But what exactly is social selling, and why should you care? Is it another buzzword that’ll quickly fade, or should it hold a coveted spot in your marketing and sales playbook? 

But before you go all-in, it’s important to make sure that social selling is the right fit for your business. So in this comprehensive guide, we’ll take a closer look at what social selling is, why it matters, and how to get started with a social selling strategy that works for you.

Let’s dive in.

What is social selling?

True or false: is social selling synonymous with social media marketing?

Drum roll, please…the answer is false.

Social media marketing is vastly different from social selling. And spoiler alert, it’s also different from social media advertising. So what’s left on these social platforms?

In a nutshell, social selling uses social media platforms to build relationships with potential customers, share valuable content, and ultimately drive sales.

It’s a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes and industries, allowing you to reach a wider audience, build trust and credibility with potential customers, and stay top-of-mind when they’re ready to purchase.

The biggest difference between social and traditional selling methods revolves around building relationships and providing value, rather than coming off as “salsey” or spammy like a used car salesman. 

For example, supplement company Athletic Greens uses basic social selling principles in this Instagram post.

They clearly outline how the six main ingredients solve a problem for people struggling with mental health. Focusing on the benefits and advantages of these ingredients in their greens powder helps the brand attract its desired audience and foster sales naturally.

Let’s break it down even further. Social selling differs from traditional selling methods in several ways:

Online vs offline:

It primarily takes place on digital platforms such as social media and networking sites, whereas traditional selling methods rely on face-to-face interactions and other offline methods like phone calls, emails, or business cards to keep the relationship alive. 

Sales approach:

Helps focus on building relationships with potential customers over time by providing valuable information, sharing industry insights, and engaging in conversations. On the other hand, traditional selling methods tend to focus more on direct selling tactics and pushing products or services.

Audience reach:

Provides a wider reach and targets specific audiences by leveraging the power of social media and online platforms. Whereas traditional methods rely more on personal networks and people you contact with.

Flexibility:

You can do it remotely, from any location, and at any time. Whereas traditional selling methods typically require in-person interactions and more rigid schedules.

Adaptability:

Social selling allows instant feedback and customer communication, allowing marketing and sales teams to adapt and improve their approach in real-time, whereas traditional methods can be less responsive to customer needs and feedback.

Automation:

It often utilises automation tools such as social media management, CRM, and lead generation software, which can help to streamline the process and reach more prospects, whereas traditional methods are generally more manual.

What is the Social Selling Index?

The Social Selling Index (SSI) is a metric developed by LinkedIn that measures your effectiveness at using social media to engage with your professional network, share valuable content, and ultimately drive sales.

The SSI score is calculated based on four factors:

1. Establishing a professional brand, such as having a complete profile and regularly publishing content relevant to your industry.
2. Finding the right people and growing your network.
3. Engaging with your audience by liking, commenting, and sharing content relevant to your industry.
4. Building and fostering relationships with decision-makers.

LinkedIn assigns each factor a score and provides an overall SSI score ranging from 0 to 100.

The higher your SSI score, the more effective you are at using social selling techniques on LinkedIn.

5 benefits of social selling for your business

Are you ready to unlock the full potential of your social media presence and take your sales to new heights? 

Here are the top five reasons you should consider adding social selling to your marketing arsenal:

1. Increased reach and visibility

Social media dominates the internet with billions of monthly active users. So why not capture a slice of that pie? 

You can connect with potential customers and industry influencers globally at your fingertips by utilising platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, with a combined reach of over 7 billion. 

Try picturing that many people in one place together. It’s nearly impossible to imagine. That’s why social media is so powerful.  

And with 26.3% of internet users turning to social media to find products to purchase, you certainly don’t want to miss out on this opportunity to get your brand in front of the right people at the right time (on a massive scale and with minimal effort). It’s a no-brainer. 

2. Improved customer relationships

According to Inc. Magazine, 96% of consumers don’t trust ads.

Like in all relationships, you want to start off on the right foot. And if you are resorting to ads as your main sales strategy, your relationship could get off to a rocky start. 

Consumers are looking for a face behind the brand. It’s no longer acceptable to bombard consumers with spammy ads. Today, consumers crave human interaction and being treated like a person rather than a number in a spreadsheet.

Social selling allows you to tap into the power of social media to connect with potential customers where they already naturally spend their time. Social listening tools help your sales and marketing teams identify the warm leads who actively talk about your brand or industry.

These conversations open the door for you to share relevant, helpful information at the right place and time. Soon your social pages will become the go-to spot when consumers search for information about a product or service. 

3. Greater credibility and trust

When you share genuine content that helps address customer pain points or answers common questions, it’s better perceived than a cold call or cold outreach email.

For instance, we all hate walking past mall kiosks where they try to jam a free skincare sample in your face. It’s not a pleasant interaction, to say the least. And honestly, it makes you less inclined to try the product. 

On the other hand, social selling often isn’t perceived by the consumer as selling. It’s just another conversation on their favourite social media platforms. And at the end of the day, authentic conversations build trust. And trust leads to paying customers.

4. Enhanced targeting and personalisation

Social media has many superpowers. But one area where it shines is the ability to reach your target audience with ease.

Why? Well, certain social media platforms are more popular with different demographics. 

For instance, LinkedIn is a treasure trove for B2B business owners. And TikTok is worth its weight in gold for Gen Z.

Social selling helps you narrow in on the platforms your audience uses, and detailed analytics can also help you identify optimal times to post and engage with your audience. 

Gone are the days of generic, faceless ads. And say hello to personalised comments and interactions with people who care what you have to say. 

5. Increased sales and revenue

According to LinkedIn, brands participating in social selling are 78% more likely to outsell their peers who don’t use social media.

If you still aren’t convinced, further data shows that 51% of businesses participating in social selling are more likely to reach their sales quotas.

Participating in social selling is a surefire way to boost your company’s bottom line.

The best networks for social selling

All the signs point to the increased benefits of social selling. So what’s the best social media platform for optimal results? 

Well, the answer is…it depends. The best networks for social selling depend on the industry and target audience, but here are some popular options. 

Instagram:

Instagram is a popular platform for B2C companies. It’s a visual-heavy platform great for using design templates to create compelling visuals to stand out from the crowd in the food, fashion, and travel industry. 

TikTok:

TikTok has emerged as a new platform for social selling. It’s ideal for companies that want to create short, engaging videos to align with the wants and needs of the younger generations. 

LinkedIn:

The professional networking site is a great choice for B2B companies, as it allows you to connect with other professionals and decision-makers in your industry.

Twitter:

Twitter can be a great way to engage with potential customers and stay up-to-date on industry news and trends.

Facebook:

With almost 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the perfect platform for reaching a large audience. It’s also a good choice for B2C companies, as it can help you connect with customers on a more personal level.

Pinterest:

Pinterest can be a great platform for social selling, especially for businesses with a strong visual aspect, such as fashion, home decor, and travel. It ties Twitter with around 400 million monthly active users.

Ultimately, it’s important to choose the platforms your target audience is most active on and where you can reach them most effectively. 

But it’s also wise to have a presence on multiple platforms to maximise your reach.

How to succeed at social selling

Like other sales and marketing strategies, solidifying a game plan is the key to success.

Follow these simple tips to boost the effectiveness of your next social selling campaign.

Identify and engage with the right prospects

Sometimes social media efforts can feel like you are throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

So before you dive headfirst into your social selling strategy, it’s critical to identify the people worthy of your interactions. 

Thankfully, social listening tools allow you to monitor conversations about your brand online and identify potential leads already talking about your products or services. And voila, you have a direct insight into their demographics.

Sounds too good to be true, huh? Well, it’s a simple, foolproof method for building your ideal customer profile. 

Build relationships through valuable content and interactions

The key to succeeding at social selling is building relationships with potential customers. And one of the best ways to do that’s by sharing expert knowledge that your audience finds helpful. 

For instance, you can provide value by answering questions about the latest trends in your niche. There’s no better way to develop yourself into a go-to resource than when people have questions about whatever product or service interests them most.

Take Zillow, for example. They conducted a poll about the top housing resolutions for 2023 and turned it into a helpful guide for customers on how to land their dream homes. 

The guide focuses more on the audience than on pitching their tools. It provides valuable insight into the housing market and outlines tips for navigating a challenging market.

Plus, the content shows that Zillow cared about their followers because they collected customer data and published it back to their feed to spread the knowledge (rather than using it for retargeting or other paid advertisements). 

Use social media analytics to track and optimise your efforts

Your social media analytics will quickly become your best friend in understanding the success of your social selling strategies.

Why? Well, the numbers don’t lie. It’s a quick way to confirm if your directed efforts are paying off, what’s working and what’s falling by the wayside. With Hopper HQ, you can see what content format performs best, including views, likes, comments, and saves (all in one simple view). 

For instance, imagine you gained 1,000 followers in one day after you posted an Instagram poll about 2023 beauty trends. That’s a strong indicator that your audience enjoys an interactive post (and you should keep up with that content format).

On the flip side, if your follower count stays stagnant after posting simple graphics with links to blog posts, you know that’s probably not resonating well with your audience, and you should move on to the next content strategy. 

Leverage tools to streamline your social selling process

As the saying goes: work smarter, not harder. 

Social media automation tools make social selling a breeze by taking care of tedious tasks like social listening and sticking to a consistent content publishing schedule (even in the wee hours of the morning).

Not only does it save you time, but these tools help identify the best leads with in-depth analytics. You can automatically schedule posts to keep your brand front and centre with the most promising opportunities.

A workflow software will help you to spend less time and effort on tedious tasks frees up more time to solidify those customer relationships and close more deals. It’s a win-win. 

Tips and best practices for social selling

Are you ready to take your social selling game to new heights? 

Here are a few simple tips and tricks for the best results. 

Use social listening to stay up-to-date on industry trends and customer needs

One of the key aspects of social selling is staying up-to-date on the latest industry trends and understanding the needs of your target customers. 

As we’ve mentioned, adding social listening tools to your tech stack can help you track mentions of your brand, competitors, and industry keywords across social media platforms. 

For instance, ChatGPT has taken over LinkedIn and Twitter feeds by storm. It’s seemingly the only thing marketers have discussed over the last few months.

And HubSpot took notice. They jumped on the bandwagon to create playful social posts around this topic that their target audience finds interesting.  

And the result was incredible. It stirred up a lot of comments and shares during a usually quiet period on the platform for B2B businesses. 

Keeping your eyes and ears open pays off tenfold. 

Engage with prospects and customers in a personalised and authentic way

Remember the golden rule that you learned in kindergarten? Treat others the way you want to be treated. Well, this holds true for social selling as well.

Nobody is interested in generic sales messaging that sounds robotic and forced. Ideally, you want to feel like a brand genuinely cares about its online presence and providing the best product (instead of focusing on maximising margins). 

So make this a priority. Use an authentic tone by writing personalized messages, engaging in direct interactions, and building a community around your brand. 

This simple approach can build trust with your prospects and customers and increase the chances of turning one-time purchases into repeat customers.

Follow the lead of MegaFit Meals for some inspiration. A user commented about their preferences for a vegetarian enchilada meal.

The brand responded by acknowledging the feedback (showing that they care about their customer’s preferences) and said they’d share the feedback with the appropriate team. 

Again, this shows that the brand is paying attention and wants to hear from the consumer to continually improve the product. The brand added vegetarian enchiladas to its menu a few weeks later. 

Offer value and solve problems through your social selling efforts

Another component of successful social selling is offering value and solving problems for your target customers. This means providing helpful information, answering questions, and offering solutions to the problems your prospects and customers are facing. 

By doing this, you can position yourself as a valuable resource and trusted advisor, increasing the chances of building loyal customers around your brand. 

Unfortunately, Twitter has become a platform where frustrated customers voice their feelings about recent interactions with a brand. Airlines typically take the brunt of the criticism on Twitter. 

However, United Airlines took this opportunity to widely address a major delay due to circumstances out of their control and shared a travel waiver for impacted customers.

Any customer with specific questions or concerns can also directly message United Airlines for further assistance. Instead of using Twitter to sell more flight tickets, United Airlines uses the platform to understand current issues and offer real-time solutions. 

Continuously track and analyse your results to optimise your strategy

There’s nothing more frustrating (and hurtful to your bottom line) than throwing time and money at a sales strategy that delivers lacklustre results. Ideally, you want to avoid this scenario at all costs.

Numerous social media automation tools are available on the market to continuously track and analyse your results and optimise your social selling strategy. If a strategy works well today, it doesn’t mean it’ll work ten weeks from now (and vice versa).

By regularly analysing your results, you can make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts and how to improve your social selling strategy to drive more sales for your business.

Spend your resources on things that drive results. If you notice things aren’t working well, it’s time to switch gears to a new approach. 

3 examples of brands doing social selling right

Olipop

The first factor in the Social Selling Index (SSI) is establishing yourself as a professional brand, starting with a complete social media profile.

Olipop, a healthy soda brand, hits the nail on the head with this one thanks to its professional and well-organized Instagram page.

They effectively use the Instagram platform to showcase their product and mission through visually appealing photos and videos. Their Instagram profile also features highlighted stories that provide an in-depth look into the brand, its values, its investors, and positive affirmations from dieticians. 

The bio is concise yet informative. Iteffectively communicates the brand’s unique selling points, building trust with consumers looking for a healthy alternative to soda. 

Zillow

LinkedIn is an underrated platform for social selling. But one brand that uses it to its full potential is Zillow. 

Zillow educates and informs people about the real estate industry by sharing content about current market trends, positioning itself as a valuable, go-to resource for everything real estate.  

They also use their page to share their monthly newsletters and answer frequently asked questions. They’re great at positioning their content so it appears in the right place at the right time.

So, for example, when someone is looking to purchase a home in Nashville later this year, they’ll turn to Zillow for advice. Gaining insights on the current state of the market and then leveraging the platform for their search process. Everything is available at their fingertips. No fuss, no muss. 

Marriott

Marriott does a stellar job with the third pillar of the Social Selling Index. Which revolves around active engagement with your audience. 

They demonstrate their commitment to customer service by replying to comments on their Instagram posts. They make a commitment to provide helpful information and travel tips through their content, and address any concerns or questions customers may have. 

Marriott focuses on building trust and establishing a personal connection with its audience. This boosts the possibility for them to book a stay at one of its many properties.

This approach also shows that Marriott actively listens to its customers. Making it more likely for customers to return and recommend the brand to their family and friends on their next adventure. 

Wrapping up

People hate ads. It’s time to say goodbye to spammy ads for good. And that’s where social selling takes centre stage. 

Social selling is a game-changer for businesses looking to grow and engage with potential customers. 

From identifying leads through social listening to building trust and credibility, social selling is a must-have strategy in today’s market. The benefits are clear, from qualified lead generation to building brand awareness and customer loyalty through personalised and authentic methodologies. 

Don’t miss out on this opportunity. Take the leap and start investing in social selling for your business today. You won’t regret it.

The post Social Selling: Why you should totally invest in it appeared first on Hopper HQ.

To keep up with the demands of effective social media marketing, you need an Instagram scheduler to simplify and automate team collaboration as well as social media marketing processes. Teams are spoiled for choice as the internet is flooded with a variety of scheduling options to choose from and pay for.

You deserve a glitch-free experience while doing social media marketing. Finding an optimal Instagram scheduling tool will help you save time, collaborate better, and effectively meet your business goals. 

The 15 Best Instagram Scheduler Apps to Use in 2024

If you’re trying to choose the best apps for Instagram posts, here’s a list of the 15 best Instagram scheduling tools to help you stay on top of your social media marketing game.

1) Hopper HQ

Price: $16/month (annual billing)

Hopper HQ is an excellent Instagram scheduler comprising a user-friendly interface and easy-to-use elements. With Hopper HQ you can plan, edit and schedule you Instagram posts, stories and reels.

Some of these amazing features include

• Content planning and visualization
• Automatic posting management
• Advanced visibility via branded agencies
• Easy reel creation, bulk upload, scheduling, and preset sharing
• Hashtag generation for optimal media coverage (offers 1000s of relevant suggestions in seconds)
• Effortless story creation for the Instagram platform
• Insightful analytics to monitor media growth
• Premium content creation for viewer engagement
• Seamless scheduling set-up for time management
• Mobile platforms on Andriod and iOS devices
• Multiple account management
• Image cropping & editing
• Team and client collaboration

If you are looking for customer-centered Instagram scheduling apps with a team that cares about your success, try out Hopper HQ. It is the number 1 Instagram scheduling tool that helps entrepreneurs and social media managers like you produce quality content, coordinate its management and improve follower engagement from desktop and mobile phones. It supports social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, and Pinterest. 

It offers affordable pricing plans of $16 per month (for annual billing) and $19 per month for monthly billings. It offers a 14-day trial to newcomers looking to explore its prospects on all plans. 

Don’t take our word for it. Here’s what some customers are saying about Hopper HQ’s ease of use, delivery, customer care, and satisfaction:

“Loving the Hopper experience so far. I’m still on my “Hopper” trial, but I must say I’m pretty smitten. I tried “Later” and was initially quite impressed, but I ran out of credits halfway through the month and they don’t allow you to top-up, so I thought I’d give Hopper a try and they haven’t disappointed. Hopper allows you to schedule unlimited posts per month and 50 in advance, which is perfect for me. What’s more, the customer service team at Hopper is exceptionally responsive and they seem to genuinely care about providing a great customer experience – big shout out to Isabel and Elle for that! If you’re serious about taking your social media to the next level, then I suggest you give Hopper a go.”

–Ms. J. Jordyn (February 2, 2022) Trustpilot.com

“In our busy lives we do not always get to post to company social media platforms, luckily with Hopper HQ ensuring there are regular posts is easy and can be scheduled months in advance to ensure there is always something happening. The ease of use is amazing and Hopper HQ is the most cost-effective. Posts are always on time and customer service when things go wrong is amazing.”

–Sharri V. (March 11, 2021) Capterra.com

“The best social media planner I’ve ever used!

I’ve been using scheduling/planning tools for social media for about 7 years and this is by far the best tool I’ve used. It’s really user-friendly, everything is logical and simplified. My favorite thing is the grid view along the side – it’s amazing that it automatically updates with posts that you’ve shared directly on Instagram, not just through Hopper HQ. Also being able to see hashtag information when adding to captions.”

–Emma I. (July 15, 2020) G2.com

Hopper HQ has been given the well-deserved nickname “The Ultimate Instagram Planning and Scheduling Tool” by users old and new.

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2) Hootsuite

Price: starts at $99/month (annual billing)

Hootsuite is a social media tool used to create and publish content on multiple Instagram business profiles and interact with followers. It is used to launch social campaigns across other platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and is quite high-end.

Pros:

• Multiple account and platform management
• Scheduling posts
• Easy content creation

“We have used Hootsuite for over 5 years as a platform to organize and publish our social media content. It is clean and user-friendly!”

–Nicole Vuong , 2022 TrustRadius.com

Cons:

• Complex scheduling system
• Technical issues on the platform
• Unalluring hashtag suggestions 

“Total waste of time.

It’s riddled with constant errors so either you can’t schedule posts or when you do they don’t post!”

–Rob Lazenby, 2022 TrustPilot.com

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3) Semrush: Social Poster

Price: $19.75/month (annual billing)

Semrush is an SEO tool with a Social Media Poster feature that allows you to automate Instagram and Facebook posts. It also serves as an SEO toolkit for Instagram and Facebook. You can use it to manage visibility and content promotion across social media platforms with a $119.95 monthly subscription fee.

Pros:

• Competition’s analysis
• Keyword and advertising research

“Semrush is used by both our Marketing team and our Editorial team. Reviewed’s Marketing team uses Semrush for paid and earned marketing research, competitive analysis, and tracking performance. Our Editorial team uses multiple research and writing tools that help them make decisions about SEO.”

–Melissa D. Cooper (MBA), 2022 Trustradius.com

Cons:

• Expensive keyword features
• Slow data updates 
• Analysis can be broad and shallow

“I dislike their sales team, they aren’t helpful, their pricing is opaque and confusing, and their team doesn’t try to help you. They observe you simply as means for them to achieve their commissions. You won’t be treated like a customer, but an ATM.”

–Brian Bojan D., 2022 G2.com

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4) SocialBee

Price: $24/month (annual billing)

An alternative social media management platform, SocialBee helps users oversee all their media channels to build a firm online presence with monthly payments for solo users and agencies at $19 and $79 at basic rates, respectively.

Pros:

• Hashtag organization
• Post management and categorization

“Really appreciate that it’s easy to use with handy features — like the ability to save hashtags — which eliminate some of the work involved in social media management.”

–Petrina J., 2022 Getapp.com

Cons:

• The user interface could be friendlier
• Slow processing speeds
• Arduous sharing across integrated media platforms

“I started social bee early in the company so my account is not set up properly and I would need considerable help to re-work it.”

–Meara P., 2022 G2.com

5) Sendible

Price: $24/month (annual billing)

Sensible is an analytical social media tool that enables users to manage clients’ content and growth on social media platforms such as Instagram by scheduling video and image posts.

Pros:

• Simple scheduling
• Easy content sharing across social media platforms
• Simple user interface

“Building lists of your client’s social media accounts allow you to post the same content across all platforms simultaneously. Save a tune of time when you are posting content that doesn’t need to be tweaked for a specific platform.”

-Pittman W., 2022 G2.com

Cons:

• Large files affect uploads
• Image content needed to be monitored often

“Overall, Sendible was good. It doesn’t have many advanced features for posting but if you’re looking for an easy and more affordable solution, Sendible might be right for you. If you want the capability to schedule Instagram Carousels and Instagram stories, then Sendible is not it.”

–Juanita I., 2022 Getapp.com

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6) AgoraPulse

Price: $49/month (annual billing)

A social media management software, AgoraPulse organizes, monitors and publishes users’ posts on social media. It offers a publishing calendar and oversees inbox interactions with customers and followers.

Pros:

• Clear user interface
• Inbox management 

“The social listening feature. It helps me a lot to check all the mentions on the same platform. I also like the reports section, it’s clear and well-organized so it`s very easy to understand your results.”

–Alexandra V., 2022 G2.com

Cons:

• Difficulty with editing posts
• Needs more social media outlets
• Rescheduling can be difficult

“Agorapulse worked, but wasn’t as helpful as we had hoped”

–Bailey Letson, 2021 Trustradius.com

7) Loomly

Price: $32/month (annual billing)

Loomly helps social media managers organize, schedule, and post their content automatically. As a social media marketing tool, It has a content library, an approval workflow, advanced analytics, and an ads manager. It supports LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Pros:

• Easy-to-use management platform
• Multiple accounts publishing 

“Loomly allows me to schedule and post with ease.”

-Katie B., 2022 G2.com

Cons:

• Instagram publishing needs revamping
• Accounts connection to the calendar need reconnecting often

“Scheduling, tagging, and more functionality didn’t align with how we anticipated it would work. We canceled a scheduled post and this went anyway.”

-Tom S., 2022 G2.com

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8) Planable

Price: $11 a user a month (annual billing)

This social media tool manages Instagram profiles, and posts and automates their scheduling using workflows and coordinated engagement with user audiences. It comprises a cloud media library for Instagram downloads.

Pros:

• Data management with spreadsheets
• Access to commercial-free images 
• Multiple account posts and scheduling

“The ease of scheduling multiple posts across all platforms. Scheduling is fast and easy. Making your social media presence consistent is key these days and Planable makes that easy.”

–Amber B., 2022 G2.com

Cons:

• Limits advanced post scheduling
• Lack of media analytics 

“It can plan, but has a lot bad UX problems that block from post and you even did not see this.”

–Kirill S., 2022 G2.com

9) Onlypult

Price: $22.93/month (annual billing)

Onlypult is a social media management tool used by businesses to harmonize posts across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and a host of others to enable rapid response to comments and hashtag trends.

Pros:

• Access to multiple social media platforms
• Simple user interface

“Brillant social media scheduler”

–Danielle H.,2022 G2.com

Cons:

• Customer service is tiered
• Can be buggy

“It seems to have some bugs here and there. I would like to be able to access help more often from my Time Zone.”

–Jaime M., 2022 G2.com

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10) Circleboom Publish

Price: $24.99/month (annual billing)

Circleboom is a social media post scheduler that provides content design and publishing services across Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Google and Linkedin.

Pros:

• User-friendly interface
• Wide array of scheduling features

“An exceptional social media management tool that everyone must use”

–Warren C., 2022 G2.com

Cons:

• Poor post backlog
• Outdated services advertisements

“They claim to be able to do things like delete tweets or unlike them on a large scale, but once you buy the pro account and try to use it, Circleboom doesn’t do what was promised. Useless tool and would recommend avoiding at all costs.”

–Andrew Fisher, 2022 Trustpilot.com

11) Buffer

Price: $6 a channel a month (annual billing)

Buffer is a content-sharing social media tool that provides scheduling options for Instagram business holders and other social account variants to promote traffic and follower engagement. 

Pros:

• Simple interface
• Easy posting across social media platforms

“Great tool for everyday social media poster.”

–Ryan Padgett, 2022 Trustradius.com

Cons:

• Analysis is not in-depth
• Experiences some difficulty with Instagram

“Overall? We switched to a different media management program because this one was too finicky.”

–Elizabeth B., 2022 Getapp.com

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12) PromoRepublic

Price: $49/month (annual billing)

This social media marketing tool aids the users’ online presence on local search and social media with the use of an intelligent dashboard and features.

Pros:

• Free educational services
• Smooth automatic scheduling

“A pleasant surprise! More than what we wanted, just what we need!”

–Kim W., 2022

G2.com

Cons:

• Poor account linking system
• Slow customer issue response
• Limited posting to Instagram

“The tool itself would be fine but Promo republic staff (mainly management) does not care about its users. Especially early adopters. Beware of it as this company is untrusted!”

–David K., 2022 G2.com

13) ContentCal

Price: $30/month (annual billing)

ContentCal, a social media management platform, offers post creation, publishing, and analysis to clients for their business. It has a visual calendar interface for content scheduling and categorization with Adobe Express. It also gives educational courses to allow users to optimize their social media handling skillset

Pros:

• Use of collaboration tools
• Free educational courses

“ContentCal has become an essential tool for not only internal planning”

–Dottie Turnbull, 2021 Trustpilot.com

Cons:

• Service cancellation after 30 days
• Extension of subscription without prior notice
• Limited information on interface

“Cancellation is impossible and they try and charge you for an extra 12 month subscription.”

–Ben Harden, 2021 Trustpilot.com

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14) SocialPilot

Price: $25/month (annual billing)

Used by businesses to target large audiences, SocialPilot as a social media marketing platform manages client profiles, content, and activities to increase media engagement and productivity.

Pros:

• Automated scheduling
• Easy access to past content
• Simple user interface

“SocialPilot is a very suitable alternative to some big name options.”

–Joe H., 2022 G2.com

Cons:

• Editing is manual across social platforms
• Interface needs improvements
• Additional features for automated tools is required

“Deceptive with their cancellation process.”

–Marc O’Brien., 2021 G2.com

15) Tailwind

Price: $14.99/month (annual billing)

The social media scheduling and management tool, Tailwind, is used to create and schedule content across Instagram and Pinterest on its platform. It helps with market plans to increase media and follower interaction growth.

Pros:

• Post scheduling
• Weekly summary of activities

“Tailwind is extremely helpful. Every page just has pop-ups to help you to use the platform. I just love that I don’t have to remember posting to my social networks

Thank you. Tailwind!”

–Makgoba Molepo, 2022 Trustpilot.com

Cons:

• Poor customer service
• Buggy features and updates
• No refunds for poor services

“Extremely unreliable service and buggy application.”

–Tommy G, 2022 G2.com

Next Steps

Instagram presents you with a cost-effective opportunity to increase your visibility, sales, and brand value. As much as Instagram scheduling apps are needed, you can’t spend all your time scheduling posts. It is only one puzzle piece in your social media marketing efforts. Choose a platform that allows you to schedule and post to Instagram from your mobile and desktop devices.

You can learn more about how to choose the best Instagram scheduler for your business or visit our blog to glean more ideas on how to build your business with social media.

 Related content:

– The Best Time to Post on TikTok
– How to Link Instagram to TikTok
– How to Get More Views on TikTok
– How to Remove The TikTok Watermark in 7 Easy Ways

Stephanie Inabo

Stephanie Inabo Moses is a freelance writer for B2B and SaaS platforms. She worked as an editor and ran a social impact initiative in the work and learning space. You can connect with her on Twitter @inabo_stephanie and on LinkedIn @Stephanie Inabo

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As a brand or influencer, it’s important to pay attention to this trend as it can bring numerous benefits to your channel. The most obvious one, which is probably why you’re reading this post, is that the more active users, the more views your content can potentially get.

After identifying the best times, you can use a tool like Hopper HQ to schedule and autopost your YouTube shorts. Streamlining your content scheduling allows you to save time and focus on other important tasks.

But first, let us take a good look at when is the right time to be posting!

When’s the best time to post on YouTube Shorts?

The best time to post on YouTube Shorts is from 11 am to 12 pm on Tuesday.

However keep in mind that this can change depending on time zone, industry, and target audience. Make sure to leverage your analytics so that you can better understand who you’re reaching out to and when they’re most active.

There are social media marketing tools you can leverage to help find the best time to post on each channel.

YouTube Shorts Advantages

First, let’s see why YouTube Shorts is so appealing to users. We’ll also discuss why it’s an excellent opportunity for brands and influencers to expand their reach and connect with their audience in a new and exciting way.

With the increasing demand for short-form video content, YouTube has launched Shorts to answer TikTok. Shorts lets users create and share 60-second video clips with music, effects, and other creative tools. It has taken the internet by storm, and its user base is rocketing.

Accessibility is one of the biggest advantages of Shorts. It’s simple and user-friendly and anyone can use it to create content. This means brands and influencers of all sizes can get involved and make the most of the opportunity. The platform offers various creative tools, including – filters, effects, and speed controls – letting users create unique and visually appealing content.

Another advantage of Shorts is its ability to reach a young and highly engaged audience. With over 2 billion monthly active users on YouTube, Shorts offers a large and diverse audience for brands and influencers to reach. The platform’s algorithm recommends relevant content to the user. This makes it easier for brands and influencers to reach their target audience.

That explains how YouTube Shorts are good. But when to post them?

Is There The Best Time To Post YouTube Shorts?

Several factors determine the ideal time to post content on any platform, and YouTube Shorts are no exception. Brands and influencers need to understand the intricacies of posting content on YouTube Shorts to maximize reach and engagement.

1) Target Audience

The target audience is one of the key considerations when posting YouTube Shorts. Different demographics have different online behaviours. The best time to post content varies based on your target audience’s age, location, and interests.

For example, if your target audience is students, the best time to post content may be during the evenings or on weekends when they’re more likely to be browsing the internet.

On the other hand, if your target audience is working professionals, the best time to post may be during the workday when they’re likely to have some downtime.

2) Time Zone

Consider your followers’ time zones and adjust your posting schedule accordingly if you have a global audience.

You may need to post at the perfect time of the day when most of your audience is active to maximize your reach. 

3) Content-Type

Some content types, such as tutorials and product demonstrations, may be best posted during the workday when your audience may be looking for informative content. On the other hand, more lighthearted content, such as comedic skits or reaction videos, may perform better during the evenings or on weekends when your audience wants entertainment.

4) Day Of The Week

While there’s no hard and fast rule, many brands and influencers found that posting content on weekdays, particularly Mondays and Tuesdays, can offer higher engagement and viewership. This may be because viewers are more likely to be in a content-consuming mindset at the start of the week.

What Is The Best Time To Post YouTube Shorts (Overall)?

After considering the factors impacting the ideal posting time for YouTube Shorts, we can determine the best time to post on the platform. Based on research and analysis, the best time to post YouTube Shorts is on weekdays, focusing on Monday and Tuesday, during peak hours for your target audience.

Peak hours are when most of your target audience is active on the platform and engaging with content. This varies depending on the demographics of your target audience. But generally, peak hours are between 12 PM and 3 PM and again from 7 PM to 10 PM.

Posting during weekends may not get as much engagement since many people may be offline. But this can vary based on your target audience. So it’s a good idea to test different posting times to see what works best for your brand or influence.

Plus, consider the time zone of your target audience and adjust your posting schedule accordingly. For example, if your target audience is mainly located in the Pacific Time Zone, posting during peak hours in that time zone may result in higher engagement.

Regarding the content type, informative and educational content, such as tutorials and product demonstrations, may perform best during peak hours on weekdays. As this is when your audience may look for helpful content to consume during their workday. Lighthearted content, such as comedic skits or reaction videos, may perform better in the evenings during peak hours when your audience wants entertainment.

Finally, analyze the results of your posts and make adjustments as needed. The ideal posting time for YouTube Shorts can change as your target audience and their online behavior evolve.

For example, if you notice your engagement is higher on weekends, it may be worth experimenting with posting more frequently during those times.

Best Times To Post On YouTube Shorts By Country

While the best time to post on YouTube Shorts is on weekdays during peak hours, the ideal posting time can vary by country. It’s because online behavior and peak hours can differ based on cultural, social, and economic factors.

For example, in countries where most of the population are early risers, such as Japan and South Korea, peak hours may be earlier, around 9 AM to 12 PM. In these countries, it may be best to post content during these hours to reach the highest number of viewers.

Where most of the population are night owls, such as in Spain and Italy, peak hours may be during the day and into the evening. In these countries, posting in the late afternoon and early evening hours may offer higher engagement.

The weekends may also have different peak hours compared to weekdays. So consider the online behavior of your target audience in your specific country when deciding on a posting schedule.

For instance, in the United States, peak hours are generally between 12 PM and 3 PM and 7 PM to 10 PM on weekdays. But on weekends, the peak hours may shift to later in the day and into the evening. This can vary based on the region. So test different posting times to see what works best for your brand or influence.

In countries where most of the population works 9-5 jobs, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, peak hours may be during lunchtime, around 12 PM to 2 PM, and in the evenings after work. In these countries, posting during these hours may lead to higher engagement.

Best Times To Post On YouTube Shorts By Days Of The Week

Besides considering the ideal posting time by country, factor in the best times to post on YouTube Shorts by day of the week.

As mentioned earlier, the best time to post is on weekdays during peak hours. But there can be slight variations in engagement depending on the day.

For example, research has shown Monday and Tuesday are generally the best days to post on YouTube Shorts. As the start of the workweek often results in higher engagement from viewers looking for new content to consume during their workday.

Wednesdays and Thursdays may also increase engagement. Viewers are in the middle of the workweek and looking for a break from their routine.

Fridays may decrease engagement, as many people look forward to the weekend and have other priorities.

Weekends, on the other hand, can be hit or miss regarding YouTube shorts engagement. While some people may be more likely to engage with content during their downtime. Others may engage in offline activities and not be as active on the platform.

These trends can vary depending on the target audience and the content being posted.

Why Does The Best Time To Post On YouTube Shorts Matter?

Posting at the best time helps maximize reach and engagement with the target audience. By posting during peak hours, brands and influencers ensure their content is seen by as many people as possible. This boosts the chances of it being shared, liked, and commented on.

1) For consistent Engagement:

Plus, posting on YouTube Shorts at the best time can also help build a consistent audience. By posting at the same time each week, brands and influencers can train their followers to expect new content at a certain time, which can help boost engagement and build a loyal following.

2) To increase visibility:

Plus, posting on YouTube Shorts at the best time can also help to increase the visibility of the content in the YouTube algorithm. YouTube uses various factors to determine the visibility of content in its search results, including the posting time, engagement rate, and relevance of the content to the user’s search query.

By posting during peak hours and maximizing engagement, brands, and influencers can boost the visibility of their content in the YouTube algorithm. This makes it easier for new followers to discover their content.

3) Boost your ROI:

Finally, posting on YouTube Shorts at the best time can also help increase the return on investment for brands and influencers. By reaching more people with their content and increasing engagement, they can build a larger and more engaged following. Which can result in more brand deals, sponsorships, and other monetization opportunities.

6 Tips To Find Your Best Time To Post On YouTube Shorts

1. Analyze your audience data: Use the YouTube Analytics dashboard to see when your followers are most active on the platform. This data will help you understand the best time to post based on your specific audience.
   
2. Test different posting times: Try posting at different times of the day and see which posts receive the most engagement. It’ll give you a good idea of what works best for your audience.
   
3. Consider your target audience: Remember the demographics of your target audience, such as age, location, and profession.

For example, if your target audience comprises working professionals, it may be best to post during the weekdays during peak hours.

4. Stay consistent: After finding the best time to post, try to stick to it. It’ll help you build a consistent audience and maximize your reach.
   
5. Monitor your engagement: Continuously monitor your engagement levels to see if your posting time is still effective. If you see a decrease in engagement, consider adjusting your posting schedule.
   
6. Experiment with different content types: Different types of content may perform better at different times of the day. Experiment with different types of content to see what works best for your audience.

How To Effectively Use Multiple Best Times To Post On YouTube Shorts?

After determining the best time to post on YouTube Shorts for your brand or channel, it’s important to use multiple best times to maximize reach and engagement effectively.

Here are some tips for that:

Schedule your content: Use scheduling tools like HopperHQ to plan your content ahead of time and ensure it goes live at the best time. It’ll let you take advantage of multiple best times without worrying about missing a peak hour.

Post at different times: Besides your main best time, consider posting at different times of the day to reach a wider audience. For example, if your main best time is during the weekdays, you can also post on the weekends at a different time to reach those who may not be available during the week.

Experiment with different posting frequencies: Try posting at different frequencies to see what works best for your audience. Some brands and influencers may find that posting daily works best, while others may find that posting weekly is more effective.

Vary your content: To keep your audience engaged, consider varying the type of content you post. For example, you can post a mix of informative videos, tutorials, and entertainment videos to keep things fresh and interesting.

Utilize hashtags: Use relevant hashtags to make your content more discoverable to your target audience. This can increase reach and engagement, even if you post at a less-than-optimal time.

Summing It Up

While there’s no “best” time to post on YouTube Shorts, understanding your target audience, time zone, content type, and day of the week can help you determine a good time to post. For inspiration, you can check out the 2023 YouTube Rich List and take insights from the biggest YouTube channels

Remember, there’s no one solution and the best approach is to experiment with different posting times. Analyze the results to determine what works best for your brand or influence.

That’s where HopperHQ comes in – a powerful scheduling tool that can help brands and influencers trim their YouTube Shorts posting process. With HopperHQ, you can easily schedule posts at the best time, ensuring your content goes live when your audience is most active.

This saves you time and effort, as you can focus on creating high-quality content while HopperHQ takes care of the rest. Plus, HopperHQ offers advanced analytics that helps you track your engagement levels and make informed decisions about your posting schedule.

Whether you’re a professional marketer or just starting, HopperHQ is the ideal tool for maximizing your reach and engagement on YouTube Shorts.

 Related content:

• The Best Time to Post on TikTok
• How to Link Instagram to TikTok
• How to Get More Views on TikTok
• How to Remove The TikTok Watermark in 7 Easy Ways

The post The Best Time to Post YouTube Shorts (2024) appeared first on Hopper HQ.

It’s a short-form video feature that lets creators share short, engaging videos with their followers. It’s inspired by the recent boom in the popularity of TikTok and short videos in general.

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Brands and influencers are eager to jump on this new trend and incorporate it into their marketing strategies.

YouTube Shorts is designed for today’s fast-paced, on-the-go audience, who prefer quick and easy-to-consume content. With a minute or less video, brands can share fun and creative content, drive engagement, and easily reach target audiences.

Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, YouTube Shorts has the potential to boost your brand’s visibility and engagement.

In this article, we’ll explore the many benefits of using YouTube Shorts and how you can create content that resonates with your audience.

We’ll take a closer look at what YouTube Shorts are and how they can boost brand visibility and reach. We’ll also see 3 brand examples to inspire you and show you what’s possible with this new tool.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just starting, this article will help you understand the potential of YouTube Shorts and how you can make the most of this exciting new feature.

What are YouTube Shorts?

YouTube Shorts are a new feature introduced by the platform in 2020. They are designed to provide a creative outlet for users to produce short, fun videos for their followers.

They’re similar to TikTok videos and are designed to be quick, engaging, and easily shareable on social media. With the rising popularity of short-form video content, YouTube Shorts offer brands and influencers a new way to reach their audiences and connect with them on a personal level.

YouTube Shorts are made using the YouTube app and are limited to 60 seconds in length. Users can create Shorts using their mobile devices and have access to a range of editing tools and features, including music, filters, and speed controls.

The platform has also introduced a new music library that offers users a huge selection of tracks. This makes creating unique and engaging videos easy.

Why use YouTube Shorts?

YouTube Shorts offer a unique opportunity for brands and influencers to reach their audiences in a new and exciting way. With the rise of short-form video content and reels of platforms like Instagram, YouTube Shorts offer a new way to connect with your audience and promote your brand.

Whether you’re looking to launch a new product, boost brand awareness, or just connect with your audience on a personal level, YouTube Shorts are the go-to.

Trends: YouTube Shorts lets you ride the latest trends. The platform is constantly updating its features and adding new tools, so you can always stay ahead of the curve and create engaging and relevant content for your audience. Whether you’re looking to promote a new product, create a viral challenge, or simply chttps://www.hopperhq.com/blog/widget-testonnect with your followers. YouTube Shorts offers the tools to do so.

Popularity: With over 2.1 billion monthly active users, YouTube is one of the largest and most popular video platforms worldwide. So your Shorts have the potential to reach a huge number of people, boosting your brand visibility and helping you connect with new audiences.

Human Touch: YouTube Shorts allow brands and influencers to connect with their audience on a personal level. The short-form format makes it easy to create fun, engaging, and relatable videos.

By sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses, tutorials, or simply showcasing your products and services, you can build a connection with your followers that’s more meaningful and lasting.

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What Makes YouTube Shorts Different Than Other Short-Form Videos (TikTok And Reels)

YouTube Shorts differ from other short-form videos in several key ways, making them a unique and valuable tool for brands and influencers looking to connect with their audience.

No need to start from scratch: First, YouTube Shorts are integrated directly into the YouTube platform, offering users a seamless and user-friendly experience.

This integration lets users easily share their Shorts with their YouTube subscribers and reach a larger audience than other short-form video platforms.

Variety of tools: The platform offers users a wide range of editing tools and features, including music, filters, and speed controls.

This lets users create more dynamic and engaging content that sets their Shorts apart from other short-form videos.

YouTube Music: YouTube Shorts offer brands and influencers access to a huge library of music, which they can use to create fun and engaging videos. This feature sets YouTube Shorts apart from platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, which have limited music libraries compared to YouTube.

Stability: YouTube Shorts offers a more reliable and stable platform for brands and influencers. As a well-established and trusted platform, YouTube offers a secure and reliable environment for users to create and share their content.

This sets it apart from other short-form video platforms that are less established and may not offer the same level of security and stability.

How To Make YouTube Shorts?

Making YouTube Shorts is a simple and straightforward process.

Here are the steps to creating your own YouTube Shorts:

1. Open the YouTube app on your mobile device.
2. Select the camera icon at the bottom of the screen.
3. Choose the ‘Short’ option from the camera options.
4. Record your video.
5. Use the editing tools to enhance your video, including adding music, filters and adjusting the speed.
6. Give your video a title and description.
7. Choose the privacy settings for your video.
8. Share your Short on your YouTube channel.

You can also use Hopper HQ to schedule multiple videos over a long period.

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How To Upload YouTube Shorts?

Besides creating Shorts directly within the YouTube app, brands and influencers can also upload pre-made videos to YouTube Shorts.

Here are the steps to uploading a pre-made video as a YouTube Short:

1. Open the YouTube Studio on your computer.
2. Select ‘Create’ and then choose ‘Short video.’
3. Select ‘Upload video’ and choose the video file you want to upload.
4. Edit your video as desired using the editing tools provided by YouTube Studio.
5. Add music and other enhancements to your video as desired.
6. Publish your Short video and share it on your YouTube channel and other social media platforms.

How Long are YouTube Shorts?

YouTube Shorts are 60 seconds long, making them the shortest of the major short-form video platforms.

This is in contrast to Instagram Reels, which are up to 90 seconds in length, and TikTok, which allows for videos of up to 10 minutes.

The 60-second length of YouTube Shorts offers a quick and concise format for brands and influencers to showcase their content, letting them capture their audience’s attention in a shorter amount of time.

But it also offers a creative challenge to create dynamic and engaging content within a limited timeframe.

How To Disable YouTube Shorts?

While YouTube Shorts can be a useful tool for brands and influencers to reach their audience, there may be instances where disabling them is necessary.

Here’s how to disable YouTube Shorts:

1. Log in to your YouTube account on a desktop computer
2. Click on the ‘Settings’ tab in the top right corner of the screen
3. Scroll down to the ‘YouTube Shorts’ section
4. Toggle the switch to ‘Off’
5. Confirm your action by clicking ‘Save Changes’

Disabling YouTube Shorts can be necessary for several reasons.

For example, if you prefer only to use other short-form video platforms, such as TikTok or Instagram Reels, you can disable Shorts to focus on those platforms.

Regardless of the reason, disabling YouTube Shorts is a straightforward process. By following the steps above, you ensure your account is fully secured and your privacy is protected.

How to Monetize YouTube Shorts?

Monetizing your YouTube Shorts through YouTube is a straightforward process that can help you earn revenue from your content.

Here are the steps to monetize your Shorts on YouTube:

Enable monetization: To earn money from your Shorts, you must first enable monetization on your YouTube channel. This can be done by visiting the monetization section of your YouTube Creator Studio and following the steps to enable monetization.

Meet YouTube’s monetization requirements: To be eligible for monetization, you must meet YouTube’s monetization requirements, including adhering to YouTube’s community guidelines and having a channel with consistent, high-quality content.

Enable advertisements: Once you enable monetization and meet the requirements, you can earn from advertisements on your Shorts.

To do this, just enable ads in the monetization section of your Creator Studio.

Utilize YouTube’s Partner Program: As you continue to upload high-quality Shorts and grow your audience, you can join YouTube’s Partner Program and earn money from advertisements and other monetization opportunities.

Maximize revenue: To maximize your revenue from YouTube Shorts, it’s important to consistently upload high-quality content, engage with your audience, and utilize other monetization opportunities such as sponsored content and affiliate marketing.

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YouTube Shorts: Best Practices

To be successful with Shorts, following the best practices to maximize your reach and revenue is important.

Here are the top 17 YouTube Shorts best practices:

Know your audience: Understand your target audience and create content that resonates with them. It’ll help you build a strong following and boost engagement with your Shorts.

Create high-quality content: Shorts should be visually appealing and engaging, with high-quality production values. Invest in quality equipment and editing software to create the best possible Shorts.

Utilize trends: Staying on top of trending topics is a great way to ensure your Shorts are relevant and appealing to your audience. Utilize trending topics and news to create timely and relevant content that appeals to your audience.

For example, if a popular holiday or event is coming up, create Shorts related to that event to reach a larger audience and keep your content fresh and exciting.

Engage with your audience: Engage with your audience by responding to comments and asking for feedback. It’ll help you build a strong community and boost engagement with your Shorts.

Collaborate with other creators: Collaborating with other creators can help you reach a larger audience and build your brand. Find creators with a similar target audience and collaborate with them on Shorts. This can help you reach a new audience and build relationships with other creators in your niche.

Utilize keywords: Keywords are crucial for optimizing your Shorts for search engines. Include relevant keywords in your Shorts’ titles, descriptions, and tags to help people find your content more easily. Utilize trending keywords and hashtags to help your content reach a larger audience.

Consistency is key: Consistently upload high-quality Shorts regularly to build your following and boost engagement. It’ll also help you earn more from monetization opportunities.

3 Ways To Use YouTube Shorts

To make the most of this new opportunity, here are 3 ways to use YouTube Shorts:

Showcase your brand’s products and services: Showcasing your brand’s products and services is one of the best ways to use YouTube Shorts. It’s an excellent way to introduce your brand to a new audience and reach people who may not have heard of your brand before.

You can also create Shorts that show how your products and services work to give your audience a better understanding of your offers.

Create how-to content: YouTube Shorts is great for creating how-to content that teaches your audience something new. This can be excellent to engage your audience and establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Utilize clear and concise messaging, engaging visuals, and helpful sound effects to make your how-to content easy to follow and engaging. 

Promote your events and campaigns: You can use YouTube Shorts to promote your events and campaigns. 

It’s especially useful for promoting product launches, conferences, and webinars. It’s excellent to reach a large audience and generate buzz around your brand.

Utilize the tools to grab your audience’s attention and get them excited about your events and campaigns.

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3 Inspiring Examples Of Brands Using YouTube Shorts

ESPN

The sports media giant has quickly embraced the new platform and is using it to reach a large and engaged audience. ESPN is using YouTube Shorts to showcase coverage of live sporting events, giving fans a glimpse of the action and behind-the-scenes insights.

They’re also creating how-to content, demonstrating tips and tricks for fans looking to improve their skills on the field. 

Plus, ESPN uses YouTube Shorts to promote its events and campaigns, such as its coverage of the World Cup and other major sporting events.

Glossier

The cosmetics brand Glossier is a great example of a company that has effectively utilized YouTube Shorts to reach a larger audience and showcase its products. One of Glossier’s most successful campaigns was the hashtag #WrittenInGlossier, designed to market their pencil eyeliners.

One hundred influencers were given pencil eyeliners to make Shorts with. Anyone that clicked on the hashtag would be redirected to Glossier’s website, where they could buy that eyeliner.

Food52 Inc.

Food52 Inc. is a popular food and home goods brand that has started using YouTube Shorts alongside its conventional videos.

They share sneak peeks into their video-making processes and shortened forms of their existing videos.

Closing Thoughts

YouTube Shorts has been a success and isn’t going away anytime soon. Brands and influencers are utilizing this feature to reach their audiences and grow their influence on the platform.

From the brand examples we have explored, we can see how Shorts can be used to showcase a product, tell a story, or provide educational content in an entertaining and memorable manner.

But creating and uploading Shorts can be time-consuming, especially for brands with large teams and multiple projects. This is where Hopper HQ can help. Hopper HQ is developing a Shorts scheduler that will automate the Shorts creation process, making it easier and more efficient for brands to schedule and upload Shorts.

Hopper HQ will be the ideal solution for brands looking to make the most out of YouTube Shorts in the fast-paced world of video content creation. So whether you’re a brand or an influencer, consider incorporating Shorts into your video marketing strategy and let Hopper HQ take care of your scheduling.

 Related content:

– The Best Time to Post on TikTok
– How to Link Instagram to TikTok
– How to Get More Views on TikTok
– How to Remove The TikTok Watermark in 7 Easy Ways

Mehedi Hasan Shoab

Freelance writer for marketing, SaaS, and personal development business. Mehedi is the founder of PowerhouseBlogger and he is growing businesses with sizzling writing, one piece at a time

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The post What Are YouTube Shorts & How To Make Them (with 3 brand examples) appeared first on Hopper HQ.

However, not everyone knows that AI in social media helps gain a competitive edge when creating marketing campaigns.

In a world where the popularity and power of AI are growing each day, it only makes sense to jump on the bandwagon and make it work to your advantage! Read on to explore how AI can be used to scale your marketing effort in social media and drive your business value with our insights.

What Is AI?

Before we dive in, let’s first answer the question of what AI is. While most of us have heard of it or even used it, not everyone completely understands it. Nonetheless, it’s much less fanciful than many people think. 

AI is the ability of a computer program or a machine to recreate human thought patterns to complete tasks and learn, thus reducing the effort on the human part. To accomplish those goals, researchers study how our brain thinks and, based on the outcomes of this study, develop intelligent system models. 

Machine learning (ML) is a sub-field of AI that is a way to create problem-solving systems. It’s a bit limited in capabilities, but when it comes to predicting outcomes, the accuracy of ML is hard to beat. 

So how do researchers study the brain? In case you ask, they don’t connect electrodes to neurons or anything like that. What they do is collect data. This explains why almost every organization is now so desperate to collect data on the activity of their users.  For example, they can order react native app development services, collect arrays of user data, and feed it to the machines for delivering even a higher level of user experience.   

AI in Social Media?

When it comes to social media, they owe their existence to AI technology. Take, for example, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or LinkedIn. These platforms constantly track the behavior patterns of users. Offering them profiles and ads they are most likely to engage with. 

Similarly, Amazon’s algorithms effectively increase engagement by using view history to find more content you might be interested in.

However, not only are platforms themselves using AI. AI offers lots of advantages to social media users, too, making it a hidden gem for influencers and marketing specialists.

One simple application of AI in social media is its ability to help you identify and track posts that include mentions. This not only keeps you informed about current trends, but also enables you to establish a strong and effective online presence. By closely monitoring these posts, you can gain valuable insights that will inform and enhance your overall social media marketing strategy

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How Can AI and ML Help You Supercharge Social Media?

Now that you know how big an impact AI has on pretty much any aspect of business and marketing. Let’s take a closer look at how you can leverage it for your social media marketing strategy.

Create and Manage Social Media Content

Content has never been in such demand as it is today. It’s at the base of everything: 

• Launching a new e-commerce website that needs product descriptions;
• Post a job offer;
• Writing an ad to sell your phone. 

By creating compelling content, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors and attract the target audience.

Marketers are constantly generating content to distribute across various channels. Not only that, but they are also responsible for managing it and tracking its performance. This can be a huge amount of work if you have to deal with multiple accounts. 

To make this job easier, companies use regular social management tools for the automatization of scheduling and monitoring processes. (Check out Hopper HQ the social media scheduling tool) However, with AI, you can up the ante and take your social media content to a whole new level. 

First off, many tools can be used to auto-generate posts. Some of them, like copyAI, can even include hashtags and shortened links so there’s no human effort. Besides, some tools can auto-schedule your posts, enabling you to create and share posts in bulk. This would normally take a big chunk of your work time. 

By and large, AI offers lots of advantages for content creation, making it a smart weapon in the arsenal of any marketing manager or business. AI can find employment not only in social networks but also in the creation of content for the website blog. For example, when digital transformation in the insurance industry, this is a frequently used tactic.

More Accurate Insights for Increased Revenue

Social media is a great tool to analyze customer behavior. The only catch is, it relies on such a big volume of data. No man on earth would be prepared to process that information manually. That’s where machine learning (ML) comes into play. 

With ML, you can accurately process all those thousands of random conversations that happen every day. As well as scaling your social media analysis to any amount of data you want. As a result, you’ll be far ahead of your competitors. And your marketing efforts will most likely pay off in increased revenue.

Let’s look at some examples of how you can harness the potential of ML for improved social media strategy. 

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Engaging Words, Headlines, Videos, and Images

The ability of ML to recognize language patterns, images, videos, and even metadata makes it a useful tool for categorizing posts. However, this isn’t the only strength of ML. Its biggest advantage is that it can detect new topics and trends that haven’t been covered yet, thus giving you a source of inspiration. 

On top of that, AI technology comes in handy when you need to create a catchy headline or find powerful words to appeal to your audience. Unlike humans, it can crawl through trillions of posts virtually in minutes to pick out the most effective parts that people are explicitly looking for. 

What about visual platforms like Snapchat, Pinterest, and similar that have only a little bit of text? That’s where ML shines again. Where most traditional tools are helpless, ML algorithms have no difficulty recognizing things like faces, logos, and objects, making it easy for you to track what people are sharing about your brand on social networks. 

Use AI-based Social Monitoring or Listening Tools

While almost every brand claims to listen to customers, only those who use AI-based social media listening tools do so. If you’re not using them yet, now is the time to start. 

There are many goals you can accomplish with social media listening tools, but the most important one is that you can hear what people think about your product and brand and translate this voice data into actionable insights. Sprinklr, Mention, and SentiOne are just a few of the tools you can try.

Find the Most Relevant Posts and Reduce Costs

Writing just for the sake of writing is rarely a good idea, especially given the cost and effort it involves. This is why every future-oriented business will benefit from AI implementation. AI algorithms can analyze how existing content aligns with current trends and customer interests, and give you ideas for the next most relevant posts. 

Plus, AI can do all the marketing work for you, determining the most effective content strategy, including:

• What keywords to use; 
• When to publish; 
• How often to publish; 
• Which channels to use for content distribution. 

So you can save time and further reduce costs.

Use Content Creation Software

Today there is such a choice of content creation tools that everyone, regardless of their marketing initiatives, will be able to find the most suitable one. So, whether you’re looking to create a quiz or infographics to post on your Facebook account, or you need a powerful social media ad for an upcoming product release, AI-based content creation software has you covered. 

Using content creation software also allows you to save money and time that you’d otherwise spend creating and resizing your creatives. It only takes one good ad, and AI will automatically tweak it so you can distribute it across different social media channels.

Finally, many AI-powered tools can write Instagram and Facebook social media ads for you, sparing you the need to hire professional copywriters.

Multilingual Analysis

From time to time, it’s important to perform a sentimental analysis. Sentimental analysis is a great tool to determine what people feel about your product or service and fine-tune the marketing strategy accordingly. For example, if the overall impression of your brand is low, you can take a step back to analyze the reason. If it’s high, you can consider going public.

But what do you do if you have an international user base? If you don’t have a multilingual team who can assess the emotion behind every social post correctly, you should resort to the use of ML. 

Luckily, there are tons of tools like: 

• MonkeyLearn, 
• Lexalytics, 
• Brandwatch, etc. 

These are designed to conduct multilingual analysis in more than one language.

Image and Video Recognition

The diversity of content on social media presents a challenge for traditional social media management tools, as they struggle to capture both text-based and multimedia content. However, AI overcomes this challenge, and is able to handle a wide range of content with ease.

How Can AI in Social Media Help You Identify Visuals?

Visual AI, or computer vision as it’s also known, can identify images and videos in more ways than one. What it does is it teaches machines to “see” images the same way people do so they can recognize an object and pinpoint its location and orientation in the image. 

Visual AI comes in especially helpful when it comes to categorizing objects. Not only will it provide you with information on how many objects there are in an image, but it will also label them all correctly, by making a quick comparison with the images it has in its library. 

It may sound a bit futuristic, but in fact, many of these tools are already widely used. Facial recognition function, QR code scanning, and visual search are just a few examples worth mentioning.

Understand What Your Audience Means

The purpose of a social post is to attract an audience. That said, you don’t want to attract just any audience if your marketing campaign is focused on conversion optimization. That’s where ML comes to your rescue. 

Unlike traditional tools that segment audiences according to static attributes, ML allows you to expand your reach by targeting people based on predictions of their future behavior. As a result, you can attract those users who are the most valuable to your business. 

One example widely used in digital marketing is programming advertising.

Utilize ML for Sentiment Analysis

As we’ve already mentioned, it’s important to measure the effectiveness of your marketing effort by conducting sentiment analysis. If the people you are targeting have a low opinion of your product or service or are not interested in it, your marketing campaign will fail. 

However, with the use of ML, you can monitor those trends and make timely adjustments.

Find New Audiences, Trends, and Topics

If you notice that people come to your brand but then leave without taking any action, chances are they haven’t found the answers they were looking for. To increase engagement and reach new audiences, you can use AI. It will come up with new topics for the content as well as add specific details to ensure that it keeps your audience highly engaged at all times.

Track Global Brand Mentions

While marketing encourages creativity, it often boils down to testing techniques that have already been proven to work. So why not take a peek at global brands? AI allows you to go the extra mile. Not only can you find all world-known brands by simply entering relevant hashtags but you can also highlight posts that offer the most value to you.

Identify Relevant Influencers and Engaging Accounts

Sometimes, all it takes to liven up your social media account is to find the right influencer. But where do you look for one? You can take advantage of AI-powered influencer research platforms. These platforms will guide you to the best one based on an analysis of their account activity and your marketing goals. 

You could go in the footsteps of McFedries. McFedries produced an artificial avatar Li Miquela and create your own AI influencer. With technology, the sky’s the limit!

Analyze in a Smart Way

If you are struggling with structuring your efforts on social media, AI can lend you a helping hand. Here are a few examples of how it can be used to leverage social media advertising and drive outcomes. 

Make Accurate Predictions

Marketing requires a deep understanding of customer behavior patterns. This is why marketers spend a lot of time analyzing data. However, they often don’t have access to the same level of tools as AI, which can generate more accurate predictions

AI nails this job. Whether it’s social media or any other channel you use to distribute the content. AI can help you predict LTV and extend it, by giving you insights into how the user experience can be improved.

Prioritize Content on Your Website

With all of the insights AI can give you, it should be easier for you to give users what they want by focusing on the topics they’re looking for. Likewise, you’ll never have difficulty understanding what posts don’t perform well. As AI will always provide you with up-to-date suggestions through the lens of business capabilities.

FAQ

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

In layman’s terms, artificial intelligence is the ability of a computer to think like a human and learn. This is achieved through constant training based on the data collected from multiple sources. 

What are the benefits of AI in social media?

The benefits of AI are numerous. The most important one of them is it can help you save a lot of marketing costs while notably accelerating revenue. 

For example, rather than hiring a copywriter, you can use AI to generate posts at a frequency you want and optimize them for various social media platforms. 

If you want to improve your digital marketing strategy, you can take advantage of AI programming advertising. This will let you reach the audience most likely to be interested in your ad. 

How is social media using AI?

Social media is using AI extensively. From showing users an ad that will most likely grab their attention to listening to their conversations and processing visuals. There is tons of data that social media processing with AI every day. Even such services as Netflix use AI technology, which allows it to come up with visuals that are most likely to captivate the viewer.

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Want to create a social media landing page that turns your followers into paying customers? This blog is for you

Vibrant themes and catchy captions on social media are great. They engage your audience and keep them coming back to your social media content.

However, your goal isn’t just to make social media page admirers. You want your visitors to take your desired action so they can move down the sales funnel. The bottom line, you want to turn your social media followers into paying customers.

So, apart from your engaging social media content, you need social media landing pages.

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What Is a Social Media Landing Page?

A social media landing page is a uniquely designed online destination created for visitors to see after clicking on a link you shared on social media.

Either way, unlike other pages on your website like a homepage or an about us page where a visitor can browse and explore what to do next, landing pages guide visitors to take a single action. Those actions can range from signing up for your newsletter or buying your product. 

As part of your SaaS marketing efforts, you could also use a landing page to offer a free trial or demo.

Related: 8 Tips for Social Media Marketing for SaaS Startups in 2022

Here’s an example of a great social media landing page. 

The landing page by LandingFolo is designed to get the viewer to make a purchase. We’ll talk more about what makes a good social media landing page later.

Why You Need a Social Media Landing Page

There are many reasons why you need a social media landing page.

With a social media landing page, you can stop linking to general destinations. Just think about it; If a person lands on a page that has a single “Buy” button, then that means there’s nothing else they can do on the page. So, they’ll just press the “Buy” button (or leave and not buy, of course, but that’s another story). 

The point is, social media landing pages don’t give website visitors as many options. That increases your chances of getting these visitors to take your desired action in the first place.

With landing pages, you can also measure metrics that are directly tied to business objectives. If you’re offering a free demo, for instance, and you want to determine how your campaign is doing, you can create a landing page to make it easy to attribute certain behaviours to specific values. So, you can make the necessary adjustments if needed and ultimately drive conversions to your site.

For instance, if you see based on your landing page analytics that a lot of the traffic to your free demo landing page comes from Facebook, then you’d double down on your marketing efforts on Facebook.

As seen in the image above, landing pages are already popular with several marketers and have proven to generate more leads.

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What Makes a Good Landing Page?

A good landing page is a mixture of different elements. You need to make sure the page is perfectly balanced. This includes getting the design, structure, and copy just right. 

Your images should complement your copy. Don’t include images that have nothing to do with what you want your visitor to do on your page. Your page might just end up being cluttered.

Your copy should also be succinct. It should complement your final CTA. As for your CTA, make sure it’s clear and concise, too. We’ll talk a bit more about these later.

Ultimately, your social media landing page should entice your audience into making the jump from visitor to actual lead or customer. 

Ways to Create a Winning Social Media Landing Page

So, you know how a good landing page should look in theory. But what should you do to create them in the first place? Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Make Your Branding Clear

Your social media account is an offshoot of your brand. This means everything related to your social media account should reflect your brand. That “everything” includes your social media landing pages.

However, don’t just place your logo on the page. You should make sure your colours and typography also remain consistent, not just on your landing pages but across your social media posts, too. Establish a consistent brand identity throughout all of your campaign materials. Research shows that this increases revenue significantly.

Check out this example from GoDaddy: 

The viewer is first presented with this social media post:

Once the visitor clicks, they are taken to the landing page below. The combination of logo, colours, and text remains mostly the same.

Consistency across marketing platforms helps strengthen brand trust because the viewer has no reason to doubt the page’s authenticity. Create clear rules and standards for brand assets so you can use them as a guide when creating your marketing collateral. It is a critical first step in establishing brand consistency across all platforms, including your landing pages.

2. Create the Same Social Experience

You should make sure you create the same social experience across your marketing platforms. Although brand consistency is, in a way, a component of the social experience, it’s not the entire social experience. 

Social experience refers to how your visitor perceives the journey of moving from one platform (in this case, your social media platform) to another (in this case, your social media landing page). Your goal is to ensure that your visitors have a seamless experience across platforms. So, when your visitor reads your social media content, clicks on it, and gets to your landing page, they’ll conclude everything is interrelated.

You can take a cue from the jewellery brand Tiffany & Co. The social media feed and subsequent landing page are indistinguishable from each other. Here’s the social media feed:

Here’s the landing page you’re directed to when you click on a post:

The journey across platforms is so seamless you’d think the landing page and the social feed are just one and the same.

But this is just one way of ensuring the same social experience. Another way is to ensure that your landing page delivers on what you promised on your social media content. So, if your CTA on your social content is “Get E-Book Now,” for instance, make sure your landing page shows your ebook and details the steps your visitors need to take to get your ebook. Don’t suddenly talk about how your visitor can purchase your product.

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3. Ensure a Sense of Anticipation/Urgency

An online buyers’ study discovered that adding phrases to their text that evoked a sense of anticipation and delight resulted in more conversions. 

You can use this to your advantage when creating your social media landing page. When you use anticipation, you can increase your chances of people taking your desired action on your landing page.

This landing page from Bezar, Design Marketplace, is a good example of how to use anticipation to your advantage.

The phrase “Bezar is coming” is used to build suspense. That helps trigger the visitor’s curiosity. So the visitor can end up signing up as a member.

You can also build urgency on your social media landing page. Include countdown timers or phrases that indicate that your product or offer won’t last forever.

4. Include Eye-Catching Images

Images in marketing can capture and maintain the attention of potential customers. That’s why, when used correctly, visual platforms like Instagram or Pinterest can be powerful visual tools for your business.

The images on both your social media content and landing pages should be eye-catching. Take a look at this Nike post on Pinterest for women’s sportswear. 

Here’s what the landing page looks like when you click on the post:

Notice that all images showcase movement. That’s what makes them eye-catching to the visitor, who may end up staying longer on your pages interacting with your brand.

5. Guide Audience through Sections

Your social media landing page should keep your visitors reading and scrolling. So your landing page should be designed cohesively. Use pictures and text to guide your visitors’ eye. 

For instance, this landing page by Recess displays a good natural flow of information. 

It doesn’t say too much at once. Instead, you’re “forced” to scroll down with each chunk of text placed one on top of the other.

6. Use Social Media Sharing Buttons

You can include social media sharing buttons on your social media landing page to encourage people to share the page on their socials. If they share your page, it will gain more visibility. Check out this example:

But for you to encourage them to share your landing page, you should have something that’s shareable on the page in the first place. You may, for instance, include some interesting facts your study found on the page, as in our example above. Infographics or nice images of your product can be shared, too.

There are several approaches to this. It all boils down to what your target audience is most likely to respond to.

6 Tools to Create a Social Media Landing Page

Creating a social media landing doesn’t have to be a tiresome task. These tools below can help you design winning social media landing pages with ease.

1. Linkbook

Linkbook is a useful tool if you wish to keep track of all your company’s links in one place. You can easily organize your business’ essential links and resources on one page available privately for teams or for public access.

You can create one Linkbook to share one link publicly and give access to all your communication channels, online stores, resource recommendations and information.

Add your Linkbook link in your social media bio, link to your landing pages, email signature, or website.

2. Linktree

Linktree is a tool for sharing all of your links with your followers. Linktree makes it simple to share your projects, product pages, event sign-up links, and anything else you want people to click on in your Instagram bio, through a single link.

3. Unbounce

Unbounce allows you to create landing pages, pop-ups, and sticky bars. The platform includes simple builders for users with little to no experience in creating landing pages. It also comes with personalised recommendations to help you optimise your page.

Unbounce has a unique AI copywriting feature. When you’re stuck, you can instantly generate copy for your page.

4. Curalate Like2Buy

Like2Buy allows you to build a landing page that redirects visitors to an online gallery identical to your Instagram feed.

If you are looking to get visitors to buy things that show up on your feed, while creating the same social experience, then you will find it quite useful.

5. GoDaddy

GoDaddy’s Link in Bio feature allows you to create a specific webpage that can be linked to your bios on social media. It can be used on a variety of platforms.

Simply select your preferred Link in Bio page template and make use of its easy-to-use design tools to create your page. 

6. Elementor

Elementor is a WordPress drag-and-drop page builder. Using a visual editor, this plugin allows you to build stunning pages. 

You can naturally utilise this to design landing pages for social media.

8 Inspiring Social Media Landing Page Examples

Now that you have been equipped with the tools, you need to get your social media landing page going. Let’s get you some inspiration from brands that are doing an excellent job.

These industrial web design, digital marketing, lifestyle and cooperation tool pages are great examples.

Social Media Landing Pages from Industrial Brands

1. Caterpillar Inc.(CAT)

Brands can use numbers to create anticipation in marketing materials. CAT uses the size of its offering to get visitors excited about clicking its call-to-action (CTA). 

2. Dow Chemical

Using a landing page to promote your content can enhance your brand. 

Dow offers something unexpected for its niche, a podcast.

Social Media Landing Pages from Lifestyle Brands

1. Mejuri

Mejuri’s landing is a good blend of analytics and tailor-made copy. Using its page statistics, the brand can create personalised offerings for visitors, hence the use of the words chosen by you.  

2. Ruggable

Creating an experience with your landing page is a formula for the books. You can almost see yourself in the settings presented on the page. 

Social Media Landing Pages from Digital Marketing Brands

1. MailChimp

Lots of space, a striking image, short text, and a clear CTA, as we said, is always a good landing page recipe. MailChimp uses the formula perfectly here.

2. Adobe Marketo

Marketo uses a landing page to get people to sign up for its guide on landing pages. Is that clever? You bet it is.

Social Media Landing Pages from Collaboration Tool Brands

1. Slack

This landing page by Slack is an example of material that speaks to a targeted audience. In this case, marketers.

2. Trello

The page by Trello uses a simple layout as the hero copy (main text) stands out. It also sells the emotional use of the platform. 

How to Optimise Social Media Landing Pages for Conversions

Let’s say you’ve created a visually stunning social media landing page. That’s great, but your job doesn’t end there. You need to optimise your page to maximise conversions. To do that, follow these tips:

1. Use Strong CTA

Your call to action (CTA) tells your audience what they should do or what happens after clicking a button or icon on your landing page. Sign up here is a basic example of a call to action.

To get your website visitors to elicit your desired action, you have to make sure they understand what happens if they click on your CTA in the first place. So, it all boils down to being straightforward with your CTA. You don’t have a lot of room on your page to get your point across, so tell your viewers clearly what you want them to do.

Don’t make them do so many things at once with one CTA. If you ask them to “Register for the webinar and buy our product,” chances are, you won’t get as many clicks. What if they just want to register for the webinar but don’t want to buy your product? You have to entertain that possibility.

Using plain language on your landing page is also the best way to ensure your visitors understand your CTA. So, instead of saying “Avail of the ebook now,” a better CTA is “Get your ebook now.” Longer, more sophisticated phrases with fancy jargon may also slow down your readers. Social media users have a fickle attention span. 

2. Test Your Page

Testing your social media landing pages allows you to try out different element combinations to create a design that maximises clicks.

For example, you could test different elements of your page, such as the image, text, or colour of the CTA button, for a specific audience to see what works. You can also test different value propositions, change form fields, and include more social proof.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when performing your test.

• Establish clear and measurable conversion goals.
• Calculate the amount of time and traffic required to complete the tests.
• Create and document variations of various test elements.
• Execute quality assurance checks and test deployments.
• Examine the test results and findings.

Finally, run with the winning variants of your page. Make sure you test your social media landing pages frequently. The best social media landing page now may not be the best later.

3. Make It Mobile-Friendly

Mobile devices continue to account for approximately 58.99% of global web traffic. That means, if you want to increase your chances for conversions, your social media landing pages must be mobile-friendly. 

You can easily check this by looking at how your page looks on your phone. You can also use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Just input your social media landing page’s URL. Google will tell you if your page is mobile-friendly or not:

If it isn’t mobile-friendly, it will give you recommendations.

To ensure a mobile-friendly page, use a responsive web page design. Also, optimise your image size and remove distracting components. Use large CTAs that can be seen on mobile, too.

In Closing

Social media landing pages, if created the right way, can help increase your conversions. They work hand-in-hand with your engaging social media content. 

You learned ways to create winning social media landing pages. Make your branding clear, ensure the same social experience, and generate a sense of anticipation or urgency. Include eye-catching images, too. Use social media sharing buttons and guide your visitor through your different sections.  

Get inspiration from our excellent examples here. Build a social media landing page that reaps the best results for you.

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Ian Loew

Ian Loew is a web entrepreneur and inbound marketing expert, and the Owner & Head of Business Development of Lform Design. After four years of helping Fortune 500 companies with MGT Design, Ian embarked on his freelance career before establishing Lform Design in 2005. He leads a team of creative professionals to deliver inspired online experiences via modern, responsive websites that reflect his clients’ core values. When not at the helm, Ian can be found mountain biking with friends or spending time with his family.

The post How to Create a Social Media Landing Page That Wins Customers (with Examples) appeared first on Hopper HQ.

Looking to connect with Gen Z and turn them into raving fans? Check out these 11 tips for leveraging video content to market to Gen Z. From creating a community to celebrating individuality, you’ll reach Gen Z where they are and create content that resonates.

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As the first generation to come of age in the era of social media, Gen Z is a particularly tough group to market to. They’re savvy, skeptical, and more likely than any other generation to ignore traditional advertising.

But there’s one medium that still has their attention: video content.

Engaging and relatable video content on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Youtube allows you to connect with Gen Zers on a personal level, build brand trust, and create a community of loyal fans.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss 11 ways you can use video content to turn Gen Z into your raving fans.

Why does marketing to Gen Z matter?

Generation Z is the new kid on the block—and they’re here to shake things up. Born between 1997 and 2012, Gen Z is the most diverse, connected, and entrepreneurial generation in history.

They’re also a major force to be reckoned with: In 2020, they made up 32% of the global population and accounted for $360 billion in spending power.

Marketing to Gen Z

As digital natives, Gen Z has always been comfortable with technology—and that’s reflected in their spending habits. They’re more likely than any other generation to research a product online before making a purchase, and they’re not afraid to shop around for the best deals.

But don’t mistake their frugality for a lack of spending power:

• 64% prefer to pay more for eco-friendly products.
• 73% only shop for products from the brands they believe in.
• 97% of Gen Zers use social media to research the things they want to buy.

Gen Z also values:

• Authentic and transparent brands
• Connection and community
• Experiences over things
• Making a difference
• Security

Why is video content important for Gen Z?

It’s no secret that Gen Z is a highly digitised generation. They are the first generation to grow up with smartphones and social media, and as a result, they have shorter attention spans and prefer bite-sized content that is easily digestible.

Enter videos

Video content is the perfect format for Gen Zers because:

• It is highly engaging and can be consumed quickly on the go.
• Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are extremely popular with this demographic, and video content suits these platforms well.
• Videos are also highly shareable, which is essential for reaching Gen Z.
• With their tech-savvy nature, Gen Z can easily create videos with built-in video editors on Instagram and TikTok or use video editing software to grab users’ attention and keep them hooked with their creative and entertaining videos.

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11 Marketing strategies to win Gen Z using videos

Now that we’ve seen why video content works best for Gen Z, let’s see how you can leverage it. We’ll also analyse plenty of examples along the way, so keep reading below:

1. Emphasise your brand’s mission

When marketing to Gen Z, it is important to emphasise your brand’s mission. This generation is highly idealistic and wants to know that the brands they support share their values.

Emphasising your brand’s mission will make Gen Zers feel like they’ve become part and parcel of that mission. That’s how you can create a loyal brand community around your mission and shared values.

And this community will purchase your products.

Levi’s Buy Better, Live Longer campaign proves this point. The company highlights its numerous sustainability practices, leveraging Gen Z’s intrinsic care for our planet’s faith.

The brand partnered with six activists to drive its point across. And they’re all archetypes of the Z generation:

• Xiye Bastida: Mexican-Chilean activist with indigenous origins, leader of the Re-Earth Initiative
• Marcus Rashford: Gen Z football player and advocator against child hunger and homelessness
• Melati Wijsen: Indonesian climate activist
• Jaden Smith: 501cTHREE founder and Just Water co-founder
• Xiuhtezcatl: Indigenous climate activist
• Emma Chamberlain: High-profile Gen Z influencer

2. Use interactive content

Interactive content is a good strategy because Gen Z love to be involved and interact with the world around them.

Tactics include:

• Interactive video content: You can create quizzes, polls, and other types of interactive elements that will encourage Gen Zers to participate.
• Allowing Gen Zers to contribute their ideas and creations. You can do this by hosting competitions or challenges that enable them to show off their creativity.
• Using Augmented Reality (AR): This is a great way to make your video content more interactive and engaging, and incorporating an AI Video generator can further enrich this experience. Gen Zers love AR experiences and are more likely to share them with their friends.

For example, JD, a sports retailer in the UK, partnered with Nike to create an AR-based campaign promoting the launch of Nike Air VaporMax.

@sriracha.el #ad Shuffling my way around Edinburgh @jdofficial #JDVaporMaxShuffle ♬ V Shuffle – Loud Parade ft. Morrisson and OXi

TikTokers can try their Nikes using augmented reality. They can also post their videos using the #JDVaporMaxShuffle branded hashtag, thus giving the campaign momentum with user-generated content. This #JDVaporMaxShuffle hashtag campaign got over 3.2 billion views on TikTok.

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3. Use a hook

Using a hook allows you to create relatable, shareable content that can go viral. To do this, leverage controversy, your audience’s values, and their interests.

You can also pack your message leveraging the current challenges and trends on TikTok.

Remember to:

• Not be too salesy
• Provide value
• Include a clear CTA
• Choose a good thumbnail to generate more clicks

Nike offers another good example with its “Ask Athletes” series. These TikToks:

• Feature explicit thumbnails with the “Ask Athletes” banner; that’s what motivates people to click on them
• Are catchy and fast-paced
• Provide value because they’re motivational and inspiring
• Do not have explicit written CTAs, but every athlete in these clips is wearing Nike clothing, thus offering an implicit CTA

@nike Reply to @jaden.the.runner You asked, here are the answers #askathletes ♬ Storytelling – Adriel

4. Use the right channels

Studies show that Gen Z uses these channels predominantly:

• TikTok
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Snapchat

Why?

Video content is highly versatile. You can listen to it without pictures while going on with your daily life, or you can watch it with no sound while watching a B-rated Netflix movie with your friends.

Mogo.ca offers a good example in this department, with Carter Sullivan as their spokesperson. Carter discusses the mobile app’s advantages on YouTube, detailing how the app helped her manage her finances.

This authentic, detailed video aims to convince more people in her generation to try Mogo. The strategy works because Gen Z is very interested in their finances.

5. Incorporate UGC

The point of incorporating user-generated content in your strategy is to turn Gen Z fans into your own brand’s creators. You can encourage UGC by:

• Working with influencers
• Creating a specific campaign with a clear hashtag that helps you track the user-generated content created
• Giving your followers clear guidelines regarding the content they have to create
• Using incentives that can range from discounts to the chance of winning a prize or even recognition

Laura Mercier’s #readySETgo challenge is a good example because:

• It gives TikTokers the chance to show their transformation using Laura Mercier products and creates more brand awareness.
• The campaign brings people together as they celebrate specific values like inner beauty.
• TikTokers get the chance to be creative and thus gain appreciation in their community.
• The campaign is scalable; One influencer encouraged TikTok users to recreate the #readySETgo tutorial for a chance to win $1000 worth of Laura Mercier products.

The campaign’s soundtrack went viral. In the example below, CharqueryGrills got over 15k likes using the #readySETgo audio as a basis for this recipe inspo:

6. Leverage influencer-created content

Influencer-created content is similar to UGC because the influencers:

• Have creative freedom
• Can give their honest opinion on your brand

The differences (read, advantages) are that:

• You may have an agreement outlining the number of posts, the type of content they are allowed to publish, and the frequency.
• Influencers know how to produce more professional-looking videos.
• You have access to a larger audience who trusts that influencer.

In exchange, you can either offer the influencers a free product (product seeding), pay them per post, or on the number of sales their posts generate.

Pro tip: To avoid legal issues or being duped by fake influencers, partner with a TikTok influencer agency. The best agencies give you access to a database of trustworthy, professional influencers and can assist you with your TikTok strategy.

One good example is Dr Wallace Nozile, MD, showcasing the iWALKFree Hands-Free Crutches.

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A post shared by Dr. Wallace R. Nozile, MD (@skindoctor_md)

The video shows him testing these crutches in his home, and you can notice the absence of special effects. That, along with the personal disclosures on the right-side text, generates increased authenticity.

That authenticity:

• Makes the video and product memorable.
• Fosters trust in the iWalkFree crutches.

And those are essential ingredients to boost awareness and increase sales.

7. Leverage the power of video in marketing e-mails

Using video in your email newsletters has several advantages:

• It can improve click-through rates by 65%.
• 64% of shoppers are more likely to purchase your products.
• The cost per lead drops by 19%.

One example is Spotify’s incorporating video in their marketing e-mail to explain how their Framer X works. This e-mail brings relevant help to Spotify users, responding to one of their poignant needs.

8. Tap into Gen Z FOMO with time-sensitive posts

You can use FOMO (fear of missing out) to your advantage by creating time-sensitive content.

This kind of content:

• Builds a sense of urgency
• Encourages social sharing
• Creates a “ripple effect” that gets more people interested in your brand

Guess’s #InMyDenim challenge offers a good example because the campaign lasted only six days. Therefore, TikTokers had a limited interval to show their beautiful transformations using Guess jeans.

The results are astounding:

• 5,500 UGC videos
• 10.5 million views
• 14.3% engagement rate
• 12,000 new TikTok followers

@ourfire Don’t you wish getting ready was this easy? #inmydenim #sponsored @guess ♬ #inmydenim I’m a Mess – Bebe Rexha

9. Leverage #hashtags

Leveraging hashtags helps you track your brand mentions and expose your content to new audiences.

Pro tip: Use relevant and popular hashtags, as well as branded hashtags unique to your business. These hashtags have to be short, memorable, and relevant.

For example, Laura Mercier’s #ReadySetGo hashtag Implies that people can get ready with these products immediately, and suggests the fast-paced video format.

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10. Don’t be afraid to show off that sense of humour

Why is it important to use humour when marketing to Gen Z? It’s easy: funny videos are more likely to go viral.

But that’s not the only reason:

• Humour can make your brand more relatable, which helps you connect with potential customers on a deeper level.
• It can help you stand out from the competition.
• People are more likely to remember your brand if you make them laugh.

Washington Post does a great job of using humour even if it’s a serious publication:

@washingtonpost In climate change news: this map shows where extreme heat records were broken across the United States during summer 2022. #climateanxiety #climatechange2022 #climatecrisis #newsreporterlady ♬ original sound – Mark Humphries

The TikTok video above tackles climate change, which is an essential issue for Gen Z. The humour stems from different aspects:

• The inherent human instinct to eventually see the amusing side of the things we cannot control
• The little dance associated with the presenter’s serious face
• The voice-over

And you can think of even more reasons why this video is funny.

But the real question is, why present an important issue for Gen Z in an amusing way?

How does this convince them to purchase a Washington Post subscription?

The clip humanises the publication, which helps create a connection with potential readers. It also shows that The Washington Post is not afraid to have a little fun, even if it means breaking the mould of traditional news media.

And Gen Z is all about challenging patterns.

Here’s another great example of the Washington Post using humor in covering the Brazilian presidential elections:

@washingtonpost Lula won on pledges to defend democracy, save the Amazon rainforest and bring social justice to Latin America’s largest nation. #brazil #sweetvictory #spongebob ♬ original sound – FanDuel

11. Highlight your brand’s beliefs and values

This strategy works because:

• It attracts like-minded people to your brand
• It helps you build a strong community around your products or services
• It sets you apart from the competition

A good example is WNRS (We’re Not Really Strangers), a card game that has been created to empower meaningful connections with others.

That’s what the brand sells: not a card game but the promise of finding that spark or connection with others.

Why does it work?

• Gen Z believes that people are interconnected. The generation craves hyperconnectivity and, as such, sees it everywhere in the Universe.
• The WNRS clips show universal truths that anyone can relate to.

As a result, people want to be part of this community that speaks the truths they feel.

Best Gen Z marketing campaigns

In addition to the examples above, let’s discuss five of the best Gen Z marketing campaigns:

1. #ChipotleLidFlip Challenge

The campaign went viral extremely fast because young people wanted to show off their skills. Gen Z-ers crave to be part of a community and appreciate laidback, fun challenges.

Pro tip: Notice the memorable branded hashtag which differentiates the campaign and offers clear instruction to the audience.

@daviddobrik #ChipotleLidFlip @chipotle #ad ♬ Flip – Future

2. Guess’s #InMyDenim

This campaign deserves a second mention because it was extremely well orchestrated. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have gotten so many views, new followers, and UGC posts in just six days.

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3. Netflix “Guess the Show” Series

The series encompasses all the features a campaign should have, especially one with a Gen Z audience that unfolds on TikTok.

Therefore, we’re looking at:

• A challenge to guess popular shows that Gen Z-ers watch
• The chance to connect with a community of fans
• The fun of “getting it” and being right
• A spot-on hashtag that catches people’s attention, telling them what they’re in for and what to do in just three simple words

Here’s an example promoting Netflix’s “Locke and Key” show:

@netflix no hints from me #guesstheshow #netflix ♬ original sound – Netflix

4. #ThousandDollarCrocs

This Crocs campaign offers another good example because:

• It unleashes people’s creativity as they customise their $1,000 Crocs.
• It connects with an intrinsic value: the need for authenticity. The campaign description specifically says it embodies the “Come As You Are mentality.”
• People participating in this campaign aim to show the world “IM GONNA BE whatever I want,” as per the original description. As such, the campaign:
  • Creates a community of people who appreciate connection and diversity.
  • Specifically targets Gen Zers who have adopted these two guiding values.

@rayann_prophet Ready for Christmas @crocs #ThousandDollarCrocs #christmas #crocs #foryou #famous ♬ Underneath the Tree – Kelly Clarkson

5. Instagram “We Make Today”

Instagram celebrates creativity, individuality, and self-expression; that’s this campaign’s message. The platform wants to let its users know they matter and are beautiful regardless of how they choose to present themselves to the world.

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A post shared by Benito Skinner (@bennydrama7)

Leveraging significant values like community, inclusion, individuality, and self-expression is a powerful nudge to Gen Z because they share the same principles.

Through this campaign, Instagram aims to become:

• Relatable
• Authentic
• Trustworthy

And considering Ogilvy orchestrated the whole thing, it’s no wonder it achieved its goals.

Are you marketing to Gen Z?

Video is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal when it comes to marketing to Gen Z. It allows you to connect with them on a personal level, show them who you are as a brand, and create a community of raving fans.

So, what are you waiting for? Start creating video content that will turn Gen Z into your biggest fans today!

Use platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels to reach Gen Zers on their turf. And don’t forget to employ hashtags, challenges, and influencers to amplify your reach even further.

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 Related content:

– The Best Time to Post on TikTok
– How to Link Instagram to TikTok
– How to Get More Views on TikTok
– How to Remove The TikTok Watermark in 7 Easy Ways

David Morneau

David Morneau is the co-founder and CEO of inBeat, a hybrid micro-influencer marketing SAAS/agency that helps brands scale their marketing efforts. He has helped over 200 DTC brands to date.

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Social proof is a powerful tool that any business can leverage to increase its brand reputation and fuel growth. In this blog, we’ll dive deeper into what social proof is, the different types of social proof, and how brands can use social proof to grow their businesses.

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What is social proof?

Social proof refers to the psychological impulse to take a cue from the crowd in order to conform to the “correct behaviour.” The social influence of the “crowd” can come from our friends, family, close work networks, or even random strangers on the internet. Alongside social proof, there sits a common concept known as word-of-mouth, which fuels social proof and can give consumers confidence when trying or buying something new. 

The concept of social proof is at work all around us; We consult our friends and families before eating out or going to a holiday destination. People check recommendations from search engines such as Google and Amazon before buying a product. Nearly 97% of people read product reviews before making a final purchasing decision.

Brands are well aware of the impact of social proof. Check this out.

The Native Deodorant listing on Amazon is basking in social proof. Not just due to its 4.5+ rating based on nearly 70,000 reviews. You’ll notice the conveniently located #1 Best Seller tag right next to the ratings. There are also 261 questions answered for this particular product in the community.

Amazon uses social proof to get prospects across the line and generate more sales.

Why is social proof important in your marketing strategy?

The underlying importance of social proof for any business is to increase revenues. Product descriptions, excellent sales copy, and a great content strategy will only get you so far. Social proof is that extra fuel that amps up prospective customers to make a purchase.

But besides increased revenues, there are other ways that social proof is important, including:

• Showcasing your expertise and authority
• Creating a community of long-term brand advocates
• Reducing your overall marketing expenses
• Accelerating sales

Don’t forget – Google loves social proof.  Google crawlers and bots constantly scrape web pages for affirmations of credibility and authority. Recommendations, reviews, and social proof aggregators, such as links to consumer websites, can boost rankings – especially for local businesses.

In the example above, we have a keyword search, i.e., “best BBQ restaurants in Atlanta.” Google pops up a couple of recommendations with results in the 4.5+ range.

This would explain why local businesses optimize their Google Business Profiles by adding ratings. The more and better ratings a business has, the higher the chances to generate more clicks from the search engine results pages (SERPs). Companies often use Google SERP API to understand exactly what the customer likes. In this way they can optimize their website for their needs.

Types of social proof

Now that we have a solid idea of what social proof is, we’ll dive deeper into the various types of social proof. We’ll look at five types of social proof:

1. User social proof

User social proof is the most common type of social proof. It stems from user reviews, testimonials, and product recommendations. Such content is important because it comes from an unbiased happy customer rather than being promoted by a brand. 

Check out the testimonials page of migration experts – This is Australia. We can count at least nine 5-star reviews from this one testimonials page alone, and there are several of these pages. The reviews look genuine based on the fact that full names, company names, and even profile pictures, are displayed.

Yelp is a popular crowdsourced review platform that can help businesses bolster their online visibility. While Yelp doesn’t verify users or the authenticity of reviews, its sophisticated algorithms can detect bots and other fakes. Accordingly, Yelp reviews are highly trusted compared to other review sites.

This makes Yelp another incredible source of trustworthy user social proof. You can pick reviews from this platform and even embed them on your website and landing pages.

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2. Expert social proof

Expert social proof is where an industry expert such as a business blogger or a niche influencer approves or endorses your product or brand. 

The image above is from Anne Handley, a digital content marketing expert and author of the bestseller Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content. In this tweet, she endorses an industry summit to increase awareness and sign-ups.

3. Celebrity social proof

People are strongly influenced by their favourite celebrities and influencers. The social proof generated by these high-profile personalities can be very beneficial to most brands.

For example, Porsche partnered with Alexandra Daddario – the Baywatch and True Detective actress, for this post.

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A post shared by alexandra daddario (@alexandradaddario)

Celebrity social proof may not work with all products, though. For example, customer testimonials and reviews may work better for highly specialized products in the SaaS industry than a celebrity endorsement.

Also, celebrity social proof can be pretty expensive. That makes perfect sense since you’ll need a bigger budget to get a celebrity talking about your brand. That’s why this is usually an option for well-established brands that generate more revenue.

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4. Wisdom of the crowd social proof

This is a phenomenon where having a huge number of customers causes other people to want to use your product. This plays into the crowd’s fear of missing out (FOMO). For example, during the Pandemic, Zoom’s year-on-year revenues increased by over 300% since 2019 due to the demand for remote work platforms.

Zoom’s exceptional quality drove its mega success. However, a significant part of this sales boom also came from the FOMO perspective of people transitioning to remote work and not wanting to miss out on this hot new phenomenon called Zoom.

5. Wisdom of friends’ social proof

This type of social proof extends to family and close associates. For example, you are more likely to visit a hotel or restaurant recommended to you by a family member or colleague than one with only recommendations from online strangers.

Social proof and social media

Any brand can use social media to level up advertising without spending a fortune. Social media can also support your efforts to generate social proof. Not only that, but you can also use your existing social proof to enhance your social media campaigns. It works both ways.

How do brands leverage social media for social proof? 

1. #Hashtag campaigns

First, you can create #hashtag campaigns. These will encourage more customers to share their moments using your products. That means more authentic social proof for you. Moreover, it makes it easier for you to track the social proof since it’s all under a single hashtag. 

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Dunkin Doughnuts is an excellent example of a brand that leveraged this technique. The coffee and doughnut company partnered with Charli, one of TikTok’s most followed personalities. Under the #Charlierunsondunkin hashtag campaign, the brand generated tons of social proof on TikTok. The hashtag campaign saw over 218 million views on TikTok:

They even went ahead to create the Charli Dunkin drink:

@dunkin So official, we put it in writing @charlidamelio. Order ‘The Charli’ on the Dunkin’ app! #CharliRunsOnDunkin #TheCharli #Dunkin ♬ original sound – Dunkin’

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2. User-generated content

You can also pull user-generated content from your social networks straight onto your website. This is a great way to use showcase social proof on your homepage, landing page, and other critical pages on your website. And since the users can click on social media posts, this technique makes your social proof look even more authentic.

Next-gen applications and APIs allow you to integrate social media posts, likes, comments, shares, etc., into different web resources. You could embed your Instagram feed into your landing page. Displaying reviews from the real customers, you’re interacting with on social media (for example, during a webinar, Q&A, or live video feed) allows you to display credibility.

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10 ways to use social proof in your marketing

The advantages of social proof extend beyond brand recognition, trust, and increased revenues. Let’s explore how you can leverage the power of social proof in your marketing strategies.

1. Partner with influencers and experts

B2B and SaaS businesses fair well with marketing techniques like case studies, product recommendations, and testimonials. SEO for SaaS is also vital in getting your product out there through a foolproof digital marketing strategy. 

However, beyond these options, SaaS, B2B, and B2C companies can also leverage the power of niche influencers and industry experts. These experts/influencers have built a steady following on social media. In addition, they boast the credibility of being experts in their field, thus earning the trust of their followers.

For example, GymShark partnered with Vikstar, a popular UK YouTube gamer and social media influencer.

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A post shared by Gymshark (@gymshark)

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SaaS brands are also keen on influencer partnerships. But unlike B2C brands, SaaS and B2B companies have to be more strategic. You have to partner with a reputable influencer and expert.

A classic example of an industry influencer expert is Neil Patel, who recommends several different SaaS/B2B products. 

In the image below, Neil recommends Zoho CRM as the best budget CRM. This one endorsement alone is enough to boost revenues significantly for Zoho CRM.

Meller is another excellent example of a brand that leverages the power of niche influencer marketing to promote its eyewear brand. The brand has a dedicated page for all its influencers, most of whom are models or beauticians. 

Despite the advantages provided by influencers in terms of social proof, brands should partner with the right people since this strategy can backfire. Influencers should align with your brand values and be enthusiastic about your product/brand. They should also be able to appeal to your target audience by sharing the same qualities.

2. Add testimonials on sales pages and social media

Satisfied customers are the best kind of marketing for any business. Market on South is a plant-based restaurant and bakery in Orlando, South Florida. The restaurant is reaping significant benefits from recommendations and reviews on Facebook. Not only are folks able to write reviews and leave ratings, but they can also share pictures or videos of their best moments. 

Check out the tasty photo from a customer upload below.

A potential customer can view the ratings, reviews, and kinds of food to expect. They can also make reservations, place orders directly from the Facebook page, and recommend the restaurant to their friends and loved ones.

3. Share results from customer surveys

Sharing results from customer surveys helps you utilize the wisdom of the crowd social proof. Let’s say you ran a quick poll or survey asking users something about your product or service. It could be a comparison between two of your product offerings. Then, the poll generates insane engagements from your customers. You can share the results from this survey to show other prospects what they are missing out on.

Netflix is a great example of a brand that leverages the customer feedback loop to tailor its content. On its debut in 2016, the show Stranger Things averaged viewership numbers of 14 million adults. The viewership had increased to 18 million on average by the second season, making it one of the most popular shows on the network.

Naturally, Netflix would want viewer feedback to know whether the show was a hit or miss and if the fans wanted more seasons or not. Netflix conducted a quick survey on Twitter. A majority of viewers overwhelmingly voted to create the second series of the show.

But here is the interesting bit. With such social proof, even Netflix subscribers who had not watched a single episode of Stranger Things would probably jump onto the bandwagon to watch the show.

4. Establish a referral program

Referrals are important because they tell new customers that someone they know has used a product/service and is satisfied with it. 

For example, if you are a website that teaches folks how to create free online courses, getting your business off the ground can be quite a challenge. However, if one customer successfully creates a course with your tools, they can now recommend your services through the referral program while giving a first-hand experience of how good your services are. 

How do you use referrals to generate social proof for your business? Well, a referral program by itself takes advantage of social proof. You are asking users who are satisfied with your product to recommend it to their peers for an incentive. Therefore, satisfied customers will be using their own testimonials or experiences to pitch your product to their friends. 

Make your referral program simple enough and make the reward scheme quick. Customers who’ve made a successful referral don’t want to wait a lifetime for you to fulfill your promise. Also, the best-performing referral programs reward both the referral and the referrer. Therefore, create a double-sided reward system for your referral program.

5. Use case studies

Case studies are a powerful tool that demonstrates what potential customers can expect from your product or service. Beyond sentimental marketing, case studies dive deep into the numbers and provide an in-depth analysis of past and present results.

For data-driven industries such as B2B and SaaS, it’s not enough to say, “Our product offers XYZ that can boost your revenue.” Evidence-based marketing, such as a case study, backs your claims with real results. 

That is one of the marketing strategies used at Audiense. It’s not enough to tell users what audience intelligence tools can do. So, Audiense created a dedicated page for case studies. These case studies are proving to be far more effective than mere customer reviews. 

Why are case studies important? They back brand claims by providing real data. They also demonstrate how someone used your product successfully through a first-hand customer account. Finally, they build credibility and trust. With so many claims and numbers floating around, it’s difficult to tell who is fake and who isn’t.

So, how do you create a winning case study? Follow the tips below:

• Use tools like Audiense to conduct audience research and create an accurate customer persona. Then use that persona to build your case study. Remember, your case study will only be effective if it’s relevant to your target audience, So make sure your prospects can see themselves in that case study.
• Use storytelling to create an emotional connection. Who is your customer, and what’s their story? What were their goals and pain points? How did you satisfy these needs?
• Create a visually appealing case study. Use strong headlines and clear high-definition pictures of the product and your customers. 
• Include dates, real numbers, charts, and graphs to share success stories such as increased sales or profits. 

Finally, don’t forget to include a strong CTA with each case study. You can direct the readers to sign up for a free trial or book a call with your customer reps, for example. 

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6. Share important milestones

Even if not in a case study, you can still showcase your achievements by sharing milestone data. You can do that on your landing page or social media profiles. Use percentages to make the figures relatable to the average person.

Slack is a productivity app that does this quite effectively. Not only does the Slack team display important metrics concerning customers – but it also integrates customer success stories into its website.

Milestones tap into the wisdom of the crowd social proof. For example, showing year-over-year growth in users can help other prospects want to see what the fuss is about. That means more signups for your product.

7. Tap into media mentions

Don’t underestimate the power of a media mention in building social proof. Media mentions, whether printed or audio-visual, can sway the masses or even a niche viewership to your brand. 

LifeSaber capitalizes on media mentions. LifeSaber is a portable personal emergency generator for wilderness survival.

Besides the authoritativeness of the media, psychologically, there is a power in being mentioned positively by different independent outlets. It reinforces your credibility and exposes your brand to different audiences.

8. Add trust badges

Badges, certificates, and awards will automatically capture the attention of potential customers. 

Craven’s Professional Painting proudly displays its badges, certificates, and achievements on Home Advisor. The social proof from these badges is only amplified further by the 4.97 ratings it has received from 25 verified reviews.

With certifications, awards, and badges, third parties also affirm that you are an expert and have fulfilled certain criteria to be accredited. 

9. Leverage user-generated content (UGC)

User-generated content (UGC) is one of the most powerful ways to generate social proof, especially on social media. By encouraging your audience to submit brand-related content, you can build trust and authenticity and leverage the power of connections outside your network.

GoPro is a prime example of a brand that leverages user-generated content within its brand community to promote new products, promotions, and awards. From sponsoring space jumps and partnering with Marriot Hotel guests to partnering with thousands of influencers to generate new content, GoPro has mastered UGC. 

In fact, their Instagram page is a goldmine of UGC. They share stunning content from their creators and other GoPro product users. 

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A post shared by GoPro (@gopro)

Mejuri is another brand that uses UGC brilliantly. The lifestyle brand that successfully leverages UGC as a marketing tactic on Instagram and Pinterest. In the image below, IG user @karenbritchick highlights her Mejuri collection while showing off her dance moves.

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A post shared by Mejuri (@mejuri)

On Pinterest, Mejuri highlights its different jewelry collections with exclusive pins from its customers or models. With 10million+ monthly views on Pinterest, not counting its other social handles, Mejuri is basking in the glory of social proof.  

10. Incentivize customers to write reviews

Customer reviews are highlighted in many content strategy tips as being the “trust” that search engines like Google desire. Google prominently displays positive reviews in the top tier of its SERPs, especially for local businesses. Facebook will also make recommendations for businesses or services based on reviews.

If you have a new product but very few or no available reviews, you could convince customers to write a testimonial through incentives. For example, you could share the following information with a new customer through email:

“Your feedback helps people like you who are new to our products make better purchasing decisions. Please leave a review to enjoy a $10 discount on your next purchase with this coupon.”

Wrapping up

Social proof is not just an abstract psychological concept. When leveraged correctly, it can be the growth engine you need to apply to your marketing strategy to move your business or brand to the next level and boost conversion rates, sales, networks, and customer loyalty.

Social proof also builds brand trust and credibility, provides richer search engine results, and reduces your overall marketing expenses. Use methods such as referrals, customer testimonials, influencer marketing, case studies, awards, and trust badges to display social proof.

Most importantly, your social proof strategy should be centered around familiarizing yourself with your target audience. Identify which channels and types of social proof would be most effective for them before unrolling any new strategy.

Good luck unlocking your new social proof prowess!

Carlos Serra

Carlos Serra is the head of corporate development and strategy at Audiense, a customer insights and engagement company, where he is responsible for managing partner and integration channels, ensuring seamless commercial expansion. He was named a pioneer in The Social Intelligence Insider 50 (2022) by The Social Intelligence Lab.

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Enter social media monitoring

There are several social media monitoring tools out there that will track mentions of your brand on social media to keep an eye on what people are saying about you. 

But before you get the ball rolling on your social media monitoring, it’s important to be aware of the potential pitfalls. That’s why, in this article, we’ll go over some common rookie social media monitoring mistakes to take heed of before they derail your social strategy.

What is social media monitoring, and how can it help you?

Social media monitoring is all about staying on top of all the chatter that is happening around your brand, industry and competitors. It asserts a proactive stance towards all types of correspondence related to your business, regardless of the sentiments attached to them. 

By taking note of the conversations that go on around you, you can gather all sorts of valuable information, such as:

• Social share of voice: How visible your brand is in relation to your competition.
• Social ROI: If the money you spend on your brand’s social presence is yielding results.
• Social sentiment analysis: The way people feel and the tone they use when talking about your brand on social media.
• Social trends: The latest trends your audience is captivated by. 
• Relevant keywords and hashtags: Which hashtags or keywords your competitors are using and ones you may consider using in the future.

Note that it’s not just quantitative data you’ll be collecting through social monitoring, but also qualitative insights that can help inform your future posts and campaign strategies. 

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Social monitoring vs social listening

Many people mistakenly believe that social media monitoring and social media listening are the same thing, but they are in fact two very different techniques that should not be used interchangeably. 

Social monitoring refers to tracking, identifying, and responding to individual social mentions of your brand, products, and competitors. Social listening, on the other hand, is the process of gathering data from those social mentions and the broader customer conversations to figure out insights that can ultimately be used to improve business results.

You can think of social media monitoring as akin to putting a band-aid on a wound while social media listening helps you understand why the wound occurred in the first place.

Social media monitoring is a short-term solution, in that you react to what your audience is saying — responding to a customer complaint, for instance. Social media listening, however, is a proactive process aimed at creating a long-term solution based on social media insights — for example, fixing a problem that people are complaining about so others do not have the same issue.

Social media monitoring mistakes to avoid

With the basics of social media monitoring sorted out, it’s time to get down to the juicy details. Let’s take a closer look at the most common social media monitoring mistakes so you can keep yourself from making them. 

Mistake #1: Not laying out a clear plan before you get started

It’s amazing how many companies try to jump on the social media monitoring wagon without proper planning only to be disappointed when they don’t see any positive outcomes.

But if you have no idea what you need to do, how are you ever going to get results?

Before embarking on your social monitoring quest, take some time to sit down and think about what exactly you’re hoping to accomplish with this new pursuit. Your plan should include measures to minimise risk, such as:

1. Which social media channels you’re going to monitor and why

2. What metrics you’ll track and what they mean for your business

3. How often you’ll check in on things

These are all great places to start when you design your social media monitoring plan. It doesn’t have to be super detailed—just make sure you know what you want from your monitoring tools. Once you’ve got that jotted down, you can begin monitoring your social media accounts. 

Mistake #2: Not responding quickly enough

Social media is fast-paced, and the most relevant conversations are often happening in real time. As a brand, you need to be able to react quickly in order to respond appropriately and capitalise on timely opportunities. If you don’t act swiftly, you may lose out on customers. According to the 2022 Sprout Social Index, not responding in a timely fashion on social media causes more than a third (35%) of consumers to turn to a competitor as a result. To further illustrate this point, here’s an example of how Brand24 lured a potential customer away from Salesforce. 

Salesforce’s response time in this case was not the best. Not responding to the customer fast enough enabled the competitor to seize the opportunity by responding quickly and offering a solution of their own.

Even if you manage to retain the customer despite slow response time, your brand will not enjoy the same level of engagement. Why? Simply because the people will have either moved on from the conversation or they no longer feel excited about your brand’s social presence.  

If you want to see just how quickly a company can respond to customers’ concerns, scroll through Glossier’s Twitter feed. The beauty brand works hard at getting back to social mentions as fast as possible. Just take a peek at the timestamps on this tweet for proof.

Being quick to acknowledge social mentions shows your followers that their voices matter and encourages them to continue engaging with your content regularly. It’s also very important to communicate your message effectively. Responding quickly without being able to communicate efficiently will also look bad on your brand.

If you’re a small business and find that it’s difficult to respond in time because you’re just too busy with other tasks, consider using a virtual assistant service to find someone with a social media focus that can help. 

Mistake #3: Not putting social monitoring analytics to good use

Social media monitoring analytics can give you powerful insights if you use them right. The problem is, most people don’t. They read and respond to social mentions—and they never look at the data behind those mentions. 

By digging a little deeper into the monitoring analytics, you’ll gain a fuller picture of your social media efforts.

For example, if you evaluate the spike in mentions in relation to the number of damaging mentions, you can gain insight into your audience’s sentiment. In the event that the negative mentions slope is more indicative of the spike, damage control may be needed. You can then assess the extent of your damage control by comparing audience sentiment and reach.

So, don’t think of social monitoring analytics as an isolated data point pertaining to a single task. View it as a constant source of insight that can help drive your social media strategy.

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Mistake #4: Not using social media monitoring to spot relevant trends

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out which social media trends to pay attention to and which ones to ignore. A trend caught at the right time, however, can prove invaluable for your online visibility. Take a look at how Jamie Oliver is raking in the engagement by riding the Valentine’s Day trend.

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A post shared by Jamie Oliver (@jamieoliver)

If you are simply monitoring and responding to social media mentions, then you are not making the most of the tool available. Social media monitoring platforms make sure you’re never caught off guard by keeping you posted on any upcoming occasions and events you may want to include in your social media content calendar. 

Mistake #5: Not watching your competitor’s activity

If you’re not monitoring your competitors’ social media activity, you’re missing out on golden opportunities to learn more about them as well as about yourself. Keeping tabs on your competition will provide you with a clear picture of exactly where your social media strategy stands in comparison. You’ll be able to:

• Discover which brands in your industry share the most social media attention.
• Listen in on what other people are saying about your competitors.
• Identify social media influencers who are mentioning your competitors.
• See what social media trends or campaigns made your competitor’s engagement and mentions soar.

Analysing your competitors’ online presence will allow you to uncover massive areas of opportunity. Take, for instance, MoonPie’s response to Hostess, a rival snack-cake brand, that promoted its golden cupcakes during the 2017 solar eclipse. MoonPie noticed the attention its competitor was receiving and sought to turn the tide with its terse, but impactful, tweet. 

Mistake #6: Not narrowing down your search

It’s easy to get excited about the sheer amount of details that social media monitoring offers, but you should resist the temptation to overextend the scope of your alerts. It’s better to focus on specific mentions and monitor them closely rather than juggling multiple threads at once. This way, you won’t waste your time going through irrelevant mentions.

For example, when SaaS company Paperbell started monitoring their mentions, they were overwhelmed by volume. Paperbell primarily targeted life coaches, but the term “life coach” includes current working coaches, those who want to train to be coaches, as well as clients looking for a life coach. Over time, Paperbell was able to learn the connotations of different hashtags to narrow their monitoring to only the working coaches that make up their target market.

5 Tips to make social media monitoring work smoothly

Below are a few tips to get your social media monitoring off to a good start:

1. Find a tool that works for you

There are tons of options out there, so start by limiting your criteria based on the type of monitoring you are looking for, then go from there. Then ensure that your chosen social media monitoring tool is compatible with your monitoring needs.

2. Don’t limit your search to your handle

It’s not uncommon for brands to have alternative names. Abbreviations, different names for social accounts, common typos etc. Consider all possible variations of your brand’s name when defining your query.

3. Get to know your users

Get to know the users who mention your brand or product regularly on social media. Building relationships with them will make them more likely to become your brand advocate over time.

Monitoring platforms for social media keep evolving at an accelerated pace, some platforms now come with dedicated modules to find potential leads. Put in the keywords people would use to search for your products or services, and you will receive a stream of leads in return. To increase the chances of converting prospects into real customers, stay in touch with them, and answer any questions they may have about your offerings. If you operate an offline store, you can also share QR codes encoding the exact location of the store for prospects to check out your offerings. 

4. Consider hiring someone dedicated to social media monitoring

Social media monitoring is one of the most valuable tools in any business’ arsenal—but if you don’t have time to get it right, hiring someone who does is a great idea. Just make sure to lay out all of your expectations, goals, and objectives with crystal clarity, during the social media proposal creation process.

5. Be on the lookout for unusual activity

Social media crises can occur at any time. Configure your monitoring software to notify you when mention volumes spike or social sentiment meters flash red.

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With over half the world on social media, it makes sense that your new SaaS startup should be on social media as well.

But where do you begin? Facebook can be crowded, Reddit can be downright confusing, and LinkedIn is usually best suited for B2B conversations. Finding a way to stand out from the crowd can be exhausting, assuming you have a strategy in place to begin with.

Social media is where the customers are in control, so to succeed in social media marketing for SaaS, you have to meet them where they are. ​​The tips below will help you do precisely that.

Learn the social media platforms

In the 20th century, the phrase “social networking” was a virtual unknown. Today, there are dozens of social media sites (if not hundreds) that crop up every single day, hoping to gain a share of the market and your attention.

Realistically though, anywhere from 10 to 15 social media sites are worth your time  — and even then, only if they suit your needs. Facebook is the resident juggernaut, followed by YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. WhatsApp is one of the main platforms in European and Asian markets.

Scale your efforts back even further, though. Instead of trying to learn all of the social media platforms, focus on one and learn everything about it. The obvious choice for this would be Facebook since it boasts nearly 3 billion active users, but if your brand requires video, think about using YouTube or Instagram.

Experience is the best teacher when it comes to learning a platform, but you should also look into taking free online courses that can help you understand each outlet’s capabilities. StuDocu, for instance, offers a number of online educational materials and learning resources that anyone can access to expand their knowledge about a specific platform or social media marketing for SaaS.

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Focus on social media awareness

Although social media can be utilised across all parts of the SaaS marketing funnel, it’s best used at the TOFU (Top of Funnel) stage. At this point, your only objective is to generate as much awareness as you possibly can. You should look to inform your audience about the various products and services you offer and the values that your brand strives to achieve.

How you do this is contingent on your capabilities and your resources. Status updates are given on sites like Facebook and Twitter, but you can also utilise long-form blog content to teach your customers how to use your software or educate them about the industry. Professional tips and tactics are also welcome.

Another effective content type is user testimonials. Even as a startup, you should have a few generous reviews from your current customers, so create some graphics that highlight the various strengths of your software and publish them to your channel. SaaS LMS systems offer scalable and flexible solutions for educational needs, making them a valuable asset for startups aiming to enhance their training and development programs.

This technically counts as user-generated content, which describes any piece of content that is not developed in-house. On occasion, your employees may assist with creating UGC, but it always works better when the potential customer hears or sees the product in action from other customers. Be sure to tag whoever created that content for you in the comments or in the caption to help expand your reach.

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Invest in high-quality visuals

when it comes to social media marketing for SaaS, It doesn’t really matter which platform you use; visuals are important.

They can also be the most challenging. Infographics need to be detailed, and the statistics need to be verified. Gifs need to be visible on the platform, not a link that takes you to a third-party website. Pictures should be high definition, not grainy photos that look like they were taken through a potato. 

All of this costs money, whether you’re paying for a graphic designer or spending staff resources to create these images. But, once you do, the ROI is there; social media posts that include high-quality images typically get 650% higher engagement than those that don’t. Plus, you can repurpose these across multiple platforms.

But creating images is the easy part. The real question is what the content of those images looks like.

Most businesses choose to focus on video rather than still images, which is perfect for your SaaS startup. Live video, in particular, works really well. You can have a live question and answer session, a behind-the-scenes tour of the product and its capabilities, and panel discussions from various industry experts. This type of video shows your brand’s vulnerability and authority.

SaaS explainer videos work really well, too. It doesn’t necessarily need to be professionally produced. Still, a well-done video that shows your product and services in action can help customers visualise it in their own lives, which can go a long way.

Content is king. Blog articles, newsletters, or even investing in a podcast platform to share interviews and expert advice — all of it can be enhanced with a few high-quality images or videos.

Create partnerships

The very nature of social media is that it is collaborative. Forming communities and participating actively in groups strengthens our sense of belonging, so it makes sense that creating partnerships with complementary businesses will only benefit your startup.

To get started, identify a few brands that complement your business. These may be in the same industry — or even a competitor — or they could be in a completely separate niche. A lawn care company, for instance, may partner with a home cleaning service to provide bundled services to both audiences. 

Alternatively, you can share your resources with other businesses to increase visibility. For example, you could hire a writer to create long-form content for your SaaS product, then give it to other companies (as long as you get the link in the credit) to give to their audiences. Just make sure that it benefits everyone, or else the reputation of everybody involved will suffer.

Sponsorship is also a great way to give your business a quick, initial boost. Reach out to a company whose audience is in your target market, and offer a free trial of your product. You may have to pay for the initial placement, but if done correctly, you can create a valuable partnership that benefits everyone.

It’s important to remember that business relationships should not consist of one-off benefits. Instead, look to form collaborative relationships that you can harvest for years to come.

Leverage social media industry influencers

In years past, marketers typically referred to influencers as endorsers, but the concept is the same. Your company is paying somebody else to share your product with their audience for a small fee. Obviously, the larger the audience, the more you’ll have to pay for their endorsement, so make sure you find the right influencer that will help you have the broadest reach.

Instead of automatically paying for top talent, consider looking for mid-level influencers with a wad of engagements with their current market. Often, these influencers are eager to have sponsorship deals because it gives them added credibility to their audience. Moreover, if these influencers reach more people in time, you’ll have a relationship with them already that you’ll be able to leverage down the road.

Influencers work well because of the so-called “halo effect.” This theory argues that if someone likes a certain aspect of something — their speaking style, fashion choices, or political beliefs — you subconsciously assume certain other things about their character. If they speak well, for instance, they must also be intelligent. If they are attractive, they’d have to also be funny.

By the same token, if people associate positive feelings toward an influencer, they’ll transfer those positive feelings to your brand. That’s just one of the reasons that influencer marketing is expected to multiply exponentially over the next several years, just as it has in the past. Utilise it correctly, and it can be one of the biggest boosts to your SaaS startup.

Utilise social media paid ads

If you really want to push the envelope with your early-stage social media SaaS marketing, paid ads are hard to beat. Facebook has made the bulk of its fortune by harvesting and sharing important demographic data with advertisers, and other platforms have followed suit. 

Since social media’s organic reach has dropped over the past couple of years, marketers have been forced to use paid advertisements to enter communities that they wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise. The key is developing an audience that you can communicate with consistently, then retarget them with offers for your products and services.

In the beginning, you may not have a budget for social media marketing for SaaS or even an audience to work with. Start with low-budget awareness ads that simply announce who you are, then use that data to create your custom audience. You’ll also develop crucial insights into what kind of messaging your audience does and doesn’t respond to, which will transfer to other platforms.

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Offer customer support

Social media is the perfect intersection between businesses and customers, so it makes sense that customer service could be one of the use cases for sites like Facebook and Reddit. After all, if people log on to social media to complain about a product or service, it’s in the business’s best interest to respond on that same platform.

The research backs this up. 54% of survey respondents said they had a more favourable view of a specific brand after seeing them respond to complaints on social media. Failure to respond to comments at all can lead to a 15% churn rate for your customers. Those are two numbers that any SaaS startup needs to pay attention to. 

Customer requests can also be a gold mine for market research, especially in the early days. When you’re just finding out which aspects of your product and messaging work and which don’t, getting near-instant feedback from your customers is invaluable. This shapes your brand to respond to what customers want, not what you think they want.

The reactive nature of social media has prompted many SaaS businesses to also use their platforms as a storefront. Businesses can build their profiles to include in-app checkout, tags for various product categories, and links back to their main page. Copy AI builds on this idea by creating Instagram posts that share tips and offers on their products, like a sentence rewriter.

“Done is better than perfect”

Two things matter the most when it comes to social media marketing for SaaS: consistency and intentionality. Every venture into a new platform needs to come with a strategy parallel to it – one that you plan on following through to the end.

For that reason, worry less about taking the “right” step and focus on taking a step in general. Get present, get active, and start trying to reach your audience where they are.

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Sarang Padhye

Sarang is a passionate content marketer and Account Manager at uSERP. He runs a successful blog on filmmaking and advertising and loves writing copy for video commercials in his spare time.

The post 8 Tips for Social Media Marketing for SaaS Startups in 2024 appeared first on Hopper HQ.