Social Media experts reveal 10 big mistakes they've made so that you don't!

A Social media company wrote an article listing the top 10 mistakes they've made so that we don't have to! Daring, isn't it? The article claims that these mistakes has not only costed them reach and engagement but even fans and customers! Wondering what the mistakes were? Here's a quick list:

1. Focusing on quantity over quality
2. Being on all social media platforms
3. Posting the same content across platforms
4. Using only landscape images and videos
5. Sharing only our own content
6. Not curating user-generated content
7. Not uploading videos to social media platforms
8. Not targeting specific audience for our content
9. Not boosting the right posts
10. Not replying to questions on social (fast enough)

I've worked on a few social media campaigns and am guilty of 2,3, 9 and even 10! How about you?

Interested to know more? Read the detailed article here.

Link: 

https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-mistakes?utm_content=buffer85840&utm_medium=buffer_social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=buffer_updates

Facebook and the Commodification of News

By Blaire Townshend

A recent article on Wired by Julia Greenberg outlines the symbiotic relationship that currently exists between Facebook and news content creators. In recent years, Facebook has become a major content outlet for news companies, and with good reason—as the article states, "600 million people see a news story on Facebook each week." However, Greenberg claims that Facebook is misleading news content creators regarding the benefits of targeting their vast online audience, and that it is using its current market dominance to acquire this rich content: "It's false hope, or at its worst, a threat."

Media companies feel compelled to put their content on Facebook because of the site's astounding membership numbers. But who does this best serve? It certainly benefits Facebook, as their users' are exposed to experiential, engaging content that Facebook does not have to create. Facebook is currently capitalizing on the potential of such news content, and has developed the following initiatives to do so:

• Instant Articles: decreases loading time on users' phones
• Live: allows users to interact with content subjects in real time
• 360 Degree Video: allows users to experience news content as if they were there
• API: allows users to communicate with a "newsbot" in Facebook Messenger

These programs greatly enhance user experience. Yet Greenberg argues that Facebook has used these programs to become a "crucial distribution platform" for news companies, and has thus made itself indispensable to these companies—and in turn made them dependent upon Facebook to reach their audiences. To me, this sounds familiar—Google has similarly used its dominance of the online search market to ensure that companies have to go through their system (and pay them) to get business. Essentially, Facebook has leveraged its power and insured that the relationship between itself (as distributor) and news companies (as content creators) is inherently unequal.

 This unequal distribution of power in turn ensures that Facebook has control over the content that is created—after all, they need not disseminate what they do not approve of, and can refuse to promote content that goes against their own ends. For example, Greenberg cites the creation of the above Facebook programs as being responsible for the decisions that news content creators are making—their content is conceived and structured to cater to these programs.

To me, this is a concerning development. Greenberg argues that the problem here is that news companies must use up valuable financial and human resources to develop suitable content. I, on the other hand, am more concerned with the ethical implications of the issue. Facebook's apparent power over the creation of news content is just one more element that biases news content creators away from what is "relevant" and "true" towards what is palatable to one company. Of course, a plethora of other business, political, and religious biases already plague the ideal of unadulterated news content. It is for this reason, however, that one more influencing factor is, in my opinion, distinctly unwelcome.


Greenberg, Julia. "Facebook Has Seized the Media, and That's Bad News for Everyone But Facebook." Wired. 13 Apr. 2016. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. 

Free Tools for Creating Visual Content

29 Free Online Design Tools for Creating Stunning Visual Content for the Web

Who said you had to pay for enriching the visual content of your web??

There are plenty of free options that can satisfy your design needs just as good as fancier, expensive tools.

Here’s a list of some of them:

Free Font Tools

1) Type Genius

2) Google Fonts

3) WhatFont

4) DaFont 

5) 1001 Free Fonts

6) Font Squirrel

7) Tiff

Free Templates

8) HubSpot's 10 Infographic Templates 

9) Canva

10) HubSpot's 50 Customizable CTA Templates 

11) PlaceIt 

12) HubSpot's 5 PowerPoint SlideShare Templates 

Free Color Tools

13) Pictaculous

14) ColorZilla

Free Annotation Tools

15) Awesome Screenshot

16) Skitch

Free Photo Editing Tools

17) PicMonkey

18) BeFunky

19) VSCO Cam

20) Snapseed

Free Stock Photo Resources

21) Compfight

22) Death to the Stock Photo

23) Stock Photos From HubSpot

24) 250 Holiday Stock Photos From HubSpot

25) Unsplash

Free Interactive Design Tools

26) Infogr.am

27) InVision 

28) Marvel

Free Drawing Tools

29) Google Drawings

Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/free-visual-content-tools-list

More Content Marketing

http://www.business2community.com/infographics/8-content-marketing-trends-watch-2015-infographic-01139640

I am piggybacking on AungMaw's post re: content marketing. I think it's fair to say most of us have become adept at avoiding/ignoring most types of advertisements. Traditional marketing techniques have become less relevant by the day and the importance of creating content that is valued by customers continues to grow more important with many marketing professionals claiming that 2015 will be the year of content marketing.

It's easy to see how this type of marketing can grab a customer. I think this raises the question, "How does this affect the cost of client acquisition?" Not all content marketing can be as clever as the campaign AungMaw cited. Large corporations will be spending great sums of money on writers and creative personnel to produce this product. The conversion from lead, to customer, to upsell may not be cheaper when we consider the costs associated with this type of marketing. Firms may gain new customers, but the increased cost structure may leave the bottom line flat.

7 Content Marketing Buzzwords you should know

1) Content Marketing

Who uses it: Everyone. SEO marketers trying to steer their careers out of a tailspin. Opportunistic MBAs attempting to build branded content farms. Agency folks touting a new content service that they just made up six days ago.

What they think it means: Doing a bunch of random crap and praying that it works. Blog posts! Vines! In the cloud, dude. It’s all about the content marketing cloud.

What it really means: The overarching practice of creating content to promote a brand or product. At this point, it pretty much encapsulates everything that isn’t a static ad (print, display, billboard, etc.) or a radio spot. (Those still exist, right?) Content marketing has even swallowed social media marketing, which is so 2012.

2) Brand publishing

Who uses it: All the cool kids cherishing the few months before it’s co-opted by every marketer this side of Madison Avenue.

What they think it means: Creating branded content that doesn’t feel like a slimy advertorial or a display ad in sheep’s clothing.

What it really means: The practice of a brand telling stories about the things they care about, their brand, and their brand’s products in a way that’s genuinely engaging and not promotional.

3) Contentvertising

Who uses it: People who should be fired.

What they think it means: That they created a clever new word for content marketing.

What it really means: That the buzzwords are mating and multiplying. Run for your life.

4) Native ad/Sponsored Content

Who uses it: Publishers desperate for a new revenue stream. Agencies freaking out over a dwindling media spend. Ad-tech dudes who know that talking about banner ads at a party is never going to get them laid. Ever.

What they think it means: A sponsored listicle on BuzzFeed.

What it really means: An ad that mimics the experience around it. Google search ads are the granddaddy of native ads online. Sponsored Facebook Newsfeed posts, Promoted Tweets, and, yes, BuzzFeed Sponsored Posts are all examples of native ads.

5) Brand Newsroom

Who uses it: Hip CMOs. Agencies that just dropped a half mil designing a command center with more screens than Minority Report. Old-school media types while rolling their eyes.

What they think it means: Gathering a bunch of people in a room and totally crushing the Super Bowl and Oscars. What time is it? IT’S REAL-TIME.

What it really means: The fundamental restructuring of brand communications to mirror those of a media organization able to publish great stories swiftly; the group of people who publish content on behalf of your brand consistently, improving and growing an audience over time.

6) Brand Journalism

Who uses it: All those people talking about brand newsrooms like it’s the latest Beyoncé album.

What they think it means: All the content a brand publishes.

What it really means: The specific practice of a trained journalist reporting on the inner happenings of a brand on behalf of the brand.

7) Content Marketing Cloud

Who uses it: People who apparently think that you just can’t wait to get rid of your content marketing mainframe.

What they think it means: That you will give them lots of money.

What it really means: Cloud-based software that lets you manage your content marketing operation and analyze your success. Not to get too SaaSy (see what we did there?), but is there any other kind?

Source: http://contently.com/strategist/2014/04/18/the-best-branded-content-of-2014-so-far/

Branded Content: Is it better to own or sponsor?

As branded content surges as an alternative to digital ads, many advertisers are facing essentially the same question - do they make their own content, or buy it from somebody else? Creativity, control, speed, quality and cost -- all are at stake. Which do they choose?

GE makes its own media for brand properties like Ecomagination.com, its informational site about technology and environment. Cadillac, on the other hand, elects to sponsor a travel site, Gallivant, for a month at a time. Virgin Mobile's model is to create innumerable lists that it posts on BuzzFeed.

It's all branded content, but each is a vastly different investment. Sponsoring content on a media property can cost much more than generating content on your own property, such as a microsite or blog. But there are plus and minuses to both approaches. What you gain in ease, you could lose in control and vice versa.

Katrina Craigwell, digital marketing manager at GE, which is still experimenting, says her publishing medium of choice is Tumblr, which offers a massive built-in network of a certain demographic -- mostly teens and tech-savvy bored-at-workers. (GE's newest content property, txchnologist.com, runs exclusively on Tumblr.)

Owning the media in this fashion gives the sponsor full control of the message, allowing it to develop a unique and memorable voice, and to engage with readers and viewers on the brand's home field, with the brand's own design. But, as anyone in media will tell you, building a devoted audience as a publisher requires patience, coordination and leadership, not to mention talent to create appealing stories. Brands face the additional challenge of pacifying the variety of corporate cooks who typically want to weigh in on any outbound communication. 

The internal complications lead many advertisers to chicken-out and buy interruptive, shot-in-the-arm banners and TV spots. The average click-through rates and user-engagement time on owned media can be 10 times that of banners. But persuading one's boss to wait six months for results to grow, when superficial results can be bought now, can be a magician's feat.

That's where sponsored content comes in.

Last year, GE sponsored a short series on BuzzFeed called "The GE Show." One of its stories, "The 60 Most Beautiful Cinemagraph GIFs" which showed examples of a new type of visual media (essentially, high-definition still images with overlaid video), garnered nearly 120 responses and 1,000 shares. The post became instantly popular, garnering tens of thousands of views from being on the BuzzFeed homepage, plus extra traffic from friends of the 1,000 readers who shared. It was a powerful alternative to annoying readers with a takeover ad, and just as easy to buy.

As was the case with BuzzFeed and "The GE Show," content sponsors typically get story ideation and approval rights, and the publisher creates the stories in its own voice and style. The publisher can then maneuver posts in order to obtain the number of impressions the advertiser paid for. With ease come downsides: lack of control, both creatively and process-wise; the audience is loyal to the publication first, advertiser second (BuzzFeed users are there because they love BuzzFeed); and it's difficult to capture traffic for content retargeting from a sponsored slot where the content is blanketed in the media company's design (placing a sponsor's code for a newsletter subscription form or a cookie for content retargeting requires custom programming, which requires code reviews, contracts, etc.).

However, when brands team up with established publishers like Forbes, The Atlantic and Gawker, which are among several media companies to have created BuzzFeed-like sponsored content programs, they can inherit audience trust. Said Mashable COO Sharon Feder to me on one occasion, "Our readers love our advertisers, because of the content they sponsor." When BMW underwrites Mashable's "Innovation Series" and refrains from speaking about cars (per Mashable's editorial policy), readers appreciate and respect BMW more than if it had smooshed ads in their faces.

It's probable that the most successful content programs will always contain a mix of owned and sponsored. And while both media and advertiser make out well in this model, the real winners are consumers, who benefit from great content.

Read the full article here.