Evolution of Contests in the Social Media Era

Contests have adapted to digital while they’ve retained their core appeal. Brands like Starbucks with their “White Cup Contest” leveraged user-generated content, inviting customers to doodle on their cups and share their designs online. This both fostered creativity and amplified the coffee brand’s visibility across its social platforms. Similarly, Dove’s “Real Beauty Should Be Shared” campaign on Facebook encouraged users to tell stories about their friends, blending emotional engagement with social sharing. GoPro also leveraged social media contests by encouraging users to upload adventurous videos they captured with their cameras, effectively turning customers into brand ambassadors. These examples show how social media has expanded the scope and reach of contests in ways that enable you to engage with a broader audience, foster community, and forge some viral marketing opportunities while you gather valuable consumer insights and content.

The Role of Social Media Automation in Contest Strategies

Automation can be critical to streamlining and enhancing your marketing strategies. Automation tools like dlvr.it can help you manage the potentially complex details of contest campaigns across various platforms. They can enable you to schedule and publish accurate contest-related posts consistently in a way that can maximize your visibility at peak engagement times. Automating your distribution of contest announcements, reminders, and updates can reduce the time you’d devote to those tasks so you can focus on creative aspects and real-time engagement. These tools can give you invaluable analytics and insights into how contest participants behave and how your contests campaigns perform. This data-driven approach can help you fine-tune your contest strategies so they resonate more with your target audience. When you integrate social media automation into your contest planning, you can efficiently manage large-scale contest campaigns, maintain target engagement, and ultimately drive successful outcomes with reduced operational overhead.

Five Reliable Types of Social Media Contests That Get Effective Results

Contests are a reliable tactic for engaging audiences and achieving brand objectives on your social media platforms. Five types of contests stand out for their reliability and effectiveness:

1. User-generated content contests can be a goldmine for brands seeking authentic engagement. By encouraging users to create content that resonates with their personal experiences, brands like GoPro have successfully leveraged this strategy. GoPro’s Photo of the Day challenge is a prime example, inviting users to submit their best photos captured with GoPro cameras. This not only generates a wealth of original content but also fosters a sense of community among users.
2. Giveaway contests are straightforward, highly effective ways to engage audiences on social media. With their Ultimate Fan Experience contest, beauty retailer Sephora invited its followers to win exclusive beauty products or a personalized shopping experience by following Sephora, liking the contest post, and tagging a friend in the comments. This approach both increased Sephora’s social media engagement and expanded its reach to potential new customers through the tagging. The simplicity of entry combined with the allure of high-value prizes made this contest a successful method for boosting Sephora’s online presence and customer interaction.
3. Creative challenge contests can push participants to think outside the box. LEGO’s fan design contests, for instance, invite enthusiasts to submit their unique LEGO creations. This type of contest not only stimulates creativity but also deeply involves participants in the brand’s world, turning them into active contributors rather than passive consumers.
4. Trivia and quiz contests are excellent for engaging and educating audiences. National Geographic’s Instagram trivia contests are a testament to this, combining engagement with educational content, thereby reinforcing the brand’s authority in geography and nature.
5. Skill-based competitions on social media platforms invite participants to showcase their talents or expertise in specific areas, creating a highly engaging and interactive environment. Adobe’s Creative Jam contests, conducted on platforms like Instagram, challenge designers and creatives to showcase their skills using Adobe software. Participants are often given a theme or a specific task, and their creations are shared on social media where the audience can view and engage with the submissions. This type of contest highlights individual talents and aligns with Adobe’s brand identity as a leader in creative software. They foster a community of skilled individuals, encourage learning and sharing, and create a buzz around the brand by showcasing practical applications of its products. Skill-based contests engage both participants and spectators, which makes them valuable tools for brands that want to showcase their community’s talent and creativity.

Six Strategic Tips for Effective Social Media Contests

• Understand your audience. To create a successful social media contest, it’s essential understand your audience deeply. That means knowing their preferences, behaviors, and the type of social media content that resonates with them. Tailoring your contest to align with audience interests increases participation and engagement–a beauty brand might run a makeup tutorial contest while a travel agency could solicit best travel photos. This alignment ensures that your contest has direct appeal in order to create more relevant interaction.
• Generate engaging contest content. The content of your contest needs to engage and be shareable. It should spark curiosity and encourage people to share with their networks. You can do this through creative challenges, compelling visuals, and intriguing prompts. The goal is to create content that engages your current audience and can go viral to reach a wider audience.
• Refine your timing and frequency. Timing and frequency are both critical for maximizing participation in your contests. Consider launching contests during holidays or special events when your audience is more active online. Try to be balanced with your contest frequency–too many contests can lead to audience fatigue, while too few might not keep your audience engaged with your brand.
• Use automation for consistency. Social media automation tools like dlvr.it can help you ensure consistent and timely posting of your contest content. Automation can help you schedule your posts for optimal times, ensuring your contest reaches the maximum number of people. Posting consistency also keeps your audience engaged throughout the duration of your contest.
• Monitor and analyze your contests’ performance. Using analytics tools to monitor your contests’ performance is vital. This involves tracking engagement metrics, participant feedback, and overall reach. Analyzing this data can help you understand what’s working, letting you both make real-time adjustments and improve tactics for future contests.
• Integrate contests into your broader marketing efforts. Contests shouldn’t just be one-off events. When you integrate them into your strategy, you can ensure that each contest supports your overall brand goals like increasing awareness, launching a product, or driving sales.

Bottom line

Strategically implementing contests on your social media platforms can significantly help enhance how your audience engages with your brand. Your contests need to align with both your brand’s identity and your audience’s interests. Each contest type can convert audience interaction into tangible results. When you integrate contests with social media automation tools like dlvr.it, you can keep the engagement consistent and monitor the performance of each campaign. When you thoughtfully plan and execute contests, you’re able to both grab existing audience attention, attract new followers, and strengthen your overall presence on the platform. Contests aren’t about short-term gains, but building lasting follower relationships and a loyal customer base. Learn how dlvr.it can free you from posting tasks and keep you focused on bringing relevant contests to your audience.

The post Make Contests Key to Your Social Media Strategy appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

How do I set up a feed in Cronycle?

To set up a feed using source feeds, just click on the Sources tab on the left side of your Cronycle account. This will bring up a page that will allow you to search for feeds. Once you have reached this page, you may enter your search keywords into the search box. Cronycle also allows you to enter a topic or a Twitter handle. You will then see a list of possible feeds related to your search terms. Select your feeds by clicking the plus sign next to the feed. Drag and drop your desired feeds into the Create Custom Feed box. Name your feed and continue.

Once you have named your feed, in the same area, you can add filters to your feeds. If you don’t wish to have too many items, you may filter them by keywords. You can choose to exclude items, or include items based on your keywords. Click the Create New Feed button. This will import the content that you have just set up into the Feeds tab.

From the Feeds tab, you are able to view the articles that are currently set up for your feed. You can also change the filters that are on your feed. This is also where you can modify the visibility of your feed from private to public. This can be done by clicking on the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the page. Then click the dropdown menu to change the privacy setting from private to public. This will provide you with the URL to your feed so that you may add this to dlvr.it. Cronycle has also created a fantastic how to video to help you make the most of your dlvr.it and Cronycle integration.

How do I use this in dlvr.it?

To use this feed in dlvr.it, you will need to add the feed from Cronycle into your automate section in dlvr.it.

dlvr.it will allow you to add any public feed into your account.

To add a feed, click on the Automate tab, click on Add New Feed and then enter the feed URL from Chronycle. Once you have entered the URL, our systems will connect to your feed and then ask to connect to your Socials. Once you have connected your socials, your content will begin automatically sharing.

Why is this helpful?

This makes curation quick and easy. By employing Cronycle’s toolset to filter your content, you can easily curate content that pertains to certain subject matters. This is also a quick and easy way to consolidate content into one feed and remove articles that you don’t wish to publish. Cronycle’s tools are the best for filtering content and creating personalized feeds. While Cronycle will help you coordinate which content you would like to share, dlvr.it will take care of the heavy lifting and share the content for you. dlvr.it will automatically check your Cronycle feed and share any new content found, without you needing to lift a finger to do so. dlvr.it can also help you pick the right images for your feed and filter within dlvr.it so that you have an extra line of defense.

The post Supercharge Your Posting Power Using Cronycle and dlvr.it appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

From the mouth of Ellen:

Happy spring break, everybody. Here’s my advice: Use sunscreen, no naked selfies, and don’t drink and tweet. I learned that last one the hard way.

Need a trusted resource to keep you up to date on important content marketing news? We’ve got you covered. Our weekly roundup is here to help you stay on top of all the latest in social media and other interesting facts, trends, tips and questions.

This week featuring:

Social Media Growth Hacks: 

1 – 3 Essential Stories You Need on Your Website to Attract Customers

2 – 7 Weird Social Media Marketing Habits All Marketers Need to Break NOW

3 – How to Use Emojis on Instagram Effectively

Bonus: Why “Go Viral” Is Not An Effective Content Marketing Strategy

Just For Fun: 12 Things Successful People do on Sunday Night

___

Social Media Growth Hacks

1 – From Judy Carter (Contributor to Entrepreneur): 3 Essential Stories You Need on Your Website to Attract Customers

Want to have more customers, opt-ins on your website and clicks on your “Buy Now” button? Do what Hollywood does — use stories to sell your products and services.

Many businesses are losing customers because their methods of reaching them are outdated. Want to get people to buy your product? Then get them to listen. Here are three essential stories you need on your website to do just that:

1. Your customer’s story

2. Your company’s story 

3. Your personal ‘heart’ story

Read more.

2 – From TopRank Blog: 7 Weird Social Media Marketing Habits All Marketers Need to Break NOW

We all have bad habits. Some are easy to break while others quickly find their way back into our lives. The same can be said for social media marketing habits. Once you get in a routine, it can be hard to break habits that are helping, but may be hurting your brand.

If you want to be one of those companies that has a positive impact on your community and generates tremendous value for your brand, make sure you’re not following ANY of these 7 weird social media marketing habits:

#1 – Automating EVERYTHING

#2 – Jumping on the WRONG Bandwagons

#3 – Engaging Too INFREQUENTLY

#4 – Focusing Only On YOURSELF

#5 – ASSUMING All Audiences Are the Same

#6 – Ignoring the Importance of VISUALS

#7 – PRETENDING Advertising Isn’t Important

Read more.

3 – From Jenn’s Trends: How to Use Emojis on Instagram Effectively

The wonderful world of emojis…. you either love them or you hate them. But no matter what you feel about them, the reality is that they are dominant in today’s communications.

So, you may be wondering how – or when – you should use emojis on Instagram. Is there a right way to use them? A right time to use them? How many should you use? Which ones should you use?

Answer … it depends

In Your Bio: One of the mandatory places (in my opinion) to use emojis on Instagram, is your bio.

In Your Post Captions: Of course, you can use emojis in your post captions as well. This is the chance to take your brand personality a little further with each and every post and message you craft.

In Your Comments: One thing I do a LOT is respond to comments with emojis.

Read more.

BONUS:

From Marketing Land: Why “Go Viral” Is Not An Effective Content Marketing Strategy

Most marketers would love to go viral — they want that amazing pickup, millions of shares, tons of attention, the elusive 15 minutes of fame. Why wouldn’t you aim for huge success? It sounds amazing, right?

If you’re trying to go viral, you’re probably trying too hard.

Read more.

Just For Fun

12 Things Successful People do on Sunday Nights

Most people will tell you they don’t look forward to Sunday evenings.

In fact, a whopping 76% of American workers say they get the Sunday-night blues, according to a 2015 Monster survey.

Here are six of the twelve things to combat those Sunday-night blues and prepare for the week ahead:

• Spend quality time with families, friends, and significant others. 
• Plan something fun. 
• Read.
• Relax.
• Eat something healthy.
• End Sunday on a high note. 

___

Have any social media trends, tips or tricks to share?

Read any interesting social media facts recently?

Run across any fascinating infographics?

We’d love to hear from you!

Please share!

The post Going Viral and Social Media: Best Trends, Facts and Productivity Tips (March 27) appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

This week:

• Featuring: Facebook Is Eating The World

• Social Media Growth Hacks: 

1 – 5 Websites That Offer GIFs to Enhance Your Social Media Marketing

2 – How Adidas is using newsrooms to create five great pieces of content a week, not just five great ads a year

3 – Is Your Social Media Content as Popular as You Think?

• Just for Fun: Fill Our Stapler Day – March 14

• Productivity Tip: Actually, You Should Check Email First Thing in the Morning

___

Featuring

Taken from a lightly edited speech Emily Bell gave at Cambridge last week titled “The End of the News as We Know It: How Facebook Swallowed Journalism”:

Facebook is Eating the World

SOMETHING REALLY DRAMATIC is happening to our media landscape, the public sphere, and our journalism industry, almost without us noticing and certainly without the level of public examination and debate it deserves.

Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything. It has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, personal histories, the leisure industry, retail, even government and security. The phone in our pocket is our portal to the world.

Let’s recap:

1. People are increasingly using their smartphones for everything.
2. They do it mostly through apps, and in particular, social and messaging apps, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Twitter.
3. The competition to become such an app is intense. Competitive advantage for platforms relies on being able to keep your users within an app. The more your users are within your app, the more you know about them, the more that information can then be used to sell advertising, the higher your revenues.

Read more.

Social Media Growth Hacks

1 – 5 Websites That Offer GIFs to Enhance Your Social Media Marketing

GIF, noun. Alternate: “Graphics Interchange Format” — picture format

1. a set of standards and file format for storage of digital color images and short animations 

GIFs are increasingly popular on social media. Not only are they fun, but they allow users to complement their messages with animated images. Last year, on Twitter alone, users shared more than 100 million GIFs, prompting the social network to allow users to search for GIFs directly from the platform.

To help you quickly find the right GIF, here is a list of five websites that have every type of GIF under the sun.

1 – Reaction GIFs allows users to search for GIFs by popular tags and specific feelings.

2 – GIFs From Last Night is a great source for funny GIFs related to TV, movies, news and pop culture.

3 – GIPHY originally started out as a search engine for GIFs, later evolving into the top go-to source for GIF needs.

4 – GIF Bin is a great resource to uncover GIFs that aren’t as mainstream.

5 – Reddit has multiple subreddits dedicated to GIFs, most notably: /r/gifs/ and /r/reactiongifs

Read more.

2 – How Adidas is using newsrooms to create five GREAT pieces of content a week, not just five great ads a year

Understanding the need to produce weekly content rather than just a few ad campaigns a year, ‘tactical content innovation’ is becoming Adidas’ marketing super power as it moves to measure the impact of its ‘newsrooms’ around the globe.

Read more.

3 – Just published: Is Your Social Media Content as Popular as You Think?

Numbers don’t lie; they just don’t tell the truth

Marketers use a variety of metrics to collate, crunch and calculate how their content performs in social media. Metrics such as shares, retweets, and views are often the easiest and most obvious to gather, but they may be the most deceptive and unreliable when evaluating whether your content is genuinely making a difference.

• Engagement metrics don’t prove a business outcome
• “Likes” don’t necessarily correlate to a sale
• Thousands of views don’t automatically equal a positive ROI

But these metrics still provide valuable feedback about our content, helping us improve and optimize … right?

Well, only if those numbers can be trusted.

Read more.

Just For Fun

Monday, 14th March, 2016 will be…Fill Our Staplers Day

Is there anything more annoying in this world than going to use a stapler, only to find it has run out of staples?

Created by the Dull Men’s Club (where dull men – and women who appreciate dull men – share thoughts and experiences about ordinary things), Fill Our Staplers Day attempts to solve this super-serious problem. Occurring twice a year, on the day after the Sunday when the clocks change, the day encourages people, especially office workers, to refill their stapler, to (or “intending to”) minimizing the chances of a workplace crisis.

So, for the good of all humanity, fill that stapler today!

Productivity Tip

Actually, You Should Check Email First Thing in the Morning

Despite studies showing that the average worker checks email 74 times a day — and, in many cases, is lightning-fast at processing it (another study showed that 70% of work-related email is handled within six seconds) — many of us still feel we can’t keep up. Partly, that’s simple math: we’re emailing more than ever.

• By 2018, the average employee will send and receive 140 messages per day.

Read more.

__

Have any social media trends, tips or tricks to share?

Read any interesting social media facts recently?

Run across any fascinating infographics?

We’d love to hear from you!

Please share!

The post 5 of the Best Content Marketing Articles You May Have Missed [Week of March 13 , 2016] appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

This week:

• Featuring: How Snapchat Built a Business by Confusing Olds

• Social Media Growth Hacks: 

1 – Content is King, but Context is God

2 – What is the Real Impact of Social Media

• Just for Fun: Slack, I’m Breaking Up with You

• One More Productivity Tip: 7 Interview Questions For Measuring Emotional Intelligence

___

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

7.7K Shares: How Snapchat Built a Business by Confusing Olds

If you want to understand Snapchat, the insanely fast-growing and—to people born before 1990—straight-up insane messaging app and media platform, DJ Khaled is your Virgil.

• Everybody from 14 to 24 in America, it’s either the No. 1 or No. 2 app in their lives, after Instagram.
• It’s not just an American phenomenon: Snapchat is a top 10 most-downloaded app in about 100 countries, according to market researcher App Annie.

Read more.

Social Media Growth Hacks

1 – 1.9K Shares: CONTENT IS KING, BUT CONTEXT IS GOD

Jab, jab, jab, right hook. Provide value, provide value, provide value, ask for the sale.

It’s no secret that we are living in an era where everybody is a media company. This is something I have said time and time again, and I will continue to push it because I truly believe that content is the best way to market a product today. Provide value to consumers by creating helpful videos or new recipes or funny cartoons. Give them something they actually want because that content builds up the relationship that then allows you to ask for the sale.

Read more.

Shoutout to dlvr.it Twitter follower @Steveharrry for sharing the following post from simplilearn:

2 – What is the Real Impact of Social Media?

The fast development of mobile technology has played a key role in shaping the impact of social media, particularly the speed and scale with which it’s used for interacting and sharing information.

The flipside: Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism’.

1 – 8.2K Shares: Slack, I’m Breaking Up with You

Hey there, Slack. This won’t be easy, but it’s for the best.

As you and I both know, things started out so wonderfully. Me with my exploding inbox, you with your (very sexy) ambition to make email obsolete.

With you in my life, I’ve received exponentially more messages than I ever have before. And while it’s been awesome to have such a connection with you, it has been absolutely brutal on my productivity.

Read more.

2 – 3.2K Shares: 7 Interview Questions For Measuring Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence involves self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. In other words, it’s a complicated amalgam that hiring managers have a hard time testing for. As a result, many fall back on gut instincts and subjective impressions.

The traditional interview model helps you probe someone’s past experience, not their style of thinking.

Ask these seven question:

1. WHAT BOTHERS YOU MOST ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE?

2. TELL ME ABOUT A DAY WHEN EVERYTHING WENT WRONG

3. TELL ME ABOUT A COLLEAGUE YOU REALLY GOT ALONG WITH AND WHY YOU THINK YOU DID

4. WHAT’S SOMETHING THAT YOU CAN TEACH ME?

5. TELL ME ABOUT SOMEONE YOU ADMIRE AND WHY YOU DO

6. WHAT’S ONE THING YOU’RE REALLY PROUD OF AND WHY?

7. IF YOU RAN YOUR OWN COMPANY, WHAT KINDS OF PEOPLE WOULD YOU HIRE AND WHY?

Read more.

___

Have any social media trends, tips or tricks to share?

Read any interesting social media facts recently?

Run across any fascinating infographics?

We’d love to hear from you!

Please share!

The post Slacktivism, Slack and Social Media: Best Trends, Facts and Productivity Tips (March 6) appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

You’ve got to devote time to friends to maintain a close relationship, and as a nonprofit you’ve got to devote time to your audience.

With limited time and resources, content curation is an essential marketing tool for keeping the connection with your nonprofit audience fresh and current. But every organization curates content differently. Many share content only on social media while others use content curation in all facets of their Youtube nonprofit marketing plan.

Today, we will be discussing best practices for curating content for Nonprofits using the social media platform YouTube:

• Why YouTube
• Youtube Nonprofit Success Stories
• How to Curate YouTube videos for Nonprofits
• Curation Ideas
• Donation Cards on YouTube
• Perfect YouTube Post – an example
• Share Videos Across Social Media Using Smart Automation

Why use the YouTube Nonprofit Program

As a non-profit, your definition of success might be different than say, Justin Bieber’s, but you can use video in a similar manner to engage and educate people across the world.

A few things to think about (from the Playbook for Good, a valuable resource for nonprofits looking to benefit from and make the most out of YouTube):

→For many causes, videos may not be part of your current marketing plan, but they are quickly becoming an ideal format for your storytelling. Embrace the medium and start communicating!

With over 800 million people worldwide on YouTube, it’s a global living room like no other. YouTube is also the world’s 2nd largest search engine (after Google) – people are looking for you and your cause every day. What will you show them?

→Do not worry about being “viral,” just focus on creating great content and interacting with the community.

→Do not just “make videos.” Have a video strategy. Interacting with your viewers and having a clear call to action are as important as capturing good footage. Try to address these questions before you pick up the camera.

YouTube Nonprofit Success Stories

Success #1: 

The American Foundation for Equal Rights used the YouTube nonprofit channel to live-stream “8″, a play about the Prop 8 trial in California on marriage equality. The initiative raised more than $2 million dollars and drove a news cycle of approximately 300 articles.

• The donate button remains there today, subtly encouraging viewers to lend their financial support after watching one of the dozens of videos available.

Success#2: 

charity: water posted over 240 personalized thank-you videos for their donors and campaigners, effectively making the audience the stars of the videos and creating a life cycle of donors that were publicly acknowledged and highlighted.

• Taking time to celebrate milestones and recognize supporters should be an essential element of a nonprofit’s social strategy.
• The organization also uses call-to-action overlays on videos to encourage viewers to support the cause through donations.

Success #3:

YouTube comedian Kevin Wu (aka KevJumba) used his YouTube channel to raise money to build a school in Kenya called the Jumba Lenana Academy. He created the channel, JumbaFund, which donates 100% of ad revenue to the school. The channel has over 54 million views and 831,000 subscribers.

How to Curate Nonprofit Videos on YouTube

Step 1: Create a YouTube Nonprofit Channel

The YouTube Nonprofit Program is an excellent way to tell your organization’s story through videos on YouTube.

To start, watch this video: YouTube Nonprofit Program

Step 2: Create a playlist of at least four videos

Playlists displayed horizontally on your YouTube Channel require a minimum of four videos to fill in the entire section.

• Research and “Add to Playlist” at least four videos that speak to your nonprofit’s mission and programs
• When you add your first video, you will be prompted to create and name your playlist
• Select the playlist to add more videos

Step 3: Add your new playlist as a section to your channel

To display your new playlist(s) on your YouTube Channel, you must add it in as a section and then use the up or down arrows to feature it on your channel.

Step 4: Add your website, icons, and channel banner

Since your nonprofit will be driving more traffic to your YouTube Channel, be sure to add your website, icons, and a channel banner to your channel.

Curation Ideas

Here are some ideas to help you curate content and promote others in the process:

1 – Feature other YouTube videos on your channel related to your cause.

2 – Promote other channels in your “Other Channels” module and reach out to others to return the favor.

3 – Find videos from the broader community rallying around similar causes and organize them into topical playlists.

4 – Stay active on your channel feed: ‘like’, ‘favorite’, and comment on videos relevant to your channel and your audience.

5 – Add relevant videos to playlists. Curating videos into playlists is a good way to add value for your audience and build credibility as an expert in your field.

Donation Cards on YouTube

Read: YouTube’s New Donation Cards Help Video Creators Raise Money For Charities

The Perfect YouTube Post

Can your remember the exact specifications and nuances for posting to all the social media platforms? From MyCleverAgency and Sprout Social, here are the elements needed for the perfect YouTube post:

Title: The title is what gets people to click and watch your video so you should spend a lot of time working on it. Limit the title to 70 characters for best results on both YouTube and Google search.

Thumbnail: Custom thumbnails attract more people when it comes to overall clicks. Make sure they look great. The best size for a thumbnail is 1280 x 720.

Description: Use keywords in the description to help your videos rank better and include links to your site/blog to increase traffic.

Call To Action: CTA in videos increase subscriptions, likes, and comments.

Smart Automation

To amplify your message, it’s not only important to ‘broadcast yourself’ on YouTube, but also to use every outlet available to reach potential supporters. Leverage networks outside of YouTube to promote your videos.

Sharing videos from YouTube to social media is easy using dlvr.it’s smart automation. All you need is an RSS feed and a little creativity.

Believe me. Automation is easy. By following the steps in the how-to guide below, videos can come to life in your social feed – no clicking away needed to play the video. It creates a better experience for your audience and leads to increased engagement.

Read: How to Create a YouTube RSS Feed and Instantly Give your Tweets a Boost with Video

___

How does curation fit into your nonprofit’s content mix? Have any interesting ways to make your YouTube nonprofit channel stand out?

We would love your feedback. Please share in the comments.

The post The Right YouTube Nonprofit Strategy That Will Make You Grow appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

The roundup blog post is the prototype blog content type for content curation. Bring together several resources from others in one post, based around a given theme or idea, and then present it to the world. – Ross Hudgens, The Definitive Guide to Content Curation

3 Key Roundup Blog Post Benefits

A properly executed roundup post can put your blog on the map by:

1. Providing expert input
2. Attracting reader attention
3. Enhancing content distribution

They’re also great traffic builders because of how likely they are to get shared.

From the Daily Egg:

Most publications and blogs these days publish a lot of roundup articles or listicles, and it’s clear why. They’re easy to digest, they offer a new perspective to your readership, and ideally, they drive traffic and help build relationships with your brand.

Imagine…

• If only five influencers shared your roundup on their blog or social media site, driving 300 visitors each.
• And let’s say, from experience you know each traffic spike converts approximately 3-10% of visits to email signups.
• That’s 1,500 new visitors and up to 150 new email subscribers! Maybe more if you’ve delivered outstanding content.

The Sky is the Limit with Roundup Post Topics

Roundup topics range wildly from the personally relevant 10 Modern Prefabs We’d Love to Call Home to the inspirational 5 Best Instagram Accounts to Follow to the helpful 75 Apps That Will Save You Time as a Busy Professional.

But, what is the real secret behind roundup posts?

The Unspoken Truth about Roundup Posts

From Rita Kreig:

• The world is filled with procrastinators like me, who will gobble up clickbait-y roundups like there’s no tomorrow.
• The world is also filled with curious, time-constrained people like me, who appreciate well-written roundups for their substance.
• Roundups work for readers because they are organized, easy to read, and quickly get to the point. Roundups allow readers to skip around, skim for the information you want, and ignore the rest.
• Roundups work for marketers because they drive traffic to your content, allow you to form partnerships with industry leaders, and occasionally score you a high-quality link.
• You don’t have to have “Buzz” in your company name to write excellent, traffic-driving roundup posts. This popular form of content marketing is accessible, scalable, and learnable.

So, we know the secret truth behind roundup posts, but curiosity led us to dig in even deeper, “But, why?”…

Ask the Experts: Why does a Curated Roundup Blog Post Work So well?

Expert #1 – From Steve Rayso, Buzzsumo: 

We are reluctant sometimes to highlight how well list posts work, as we’re all drowning in them, but there is little question, they work well whether in B2B or B2C marketing. They work particularly well as a format for curated content.

The late Cindy King of Social Media Examiner was simply the very best at creating a roundup blog post. Her post on 44 Social Media Tools Recommended By The Pros is currently the most shared on the Social Media Examiner site in the past 12-months.

Expert #2 – From Tor Refsland, SumoMe:

To pull myself out of The Triple Zero Club, I looked around and I noticed that several bloggers were writing something they call “roundup blog post.”

In a few simple words, Tor’s first roundup post resulted in:

• 20,231 page views in 6 days
• 1500+ social shares
• 84 comments
• 185 new email subscribers

Expert #3 – From Heidi Cohen, Actionable Marketing Guide:

A Roundup blog post is “sweet”.

As a specialized form of content curation, a roundup blog post is the content marketing gift that keeps on giving when done well.

Here’s a curated list of Heidi’s top 10 steps to create a roundup blog post:

1 – Develop the roundup post idea and question. Assess what issues and information are relevant to your audience.

2 – Create a list of experts from whom to request input. Anticipate that your list must be longer than the number of people you expect to respond. Not everyone will participate. Even if they like you, they’re busy.

3 – Contact your list of influential people. You need to be able to communicate with them via email or a social media platform. (If you’re a newbie writer without a big name company, blog or media platform behind you, this may be a challenge.)

4 – Add a cushion of time. Don’t expect people to respond immediately! Allow enough time to respond if they’re busy, but not so much time that they forget.

5 – Be persistent in your follow-up without being a pest! Remember this is from the recipient’s point of view, not yours!!!

6 – Combine the input into a single document. Whether you use Google Drive, MS Word, WordPress or another option, wrangle the information into a nicely formatted piece.

7 – Add your commentary. At a minimum, include your response as well as an introduction and conclusion.

8 – Edit and format the content. Make sure you have permission before you change someone else’s words. (I learned this point the hard way by editing someone’s comments for grammar, and it was an issue.)

9 – Optimize the article for search and distribution. Focus your request around a keyword phrase, craft an attention-getting headline, and include a photo. Don’t forget social sharing.

10 – Let contributors know you’ve published the piece. Don’t assume anyone is waiting for your article. Send them a follow up after you’ve published the article. BTW—Don’t forget to thank them for their participation.

Expert #4 – From Mari Smith, Social Media Thought Leader & Top Facebook Marketing Expert:

Hello, world! Every week, for the past two-and-a-half years, I’ve published an email newsletter – called THE SOCIAL SCOOP.  I include my top selections of “OPC” – that is, I curate other people’s content on social media marketing, business building, productivity and other related subjects, along with my own words of wisdom!

Expert #5 – From David Schneider, SEO Hacker:

Last year was an epic year for the roundup blog post.

Do you know why so many people have been doing these? Because they work.

Here are some excellent ones I remember:

• 60 Experts Reveal Top 3 Tools To Grow Your Email List
• 42 Blogging Specialists Explain How to Monetize Email Newsletters and Turn Autoresponder Messages into Profit
• 39 Successful Entrepreneurs Share Their First Ever Sale (This one was my own)

Just Ask Yourself…

Where can you help your audience and save them time by curating content into a list post?

Ask the Expert #6 – Bill Gassett, My Realty Times

Bill is a huge fan of using social media for his real estate business.

Content marketing can offer significant advantages to a real estate agent. It offers an inexpensive way to build a brand, drive traffic to your website and increase the number of leads that come your way. But keeping up a steady stream of content for site visitors is also a lot of work. If you are like most agents, you probably have your hands full with your real estate work, and therefore a limited amount of time to spend writing original content.

Here’s a recent example of a curated roundup blog post from Bill:

Real Estate Round Up: Articles Worth a Look January 2016…take a look at these articles, and if you find any of them helpful or enjoyable, please consider sharing them socially. There is a wealth of great content here from some really terrific real estate authors!

But what separates a bad roundup post from an optimal one? What makes a roundup post perfect?

The following infographic from Siege Media pinned by Robin Good on his Content Curation Visualized board breaks it down from start to finish.

To create an effective and valuable roundup for readers and sources alike, it must contain these elements:

1. Sourced articles with social proof (i.e. highly ranked, linked to, and shared)
2. Plural focus keyword (i.e. “Christmas decorating ideas)
3. High quality images in one format
4. Easy readability (i.e. 16px font, bright images, 50-60 character lines, etc.)

Here are a couple of other highlights to note:

1 – Use a short, keyword-only URL

The URLs of articles ranked on Google’s #1 page contain an average of 37 characters. – SEO SiteCheckup

2 – Use an odd-numbered headline

Odd numbers seem to be more believable and are shown to help people digest the information better. Headlines with numbers are 36% more likely to generate clicks, according to research by Conductor.

3 – Reach out to people mentioned in the post

Tool: Notifier from ContentMarketer.io

Easiest way to 3x your traffic & shares. We’ll find @mentions in your post and let you notify them with one click.

Here’s the full infographic:

Looking for an easy solution to create a roundup blog post?

Read more:

• 3 Easy Solutions for a GREAT Content Curation Strategy
• How to Build a Massive Email List with a Curated Newsletter (in 15 minutes or less)

___

Your audience is listening. What will you share?

We’d love to hear from you!

The post What do Science and Curated Blog Posts Have in Common [from the experts] appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

This week featuring:

• Inquiring Minds Want to Know: How Do You Celebrate A Leap Year Birthday?

• Most Shared: Facebook wants to know: How are you feeling?

• Social Media Growth Hacks: 

1 – The Definitive Guide to Content Curation

2 – 4 Little-Known Tools to Curate and Publish Content

• Productivity Tip: 9 Apps That’ll Take the Stress Out of Your Morning Routine

___

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

How Do You Celebrate A Leap Year Birthday?

Once every four years, people born on Feb. 29 actually get to celebrate their birthday. That’s right, Monday is leap day, the extra day added every fourth year to help fix the problem that while our calendar year is 365 days, the solar year — the amount of time it takes the Earth to circle the sun — is 365.24219 days.

Read more.

Most Shared

67.5K Shares: Facebook Is Using Those New “Like” Emojis to Keep Tabs on Your Emotions

Facebook wants to know: How are you feeling?

Facebook has upgraded the ubiquitous Like button with a host of new emotions. You can now “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad” or “angry” something with cute emojis. You can “wow” a friend’s appalling Tinder screengrab, send them a “sad” for emotional support during a period of anxiety or just “haha” their wack memes in sympathy.

But just remember this: For every little inch of emotional nuance we gain from these buttons, Facebook gains a mile in the ways it can manipulate and keep tabs on us.

Read more.

Social Media Growth Hacks

You need to bookmark this post. It’s long, but worth every word!

1 – 1K Shares: The Definitive Guide to Content Curation

Content curation is an amazing way to engage your audience and increase your social media presence without big investments in content creation.

In this massive 8,000 words guide you’re going to learn how to start curating content for your company in a successful way!

Read more.

2 – 2.4 Shares: 4 Little-Known Tools to Curate and Publish Content

Is curated content part of your social media marketing?

Discover four unique ways to curate social media content on:

#1: Select Stories on Medium. Medium is a great platform for marketers because it allows you to distribute content quickly.

#2: Collect Tweets on Twitter. Use Twitter’s Curator platform. With this tool, you type in a few keywords, hashtags, or individual users and Twitter will deliver the most relevant or engaging content in a real-time stream.

#3: Clip Slides on SlideShare. SlideShare recently rolled out their Clipping tool, which lets you clip and save the best slides from presentations to view or share later.

#4: Link Mentions and Blog Content. Paste the URL of your post into Notifier. As Notifier scans your article for mentions of those Twitter usernames, it will create a pre-filled tweet to let each source know you’ve mentioned them.

Read more.

Productivity Tip

1.7K Shares: 9 Apps That’ll Take the Stress Out of Your Morning Routine

You know those people who obnoxiously set their alarm clock in five-minute intervals nearly an hour before they actually have to wake up? Well…

Here is sneak peek at 2 out of the 9 apps that should help you de-stress your morning routine and get up on the right side of the bed:

1) Morning Ritual

ALREADY GAVE UP ON NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS? This app will help you create the right habits you always wanted to implement in your life.

• Price: $1.99
• Available for: iOS | (Android users: Here’s something similar.)

2) Poncho

Personal weather forecasts written by a cat just for you! Poncho has you covered with a cute alarm clock, GIFs, and jokes that will make you smile whatever the weather.

• Price: Free
• Available for: iOS | (Android users: Here’s something similar.)

Read more.

___

Have any social media trends, tips or tricks to share?

Read any interesting social media facts recently?

Run across any fascinating infographics?

We’d love to hear from you!

Please share!

The post 5 Must-Read Articles You May Have Missed in Social Media [Week February 28, 2016] appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

What is Content Curation?

Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and then presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a particular theme.

If you are a frequent reader of our blog then you know I love the concept of smart automation.

If you are a small business with a marketing team of one, you will especially appreciate how you can grow an email list by reusing the same content you are already curating and sharing on social media.

• According to the Direct Marketing Association, email sees the highest ROI for direct marketers at $39 for every dollar spent.
  

“Why on Earth Would I Send a Customer Away?”

via GIPHY

If you are new to content curation, then you may be asking yourself that very question. Why would I send a perfectly good customer away from my site?

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were. – Richard Bach

5 Reasons to Curate Content

While there are excellent reason to curate content, what is most surprising is how most brands ignore these benefits and only focus on how curation can take readers away from their own website.

Reason #1. Establishes credibility and trust

It’s no secret that consumers rely on recommendations from their peers, but they also crave information from other reliable sources. My providing your customers with this information you can then improve your brand’s credibility. When you curate content,  you present the opportunity to back up your claims with outside research that supports them. In addition, over time this will build a stronger relationship with your readers as they learn to trust the knowledge you have to share.

Reason #2. Builds brand loyalty

When you curate content you show your audience that you care about the problems they’re facing. As a result, you’re taking the time to share information with them that doesn’t just toot your own horn. Furthermore, consumers feel loyal to brands that have their best interest at heart.

A real example: On May 12, we shared an article posted by Ragan.com titled, The right way to respond to negative online reviews. The article was spot on for our audience of small business owners who may face the same Yelp review issue.

As a result, engagement on the tweet and click through to the article was 2x times greater than the typical engagement rate on our own posts!

Reason #3. Improves brand voice

A brand with a personality is much more likable than a brand that isn’t much more than a logo. As you curate content, it’s important to remember your own commentary, whether you share through your blog, social media or email newsletters. Your audience will begin to understand where your brand stands when it comes to industry tactics or best practices.

Reason #4. Inspires and delights

You don’t have to be all business all the time. It’s okay for a brand to share content solely for the purpose of entertaining its community as long as you truly understand your audience. You’ll be able to delight them with content that still makes sense for your brand.

Reason #5. Increases brand awareness

As you curate content from other brands and bloggers, it won’t take long for them to notice. As a result, often times they’ll repay the favor by thanking you in front of their audience or sharing your content as well.

However, it’s important to keep your content recommendations genuine. Don’t let ego stroking be your sole motivation. Consequently you’ll quickly lose the benefits of content curation.

Creating Original Content is Time Consuming

Content curation has been around for a long time however many brands have failed to see the benefits it does deliver.

The benefits and ROI of original content creation are evident. However, consistently creating original content can be:

• Difficult
• Time consuming
• Expensive

Small businesses are feeling the pressure.

Consider these facts:

• 62% of their time each month is allocated to content production (according to a Kapost survey)
• 71% say they’re under pressure to create ten times more content to support all of the different social media channels (IDC study)
• 85% are under pressure to create assets and deliver campaigns more quickly (the same IDC study found)

According to research by Nielsen, it’s best NOT to create original content all the time:

92% of consumers trust recommendations more than your originally created content.

Mari Smith – A Trusted Filter

If you are a content curation doubter, let me introduce you to Mari Smith. Mari is a leading social media thought-leader who has a wealth of expertise in Facebook marketing. She is a Forbes’ Top Social Media Power Influencer (currently #4 of 100) and the author of a few Facebook marketing books.

Mari is the perfect example of how to build thought leadership around curated content. Most noteworthy is the massive following she built using content curation.

• Curated Email Newsletter: 97,000 subscribers
• Twitter Followers: 445,000
• Facebook Fans: 167,000

Mari aggregates interesting and/or popular content around the subject of social media marketing. She finds the best of the best and then pulls it together in her weekly newsletter.

Each week, she sort through the huge pile of new social media blog posts, resources, articles, tools, tips and more … and hand pick just three of them to send via email.

When she finds an article she likes, she uses a bookmarklet to add it to her queue. Additionally, along with links she shares in her newsletter, she offers a brief comment or summary about the pieces.

While there are many reasons (as we highlighted above) small businesses should start a curated newsletter the most noteworthy reason in the eyes of Mari to“… build a significant audience over time, make appropriate offers, and generate revenue. ”

Curated newsletters are a chance for you to offer readers a vast variety of material you’ve hand selected for them. And with so much content published online, a curated newsletter has serious business value.

How to Curate Content Like a Pro

Creating and setting up a curated newsletter is simple often times taking less then 15 minutes.

Tools you will need:

• dlvr.it
• Email service provider (e.g., MailChimp)

Step 1. Choose your topic

According to Campaign Monitor, there are the two key things you should to consider when choosing your topic:

1. Audience Value – Most importantly, consider the needs of your audience. Because you have a target market you focus on, they will be most interested in specific types of content. The value of a curated newsletter for subscribers is the convenience of having all the best content about a particular subject selected and sent directly to them, so you need to make sure the topic you choose aligns with the types of content your target market is interested in.

2. Business Alignment – First of all, the goal of starting a curated newsletter is to keep your business top of mind while building thought leadership around your brand. Therefore, you won’t achieve these objectives if the content you curate isn’t aligned with the products and services your business provides.

Step 2. Gather relevant content with dlvr.it

Once you’ve established your topic, you need to find great content to share.

• Read: Energize Fans and Followers on Social Media in Five Minutes (or less) a Day. Here we walk you through how to find great content using dlvr.it and then sharing it via social media. ***This is an important step as we are going to re-use this same content to create our curated newsletter.

• Once inside dlvr.it, click the ‘Curate’ tab
  • Type in a keyword
  • Point to a URL
  • Add an RSS feed
  • Pull in a Twitter feed, Instagram source or Pinterest Board

dlvr.it draws from more than 100,000 content sources, including blogs, professional journals, news services, magazines, video feeds, and podcasts and can quickly display the relevant content from your sources.

• Once content is pulled from the source, the curated items are displayed and most of all are easy to scan and review before and after publishing.
  
  

Want to take curation to the next level? Install our quick capture browser add-on so you can quickly add content you discover to your newsletter queue.

Next: Create an RSS feed. We’ll be using this as a content source for your newsletter. If you followed the first point above and are adding curated items to social media, you will now also be queuing items for your curated newsletter! Talk about a time saver!

• Click the social media icon at the top of the page (1)
• Click the + icon (2)

• Select the orange RSS feed icon from the list and follow the prompts to create an RSS feed
• Start adding items to the feed along with your comments. (***You may already be adding items to social media if you followed the steps outlined here so no need to duplicate the work).

dlvr.it automatically populates the newsletter link with a sample message (2) which then you can use as is or add additional commentary (1).

In just a few minutes you’ll have a list of stories to add to your newsletter.
*** New to dlvr.it? For a complete getting started guide, start here.

Step 3. Create your curated newsletter

Armed with the RSS feed you curated in Step 2, add it to your current email service provider (ESP) that accepts RSS feeds.

See our complete step by step guide for Mailchimp users.

Alternatively, you can use a tool like Zapier to connect the RSS feed to your ESP. Services in the Zapier directory that accept an RSS feed include:

• Curated.co
• Goodbits.io
• ActiveCampaign
• Intercom.io
• HubSpot
• WordPress
• Slack

Start promoting your curated newsletter.

Read: 6 High-Converting Places to Add Email Sign-Up Forms to Build Your Lists

How to Measure Engagement

Stay on track with built-in analytics and reports.

dlvr.it helps you understand how your audience is responding to the content you share therefore giving you the guidance needed to curate content that will keep your audience energized.

The dlvr.it platform integrates with analytic tools such as Google Analytics so can automatically append each curated link with unique tracking codes to let the host publisher know who referred the traffic.

We showed you how to share curated content on social media [icon name=”rss” class=”” unprefixed_class=””] and create a curated newsletter. There’s a great appeal in having someone sift through the most interesting stuff and present a digest every day or week.

Your audience is waiting.

What will you share?

The post How to Build a Massive Email List with a Curated Newsletter (in 15 minutes or less) appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

The Social Media Dilemma

More so than ever before, small businesses are under pressure to create original content.

Consequently, do any of these three content creation facts ring true for your small business?

• 62% of their time each month is allocated to content production (according to a Kapost survey)
• 71% say they’re under pressure to create ten times more content due to the desire to support all of the different social media channels (IDC study)
• 85% are under pressure to create assets, while at the same delivering campaigns more quickly (the same IDC study found)

___

Question

How can you energize fans and followers with fresh content when you don’t have time to create original content?

Answer:

Embrace the content your audience is already making and sharing.

___

Content curation helps you find content to share on social media.

How to Find Content For Social Media

The benefits and ROI of original content creation are evident. However, consistently creating original content can be:

• Difficult
• Time consuming
• Expensive

To illustrate the issue, see the results of sporadic posting in the “Engagement Gap” illustration below.

To explain, the Engagement Gap is extreme dips in the number of clicks, retweets, shares, likes, and repins. This gap typically occurs between the engagement spikes realized when you post original content.

To put it differently, to keep followers engaged, you must keep your social media feed – active.

Close the Gap with Content Curation Tools by dlvr.it

It’s important to realize that the optimal amount of content to share per day, depends on upon the social network.

For example, the infographic below from SumAll shows the optimal frequency of posting on social platforms.

The most painless way to find content for social media is with content curation.

Content curation guarantees you won’t experience a gap in engagement. Therefore, your social media feed will always have fresh, relevant content. As a result, fans and followers stay engaged.

dlvr.it’s content curation tools help you win big on social media. You will engage more fans and followers and save you a ton of time.

With dlvr.it, you not only share your original blog posts, but you can also find content to share on social media from over 100,000 sources. In particular, these sources include blogs, journals, magazines, news services, videos, and podcasts.

dlvr.it’s extensive content library makes content curation highly scalable!

Before we dive into the Content Curation tools from dlvr.it, let’s look at the benefits.

92% of Consumers Trust Curated Content

• The first thing to remember, silence on social media is one of the reasons fans unfollow your social media feeds.

• An essential element of a successful social media presence is a consistent flow of content. Regular updates remind your fans that you are still around.

According to research by Nielsen, it’s best NOT to create original content all the time.

92% of consumers trust recommendations more than your original content.

Content curation has many benefits:

1. Establishes credibility and trust
2. Scales when you cannot
3. Increases visibility, reach, and engagement
4. Decreases time and cost

dlvr.it’s Content Curation Tools Fill the Engagement Gap

When you use dlvr.it to find content for social media, you have a better opportunity to get more likes, repins and retweets. Not to mention, you build brand awareness between original content posting.

As illustrated below, the dips in engagement experienced between original content posting are now leveled out with dlvr.it’s content curation tools.

What’s the Right Content Mix?

Striking the balance of original content and finding content for social media takes experimentation.

However, there are some best practices.

According to a recent study on social media, businesses use a mix of:

• 65% original content
• 35% content from 3rd party sources

Another study suggests a much more aggressive ratio of up to 10 pieces per day.

Another option many small businesses follow is the rule of thirds:

• ⅓ of your social content promotes your business, converts readers, and generates profit.
• ⅓ of your social content should surface and share ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded businesses.
• ⅓ of your social content contains personal interactions to build your own brand.

There is no right way of sharing content on social media.

You need to discover the right ratio for your business:

1 – Set goals or have an idea of an outcome.

2 – Monitor the stats to see if you are reaching the desired result.

Use Automation to Find Content for Social Media

dlvr.it now empowers you with a complete set of tools:

• You have the option to share original content and find content from high-quality 3rd party sources.
• You can create an effective social media program in less time.

Content Curation by dlvr.it is perfect for small businesses and nonprofits who are too busy to blog.

dlvr.it does all the heavy lifting, so you don’t have to.

Our content library makes it easy to find content. Additionally, a smart workflow makes it a breeze to review, edit and publish posts quickly.

Key Features:

• Easily find, annotate, and post content tailored to your audience with just a few clicks
• Get the most relevant and updated text, images, video, and audio content delivered automatically and in one place from hundreds of thousands of sources
• Add your own RSS feed, Google Alert or Twitter Feed or use our browser add-on to add content you discover throughout the day
• Immediately share the pre-populated curated post or add your creativity and opinion
• Deliver fresh, relevant content automatically or on your schedule weeks in advance

Discover Relevant Content from Thousands of Sources

✓ Centralized content library

The content library provides the flexibility of finding relevant content:

Type in a keyword

Point us to a URL

Add an RSS feed

Pull in a Twitter feed

Use an Instagram source

Enter a Pinterest Board

We continually update your queue with fresh content. So, your feed will always be up-to-date! Our robust content search feature gives you the precision to find just the right content. We draw from more than 100,000 content sources, including blogs, professional journals, news services, magazines, video feeds, and podcasts.

Organize, Curate, and Schedule Content You Find

✓ Intuitive interface

Content is elegantly displayed, smartly organized and easy to scan.

✓  Customize each update

New to social media and not sure what to say? No problem. We automatically populate the social media update with a sample message (2) that you can use as is or add additional commentary (1).

Publish With One Click

✓  One-Click Publishing to Anywhere

With a single click, you can publish from your content queue to any major social network.

✓  Schedule Your Posts

Analyze Your Most Popular Content

✓  Measure Engagement and Amplification

Stay on track with built-in analytics. Quickly understand how your audience is responding to the content you share. Gain guidance to shape your curation strategies while keeping your audience energized.

Our platform integrates with analytics tools like Google Analytics. For instance, you can automatically append each curated link with unique tracking codes. With this in mind, the publisher knows who referred the traffic.

Using analytics is of particular importance for building social currency. Not only is it a best practice but you’ll start building influence in your niche. Not to mention you’ll gain followers. As more people recognize you for sharing their content the more likely, they will share your content.

In as little as five minutes a day, you can easily find content for social media to engage more fans and followers while spending less time.

The post How to Find Content For Social Media That Will Energize Fans appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

This week featuring:

• Top Tweet of the Week: 

Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, or Friends: Pick 3

• Social Media Growth Hacks:
  • How to WIN on Facebook
  • Why Small Businesses are Getting LinkedIn WRONG

• Productivity Tips:
  • How to Improve Your Job Performance in Two Seconds (yes, your Mother was right!)
  • Facebook Turns 12 — Trillions Squandered in LOST productivity

• Bonus Fun Fact (includes a video): Taking Naps at Work Will Make You More Productive

Top Tweet

54.7K Shares: Work, Sleep, Family, Fitness, or Friends: Pick 3

Social Media Growth Hacks

1 – 5.4K Shares: How to Win on Facebook: 8 Lessons Learned From Analyzing 1 Billion Posts

If you want to know what works when it comes to marketing, you need to study the competition…The BuzzSumo team decided to compile as much data as possible on marketing on Facebook, and then complete an in-depth analysis.

Here’s a peek at one of the eight lessons learned on how to win on Facebook:

1. The best time to post isn’t when you think it is

Intuitively, it makes sense to post when the most users are online, which is during the day. That way, a greater percentage of your followers could potentially be exposed to your posts.

But the BuzzSumo analysis actually found the complete opposite.

The pattern is remarkably clear.

Posts get the most engagement when the total amount of posts is at its lowest.

Read more.

2 – 3.3K Shares: Why Small Businesses Are Getting LinkedIn Wrong

The social network can be a great place to promote a startup. Here’s how to do it right.

Here’s a glimpse of the eight tips on how small businesses can use LinkedIn:

Tip #1 – Don’t use it for marketing

Tip #2 – Tap your network for trips

Tip #3 – Don’t help competitors

Tip #4 – Keep critical activity private

Tip #5 – Don’t focus on lead generation

Tip #6 – Sell the business, not yourself

Tip #7 – Get focused when hiring

Tip #8 – Ask for help

Read more.

Productivity Tips

1 – 4.3K Shares: How to Improve Your Job Performance in Two Seconds

Your parents were right. Stop slouching to work smarter.

Posture matters more than you may think. In fact, there’s evidence that whether you sit up straight or slouch affects the quality of your work.

Another good read: 7 Awesome Standing Desks that Will Change Your Life

2 – 4.5K Shares: Facebook turns 12 — trillions in time wasted

Twelve years ago Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with a simple dream: to have everyone spending as much time as possible clicking around on his website. Today, the social network site’s users are closing in on $3.5 trillion in squandered productivity.

→So what’s the best gift you can get Zuckerberg on his company’s birthday? Just open up your browser or phone to Facebook, and don’t forget to give him your 20 minutes.

Read more.

Bonus Fun Fact

4.3K Shares: Taking Naps at Work Will Make You More Productive

Turns out you shouldn’t work all that long and that you should take naps during the day. Seriously! It’s science! Watch the New York Magazine video below to hear more about the data that proves napping may be key to your productivity.

Another good read: 5 Perks of Sleeping on the Job and How it Might Just Save Businesses Billions a Year

___

Have any social media trends, tips or tricks to share?

Read any interesting social media facts recently?

Run across any thought-provoking questions?

We’d love to hear from you!

Please share!

The post 5 Articles and One Thought-Provoking Tweet You May Have Missed in Social Media [Week of February 7, 2016] appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

This week featuring:

• Top Tweet of the Week: The Big Agenda: What Ad Industry Needs to Know About 2016

• (2) Social Media Growth Hacks: How to Get 1,000 Visitors to Your Next Blog Post Using an Influencer Group Pos

• Productivity Tip: Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate

• Bonus App: Stuck in an unproductive meeting — again?

• Bonus Video: EVERY MEETING YOU’VE EVER BEEN TO (IN TWO MINUTES)

___

Top Tweet

3.7K Shares: The Big Agenda: What Ad Industry Needs to Know About 2016

Unilever spends $7.7 billion on global advertising, and $15 million protecting that investment.

That’s how much the consumer packaged goods giant has committed so far to its Foundry program, which has vetted 4,000 marketing-tech startups and done pilots with 80 to date. The program is among the most ambitious and highly organized forms of “future hunting” that goes on in most marketing departments today. And it points to what’s on the agenda as the industry comes to grips with perhaps the most pressing issue of 2016:

How to achieve marketing efficiency when consumers are going out of their way to avoid ads, and the bottom is falling out of the middle class, making mass marketing even less relevant.

Read more.

Social Media Growth Hacks

First the video:

1 – 2.7 Shares: Why Certain Things Go Viral

2 – 3.7K Shares: How to Get 1,000 Visitors to Your Next Blog Post Using an Influencer Group Post

Creating valuable content on your website through a blog post that demonstrates your expertise will help you to build your brand, drive traffic and create leads. But entrepreneurs often struggle to get enough visitors to validate the time they spend creating and promoting their content. In this article, we outline what you need to do to create your Influencer Group post.

Here’s a sneak peek at the five steps:

1. Find a list of influencers in your industry.

2. Get started on content.

3. Create the content.

4. Reach out to the influencers.

5. Start your social-media promotion.

Read more.

Productivity Tip

21.4K Shares: Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate

NORMALLY, I would have finished this column weeks ago. But I kept putting it off because my New Year’s resolution is to procrastinate more. I guess I owe you an explanation. Sooner or later.

We think of procrastination as a curse. Over 80 percent of college students are plagued by procrastination, requiring epic all-nighters to finish papers and prepare for tests. Roughly 20 percent of adults report being chronic procrastinators. We can only guess how much higher the estimate would be if more of them got around to filling out the survey.

But while procrastination is a vice for productivity, I’ve learned — against my natural inclinations — that it’s a virtue for creativity.

Read more.

Or, alternatively read: The Psychology of a Procrastinator: 15 Ways to Overcome and Get Things Done

Bonus App

8.5K Shares: Estimate the Cost of a Meeting with This Calculator

Stuck in an unproductive meeting — again? Everyone agrees that meetings can be a waste of time, but they’re actually a waste of money, too. How much? In a study of time budgeting at large corporations, Bain & Company found that a single weekly meeting of midlevel managers cost one organization $15M a year!

Read more.

Bonus Video

4.2K Shares: EVERY MEETING YOU’VE EVER BEEN TO (IN TWO MINUTES)

___

Have any social media trends, tips or tricks to share?

Read any interesting social media facts recently?

We’d love to hear from you!

Please share!

The post 10 Articles and Videos You May Have Missed in Social Media [Week of January 17, 2016] appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

This week featuring:

• Top Tweet of the Week: Who Controls Your Facebook Feed?

• Social Media Growth Hack: How to Consistently Create Remarkable Content

• Most Viewed: 2016’s Biggest Social Media Trends to Watch Out For

• Productivity Tip: Calming Powers of the To-Do List

• Popular on Facebook: The Most Overlooked Factor Of Content Marketing? Scannable Content

___

Top Tweet

14.8K Views: Who Controls Your Facebook Feed

Quick answer: A small team of engineers in Menlo Park. A panel of anonymous power users around the world. And, increasingly, you.

Every time you open Facebook, one of the world’s most influential, controversial, and misunderstood algorithms springs into action. It scans and collects everything posted in the past week by each of your friends, everyone you follow, each group you belong to, and every Facebook page you’ve liked.

No one outside Facebook knows for sure how it does this, and no one inside the company will tell you. And yet the results of this automated ranking process shape the social lives and reading habits of more than 1 billion daily active users—one-fifth of the world’s adult population.

Read more.

Social Media Growth Hack

1.7K Shares: How to Consistently Create Remarkable Content

Innovation mantra: Fail often to succeed sooner.

No one (in their right mind) says content marketing is easy, but having a solid starting place is a huge step ahead of the competition.

Here’s a sneak peek at IDEO’s method in 5 simple steps:

1. Understand the market, the client, the technology, and any constraints that are perceived for the problem at hand.
2. Observe real people — in real-life situations, using real language — to find out what makes them tick.
3. Visualize groundbreaking concepts and the customers who’ll use them.
4. Evaluate and refine to create quick, iterative prototypes that build on each other incrementally with the understanding that “no idea is so good it can’t be improved.”
5. Implement the new concept for commercialization and business.

Read more.

Most Popular

15.5K Views: 2016’s Biggest Social Media Trends to Watch Out For

2015 was a big year for social media:

• Social live-streaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat burst onto the scene
• Snapchat shed its reputation as a niche network for teenagers now boasting over 200 million active users
• The social video really took off. Proof in point: Facebook users alone now log a staggering 8 billion video views a day (even more than on YouTube, by some counts).

So does 2016 have as much excitement in store for social media users?

Read more.

Productivity Tip

7.3K Shares: A Neuroscientist on the Calming Powers of the To-Do List

There are two kinds of people in the world:

1. Those who make lists.
2. Those who don’t.

And, as one scientist recently argued, those who fall into the former group might hold the secret to being more productive individuals.

Read more.

Trending on Facebook

11.1K Shares/44K Views: The Most Overlooked Factor Of Content Marketing? Scannable Content

Scannable Web content makes it easy for potential customers to engage with your business, but the practice is often overlooked. 

I hate to have to break it to you, but very few people can read the content on your website. It’s not your fault. Blame the screen.

To offset the challenges created by screens and layouts, few people actually READ online content:

• 79% of them SCAN and pick out individual words and phrases
• Only 16 percent read word-for-word

Read more.

___

Have any social media trends, tips or tricks to share?

Read any interesting social media facts recently?

We’d love to hear from you!

Please share!

The post Social Media Roundup: Best Trends and Productivity Tips (January 10) appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

If you want to scale social media, there are plenty of repetitive tasks best left for social media automation tools.  Or, at the very least, use smart social media automation tools to lessen the daily workload that is required to succeed in social media.

Before we begin, ask yourself these four questions:

1. How much of my time is social media consuming each week?
2. Can I justify my hourly rate vs. the time I’m putting into social media?
3. If I outsourced or minimized my time, how will my business benefit?
4. By outsourcing social media, what areas of my business will benefit?

5 Tasks that Can Easily Benefit from Social Media Automation

I know what you are thinking. You can’t rely on other people to do things properly for you. “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” But at what cost to you – your health and the growth of your business? Whether you prefer to outsource 100% of social media or remain in control but automate a few tasks to win back hours in your week, there are a plethora of social media scheduling tools to use.

It’s important to realize social media automation isn’t a dirty word. However, there are certain social media automation best practices that you should follow.

1 – Content Creation

There is no secret formula as to how much content you have to write to keep your social followers engaged, but there is plenty of data that points to why targeted content is crucial to engagement. According to HubSpot, companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not blog. Furthermore, a healthy flow of content shared on social media can reduce lead acquisition costs by as much as 80%.

Curata put together an uber list of content writing services. Their list includes descriptions of each service.

Benefits of outsourcing content creation:

• Save money on employee benefits and seasonal work
• Save time with fast turnaround and having multiple writing assignments going at one time
• Take advantage of others’ expertise in your niche as well as editing grammar
• Outsourcing keeps you focused on running your business
• Introduce best practices, standardization, and create a consistent voice
• Get better results because agencies can pull from a wider client base to see what content converts, use call to actions, and optimized for search
• Create a broad range of content types including short and long form content, infographics, videos and images

Conclusion: According to the data, outsourcing content can produce 67% more leads and reduce costs by at least 80%.

2 – Content Curation

Silence on social media is one of the reasons fans unfollow your social streams. As shown above, an essential element to a successful social media presence is having a consistent flow of content. Generally speaking, content is the currency on social media.

You will be relieved to know you don’t have to write it all yourself. In fact, sharing content written by others, content curation) is a smart social media strategy.

Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a particular theme.

The benefits of content curation are evident:

1. Establishes credibility and trust
2. Builds brand loyalty
3. Improves brand voice
4. Inspires and delights
5. Increases brand awareness

Not a believer in content curation? Read how one software company increased their email list 130% with content curation.

As a matter of fact, according to research, 50 to 75% of all items you share on social media should be 3rd party content.

Companies that consistently reach that threshold see a 10x better conversion rate than those who don’t. The study also concluded that social media updates with curated content links generate 33% more clicks than original content links.

If you’re looking for a general guideline, the 5-3-2 rule of social media sharing is quite popular. The idea is that for every ten pieces of content you share:

• Five should be relevant content from other sources
• Three should be relevant content from you
• Two should be personal or funny as a way to humanize your brand

Tools you’ll need (depending on your needs):

• Where to find content to curate
• Tools to help you scale content curation

Continue reading about the benefits of content curation.

3  – Social Follower Acquisition

Finding new people to follow on Twitter is pretty time consuming. You could use Twitter advanced search, but it is not scalable.

If you are just starting out on social media, it is necessary to use tools to quickly get that initial growth. This class of tools allows you to enter keywords into their program, and it returns twitter accounts that match your criteria. To that end, you can instantly follow the most relevant people. For example, if you are interested in finding people with dogs, you could use a tool to find people talking about their dogs.

Furthermore, in some cases, these tools will allow you auto-follow them.

A word of caution

Although this may be true, there is a fine line you need to walk with this type social media automation. Finding new followers is one thing. Auto-following them, goes against Twitter’s terms of service. Once you have discovered potential followers with these tools, it’s easy enough to review them and click to follow them within the platforms dashboard.

Keep in mind your follow to follower ratio

One theory is to never follow more people than you have followers. Being followed more than you are following suggests you’re more compelling than those with an equal number.

We tested this theory two ways:

1 – We created a Twitter account and followed more people than followed us. Result: Growth was stagnant.

2 – We followed five fewer people than we were following. Result: Growth doubled.

We continued testing for a few weeks, and the pattern was consistent.

There are many theories on the follow-to-following ration. One other theory comes from digiwriteitit. They suggest when you first start out, keep your ratio 5:1. Make sure you follow no more people until your ratio gets to 5:1 (100 following: 20 followers).

Tools you’ll need: Tweetfull automates the process of finding and following relevant people on Twitter. They have two settings – autopilot or do-it-yourself. Regardless, you will save a ton of time. We have used it successfully to grow several niche twitter accounts.

4 – Posting Content to Multiple Platforms

Manually updating all your social networks with content is the equivalent of copy and pasting the same content one email at a time to all your newsletter subscribers. Consequently, it’s not a good use of anyone’s time. With this in mind, many tools on the market allow you to instantly share content across social media, customize it, and get instant feedback on its success.

The average American consumes 34 gigabytes of content and 100,000 words of information in a single day. In other words, you want to get your content in front of them first and on a consistent basis to remain relevant. The smartest tools on the market can analyze thousands of streams to determine the best time to tweet and deliver your content when your audience is listening.

For example, according to a BuddyMedia study, engagement rates on Facebook tend to rise as the week goes on; they’re 18 percent higher on Thursdays and Fridays. Another study found that B2C marketers get 32 percent higher engagement on weekends.

Tools you’ll need: Consider dlvr.it for smart social media automation. dlvr.it manages over 1M customers who send 4 million updates per day to nearly 1.5 Billion people worldwide. dlvr.it has smart automation down to a science.

5 – Social Listening and Brand Monitoring

As a small business owner, you likely wear many hats. Social media monitoring may or may not make it on your to-do list regularly. Taking one full week to do monitoring, like I once did, is not an option. I struggled to find a comprehensive online solution that could combine the different types of monitoring I wanted to do including:

• Brand monitoring
• Customer feedback
• Competitive intelligence

In the 24x7x365 connected social media world we live in today, people are constantly talking and offering their opinion. They are having public conversations that they once only had with friends in person or on the phone. We have more information available to us than ever before.

Social media coupled with the advancement in technology is now allowing us to:

• Instantly respond to conversations related to our brand
• Quickly understand the content competitors are sharing and conversations they are having
• Understand the needs of prospects and get inspiration for product ideas
• Provide instant customer service

Essential Elements of a Social Listening Strategy

Brand Monitoring

You want to know what is being said about you and your key employees daily. As a matter of fact, eighty-three percent of consumers say online reviews influence their perceptions about companies and 80% report that negative online comments changed their purchasing decision. (source: eMarketer.com)

In addition to monitoring your company name and URL, consider tracking:

• Related terms in your industry or specific business. You will gain insight into where the market is headed or better yet, find a prospect looking for what you sell.
• Names of your key employees. Reward those who are making an impact.
• Negative terms, for example, “Company “XYZ” Sucks.” Respond as soon as possible so others can see you are listening and quick to resolve the issue.
• Mentions of your industry and words like “recommend,” “recommendation,” and “advice”.

Customer Service

Social media is about relationships. Social sites are public forums and the new telephone. For example, people turn to Twitter expecting you to be listening and responding quickly to support questions – 42% of people expect a response within 60 minutes.

In my opinion, of the three things to monitor in social media, customer service monitoring is the only type of monitoring that should be done in ‘near’ real-time.

A few lessons learned:

1. Set up keyword streams for phrases including your brand name plus words like “help,” “support,” and “customer service”.
2. Listen for new ways customers are using your product or service.
3. Remember your manners. Say thanks for Retweets, positive mentions, and feedback.
4. Follow your customers on social media sites.

Competitive Intelligence

Generally speaking, when it comes to competitive social media monitoring, refrain from jumping into the conversation. Take an active listening role with the purpose of gaining valuable insight – in contrast to bad-mouthing the competition or promote your brand.

• Track your competitor’s brand name, URL and Twitter handle.
• Add competitor brand name plus negative key terms. For example  “Competitor A + Sucks.”
• Kill them with kindness. Help your competitor’s customers. Genuinely respond with a thoughtful solution to their question.

Tools you’ll need: If you are looking for an affordable, comprehensive view of online brand mentions, customer conversations, and intelligence on competitors in one solution, I suggest Mention.com. (I am not affiliated with mention.com in any way.)

Mention actively searches the Web and social media sites for key terms of your choosing. You can opt in to receive alerts via mobile, desktop and through their UI.

The key for me is the ability to interact with customers who are having conversations across social media without leaving Mention.com. The stats provide a snapshot of your activity. This snapshot is handy if your goal is to increase positive brand mentions. This service has saved us a ton of time.

___

Do you use social media automation tools to run your business. What tasks do you outsource or automate?

Please share in the comments.

We’d love your feedback.

The post How to Use Social Media Automation for Profit appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

This week featuring:

• Top Tweet of the Week

• 2016 Trends: Contenting Marketing, Public Relations, and Social Media

• 2016 Productivity Tips: Bad Habits to Break in 2016 and How to Reclaim Your Time

___

Top Tweet

190K Shares: Why You Should Always Buy the Men’s Version of Almost Anything

Radio Flyer sells a red scooter for boys and a pink scooter for girls. Both feature plastic handlebars, three wheels, and a foot brake. Both weigh about five pounds.

The only significant difference is the price, a new report reveals. Target listed one for $24.99 and the other for $49.99.

This price gap isn’t an anomaly.

Read more.

2016 Trends

1 – 15.2K Views: Content Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2016

An amazing year comes to an end, complete with videos going viral, algorithms throwing us curve balls and news-feeds getting chaotic. If content marketing is your game, 2016 would be the year it gets crazy competitive, and a lot more exciting!

Here is a sneak peek at a few of the content marketing trends and focus areas for 2016:

#1: Videos will continue to dominate

#2: User attention span will continue to fall

Human attention span is at the all time lowest of 8 seconds, gold fish is 9 seconds.

#3: Quality will beat quantity, hands down

#4: Rise of Instagram + WhatsApp for content distribution

#5: Rise of branded content

Read more.

2 – 26.1K Views: 7 PR Trends You Need To Know In 2016

Just as communication evolves and the needs and preferences of our audience shifts, so should our practice of public relations. Publications and media outlets are navigating changing revenue models, new communication channels are opening, and more business leaders are establishing their voices in the industry.

Staying on top of your game — and ahead of competitors — means you have to keep up with the practices shaping your industry.

Sneak peek at the public relation trends to watch out for in 2016:

#1: The traditional press release is no more.

#2: Thought leadership will become a growing PR budget priority.

#3: Content amplification will become (even more) critical.

#4: Negative brand advocates will be prevented through content.

#5: Online reputation management will be necessary. 

#6: True influence will win over the # of followers.

#7: Use of paid promotion and social ads will continue to rise.

Read more.

3 – 3.8K Shares: Five Social Trends Marketers Won’t Be Able to Ignore in 2016

Marketers Must Adapt or Die As Social Continues to Evolve

With the year coming to an end, headlines like “The War on Advertising” and “The Perfect Storm” are becoming more common as marketers are getting the year-end jitters, asking “What’s next?” and “Where is there space for my brand in 2016?” While the speed of social has always been dizzying — new platforms, behaviors, memes and audiences are born and die every minute – the year ahead promises to be especially frenetic.

When it comes to social and digital marketing, 2016 is going to be an adapt-or-die year.

#1: Messaging platforms will trump broadcast social networks.

#2: Marketers will realize that Snapchat isn’t social — it’s TV.

#3: Ad blocking turns all eyes to social.

#4: The Hotel California effect will change the game.

Social networks are becoming Hotel Californias — closed systems where you can check out, but you can never leave. 

• Snapchat doesn’t lead outside the network.
• Instagram barely does.
• Facebook is making every effort to keep users from heading outside of its walled garden.
• More alarmingly, Twitter users are increasingly hesitant to click on links — the behavior is mirroring the platform shifts.

The implications for marketers are enormous: Brands will need to optimize for on-platform success and conversation, and minimize CTAs and clickthroughs.

#5: Social video will get more crowded and complicated.

Read more.

2016 Productivity Tips

1 – 910.5K Views: 13 bad habits you should break in 2016 to be more productive

Being more productive is about working smarter, not harder, and making the most of each day.

While this is no easy feat, getting more done in less time is a much more attainable goal if you’re not sabotaging yourself with bad habits.

Here are 3 of the 13 things you should stop doing right now to become more productive:

Bad Habit #1: Impulsive web browsing

Bad Habit #2: Multi-tasking

Bad Habit #3: Checking email throughout the day

Read more.

2 – 5.8K Shares: Commit to Under-Scheduling in 2016

 “So often we’re missing what’s truly important because we’re on the quest for what is extraordinary.”

Sometimes, tiny shifts in how you use your time can make the difference between feeling focused and productive at work, with energy left over for home, and feeling like you’re pulling yourself through the day in a fog of exhaustion only to collapse on the couch at night.

For example, make it a rule to have at least 15 minutes between meetings to wrap up your notes, get a drink of water, and have a moment to breathe. Even those few minutes can help you feel good about what you accomplished and leave the office satisfied — instead of feeling overwhelmed by loose ends and.

Here’s how:

1. Define what success feels like for you.
2. Be honest about “must do” activities.
3. Under-schedule your calendar.
4. Decline activities and tasks that aren’t aligned.
5. Savor the beauty of the everyday.

Read more.

___

Have any social media trends, tips or tricks to share?

Read any interesting social media facts recently?

We’d love to hear from you!

Please share!

The post Time Flies: 10 ‘Best-of’ Posts You Missed in Social Media Last Week [December 20] appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.