All Social Platforms Were Not Created Equal

Sure, you can easily lump all the different social media platforms into a large bucket and call them “Social Media,” but to truly reach your target audience today, it means tailoring your messaging for each platform. While a “spray and pray” method used to work in the past, it doesn’t anymore. Consumers talk about content fatigue, and are getting much smarter in their abilities to tune out “bad” marketing.

Now, to really speak to THAT consumer you are writing each piece of content for, it has to be relevant. And relevance isn’t limited simply to the topic; the platform and method of content delivery is equally important. I have a few friends that will write something they are proud of, or think is great for who they are trying to get in front of, and they will post the same piece, word for word on both Twitter and Facebook. Here’s why I’m already tuned out – if I were to see it on only Twitter or only Facebook, I might feel it’s a bit more tailored to me and my needs. But the second I see it just thrown out there, my mind has become trained to begin ignoring what the piece is about, even if it is exactly what I’m looking for. Social media has trained my brain to look at marketing messaging cast out in a huge net and phishing. Also, and here’s the catch – if you are posting the same thing on both Twitter and Facebook, what is my (and countless hundreds of others) incentive for following you on both sites? While personalizing your marketing is important, if you are posting identical content on both of those platforms, you are losing out on potentially millions more people seeing your content.

Unfortunately, these friends of mine that are doing this aren’t necessarily “new” to marketing, or “new” to using social media marketing. Nor are they alone – I am surprised almost daily at people I used to think of my go-to’s for “best practices” doing this exact same thing. I like to think that it’s not a misunderstanding of how to use social media platforms correctly, but then what am I left with? Are they simply lazy? Or do they truly not recognize that each social media site is different? WHO you are writing for needs to be just as much of a focus as WHERE you are writing for.

For brevity, let’s focus on just Twitter and Facebook here. Both are necessary for businesses and brands to garner attention, new customers, and deepen relationships with existing customers. Those current and potential customers, as well as you and me (and millions of others) go to each of those sites for different reasons. It is our job as marketers to learn what those reasons are, and what drives people to one site for certain information and sharing, where they are most receptive to information we are aiming to provide for them, and where ultimately, we can convert them.

Twitter vs Facebook: What’s the Big Difference?

There are generalizations we can make about who visits each site, and break those down by demographics. When we understand who is going where, we can begin to come up with strategies to get in front of those people, to achieve each of our goals.

The statistics seem to change daily, but it appears that Twitter users skew younger than Facebook’s average users. That makes a difference when you think of what content to share on Facebook. Many articles have recently been written that the biggest growth in users that Facebook is seeing recently is within the 65+ crowd. So while emojis and gifs may be all the rage on Twitter, they will most likely not be as relevant on Facebook.

We can then generalize and say that content written for Facebook needs to go a bit deeper in information and topic, and be written for a more mature audience.

Working off personal knowledge, (as marketers need to be able to do) Facebook friends are more often people you know in person, as opposed to Twitter, where you are more likely to have “Twitter friends” you have never met. Think of the people you engage with the most on Twitter – if you are like me, they span the globe more than the people you are friends with on Facebook.

This is important to keep in mind for writing content – content for Twitter may need to have a more global feel than Facebook posts. If you are a brand, odds are that the people that have liked you on Facebook are more concentrated in where they live – that would make sense, since people are more likely to like a brand they can purchase. If you only sell in the US, it follows that you will not have many likes coming from the UK or Australia, while on Twitter, people from another country may follow you more for your content, than for availability, coupons or deals.

How do topics differ between Twitter and Facebook?

Right away, you can see that with the character restraints currently on Twitter, content must be written to grab your audience much faster. Facebook allows you to write more in a post, whereas on Twitter you would have to send someone off the platform via links to get your full message out.

As we mentioned with friends vs people you haven’t met, Facebook topics tend to be more personal in nature. Twitter topics are less personal, focusing more on trending topics, news and opinions.

Twitter moves much faster than Facebook. The average life span of a tweet is under an hour, where on Facebook, posts are seen for much longer (depending on how many friends you have). Because of this, you will want to repeat certain tweets during different times of the day, where on Facebook, you will only post the same post once.

On the flip side, Twitter is like a raucous soiree in which everyone is talking over everyone else. Therefore, the relationships are pretty superficial and all about the fun they are having at that moment in time. You may find that Facebook is better for your brand for converting casual consumers to more loyal buyers. I believe this is because with the more personal nature of sharing on Facebook, influence amongst friends recommending products to one other is stronger, because people are more connected and personal.

However, because of hashtags and Twitters search functions, people that influence others will tend to influence many more people than they do on Facebook.

What do we do now, with this information?

We begin by learning to write for Twitter and for Facebook, but not with the same content at the same time.

Let’s start with Twitter

Twitter allows you to post 140 characters per Tweet. However, it is recommended to use much less, so that people can RT your posts and still have space to include commentary, as well as allowing yourself room for hashtags that will help each  Tweet reach the people you are writing it for. Hashtags will also allow you to encourage conversations between people around those terms. I would suggest aiming for no more than 100 characters/tweet.

You will want to have something compelling and relevant to say in the beginning of your tweet to grab followers’ attention and stand out in an increasingly busy stream. Images are perfect for attracting people to your tweets and can say much more than your allowed 140 characters.

And now for Facebook

If we researched and learned that Facebook is more personal, posts on this platform will need more emotion tied to them. You have more room here to tell more stories from a personal point of view, so take advantage of that time and space.

Images are just as important on Facebook as they are on Twitter. They still help grab attention on the News Feed and give people more opportunity to connect with your visual and your words. Now, you even have the option of adding a personal video or even live stream without having to take users off the platform they are already looking to connect with you on.

Know Your Audience

No matter the platform, you will need to know who is going to see your posts and when, and what their preferred method of receiving your content is.

The better and more personally you can get to know your target audience, the better you can craft posts for them, no matter the site. It takes time to listen, chat and engage with all the people you want to, but without doing so, you won’t have the edge on knowing what types of content they are seeking, and where they are most likely to see it. The time you spend getting to know your audience will definitely pay off.

 

Skinny Chocolate Muffins

I am all for rationalizing my indulgences and turning guilty pleasures into just pleasures. Especially when it comes to chocolate. I recently made these muffins and loved them. I want to work on making them stay a bit moister for longer - let me know if you have any tips!

Ingredients

• 1/2 c brown sugar + 1 tbsp. brown sugar, firmly packed
• 3 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 c water
• 1/4 c unsweetened applesauce
• 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 margarine, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. In one bowl, stir together flour, brown sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt
3. In a second bowl, stir together the remaining ingredients
4. Pour the mixture from the second bowl into the first bowl
5. Stir until you have a smooth batter
6. Pour into a nonstick muffin tin coated with cooking spray
7. Fill until half full
8. Bake 20 minutes, or until the toothpick test comes out clean
9. Enjoy!

All-Natural Homemade Pumpable Lotion

I am on a big DIY kick lately. One of the main things I wanted to learn how to do was make my own lotion. I use lotion often (especially during these harsh Chicago winters) and wanted to save money and be able to have exactly the scents I wanted.

The first few lotions I made were great, but very thick and a bit hard. I wanted to find a lotion recipe that I was able to put into a pump and also into small containers to keep with me. After much trial and error, I found a recipe I was able to adapt - and now I want to share it with you!

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup Old Fashioned Oats
• 1/2 cup almond oil (I also have used jojoba oil and it works exactly the same)
• 1/2 cup organic extra virgin coconut oil
• 3 tbsp. beeswax pellets (I use the pellets as they're the fastest to melt)
• 1 tbsp. Vitamin E oil
• Essential Oils for scent (optional)

Instructions

1. Put the water and oats into a Mason jar and soak for 12 hours at room temperature.

2. Drain the oats, keeping the water from the oatmeal. You want to end up with 1/2 cup of oatmeal water. You'll be left with oats for breakfast! Set aside the oatmeal water for a later step.

3. In a bowl that can be heated (I use a glass measuring cup), add in the almond oil, coconut oil and beeswax. Heat this in a double boiler until fully melted.

4. Put the oil mixture into the fridge for 45 minutes.

 

5. Place the oatmeal water, Vitamin E oil and any essential oils into a mixing bowl. Scrape the container from the fridge into this bowl and mix both mixtures together with a handheld mixer. Continue to whip until it looks like soft, creamy lotion.

6. Pour the lotion into an empty Ziploc bag and snip off a corner (like a homemade pastry bag). Squeeze the lotion from the bag into your pump bottle.

7. Use and enjoy! You can store this lotion at room temperature.

 

8 Ways To Be More Productive Working From Home

In the sixteen years I have been working professionally, I have been fortunate to spend 9 of them working from home. My very first job out of college, at 21, was a work-from-home job. I had never had a “real” full-time grown up job before, and it was very exciting. However, I had no clue how to manage my time. (Why isn’t time management a college business course?) Still living at home, I set up a home office in my bedroom, with a little desk that sat me in front of a window that opened onto the street, and I would either spend 15 hours each day working at that desk, or I would end up spending more hours inches away in my bed.

Many of us work more productively working from home, as opposed to working in an office environment. On Twitter, I see many people complaining about working from home, or writing blog posts about “How To Keep Your Sanity” when you work from home, but personally, I don’t agree with those. I find that my gratitude for never having to battle traffic, having no stress that perhaps I’m not home and my dog needs to go out or there are dishes waiting for me in the sink outweigh any negatives. That does not mean it is without its challenges. As I mentioned before, time management is the number one. It takes a lot of self-discipline to successfully work from home, and it is an ongoing process to continually find the best ways to be the most successful. What works for me may not work for you.

Here are 8 tips I hope will help make you more productive when working from home.

1.      Give Yourself a “Commute” to the Office

I have a spare bedroom in the current house that I use as my office. On the weekends, I do not enter this room at all. I only go into my office when I am working. Are there some weekends I DO have to work? Absolutely, and I will go into the office to work, and then go into any other room to give myself a weekend. Your office set up is also very important – it should have the “right” light and desk set up for you to be most productive. The main idea is to keep your work space and home space separate. I would highly advise against taking your laptop into bed with you. It’s important to leave work behind and clear your head, and it can become a bit depressing to feel like work is always there.

 

2.      Keep Regular Office Hours

This has taken me years to abide by, but I find it helps immensely. I start work every day at the same time, I try to end work close to the same time every day. The biggest issue with time management was I began to feel burned out when I worked too many hours, since I live and work in the same house.

 

3.      Have a Routine

Similar to keeping regular office hours, I find that it helps to have a routine. If you worked in an office you would have certain things you did before leaving for work – perhaps that is hitting the gym or packing a lunch. You can do the same routine when you work from home. When you first begin working from home it is easy to take an extra-long lunch break or still try to catch the same shows you watched prior to working, but sticking to a routine will help safeguard against using this as an excuse to slack off.

 

4.      Take Breaks

If you were in an office, there would be times you would take a break to visit a colleague, or walk around the office, go for coffee – you need those same breaks when you work from home. There are easy stretching exercises you can find to do sitting down or away from your desk, if you have any home fitness equipment you might want to take a 15 minute exercise break at the same time each day or you might even get to the gym at a certain time daily. I take breaks to walk the dog every four hours, or visit my “water cooler” (more info on that next).

 

5.      Find Your Water Cooler

Not working in an office can at times, be a bit isolating. I believe it is important to guard against this. You might find your own water cooler by phoning or texting a colleague and sharing a bit of info with them. For me, my water cooler has been found in Twitter Chats. I have a calendar of chats I try to make on a regular basis where I have gotten to know a few key people in each one and have allowed them to get to know me. It’s a nice break in the day and it gives me an outlet for communication outside of work.

 

6.      Have the Right Tools For Your Job

If you work remotely for a company you will be given an employee laptop and other such essentials, but if you freelance or own your company it will be imperative that you have a laptop and printer that works best for you. I’d also suggest finding a conferencing solution such as Zoom or Go To Meeting for all team meetings and screen sharing. I also believe everyone should have a VPN. Your scheduling and document management will also be critical to maintaining a productive workspace. Personally, I am old-school when it comes to my calendar. I use a paper planner where I can view the whole “Month-At-A-Glance” and use a color coding system to differentiate between work appointments and notes, and personal dates.

 

7.      Work When You Are at Your Most Productive

I am a morning person. So I begin my days earlier than some other people. This can at times be a challenge when needing email responses or calls scheduled for West Coast workers, but I believe it’s most important to schedule the bulk of your workday around the time you are going to have the most energy and do the best work.

 

8.       Eat Well

I don’t mean prepare six course lunches and spend hours slaving over the stove simply because you have the time to. I have found that it is all too easy to have a bag of chips next to me at my desk and munch throughout the day while I’m sitting in front of my laptop. Take time before work and after work to do simple meal prep, so you always have healthy fast options available to you when hunger strikes. Set times to eat just as you would if you were at an office. Your mind and body will thank you.

 

 It might take you some time to adjust to working from home, but it really does pay off in the long run. What are some of the tips YOU have to share, on what helps your work from home experience work for you?

 

Meatless Monday Motivation: Minestrone!

It's 11 degrees in Chicago. I can't think of a better time for a hearty hot soup! Minestrone has always been a fave of mine - it's easy to make, (even easier with this recipe in a slow cooker) and it's chock full of veggies.

Working from home, I love using my slow cooker. I can decide on meals ahead of time, buy the ingredients, throw everything in and not have to think about dinner the rest of the day (or week, depending on how well I plan!)

Here's my latest recipe for slow cooker Minestrone, just in time for Meatless Monday

INGREDIENTS

• 1 box (1 qt) of reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 1 can (15 oz) red kidney beans, drained
• 1 can (15 oz) garbanzo beans, drained
• 1 can (15 oz) cannellini beans, drained
• 1-2 cans (at least 15 oz) diced tomatoes - I used two cans, because I like the soup base a bit thicker
• 5 baby carrots, thinly sliced
• 1 bunch green onions or scallions, sliced
• 4 celery stalks, sliced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 package frozen spinach, thawed

DIRECTIONS 

1. Add broth, beans, tomatoes (with juice), carrots, scallions, celery and onion into the slow cooker. Stir to combine ingredients.
2. Cover and cook on low for 5 hours.
3. Add spinach and 1 tablespoon of Italian seasoning to cooker.
4. Cover and cook for 30 more minutes.

Serve with parmesan cheese sprinkled on top of the soup and enjoy!

4 Ways Social Listening Can Benefit Your Business

Admit it, marketers. There are times we have a bit of trouble finding the right balance between talking about ourselves and talking with our communities. Are we truly listening to people that take the time to talk with us, write about us, spend time chatting about us and our brand? Are we really listening to what consumers are telling us, or are we listening while we think of a way to interject our brand into their conversations?

Social media listening is often also called social media monitoring. It is the process of finding out what is being said about our company, products, brand and team and analyzing that data. Done right, social listening can be one of our most important tools to gather intelligence from our customers. We then have the ability to take that intel and use it in our content, business development, R&D, customer service and real-time marketing campaigns.



Seen in San Francisco

But I’ve got a Facebook page! I tweet every day at the optimized times! Social listening is more than simply setting up a Google Alert to see what people are saying about us on their social platforms. It’s about finding where those conversations are taking place, and engaging with the people having those conversations: responding, delivering content to them that they have shown an interest in, helping them with problems where you can that they have mentioned, and giving them offers that will enrich their lives.



If our goal is to reach a targeted group of consumers, the way to their hearts is through relevant, personalized and engaging content. How many times have you shaken your head at an ad you’ve been shown on social media, wondering how you possibly were targeted by that brand? It happens to me almost daily, lately. Think of it in terms of your own life – if you had a friend that constantly tried to have conversations with you that weren’t based on anything you were interested in or wanted to engage about, how long would that friendship last? When you focus on social listening, you can avoid being tuned out by the people you are trying to reach, by getting to know what they want to talk about.

Here are 4 ways social listening can benefit your business:

1.      Get An Edge Up Over Your Competition

You can set up keywords to monitor words and phrases that relate to your product. My tip – do varieties of your product name, as well as common misspellings (if there can be any). You may find that people are complaining about a competitors product or customer service, then step in and ask them to explain what shortcomings they are finding. From there, you can show them that you are there for THEM, that they are important to YOU, explain your product’s benefits and that you are available to them. This can then lead to finding new customers for your business! People will see that your brand cares about the people that are building the brand, and that makes you more attractive to potential consumers, watching your interactions. I’m willing to bet your competitors are already monitoring your brand and what is being said about it, so it’s only fair for you to have the same advantage.



2.      Identify Influencers and Brand Advocates

Finding out who is sharing your information and organically spreading positive attributes about your product or brand is a great way to find relationships to begin building. Who are your brand advocates? Once you know, you can reward them for their unaided help in spreading the love for your brand. A happy customer that talks about you without being asked is marketing gold. Continue to build upon those relationships!

3.      Find Your Tribe

With social listening, you don’t have to guess where the best place to focus your marketing efforts might be. Guess work and lost time is saved by knowing what platform is best for your social media marketing. You can see where people are having the conversations surrounding your product and talk to them there. It might be on Twitter, or Facebook or Instagram…join those conversations and get to know both your current and potential consumers.

4.      Improve Customer Service

When you are focused on listening, you will hear both positive and negative feedback. It can easily be argued that negative feedback is better to find, because then you are being directly told how to improve. If someone is taking the time to complain, they are not yet a lost consumer! That is them showing you they still DO like you, your product or brand, and are open to being helped through a problem.

Social listening requires patience and empathy to understand consumers’ points of view. It might be hard at first, but try to listen with an open mind. Do not get overly defensive while you are gathering data and finding out what people are saying. There are a great number of additional benefits social listening can provide your business. So…let’s get out there and start learning!

 

 

 

10 Questions to Ask When Hiring A Social Media Consultant

Today, more than ever, people are leaving in-house marketing jobs, choosing instead to begin their own consulting business. Even I did it. After 12 years in corporate America, working in-house as a Senior Marketing Manager, I chose to break off on my own and open my own consulting company.

There are both pros and cons for small businesses looking to hire a consultant. The pro is that you can find people with years of experience and can hire them as consultants. Not bringing them in-house means you save money on their insurance, bonuses and at times, even equity. The cons come in when you realize there is a lower barrier to entry now; anyone with a personal Facebook page and a large number of Twitter followers can offer their services to you. While they might be more affordable, it is sometimes hard to discern if they have experience building brands, or if they’re simply good at promoting themselves.

Once you decide it is time to outsource, you will want to strongly vet potential consultants and/or agencies. Here are 10 things I recommend you ask or consider:

1.      Can they show you a proven track record? Ask what brands the person or agency has worked with and is currently working with (to ensure they are not working with a competing brand). Don’t be shy about asking for references. Ask about a brand they worked with where something did not work out – how did they handle that? Were they able to quickly adapt and change course? Do they have the necessary experience in your industry to properly advance your business? The more they know about your industry, the less of a learning curve there will be, and the more resources they will bring to your brand. What are their first steps when taking on new clients?

2.      Where can I find current and past examples of your work? Anyone with experience will be readily able to show you a portfolio of work as well as links to initiatives they have run or been involved in creating. Look for campaigns that have been repeated. You know things are working when you keep doing it! Have the campaigns led to brand exposure? Sales leads? Will this experience help your market?

3.      Who will be handling my account and what background does this person come from? The background of each person working on behalf of your brand is important. If you are looking for marketing, PR and/or social media help, you want people that have leveraged those skills working with prior companies. Do these people have knowledge and experience with trends in these areas, or have they recently realized how easy it is to call themselves a consultant and pitch for your business?

4.      How will we track ROI? We know that not everything will have immediately ROI that is trackable when it comes to social media, but most is. You want to know that this consultant or agency isn’t simply looking to add likes, followers or fans, but is actually able to analyze conversion rates. Brands that hire an outside agency will want to know that the agency or consultant is consistently monitoring results, and is being held accountable. You will want to know there is a standard monitoring and reporting process in place that works for both you and the agency or consultant.

5.      What is their process for reporting? How often will you meet with them? How often will you be provided status updates or check-ins? If the agency doesn’t have a method to suggest immediately to you on how they will communicate, it might be a red flag that the agency isn’t as connected with their clients as you will want to be, or that they haven’t even thought of this yet.

6.      What will you do if something goes wrong? How would you handle a social media crisis? Marketing campaigns that look great on paper can go wrong in application, no matter how seasoned the consultant is.  How will they react? How do they respond to negative reviews? Tweets? Negative Facebook comments?

7.      How do they come up with strategic plans? How much does writing content figure into their experience and plan for your business? A good consultant will have a workflow that works for them and you. They will know how to integrate social media with PR and traditional media. They will want to talk to your sales team and find out what plans they have and will know how to integrate them into all they are doing.

8.      How will content be developed? And, will you have to approve all of the content written on behalf of your brand? Will it all have to be planned, or will you trust this person or agency to create on-the-fly content for you? Does this person have the experience necessary to understand the nuances of writing content specific for each platform? Content developed for your brand needs to be likeable and shareable. A consultant or agency should be able to show you examples of previously created content for other clients, as well as their content calendar, or what their content creation process looks like.

9.      What does success look like, and how will we measure it? Brands that are investing in consultants and agencies must have clear goals in mind when starting this process. An agency should be able to help you achieve your KPIs. The consultant or agency you choose will help you establish these KPIs and will (with you) write strategies and tactics to hit those goals.

10.   What will this cost? Outside of the monthly retainer or fee you agree to with the consultant or agency, you want to know that your budget is being kept in mind in all they are doing. Are there going to be additional costs in monitoring brand mentions? What is the process for getting additional budget approved, before this consultant agrees to something? Do they have a plan for ads on Facebook and Twitter? What will that cost?

By no means is this an exhaustive list. Choosing a consultant or agency is a big decision for every brand. You are entrusting your baby to someone outside the “inner circle.” You want to know what influencers they are friends with and for how long, what their personal social media profiles look like, how they conduct their networking…What other questions would YOU ask? Are there any questions you wish you’d asked prior to hiring a previous agency or consultant?