IM Sphere

Effective digital marketing is hard work. There simply is too much content and competition fighting for your audience’s attention. So, how do you stand out? 

It all starts with research. If you want to stand out, you need to understand your audience, the people they follow, the content they like and the conversations they’re having online.

And that’s where social listening comes in. Not only does social listening help you better understand your audience to help you improve your digital marketing, but it’s also a great tool for social selling, brand reputation monitoring and customer service.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to use social listening to improve your marketing. 

What exactly is social listening?

Social listening basically means using technology (paid and free tools) to monitor keywords across social media (and the web in general, depending on the tool you’re using) in order to gather relevant mentions and conversations from an audience.

That said, this definition doesn’t really explain the full value of social listening. While social listening is a great way to catch mentions of your brand so that you can respond accordingly, you can act… Read More

You have a website, a few social media profiles, and even traffic coming in from search results. This is all nice and dandy, but when you factor in that there are now more than a billion active websites and blogs on the internet today, you are going to need more tools and resources in order to beat your competitors.

Gone are the days of writing content, promoting it a little bit, and then moving on with your life. Now it’s all about using the best tools and services to expand your content reach, increase customers, and generate more traffic and sales than ever before.

To help with all of this, we are going to look at some of today’s best tools to effectively monitor, improve, track, and grow your business across platforms and media outlets.

1. Smarp

When it comes to increasing sales, it definitely takes a team effort. Whether it’s content creation, social promotion, or even making sure everyone in your organization is on the same page… it’s all about engagement and conversation.

One of the best tools for accomplishing this is Smarp, which allows businesses and brands of all sizes to create an internal content hub for employees, sales teams, or any other specific business unit wi… Read More

Want to better understand your customer’s journey across devices and channels? Have you heard of the Facebook Attribution tool? In this article, you’ll learn how to use Facebook’s new Attribution tool to measure the effectiveness of your ads. What Is the Facebook Attribution Tool? Before we dive into the Facebook Attribution tool, it’s worth looking […]

The post How to Use the Facebook Attribution Tool to Measure Your Marketing Impact appeared first on Social Media Examiner.

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Posted by MiriamEllis

Everything your brand does in the new year should support just one goal: better local customer service.

Does this sound too simple? Doesn’t marketing brim with a thousand different tasks? Of course — but if the goal of each initiative isn’t to serve the customer better, it’s time for a change of business heart. By putting customers, and their problems, at the absolute center of your brand’s strategy, your enterprise will continuously return to this heart of the matter, this heart of commerce.

What is local customer service in 2019?

It’s so much more than the face-to-face interactions of one staffer with one shopper. Rather, it’s a commitment to becoming an always-on resource that is accessible to people whenever, wherever and however they need it. A Google rep was recently quoted as saying that 46% of searches have a local intent. Mobile search, combined with desktop and various forms of ambient search, have established the local web as man’s other best friend, the constant companion that’s ever ready to serve.

Let’s position your brand to become that faithful helper by establishing the local customer service ecosystem:

Your Key to the Local Customer Service Ecosystem

At the heart sits the local customer, who wants to know:

Who can help them, who likes or… Read More

The worst time to start planning for a crisis is when you’re in the middle of one. Pre-crisis planning is key to successful social media crisis mitigation. This is lifeguard mode, and there are three elements to it.

1. Buy Some Binoculars — Set Up a Listening Program

It’s hard to deal with a crisis you can’t find. You can most effectively monitor conversations and stay aware of crises with a social media listening tool, but you can also monitor chatter by setting up keyword searches and Google Alerts. 

Technology is only good as its operators. You must have a listening protocol in your organization. Who is listening to social? When are they listening? For what are they listening? Who is covering nights and weekends?

2. Know What Is and Is Not a Crisis

Somebody sending a mean tweet or two about your company doesn’t constitute a crisis. When the volume of public outcry starts gaining speed like a boulder down a mountain before your company has a chance to gather its druthers, then its time to activate crisis mode. When identifying a crisis, here are three things to watch for: 

A social media crisis is a decisive change from the norm.

Nike and Chick-Fil-A are routinely criticized for company e… Read More