viewership and fuel two different social channels. Creating a content series is helpful for establishing a regular cadence with your audience.

Make sure your series is consistent, focused on a unique and relevant subject, and it's shared where your audience spends time. While the planning make take more time upfront, it'll be well worth it in the long run.

- Variety makes your messaging stick. When you share different types of content with your audience on social media, you accomplish three things. You'll stand out amongst the noise, you'll reach a diverse mix of people, and you'll address a wide range of customer issues. Here are the leading types of content worth sharing on social media and including in your content series. First, there's foundational content. This is the content that explains your offerings in tangible terms your audience can understand without being promotional.

It's the introductory information that describes your business, your values, and expertise in a succinct manner. This is mainly to potential customers. Foundational content is what you'll create first in your website and social media. Since it provides context for your audience, you'll link back to this information often in other content. In addition, foundational content is evergreen, meaning it'll stay accurate and relevant for a longer time. This content type is valuable for explaining your company's position in the marketplace relative to competitors, but it isn't necessarily as timely or as detailed as other types of content.

For example, an article shared on LinkedIn by American Express outlines its membership benefits for small businesses. This piece provides important information to potential customers about why using their product is worthwhile, and which product options are available for business owners. The information is useful and educational to people considering becoming an American Express customer, but not exactly timely, in-depth, or particularly entertaining content. Next is customer-focused content. This is typically content created to answer questions or issues faced by your existing customers.

Whether pulled from social media or customer service, this content is created in response to enough customers asking the same questions consistently. Another type is timely content. It's when your organization ties your content efforts with current events, like an election, moments in pop culture, or a holiday. For instance, this could a company sharing a Facebook post about their stance on a recent policy enacted by the government. They are using content to chime in on larger conversation, and make their perspective clear to their audience.

Lastly, repurposed content is when you're using a piece of content that's already been published in other formats. You might repurpose a lengthy whitepaper into multiple blog posts, or convert an article into an infographic to present previously shared information in a new format. It still takes time and resources to focus on repurposing, but less than it does to reinvent brand new content. With the intense competition for audience attention, it's difficult to reach your customers. Recognize that offering a mix of content types on social media is your best bet for achieving the results you're after.

- One of the questions I get asked the most is when should I be posting on social media and how often. You don't want publish so infrequently that your audience forgets about your content, but you also don't want to publish too often and become annoying. It's all about finding the right balance. There isn't a perfect formula. Figuring out the appropriate frequency comes down to a variety of factors specific to your organization. Let's explore what those are. First, be data driven. If you're already active on social media, review existing data to determine when your content on each channel received the most engagement.

The native analytics that come with most of the social networks can help provide these insights. If you don't have data to reference yet, review third party research on the best times to share per channel from sources like Social Media Examiner or eMarketer. Or you can use these simple rules of thumb. People tend to be active on social media in the early morning when they first start working, around lunchtime mid-day, and at the very end of their workday. As you act on your predictions, test different time slots and alter how frequently you're sharing on a particular channel.

After spending a month actively sharing, measure when your content saw the most engagement and which frequency of sharing drove the most results. Second, how often you're sharing is impacted by the nature of the platform you choose. For example, Twitter is a really fast paced social network where content is shared much more frequently than content is on Facebook or LinkedIn. So if you're investing in Twitter, share content more often or risk getting lost in the feed. In contrast, if you're publishing too frequently on Facebook or LinkedIn, you might diminish the visibility of your previously shared posts.

Third, consider content format. If you're publishing YouTube videos or blog posts on social media, you're not going to be able share those as frequently as you would an image or a purely text focused update. This is because these formats of content are more resource intensive and require a longer production timeline. One last thing to consider when determining the ideal publishing frequency is setting expectations with your audience. In some cases, I'd suggest actually calling out how frequently you plan to publish. For example, let your company's Facebook group know you're sharing podcast episodes every Monday and Words of Wisdom on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

This public declaration keeps you on schedule because you're now publicly accountable. Another way to set the expectations of your audience is to remain consistent. It is important to still test regularly to see what changes need to be made, but if you make a publishing promise, commit to it in the long term. To figure out what frequency of publishing makes the most sense for your company, continue to predict, measure, adapt your approach, and repeat the process.

- Word choice matters. Whether you're composing a tweet or crafting the title of a YouTube video, the copy you're including on social media has an impact. In this video, we'll discuss how to write copy for social media to increase the effectiveness of every post you're sharing. Refer to your company's style guide. You want to align your social media copy with your messaging elsewhere. The goal of a style guide is to communicate with your audience from one unified perspective with the same tone, using the same grammar style, and usage guide.

Start here as a foundation for how you should direct your social media copywriting efforts. If you don't have a company style guide, I suggest you develop one. With or without a style guide, think about the approach you're taking on each channel. Specifically, think about the series of content you're developing. Each content series should inform what copy you'll need to update on each network. For example, I worked with a wine company to build their brand on social media. And we decided to be active on both Twitter and Facebook.

For Twitter, we shared witty tips on how to find the best wine for all occasions and preferences. Since the tweets are short, it was easier to deliver advice in short and snappy sentences that presented the brand's expertise, alongside a distinct personality. On Facebook, we regularly shared full reviews of our favorite wines. These were posted as photos of a particular wine paired with a few snarky paragraphs of text. Facebook is a more ideal platform to share lengthier copy, which is why sharing the reviews there made the most sense.

For every content series and channel you're active on, adapt the copy you're including accordingly, whether that's altering the length of the copy, its tone, or otherwise. The goal of every post you're sharing on social media should direct what copy you're including. You have limited space, so you've got to prioritize one goal per post, and this goal will vary. Is the copy included meant to encourage a person to click on a link, provide context for a photo you're sharing, purchase a product, or maybe the point is to make your audience aware of a particular issue your company supports? For instance, the burger join Shake Shack tends to post concise informative captions with all their Instagram photos that tend to highlight new store openings, content from their customers, and new additions to their menu.

All the copy included is simple to read, descriptive, and conversational, giving their audience a friendly feel. Shake Shack always considers their readers, and you should too. Now is the time to think like your reader. Write what will delight them and motivate them to take action. Use language they'll identify with to improve your chances of conversation. This could be a highly professional tone, a conversational exchange, or humorous quips. Remember that every post is just one piece of a larger picture.

Each post you share on social media will lead into the next. So don't try to cover too many themes or include multiple goals in your copy. Instead, to make every word you're using on social media impactful, consider your audience, your style guide, your content themes, and keep it simple.

- An image can make or break a post shared on social media. That's why it's vital to strategically include visuals in your approach. By visuals I mean images, gifs, infographics and memes. To prevent your audience from zoning out and to compete with all the information shared in the feed, include visuals with your post often. Why, because our brains process an image in 13 milliseconds. Much more quickly than when we comprehend text. You can get your message across to your audience at a great speed when you use an image.

Not to mention, visuals insight emotions that will make the message easy to remember later on. Most social networks allow you to easily add visuals to what you're sharing, providing an opportunity to take a creative approach on each platform. But when you're creating images for social media, you want to keep a few things in mind. Start by making sure you've sized a visual correctly for certain social channels as the ideal image dimensions vary significantly per network. To get the sizing specifics for each social network, look up Sprout Social's Free and Always Up-To-Date Guide on the proper image dimensions.

After that, think about how your visuals provide consistency for your campaign, making everything a recognizable part of your company's messaging. Establish guidelines as to which fonts, logos, color palettes, and the types of images are allowed to be used in social media to foster visual consistency. Next, aim for simplicity, you don't have a lot of real estate to work with when sharing a visual on social media, so don't over complicate it by including too many elements. Going hand in hand with simplicity consider the clarity and contrast of your visuals.

No one area of an image should draw your attention so much that you can't see it's other aspects. For example, if you have a dark colored background and lay dark colored text on top of it, the contrast is going to be very low. And the text on the image will be really difficult to see. Avoid this issue by choosing high contrasting colors. Another important element to keep in mind is prioritizing quality, whether you're designing an image or sourcing it from elsewhere, never share a blurry, poorly designed image.

Jaguar CEO once said it best, if you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design. Lastly, streamline your visual creation process by using tools and creating templates. Tools like Photoshop, Adobe Spark, and Canva can assist your team in developing captivating images for sharing on social media without the help of a designer. In addition to developing your own visuals, pull images from stock photo libraries and use them as is or edit them to add branding.

Only select high quality, high resolution images when pulling visuals from a stock photo library. But at the same time, avoid widely used stock images that you've seen before. To find a variety of copyright free, quality images that'll represent your brand appropriately, search for images from Unsplash, Death to Stock Photo, and New Old Stock. There's no doubt about the added value of visuals. Invest in the right ones for social media to convey your brands method, vision, and mission concisely.

- Supplying your social channels with enough content isn't easy. No matter how many assets you have designed, or photo shoots your brand has, you'll always need more content. One way to solve this is to use content created by your audience. Let's explore how to encourage your customers to create content on your behalf. To start, User-Generated Content or UGC is best defined as images, articles, tweets and any other content created about your company by your audience.

For example, if a person shares an image on Instagram from their favorite skin care products displayed on their dresser, and tags the brands included, this is UGC. When UGC presents an organization in a positive light, it is an effective endorsement for your company, as people trust others in their network more than they do a brand. Sharing UGC from your social accounts saves time and resources that you can allocate elsewhere. To find UGC worth using, start by searching mentions of your brand, and hashtags related to your company on social media.

Make sure to provide credit to the authoring customers that your company pulls content from. And let them know they've been featured which is often very exciting for fans. When you feature content from a customer on your social accounts, they're often thrilled at the opportunity and excited to see that you're paying attention. Make it as easy as possible for your audience to share content about your company by identifying what hashtags your brand uses to express itself. The outdoor company, REI, does this well by including the hashtag OptOutside in the bio of their Instagram account.

This makes it clear to their fans this is the hashtag to include in their photos. Consider calling out your brands hashtags within the bio of your accounts or elsewhere to alert your audience. Think about the different ways your customers can model or highlight your products and services that encourage this behavior. This is easy for a food or clothing company as people tend to take pictures of what they're eating and their outfits, but this is also possible in different fields. You just have to be more creative. I once saw a financial services company share a view from a satisfied corporate customer on their LinkedIn page.

The review was originally shared in a LinkedIn group the customer was active in. But then the company asked for permission to share it with a wider audience because it was so kind, descriptive and well-written. The company actually asks all satisfied customers over email to leave a review on LinkedIn, their website, or over email, which certainly worked this time around. Who better to speak your praises than one of your past customers? Other organizations have hosted contests or provided other incentives to encourage customers to create interesting content.

Don't reinvent the wheel. Instead, become partners with your customers and make it easy for them to participate with your brand on social media. It's a win-win for everyone involved.

- Not everything you're sharing on social media has to be new. Let's discuss how re-sharing content from the past is beneficial for keeping your social accounts updated with useful, and relevant information. Republishing content is the act of sharing something on your social media channels that you've previously shared there. At first this sounds counterintuitive. Why would you share the same material again and again on social media? Is this annoying and a major social media faux pas? Well, if you aimlessly share the same exact post, with the same exact information, one after the other on the same channel then yes, this is annoying and irritating for your audience.

The right approach to republishing entails sharing content you've shared before, but mixed in with your other content. They might be new, from customers, or another source. Content that's worth republishing must be evergreen in order for it to make sense to share again. Evergreen means that a piece of content isn't timely and doesn't expire. The information included is relevant for a long period of time. An article about the presidential election is timely content and likely wouldn't make sense to share again in the future.

While a how-to video on making vegan stromboli is more evergreen, as the information provided will still be useful months and years later. Republishing content repeatedly on social media is beneficial because it drives more traffic to what you're sharing. Due to the nature of social media, most of your audience won't see what's been shared unless you pay for it to be promoted. By republishing, you're improving the likelihood that members of your audience that probably missed the original post the first time, will see your content the second or the third time.

Your audience is likely active across multiple timezones, so repeatedly republishing each social post will ensure more of your audience sees what you're sharing. Now, to republish without being a nuisance, reframe what you're sharing. You never want to share the same exact post word for word a second or third time, but instead, alter aspects of what you're sharing each time to alter the way the post is packaged. For example, maybe you originally shared a link to an article on healthy eating habits on Twitter, with copying including the headline and a relevant hashtag.

When republishing on Twitter, share the same article but this time include an image from the article within the tweet, and replace the copy included to call out one of the tips the article suggests. In the end, you're sharing the same piece of content, but reframing how it is presented when re-sharing it. You might do this across social channels as well by sharing content one way on Facebook, but then altering how it's packaged significantly when shared on LinkedIn. What's important when republishing is to space out the time in which you're sharing the same content again, even if it is reframed.

Don't publish the same piece of content back to back, but instead publish one post at 12 p.m. on Tuesday, then re-share it again later in the day in between a couple of other posts. Republishing content is a part of your greater mix of posts you're sharing, keeps the interest of your audience, stretches your limited resources, and drives more awareness to your content. Think of republishing on social media as a second chance for success.

- Basketball legend Michael Jordan once said, "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships." The same goes for social media. The medium is used most effectively when different stakeholders work together as a team. To drive the results you're looking for, you've got to engage in departmental integration. Departmental integration is involving other departments other than marketing in the adoption of social media. It's marketing's responsibility to work with other departments to educate, support, and collaborate with them to use social media to better achieve their goals.

The use of social media can be integrated with public relations, human resources, sales, customer service, the C-Suite, and others. For example, public relations could monitor journalist activity on social media to identify which ones to pitch to, and how to best craft their communication. Social media surges a reservoir consumer data that can be creatively used for different purposes across an organization. It feels more informed and efficient decisions.

Like having HR managers at your organization use social media profiles to vet potential applicants, they can quickly weed out any clearly unqualified job candidates by scanning their profiles, rather than reading cover letters. To integrate social media across departments, marketing must take the lead. Since the marketing department is most familiar with social media, they'll be best suited to identify departments that would benefit, as well as consult them on how to best use the data. Meet with department leadership to explain the value of integrating social media into their existing workflow.

This meeting should highlight the benefits of using social media to reach their particular goals, how it saves time, and improves decision making. With buy-in from leadership, set up a training schedule for members of the department to learn how to begin to use social media as a part of their overall role. In addition to training, provide employees with access to the right tools and documentation. Give them the company social media policies to ensure consistency. Let's say your company was interested in creating products in the virtual reality space.

Your marketing department could partner with the product development team to give them access to the social listing tool you're using. Offer training on how to best use the tool and how to generate reports. This will help them identify virtual reality features consumers are talking about today. This is only one source of data to review. Verify your predictions with surveys and focus groups as you consider what kinds of products to develop. Following these steps your organization can begin integrating social media across relevant departments and start winning big.

Social media is often over-hyped. Yes, as a method of communication, social media has altered the way information is shared by consumers, businesses, and governments alike. But it is not the end all be all for marketers. There are many other marketing channels available today that provide value to advertisers in ways that social media cannot. It's not to say one marketing discipline is better than the other. But instead, let's learn how to integrate your use of social media with other marketing channels as well.

This is known as Omnichannel Integration. When your organization has successfully coordinated the use of your marketing channels to achieve the same objectives. The goal of omnichannel integration is to provide tailored messaging coordinated across different mediums to engage your target audience at all possible touch-points. For example, a consumer goes to Disney's website to read a blog about the most kid-friendly hotels at their parks. Then the next day they see a sponsored video on Facebook about a past customer's experience; further highlighting what it's like to visit their theme park.

And then finally, the same person is browsing a different site two weeks later and sees a display add about discounted tickets to Disney World. This is omnichannel marketing. Each channel further supported the experience the consumer was having on the previous channel, eventually leading to a ticket sale. Notice that the same exact messaging isn't repeated. Instead, each channel acts as a different touchpoint for consumers that provides a consistent experience.

Social media should compliment your email marketing, events, direct mail, paper click-adds, and vice versa. An omnichannel approach is effective because it delivers one unified experience for customers. Since consumers are active across many platforms and devices, an omnichannel approach is required to reach them on each touchpoint where they spend time online and offline. As you begin to plan a marketing campaign for your organization, start with your goals.

Then the campaign's focus will come together to inform what strategy, channels, and tactics you'll need to implement. Orienting towards your goals will also help you more quickly and efficiently coordinate social media with the rest of your channels. Your social media activity should support your other channels; but the opposite should also be true. Say you're hosting a giveaway on your company's Youtube channel and to increase participation you announce it within your monthly newsletter and in a blog post.

This way the other marketing mediums you're active on support a campaign living on social media to help increase the number of entries. In the end, the goal is to integrate social media and your channels together to deliver one concise experience for your audience while achieving your goals.

- Without a doubt, being able to listen and respond to consumers is the one of the biggest benefits of using social media. Listening to what people are saying about your organization and your industry at large is useful for making more informed audience-focused decisions. In this video we'll talk about how to listen to and engage with your community on social media with social listening tactics. Social listening is the term used to define monitoring what's being said on social media about your brand or the market at large.

For example, you might track the reactions to your Super Bowl commercial on Twitter or monitor the most influential food bloggers this month. So what are the benefits of social listening? Primarily it allows you to not just understand the customer perspective, but to show your customers that you care about them. Take the opportunity to respond to user posts. It lets them know that you hear their feedback and plan to take action when necessary. Every interaction you're having with someone on social media, whether it's thanking them for a nice compliment or responding to a question is a marketing opportunity.

Since these conversations are happening in public, others can see that your organization is responsive and uses a particular channel like Twitter to respond. Not to mention purely listening to what your customers have to say leads to retaining them for the long term. According to a survey by Sprout Social, 65% of people were more brand loyal when a company responds or reaches out to them on social media. You'll also be able to gauge how the audience feels about your brand and its offerings, which may offer really useful feedback for planning purposes.

Listening to the discussions your audience is having on social media can also alert you to the purchasing signals that trigger someone to convert. You might even learn their most common hesitations. Take this information to improve on your campaign or even help advise your sales department. To start listening to your audience, find where your ideal customer is communicating with you or talking about the industry overall. The channels you are searching may be industry-specific, like the G2 Crowd Forum, for example, where users share reviews of softwares and services used for business.

Or maybe you need to check out reviews left on Yelp about your restaurant's performance. Once you know where you look, you can certainly use Twitter and Facebook to search for specific conversations happening there with hashtags and keywords. The easiest way to listen to what's being said on social media is by using a tool like Brandwatch, Mention or Sysomos. Listening tools make it simple to sift through all the conversations happening on social media every day and focus on what's really relevant. Over time listening and responding to conversations on social media can lead to your audience transforming into an active community of users that help one another.

The best-case scenario is that your audience starts supporting other customers and answering questions for you. You can build this community and receive the other benefits of social media by simply listening to what's being said and responding accordingly.

- At its core, competitive intelligence allows any organization to make smarter decisions about how to successfully position themselves. Let's discuss how using social media can help your company monitor the progress of competitors and inform the actions you'll take to remain at the top. Competitive Intelligence is strategic information gained from monitoring what your competitors in your field are doing to succeed. Social media comes into play as a way to learn what consumers are saying online about your organization and competitors alike.

This allows you to assess which brands are the most talked about in your sector and the sentiment of consumers around certain products and brands. Not to mention you can analyze the progress of a competitor's content on social media to understand what's working for them and what's missing the mark. You'll need to start by selecting a social listening tool that's focused on providing competitive intelligence reporting. I'd recommend Brandwatch and Radian6 for following consumers. Unmetric and Socialbakers are better for monitoring competitors.

Once you've selected the tools that are right for your needs, create a report centered around your company and a few competitors. Make a list of your top 10 competitors. You'll focus your monitoring efforts on these companies so you can compare them to your own performance. Add these organizations to whichever tool you're using right away. It may take some time to pull the data you need. By analyzing the number of mentions each brand is getting on social media, you'll be able to quickly determine who owns the conversation in your niche.

For instance, let's say you're Ford Motor Company and you want to see who commands the dialogue in the auto industry. You might generate a report comparing the number of mentions Ford, Chevrolet, and Mazda has received for the last six months. This report shows that Ford commands 50% of the conversations on social media amongst the other companies, but that Chevrolet is in second with 31%. From this report, Ford might take a deeper look at what Chevrolet's doing right marketing and product wise to figure out how they can maintain their lead and stay ahead of this competitor.

Another report to run is demographic reporting to grasp which groups of consumers are talking about your company compared to competitors. With this analysis, you'll be able to understand the gender, location, jobs, and other demographics of your consumers talking about your brand on social media versus competitors. This type of analysis allows you to find which brands are competing for the attention of the same audiences and identify which demographics are underserved in your market.

This reporting can help you maintain awareness of your audience to monitor shifts in demographics across brands, products, and campaigns to remain competitive and adapt. Now, I'd also recommend analyzing the language associations about your company versus competitors to see if consumers clearly understand what makes you unique. If your company sells snack bars, see if they include the words health, energy or gluten-free when they're mentioning your brand on social media.

What key words are usually associated with leading competitors? Analyze any patterns in conversation will help clarify your company accurately relaying what makes your snack bars different than others on the market. There are many competitive intelligence reports worth considering, but begin with these to start understanding and managing your reputation on social media.

- Getting feedback from customers is always a good thing, even if the message or comment is negative. The fact that a person took the time to send feedback to your company is an opportunity to learn, further serve a customer, or fix a problem. Managing customer service concerns on social media isn't always an enjoyable task, but it is a rewarding process that your organization needs to learn in order to deliver the quality experience your customers demand. In addition to offering customer service over the phone, live chat and email, your team must include social media in the mix to go where your audience is communicating with you.

However, one third of all customer complaints are never answered, most of which are on social media, according to Edison Research and author Jay Baer. Most companies ignore social media for customer service due to their limited bandwidth or denial that their customers are talking to them there. This is obviously a frustrating experience for consumers who feel ignored by brands. At the same time, this is a prime opportunity to stand out against competitors, since they're not likely offering customer service on social media.

Brands like KLM, Sephora, and HubSpot have long dominated in their industries due in part to their willingness to provide customer service on social media and other channels. Start monitoring conversations, comments, and messages related to your brand on networks where customers are known to ask questions, and leave reviews. This might be on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, LinkedIn, industry-specific forums, or elsewhere. Once you start to get mentions on Twitter, reviews on Yelp, and other messages from customers, respond to almost everything, even negative feedback.

Answering every message in under 24 hours is important as it makes a customer feel valued, solves their problems if there is one, and can transform a negative experience into a positive one. The only types of feedback from users that should be flagged, deleted, and ignored, is hate speech, spam, and outright trolling. When you're able to quickly answer questions and deal with customer issues, you are providing them with value through your reliable support. Instead of waiting on the phone or typing out a long email, it is easier at times for customers to just leave a comment or send over a tweet.

Make it easy for customers by responding where they left their message. When answering feedback, publicly respond to the person if their initial message was public, using natural, friendly language. Don't copy and paste a script, but respond conversationally and address their question. Be sure to address the person by name to make it a more personal response. If their message requires a lot of back and forth, is negative, or requires the exchange of sensitive information, respond publicly first with an apology, or the appropriate response to their request.

Then, alert them that you'll reach out to them privately on the same channel. This might mean moving from a tweet on Twitter to a direct message, or from a Facebook comment to a Facebook message. This way, any additional anger, personal information, or lots of back and forth dialog is taken out of the public forum, where everyone can watch the private exchange. Your first response to their public message should tell them that you're going to reach out privately, which lets everyone else know that you do listen and respond to your customers.

What's important is that you make it clear your organization is not only listening to customer service issues on social media, but responding, and taking action.

The days of free reach on social media are long over. Today, to increase the reach of your social posts, you've got to use paid advertising. We'll cover what your paid advertising options are on social media, and discuss how to best spend your dollar. But first, what is paid advertising on social media? Paid advertising is when you purchase exposure to certain audiences or preferred content placement on social media. In contrast, organic promotion is when an organization shares content on social media without paying for exposure.

One of the ways most leading social networks generate revenue is through a diverse set of paid ad options. For example, your company posts on Facebook, and organically reaches less than 10% of your audience. You can pay to reach a much higher percentage of the network's user base. More money spent means more users reached. With the massive amounts of content shared daily, it is difficult for businesses to stand out and for users to find the content they want. To assist users, most social networks use an algorithm to serve relevant posts to each person.

For a business, this means you need to provide valuable content organically, but also pay for more exposure. Advertising on each social network is different, with a few minor similarities. Most social networks allow you to target a specific audience, choose the type of ad that corresponds with you goals, and measure the results of the campaign on a cost per click, cost per engagement, or cost per impression basis. Here are some of the nuances of each platform.

Facebook and Instagram undoubtedly have the most mature advertising system on social media. Amongst the variety of ad options, Facebook allows you to target people similar to your existing audience to reach new users. Advertising on Facebook is affordable and accessible. A mom and pop retailer and a fortune 500 brand can both bear the expense for ads here. Advertising on Snapchat is still in its infancy, and if only really affordable to large enterprise companies.

This may change over time, since they went public. Serving ads on Twitter, Pinterest, or LinkedIn is similar to Facebook in many ways, but any ads run on LinkedIn should be focused around the professional business to business community, not consumers in general. I'd argue that paid ads on Twitter are the least effective to date, as the network has been having problems keeping their platform user-friendly and hasn't provided the robust advertising capabilities brands are looking for. The most widely used form of advertising you'll encounter on YouTube are video ads appearing before, during, and after a person watches a video, like a TV commercial.

Video ads can be widely effective if used correctly, but certainly require a different level of commitment in order to produce results. With that said, what's most important is that you research the different paid advertising options available on social media before dedicating a large budget to any campaign.

- Imagine this. Your company Facebook page has over a million likes. But you only have interaction with little more than 2% of your audience. That's very low, and actually very common. Your organic reach of social media content is dwindling. To fight this, you must use paid advertising. Here's how to develop a paid social advertising campaign to promote your content, drive engagement, or increase conversions for your company. First, decide which audience members you're trying to reach.

Is it small business owners? Fathers with incomes over $50,000? Veterans? Just be specific to gain focus. This could mean reaching out to your existing customer base, or targeting new customers entirely. Next, decide what you're trying to do with your audience. Or in other words, what's the goal of the advertising campaign? Are you trying to drive sales? Encourage app installs? Improve your web traffic? Feel free to aim for one or a few goals, as different ads can have specific objectives, as long as they all tie back to the same focus campaign.

After you pick your audience and set the goal, determine a budget. Typically, advertising on a social network is affordable on any budget. It just depends on what you're trying to achieve. There isn't an ideal starting budget, but it really depends on your circumstances. Start with what makes you comfortable, and then scale up. Your first advertising campaign on social media will include lots of experimentation. Bear in mind reaching more people costs more money.

And the bidding price of keywords can vary quite a bit. Invest just a small portion of your budget on different ads across platforms to see which perform and which don't. The social network you decide to go with will inform what type of content you'll need to create, and the ad units you'll have available. For example, if you're thinking about advertising on Pinterest, then you'll need to create vertical pins that best reflect the message you're trying to get across. That's exactly what the company Baby List did for their campaign.

A gift registry service, Baby List created vertical pins featuring multiple best in class baby products for their ad campaign on Pinterest, to both establish their credibility in the market, and drive additional signups. In many cases, you don't need to develop new material from scratch. You can promote content that already exists on your business page. In the end, choose the ad unit on the network that best reflects your goals. On LinkedIn for example, you can choose between sponsored content, text ads, or sponsored mail, which are three distinct paid options that assist with different objectives.

The best way to master paid advertising on social media is to run a campaign, monitor your progress, and learn from your successes and failures. Experiment with a small budget on these networks that interest you, to discover which channels are worthwhile.

- As the saying goes, every line is the perfect length if you don't measure it. The same can be said with social media. If you're not actively measuring what you're doing, then you'll have no benchmark for what success looks like. In this video, we'll discuss the value of pairing metrics with your goals to understand your progress on social media. I can't stress the importance of measurement enough. It tells you what's working on social media and what's not. It's not a guess, it's not a gut feeling. Data from measurement allows you to accurately prioritize your time and resources.

One of the easiest ways to measure where you stand is to set goals and then monitor metrics paired with those goals. A metric is a unit of measure that lets you know whether you've achieved a particular goal or not. For every goal you're focused on, select two to three metrics to measure that goal. For example, if your goal this month is to increase engagement on your companies LinkedIn page. Then you might monitor likes and shares as a metric for success. By selecting two to three metrics per goal, you have enough data to get a complete picture of your campaign's performance.

But at the same time, don't dilute your results or overwhelm your team with too many metrics, keep it simple. You also want to choose a healthy mix of both vanity and actionable metrics. Vanity metrics illustrate surface-level success on social media, but don't provide the full picture. Some examples of vanity metrics are likes, followers, and comments on social media. They can certainly indicate success, but if you don't look deeper than you might be mislead on the true progress of your social media marketing.

You might see that your content on Facebook gets hundreds of likes and comments and think your approach to social media is really working. But if you decide to look more closely at your web analytics, you might find that none of the activity on social media led to any traffic or sales on your website. If this is the case, all the interaction on your Facebook page may have been useless. This is where actionable metrics come into play. Actionable metrics are units of measure that provide deeper insight into the performance of social media in driving leads, sales, brand loyalty and conversions.

In a nutshell, actionable metrics have a real tangible business value. Some vanity metrics can provide value to your brand, but unless you combine them with actionable metrics, you're not getting the full picture. It'll take some trial and error at first and that's okay, set your company up for success with social media marketing from the start by measuring what matters most.

- Imagine manually recording every like, comment, and share into a spreadsheet. Even though you're making the effort to measure progress, this wouldn't be a good use of your time. Instead, let's explore some social media measurement tools that will automate your reporting efforts, saving you time and providing you with valuable insight. There are specific measurement tools that provide more in depth data than the standard platform analytics. Here are the five categories of measurement tools to consider. First, consider social listening tools.

They give your organization the ability to search, discover, analyze, and respond to what's happening with your customers on social media. They can also provide guidance on the status of the industry at large. Some good examples are Brand Watch, Radian 6, and Sysomos. Next, there are competitive intelligence tools. These are mainly used for monitoring the performance of content from competitors. For example, competitive intelligence tools allow you to keep tabs on a competitor's YouTube channel and the kinds of videos driving their user engagement.

Even better, the tools can automate the monitoring process for you with weekly emailed reports. Check out companies like Unmetric and Social Bakers. Social analysis and monitoring tools are the third category of tools to consider. They help an organization better understand its own progress with social media across company accounts. They provide an organization with more in depth data about what's working on each channel. This might mean reporting on your Pinterest account each day over the course of a month or you could set the tool to review the performance of your Facebook content this quarter compared to the last one.

Consider using Simply Measured or Sprout Social. Next are customer service analytics tools. They measure a couple of things, but mainly they track the number of customer service messages you're receiving and how quickly you're responding to customers. These tools help answer customer concerns across social media at scale, but their measurement capabilities make it easier to understand the overall impact of your efforts. I can recommend Converse Social and Sales Force as effective tools. The final category are content research and analysis tools.

These tools don't necessarily illustrate what's happening with your counts or competitors, but with content being shared overall on social media. These kinds of tools search for what content is working well in any industry. They can also help you identify major influencers. Let's say your company sells workout equipment to gyms and you want to create relevant content to share online. You can use these tools to generate a list of most shared articles related to keywords you choose, like lifting techniques or treadmill workouts. This way you can see which topics resonate and where.

You'll also know how to best allocate your resources and even better, how to create content that's more useful than what's already out there. To get started, try using a tool like Buzz Sumo. When choosing a tool, consider choosing one per category. You don't need to adopt multiple tools in the same category, but think about the unique value each adds to your toolkit. For instance, not every organization needs a competitive intelligence tool or a customer service analytics tool, and that's okay. Test and compare your options to make sure the tools you decide to go with are for the functionality your organization needs when measuring social media.

- [Narrator] There's more to the links your sharing on social media than meets the eye. You can monitor traffic to your site from social media platforms by using Link Tracking. Links not only drive traffic from social media, but allow you to attribute which social channels and campaigns tend to bring the most people to your website. Let's explore what Link Tracking is, why it's important and how to set it up. Link Tracking is the process of tagging the links you're sharing on social media to send back specific data about how many people are clicking on them and from where.

Without Link Tracking the source of the traffic will simply be listed as, for example, Facebook. With no other details. This is not helpful for even the most basic social media strategy. Link Tracking can be done in several ways. You can add tracking code to specify the particular traffic source and campaign driving traffic. Tools like Bitly, Google Analytics and Buffer allow for this. With access to specific data about the activity around your links you'll be able to make more informed decisions about how to continue to use social media effectively.

Instead of simply seeing Linkedin as a source of traffic you'll be able to see which specific types of content and campaigns shared on the network drove people to your website. Another method of setting up Link Tracking is through UTM tags. UTM tags are a string of characters added to the end of your URLs. Do this with a tool like Google's campaign URL builder. Because you can't access link data to any site you don't own only tag links to content living on your own website. When a person clicks on a UTM tagged link to your site certain labels known as parameters are automatically sent to your web analytics tool.

These parameters include the social channel your traffic is coming from. The pages the person visits on your site. And which specific campaigns drove this traffic. Make sure you're tagging in a consistent manner to keep your labeling accurate in your reports. In a nutshell tagging links helps you gather accurate data and automates most of the tracking process for you. Another way to track your links is using the analytics provided by the URL shortener Bitly. You want to shorten your shared links anyways to make them easier to use and more aesthetically pleasing.

But another bonus is the data Bitly provides on link engagement. Any link shortened with Bitly provides data on the total number of clicks, the channels where the link was clicked and the location of users clicking your links. Bitly makes it simple to quickly review who's clicking on your links and from where to see if your campaign is targeting your customers or not. Simply add a plus sign to any Bitly link in your browser to view the analytics for that particular link. No matter what method you use take advantage of Link Tracking.

Tap into the full benefits of sharing links in social media by tracking their part in moving the right people from one destination to the next.

- You won't get far in social media relying on best practices alone. Innovation is essential. Think of best practices as the foundational rules you should follow. Once you master the established standards, you can bend or ignore them in creative ways to enhance your brand. This might mean using a specific feature in a new way, sharing a controversial type of content, or maybe standing behind an important social cause that aligns with your brand's values. This doesn't mean sharing a lewd photo on your company's Instagram account just to get a reaction.

All companies follow social media best practices to some degree. But, because of this, they tend to use social media in the same exact way, providing a similar experience for customers that's difficult to tell apart. Not only do you need to know best practices, but you also want a strong grasp of what your company stands for. Think about how you might achieve your marketing goals next quarter by using social media in an unexpected way that incorporates company values. One example comes from the Human Rights Campaign.

They generated widespread awareness by creating a Facebook app that gave users a red filter for their profile picture in support of marriage equality. It turned out to be an easy way for consumers to show their support using an already familiar feature. Over two million people participated. The campaign was covered by every media outlet and the Human Rights Campaign increased traffic to their website by 600%. At the same time, the campaign increased audience exposure to the conversation regarding the Supreme Court's upcoming oral arguments on gay marriage.

Now, you don't need to stand behind a national issue to be innovative on social media. But you should certainly think about the causes and beliefs that are tied to your brand. Another way to innovate on social media is to buck expectations. Consumers know they can complain to brands on Twitter to get assistance with a customer service issue. It's expected that the company will be kind, courteous, and apologetic to customers in their responses on social media. Wendy's decided to take the opposite approach.

Recently, the fast food chain responded to customers on Twitter with snarky, attitude-infused tweets that roasted complainers on the network. They weren't attacking just anyone with a real customer service complaint, though. Instead, they took on the unproductive tweets like "McDonald's is a better restaurant." To these, they replied with attitude to outsmart the person. The responses received tons of attention on Twitter, not to mention tons of coverage in the media. Wendy's use of Twitter would've likely backfired for most organizations, but the takeaway here is to think of what your audience expects of you on social media, and flip the script.

Innovation is certainly a trial and error process. Sometimes you'll do something on social media that's original, impactful, and well received. Other times, there will be radio silence. Go beyond best practices and continue to test new ways of communicating on social media to see what helps your company stand out for the right reasons.