Week 3

You will focus on the third core pillar of social media marketing: listening and engagement. You’ll learn the importance of social listening and how to use popular social listening tools. Then, you’ll explore ways to develop relationships with customers and build brand authority.

Dedication to study

Videos: 49 min
Leitura: 3 h 40 min
Teste: 1 Teste com avaliação

Learning Objectives

Define social listening and discuss why it’s important.
Introduce popular social listening tools and how to use them.
Provide tips for effective social listening.
Understand how to boost engagement on social media.
Discuss how to communicate and develop relationships with customers.
Discuss how to respond to different types of customer communication on social media.
Understand how to write, design, and repurpose engaging content for social media.
Describe how to develop a brand voice on social media.

Content

Social listening
Engagement on social media
Composing engaging content
Review: Listening and engagement on social media

Welcome to week 3

Video. Duration: 1 minute

Imagine that you are responsible for the social media marketing for a small company. Unfortunately, one of your company’s products has a small defect and customers have been complaining about this product on social media. If you aren’t aware of these posts and don’t take steps to address the issue, your company’s reputation could be jeopardized.

But because you listen to your customers on social media and engage with them to address their concerns, you’re able to keep your company’s reputation intact. That brings us to the 3rd pillar of social media marketing: listening and engagement.

In this section, you will learn about how to implement social listening, which refers to tracking and analyzing conversations and trends related to your brand. We’ll talk about how to listen to your customers and followers on social media and analyze those conversations to gain insights. You’ll also learn about some social listening tools that can help you in this process.

Then we’ll talk about how you can take what you’ve learned from listening to your customers to increase their engagement with your brand. We’ll discuss different ways to communicate with customers and how to respond to different types of communications from them. Taking these interactions further, we’ll explore strategies for developing ongoing relationships with your customers. You’ll also learn how to write and design engaging content for social media and how to develop your brand voice on different platforms. And we’ll explore how to save time and resources by taking your existing content and repurposing it in new ways.

Ready to find out how to listen, learn from, and engage your customers on social media? Let’s go.

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Let’s say you’ve published multiple posts on the social media platforms you’ve selected for your campaign, now what? To find out how people are reacting to these posts, you need to use social listening.

In this video, we’ll discuss what social listening is and why it’s such an important component of your social media campaign. Social listening refers to tracking and analyzing conversation and trends related to your brand. It helps you understand what people think about your brand, which can inform your marketing and product development decisions moving forward.

Step 1: involves monitoring social media platforms for mentions of your brand, product services, competitors, and any related keywords.

Step 2: is when you analyze the information you’ve collected and plan actions based on what you’ve learned. These actions can be as small as responding to a dissatisfied customer or as big as adjusting your entire social media strategy.

Social listening is a key part of your social media marketing strategy for a number of reasons. To begin with, social listening helps you understand the social media sentiment around your brand. Social media sentiment is the attitude and feelings people have about your brand on social media. Learning how people feel about your brand helps you identify what’s working with your social media marketing strategy and where you need to make changes.

Social listening also provides an opportunity for you to engage with your customers and followers about your brand. For example, if a customer comments about how much they love your product or asks a question, this is a great opportunity for you to engage with them directly. Customers want to feel heard on social media, responding to them can elicit brand loyalty and increase customer retention rates.

When there is negative social media sentiment being expressed about your brand, social listening can help you pinpoint its cause and address the issue. What are your customers’ pain points? Can you offer a solution to the problems people are talking about? If you can, be sure to tell people about it on social media. For example, let’s say a number of customers have been monitoring a problem with ordering from your company’s app. You could escalate the issue to your company’s IT Department and then publish a post that lets customers know you’re addressing their concerns.

That being said, you want to be mindful of what messaging you share to respond to individual users directly versus those you post publicly. An issue impacting a small group of people may not be affecting the majority of your audience, and posting publicly about the issue may bring more attention to it.

Social listening is a great tool for analyzing the competition. It allows you to learn what your competitors are up to and find out how their customers feel about it. For instance, you might learn that your competitors’ customers are unhappy with a particular product. Then you could strategize ways to improve upon a similar product. Or you might find that some of your competitors’ content outperforms your own. You could analyze why their content resonates well with your shared audience and make adjustments to your own content accordingly.

You can also use social listening to increase customer acquisition. Social media provides many opportunities for reaching potential new customers. After all, your followers aren’t just your existing customers, they’re also people who simply have an interest in your content. Using social listening, you can discover the kinds of content your followers enjoy. Then you can create content that appeals to them and potentially draws them into your brand.

Social listening will be a key component of your social media campaigns. The insights you gain from social listening can help you create content your followers are interested in, come up with new ideas based on trends in your industry, and adjust your marketing strategy to fit the current marketplace. Coming up, we’ll talk about some helpful social listening strategies and tools.

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

You have learned that social listening is tracking and analyzing conversations and trends related to your brand. You’ve also learned how social listening can help you understand how people feel about your brand, which allows you to engage with them more effectively. Now that you know what social listening is and why it’s important, let’s discuss how to do it.

To get started with social listening, you’ll need to identify the key words people use most when discussing your brand. Previously, you learned about doing keyword research for search engine optimization. For SEO, you find the keywords customers search for the most and put those on your webpage to help people find your content. For social listening, you identify the keywords that will help you find conversations about your brand. You want to use the keywords that are most relevant to your and your competitors’ brands. Brand and product names include any variations or common misspellings, slogans, names of key people in the company, industry buzzwords, hashtags related to the brand.

A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the pound symbol that indicates that a piece of content relates to a specific topic or category. Hashtags are the kind of digital label that help people find content across social media platforms. For example, a coffee company might use hashtags like #coffee time, #coffee lover, #best coffee, or #coffee drinker.

Once you’ve identified the best keywords to use, you’ll need to determine where you’re going to listen for them. For example, people may talk differently about your business on LinkedIn than they do on Facebook. Or they might mention your business more frequently on Twitter than on Instagram. In order to develop the best strategies for different platforms, you’ll need to listen to how people are talking about you on each of them.

Next, you’ll want to find out what people are saying about your brand. Search for the answers to questions like: what do customers like most about your brand? What are their most common issues? What are their most frequently asked questions? What are the associations people have with your brand? What kind of content do people share about your brand? These questions help you identify customer comments, issues, and sentiment around your brand.

Understanding how people feel about your brand and products can help you improve your strategy. You’ll get insights into the feelings people have around your brand and the specific products or features they’re most interested in. Instead of just acting on your assumptions, you’ll understand what your customer truly needs.

You’ll also use social listening to assess your competition. Evaluate things about your competition, like which of their content is performing better than yours. And how could you improve your content to resonate better with your shared audience? Which of their products are customers dissatisfied with? And what learnings could you apply to improve your own products? What new products or solutions they are offering and how do they compare to your offerings.

Social listening can show you what your competitors do well and what customers like about them, but it can also highlight where they make mistakes, so you can see what not to do. For example, if a competitor posts content that receives a lot of negative responses, you can avoid posting similar content. You can save yourself time, energy, and resources by learning from your competitor’s mistakes and then avoiding those mistakes yourself.

In addition to learning from your direct competition, social listening can help you learn what’s happening in your industry, such as trends or how the market is performing. To use social listening to gain industry insights, consider the following. Are there any gaps in the industry that a new product or solution could help solve? Are there any major events or issues happening in the world that are relevant to your brand? Which frequently asked questions could you create content around to address your audience’s needs?

In order to help you implement all of these social listening tactics, you could use a social listening tool. A social listening tool is a software that helps you track mentions of your brand, relevant keywords, and direct feedback from multiple social media platforms in one place. Later in this lesson, we’ll discuss some popular social listening tools and how to choose one for your campaigns.

Now that you’ve learned some useful tactics to help you get the most out of your social listening efforts, we’ll discuss how to use these lessons to inform how you engage with your customers and followers.

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

You learned that one of the benefits of social listening is increased user engagement with a brand. Social listening happens on many social media platforms through a variety of different methods. This case study describes how Erin and Dusty Stanczyk, founders of the Omaha, Nebraska-based healthy lifestyle brand EatMoveRest, successfully incorporated social listening to improve their content.

Company background

EatMoveRest operates under the belief that since people do three things everyday—eat, move, and rest—they should be doing them as best as they possibly can. EatMoveRest was established to coach people to achieve healthy and sustainable lifestyles. As part of its business model, EatMoveRest offers vegan meal planning, plant-based recipes, expert advice, coaching, and practical tips for sustainable living.

The Stanczyks built their business on the concept of friends sharing similar interests, but since they’ve built an online community, their social circle spans the globe. Their followers and clientele are people who are like-minded about their health.

EatMoveRest founders Erin and Dusty Stanczyk and family

The challenges

Recall that social listening is tracking and analyzing conversations and trends related to a brand. Social listening is a big task for a business of any size. However, the main challenge for small businesses, like EatMoveRest, is there is too much feedback and not enough time to go through all the data, much less analyze it to make business or content decisions. Here are three specific challenges EatMoveRest encountered with social listening:

Large volume of user comments
No barriers or limits on expression in feedback
Inability to reply to or address every comment

Large volume of user comments

YouTube and Instagram comments are endless. Users are free to give feedback whenever they choose, and it can be overwhelming to read, track, and respond to it all. Sifting through a massive volume of comments is a huge challenge.

No barriers or limits on expression in feedback

Many user comments are positive and constructive, but there are plenty of negative and sometimes hateful comments, too. There are no barriers on expression. It can be hard to identify useful feedback from thousands of people digitally “shouting” in strong language or bold text.

Inability to address or reply to every comment

Addressing the input from a large number of followers can be a difficult task to navigate. With the sheer volume of YouTube and Instagram comments, it’s impossible to post replies to all users.

The approach

The Stanczyks recommend these best practices or tips for social listening:

Identify which channel is a priority to review comments.
Offer followers designated times to provide feedback via chosen methods.

Prioritized reviews

EatMoveRest prioritized the comments on its YouTube channel over other social media channels. The Stanczyks prioritized reading through and responding to these comments to make their viewers feel like they are a part of the EatMoveRest community. The opinions of these subscribers matter the most to the brand.

Designated times and methods for feedback

EatMoveRest started providing its followers designated times and methods to provide feedback. The Stanczyks could then plan for and set aside a certain amount of time to address the collected feedback. Setting designated times and methods for feedback enables a more detailed focus on constructive comments. Noisy and sometimes tasteless comments can be ignored.

One method of feedback they find to be very useful is the Q&A feature in Instagram. It allows them to create a submission box right below their posted content. Users engage with the Stanczyks through direct and relevant messages submitted in the box. The feedback they get on their products, apps, website, recipes, and content is in one organized location, and they can reply to users promptly.

The results

By prioritizing the review of YouTube comments and implementing designated times and methods for social listening, the Stanczyks were able to discover two problems and address them. One issue was with a particular style of content and the other issue was with their meal planning app.

Reversing changes to content

Much of EatMoveRest’s social media content takes the format of “a day in the life of the Stanczyk family.” Many young families find these types of videos to be a reflection of their own lives. They appreciate the vibrant colors in the house, the uplifting music in the background of the videos, and the positive reinforcement of their lifestyle choices. When the music in one video was a little darker than usual, YouTube subscribers let them know they preferred the uplifting music. The brand’s upbeat music style was validated through social listening. When Dusty Stanczyk posted a video about animal agriculture, YouTube subscribers also let him know through comments that this wasn’t the kind of content they wanted to watch. That video had veered from the usual positive and uplifting content EatMoveRest was well known for creating. Thumbs down and no shares! EatMoveRest now avoids posting any content like that on YouTube.

Improving the meal planning app

EatMoveRest also discovered an issue with its new meal planning app through social listening. After the launch of the app, the Stanczyks started getting Q&A feedback on Instagram that the recipes displayed were old. Although it wasn’t in the app’s design, users expected the recipes to rollover and change on a weekly basis. Because of its savvy and dedicated social listening practices, EatMoveRest heard its users and started to update the recipes in the app more frequently.

Conclusion

A business needs to actively listen on social media to understand how users are interacting with its brand. Feedback will be positive and constructive, negative and biased, or sometimes contentious. Even a brand like EatMoveRest with a loyal base of followers can benefit from making changes to its business practices or content after receiving constructive feedback through social listening.

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Now that you’ve made your way through this social media course content, you should be familiar with social listening. As a refresher, social listening refers to the tracking and analyzing of conversations and trends related to your brand. Another way to conduct social listening is simply by listening to your audience. In this reading, you will learn about the tools that allow you to conduct effective social listening. Social listening tools can help you monitor all of your social media platforms in one place.

In these tools’ dashboards, you can check:

mentions of your brand
relevant keywords
feedback through tags and direct messages

You can even post on your social accounts directly from tool dashboards, and integrate all your accounts so you can track analytics.

There are countless social listening tools on the market, and choosing the right one can be a big task. For now, you will have an introductory look at the most popular tools out there. As you learn about each one, you can start to form an opinion on which you might prefer when you start your journey as a digital marketer. And after you’ve done that, feel free to browse their sites and test them out—you can’t really know which tool you prefer until you try them!

For the duration of this certificate program, you will continue to learn about HubSpot and its robust features. HubSpot does many things, but as a social listening tool, it offers integration for all types of marketing and analytics in one place. With HubSpot, users are able to target specific audiences using the contacts database built into the customer relationship management tool, and then track and manage the engagement their brand gets from those interactions. And, like many social listening tools, HubSpot allows you to reply directly to any tags, mentions, and comments directly in the interface.

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management tool with features similar to HubSpot. It’s comprehensive in that users can post content via their publishing tools, and users can manage social listening and customer service needs. Users find Sprout Social favorable because it allows them to discover trends from within their mentions and comments, and it provides valuable insights into their audiences.

Falcon.io + Brandwatch (Falcon.io is now part of Brandwatch)

Another comprehensive social media management tool that is commonly used is Falcon.io. Falcon.io allows for direct communication between social media users and your business’s internal team members when necessary. Falcon.io also includes a feature called the Engage inbox, which allows users to handle private messaging communications effectively.

Hootsuite

Like the other tools, Hootsuite allows you to create and schedule content, monitor activity and mentions, and manage communication across all your supported social accounts in one dashboard. Hootsuite also suggests the best times to post, based on your data, and allows for team collaboration on all messages in Hootsuite Inbox.

Key takeaways

Remember, these are just a few of the commonly used tools for social listening. They all have similar use cases, but the user interface and capabilities may vary. If you have a moment, take some time and try out each tool to help you identify which one you feel most comfortable in.

Resources for more information

Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%

Activity Overview

In this activity, you will filter and analyze social listening data to identify audience insights and industry trends. You will then suggest actions to take based on those insights.

Social listening involves monitoring social media platforms for mentions of your brand, competitors, and any related keywords, then analyzing the information you’ve collected and planning actions based on what you’ve learned.

Be sure to complete this activity before moving on. The next course item will provide you with a completed exemplar to compare to your own work. You will not be able to access the exemplar until you have completed this activity.

Scenario

Review the scenario below. Then complete the step-by-step instructions.

You work for an agency hired to do marketing for Great Grounds, a small, regional chain of coffee shops based in the Northeast United States. You have monitored Twitter for mentions of the brand, its products, its competitors, and related keywords and collected the data in a spreadsheet. Now you want to review that data to learn more about Great Grounds’ audience, understand their sentiment around the brand and its main competitor (Java House), and spot any emerging industry trends. You will record your insights and the actions you plan to take based on those insights.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1: Access the template

To use the supporting materials for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Social listening insights

Step 2: Access supporting materials

The following supporting materials will help you complete this activity. Keep them open as you proceed to the next steps.

To use the supporting materials for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to supporting materials: Great Grounds social listening data.

Step 3: Filter mentions by positive sentiment

In the next few steps, you will filter the data in the Great Grounds social listening data spreadsheet by different criteria. Then, you will analyze the information.

First, filter the Mention column by positive sentiment. To create a filter, click on the cell in the top left-hand corner of the sheet to select the entire sheet. Then select “Data” and “Create a Filter.”

The “Data” menu is opened with “Create a filter” highlighted

Click on the filter icon in the Sentiment header and click “Clear.” Then select “positive” from the dropdown list and click “OK.”

The “Sentiment” dropdown menu is highlighted. “Positive” is checkmarked. The “OK” button is highlighted

Now review the positive mentions in the Mention column. What are people talking about? What trends do you notice? What do people like?

Record notes on your findings next to Positive Mentions in the Insights column of the social listening insights template.

Step 4: Filter mentions by negative sentiment

Repeat the previous step to filter the Mention column by negative sentiment. To change the filter, click on the filter icon in the “Sentiment” header, deselect “positive,” and select “negative.” Then click OK.

The “Sentiment” dropdown is highlighted. “Negative” is checkmarked. The “OK” button is highlighted

Review the negative mentions in the Mention column. What are people talking about? What trends do you notice? What do people dislike?

Record notes on your findings next to Negative Mentions in the Insights column of the social listening insights template.

Step 5: Filter the data by additional criteria

To gain even more specific insights, filter the data by additional criteria. For example, you could filter for mentions of the name Great Grounds, its competitor—Java House, a specific flavor, and so on. You could also filter the data by gender, interest, or region.

To filter the mentions by additional criteria, click on the filter icon in the Mention column, select “Filter by condition,” and select “Text contains” from the dropdown menu. Then type in the text you want to filter for (e.g., Great Grounds) and click “OK.”

“Filter by condition” is expanded to reveal “Text contains” option. “Great Grounds” is entered as filter text

Review the filtered data.

Describe the criteria you filtered for (e.g., Great Grounds mentions) in the Filter column in the social listening insights template. Then add notes on any new findings next to your description in the Insights column.

Step 6: Plan actions based on insights

The final step of the social listening process involves planning actions based on the insights you’ve revealed. Review the notes you recorded in the Insights column in the social listening insights template. Determine some actions you plan to take to improve your marketing strategy based on these findings. For example, if you found that people liked a particular coffee drink, you might plan to promote that drink more on social media. Then, add notes on any actions you plan to take based on your social listening insights to the Actions column in the social listening insights template.

Pro Tip: Save your work

Finally, be sure to save the work you did to complete this activity. This can help you work through your thought processes and demonstrate your experience to potential employers.

What to Include in Your Response

Be sure to address the following elements in your completed social listening insights table:

Insights gained from filtering the data for positive mentions
Insights gained from filtering the data for negative mentions
Insights gained from filtering the data for additional criteria, and a description of that criteria
A description of the actions you plan to take based on your social listening analysis

Reading. Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Social listening insights

The following supporting materials will help you complete this activity. Keep them open as you proceed to the next steps.

To use the supporting materials for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to supporting materials: Great Grounds social listening data

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed social listening insights table. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Your social listening insights table should include:
The insights you gained about what your audience likes about your brand, products, competitors, and/or other related trends from filtering the data for positive mentions and analyzing that data.
The insights you gained about what your audience dislikes about your brand, products, competitors, and/or other related trends from filtering the data for negative mentions and analyzing that data.
A description of any additional criteria for which you created a filter.
Any new insights gained from filtering the data for additional criteria.
A description of the actions you plan to take based on your insights and analysis.

Note: The exemplar represents one possible version of the social listening insights table. Yours will likely differ in certain ways. What’s important is that your table describes specific insights based on the data in the spreadsheet and related actions you plan to take.

Practice Quiz. 5 questions. 100%

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

In the earlier sections of this course, you gained insights into the significance of social listening and some effective tactics for implementing it. Now, let’s dive deeper into enhancing your current and potential customers’ engagement on social media. Social media engagement is a vital metric that reflects how people interact with your brand’s social media accounts and content. This interaction encompasses actions like likes, favorites, comments, shares, retweets, saves, clicks, hashtags, and mentions. Analyzing engagement helps you gauge the resonance of your content with your audience.

One powerful strategy to boost audience engagement on social media is by establishing genuine connections with them. Social media offers an ideal platform for forging meaningful connections with your customers and potential customers. A study by Sprout Social demonstrated that when customers feel connected to a brand, they are more likely to increase their spending with that brand. Additionally, a significant majority will opt to remain loyal and choose your brand over competitors.

To effectively engage people on social media, it’s essential to be social in your approach. Think of it like being the host of a party – you may not always be in the spotlight, but your goal is to ensure everyone has a great time. Although, as an entry-level digital marketer, it may not always be your responsibility to interact directly with customers on social media, here are some valuable tips for when you need to do so:

1. Respond to Comments and Mentions: Engaging in two-way conversations by responding to comments and mentions fosters healthy and meaningful relationships with your customers.

2. Provide Excellent Customer Service: Be prepared to address customer queries, offer resources that assist them with their concerns, and show empathy towards any challenges they’ve faced concerning your brand.

3. Rapid Responses: Customers value swift responses, which make them feel heard and cared for. Timely replies can lead to higher customer satisfaction and trust in your brand.

4. Authentic Personal Voice: Develop an authentic, personal voice on social media. Interact with customers using first names, add warmth and humor to your responses, and consider sharing images or videos of employees to make your brand seem more personable and relatable.

Moreover, it’s essential to understand your target audience and tailor your approach accordingly. The language, tone, and imagery used should align with your audience’s preferences. The content you create should address their needs and offer valuable insights, positioning your brand as a credible source of industry information. Inspire your audience and help them envision the benefits of interacting with your product or service.

While promoting your products or services is vital, not every interaction on social media needs to revolve around them. Sometimes, social media platforms serve as a medium for connecting with your target audience on topics that interest them.

To further encourage customer engagement, get creative with your posts. Organize contests, post polls, develop quizzes, ask questions, showcase customers and employees, encourage user-generated content, provide discounts or giveaways in exchange for interactions like follows, likes, retweets, or tags. By fostering customer engagement on social media, you can glean insights, better cater to their needs, and enhance their trust in your brand.

In the upcoming sections, we will delve deeper into customer engagement and strategies to attract more followers on social media.

How to use YouTube to grow your audience

Video. Duration: 2 minutes

I’m Olivia, a Product Marketing Manager at YouTube, and my role primarily revolves around assisting brands and advertising agencies in creating successful advertising campaigns on this platform. The beauty of my work lies in its ever-changing nature, where no two days are alike. On some days, I find myself immersed in writing articles or blog posts, while on others, I delve into data analysis to decipher which marketing channels prove most effective for our initiatives. This intriguing blend of creativity and analytics within the realm of digital marketing is something I genuinely appreciate.

YouTube stands as an incredible medium for connecting with a global audience actively seeking education, entertainment, and information that aligns with their passions. It offers a multitude of avenues to expand your audience. You can harness our advertising products to ensure your narratives reach a broader, worldwide audience. Alternatively, you can take a more organic approach by engaging with other channels and crafting diverse content to gauge audience response. What often surprises people is how their content can resonate far and wide, even without extensive advertising efforts. The key to success here isn’t rigid requirements but authenticity and the ability to weave a compelling story that aligns with a brand or product. This emphasis on storytelling tends to keep audiences engaged and intrigued, often surpassing other factors like structure or production quality.

For digital marketers embarking on their journey to enhance their presence on YouTube, I recommend first immersing yourself in the platform. Becoming a fervent fan and subscribing to creators who pique your interest is an insightful initial step. It’s a captivating and dynamic space that can provide valuable insights into the kinds of narratives that truly connect with viewers. Following this, start identifying a handful of essential stories that your brand, business, or marketing goals aim to convey. Whether it’s introducing a new product or expanding your audience internationally, hone in on five or six themes integral to your business objectives. Yet, the most crucial endeavor is to cultivate a fan’s perspective on the platform, deeply understanding the content that resonates within its unique ecosystem.

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

When a customer reaches out to you on social media—whether it’s via direct message, a comment on a post, or any other type of interaction—a reply is usually needed. Sometimes, however, a reply isn’t the best course of action. In this reading, you will learn when to reply and what kind of reply is best.

Why should you respond?

Generally speaking, replying to social media comments, messages, mentions, and tags is a great way to get customers to engage. When you reply to users, you make them feel heard. You also appear accessible to people who read the replies. This indicates that your brand cares about the customer experience. Whether you’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or another platform, engaging with your customer base is usually a good idea.

How should you respond?

If you are responding to positive feedback, acknowledge the comment, thank them for the kind words, and consider reposting or Retweeting their feedback. It says a lot about your brand when people provide positive feedback about it on social media, so it’s a good strategy to ensure as many people as possible see that feedback.
If you are responding to questions or general feedback, reply briefly and with clear enthusiasm. Engaging with customers should be fun and informative for both parties, and your customers should be able to tell you’re having fun based on the type of responses you give. Don’t be afraid to use creative language and exclamation marks, if it aligns with your brand voice.
If you are responding to negative comments, such as when you have to resolve an issue for users, it’s best to remain calm and use helpful, polite, and approachable language. If there is a clear issue that has the potential to become something larger, you may have to offer refunds or promotional codes to make things right. In these situations, encourage them to send you a direct message so the issue can be resolved quickly and privately. However, if the response could be helpful to other people who may have the same concerns or thoughts as the original poster, you may choose to answer it publicly so everyone can benefit from the interaction.
If you are responding to internet trolls, the short answer is: don’t. An internet troll is a person who intentionally antagonizes others online by posting inflammatory, unnecessary, or offensive comments or other disruptive content that shouldn’t necessarily be replied to. This is typically the only time you’re encouraged not to reply to users on social media. Unfortunately, trolling is a reality of social media, and a common one at that. The more your brand grows, the more trolls you will get. If you know your brand didn’t do anything wrong, simply don’t reply. If the trolling gets worse, consider deleting the comments or hiding the replies.

Key takeaways

When it comes to interacting with users on social media, each reply requires careful thought and consideration. Whether the comments are positive, general feedback, or negative, you’ll want to be strategic about when, how, and where you reply. Feel free to keep these tips in mind as you move forward on your digital marketing journey, and leverage the help of any team members who may have experience replying to users.

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

Hello, I’m Camille, and I serve as a Product Support Manager, specifically dedicated to the Pixel phone here at our company. In my role, I oversee the strategic approach we take in supporting our users through various online channels like social media and our community website. What I find most gratifying about my position is the collaboration it entails with an array of diverse teams. I work closely with marketing, product management, legal, public relations, and support teams on a global scale. Each collaboration feels like assembling a complex puzzle, where I’m the piece that connects everything, ultimately making it easier for our users to access the assistance they require.

A genuine marker of a successful collaboration is when we receive heartfelt thank-you messages from our users. Knowing that our collective efforts have led to someone having a functioning device truly warms my heart. These messages of gratitude typically surface on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and even Reddit, where we actively support users within the online community.

It’s crucial to distinguish between social media marketing and social media listening. While marketing involves proactive engagement with users through posts, listening is about precisely that—listening to users. We employ a variety of tools to gather user feedback, understand their experiences, and grasp their expectations, which we then relay to our team.

My team and I consistently respond to negative comments as part of our daily routine. With a strong focus on support, we actively seek conversations where we can assist users in troubleshooting their devices or addressing their negative experiences. Approaching users with empathy is a key strategy. It demonstrates our willingness to help, conveys our care for them, and reinforces their significance beyond just being another number. So, offering to help users and addressing their concerns is vital. For cases requiring more in-depth discussions or private information, we often direct the conversation to private messaging, such as DMs. This shift occurs when we need to provide a solution that exceeds the character limits enforced by many social media platforms or when handling sensitive, private information.

While ignoring negative comments may seem tempting, we make an effort to acknowledge all customer experiences. Although my team primarily focuses on addressing negative or neutral user experiences, we also make a point to respond to positive comments. Recognizing a customer’s positive interaction with your brand, expressing gratitude for their continued support, and offering compliments can help foster a sense of community and connection among these customers.

Fostering community and building connections with our users is crucial for the Pixel team. We want them to remain Pixel customers and advocates, sharing their positive experiences and encouraging others to join our community. This is why we make it a priority to respond to all comments, whether they are negative, neutral, or positive.

If I were to offer advice to my past self when I first ventured into social media marketing, it would be to approach every situation with grace and avoid taking things personally. It’s easy to absorb the negativity from comments and feel like it reflects negatively on your character or brand. However, there are often valuable insights hidden within user feedback. You never truly know what someone is going through on the other side of the screen. It could be a bad day or a critical device malfunction, which might be their livelihood. Empathy, proactive action, and doing your best to help the user are essential in such situations.

Activity: Respond to customer comments

Practice Quiz. 1 question. Grade: 100%

Activity Overview

In this activity, you will read and respond to different types of customer comments posted on social media.

Social media is an ideal channel for making meaningful connections with your customers. Replying to customers’ comments on social media is a great way to make your customers feel heard and get them to engage.

Scenario

Review the scenario below. Then complete the step-by-step instructions.

You work for an agency hired to do marketing for Great Grounds, a small, regional chain of coffee shops based in the Northeast United States. You are reviewing and responding to comments posted on the company’s Facebook profile. To determine how to respond to each comment, you will need to consider the type of comment, what resources and information the customer needs, and how best to communicate with them.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1: Access the template

To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template”.

Link to template: Respond to customer comments

Step 2: Reply to positive feedback

When a customer posts a positive comment about your brand, product, or service, you can use the opportunity to engage with them directly. Read the comment in the Positive Feedback row of the customer comments template, then write a response in the Response column. Thank the customer for their kind, helpful, or insightful words, and let them know you appreciate them and their positive feedback.

Remember that people are more likely to engage with your brand when they feel like there’s an actual person reading and responding to their comments. To make your responses more personal and authentic, include the person’s first name and incorporate warmth or humor.

Step 3: Reply to a question

Your social media profiles offer many opportunities to provide excellent customer service. Read the comment in the Question row of the customer comments template, then write a response in the Response column. Refer to the Resources/Information column, and provide resources that can help answer the customer’s question. You can also use this opportunity to engage the customer, either by continuing the conversation or asking a related question. Feel free to use creative language and/or exclamation marks since this aligns with Great Grounds’ brand voice.

Note: The Great Grounds link in the template is fictional and you should not go to it. Use the link as a resource in your response to the customer’s comment.

Step 4: Reply to a negative comment

Sometimes you may need to respond to negative comments about your brand on social media, such as when a customer posts a complaint or when you have to resolve an issue. Read the comment in the Negative Comment row of the customer comments template, then write a response in the Response column. Refer to the Resources/Information column for information that helps explain the situation to the customer and a promotional code to provide the customer to help make things right. Thank the customer for their feedback, use polite and approachable language, and show empathy for their perspective.

Responding to negative comments in this way can not only help you win customers back but can also have a positive impact on your brand’s reputation. When people see that you value your customers and their feedback, they’ll have more respect for your business.

Pro Tip: Save your work

Finally, be sure to save the work you did to complete this activity. This can help you work through your thought processes and demonstrate your experience to potential employers.

What to Include in Your Response

Be sure to address the following elements in your completed replies to customer comments template:

A reply to the positive feedback that thanks the customer for their kind, helpful, or insightful words and lets them know you appreciate them
A reply to the question that offers helpful resources and engages the customer
A reply to the negative feedback that uses polite and approachable language and shows empathy for the customer’s perspective

Activity Exemplar: Respond to customer comments

Reading. Duration: 10 minutes

Here is a completed exemplar along with an explanation of how the exemplar fulfills the expectations for the activity.

Completed Exemplar

To review the exemplar for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to exemplar: Respond to customer comments

Assessment of Exemplar

Compare the exemplar to your completed replies to customer comments. Review your work using each of the criteria in the exemplar. What did you do well? Where can you improve? Use your answers to these questions to guide you as you continue to progress through the course.

Your reply to positive feedback should:

Thank the customer for their kind words
Let the customer know their positive feedback is appreciated
Include the person’s first name and incorporate warmth or humor

Your reply to the question should:

Provide resources that help answer the question
Engage the customer, either by continuing the conversation or asking a related question
Use creative language and/or exclamation marks

Your reply to the negative comment should:

Include information to explain the situation
Share the promotional code to help make things right
Use polite and approachable language
Show empathy for the customer’s perspective

Increase your followers on Twitter

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

We’ve explored strategies to boost engagement on social media platforms, and now it’s time to delve into attracting a valuable segment of your audience: followers. A follower, in the context of social media, is someone who actively opts to receive updates and content from a business or brand. They make a conscious choice to see posts and updates from another user, similar to how they’d engage with a friend on social media.

As we’ve previously established, engagement involves actions like likes, shares, and retweets, where users interact with your content. On the flip side, followers are individuals who express an interest in receiving consistent updates from your brand. Increasing your follower count is often seen as a significant indicator of a successful social media campaign, signifying that you’re consistently delivering relevant and engaging content, and that you wield influence in your industry.

Followers hold a special place in your social media strategy because they constitute an audience you can reach with your organic content each time you post. Gaining more followers involves employing specific tactics on various social media platforms, tailored to their unique dynamics and your audience segments’ preferences.

Let’s take Twitter as an example. Twitter is a platform designed to foster conversations through short and frequent messages, known as tweets. These tweets can encompass text, images, videos, links, and audio. It’s a valuable platform for building connections with your audience. To bolster your Twitter following, or followers, you should engage actively with your audience. This involves linking, tagging, retweeting, or responding to other users’ tweets. Regular interaction with your audience humanizes your brand and widens its reach.

Unlike some other platforms, on Twitter, the adage “less is more” doesn’t necessarily apply. Twitter feeds move at a rapid pace, so posting frequently is encouraged. More tweets mean more chances to engage and attract followers. A social media calendar can aid in planning and publishing tweets consistently.

Effective use of hashtags is another tactic to attract followers on Twitter. Hashtags help categorize and make your tweets searchable, similar to SEO for your Twitter account. Including a few relevant hashtags in your tweets enhances your discoverability. Nonetheless, avoid overcrowding your tweets with excessive hashtags, as it can dilute the content’s impact.

Eye-catching visuals, such as images, infographics, and user-generated content, can significantly boost your tweet’s appeal. Visuals are more attention-grabbing than text alone and can prompt users to explore your posts. Tweets with images are notably more likely to be retweeted, amplifying your reach.

Utilize your Twitter bio as an opportunity to introduce your brand, describing what you do, your products or services, and what sets your brand apart, all within the constraints of 160 characters. A creative and original bio that encapsulates your brand’s personality, along with relevant keywords, can help users find you easily.

Promote your social media accounts through other marketing channels, such as email, your website, or in-store materials, to further expand your Twitter follower count.

Let’s review

To increase your followers on Twitter, consider the following key strategies:

Active Engagement: Actively engage with your audience through linking, tagging, retweeting, and responding to other users’ tweets. Consistent interaction with your audience humanizes your brand.
Frequent Posting: Twitter feeds move rapidly, so post frequently to maximize engagement and increase your chances of attracting followers. A social media calendar can help maintain a consistent posting schedule.
Effective Hashtags: Use hashtags strategically. They categorize your tweets and make them searchable. Including a few relevant hashtags in your tweets can enhance discoverability, but avoid overloading your posts with hashtags.
Visual Content: Incorporate eye-catching visuals, such as images, infographics, and user-generated content. Visuals are more attention-grabbing and increase the likelihood of retweets.
Optimize Your Twitter Bio: Your Twitter bio is an opportunity to introduce your brand. Use it to concisely describe your offerings, what makes your brand unique, and include relevant keywords for easy discoverability.
Promotion Across Channels: Promote your Twitter account through other marketing channels, such as email, your website, or in-store materials, to attract followers from various touchpoints.

Applying these strategies can help boost your Twitter followers and improve your overall social media engagement. Remember that while these tactics are specific to Twitter, the overarching principles of active engagement and appealing content can be adapted to other social media platforms as well.

Remember that while these strategies apply to Twitter, the overarching principles can be adapted and employed across various social media platforms, tailoring your approach to enhance both your followers and overall social media engagement. In the upcoming segments, we’ll explore additional techniques to engage your audience effectively.

Discussion Prompt. Duration: 10 minutes

Lately, you’ve focused on social listening, why it’s important, and how to do it effectively. You’ve been learning about popular social listening tools and how to use them to gain valuable insights. Now it’s time to bring this knowledge into your everyday life to practice thinking like a social media marketer.

For this discussion prompt, consider the following questions:

How have companies engaged with you on social media?
Which of those interactions did you feel were most effective, and why?

Please write a response of 5–10 sentences (100–200 words). Then, go to the discussion forums and, applying what you’ve learned, comment on at least two posts from other learners.

Hundreds of companies have engaged with me on social media in various ways, mostly through ads and promotions in my feed. They also reach out with responses to my comments or mentions when I talk about their products or services. Some companies have been more effective than others in engaging with me. I think the ones that stand out are the ones that reply to my questions or concerns promptly and helpfully. It makes me feel like they genuinely care about their customers. Also, when companies use humor or creativity in their interactions, it catches my attention and makes me more likely to engage with their content. In contrast, companies that send automated or generic responses feel less engaging, and it’s obvious that they’re just trying to sell something. So, the most effective interactions are the ones that feel personal, helpful, and fun.

Influencer marketing

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

As a digital marketer, chances are you’ll hear the term influencer often. An influencer is a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media. If an influencer recommends a product and you buy it, you have been influenced.

Influencer marketing is when a brand collaborates with an online influencer to market its products or services. In 2021 alone, it’s estimated that brands spent $13.8 billion on influencer marketing. In this reading, you’ll learn more about influencer marketing and the various strategies marketers use to make it successful.

Different types of influencers

Influencers span all industries and subject matters. There are influencers in the beauty, art and design, food, and home organization spaces, and many others. Today, anyone can be an influencer—all it takes is having a large and/or engaged social media following.

The influencer’s number of followers determines their category:

Nano-influencers: 10,000 followers or fewer
Micro-influencers: between 10,000 and 100,000 followers
Macro-influencers: between 100,000 and 1 million followers
Mega-influencers: 1 million or more followers

Importance of influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is wildly successful on social media and has become an important tactic for brands trying to leverage social media to bring in revenue. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, 67% of brands on Instagram use influencer marketing. In a recent benchmark report, Influencer Marketing Hub found an average return on investment (ROI) of $5.78 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.

Tips on selecting influencers for your campaign

Although it may seem that partnering with mega influencers would be the most effective for your brand, often, the influencers with smaller followings have higher engagement. For instance, engagement for micro-influencers is estimated at 3.86%, while engagement for mega-influencers is estimated at just 1.21%.

If you are running a campaign in which your aim is to increase engagement, conversions, sales, or followers, consider using influencers with smaller followings that align with your target audience to drive higher engagement rates. However, if your campaign goal is to hit a certain number of views or impressions, you may want to target influencers with large followings. Regardless of your goals, make sure you’ve done your research on each potential influencer. Run audits on their social media accounts, or reach out to them to ask for the metrics you’re interested in.

Quick tips for effective influencer marketing

As is true with all marketing, you’ll need to be organized and detail-oriented when creating an influencer marketing plan. After you’ve researched and selected your influencers, create a strategy, budget, and schedule. Then, present your plan to your influencers.

Pro tip: Remember that although you and your influencer both represent your respective businesses, you’re speaking person-to-person. Have an open conversation about the benefits of partnering, and when addressing any concerns, be diplomatic.

As you set out to create your influencer plan, make sure to integrate it with any public relations, events, or product releases you may have in your near future.

Key takeaways

Influencer marketing has proven itself an invaluable tool for brands on social media. Staying up-to-date on the top influencers in your industry, remaining organized, and executing a clear strategy will allow you to have successful influencer marketing campaigns.

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Animation-shows-dog-walking-video-on-cell-phone

You are learning about how to increase engagement on social media. To review, engagement refers to the actions people take on social media, such as likes, favorites, comments, shares, Retweets, saves, clicks, hashtags, and mentions. In this reading, we’ll discuss one of the best ways to engage your social media audience: through mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing is a digital marketing strategy aimed at reaching your target audience on their smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Mobile marketing can reach users through many channels, including websites, email, and social media. Social media and mobile marketing go hand in hand because people are increasingly accessing social media content from their mobile devices. For example, in July 2021, over 98% of users worldwide accessed Facebook from their smartphones. Because of this, your social media marketing strategy should incorporate mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing on social media offers the following benefits:

High engagement
Wide reach
Increased conversion rates
Effective user targeting
Opportunities to make personal connections with customers
Quick customer response time
Access to user-generated content
Easy-to-track results

As a digital marketer, there are several ways you can use mobile marketing to boost the performance of your social media campaigns.

Here are some tips to incorporate mobile marketing into your social media marketing strategy:

Create mobile-friendly posts

If you create a post that looks good on a desktop, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will look good on a mobile device. Be sure to test all of your layouts and images on mobile, and make sure any links in your posts lead to mobile-optimized landing pages. You should also keep mobile users in mind when creating written content. People generally don’t want to read long articles on their phones, so focus on creating shorter posts.

Integrate video

Users engage more with video than they do with other types of content on their mobile devices, so include videos in your posts often. That being said, people have short attention spans when they are on their phones. Therefore, be sure to highlight important points or product features at the beginning of videos, and keep your videos short—no more than 15 to 30 seconds. Live video is another engaging option for mobile marketing. You can broadcast live from your business on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram Live, or another platform to generate interest and engagement.

Ask customers to check in

Asking customers to “check in” at your business on social media is a great way to gain earned media. Checking in lets customers’ friends and followers on social media know that they are patronizing your business. Offering incentives like discounts, coupons, and rewards programs can encourage customers to check in.

Encourage user-generated content

User-generated content, or UGC, is any kind of content created by people, rather than brands. People enjoy content from actual customers because it feels authentic and trustworthy. Because of this, user-generated content can help boost your social media engagement rates. User-generated content is also convenient for customers to create and post on social media from their mobile devices. To encourage users to submit UGC, you can run contests inviting customers to post photos or videos of themselves using your product or service.

Leverage influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is when a brand collaborates with an online influencer to market one of its products or services. Mobile marketing is convenient for influencers because they can promote brands remotely. To build a collaboration with an influencer, find one who shares your target audience, uses the same platforms as your target audience, and has a great connection with followers.

Key takeaways

A successful social media marketing strategy will include mobile marketing. Integrating social media and mobile marketing has many benefits, including a wide reach, high engagement, and increased conversions. The tactics discussed in this reading are just a few ways to leverage mobile to maximize the results of your social media marketing campaigns. As both mobile and social media continue to grow and evolve, stay informed about the latest trends to keep your campaigns relevant and achieve better results.

Test your knowledge: Engage customers

Practice Quiz. 5 questions. Grade: 100%

3. Composing engaging content

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

When it comes to successful social media marketing, content is king. You can employ various strategies to boost engagement and followers, but without compelling content, your efforts may fall flat. How companies tackle content creation varies, depending on their size and resources. Some have internal teams dedicated to marketing content, while others outsource to freelancers or agencies. Whether you’re creating content yourself or coordinating with others, you must understand the principles of engaging content.

Your content represents your brand, and it must resonate with your audience. Begin by tailoring your writing to your specific audience, which requires research to understand their interests, values, and challenges. Address their needs, obstacles, and aspirations in your content, speaking directly to each individual. Moreover, use language that your target audience is comfortable with, ensuring your messaging aligns with their communication style.

Adapting your writing to each platform is essential. What works on LinkedIn might not be suitable for Facebook. However, using language that stands out from the norm on a platform can grab attention. Given the flood of content on social media, keep your posts concise and easy to understand. Avoid jargon, use headlines and lists to break up your message, and keep sentences and paragraphs short. Include a call-to-action at the end of your posts to guide your audience on what to do next.

While tailoring your language to your audience, maintain your brand’s voice throughout your content. Your brand’s voice reflects your brand’s personality and includes the language and tone you use in communications. Consistency in your brand voice across all marketing channels, including social media, helps your audience recognize and connect with your brand. Finally, pay attention to grammar and spelling, as errors can negatively impact your brand’s image.

By implementing these principles for effective social media writing, you can enhance your reach and engagement with your audience. Throughout this lesson, we’ll delve deeper into developing engaging content for social media.

Video. Duration: 5 minutes

Previously you learned some tips for writing engaging content on social media. One best practice we discussed was writing in your brand’s voice. In this video, we’ll further explore what a brand voice is, why it’s important, and how to develop one for social media.

To review, a brand’s voice is a distinct personality a brand takes on in its communication. It’s how the attitudes and values of a brand are reflected in all of its content. Developing a clear, consistent brand voice is essential for a number of reasons. To start, it helps you stand out on social media. In the crowded social media space, having a distinct brand voice can make you more memorable and distinguish you from your competitors. Having a distinct brand voice also helps make your brand more recognizable. This can increase your current and potential customers’ familiarity with your brand and your overall brand awareness. Creating a brand voice is all about delivering consistent language and messaging across all of your marketing content. This consistency helps build customers’ trust and loyalty.

Now that you understand why having a distinct brand voice is important, let’s discuss how you can go about developing one for social media. To start defining your brand’s voice on social media, first think about how you would like to describe your brand’s personality. If your brand were a person, what would they be like? What would they say? How would they act? What would their relationship to the customer be like? Would they act like a coach, a friend, or a parent? Think about some adjectives you might use to describe your brand’s personality. Are you friendly, upbeat, and helpful? Smart, confident, and formal? Casual, sarcastic, and bold?

In order to further define your brand’s voice, review your company’s current and past content. Study examples from all of your marketing communication to get a sense of what your brand voice is like currently. How does your target audience speak, and how do they interact with you? What content has resonated with your audience in the past? What language do they use? From here, you’ll be able to get a sense of what your brand’s personality is currently like and begin thinking about how to shape it further.

It’s important that your brand voice be honest and authentic. Avoid complicated terminology, acronyms, jargon, and anything else that might get in the way of your audience understanding your message. Rather, speak naturally to your audience as you would if you were saying something to them in person. Audiences need to feel comfortable engaging with you online and want to speak to a real person. Having an authentic brand voice will help you form connections and build relationships with your customers.

In addition to developing your social media brand voice, you can start thinking about a related concept, finding your tone. While voice is an expression of your brand’s personality, tone is how your brand’s voice is applied. The tone of your content can differ based on factors like audience, situation, and platform. For example, you might use an upbeat, excited tone to describe the launch of your latest product whereas you would use a serious empathetic tone to convey support for community members who’ve just been through a natural disaster. Essentially, you will have one brand voice, but it’ll use many different tones to express that voice.

To help maintain consistency across all marketing channels, companies often create brand voice guidelines. These guidelines describe the way your brand should be presented in writing. They include things like your brand’s mission and values, personality, target audience, common vocabulary and phrases, tone in different situations or on different platforms, and examples. Brand guidelines are a useful reference when you have to write in your brand’s voice or review the work of others. They can help multiple contributors create content that reflects your brand and ensures brand consistency. As someone new to the field or organization, they could provide helpful direction.

It’s important to express your brand voice on social media because it helps you stand out from your competitors, makes your brand more recognizable, and builds your customers’ trust and loyalty. Coming up, we’ll tell you about Black & Bold, a coffee company that values investing in communities who are presenting diversity and producing and providing access to quality drinks. We’ll explore how Black and Bold expresses these values through their brand voice on social media. Meet you in the next video.

Case study: How BLK & Bold found its brand voice

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Previously, you learned that brand voice is the distinct personality a brand takes on in a company’s communications. It’s how the attitudes and values of a brand are reflected in public content, including social media content. This case study describes how the founders of BLK & Bold, a coffee company based in Des Moines, Iowa, successfully incorporated a distinct brand voice into their social media content. You’ll learn about the elements that make their brand voice unique.

Company background

BLK & Bold founders Pernell Cezar and Rod Johnson standing in their production facility

BLK & Bold founders Rod Johnson and Pernell Cezar, Jr. have been lifelong friends and grew up in Gary, Indiana. They started BLK & Bold with an idea to bring their passion and taste for premium coffee and tea to the masses, and to do some good. They began roasting coffee in their garage, which grew into an online business and a 20,000 square foot production facility. Today, their coffee is featured and sold in Target stores in the U.S., and 5% of their profits support programs for youth in need.

The challenges

In the beginning, Rod and Pernell were up against a few challenges. First was the product category. Coffee is an oversaturated market with many brands. Second, they were going against an industry norm. Premium coffee and tea are usually targeted at upscale consumers, but they wanted to bring them to a much larger market—everyone. They wanted to introduce a premium product to mass retail. Lastly, they were launching a digitally-native brand at a time when most people didn’t buy their coffee online. Unlike larger companies with well-known coffee shops, they didn’t have brick-and-mortar stores to help drive brand recognition and online sales. On top of these challenges, neither of them had prior experience in the coffee industry, or were high-profile influencers for coffee consumption.

The approach

Despite these challenges, Rod and Pernell set out to build their business. While doing so, they became direct contributors to BLK & Bold’s brand voice, the distinct personality of their brand. The main elements of their brand voice include the following:

Company’s name
I- nspiration
Values
Tone
Attitude

Company’s name

The company’s name, BLK & Bold, is a powerful statement for their brand. BLK represents black coffee and tea—their products—but also represents who they are as Black business owners. Bold differentiates their brand from bland flavors, but also represents their bold representation as minority stakeholders in the coffee industry.

Inspiration

Their personal story is a source of inspiration to others. Rod and Pernell were first-generation college graduates and found their purpose and mission as entrepreneurs. They worked hard to build their business from the ground up and are often viewed as role models in their community.

What motivates them is their sense of purpose and mission. Their purpose is creating specialty coffee and joining forces with community impact. Their mission is to educate coffee drinkers and give back to the community.

Values

For an individual, nothing is more powerful than saying something that reflects your deepest values. The same is true for brand voice. Notice how the following statements made by the founders reflect their brand voice and related values and business practices.

Brand voice: “Today, people shop their values.”

Underlying value: BLK & Bold respects that you have a choice in where you shop. Shop with us because you support our mission.

Brand voice: “Shop with a company that does more than just sell a widget.”

Underlying value: Invest in our community by returning 5% of profits to support community programs.

Brand voice: “We connect the everyday ritual of drinking coffee and tea to doing good in the world.”

Underlying value: Daily beverage choices make a difference and impact others.

Brand voice: “We take the consumer-first approach.”

Underlying value: Break free from complicated coffee jargon and simply have an amazing cup of coffee.

Tone

Another element of brand voice is tone, which is how a brand’s voice is applied. BLK & Bold’s brand voice is casual, approachable, conversational, and educational.

Attitude

BLK & Bold’s brand voice also shows an attitude of social engagement. In particular, BLK & Bold looks for culturally-relevant opportunities to promote its brand and mission. For example, in collaboration with the Movement for Black Lives, it partnered with Ben & Jerry’s to create an ice cream flavor made with a distinct cold brew from BLK & Bold called Change is Brewing. BLK & Bold also produces an officially-licensed National Basketball Association (NBA) special edition coffee. For every bag of The Warm Up coffee sold, the NBA matches an additional 5% towards BLK & Bold’s For Our Youth initiative.

The results

With its brand voice in mind, BLK & Bold has had the most success with branding using Instagram. In particular, BLK & Bold’s success with Instagram videos is due in large part to an ability to capture coffee brewing and tasting sensations. One example is an Instagram video for iced coffee in which viewers can hear the sound of ice cubes going into a glass. Ads on both Instagram and Facebook target coffee drinkers between the ages of 25 and 45. These users are most likely to have the discretionary income to purchase the equipment needed to brew coffee at home. They are also the most likely to be attracted to socially responsible companies like BLK & Bold—companies that are making an impact on communities with proceeds from their profits.

The following are taglines from BLK & Bold’s top-performing posts on Instagram. Can you spot BLK & Bold’s brand voice in these?

What started as an idea turned out to be much more than we expected.
- Inspiration (Purpose): Speciality coffee joins forces with community impact
- Value: Invest in our community by returning 5% of profits to support community programs
It’s really the coffee experience that we’re here for.
- Inspiration (Mission): Educate coffee drinkers and give back to the community
- Value: Daily beverage choices make a difference and impact others
- Value: Break free from complicated coffee jargon and simply have an amazing cup of coffee
Let us know if you can spot the different flavor characteristics and mouth feel of our light and dark roast coffee by trying the roasts side-by-side.
- Value: Break free from complicated coffee jargon and simply have an amazing cup of coffee
- Tone: Casual, approachable, conversational, and educational

BLK & Bold would like to continue their successful branding on Instagram and Facebook while making better use of Twitter to reach more customers. Because tweets rely more on text than visuals, they will continue to ensure that their brand voice comes through loud and clear in their messages. Their tone and attitude of social engagement in their brand voice will play a larger role when using Twitter. Their ability to capture user interest through timely tweets about culturally-relevant events and topics will be crucial.

Conclusion

This case study on BLK & Bold’s brand voice demonstrates how well a brand voice can convey a company’s core values and business. Brand voice elements differ for every company, but they should be thoughtfully considered and incorporated when creating content for social media campaigns.

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

In the video that covered writing for social media in this course, you learned about brand voice, language, and tone for social media content. You also learned that including images and visuals helps attract people to follow you and consume your content. This reading provides additional tips about creating visually engaging content for social media and introduces popular software tools for design and editing.

Note: Review the Make social media posts accessible reading for additional design tips to make your social media content inclusive and accessible.

Here are ten tips for designing content for social media:

Use simple graphics. Graphics that have too many details aren’t fully understood or appreciated in a few seconds. Keeping graphics simple and elegant helps your message remain clear.
Use colors that drive more engagement. Even if your organization or agency has a recommended color palette, you can sometimes include a contrasting color or tint to grab people’s attention. However, make sure you get approval when you veer away from a brand’s approved colors. For help choosing colors that look good together, consult a resource that provides recommendations on color combinations. For example, try the color wheel offered by Canva.
Use contrast to help put the focus on key elements. It doesn’t always have to be a color contrast. You can also use variations in size, texture, shape, layout, and font.
Use text that is easy to read. Text should be easy to read so it doesn’t distract users from the full impact of visuals.
Use a variety of styles. Although certain styles clearly make a company or brand recognizable, using the same style for all social media content gets boring. Shake it up and surprise users with a variety of styles. Be playful and adjust text sizes, colors, and weights for full effect.
Use smart branding. Users should know what brand you’re highlighting without your brand being mentioned repeatedly, or your logo visible at all times. Place branding in or near key images for users to find when they want it.
Use principles of visual hierarchy. Visual hierarchy enables users to observe overall meaning before they gather details from individual elements. A structured hierarchy of visual components can group elements together, place elements in a natural or predictable pattern (such as reading from left to right), or lead to the most important elements to click on.
Use a call to action. A call to action is an instruction that tells the customer what to do next. Whether it’s liking, sharing, or commenting, include a call to action in your social media content to reach more users.
Use visuals across multiple platforms. Design, optimize, and re-use graphics, photos, and videos across multiple social media platforms. For example, a photo on Instagram can be reused on Facebook.
Use and create templates. Use and create templates for social media content that is successful. Doing so enables you to create similar content with a high likelihood of success.

Tools for visual content

If you work for an advertising agency or larger company, you might use an approved set of paid tools, like Adobe Creative Cloud, which is a collection of more than 20 apps for photography, video, design, web pages, UX, and social media. If you work in a smaller company or work as a freelancer, you might use free tools to minimize cost or a combination of paid and free tools. The following is a sampler of paid and free tools so you can get an idea of what is available.

Photo editing

For paid software for photo editing, you can try the following products:

These links will take you to the respective websites of the photo editing software for more information.

For free or open-source software for photo editing, you can try the following options:

Canva
darktable
Fotor

Video editing

For video editing, you can try the following products:

For free or open-source software for video editing, you can try the following options:

Graphic design

For graphic design, you can try the following products:

For free graphic design options, you can try the following:

Images and graphics for commercial use

Creating original images, graphics, and artwork takes a lot of time and skill. Many organizations search online for image libraries or stock photos when they can’t create something in-house. If you choose to search online for images and graphics, be sure you know the difference between free and licensed materials. Free images are offered by creators with an understanding that they are to be credited for their work. Sometimes these images must be displayed with the creator’s logo. Licensed images for commercial use typically have a payment fee or subscription requirement that users must abide by.

Key takeaways

Many popular software tools help you create visually appealing visual content on personal computers. Some software tools are free or open-source. Graphic designers use tools that require some additional training to use at a professional level. Other tools have templates and editing features that make creating graphics or working with photos and videos much easier for everyone. If you don’t use original artwork, make sure you follow all copyright and licensing

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Over 1 billion people in the world have a disability. That’s more than the populations of the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil combined. A disability can affect:

Vision
Movement
Thinking
Memory
Learning
Communication
Hearing
Mental health
Social relationships

When creating social media content, it’s important to remember that your audience includes people with hearing loss who rely on captions, and people with visual disabilities who rely on special text that describes images. This reading describes how you can make your social media posts more accessible to these audiences.

What is accessibility?

According to one definition, accessibility is considering the needs of people with disabilities when products, services, and facilities are built or modified, making them usable by people of all abilities.

Use the following guidelines to help make your social media posts more accessible to all.

Video captioning

Video captioning assists those without hearing or with some hearing loss. Captioning also assists those whose native language isn’t the one being used, and those who aren’t in a place to play sound as they normally would, such as in a quiet space or crowded environment.

Closed captions are overlaid on video and can be turned on and off by users.
Open captions are embedded directly in video and can’t be hidden or turned off by users.

Check which type of captions are supported on the social media platforms you intend to use and design your content to meet those requirements.

Alternative text

Alternative text, or alt text for short, is a brief, written description of an image with the primary purpose of assisting individuals who are visually impaired. Many platforms allow you to submit alt text for social media posts. Some platforms automatically generate alt text for images using artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. While this technology is still emerging, it might save some time if you edit the auto-generated text instead of creating the text yourself.

Here are two tips for writing alt text descriptions:

Cup of coffee with foam in the shape of a heart on top

Because screen readers announce the presence of images with the word “image,” there is no need to include “image” in your description. For example, instead of “image of a cup of coffee” you can use “cup of coffee” and even add more descriptive details like “cup of coffee with foam in the shape of a heart on top.”

Wall clock with hour, minute, and second hands showing the passage of time

Focus on the purpose of the image as opposed to every detail about the image. For example, if an image of a clock is used to illustrate a limited-time offer, it really isn’t necessary to include the actual time set on the clock in the alt text. You can use “wall clock with hour, minute, and second hands showing the passage of time” without even mentioning that the time displayed is 10:10.

Color contrast

Color contrast ratios (L1/L2) measure the luminescence (or brightness) of the lighter color (L1) against the luminescence of the darker color (L2). Contrast ratios range from 1/1 or 1:1 to 21/1 or 21:1. White on white has a contrast ratio of 1:1 and black on white has a contrast ratio of 21:1. For comparison purposes, red on white has a contrast ratio of 4:1, green on white has a contrast ratio of 1.4:1, and blue on white has a contrast ratio of 8.6:1 .

For graphics in social media, use a color contrast of at least 4.5:1 for text and background color to make the text more readable. Using this guidance, you would choose to use blue on white with a contrast ratio of 8.6:1 instead of red or green on white with contrast ratios of 4:1 and 1.4:1, respectively.

Pro tip: WebAIM is a useful website where you can access resources for making content more accessible. Check out their interactive contrast checker page where you can input foreground and background hex color codes to determine the contrast ratio.

Fonts

Custom fonts may appear striking and innovative, but screen readers could have a problem identifying the text. Be on alert because this includes italic text and other standard styles.

Hashtags

Hashtags should use what’s known as CamelCase, where initial letters of words are capitalized. For example, use #VirtualClassroom instead of #virtualclassroom. Screen readers recognize CamelCase text as two words and will use the correct pronunciation.

Emojis

Emojis are fun, but use them sparingly in social media posts because screen readers use multiple words to describe them. Imagine five smiling face emojis translated by a screen reader as “Grinning Face with Big Eyes, Grinning Face with Big Eyes, Smiling Face with Sunglasses, Grinning Face with Big Eyes, Grinning Face with Big Eyes.” Emojis take too long to describe with screen readers and people can lose their patience.

Language

When you create social media content, avoid terms that undervalue or dehumanize people because of their disability. For example, instead of using the term “the blind,” you could use “blind people” or “partially-sighted people.” Additionally, just because you have heard certain phrases used frequently doesn’t mean that they are inclusive. It is often necessary to rephrase commonly used statements with accessibility in mind. For example, you could replace “take a walk” with “enjoy the outdoors” because people using the aid of wheelchairs can’t walk, but certainly do enjoy the outdoors. Use inclusive language in your social media posts.

Key takeaways

Social media content casts a wide net to increase user interest in a company, brand, product, or individual. The more accessible and inclusive posts are, the wider the audience and the greater the interest. Aim for the largest audience possible by making your social media content accessible.

What is Canva?

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Throughout this course, you’ve learned a lot about what content can do for your social media presence. In this reading, you’ll learn how to design a post for your social media pages.

What is Canva?

Canva is an online graphic design tool used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content, including videos. As opposed to other graphic design tools that require some level of expertise, Canva is specifically laid out for ease of use, which means novice users can feel more comfortable starting out with the tool. Canva offers a large number of pre-built templates so that digital marketers can create on-brand posts at an expert design level.

Navigate the Canva interface

To create a new social media asset in Canva, you’ll need to log in or create a new account. To begin, navigate to Canva and complete one of those steps.You will be directed to provide your email address and create a password, or log in via your Google, Facebook, or Apple account.

Log in or create a new account interface on Canva

Next, select create a design. Select the type of post you want to create. You’ll have the option to create a video, presentation, Instagram post or story, poster, Facebook post, logo, flyer, infographic, resume, and other types of content. Since we are covering social media in this course, for now, select an Instagram post.

Now, title your post in the bar at the top of the page. Make sure to give your post a descriptive title. For example, your title might include the name of the discount being offered or an upcoming holiday.

After you’ve titled it, browse Canva’s various templates by entering keywords in the search bar that involves the specific topic of your post or business, like electronic store, or more vague terms, such as colorful.

Note: The free templates do not have a crown icon. The items with a crown require a paid Canva Pro account.

When you find a template you like, select it to add to your post. You can adjust and edit all the elements within the template by selecting an element. A toolbar will pop up, allowing you to make any changes you want. You’ll have the ability to change colors, sizes, fonts, text alignment, spacing, and more. If you want to select more than one element, you can click and drag your mouse over the elements you wish to edit, and they’ll be selected together.

When you’re ready to add header text, go to the Text menu and select Add a heading. Move the heading to where you would like to place it in the post. You can also click on an existing text element in the template to edit or delete it.

Note: If you’re on desktop, Canva has a series of keyboard shortcuts you can use to streamline your design process. These shortcuts allow you to easily complete actions like: create a new text box, bold your text, resize your images, copy your elements, and much more. Visit this link to learn more.

To adjust text, select the text you want to edit and choose a font from the dropdown menu. To ensure your text is accessible, avoid complicated fonts and italics, bold, or other special lettering.

Cursor resting in the font selection field, with popular fonts listed below

If you need to add additional body text, go to the Text menu and select Add a little bit of body text. Move the text box to where you would like to place it in the post.

“Text” and “Add a little bit of body text” highlighted

Next, click on the Elements tab to find graphics, photos, videos, and more. Type a keyword in the search bar to find relevant elements for your design. When you click on an item in the elements tab, it will automatically be added to your canvas, but feel free to drag it around and place it where you want.

You might want to share your post with collaborators before posting your new post on social media. To share, click the share button. Here you can set the sharing permissions from only people added to Anyone with the link.You can also choose what access to allow, from full editing access to view only. You can either click Copy link or add in your collaborators email addresses.

Finally, be sure to save the work you did to complete this activity. Canva automatically saves your work, but you can also save it by clicking File and selecting Save. After you save your work, navigate to the homepage to the Your Projects tab, where you can find your saved projects.

After you’ve experimented with creating an Instagram post for this course, we encourage you to go back and try to design other kinds of assets in Canva. The skills you learn in this course can be applied to any kind of social media post.

Key takeaways

Canva can be an invaluable tool to your social media presence as a digital marketer or social media manager. Make sure to spend time getting acquainted with its various capabilities and features so you set yourself up for success in future roles.

Practice Peer-graded Assignment. Duration: 1 hour. Grade: 100%

Video. Duration: 4 minutes

As a digital marketer posting on social media, you need to know best practices for writing and designing new content, whether you’re the one developing it yourself or you’re overseeing someone else’s work. However, it can be time-consuming to continually have to develop fresh content for all of your social media platforms.

For this reason, it’s useful to repurpose content on social media. Repurposing allows you to take your best content and make it do more work for you. Repurposing content is a process of recreating and republishing content in different formats. For example, you could take the content from one webinar and turn it into a video, an e-book, a blog post, a podcast, and a checklist.

Besides saving you time, repurposing content on social media has other benefits. It can reinforce your brand’s message, give your content an SEO boost, and reach audiences who missed the post the first time you published it. Repurposing content also allows you to create something completely new and original from your existing images, videos, and text.

When considering what content to repurpose, prioritize content that has performed well and can help you meet the goals defined in your strategy, like driving more traffic to your website, generating more leads, or raising brand awareness. Another thing to consider is whether the content is evergreen, meaning that it will be relevant over a long period of time or time-constrained. For example, event-specific content would not be ideal to repurpose.

Once you’ve selected high-performing evergreen content to repurpose, you can go about determining how to repurpose it. There are endless approaches to repurposing content on social media, and these will differ based on the platform you want to use.

A five-minute tutorial video may work well on YouTube, for example, but it is probably too long for Twitter. Here are a few common ways that you can repurpose content on social media.

Let’s start with lists, or listicles. Listicles are articles written in a list format. Maybe you’ve posted a how-to guide with bullet points or a list of suggestions. You can break that list up into a series of posts. For instance, your home improvement company’s post on five ways to update your kitchen on a budget could become five new standalone posts, each elaborating on the original list. Each post could provide additional information and links which increase the original post’s value for your audience.

You can also transform text into images. Posts that contain data or statistics translate well into infographics, for example. Images help readers understand complex concepts. Furthermore, visual content generates higher engagement than text, so repurposing written content as images allows you to reach more people.

Another creative way to repurpose content is to take fun or amusing video clips or animations and turn them into GIFs. A GIF is an animated image. A number of tools exist that can help you create fun, eye-catching GIFs that can help you promote your content.

You can also identify frequent questions on your social media platforms and answer them with an existing article. By repurposing relevant content and linking it to your responses, you build relationships and help others asking the same question find you.

There are many tools available that are designed to help you repurpose content. These tools can help you do things like convert a podcast into a blog post, create articles from short YouTube videos, and take a blog post and turn it into a podcast episode. For example, WordPress, a tool that helps digital marketers create websites and blogs, offers a feature that automatically publishes blog posts simultaneously as Twitter threads with two extra clicks.

We have discussed just a few of the many ways to repurpose your social media content here. You can research numerous other approaches to repurposing content or come up with your own. You’ve learned so much about how to listen and engage with your audience, and you’ll soon get the opportunity to put these lessons into practice.

Video. Duration: 3 minutes

My name is Catherine, and I manage the Global Google Social Media accounts. In my job, I manage the Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and now TikTok channels for Google globally. My favorite part of the job is that no day is the same. We meet a ton of people. We get to constantly think creatively. We get to write and take pictures and learn so many things about what Google is doing throughout the world.

You engage a social media audience by talking to them directly. You learn where your audience is, what they care about, and how to talk to them. So we write copy that’s really thoughtful and funny and clever. We try to think of what the users on each platform care about. The audience on Instagram is very different than the audience on Twitter, and how to reach both of them effectively is very different.

And we just tell a story. We talk to them as if they’re real people. We incorporate storytelling in everything that we do. We think that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we try to figure out why people will care. We introduce it to people as if they don’t know anything about it, because in the case of many of our products that are brand new, they don’t. So we introduce it and we start to explain, why is this cool, why is this important, and why is this relevant to you as the user or potential user? And then we build a story from there.

When I’m trying to tell a story on social media, I approach things pretty much the same way each time. I try and figure out everything I can about the post, and I talk to the people that I’m working with to figure out what their goal is. So their goal could be like, “We want to reach Gen Z” or “We want to break news.” And once I know what their goal is, then I start to ask questions to learn about what the announcement is. And once I know everything I can about it, I ask, “What do we have access to? Do we have videos? Do we have photos? Do we have nothing?” Sometimes it’s nothing, and we just have a fun news that we have to figure out what to do with.

So, from there, after I’ve learned and gone on this fact-finding mission to figure out what the story is, then I start writing copy. For us at Google, writing the copy is perhaps the most important thing that we start with. We spend lots of time writing it as a team and getting it edited by many people. Nothing that we publish is published without many layers of approval.

So once we get the writing perfect and we send it to various teams to approve, then we start looking at images and we think, “What’s going to be the image that makes people stop? Why are people going to be—once they’re scrolling through a busy feed with lots of news, lots of fun memes, lots of announcements— why are people going to stop and listen to what a corporation has to say?” So we look for compelling images, and we will work with people to reshoot stuff or to provide best practices.

I think the thing to always remember about social media is that it’s still a really fun field and it’s really creative. And even though marketing sometimes feels really serious and important, what we’re doing is still really fun, and it’s an opportunity to try new things and be creative. My biggest recommendation is: Don’t lose sight of the fact that you’re doing something every day that’s fun and original and creative, and just keep enjoying it.

Test your knowledge: Compose engaging content

Practice Quiz. 7 questions. Grade: 100%

Wrap-up

Video. Duration: 2 minutes

You’ve made it to the end of this section of the course, where you’ve learned all about the third pillar of social media marketing, listening and engagement. We have explored what social listening is and how it can help you understand the social media sentiment around your brand, engage your customers, and increase your customer acquisitions. You’ve learned some social listening tactics such as locating where people are talking about you and what they’re saying, assessing your competition, and choosing a tool to help you in the process.

We’ve also discussed some ways to engage your social media audience and gain followers. You learned that responding to comments quickly and authentically provides excellent customer service. Getting to know your audience and creating valuable and creative content can help boost your social media engagement. You’ve also discovered some specific strategies for growing your followers on Twitter, including tweeting often, using hashtags effectively, and posting attention-grabbing visuals.

You’ve learned that to write effectively for social media, it helps to research and write to your target audience, speak like them, and include a call to action at the end of your posts. You also understand why it’s important to develop a social media brand voice, and how you can start to develop this voice by defining your brand’s personality, finding the appropriate tone for different posts, and creating brand voice guidelines.

Finally, you’ve learned that social media marketers often repurpose a lot of existing content to save time and increase their reach, and we’ve discussed a few ways to do this. When you’re new to marketing on social media, social media listening and engaging with your audience can teach you a lot about your brand. They give you the opportunity to experience your brand from your audience’s point of view, which can help you create content that is more valuable to them.

Amazing job. Up next, we’ll get into the next pillar of social media marketing, analytics and reporting.

Glossary terms from module 3

Reading. Duration: 20 minutes

Terms and definitions from Course 3, Module 3

Open Link to access Glossary module 3

Module 3 challenge

Due, Nov 12, 11:59 PM WET. Quiz. 10 questions. Grade: 100%

Week 3

Listening and engagement on social media

Dedication to study

Learning Objectives

Content

1. Social listening

Welcome to week 3

The importance of social listening

Social listening is a two-step process.

Social listening strategies

Case study: How EatMoveRest improves content with social listening

Company background

The challenges

Large volume of user comments

No barriers or limits on expression in feedback

Inability to address or reply to every comment

The approach

Prioritized reviews

Designated times and methods for feedback

The results

Reversing changes to content

Improving the meal planning app

Conclusion

Popular social listening tools

Social listening tools

HubSpot Social Media Management Software

Sprout Social

Falcon.io + Brandwatch (Falcon.io is now part of Brandwatch)

Hootsuite

Key takeaways

Resources for more information

Activity: Use social listening to gain insights

Activity Overview

Scenario

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1: Access the template

Step 2: Access supporting materials

Step 3: Filter mentions by positive sentiment

Step 4: Filter mentions by negative sentiment

Step 5: Filter the data by additional criteria

Step 6: Plan actions based on insights

What to Include in Your Response

Activity Exemplar: Use social listening to gain insights

Completed Exemplar

Assessment of Exemplar

Test your knowledge: Social listening

2. Engagement on social media

Social media engagement

How to use YouTube to grow your audience

Respond to social media users

Why should you respond?

How should you respond?

Key takeaways

Camille - Respond to social media comments

Activity: Respond to customer comments

Activity Overview

Scenario

Step-By-Step Instructions

What to Include in Your Response

Activity Exemplar: Respond to customer comments

Completed Exemplar

Assessment of Exemplar

Increase your followers on Twitter

Let’s review

Social media engagement

Influencer marketing

Different types of influencers

Importance of influencer marketing

Tips on selecting influencers for your campaign

Quick tips for effective influencer marketing

Key takeaways

Social marketing on mobile

Social media and mobile marketing

Mobile social media marketing tips

Create mobile-friendly posts

Integrate video

Ask customers to check in

Encourage user-generated content

Leverage influencer marketing

Key takeaways