How Your Brand Can Benefit from Social Listening

Incorporating social listening into your brand strategy can upgrade your understanding of the market and improve your engagement with customers. It can give you a multifaceted view of your brand’s social presence, along with critical insights that can inform your decisions and planning. Social listening can help you:
Understand customer sentiment better. Social listening delves into the emotions and opinions expressed by customers, offering a clear perspective on how they experience your brand. This is useful as you tailor your tactics to the current state of your market.

• Get competitive analysis and market intelligence. When you monitor competitors and industry trends as part of your social listening, you get valuable insights into market gaps and opportunities that can inform the way you position and differentiate in the market.
• Manage crises and protect your brand. Social listening lets you detect potential issues or negative sentiment early, manage your brand’s reputation proactively, and respond swiftly to emerging crises.
• Inform your product development and innovation. Customer feedback and discussions reveal their unmet needs and preferences. That can help guide your product enhancements and innovation, and stay ahead of market demands and customer expectations.
• Improve customer engagement and loyalty. When you understand the desires and pain points of your audience you can create more relevant and engaging social media content. Doing so strengthens audience connections, fosters customer loyalty, and creates long-term relationships.

Each of these benefits can help you understand your brand’s market position more comprehensively, and stay relevant, competitive, and closely connected with your audience.

Data Types You Can Glean from Social Listening

Social listening yields a rich trove of data and diverse insights into various aspects of brand and market dynamics. The primary data type is customer sentiment and feedback, which reveals how customers view your brand, its products, or services. This data includes emotional reactions and opinions that can give you a detailed picture of both customer satisfaction and areas for improvement.
Another crucial data type is trend analysis, which involves identifying and understanding emerging patterns in consumer behavior, preferences, and market shifts. This analysis can help your brand stay ahead of the curve by adapting to new trends. Social listening also gathers competitor insights that offer a view into competitor strategies, strengths, and weaknesses, and enable you to position your brand more effectively in the market.
Lastly, social listening can track brand health metrics, like share of voice, engagement rates, and brand mentions. These metrics can offer a quantitative assessment of your brand’s visibility, reputation, and overall health.

Social Listening Tactics for Immediate Implementation

Implementing social listening tactics can help you respond proactively to market changes, tailor your content more effectively, and build stronger relationships with your audience. Here are some key tactics that you can start executing right away:

• Keyword monitoring. Track specific brand-related keywords, hashtags, and industry terms to stay informed about relevant conversations. Doing that can help you understand how often and in what context people mention your brand, and help you understand public perception and areas for strategic focus. In 2018, Starbucks monitored keywords on Twitter and Instagram to track public response to their holiday cup designs to understand customer sentiment and enhance their holiday marketing efforts.
• Influencer collaboration. Use social listening to identify key influencers whose audience aligns with your brand’s target demographic. Collaborating with these influencers can extend your brand’s reach and enhance your brand’s credibility.
• Optimizing customer service. Monitor social media for customer complaints or queries, and respond promptly and effectively—preferably with a solution at hand. This improves customer satisfaction and loyalty, turning potential crises into opportunities for positive engagement.
• Content strategy development. Base your content strategy on insights from social listening. Getting a grasp on popular topics, concerns, and preferences helps create engaging and relevant content that resonates with your audience. For instance, Netflix often creates content and memes based on trending topics and discussions related to their shows, identified through social listening.
• Crisis alert and response. Detect negative sentiment spikes or emerging issues to manage potential crises. When you respond quickly with useful information, you can protect and even boost your brand’s reputation in challenging situations. In one classic example, KFC’s response to their chicken shortage crisis in the UK used social listening to quickly speak to customer dissatisfaction with a clever, apologetic response that turned a potential PR disaster into a brand win.

Putting social media tactics to work can make your social media strategy more responsive, relevant, and engaging. By staying on top of the conversation on your platforms, you can maintain an impactful presence for your brand.

The Role of Social Listening Tools

Social listening tools are vital for brands to navigate the complexities of online conversations and market dynamics. Each tool offers unique features that cater to different aspects of social listening. Here are some examples:

• Real-time analytics: Tools like Brandwatch can provide real-time insights into current trends and conversations that can enable you to react swiftly and stay relevant on your social media platforms.
• Comprehensive data aggregation: Hootsuite Insights is known for its extensive capability to collect data from a wide range of social platforms, which can give you a comprehensive view of your online presence and audience interactions.
• Advanced sentiment analysis: Sprout Social offers deep sentiment analysis that interprets the tone and nuances of social conversations. This can help you understand not just what your audience says, but also their underlying emotions and attitudes.
• Integrative market research: Meltwater combines social listening with broader market research to give you a holistic view that includes both social insights and traditional market data. That kind of integration can help you understand the market better and make decisions more strategically.

Each of these tools can play a crucial role in a brand’s social listening strategy, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of the market and enabling informed, strategic decisions. By leveraging these tools, brands can effectively interpret the moods of their audience and market, turning insights into actionable strategy.

Integrating Social Media Automation with Social Listening

When combined with social listening, social media automation can help bring your brand’s social media strategy to the next level. Automation platforms like dlvr.it streamline content distribution across your social channels, ensuring timely, targeted, relevant, and consistent engagement with your audience. Social listening insights can inform how you create and schedule your posts so they’re relevant to current trends, audience sentiments, and emerging conversations. Automated posting ensures that your brand remains active and engaged, while social listening data can provide direction that makes each post resonate with the audience. The combination can save you time and resources, and boost the power of your campaigns to increase engagement, loyalty, and the impact of your brand presence on social.

The post How Social Listening Can Take Your Strategy to the Next Level appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

A “URL shortener” is a program to make shorter variations of long URLs. You can use it to make it simpler to recall the subject matter of a lengthy link. A URL shortener can be compared to a bookmarker. However, you store a condensed version of a link to a specific location where you may access it later rather than storing an entire web page to your favourites bar.

Simply copy the brief URL into a browser window to return to the original link.

The capability to monitor how frequently you are shared is another advantage of employing a URL shortening service. This assists you in finding chances to connect with new audiences and may even inspire ideas for next campaigns and social media postings.

URL Shorteners Offer a Wide Range of Benefits:

1. You don’t need to worry about inputting lengthy character strings

2. It makes it simpler to distribute links on various social media networks.

3. It frees up room on social media platforms.

4. Condense a large domain name into a shorter version.

5. To improve your chances of being noticed on search engines, you can add keywords.

There are numerous varieties of shorteners. In this post, we’ll examine a few of the possibilities and discuss why, depending on your needs, each one might be valuable. The benefits and drawbacks of each kind of shortener will also be covered.

How to Use URL Shorteners

One of those tasks that appears straightforward but actually has a variety of approaches is URL shortening. Here, we’ll examine some of the most well-liked ones in detail.

The fundamental concept of URL shortening is rather simple. You begin with a lengthy link, and the URL shortener is a straightforward tool that reduces the number of characters. People can access the original link by simply copying and pasting the abbreviated URL into the address bar of their browser.

The ease with which information may be shared online thanks to shortened URLs is fantastic. They’re notably helpful for linking to destination URLs of certain articles or images when sharing web addresses on social media.

Shorteners: The Three Types

There are three types of URL shorteners: free, premium, and custom. Other free URL shorteners include TinyURL and Bitly. These services are fantastic because they are cost-free and extremely user-friendly. Additionally, they offer fundamental functions like analytics and social sharing. They are not customizable, though, and frequently have a cap on the number of redirects per site.

Create your own solution with custom shorteners – everything about your shortener may be changed, including the name, logo, appearance, colors, and even functionality. Custom shorteners are typically developed using the PHP programming language, which gives them strength and adaptability. Although they frequently cost money, they provide you with complete control over every element of your website.

Last but not least, paid shorteners are created especially for businesses. They frequently include several extras, such as analytics, social media integration, and others. For instance, you may import your complete blog archive into a single post with the well-liked WordPress plugin WP All Import. This improves your search engine exposure and makes it simpler for visitors to find earlier posts.

Effect of Link Shorteners on SEO

Those who dislike link shorteners frequently raise this problem. However, as Google’s Matt Cutts explains, as long as the URL shortener is employing a 301 redirect, the PageRank and anchor text will flow via the shortened link and there shouldn’t be any damage in using them.

Choose the Appropriate Tool for the Job

One of those things, URL shortening, seems like it should be simple to do, but you have no idea where to begin. It’s likely that you’ve heard of it, seen it used on social media, and perhaps tried it yourself. Of course, it may appear trickier to use than it is. And no, in order to shorten a URL, you don’t need to be a web designer or have a degree in computer science.

Shortened URLs allow you to share links more quickly and save time.

On the internet, URLs are crucial pieces of data. They instruct individuals on where to go, what to do, and how to locate items online. But it takes time and energy to type out lengthy URLs. You might want to tweet a link, but you don’t want to take the time to type it out. That is why Bitly exists; by shortening links, we make it simple to share them.

Detailed Reports Regarding Your Shortened Links Are Available.

You will get thorough analytics information for any shortened link you’ve ever shared when you utilize Bitly. These contain information about where the link was shared and how frequently it was clicked.

The Most Well-Known Link Shorteners:

1. Bitly

Using Bitly, you can convert lengthy site URLs into shorter connections. Without having to spell the entire thing out, you can quickly share your customized links on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms.

In addition to providing users and marketers with the ability to shorten links, Bitly also allows them to track click-through rates for individual URLs, view analytics on the total number of clicks and shares for their generated shortened URLs, and integrate Bitly with other tools like social media platforms and other digital advertising dashboards.

It not only provides free accounts, but also subscription plans with analytics and personalized domains. The ability to quickly construct several abbreviated versions of a single URL is its key feature.

Therefore, you can simply copy and paste the original URL into the Bitly box, select the platforms you’d like to share it on, and tap “shorten” if you have a blog post that needs to be connected to a variety of social networking networks (especially when utilizing an automated scheduler). When someone has to read it, you may just send them the condensed version.

2. TinyURL

TinyURL is simple to use and doesn’t demand that users register for an account. Enter a URL into the text box and click “Create Shortlink” to create the link.

Users can shorten any URL they like with TinyURL, a straightforward URL shortening tool. Click the “Create Shortlink” button after entering the URL you want to use. Following that, you’ll have a special, one-time code that you may copy and re-paste onto your original URL.

Preview the end result before clicking on them by making personalized small URLs and using a browser extension. Sign up for a premium account at TinyURL.com if you want to know which websites people visit after clicking on your link.

Although TinyURL is free to use, you’ll need to subscribe to a premium plan if you want to maintain your whole link history.

3. Yourls

Yourls, which stands for Your Own URL Shorter, is a user-friendly link shortening tool that lets you make unique short URLs for your website. You can quickly add unique domains to your account and view data on the number of times visitors click on your short URL.

The URLs you create belong to you, and by including a custom domain name in your shortened links, you may utilize them to build your brand. several practical built-in features to add new functionality rapidly. Historical click statistics, referrer tracking, and visitor location are some of the analytics tools and reports.

4. Rebrandly

It’s time to check out Rebrandly if you want to brand your link shortener with your own domain name. With the help of this tool, you may accomplish so while also adding your own domains or choosing from Rebrandly’s enormous database of more than 2 million domains. Even your own photos can be used.

Rebrandly allows you to directly generate and distribute brand links while you browse the web using the browser add-on. With Rebrandly, you may directly register a new URL by choosing from more than 2,000 domain extensions, including.link,.shop, and other unique links.

Because the corporate name is included in the link even if it is being utilized by another party, branded links raise brand recognition for the company. It increases link trustworthiness, and in comparison to generic short URLs, a branded link can actually increase the click-through rate (CTR) by up to three times (GSUs).

5. BL.INK

Using the link-shortening application Bl.ink, you may monitor clicks on the abbreviated URLs you create. This makes it simple to count the number of clicks on your links.

Five distinct pricing tiers are available, with prices ranging from 12 cents per month to 59 cents per day. Each tier grants access to Bl.ink’s services, including SSL certificates, custom domains, and URL tracking.

The capability to monitor clicks per link is the most widely used function. For instance, you could want to see where visitors are clicking on your website if you’re attempting to market a product or service. You can do that with BL.INK.

To monitor clicks on your social media posts, you can use use BL.INK. You may now view exactly what happened to a link you sent on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or another social media platform.

It’s easy to create custom domains in addition to being able to track clicks on your website. You may ensure that your link always points to the same location in this method.

Finally, you have the option of purchasing SSL certificates. These enable you to guarantee that site users feel secure while surfing your webpages.

Why You Need to Use a URL Shortener for Your Business

It is simpler to share content across many networks when you utilize URL shorteners, which are practical tools. They enable you to use long URLs as text shortcuts by shortening them. But before you begin sharing links, there are a few things you should understand about them.

You can share material across channels by shortening URLs. For instance, you could simply copy the entire URL and paste it someplace else if you wanted to share a link to a blog post. Without having to type the entire thing out, this makes it much simpler to distribute the link.

Utilizing a URL shortener also gives you the ability to monitor how frequently your URLs are shared. When someone clicks on one of your shortened links that you’ve shared, a notification will appear in your dashboard to let you know. You can even set up notifications so that you get an email notification each time one of your links is shared.

Always include a disclaimer if you genuinely want to utilize a URL shortener. Make sure you give a justification for your actions and that you are not deceiving anyone. Make sure you aren’t breaking any terms of service agreements as well. Some businesses forbid the use of specific kinds of URL shorteners because they believe that these tools are too simple to abuse.

Shortened URLs Have a More Streamlined Look

Facebook made adjustments to the way postings are displayed. The social network is making some adjustments to make it simpler for users to find what they’re looking for in addition to modifying the feed’s appearance. One of those adjustments entails URL shortening. Chris Cox, the Facebook product manager, stated in a blog post that “we’ve heard comments about how difficult it may be to remember large URLs.” As a result, we’ll soon start displaying shorter URLs.

Not every sort of link shared on Facebook will be impacted by the change. Photos, for instance, are still immediately connected to the original picture file. However, the whole URL will no longer be included in links to movies, articles, events, businesses, and groups. Links shared via comments, advertising, and status updates fall under this category. Also truncated are any links that are posted in messages.

Each shortened link will have a tiny green icon next to it for users to view. The whole URL will be displayed when they click on it. There is a button in the top left corner of the screen that allows you to keep the entire URL if you choose.

Twitter already makes use of shortened URLs. Users can share links without needing to use all 140 characters thanks to them.

Increase Traffic with Shorter Links

Why then do people employ them? The reason for this is that they want to make sure that the link is shared with as many individuals as possible.

Of course, you still have to manually type the entire address. However, it is still far quicker than attempting to copy and paste the original URL.

Shortened links are a terrific, time-efficient way to spread the word about your content. They let you track it while yet keeping your URL brief. You may shorten your URLs and monitor their usage by using a custom URL shortener. This enables you to precisely determine what information your audience is interested in knowing about your brand.

Gain More Credibility

One of the best methods to raise your brand’s online trust is with a shortened URL. People assume that a short link will be simple to remember and less likely to result in broken links. Additionally, they frequently assume that because there are fewer words to type into a browser address bar, the website behind the link must be reliable.

A shorter URL encourages customer confidence and trust. In fact, customers are more likely to trust a business when they see a shorter URL, according to research done by Moz.

Share Shortened URLs on Social Media

One of the most efficient ways to reach out to potential customers is through sharing links on social media. You must make sure that the links you post are optimized for social shares if you want to increase the impact of your postings. Making ensuring that your shortened URLs are prepared for social media sharing is part of this.

Links were frequently used to abbreviate URLs in the past. But nowadays, the majority of individuals just copy and paste a URL from the address bar of their computer. Therefore, using a URL shortener eliminates the need to write a lengthy 45-character address to reach that location.

For instance, you might get something like /wp/products/product1/ if you abbreviate a URL that ends in.com/products/product1. All but WordPress users won’t find much use in this. You may shorten the URL to /products/product1/ to optimize it for social media, which would make it much simpler to distribute on social networks.

To achieve this, you don’t have to alter your entire URL structure. Just a few extra letters need to be added at the beginning of each URL. This strategy works well for websites when the product catalog is a primary draw for visitors.

Why You Should Use URL Shorteners, in Summary

A URL shortener is an online tool that enables you to create shortened URLs that direct users to different web pages or sites.

Therefore, why use a URL shortener? So, in addition to saving you time, it can help you have a stronger online presence. It can be challenging to type more than the allotted 140 characters if you’ve ever tried to tweet a lengthy URL. An integral aspect of any marketing plan, URL shorteners allow you to reduce the length of the internet links you post, making it simpler to share information about your brand on all social media platforms.

The post Why You Need to Use a URL Shortener appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

One of the biggest challenges with Instagram is determining how to maximize your content outside the Instagram app.

We’ve outlined the steps below in the hope that you can easily extend the reach of your images and video outside Instagram.

Instagram now offers a way to make your Instagram feed available anywhere else on the web. You can even use it on sites like Tumblr, WordPress, and Medium without having to go through the hassle of manually uploading each photo. All you have to do is install the InstaRSS app on your computer, sign into your account, and start posting photos. After that, you’ll see a button in the upper left corner that says “Post to RSS.” Click that, enter the URL of any site where you’d like to post your Instagram feed, and you’re good to go.

You can find instructions for installing InstaRSS here. If you don’t know how to add an RSS feed to your site, check out our guide to setting one up.

How to Create Instagram to RSS

We partnered with Instagram to make creating RSS feeds and linking Instagram to Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest a breeze. Not only will this make social media sharing a cinch, but it will also generate new followers. In a few clicks, easily create an Instagram RSS feed with dlvr.it’s FREE tool.

Instagram is one of the most popular photo-sharing apps. But what about those times when you want to share photos with friends on Twitter, Facebook, and even Pinterest? If you don’t use a third-party app, you’re stuck manually copying and pasting each image into the text editor. Not anymore. With InstaRSS, you can easily share pictures directly from Instagram to Twitter, Facebook, and more.

If you already have an account on Instagram, just follow the steps below.

• Open the Instagram mobile app.
• Tap the three dots icon in the upper right corner.
• Select “Share.”
• Click the “+” button next to “Add URL,” select “Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest,” and paste your Instagram URL.
• You’ll see a preview of how the post will look on the respective network. When you’re happy with the appearance, tap “Post.”

Your Smart Instagram RSS Feed and Instagram Stories

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms out there, especially among millennials. But it isn’t always easy to get the best quality pictures from the app. If you’re looking to improve your Instagram feeds, we’ve got some tips that’ll help you do just that.

First things first: You need to know what type of account you want to use. Are you posting for personal reasons? Or are you trying to grow your brand with business account posts? Either way, you’ll want to make sure that you’re taking advantage of the full potential of the Instagram feed plugin (RSS feed automation tool).

Next up, you’ll want to set up your profile. This includes adding a username, choosing a bio, uploading a cover photo, and selecting your location. Once you’re done setting up your profile, you’ll want to start building your feed. To do this, you’ll want to go to the Explore tab and select “Explore.” From here, you can see trending topics, browse hashtags, and even view the feed content of people you follow.

Once you’re ready to build your feed, you’ll want to choose an image input source. There are three options:

• Uploading Images from Your Computer
• Adding Images Directly Into Posts/Stories
• Using Hashtags to Find Relevant Photos

From Your dlvr.it dashboard, Click ‘Add a Feed’

Click the Instagram Icon

If logged into your Instagram account, click ‘Authorize’. If not logged in, you will be prompted to log in and Authorize

Dlvr.it = Intelligent Reporting

Measure audience engagement across social networks and track the performance of each item you share.

Followers: The change in your total number of followers/friends across all your social networks for the last 24 hours. dlvr.it also shows you how that compares to the maximum/minimum daily follower changes over the last 30 days.

Clicks: The total number of clicks across all your Routes for the last 24 hours. dlvr.it shows you how that compares to the most active and least active days over the last 30 days.

Posts: The total number of individual posts made across all your Routes for the last 24 hours. dlvr.it shows you how that compares to the maximum and minimum daily post days over the last 30 days.

Audience: The total number of active users followers/friends (and reach, when enabled) across all your social networks for the last 24 hours. dlvr.it details the changes for each of your social networks during the last 24 hours.

Popular Posts: The most popular posts made in the previous 7 days, including the number of clicks.

Geo: A global map of your click activity over the last 7 days.

Customize Content with Filters

With the amount of information coming through Instagram at any given time, filtering and customization are becoming more important every day. dlvr.it provides a slew of filtering options to help you battle the elements and publish to your heart’s content. You can easily set up filters with your dlvr.it account to tailor your Instagram RSS feed.

• Want to post items that mention iPhone? How about articles that mention iPhone or iPad? How about items that mention iPhone or iPad, but not if the item mentions Facebook? No problem.

• Want to apply filters only to your headlines? To your headlines and bodies? Only to your categories? To headlines, and categories, but not the body? No problem.

Schedule at Just the Right Time

Instagram recently rolled out an update that lets publishers schedule fresh content posts ahead of time. This feature allows brands to set up multiple custom feeds based on different events like holidays, birthdays, etc. If you don’t know how to use the tool, here are some tips.

• Set Up Your Feed

The first step is to create a profile and select “Schedule.” You’ll see the option to add a custom URL, which you can use to link to your site.

• Add Events

Once you’ve added a custom URL, you’re ready to start scheduling posts. To do this, tap on the “+” icon in the upper left corner. From there, choose what type of event you’d like to schedule.

Link to Other Social Networks

The Facebook link tool allows you to quickly and easily post your real-time updates directly to your Facebook Timeline. This way, people can see what you are up to without having to go to your profile. You can even choose to make it public or just visible to friends.

To use the feature, follow these steps:

• Go to the Facebook link tool.
• Click the “Add a link” button.
• Select the type of link you want to include (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
• Choose where you want the link to take visitors.
• Add the URL of the site you want to share from.

Get FREE Instagram followers with Any Instagram RSS Feed

Instagram is a Powerful Marketing Platform

Instagram is one of the most popular photo-sharing apps out there. Millions of people use it every day to capture life’s moments and share them with friends and family. But did you know that Instagram is actually a great way to promote your brand and build up your audience? If you want to start growing your Instagram account, here are 3 ways to do just that.

• Use the Free Instagram Followers Hack

This method is probably the easiest one out of the three. All you need to do is enter your username into the URL bar, hit Enter, and voila! You’ll instantly receive some free followers. There are no strings attached.

• Post Content Regularly

The second method involves posting regularly. When you post consistently, you give your audience a chance to follow you. And once they do, they’ll see your posts everywhere. So make sure you post at least 2 times per week.

• Create Engaging Videos

Videos are the best way to connect with your audience. They allow you to express yourself better than text alone. Plus, videos are easier to share across different platforms. For example, you could upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Twitter.

• Link Instagram to other Social Media Accounts

Instagram is one of the most popular photo-sharing apps out there. If you want to increase your reach, it might be worth linking up your accounts. Here are three ways to do it.

1. Link Instagram to Tumblr

Tumblr allows you to post images directly onto your site. You can use the same account on both Tumblr and Instagram. Simply go to your profile settings and select “Linked Accounts.” Then follow the instructions.

2. Link Instagram to Pinterest

Pinterest is another great place to promote your Instagram posts. You can link your Instagram feed to your Pinterest account in several different ways. Go to your profile settings and choose “Add Account,” then scroll down to “Other Social Media Links.” Follow the steps.

3. Link Instagram to Facebook

Facebook is still the biggest social network around. It’s also a good place to promote your work. To link Instagram to Facebook, go to your profile settings, then select “Connections.” Choose “Add Connection” and enter your username and password.

Instagram now allows users to easily save their Instagram posts as an RSS feed. This feature is similar to how Twitter works. You can use it to create a feed of your favorite pictures without having to manually post each image. Now, whenever someone visits your profile, they will see your latest images.

You can also find new accounts to follow by searching for hashtags on Instagram. Simply type # into the search bar and hit enter. Instagram will show you a list of people who have used that hashtag. You can choose to follow those accounts directly from there.

If you don’t like the idea of sharing your Instagram feed publicly, you can still make it visible to friends and followers only. Then scroll down to the bottom of the screen and tap “See what others see”.

It’s East to Include an RSS Feed on your Instagram Site

Instagram recently added support for embedding apps directly into your profile. Now, you can add an RSS feed app to your Instagram account and display it wherever you like. You can even choose where to place the feed within your profile.

The feature allows you to include social feeds from your favorite websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Blogger, WordPress, YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo, Flickr, Foursquare, Spotify, Dailymotion, and many others.

You can also use the same technique to add a podcast feed to your Instagram profile. Just make sure you’re logged into your podcast provider’s website and select “Add Podcast.”

The post How to Make an Instagram RSS Feed for FREE appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

Why do headlines matter?

Headlines are your first impression upon your readers. Think about what you are likely to click or not to click. If you wouldn’t click it, your readers would probably skip it too. Having an eye-catching headline is what draws in readers so that you will see your SEO rankings jump. Maria Konnikova of the New Yorker published an article indicating why headlines matter. She says that not only does a headline draw in a click, but it also provides the reader with a frame of reference for the content that they’ll be reading.

1 – CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

The positive side of CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

On the positive side, CoSchedule’s tool is geared toward those that are frequently sharing original content on social media. Because CoSchedule has a lot of experience in the social media world, they have utilized their experience to create this tool and help you determine which headlines will work best with your content. Rather than looking for headlines that will work in native advertising, they will help you find an appropriate headline that will work with any source. CoSchedule also provides a history of how your headline has changed while you’ve been altering your headline. This is nice because some changes may not improve your score, but lower it. Since this is the case, CoSchedule has provided this history along with the dozens of the historical headlines.

The potentially confusing

CoSchedule has also implemented their own headline analyzer. CoSchedule’s headline analyzer works through a number of factors and utilizes a different type of algorithm than Sharethrough’s algorithm. CoSchedule, like Sharethrough, provides tips and tricks to improve your headlines. However, CoSchedule’s tool provides a little bit more vague guidance. Their headline analyzer starts with a rating of your current headline. It breaks down your headline by percentage of types of words. Rather than providing tips at the top of the page, you must scroll down to view more information.

CoSchedule does provide information about particular types of headlines and words that will improve your headlines. dlvr.it also has published a fantastic list of 1000 powerful words to help you post better headlines. They link to an article that will give you quite a few suggestions for new words to improve your headline.

Depending on what type of headline you determine to be appropriate, you may need to:

• Include more emotional words
• Include a headline type like ‘How To’

Some of the suggestions that CoSchedule’s tool provides are ambiguous as to how they are supposed to be implemented. For less ambiguity regarding how to create a better headline, we have created an article for you about how to phrase a more powerful headline.

2 – Sharethrough Headline Analyzer

Sharethrough is one of the best free headline analyzer tools that I have had the pleasure of working with. While some of their suggestions may not bear out for many businesses, they do create very valid suggestions for most headlines, assisting you in writing headlines that not only catch the eye but also have science backing them. Sharethrough employs algorithms that it creates based on research conducted within their own systems and also with neuroscientific backgrounds. We do have to consider Sharethrough’s experience when reviewing its headline analyzer tool, however.

Sharethrough is a software platform that assists in native advertising. Native advertising is a type of advertising that fits within whatever platform to which you are advertising. For example, if you are advertising on Facebook, it will recommend full articles for advertising, rather than ads that might be more brief or visual. Their tool provides a headline analyzer tool with these options in mind. This tool crafts headlines using the best combination of what they determined as the most powerful words to appeal to the human mind.

Sharethrough makes its headline creation process quick and easy by providing a rating for your headline. Once they have provided a headline, they offer suggestions in expandable menus to the right of the rating so that you can tweak your headline as necessary. The expandable menus offer cool tips about what would make your headline stronger. These tips are quick and easy to follow and will show immediate results when analyzing your improved headline.

3 – Advanced Marketing Institute’s Headline Analyzer

Unlike the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer tool, Advanced Marketing Institute’s analyzer does not provide much in the way of information to improve your headline. When I analyzed my headline, it simply tells me that my headline contained 11.11% Emotional Marketing Value words. It recommends between 30-40% EMV words. Rather than tell me how to do this, it indicates that my current words pertain to spiritual value. When I read more about what this means, this states that my headline would appeal to the clergy. Unfortunately, it does not give me many tricks or tips to make my headline more effective. This tool seems to be the barest of the tools that I have encountered. It refrains from providing more tools to make a better headline, even avoiding the specifics of what makes a great headline.

Should I use a title generator?

Utilizing the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer along with the common title generators provides some insight as to what a title generator actually does. Free title generators use an algorithm that will use your topic and generate a title that it would believe to be popular. For example, I entered my keyword “CoSchedule Headline Analyzer” into the seopressor.com Free Title Generator, and the below screenshot is what I received back.

The keywords from seopressor.com were the best of any free title generator that I tested (that is not saying much). These free title generators do not seem to have any technique for piecing together headlines, but rather have a template into which a keyword is simply stuffed. Utilizing one of these title generators is clearly absent of specific information related to your topic. You know better than anyone what you would like to write. This particular title generator can be useful for brainstorming reasons, but that is about it. If you already have a topic and copy written for a topic, you are better off using a tool like the CoSchedule headline analyzer to refine your headline.

Why should I even use a headline analyzer?

These types of tools can help you improve your traffic dramatically. The idea with headline analyzers is to improve your search engine optimization scores for your content. This helps you to market your product or service far more effectively.

• Free headline analyzer tools provide a useful analysis of your current title and will tell you how to make it better.

On the other hand:

• Free title generators will provide you with brainstorming ideas for articles, but will not provide you with any further information as to how to make this title appealing, or how to center your content around the suggested title.

It is important to note that using a free title generator is more likely to provide you with useless information, as it has no system to assign titles. Personally, I would use the free headline analyzer over the free title generator any day of the week.

The post Is CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer the Best Tool for the Job? appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

Evergreen content is content that is always relevant—much like the way evergreen trees retain their leaves all year around. – Rachel Deahl

Evergreen content creation requires a two-pronged and creative approach.

What is Evergreen Content and Why is it Important to My Marketing Strategy?

Evergreen content is a crucial marketing tool. As the name implies, it is content that will likely never lose relevance. Some evergreen content will require a little bit of updating, but for the most part, this content should be timeless.

Some great examples of evergreen content are already in your social media feeds. Think about the marketing strategies of BuzzFeed and Real Simple. All of these content creators have one thing in common – they are excellent at making sure their content never ages out of production.

Real Simple’s home page, for example, looks like this:

What do we notice about this page?

Sure, there is an article about Cinco de Mayo, as this was current when we took this screenshot. And, yep, those sneakers are probably not always going to be $65 (unfortunately). However, other articles in this post are currently relevant but also just as pertinent to other times in life.

When can we use recipes for baked goods? Pretty much anytime.

Any event can be a place for a sweet cake or cookie. And guess what? This article gives you eleven options that may look like they’ve come from a professional bakery. The best burger ever? We could use this at Labor Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, or really any family event. The most important aspect of evergreen content is that all of these articles are already done. They do not require any additional editing or updating. You may choose to publish more topical content that might need little updates every year, but for the most part, content like this should be a no-brainer.

A Case Study

One of our articles, 21 Unique (and Inexpensive) Gift Ideas for Boss’s Day remains one of our most popular posts to this day.

Why is this the case?

First, the article mentions Boss’s Day. Even though this is one day a year, these gift ideas could apply for birthdays, office holidays, or a special occasion for your boss. More importantly, these gift ideas represent unique gift ideas for anyone in your house for which you have run out of creative gift ideas. A piece of content like this is valuable because it is giving your audience something that applies to everyday life.

Tip #1: Make sure that your evergreen content is useful to your audience

Make sure that your evergreen content is helpful to your audience. We opted to utilize Boss’s Day as a useful guide because our blog primarily discusses business and marketing. Everyone in this field has a boss and can relate to the struggle of finding a gift for your boss or coworker. You may have a blog that discusses issues that face single moms, gardening, or politics. Content for these types of sites can include tips on how to keep your toddler busy, or when to plant your azaleas or grassroots organizing for dummies. All of these types of content can be used for many years and can also serve a much larger purpose.

Take this article for example:

Notice that this article is from Parenting magazine and is likely geared toward parents of young children. But also notice that this type of article can appeal to professional daycare providers or nannies; anyone who may have a tough time keeping toddlers busy while they care for an infant or older child. This applies to any content out there. If you want to make it evergreen, make it specific to your target market, and it will end up being relevant forever.

Tip #2: Do not neglect your social media accounts

As important as it is to create evergreen content for your blog, it is just as important to create evergreen content for your social media accounts.

Bulk.ly created a blog article that discusses how important your social media feeds are and in turn how important evergreen social media posts can be. They suggest many tactics on how to create this content – like using open-ended questions, sharing your favorite tools, asking for testimonials from your users, or posting links to guest posts.

Open-ended questions can be something like “It’s Friday. We’re getting ready to leave the office. What are your plans?”

This engages your readers by giving them the opportunity to provide their own thoughts. Surprisingly, these posts receive a ton of attention and can end up generating hundreds of retweets. Sharing your favorite tools can engage your target demographic and provide more attention to your social media feeds. These tactics can be immensely helpful in increasing attention to your social media accounts. Check out the bulk.ly article for more tips and tricks for creating evergreen content for your social media accounts.

Tip #3: Don’t make your evergreen content all about your products

Lori Ballen recommends including this content because it will not age as quickly as other content. Your products will evolve and change with time, and including nothing but detailed descriptions will age your content much faster than it needs to age.

For example, if you have a promotion that involves prizes, this content will age very quickly. You may be a car dealership giving away a new car. But a post about that model of car will last all year! Reviews about the type of vehicles will stand the test of time.

Tip #4: Avoid dates whenever possible

This tip may seem obvious, but dates can be included anywhere in your blog posts. Even the URL can have a date in it, and it’s possible to remove this date. Remove dates from your content, from your URL, and from your meta description. Avoiding dates means avoiding the appearance that the content is out of date. Small updates will keep the content fresh.

Why is evergreen content for me?

Evergreen content can be useful to any business, small or large. BuzzFeed is very successful at providing everlasting content, whether it be through quizzes or through top ten lists. All of this content can be used over and over. You do not have to be BuzzFeed to be able to create and use evergreen content. Evergreen content also can provide new SEO opportunities, as it remains around forever and remains relevant forever. This can improve search results for all of your articles.

What software can help me publish this content?

dlvr.it has the ability to set up Reposts of your Evergreen content. Setting up Reposts can take the guesswork out of republishing your Evergreen content. dlvr.it is capable of scheduling Reposted content up to 12 days in advance and up to 12 times. For more information about Reposting, visit dlvr.it’s support site.

The post How to Use Evergreen Content to Engage Your Audience appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

If you engaged in a conversation with someone who only talked about themselves, how long would you want to remain in that conversation? –Maja Jaredic

Carefully curated content can bring you an audience that will become your loyal customers. You may start with a few well-placed articles, but eventually, you can use these articles to even help to strengthen your own content.

What is Third Party content?

Third party content is exactly what it sounds like: it’s content that neither you nor your team has written. Third-party content can be a news article, a blog post, or a how-to guide. You may opt to use many different types of third party content in your social media feeds, but it is important to make sure that you are presenting a message to your audience. Ask yourself a few questions before you start to seek out your content:

• What message am I trying to show?
• Who am I trying to reach?
• What are my goals through this process?

Asking these questions before any curation process will make sure that you are posting content that is relevant to your audience. So, rather than presenting a chaotic set of content, you will be presenting what your audience is looking for.

Why should I be using Third Party content?

First, third party content is not content that you have to write yourself. You may be pressed for time in coming up with original content, but want to make sure that you are maintaining a consistent social media presence. That’s where third- party content comes in. Well curated third party content can reinforce your messages in your original content. B2B Marketing Solutions suggests that you make this a part of your marketing strategy because you want to be a trusted source of valuable information. Not all of this information has to come from content that you generate.

Second, third party content can add valuable information to your social media walls without you needing to write it. Social-tribe suggests that third party content can add value as long as it holds relevance to your target audience.

→For instance, if your target audience is busy moms, you may post articles about quick and easy ways to make and store lunch items. You can craft original content addressing these items, but this requires much time and research. Sharing someone else’s article can help you publish this valuable information for your readers, increase your credibility and also increase your followers.

Third, this falls into the category of making sure that your content isn’t just bombarding your followers with sales pitches. Neil Patel recommends that when sharing content to your social media accounts, 80% should be social, rather than sales. The social content draws in your audience and makes sure that they’re not exhausted by a constant sales pitch, leading you to see more audience attrition.

This Third Party content thing sounds like it’s for me. What should I know before sharing, though?

There are some rules to sharing someone else’s content. Paying attention to these rules will help you maintain your credibility and avoid ugly battles over content.

Rule #1: Make sure that if you’re sharing copyrighted content, you have permission and are giving credit.

If you are sharing third-party content, it is vital that you are giving credit to the original source. Remember those school essays that had you cite all of your sources? It’s the same principle with third party content. If someone else wrote it, you must share that fact. Plagiarism will only detract from your central message. Also make sure that if you are sharing someone else’s content, that entity has provided permission for sharing.

Rule #2: Share content that is relevant and reputable.

Social-tribe discusses this rule in detail, and it boils down to this: If it doesn’t matter to your audience, don’t share it. Your audience doesn’t want to hear tech tips from the thirteen-year-old down the street. They would much rather read an article by a reputable source that tells them how to protect their computer security. This maintains the consistency of having a feed that is well maintained and above board.

Rule #3: Share more than just third party content.

Sharing only items written by someone else essentially removes the need for your news feed. If you post content that is relevant to your audience along with original items with the same messaging, your readers will find value in following your entire news feed including your third party content items.

I think that I may want to start curating and sharing third party content. What are some tools to help me?

dlvr.it has a set of tools that will help with curating, sharing and filtering content. (Read definitions from the experts on what exactly is content curation.)

First, dlvr.it has a search tool that will find RSS feeds in your desired topic. If you’re a real estate agent, you can find RSS feeds related to real estate very quickly. All content that dlvr.it finds is public and it is very simple to find specific content that you wish to share.

dlvr.it offers two methods to select more specific content from your chosen public RSS feed. The first is called curation. dlvr.it will import the most recent 10 items from any feed and allow you to share any one of them to any of your social media accounts. This will allow you to make sure that only the best content makes it to your readers.

Second, dlvr.it offers filters that will automatically do the painstaking task of sorting through your items. Simply set up your feed and your filters. Anytime dlvr.it receives an update from your RSS feed, we will run this content through your chosen filters and make sure that the content passes your requirements. Filter by Author, Content, Link or more and we will take care of the heavy lifting.

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To learn more about filters and curation, visit our Support site, or to sign up, visit dlvrit.com.

The post How to Use Third Party Content With Little to No Effort appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

Why is recycling content important?

When you are posting new content, you want as many people as possible to see it, right? Getting this post out more than once may seem redundant, but a lot of savvy marketers are using this tactic to increase attention to their content quickly and easily.Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer reports that sharing content more than once increases retweets and traffic. In other words, recycling content can increase your reach exponentially.

Sharing content more than once gives your audience more opportunity to see your post and repost it on their own pages.

Another benefit to recycling content is that you can reach more than one time zone with the same post. Much of your audience has a full-time job or children to take care of, leaving little time for social media engagement. This is where recycling makes sense. Your audience may check their social media once or twice a day. If your followers only check their timelines once a day, posts are lost in busy schedules of family, friends, and other articles. Recycling content places your content in their timelines during ideal times when they’re already looking for new information.

Surprisingly, recycling content can even help you gain insight as to when your followers are online. Using your click stats from each post will tell you how many times your post is being clicked on. You can also measure the interaction with each post by viewing comments and likes. These are all indicators that your post is gaining traction on social media.

Recap:

1 – Recycling content can increase your reach exponentially.

2 – Recycling places your content in the ideal time when your audience is online.

3 – Gain invaluable insight when your followers are online.

Won’t this make my followers ignore me?

It surely seems like it would. After all, you are showing your followers the same content over and over, aren’t you? Well, no, not really. When you are posting this content, as long as you are posting it during different times of the day, most followers will only see your post once. You may post your content once per time zone, once per day, or once per week. In the end, different people will see it because different people are accessing their timeline during your second post. According to meetedgar.com, fewer than half of all Twitter users check their feed once a day. Since you’re competing to gain their attention, your posts should be frequent on their timelines.

In the image above from CoSchedule, you see that a single post got a total of 19 clicks. If you only post this content once, those 19 clicks would be the end of the post. But by resurrecting the post for a second and third post, you are gaining yourself an additional 24 clicks – without having to do any extra work! All you have to do is set up a repeat post day one and then a week after the initial post. This schedule doubles your traffic because it reaches those additional audience members that may have missed the first post, or perhaps ignored it for something deemed more important.

Does recycling content actually work for anyone?

Many major companies use this strategy to bring in more followers for each post. For instance, Buzzfeed employs this strategy on content that is not time-sensitive. The data gleaned that a lapse of three days between posts gained exactly the same viewership as the original post. CoSchedule has taken the time to measure a few sample posts and how they perform after the initial post and after two reposts.

Not only has Buzzfeed employed this strategy, but even marketing bloggers endorse this as a sound method to improve your content’s performance. Digital Branding Institute performed a test on their own marketing blog. They posted an article entitled “3 Awesome Ways to Test your Marketing Campaigns” and reposted this two additional times. This led to increased performance of the post across all platforms. They report that this strategy garnered more than double engagements on their articles.

Well, I’m convinced. This recycling thing sounds like it works. How do I do it, though?

We have seen from the examples mentioned above that reposting content is an easy way to increase engagement across your social media. This strategy is used by many large companies to help engagement. But how do we do this efficiently? We can’t expect to sit next to our computers all day long, babysitting our social media accounts and setting up repeat posts all by our lonesome. We simply don’t have the time to hack our Google Calendars with a complicated set of commands as suggested by some bloggers. After all, when you’re marketing your business, time is money. You own a small business, and this type of system is pure insanity for you.

The post Why Recycling Content is Important and How to 2X Your Reach appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

eMarketer estimates more than 52 Million people in the US use Twitter on a monthly basis. So, it makes sense to automatically Tweet blog posts to reach potential customers. Nevertheless, there is a right way and a wrong way to post your blog to Twitter.

We’ve outlined a smart auto tweet strategy that will not only help you avoid spamming but also increase followers. In general, the basic idea is to understand your audience and then deliver the right content at the right time.

1 – How to Auto Tweet Blog Posts and RSS Feeds

The recipe below will show you how to auto tweet blog posts or any RSS feed to Twitter in just a few steps. Of course, you are not limited to just your own blog RSS feed. You can also auto-tweet RSS feeds from any blogger as part of your content curation strategy.

1) Go to dlvr.it and create an account with your email + password.

2) Enter your RSS Feed URL from the Automation tab.

3) Once you have this entered, configure your Feed and click on ‘Next: Connect Socials’.

4) Under the Connect Socials screen, click on the ‘Connect New’ button.

5) Click on the Twitter icon and authorize dlvr.it to post to your Twitter account.

That’s it! Now whenever you create a new blog post, dlvr.it will automatically send your blog posts to Twitter.

Here’s what a completed dlvr.it Route looks like:

Now that you can send blog posts to Twitter, we need to add some intelligence. When creating a smart auto tweet strategy, there are a few more steps to take if you want to avoid spamming your followers.

2 – Know thy Audience

To auto-Tweet is not to Spam. Not knowing thy audience coupled with irrelevant Tweets is considered spam.

Twitter Analytics provides detailed performance stats that are not accessible by 3rd party social media analytics tools. Additionally, these stats contain a wealth of information and are available to anyone who has created a Twitter account. However, the key is to understand how to unlock this meaningful data to get the most value.

When you view your Twitter stats, ask yourself a few questions: 

• How does time of day and day of the week influence the performance of your tweets? Do certain times lead to more impressions?

• What is your optimal tweet frequency? Are you burning out your audience by over-tweeting or can you stand to tweet even more than you currently do?

• Is your audience more responsive to a fun and conversational tone or more business-like, professional-sounding tweets?

• How does media perform in your tweets? Do people love videos and photos, or do they prefer text-based tweets?

• How does link placement in your tweets impact engagement?

• What kinds of calls-to-action (CTA) generate the most engagement with your audience? Are blatant CTAs more impactful, or does your audience appreciate subtlety?

I encourage you to read through this helpful guide in understanding Twitter Analytics: 3 Informative Twitter Analytics Reports With the Most Value.

For the purpose of creating our smart auto-Tweet strategy, we want to pay particular attention to Audience Insights and Audience Comparison.

The reports tell us:

1. Who our audience is
2. What blog post to send to Twitter

1 –  Audience Insights

Click the ‘Audiences’ tab at the top of the Twitter Analytics page (see diagram below) and you’ll see detailed stats on your followers, including:

• Demographics: Gender, County, Household Income, Net Worth, Languages, Home value, Region
• Lifestyle: Interests (by category), TV genres
• Consumer Behavior: Aftermarket auto buyers types, Consumer buying styles, Consumer goods purchases
• Mobile Footprint: Wireless Carrier, Device categories

Tip: If your audience is not sufficiently large enough to provide insights, read How to Get Twitter Followers in 7 Easy Steps.

2 –  Audience Comparison

The above provides me with a great level of detail on my Twitter followers. However, one of the hidden gems is the audience comparison feature.

I can compare my followers to what Twitter calls “organic audience.” Your organic audience looks like this:

Your followers + Your followers’ followers

= Your Organic Audience

For example:

If your follower retweets your content, your content is exposed to that audience of your followers = viral marketing!

In the example below, I compare my Followers to my Organic Audience.

(1): My Followers

(2): My Organic Audience

As mentioned above this comparison can be helpful to figure out what to auto tweet.

3 – Use Twitter Search to Find More of The Right Followers

Next, we need to find more followers just like the ones we have. Again, assuming we find customers who would be more interested in what we auto Tweet, plays into our smart strategy.

The first thing to remember when you grow Twitter followers is to  “follow to be followed“.

In other words, this is a gentle way of saying “Hello, pleased to meet you” without being pushy. As a result, if you follow them, and if they like what they see in your Twitter feed, they’ll follow back.

Success on Twitter (and social media marketing in general) is having the right people to follow.

The purpose of Twitter Connect is to help you find people of interest much quicker than before.

The Connect tab also makes it easier to connect with your friends and family by giving you the option to automatically sync your address book.

If you have the Twitter IOS or Android app installed, look for the tab in the upper left of the screen. Click it to expose a wealth of new people to follow.

Twitter recommends people to follow based on the following:

• Who you already follow
• Tweets you like
• Popular accounts in your local area
• What’s happening in the world right now

Furthermore, this handy Twitter Search tool organizes the recommendations using the above criteria, so you know exactly why Twitter recommended someone.

***You control how good Twitter’s recommendation engine is and the results they display.

For example, let’s say own a pizza joint in San Jose, California. You want to find people who love pizza within your given geographical area. Do a Twitter Search for ‘pizza’ in your zip code (continue reading to learn how). Scroll through the Twitter Search results and like tweets.

In the long run, you’ll  start to notice how Connect recommends more people in San Jose who love pizza.

To get even more out of Twitter Search, I encourage you to read: How To Use Twitter Search To Quickly Find More Happy Customers

4 – Schedule Tweets to Avoid Clumping

Scheduling Tweets can be a productivity aid when used “smartly”. Moreover, scheduling Tweets offers the flexibility to plan your message in advance and saves hours of time every week.

Generally speaking, the best time to auto Tweet is between 1 pm and 3 pm, Monday through Thursday. With that said, you will have to experiment with your audience. Review Twitter analytics to learn more about the best time to Tweet.

Not only is scheduling an important piece of a smart auto Tweet strategy but it also avoids having too many Tweets going out at the same time. One of the many reasons Twitter followers unfollow is because of ‘clumping’ – that is the rapid firing off of Tweet after Tweet after Tweet.

Auto-scheduling Tweets is how business savvy professionals build time back into their day.

Smart automation scheduling tool

Queue, by dlvr.it, is a smart social media scheduling tool. Not to mention, Queue delivers a consistent flow of perfectly timed content throughout the day to keep your Twitter audience engaged. Queue manages your Twitter feed while you are out to lunch, on vacation or just not available.

Send RSS to Twitter with Queue

Link any RSS feed to Twitter as a backup content source. With an optimized continuous stream of content, you will increase traffic, engagement and brand recognition. No clumping, no spam and not to mentioned delivered at just the right time.

5 – Find the Right Hashtags and Automatically Add to Tweets

Many studies have shown that tweets with hashtags generate up to double (if not more) user engagement.

1. Increase viewership: Similar to keywords used for search optimization, hashtags help people discover your content in social. You can instantly become more visible and become part of a trending conversation.
2. Build Social Followers: Hashtags help build social followers. If you are an authority on barbecuing, hashtags will help people find you within a room of desperate conversations.
3. Create new customers: Find new prospects and customers. Monitor important hashtags in social and jump on relevant opportunities. For example, you could find a prospect in need of your service or discover a prospect unhappy with a competitor. Hashtags discover conversations that are happening ‘right now’ vs. keywords that will last a long time. It is important to set-up an alert within your favorite social media monitoring tool monitoring the conversations (hashtags) you want to follow.
4. Branding: Hashtags can help brand your business. You can set-up a branded hashtag specific to your business. For example, if you are running a sale, you could create the hashtag #Bobs_barbeque_blowout. If you add the hashtag to your customer communications (email, twitter), your customers can follow the hashtag to stay current on your latest promotions.
5. Revenue: Hashtags help you quickly determine what people are talking about so this will help guide new content decisions and create new product ideas to boost sales.
6. Competition: Track your competition. See what conversations they are a part of or what people are saying about them.

With this in mind, finding the right hashtag is the first step. The last thing you want to do is spam Twitter feeds with irrelevant content because you used the wrong hashtag. Leverage popular hashtags – search for hashtags on Hashtagify

Now that you have relevant hashtags, use them to categorize your content on your blog. In WordPress for example when you create a new blog post you can also add a category.

With that said, by using dlvr.it, we can automatically turn that category tag in the RSS feed into a hashtag on Twitter!

To enable this feature on your Twitter account, you will need to access the Socials Tab.

1) Click on the Twitter account and click on the Edit icon

2) Click on the Advanced tab

3) Click on Auto Hashtag placement and choose where you would like to post your Auto Hashtags (Hashtags Before and After content are limited to 5 hashtags)

• Before Content: This will be placed between any prefixes that you have set and the content itself
• After Content: Placed between your content and any suffixes defined
• Inline: If any category tags are matched within the text, this will automatically be changed into a hashtag

4) Select the maximum number of hashtags that you would like us to generate

5) Choose how you would like blank spaces handled (either eliminate or use underscores)

6) Save, and you’re done!

Additionally, read more about other ways to automatically add hashtags to Tweets.

6 – Add Filters to Target Content

For one thing, followers will call anything irrelevant in their Twitter feed as spam. Again the goal with your auto Tweet strategy is to share the RIGHT content with your audience to avoid the perception of spam.

This tactic is where filters make the most sense. Before the auto tweet is sent, dlvr.it can share or exclude specific content based on keywords you enter.

You can filter by the following:

• Title
• Content
• Category
• Author
• Link

You can filter these categories in a number of different ways. The first selection that you must make is to filter by either ‘Match Whole Words’ or ‘Match Sequence Anywhere’.  We have described these cases in more detail below:

• Match whole words: Applies filters on words/phrases only if they appear as a whole word. For instance, if filtering on the word “state”, a) “state” will trigger the filter, while b) “statement” will not.

• Match sequence anywhere: Applies filters on words/phrases if they appear anywhere in a sequence. For instance, if filtering on the word “state”, all of the following will trigger the filter: “state”, “statement”, “understated”, etc.

Once you have opted for one of these two cases, you will be asked for your filter terms. You can choose to filter by the following:

• Must contain all the terms
• Must contain any of the terms
• Ignore items that contain any of the terms

Save your filters, and now your auto tweet strategy just got that much smarter!

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Do you auto Tweet? What are the best practices you follow? We would love to hear from you.

The post 6 of the Best Ways to Auto Tweet That Will Avoid Spamming Twitter appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

If you are looking for even more blog growth tips, we’ve also collected 19 of the fastest and easiest to implement tactics to promote your blog.

My goal is to provide you enough detail to easily implement the tactics you have not already put into practice. Every tactic is something we’ve tried to get traffic. We’re only sharing what has worked for us.

7 Proven Strategies We Use to Get Traffic to our Blog

1. Write irrefutable headlines (backed by data)
2. Use smart automation to scale social media
3. Measure Dark Social with Google Analytics
4. Create a healthy email newsletter
5. Create a Quora growth machine
6. Ping 1000’s of blog directories in one click
7. Turn blog post to slides and share on Slideshare

***This post is part 2 of the Ultimate Playbook for Growing Your Blog Traffic.

Andy Merchant, Co-founder of Bloggers Required, inspired this series. He created an impressive list of 35 ways to get traffic to your blog. After reading through his list, I was compelled to do a follow-up post that shows you how to get traffic to your blog or website by implementing many of his great ideas. We won’t cover all 35 – some don’t require much explaining. However, others require a few steps and for that reason, I’ll expand upon Andy’s ideas over several blog posts.

Let’s start: The Ultimate Playbook for Growing Your Blog Traffic – Part 2

Get Traffic Tip 1 – Use Exciting and Engaging Headlines for your Blog Posts

Andy Merchant: Your readers are most likely to judge your content by their titles. Titles with numbers, data, breaking news or funny twists will attract readers to your blog.

The tsunami of social media updates has turned us into skimmers, scanners, and browsers. Facebook alone sees 2.4M updates every minute while 400M updates flow through Twitter pipes every day.

As if we were treading water keeping ourselves from drowning in a pool of updates, we spend nanoseconds frantically swiping, scrolling and thumbing through social media streams trying to find “the perfect one”. Whether it is smart, funny, or informative, something jumped out of the stream and demanded our attention as if it had superpowers. We click, and so begins our journey.

I am talking about the headline. As the creator, you achieved your first goal. You moved us from browsing to reading.

• According to copyblogger.com, 80% of readers won’t make it past the headline. Maybe you do possess a superpower. However, your challenge now is backing the promise of the headline with substance, which pulls us into the article. (We’ll save that discussion for another day.)

Your blog content lives and dies by the headline. The headline has always been important but more so today. Competition for attention is at an all-time high. Anyone can create content. Your competitor is just a thumb swipe away. Over 50% of content consumption happens on a handheld device. These real-estate starved devices lack the space for anything more than a headline showing in your stream. It is more important than any other time since the Gutenberg Press that we perfect the art of headline writing to get traffic to your blog.

For example, Upworthy.com gets serious about headlines. They brainstorm up to 25 headlines for each piece of content. Their time is well invested. The perfect headline can get traffic to your blog by a whopping 500% according to their analytics.

David Ogilvy, hailed as “The Father of Advertising”, said this about headlines:

On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

The headline must awaken a curiosity and create a hunger for new information. There are many different styles of headlines (intrigue, suspense, informative). Google is full of hundreds of how-to articles on writing compelling headlines.

I wanted proof. What really works?

What headline type will get traffic to your blog?

-> STOP using you, your, you’re, must or need or risk a 20%+ drop in clicks according to Outbrain.

–> Use testimonials. LKR Social Media improved conversion by 24.31% using this technique.

–> The “top x of something” headline format will get traffic to your blog, period. (e.g., 9 Irrefutable Laws for Writing Irresistible Headlines).

• Headlines that contained odd numbers had a 20% higher click-through rate than headlines with even numbers.

–> Size matters. If you’re optimizing for SEO, keep the headline at 65 characters max. Google shows only the first 65 characters of a title. According to Outbrain blog headlines containing 60-100 characters perform the best.

• To get traffic most efficiently, research from the direct mail industry shows headlines should be eight words or less. Magazine copywriters have to write tight headlines due to space concerns, just like Twitter users.

–> Be extremely modest or overzealous. Avoid the middle ground.

–> Readers prefer headlines written in sentence case.

• Nine irrefutable laws for writing irresistible headlines – backed by data (Lowercase)
• 9 IRREFUTABLE LAWS FOR WRITING IRRESISTIBLE HEADLINES – BACKED BY DATA (Capitals)
• 9 Irrefutable Laws for Writing Irresistible Headlines – Backed by Data (Sentence Case)

–> Tell readers exactly what they are about to read. Descriptive headlines get readers to click.

–>The use of verbs works to get traffic according to Dan Zarrella, Social Media Scientist at Hubspot.

–> A colon or hyphen in the headline — indicating a subtitle — performed 9% better than headlines without. (source)

Get Traffic Tip 2 – Post Blog Content on Social Media

Andrew Merchant: Your current social media followers may be interested in your blog’s content. Therefore, as soon as you post something on your blog, share it on your social media channels so that your current followers can start reading your blog. In fact, they may also share the content and help to get traffic to your blog.

I don’t think I need to convince you to share blog content on your social media profiles. What I will explain is how to use Smart Automation to get traffic. In this case: RSS, to significantly reduce the time it takes to do repetitive tasks like posting to numerous social networks.

The clinical definition of RSS from Wikipedia reads like a textbook (I won’t feel bad if you skip this part): The acronym “RSS” stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. RSS uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information: e.g., blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video. An RSS document (called “feed: “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author’s name. (Blah, blah…)

Small Business Trends explains what RSS is in “layman” terms and why it is necessary for your small business. We prefer to explain it this way:

• RSS feeds give readers a method to keep up with their favorite blogs, news sites, and other websites. Anyone can choose the sites they wish to subscribe to, and then get updates in one centralized location.
• In essence, RSS allows the content to come to you. That means you do not have to go to each blog or website individually when you want to view new updates they’ve published.

Is RSS dead? Is RSS still an important Marketing tool to get traffic?

The answer to the first question is No! Despite Google’s decision to shut down its popular Google Reader service, RSS is not dead.

It may be true that end users are not subscribing to RSS feeds in feed readers as much these days. But it’s also true that RSS is everywhere whether people realize it or not.

One way to think of RSS is like plumbing. It works behind the scenes to get traffic. It’s the pipes that make content portable on the Web. RSS is still a key way that content published on one site can be seen (either in full or perhaps with just a headline and short snippet) in other places. For instance, RSS is how a lot of content gets fed to social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn in the first place.

The answer to the second question is Yes! For bloggers and website owners, RSS is a great Web marketing tool to get traffic.

• It is a means to create a loyal repeat following.
• It helps you get traffic by keeping you top of mind with your readers.

As a blog owner or website owner, it’s up to you to create and publicize your RSS feed. Most blogging software platforms make this easy because the software automatically creates RSS feeds. WordPress, for example, is one content management system that automatically creates an RSS feed for the site.

Ultimate Guide to RSS to Social – The Master List

The following are expert RSS to social media solutions to enable you to get traffic, increase views, grow reach, share your photo’s and video and ultimately, boost sales across social media.

Use these links to find the social network for which you are looking for up-to-date RSS tips, tools, and advice:

• eBay
• Email & MailChimp
• Etsy
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Flipboard
• Instagram
• Medium
• Periscope
• Pinterest
• Quora
• Reddit
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Slack
• YouTube
• Vine
• WordPress

Other RSS solutions:

• Automated Photo Posting from RSS Feeds
• Photo Posting from Instagram, Pinterest, and RSS to Twitter, Facebook, and More
• RSS Graffiti Alternative
• Share GoPro Videos Across Social Media
• Yahoo! Pipes Alternative

Get Traffic Tip 3- Use Google Analytics to Measure Success

Andrew Merchant: Google Analytics will help you to keep track of your site’s traffic while allowing you to know how each section of your site is performing. Master how to interpret the software, it will help you a great deal.

Here’s another case where you likely already know your way around Google Analytics. However, are you measuring Dark Social?

With limited time and resources, it’s crucial to know what social media marketing tactics will get traffic. What have you missed – any untraceable links or lost referrer data hiding in a corner?

According to the website analytics provider Chartbeat, nearly 70% of ‘social’ sharing goes untracked while only 25% of sharing occurs on Facebook and Twitter – combined. The term to describe this is Dark Social.

What is Dark Social?

Have you ever copied and pasted a link into email? If you have, you just participated in Dark Social. Dark Social is the blind spot in website analytics. In many cases, you can tell which sites people were on before coming to your site. This information is helpful in determining where to spend your time and marketing money.

Dark Social refers to traffic not attributed to a source. It’s hard to measure because it happens when users copy, paste, and then share a link through email, apps, bookmarks or on chat. It’s outside the basic core of the social media ecosystem. This “void” means a huge goldmine of valuable traffic and customer data remains untapped and bypasses traditional analytic systems. Alexis C. Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic, coined the term Dark Social.

Sharing activity through email, instant messaging and forum posts, aka Dark Social, is three times larger than the sharing activity on Facebook, globally. 69% of all sharing activity takes place via Dark Social globally versus 23% via Facebook – RadiumOne

Most analytic systems report Dark Social as either unknown or direct traffic. The ‘direct traffic’ category implies that someone typed in your URL directly. That might not be the case. The truth of the matter is that the information we get from web analytics tools is limited. The vast majority of social traffic may be invisible to most analytics programs.

Quantifying Dark Social Traffic

Credit to Chartbeat for this tip. Dark Social is all those visitors who don’t have a referring site but excluding those people who arrived at the home page.

Using Google Analytics as an example, the left image below shows the ranking of our “Direct” traffic for a given period. Clicking on the link displays the landing pages in which the direct traffic entered the site (see image on the right). If we assume direct traffic to mean someone directly typing in one of our URL’s, that would mean a visitor would have to know the exact URL of one of our articles on the blog which is not likely.

What is more likely the case, this traffic represents visitors originating from a Dark Social source – email, apps, pasted links or on chat. On the right image below at number two, the slash (/) you see is traffic that is more likely ‘direct’ – people typing in dlvrit.com/blog (as well as other links pointing directly to our blog homepage).

According to RadiumOne, 93% of consumers share content via Dark Social. This iceberg under the water is an incomplete picture and can cause marketers to dump resources into the wrong channels. However, is it realistic to identify all this hidden sharing activity and the users behind it? The short answer is no. However, you can create a bit more of an aggressive plan to classify the unknown or direct traffic.

How to Decrease Dark Social

Here are three low-tech ways to gain a clearer picture of the source of Dark Social traffic.
Step 1. Add trackable codes to URL’s shared on social

The most common referral tag is the UTM Code. Using UTM parameters is a way to track the performance of a custom campaign from the origination point (tweet, email or website). A link with a UTM parameter looks like this:

http://yourdomain.com/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=SPRINGPROMOTION. 

Of course, this relies on a reader to copy and paste the entire link.

Learn how dlvr.it automates the process of adding UTM parameters to ALL the links you share across social media.

Step 2. Create shortened URL’s

When sharing content outside your site, mask the link with a shortened URL. When combining trackable codes (from step 1 above) and a short URL, you will have a barrier of protection. The short URL is short enough to paste into email, chat, and text. When clicked, you will know where the link originated from because you have the UTM parameter enabled. This code will then register with your analytics program.

Step 3. Track the Copy and Paste Activity

A significant portion of Dark Social traffic comes from readers copying and pasting content from your website. Services like Tynt have been trying to solve the copy and paste tracking issue for some time. Tynt is a code you can add to a website, and their WordPress plugin makes installation easier.

Without copy and paste tracking, when a reader copies a portion of a page, the text alone is pasted into the destination. No other metadata is attached. With Tynt installed, now when the user copies a portion of a page, the copied content is automatically wrapped with a URL.

Below is an example of how a piece of copied content would appear. I copied product information from Tynt’s site. You can see the added information (URL with trackable code plus ‘Follow us’:)

==========

Get credit for your content

• 33Across powered by Tynt ensures your brand travels with your content wherever it is pasted
• Encourages users to source your content when sharing via copy & paste

==========

Nothing is full proof, but you can make great headway in classifying traffic correctly in your analytics program. Dark Social is a big enough piece of the pie that taking the time to quantify and identify the source is worth the extra effort.

Get Traffic Tip 4 – Never Forget Email Marketing

Andy Merchant: Email marketing is a powerful tool for building a steady audience for your blog. Start building your email list as soon as possible.

Having a healthy email newsletter should be a priority of every small business to get traffic.

Consider these facts:

• Email marketing is one of the most heavily used communication channels to date and is considered the third overall most effective channel for lead generation for marketers, producing 13% of all leads.

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

• An Adobe study says millennials check email more than any other age group, and nearly half can’t even use the bathroom without checking it. In fact, 98% of millennials check their personal email, at least, every few hours at work, and nearly 87% of millennials check their work email outside of work.

Top Reasons People Opt-in

For most people, submitting an email address is like handing over cash. As a newsletter publisher, you should view the transaction as such.

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience:

→Does your opt-in process look safe?

→Do you feel confident leaving your email address?

The reasons people opt-in in the first place are varied. GetApp surveyed 500 people between the ages of 25 and 44 to determine motivations of subscribing to a newsletter.”

Answers to the question: “What’s the most common reason you subscribe to an email newsletter?”

#1: Auto-subscribe, I didn’t choose to (24.8%)

#2: For deals or special offers (22.6%)

#3: To get news updates (21.4%)

#4: Interesting articles or content (21%)

#5: To get access to restricted content (7.6%)

#6: Other (2.6%)

6 High-Converting Places to Add Email Sign-Up Forms to Build Your List

Early in my marketing career, a wise ole marketer gave me some sage advice. A small group of us were sitting around a table guessing what our customer’s wanted. This marketer said, “Just ask them.”

Want more opt-ins to your newsletter? You need to ask visitors to sign-up and make it super simple.

Here are six great places to put in an opt-in reminder:

1. Sidebar
2. Footer of your website or blog
3. The end of a blog post
4. Content upsells (example – see yellow call to action on this page)
5. Very top of your website
6. Exit Lightbox (when a visitors mouse leaves the screen with the intent of browsing away, an opt-in box appears)

The Anatomy of an Effective Email Newsletter

There are many elements to consider when creating the perfect email newsletter. Knowing what they are will help you optimize them for best performance. We tested each of the following components, and they have proven to have an impact on open and click-through rates.

1 – From name, and from address

• The “from name” can be as important as the subject line because subscribers won’t open emails from people they don’t recognize. Use the “from name” to say who you are as the sender, and keep it consistent over time. For example, our “from name” for the dlvr.it blog is ‘debra at dlvr.it’ (one of our blog writers). We experimented with different author names, and ‘debra’ had the highest open rate.

2 – The subject line

Mailchimp’s team analyzed emails sent from users to find what subject line formats resulted in the best open rates.

• Avoid Sales or Overused Words
  Most people know to avoid words like “free” in their subject lines because they trigger spam filters. But you should also avoid common words that are associated with sales, like “help,” “percent off,” or “reminder.” These words don’t always trigger a spam filter, but many subscribers will ignore them.

• Include Localization
  Personalize a message with a recipient’s first or last name to improve open rates. MailChimp research suggests including a city name is even better.

• Use Different Subject Lines
  Newsletters tend to start with high open rates, but these decrease over time. Keep your content fresh, and don’t repeat the same subject line for each campaign. If subscribers can’t tell something about your content from the subject line, they probably won’t open your campaign.

• Keep Subject Lines Short
  Most people quickly scan subject lines to decide if they’ll open or ignore the email, so don’t expect subscribers to dig through your subject line to figure out if they’re interested. Keep your subject line to 50 characters or fewer.

• Tone Down Promotional Emails
  Keep the message straightforward and avoid splashy promotional phrases, phrases in all capital letters, or exclamation marks in your subject lines. Subject lines framed as questions often perform better.

3 – The pre-header or snippet

The pre-header is shown as the subject line in Gmail and inboxes on mobile phones. Most email clients allow you to customize this.

4 – The header

According to emailmonks.com, the top part of your email is one of the most valuable areas of your email. It plays a significant role in engaging subscribers.

5 – Email body and offer

• Use images, short sentences, and paragraphs
• Use design elements like spacing and dividing lines to distinguish the content sections from one another
• Use bold typeface and subheads to make certain words stand out
• Use bullet points to showcase benefits
• Use web-safe standard fonts (i.e. Arial, Comic Sans, Courier New)
• Ideal font size for body copy is 14 pixels and title is minimum 22 pixels, which provides a better mobile experience

6 – Footer

The most important element to include in your footer is the line that reminds your readers how they subscribed to your newsletter. Having a footer will help decrease chances of someone calling you out for SPAM.

Other items to include in your footer.

• Contact details
• Unsubscribe link
• Link to your website
• Links to share email with a friend
• Reason how subscribed was opted in

Optimizing for Mobile

With most people having smart phones at their side, it is no surprise that 90%* of people are accessing email on their mobile devices, and 42%** of them are opening email newsletters on their phones.

Your newsletter needs to be mobile ready.

Most email clients will automatically create a mobile version of your newsletter, but there are some things you need to keep in mind:

• Keep email width under 600 pixels
• Clearly state call-to-actions and make them tappable, centered and minimum size of 44×44 pixels
• Use a single column Email template design
• Make sure your email vendor uses Responsive or Scalable email coding standards. Using these standards allows for better shaping of your newsletter on various screen resolutions.

* Exact Target
** Litmus Email Analytics

8 Email Newsletter Success Metrics

You sent your email. You agonized over the content and layout. Now you cross your fingers. Is an open rate of 15% good? What about a click-through rate of 4%? Sounds good, right?

The biggest question I have is: How does the performance of our newsletter compare to other businesses in our market?

Mailchimp put together an excellent resource that allows you to compare your performance to your industry and company size. They scanned hundreds of millions of emails to determine the performance data.

Email performance data by industry:

Email performance data by company size:

The overall strength of your email list is more than just looking at open and click rates.

There are many other factors to consider to get traffic from a newsletter. FulcrumTech put together a great plan to monitor the true strength of your email list.

-> Bounce Rate
This metric measures the portion of recipients who didn’t receive your email message. The bounce rate is further broken down into “soft” bounce rates and “hard” bounce rates. Typically caused by such issues as network problems or a full mailbox, soft bounces are likely temporary and eventually delivered. Hard bounces, however, will never be delivered. They’re returned to the email server because the email address is invalid or doesn’t exist. Typos in email addresses are frequently the cause of hard bounces, for example, indicating that your list needs some cleaning up.

Bounce Rate = # Hard Bounces / List Size

According to MailerMailer’s email marketing metrics report, bounce rates vary by industry, ranging from .9% in banking to 4.3% in real estate.

-> Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate measures the number of people who “opt out” of your email list. In addition to measuring the quality of the subscribers on your list, it’s also a good indicator of how relevant your audience finds your content.

Unsubscribe Rate = # of Unsubscribes / List Size

Unsubscribe rates higher than 1% indicate that there’s a problem that needs to be identified and addressed.

->  List Growth Rate
This metric measures how rapidly your list is growing. To determine your list growth rate, subtract the number of unsubscribes and bounces from the number of new subscribers and divide that number by the previous number of subscribers on your list.

List Growth Rate = (New Subscribers – Unsubscribers – Hard Bounces) / List Size

-> Inactive User Rate
The inactive user rate measures the number of recipients on your email list who haven’t opened your emails over a period that you believe indicates they’ll likely never open again (e.g., six months for a monthly newsletter list). Sending to people who repeatedly don’t open your emails can lower your email reputation and decrease your inbox delivery rates.

Number of Subscribers Who Haven’t Opened Your Emails for > 6 Months / Total Number of Subscribers

If you determine that you have a high number of inactive users on your email list, you may need to take action to help re-engage them.

-> Unique Open Rate
This open rate metric measures the number of people who open an email message. Are your subject lines effective? Is your message resonating with your audience? That’s what this metric helps to determine.

Open Rate = Number of Email Messages Opened / Total Number of Email Messages Sent

See the open rate charts above to compare your open rate to industry averages.

-> Click-Through Rate
The click-through rate measures how many times the links in your email message were clicked. The more relevant your content and marketing messages are to your audience, the higher the click-through rate. If your open rates are high, and your click-through rates are low, you’re doing a great job of generating interest in your emails, but the content is not resonating.

Click-Through Rate = Total Number of Unique Clicks / Number of Links in the Email x Total Recipients

See the click rate charts above to compare your click rate to industry averages.

-> Click to Open Rate
This metric is the ratio of unique clicks as a percentage to the unique opens. It measures how effective your message is in motivating recipients to click a link once they’ve opened your message.

Click to Open Rate = Number of Unique Clicks / Unique Number of Opens

Click to open rates should be in the range of at least 25% to 30%.

-> Conversion Rate
Are you getting the results you’re looking for? That’s what this key metric tells you. The conversion rate tells you how many of the people you sent the email to actually clicked all the way through to complete the desired conversion – such as making a purchase, completing a survey, or signing up for your e-newsletter.

Conversion Rate = Number of People Who Converted / Total Number of Recipients

Reducing Unsubscribe Rates

You worked so hard to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. Email subscribers are valuable. However, like death and taxes being a sure thing, so are opt-outs.

The question is how do I reduce my overall churn rate. If you receive less than a 2% unsubscribe rate, you are within industry norms.

“List churn” refers to how many subscribers fall off your list every year. They can fall off due to:

• Hard bounces (e-mail message that has been returned to the sender because the recipient’s address is invalid)
• Changed email addresses
• Because they unsubscribed

The Direct Marketing Association states that list churn can erode up to 32% of a list each year. It takes a lot of list building to stay ahead of losses like that. The number one reason people unsubscribe is because they’re getting too many emails. A MarketingSherpa study found that 86% of people would prefer to receive an email from a company once per month.

Simple changes to the frequency of emails can help get traffic and reduce churn. There are many ways to get a sense of how frequently your customers want to receive an email from you.

MarketingSherpa suggests the following:

• Have several newsletter or email sign-up options available when customers opt-in to receive email. The more options they select, the more frequently they receive email.
• Clearly list the cadence of your different newsletters and email lists on the opt-in form so customers can self-select how often they want to receive email.
• Have a single email sign-up and send less frequently, giving customers an option in those emails to sign-up for more frequent emails (perhaps even just during your high season, e.g. from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day).
• For customers who click on the unsubscribe link, give them the opportunity to opt down (receive email less frequently), not only to opt out.
• Test different frequencies, and see how they affect total revenue and unsubscribes.

The following infographic by Litmus offers a visual breakdown of some of the most common reasons why people unsubscribe from emails. Litmus and MarketingSherpa found frequency is the number one reason people unsubscribe.

A study from MailChimp has established that frequency and engagement are negatively correlated, meaning that as businesses send email more frequently, their customers tend to engage less with each campaign.

What can you do to reduce email churn?

Follow these best practices from email service providers:

1 – MailChimp: Survey unsubscribers for feedback

• Set up a survey for when people do unsubscribe to poll them on why they decided to leave your list. Make any necessary changes to keep current subscribers happy.

• Instead of simply including a company name in the “From” field as most email marketing campaigns do, repeat your brand name in both the “From” and the “Subject” field. Repeating your name can result in a 20% gain in open-rates and an overall 15% improvement in click-through rate.

• The general rule of thumb is to send no more than one email every 10-15 days. Of course, this depends on the business you are in and the expectations you have set with your subscribers. If you are emailing more than once every ten days, you may want to consider reducing the frequency of your emails.

Get Traffic Tip 5 – Quora

Andrew Merchant: Question and answer sites such as Quora and Yahoo Answers can help you to attract readers to your blog. Just visit and sign up with these sites and then answer questions related to your blog. Leave behind links to your blog.

In reviewing our Google Analytics, we noticed referral traffic from Quora was starting to grow. Quora is a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users.

The discovery of a previously untapped traffic source engaged us to come up with a strategy to see how we could get traffic specifically from Quora. We’ve documented the steps below. But first, the results:

Our referral traffic from Quora grew an impressive 3x between February and April!

Why Quora?

First, you have to decide if Quora is the right place for you to spend time.

Are your customers there? Quora contains questions and answers for over 500,000 subjects and popular categories including technology, economics, and personal health. You should be able to find a niche to participate in.

Joanne Xu from Crazy Egg explains why social media marketers should get involved with Quora:

• Quora is a great way to find out what issues are puzzling your current and potential user base. Use this information to determine the direction of future content.
• By answering questions related to your industry, you can demonstrate your expertise in the space and improve your company’s brand image.
• You can influence people to start thinking about the problem in a new way—one that considers your product niche.
• As long as you’ve clearly stated who you work for, you can also explain how your product can help solve someone’s problem.

Quantcast estimates nearly 800,000 people access Quora each month. Their traffic has been steadily growing.

Quora Growth Strategy

Mastering Quora isn’t complex, but it does take time to build momentum.

Step #1: Follow topics and build your profile(s)

Try a few approaches. Follow narrow and broad topics and fine tune over time. You will get notified when there is a new question on the topics you choose.

Build out your profiles. With each topic you follow, you can create a unique profile that highlights your expertise on that topic. This expertise is a great feature that compliments a diverse background and further adds creditability to your answers.

Configure your Quora profiles at: 

https://www.quora.com/INSERT-YOUR-USERNAME/about

Using myself as an example below, you can see I have seven different profiles – one for each topic I follow.
Step #2: Create a Quora blog(s)

We decided to create a Quora blog with the idea of exposing our existing content to a new audience.

For instructions, Quora provides the answer: How do I start a blog on Quora?

Next steps – On a daily basis, we performed the following tasks:

Task #1: Answered questions

• Strategy: We pinpointed 2-3 targeted questions to answer that would get traffic back to our blog. Although our answers were precise, we included a link back to our blog for more information on the subject. See example below:

• How did we choose which questions to answer? We asked ourselves the following:
  • Do we have domain expertise in the area?
  • Do we have data to backup our answer? Do we have a blog post as a reference?
  • Are we one of the first to answer the question? We wanted to be one of the first to answer. We noticed this increased the upvotes on our answers.

• Time spent: 15 minutes, Monday – Friday

When I responded to questions in each category, Quora had already populated the correct profile in my response – again highlighting my expertise in that subject area. Most social networks only allow for one generic profile. This ability to have multiple profiles is a unique advantage. I can showcase my many talents that expand beyond just my professional activities at dlvr.it.

Task #2: Republished blog posts

• Strategy: When we added a blog post on the dlvr.it blog, we turned the content of the post into a question to repost on Quora. Each Quora blog post included a summary of the main points and link back to the dlvr.it’s blog for more information.

• Time Spent: 5 minutes

Task #3: Shared answers on Twitter and Facebook

• Strategy: Build awareness to the Quora answers with our existing social media audience. We used smart automation to build awareness of our answers. When I answered a question, the answer was automatically shared with our social media audience using Quora-to-RSS.

• Time Spent: One-time set-up in dlvr.it using RSS. How to create RSS feeds for Quora.
  

We found that starting with “My @Quora answer to…” was the best format when sharing on social media.

Get Traffic Tip 6 – Use Pingler to Distribute Your Blog Posts

Andrew Merchant: Pingler provides a free service for distributing posts to News Reader sites and search engines. In fact, Pingler will boost the chances of your blog posts being found through search engine results.

Pingler is a pinging service to get traffic automatically. Pinging is a way for your website to tell the world you have new or updated content. WordPress has this feature built-in and automatically notifies (pings) update services each time you add, modify or edit a post. The update services then take the information they receive from your site and tell other search engines, blog directories, news websites, feed aggregators, social networks, and all subscribers to those services, that your blog has been updated.

Why Ping?

Three words: Traffic, Reach, and SEO

Notifying “the world” of fresh content the instant posted helps improve the following:

• Helps to get traffic from a variety of sources = INCREASED TRAFFIC
• Getting indexed faster by major search engines = INCREASED REACH
• Increase your blog’s exposure and SEO benefits = INCREASED SEO

Can you Add Additional Ping Lists?

By default, WordPress uses Ping-O-Matic to notify all major ping services about your blog update.

However, you can always extend your blog reach by pinging more services by adding them manually. A simple Google search resulted in many updated 2015 WordPress Ping lists including the Recommended WordPress Ping List 2015 from Genesis Themes.

To update your ping list:

Step #1. Login to your WordPress admin area and navigate to:

Settings > Writing

Step #2. Scroll down to Update Services

Step #3. Manually paste any reliable and authoritative pinging services that you want to add to the list.

Step #4. Save Changes

One word of advice:

Avoid using long ping lists that contain services which no longer exist. The other problem with a large list is that you could end up pinging the same URL multiple times, and may get labeled as a ping spammer by those services. Not good!

Get Traffic Tip 7 – Publish Slides to Slideshare

More than 70 million professionals visit Slideshare per month, and it is one of the top 100 most visited sites globally. Share your blog on this website and attract the attention of expert readers.

Do you use SlideShare to get traffic?

If you’re busy like me, you may have missed the post from Forbes proclaiming SlideShare as the quiet giant of content marketing or maybe you’re just too busy with your social media workload to add another step into your daily routine.

Frankly, I’m sold when it comes to an easy social media tool to increase ROI with little to no cost.

comScore reports that SlideShare has five times more traffic from business owners than Twitter or Facebook. And because SlideShare is now owned by LinkedIn, it’s simple for B2B audiences to both find and use it.

Surprising facts about SlideShare:

• It is not just for sharing slides. You can share just about any content on SlideShare – presentations, infographics, documents, videos, PDFs, and webinars. Slideshare content also includes sharing your blog posts!
• SlideShare itself claims to be “the world’s largest community for sharing presentations and other professional content.” In Q4 of 2013, the site averaged 60 million unique visitors a month and 215 million page views. SlideShare is among the top 120 most-visited websites in the world.
• Since created in 2007, SlideShare has had more than 10 million presentation uploads, drawing 50 million visitors and 3 billion views a month. With SEO in mind, SlideShare content frequently ranks high in Google search results.

An easy way to SlideShare your blog content:

The benefits of SlideShare are exponential (i.e. improve SEO, get traffic to your blog) but with limited time and resources, where do you start? To get your feet wet, I suggest sharing your blog content first. Sharing content is the fastest way to get traffic immediately with little work.

In no time at all, you can aggregate your blog into a word document and share it as a PDF. SlideShare supports OpenOffice, Microsoft Office (Word and PowerPoint) and PDF. Assuming you already have setup your SlideShare account (setup is a breeze and low to zero cost for entry), here are the 5-easy steps that you can do in less than five minutes:

Step #1: From your blog, if you have the AddThis plugin installed on your blog, open the plugin and use PrintFriendly or just go directly to the printfriendly.com website and enter the blog post URL

Step #2: ‘Create a PDF’, but before you do this:

• Consider increasing the Text Size to its maximum of 130%. I find the larger font easier to read once it’s uploaded to SlideShare.
• At this time (before you hit PDF), you can also delete the Author and/or Remove Images if you need. Unfortunately, this is the extent of any possible editing within the plugin.

Step #3: Click ‘Download Your PDF’ and save the file to your computer

Step #4: Open your SlideShare account and hit ‘Upload’

Step #5: VERY IMPORTANT: Before you ‘Save’, make sure to optimize for SEO. Use the virality score as a guide. Adding keywords and more information (Category, Description, Tags) is key to making it easier for others to find your content.

We don’t spend time creating original content specifically for SlideShare, but the traffic spikes we see from this simple method of uploading blog content leads me to believe we could be doing a better job. Getting more traffic is where SEO is important.

How to Improve SlideShare SEO

Step #1: Identify target keywords

Off-page SEO includes anything done outside of your website, proving to search engines that your digital footprint is relevant for certain keywords and phrases. This includes SlideShare.

To start, Google is the first place I go when I need to do keyword research.

• Google’s Keyword Planner: It is mostly intended to help Adwords advertisers spend money efficiently when purchasing ads from Google but you can still use the data to find higher traffic keywords that are more likely to get traffic organically.
• Google Analytics: Although most keywords will be displayed as “not provided”, Google Analytics does still show some of the most important keywords that get traffic as well as which pages are performing the best.
• Google Webmaster Tools: Provides a wider range of keywords than Analytics if you want to get even more data from your current content.

Other (non-Google) keyword research tools:

• Keywordtool.io: With a single search, this tool can generate up to 750+ keyword suggestions from Google, YouTube, Bing and even the App Store. It’s free, reliable and pretty fast!
• Übersuggest: Created by an Italian SEO guy and touted as one of the best free keyword tools for getting lots of keyword suggestions. Check it out!

Step #2: Give your upload file an SEO-friendly name

The name of the file you upload to SlideShare becomes the URL slug, so when you name your file, choose something SEO-friendly with your keywords (from Step 1). Your SlideShare presentation will have a better chance of ranking in SERPs, which you get traffic to your presentation.

For example: Using our simple technique of uploading blog posts to SlideShare as a PDF, we save the PDF using keywords in the filename.

Step #3: Write SEO friendly descriptions

Don’t ignore SlideShare’s description field. The text you include here is what the search engines see.

What you say and how you say it can improve your SlideShare natural rankings dramatically. When someone does a search on SlideShare, the search terms appear bold in the results, which draws more attention to them. More attention easily translates into more clicks.

• Include your main keyword in the description, ideally in the first sentence.
• Make sure to include a link back to your website or reference the URL to your blog post.

Step #4: Don’t forget to optimize the Tags

In addition to using your keyword or phrase in the title and description of your Slideshare, make sure you include the tags as well. Make your keyword the first tag for the presentation, and then choose closely related tags to follow. Notice in the example above the use of our keywords: Instagram and Winning Profile.

Step #5: Use Slideshare Analytics

For deeper insight into your content, SlideShare offers a robust analytics feature allowing you to track the daily progress of all of your content. You can see the geographical distribution of views to find out where your content is accessed, traffic sources to evaluate which channels are bringing the most viewers, and timing to measure what days of the week and months content performs best. There is a lot of great information packed into this feature.

On your dashboard, you can choose to see stats for each upload by clicking the ‘uploads’ drop-down menu. From, here you can see a daily detail of Views, Sources, and Geography. You can also see stats for:

• Top Content
• Top Countries
• Traffic Sources
• Slideshare Actions
• Recent Viewers

The image in the picture below is the analytics view for one of our more popular posts on SlideShare: 21 Unique Gift Ideas a Small Business Owner Would Love and Appreciate. We posted this to Slideshare on December 22, 2014 (just in time for the holidays). The data shown below was taken for the period March 29 – April 28, 2015 (3-months later), proving that posting content to Slideshare is an easy way to get more eyeballs on your content and ultimately, get traffic back to your site.

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If you haven’t read Part 1 of this post, head over to the Ultimate Playbook for Growing Your Blog Traffic.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the tips we provided to get traffic.

Would you add anything to what we discussed thus far?

Do you think these tips will save you time?

Let me know in the comments.

The post How to Get Traffic to Your Blog: Backed By Results Driven Research 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

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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.

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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.

Think again!

While marketing on Pinterest has certainly proven to be a successful strategy — especially for businesses that sell products online, it also offers unexpected benefits for non-retail businesses as well.

Consider these two statistics:

Stat #1: 96% use Pinterest for research

• Pins leading to your blog will enable you to stand out as an expert in your field

Stat #2: An average Pinterest Pin yields two visits, 6 page views, and over 10 repins

•  Pins to your board will lead to increased website traffic

Used optimally, Pinterest can help you increase traffic to your website, boost brand awareness and search engine optimization with the ultimate goal of generating leads and sales – for both retail and non-retail businesses!

How Does Pinterest Work? Tag me. Like it. Share it. Comment. Retweet.

With the help of Constant Contact, use the following examples to study how your non-retail business can use Pinterest to engage your audience, drive traffic to your site, and bring in new sales.

Scroll down to review Pinterest tips for the following non-retail businesses:

• Nonprofits
• Realtors
• Teachers
• Doctors

How Does Pinterest Work for Nonprofits?

What is the # 1 reason nonprofits use Pinterest?

To tell your story!

No matter what the mission of your nonprofit is, Pinterest can help you promote your cause and inspire others to get involved by using it as a powerful storytelling tool.

If your nonprofit uses photos and videos to tell stories, Pinterest is a great way to share them.

What to do:

• Use pictures you have from past events and volunteer opportunities to show your organization in action.
• Pin these images to different boards and tell a story that goes along with it in the caption.
• Make sure you link back to your website or a donation page.

Tip: How can you tell if your stories are being shared?

You don’t need a Pinterest profile to have a presence on Pinterest. Check if your nonprofit (or any business) is being talked about on Pinterest simply by using your website’s URL: http://pinterest.com/source/ENTER YOUR URL HERE/

For example, the local Boys & Girls Club of Sonoma Valley does not have a Pinterest profile, but people are talking about them here:

https://www.pinterest.com/source/bgcsonoma.org/

Remember that your nonprofit has an advantage because a lot of the work that you do has an emotional appeal. Utilize Pinterest to show people what you are doing and give them tips on how they can make a difference.

For example, here’s a Pinterest board for the National Wildlife Association aggregating live wildlife cams from around the world.

How Does Pinterest Work for Realtors?

Much like tourism, the real estate industry relies heavily on people being able to envision themselves somewhere new.

While your agency might be on other social media sites already, an advantage of Pinterest is how easily it brings people back to your website. Think of Pinterest as a virtual catalog where visitors can find and browse properties before they contact you directly.

Here are nine of the 25 Killer Pinterest Real Estate Board Suggestions to Target Buyers and Sellers:

Boards to attract buyers:

• My Dream Home. Almost everyone on Pinterest has a “Dream Home” board, and your job is to find pictures that your followers will want to add to theirs. Think massive walk-in closets, stunning built-in pools, and homes with curb appeal to leave anyone drooling.

Check out this example of “Barn-Home” boards from local Sonoma County Realtor Irene Turner. Irene’s tagline is:

In #SonomaCounty you don’t just buy a home, you get a quality of life. I can help you find IT and create IT! #RealEstate & #InteriorDesign #SonomaStyle

Boards to attract sellers:

• Capitalizing on Small Spaces. Ideas for people to make the most of their space, like multipurpose furniture ideas, and tips and tricks to using color.

Boards to target certain areas:

• Things to Do in ____. Pin pictures with links to all of the fun community events going on in the areas you have homes for sale. Make seasonal boards so your followers can find the perfect thing to do year-round.

Boards about you:

• What Makes Me Laugh. This is where you can post anything you think is funny, like those memes going around or just a funny picture you found on the Internet. Something hilarious has a high repin percentage.

Business boards:

• Homes for Sale. Of course, you need to have a few boards dedicated strictly to your business. You can have one board with all of the homes you have for sale, or you can make several boards and sort the homes by price point, neighborhood or anything else you see fit. Remember, it’s all about the images, so invest some time in getting some professional photographer-worthy photos of the homes.

One more idea: There is also an excellent opportunity to show prospective clients how happy your past customers are in their new homes. Ask customers to write a quick blurb about why they love their new home and how you helped them get there, and then pin these testimonials to a designated board along with a picture of their home.

For a complete social media strategy read: How Real Estate Agents can Attract Buyers and Increase Referrals by Localizing Social Media – in 4 Easy Steps

How does Pinterest work for Teachers?

Pinterest has the potential to be a hub for teachers, parents, and students alike. Think of Pinterest as a virtual storage unit for your school.

Also, for thousands of teachers, Pinterest has become an important venue for professional development —a place to find creative lesson plans, classroom decorations, and teaching tips.

Pinterest usage, in general, has risen steadily over the past few years, but teachers have become an especially important group for the site. (source: slate.com)

Consider the following from Madeleine Cummings (April 2105) on There’s a Big Hole in How Teachers Build Skills, and Pinterest Is Helping Fill It:

• Education pins per day climbed from 500,000 to about 1.3 million last year.

• When the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education polled educators online in August, 38 percent reported using Pinterest to find resources (second only to Twitter).

• Last summer, Pinterest gave teachers their own hub on the site where they can find resources organized by grade level and subject. The page now has 32 boards and more than 100,000 followers.

For teachers:

• Pinterest could be a place to provide supplemental materials for students based on what they’re learning in the classroom. These boards will give visual learners more resources to work from and allow educators to offer additional sources and perspectives.
• Teachers could also create a private board to share curriculum ideas. Increased collaboration between departments will build relationships within your school and provide an excellent opportunity for skill sharing.

For parent engagement:

Lastly, Pinterest can help you engage more with parents.

• Create boards geared towards student projects, awards, and activities.

They’ll love to see what’s going inside the classroom and feel more involved in their children’s education.

How does Pinterest work for Doctors?

Yes, you read that correctly – Pinterest for Doctors!

Pinterest is an opportunity to drive traffic to your medical practice website. This is a great opportunity to give visitors a visual experience of your practice, staff, and offerings. This can translate into more referrals.

Health and beauty are popular genres on Pinterest. Additionally, Pinterest is often used as a visual search engine where users look for answers and advice.

You can create boards full of tips on how to deal with certain medical conditions, and you can also give general tips and tricks for living a healthy lifestyle. This way, you can be involved in the lives of your patients outside the office and promote healthy living!

If nothing else, you can always post medical humor:

Final Note

Still asking how does Pinterest work for my business? Review our Ultimate Pinterest Marketing Guide. You’ll find a plethora of information on:

• Best times to post
• How to optimize your Pinterest Pins
• Free Pinterest tools
• Benefits of smart automation using dlvr.it’s Pinterest for business tools.

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Please share your Pinterest stories in the comments.

We’d love to hear from you!

The post How Does Pinterest Work? Unexpected Ways to Remarkable Success. 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)

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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)

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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.

Wondering what trends will dominate 2016? Don’t have time to keep up with the pace of social media? No worries. 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:

• Top Tweet of the Week: What you measure is what you’re able to improve.

• Productivity Tip: Want to upgrade your communication skills for the New Year? Then stop using these sloppy, dull, or simply played-out words and phrases.

• Read on LinkedIn: What’s important to your #employees? #work #benefits #bonus

• Trending Question: 2016 Social Media Marketing Predictions From the Experts

• Seen on Twitter: The journey of a simple Tweet

• Heard on Podcast: Is Blogging Dead?

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Top Tweet

4.5K Shares: How to Build the Right Traffic Metrics Dashboard for 2016

What you measure is what you’re able to improve. While there’s no one magic solution that works for everyone, setting yourself up for success involves measuring your traffic metrics the right way, so you can identify areas to work on and implement the right actions.

Read more.

Productivity Tip

4K Shares: 8 Phrases You Really Need to Stop Saying in 2016

Right around now, many people aim to improve their health or their career in the coming year, but if you’re looking for a more unusual (and possibly more achievable) New Year’s resolution, how about this: Tune up your speaking and writing in 2016.

Over on the blog The Freelancer, Nicholas Pell has some great suggestions for played-out or straight-up annoying words and phrases that you should jettison in 2016. Here are a few of the 15 he mentions:

1. It’s [the current year]
2. Amazing
3. Literally
4. Little did I know
5. Leverage
6. For all intents and purposes
7. Rockstar, guru, ninja, and Jedi
8. Next level

Read more.

Seen on LinkedIn

1K Shares: 5 Bonuses Employees Love No Matter What the Time of Year

Summary of key findings from 2015 MassMutual Generations@WorkStudy about the employee benefits America’s workers value the most.

It’s the end of the year, which for many employees means holiday bonus season. Originally, monetary holiday bonuses were intended as appreciation for employees — and help with the extra expenses they incur this time of year.

But is a bigger paycheck once a year still the best way to engage employees and acknowledge their hard work?

Here is a sneak peek at five unique bonuses employees will appreciate more than extra cash:

1. More flexible schedules

2. Personal concierge services

3. Gym memberships

4. Help with health insurance

5. The ability to pick and choose benefits

Read more.

Trending Question

5K Shares: 2016 Social Media Marketing Predictions From the Experts

Are you looking for the hot marketing trends coming in 2016?

Do you want to know where social media pros are focusing their attention?

To get you ready for what’s coming next, we asked 14 social media marketing experts what to watch for in the new year. Here’s a snapshot of what a few had to say:

• Social Media Goes Private – Mitch Joel
• Get Ready to Pay More for Traffic – Andy Crestodina & Neil Patel
• Companies Adapt Social Strategies Around People – Neal Schaffer
• Visuals Customized By Platform Become Critical – Peg Fitzpatrick & Donna Moritz
• Live Video Goes Mainstream – Michael Stelzner & Andrea Vahl
• Instant Content Becomes More Prevalent – Antonio Calero

Read more.

Found on Twitter

1K Shares: The Powerful 17 Step Journey of a Simple Tweet

My first tweet was underwhelming.

It had no link, was short and sweet and included just three words. “Watching the Cricket“. Now for some of you, that will seem strange. Why was Jeff watching an insect? For those of you who live in London, India or New Zealand and other countries, they will know that “Cricket” is also something else!

Below are 17 possible steps, actions, and engagements that start with that first tweet. It is not a linear journey. Your potential prospects and customers will bounce in and out at different points. Your challenge is to turn that first tweet into sales.

Read more.

From the Social Media Marketing Podcast

2.8K Shares: Is Blogging Dead? Building Your Content Home on Rented Land

Wondering what the future is for blogs?

Is blogging dead?

Listen now.

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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 [January 3] appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

A growing number of dlvr.it users have asked us how to best use dlvr.it with Pinterest. One fast and easy way to get started using dlvr.it and Pinterest is to add your Pinterest RSS feeds to dlvr.it as a content source. Then let dlvr.it post your latest pins to your social networks.

Solution 1. Pinterest RSS to Social Media

You can easily connect your Pinterest account to dlvr.it. Once you set this up, dlvr.it will automatically share your Pins to your social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. We’ll post your pinned photos in a visually rich photo post style — not just text and a link to view the photo on Pinterest.

1. Sign into your dlvr.it account. Click ‘+’

2. Click the Pinterest icon

3. Enter ‘Pinterest User’ name

–> Optionally, you can specify a Pinterest Board name. dlvr.it cannot connect to secret Pinterest Boards

4. Click ‘save’

How to Find Your Pinterest Username?

To find your Pinterest username, log into Pinterest and go to https://www.pinterest.com/settings/. Scroll down to the Profile > Username section.

Your username will look something like this http://pinterest.com/username. Just enter your username in dlvr.it and not the entire URL. (Don’t include this part: http://pinterest.com/)

You’re all set! When you pin photos, dlvr.it will automatically post those new pins to your social networks. Here is how it looks:

Solution 2. Finding the RSS Feed of  Pinterest User / Board

Below are instructions for finding:

(a) Your Pinterest User RSS / Atom feed (all your public pins)

(b) Your individual board RSS / Atom feeds (feeds for each of your boards).

Pinterest User RSS Feed

You’ll find your User RSS feed by entering your Pinterest URL, and adding /feed.rss to the end of the URL. Examples:

The Pinterest URL for dlvr.it is: https://www.pinterest.com/dlvrit/

The Pinterest feed URL for dlvr.it is: https://www.pinterest.com/dlvrit/feed.rss

To get your Pinterest User feed, just replace dlvrit in the URL above with your Pinterest username.

PinBoard RSS Feeds

You’ll find your Board RSS feeds by entering your Pinterest Board URL and adding .rss to the end of the URL.

The Pinterest board for our blog, the Social Media Minute: https://www.pinterest.com/dlvrit/social-media-minute/

The RSS feed for the board is: https://www.pinterest.com/dlvrit/social-media-minute.rss

Would love to hear how you are using your Pinterest RSS feed. Leave your ideas in the comments.

Happy Pinning!

The post How to Find Your Pinterest RSS Feeds appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.

As of May 1, 2015, RSS Graffiti will no longer be available on either a free, or paid, basis to power Facebook automation for you.

But, here’s the good news:

Best RSS Graffiti Alternative

If you are in the market for a RSS Graffiti replacement, please accept this as your personal invitation to check out dlvr.it. We would love to have you.

We not only have smart automation to Facebook but also to Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more. We also have a smart auto-scheduling and buffering of posts.

We encourage you to explore what dlvr.it has to offer. Setting up a dlvr.it account is quick and easy. We offer both FREE and paid plans. We put together a list of questions we have been receiving from RSS Graffiti customers looking for alternatives.

1. What social networks does dlvr.it post to?
2. What are dlvr.it’s features?
3. How do I set-up Facebook?
4. How much does dlvr.it cost?
5. Can I add a Facebook profile and page?

dlvr.it 3 main areas of focus:

• RSS to Social: We continuously monitor your news feeds and RSS enabled web sites and automatically share new content to your socials.
• Scheduling: Queue up content wherever you find it with our browser extension. We’ll share it to your socials on an optimized schedule.
• Promote: We boost your website traffic and leads by distributing your blog posts to search, social, mobile and local media.

If you have additional questions, please visit our support forum or feel free to contact us. You may also enjoy our tips on optimizing Facebook posts.

Don’t take our word for it. We serve nearly 600,000 customers every day. Here is what a few of them have to say:

Favorite Tweets by @dlvrit

Other RSS Graffiti alternatives:

• Twitterfeed
• Post Planner
• Hootsuite

The post Looking for a RSS Graffiti Alternative for Posting to Facebook? appeared first on dlvr.it | blog.