#MDMC19: Shane Barker Reveals Everything You Need To Know About Influencer Marketing

By Sarah Thomas


It is no secret that influencer marketing is extremely successful! I mean with 1 billion monthly users on Instagram spending an average of 53 minutes a day on the platform, influencers have a huge reach! Influencer marketing has completely taken off leaving a lot of businesses’ in the dark on how to use it to their advantage and just not using it at all.

Digital Strategist and Influencer Consultant, Shane Barker shared his influencer marketing expertise with us at MDMC this year. Shane shared everything from his experience consulting influencers, to the best ways for businesses to utilize influencer marketing. Keep reading for answers to your influencer marketing questions!

Influencer Marketing Works

Influencer marketing works because influencers have gained the trust of their audience. When someone you know suggests something, you trust their opinion and recommendations. This is why when an influencer shares a product, their audience is quick to try it! Even I have been guilty of impulse buying the electric toothbrush that my favorite youtuber swears by – haha!

 

Finding The Right Influencers

Shane shared four tools that can help you find influencers that best suit your business and goals.

  • Buzzsumo – Helps you find trending content ideas and relevant influencers
  • GRIN – Find influencers, and run and track your campaigns
  • GroupHigh – Find relevant bloggers and influencers, track and measure content reach
  • Insightpool – Identify relevant influencers with helpful tools like discovery, activation, and insights

How To Pitch Influencers

Before you send a pitch, you should get to know the influencer you are interested in. Do this by taking the time to follow and engage with what they share on social media. Look for any common interests that you can mention when reaching out. A pitch should be personalized to each influencer you are reaching out to so that the influencer gets the sense you genuinely want to work with them. Influencers are receiving a lot of pitches so be sure to make yours unique!

Successful Influencer Marketing

In order for influencer marketing to be successful, Shane shared a few key components to control.

  • Know your audience – this is the biggest thing to consider before choosing an influencer. Choose an influencer that has the same audience as your target audience.
  • Know your goals – in order to keep things clear with the influencer you should set specific goals and communicate those to your influencers.
  • Customize your approach – Your approach should be customized to each influencer you work with depending on their audience and personality

Now that you’re in the know on how businesses can utilize influencer marketing, take the leap and try it out! Be sure to check out Shane Barker, @shanebarker on Instagram and @shane_barker on Twitter.

#MDMC19: Instagram Expert Jenn Herman Shares How to Grow Your Instagram and Make More Sales

By Sarah Thomas


Here’s the undeniable truth about Instagram at the moment – it is POWERFUL. The engagement rates on Instagram are higher than all social media platforms making it is the best platform to build a community for your brand.

Instagram expert Jenn Herman, who you may know by her Instagram handle, Jenn’s Trends, shared everything you need to know to strengthen your game on Instagram at MDMC this year. Jenn is a social media marketing consultant, author, and speaker with a huge community of followers on Instagram. One thing is for sure, Jenn packed the room during her presentation and captured the attention of the audience with her vivacious personality and humor! Continue reading for a recap of the valuable steps Jenn provided to grow your Instagram and make more sales.

Clearly, you should not want to miss this, I mean look at how packed her session was!

Create a Profile That Attracts Followers

Jenn shared that the most important factors in your profile are as follow:

  • Name & username
  • Profile Photo
  • Bio Description
  • URL
  • Contact Info

These are the first impression of your audience so use them wisely! One thing Jenn stressed is the use of hashtags in your bio – do not overdo this. The only hashtags you should be using in your bio are hashtags that are specific to your brand, otherwise, you are sending viewers to a hashtag that has nothing thousands of photos with no relation to you.

Better Attention with Better Content

Jenn explained that less is more when it comes to content. The quality of your content is much more important than the quantity of content. A couple of posts a week that get engagement are much more effective than posting every day with little to no engagement. To get more engagement with your content, find ways to connect to your audience through emotion, this can be done using humor or relatable stories.

Get More Reach and Followers

Strategies you should be using to get a larger reach include:

  • “Tag” friends – have your audience tag friends in the comments, this gives more exposure to your posts
  • Hashtags – use hashtags that are specific to your brand or industry
  • Resharing to Stories – make sure your audience is able to share your stories to theirs, you can find this option in your settings.

With all of this in mind, you are officially ready to go step up your Instagram game and build your brand’s community! If you aren’t familiar with Jenn be sure to follow her on Instagram @jennstrends, there is no doubt you will benefit from all of the tips and tricks she is constantly sharing with her followers.

5 Reasons Why Video Marketing is Important in the Digital World

 

By Patricia Knight


Video marketing is a huge commitment in the business world. Managers think that video is time-consuming, hard to track, and requires a lot of attention to detail. However, video marketing is a lot easier than everyone thinks and it can reap big rewards. 87% of businesses can use video as a marketing tool, according to Wyzowl. Video has been seen as a powerful asset to all consumers with 79% of people mentioned that a brand’s video has convinced them to use video creating app, like Snapchat for filters that a company is promoting. For example, Snapchat users use this social media app to try the len that makes your face look like a taco when Taco Bell is promoting their Doritos Loco tacos.

 

Video is now the present and the future, and it is absolutely necessary for every brand and company to be using video to its fullest potential. There are so many reasons why video marketing works, but here are five reasons why you and your brand should unambiguously be using video in your marketing strategy.  

 

1. Social Platforms Love Videos

48% of people said they will be most likely to share video content with their friends, ahead of any other type of content in their social media websites. That means if you want to make an impact on social, you’ll need to be posting videos. The social opportunities for video are growing every day, from posting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin to creating live videos, stories, and virtual reality. This flexibility allows you to pinpoint the exact content and distribution method that reaches your audience best.

 

In addition, video is much more engaging to social viewers than any other type of content. For example, Facebook notes that many of its users who post videos on their pages are a prompt discussion among their followers, as do all the posts that celebrities share in their Facebook pages. In fact, average live videos get six times as many interactions as regular videos. Incorporating video into your posts can drive higher engagement and interactions from a lot of people. In addition to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter videos are also automatically play in your newsfeed and it shows that making videos more eye-catching to followers than just text that we share in social media.

2. Mobile Viewers Love Video

 

A study recently released by Deloitte shows that Americans are commonly checking their smartphones about 8 billion times per day. Also, more than 75% of worldwide video viewing is mobile, according to JWPlayer. That means it’s required you to reach that giant mobile audience so that the video is the way to go.

“The growing range of content that’s available from on-demand services like YouTube, Netflix or Facebook Watch allows viewers to feel encouraged to watch more frequently on their smartphones and tablets while on the go,” according to Mobile Marketer. Readily available video content makes it easy for users to engage on social media, and the demand for fast content is rapidly growing. Therefore, big companies like Facebook Watch and Netflix are constantly adapting to meet the demands of their audience.

3. Video Commands More Attention

There are so many things in the world that are demanding a consumers attention — and there is only so much attention to go around. Because video uses both visual and aural stimuli, it dominates static advertisements in capturing audience attention. By catching your viewer’s eye, video can raise awareness and possible ROI.

For example, in a heat map study has done that tracking consumer eye movement and attention on the search page videos was shown to be particularly powerful in capturing eyeballs compared to static ads, even when these videos were not the first results according to an article on Moz.com.

On top of this, the average user spends 88% or more time on a website with video. So if you’re trying to use your website to make an impression, a video is a sure way to do it. You can easily track your website metrics by using Google Analytics.

4. Stronger Emotional Connections

According to Entrepreneur magazine, branding is the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies a product from other products.” Then, Emotional branding is creating an emotional connection to one company that separates it from the rest by creating brand loyalty over time.

It is those emotional connections that create higher ROI and audience engagement. According to Medium, 94% of respondents said they would be highly likely to recommend a brand they were emotionally engaged with. You can use video to reach the audience on an emotional level, while it’s also pushing your product or message.

For example, Green Buzz Agency produced “A Boy and His Dog,” which has shown how Cooper received a service dog to help him with his seizures caused by Dravet syndrome with the help of Make-A-Wish® Mid-Atlantic. By interviewing the parents to hear not only about the struggles of raising Cooper but also their gratitude for Finn, we gave the audience an inside perspective into Cooper and his family. Additionally, this video premiered at the annual Evening of Wishes Gala, helping Make-A-Wish Mid-Atlantic raise over $720,000 to help support local wishes.

While traditional marketing methods are expected by audiences, video is a new experience most of the time by everyone. Most people can still recall a video or commercial that made them laugh or cry, even if they saw it months or years ago. If making an emotional connection is the most effective method to get a consumer to take action, videos are the most powerful way available to deliver the message.

5. Video Drives Organic Traffic

82% of all consumer internet traffic will be from video by 2021. A brand is 53 times more likely to show up first on Google if you have a video embedded on your website, according to Moovly. Since Google now owns YouTube, there has been a significant increase in how much videos affect your search engine ranking. But, 75% of people will never scroll past the first page on a Google search.

It’s important to put your keywords in your title, description, and in your actual video.

This will help Google rank your video on its relevance to what the user is searching for. Google Trends and Adwords are both helpful tools in generating keywords for your video. Remember to also include the keywords in your actual video, for example as narration at the beginning. Google has voice recognition software that picks up on the words that you’re actually using in your video and determines which keywords it should be ranking for.

You can get a good amount of traffic to your video. You made great content, now share it! You can do this by posting your video on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and including it in any blog posts or pages on your website. Adding a call to action to your post may help others share it, too! You should also try to embed your video wherever you can, whether that is on an outside blog post or website.

 

Conclusion

All this is to say, if you’re not using video, you should learn how to use videos to attract your audiences. It is one of the most effective ways to reach viewers in this digital era, especially on mobile and social platforms. In the end, it makes the most impact and engagement on your viewers, and that will only help your bottom line. I think that video marketing will still have success in the digital world in the future.

Why Did Hashtags Disappear from 2019 Super Bowl Ads?

By: Dr. Perry D. Drake 


Every year for the past 6 years, I have had my digital marketing students at the University of Missouri – St. Louis do an assessment of the Super Bowl ads regarding their use of hashtags, social media icons and URL’s to help drive a conversation. This year, my students and I were shocked to see virtually no advertiser using hashtags.

Peak usage of hashtags in Super Bowl ads was 57% in 2014 according to Marketingland. Since that year, it has been in decline every year. In 2015, 2016, 2017 usage of hashtags in Super Bowl ads were 50%, 45%, and 30% respectively based on another report by Marketingland.

So why has hashtag usage in Super Bowl ads slipped to virtually none in 2019? Are they just not effective any longer? To prove or disprove this point I decided to examine brand mentions for the top five brands from 2018 and compare that to the top five brands from 2019.

For 2018, we can see in the graphic below, Avocados from Mexico had the most mentions during the Superbowl at 137,000, followed by Pepsi at 38,000 according to Salesforce. And, all five of the top brands used hashtags within their ads. In addition, we should keep in mind this is not really reflective of the true reach which could easily be in the millions for some brands depending on the influence and reach of those that used the hashtags within their posts.

 

2018 Social Media Mentions, Top 5 Brands (Salesforce.com)

For 2019, virtually no brands used hashtags within their ads. They all had campaign hashtags in play but were only using them in their social media posts. The top five most mentioned brands on social media during the Super Bowl according to Salesforce are shown below. None of the top five used hashtags upon my examination of their ads. And, as a result, we can definitely see much fewer mentions than the prior year.

2019 Social Media Mentions, Top 5 Brands (Salesforce.com)

This year the most mentioned brand was Bud Light at only 31,500 in comparison to the top brand in 2018 (Avocados from Mexico) at 137,000 mentions. A significant difference to say the least.

My students this semester thought that the Pepsi “More than OK” campaign was one of the best executed across the digital channels but felt they missed out on additional reach and exposure by not having the “morethanok” hashtag appear on the TV ad. They also felt that Pepsi missed out by not driving those not familiar with their abundance of fun social media content to their social media channels.

They also felt the Doritos “NowItsHot” campaign was a hit given how they ensured a large audience by mashing up Chance the Rapper with the Backstreet Boys. This is a great way to grab the attention of the broadest audience possible across generations. But they thought the hashtag strategy was a bit weak. Engagement could have been centered around how we eat the Flamin’ Hot Nacho flavor or asking us if we prefer hot or regular.

So why did almost every advertiser not use a hashtag in 2019? Why would you not toss your campaign hashtag (or a new one) at the end of your ad? Why would you not want to drive significant conversation around your brand at a time when it will be seen by 103 million viewers? The benefit of a hashtag is to help evoke conversation and extend your voice around an event, cause, emotion and in that moment. Why would you not want to do extend your reach? It seems crazy to me!

So what happened? Given recent marketing missteps by various brands like Dove and H&M and others were advertisers afraid this year of making a misstep themselves in front of such a big audience. Were they all just playing it safe? Did they lack the resources to monitor the conversation? Not even Anheuser Busch, which had the ever popular #DillyDilly last year, used any this year. I am anxious to see what 2020 brings us, or should I say doesn’t bring us.

How Crowdfunding Changed The World: Interview W/ Ryan Brennell

UMSL Marketing recently talked to Ryan Brennell, founder of Gladitood, and how the era of social interaction has re-shaped the way we give! Ryan will also be teaching an exclusive ‘Crowdfunding 101 ‘ class as part of the revamped UMSL Digital curriculum!


We live in the era of social organizing. How has Crowdfunding been a part of this trend over the last five years?

I think crowdfunding is a natural progression of social organizing. We’ve been using Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family, or Reddit to talk with like-minded individuals about shared interests, and I know it’s easy to connect the dots looking back, but it just seems like Crowdfunding was inevitable. We’re making it so easy for people to connect from all over the world, it was only a matter of time before we started using this medium to raise money. Now we’re seeing it on a scale that is changing our culture. Bernie Sanders just ran the most successful political crowdfunding campaign in history during the last election. Startup founders aren’t at the whim of venture capitalists who held all the power. Now they can find their audience and let the market decide if they should be funded. Thanks to social organizing, we have crowdfunding. And thanks to crowdfunding, new opportunities exist for us all.

Crowdfunding services such as GoFundMe are everywhere. From school supplies, family tragedy’s, to lifelong dreams. How has this changed fundraising culture?

I think that the many crowdfunding platforms that have popped up, especially those like GoFundMe where anyone can raise money for nearly anything, has increased competition for fundraisers and also increased an individual’s awareness of fraud. Crowdfunding has completely democratized access to funding. If you can tell a compelling story and execute a clever promotional plan, access to a wealthy network isn’t necessary anymore. It has also made fundraising a very real piece of pop-culture. The subjects of viral campaigns become overnight celebrities, and this perpetuates the biggest myth in crowdfunding – “If you build it, they will come.”

Despite the abundance of crowdfunding campaigns, many generate zero dollars. Why is this?

The failures almost always come down to that crowdfunding myth. The idea that crowdfunding is internet magic is the reason why the vast majority of crowdfunding campaigns fail right out of the gate. You have to put in the work.

Crowdfunding campaigns can be very difficult to dissect. We see the success, but we can’t get a good look under the hood to see what’s driving those results. This makes it very difficult for those new to crowdfunding to figure out where to begin. After years of helping hundreds of campaigns succeed, and seeing plenty fail, we’ve recognized the patterns and formulas that lead to both results. Frankly, 90% of the work for a successful campaign happens before it even launches.  Realistically, there were several weeks – sometimes months – of planning ahead of a successful 30-day campaign.

Basically, crowdfunding is not a magic ‘Easy’ button. It takes work. How can someone approach this?

I like to approach it by creating a two-part plan. Part one consists of everything you need to get in place in order to put the campaign together and set yourself up to execute successfully. Part two is the actual execution.

Part one is about crafting your story, strategically planning your reward levels, identifying and building relationships with your audience, and lining up distribution channels for your campaign. This means making a video and creative graphics, coming up with creative and unique “up-sells” that don’t dip into your profits, figuring out which social channels and forums to engage, and creating a PR plan. It sounds like a lot, but if you tackle these, you are in the top 10% of your competition. If you take part one seriously, part two is a breeze. If you half-ass part one, those 30-60 days might be the most stressful of your life.

What will your new Crowdfunding course be touching on? Who is this course for?

The course is for anyone who wants to learn how to run a successful crowdfunding campaign from day 1 of planning through day X of follow up after the campaign has ended. Nonprofit organizations, startup founders, marketers, and inventors, I’m talking to you. My goal is that my students leave with not only an understanding of how to run a successful campaign but with their own concrete plan of action.  We’ll cover how to craft your story to include the four key ingredients for virality, how to identify and engage your target audience, how to utilize distribution channels to increase your reach. We’ll go over creating a great video – even without access to a professional production team, building an email and social campaign to accompany your fundraiser, and how to capitalize on the momentum of success after your campaign to keep backers engaged for your next fundraiser. The course will include a number of case studies that break down some of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in history, including successful campaigns from right here in St. Louis!

 

 

New Up and Coming Social Media Platforms

By: Andrea Siecinski


Social media is a relatively new concept, but it has quickly become a way of life in this century. It is hard to break through the noise of the big platforms that are present in today’s society. Many venture in creating the greatest, new social media platform but do not make it due to the competition. There are some social media platforms that are making a splash and turning heads lately, though.
Musical.ly
Musical.ly is an app that started in 2014 and is a platform that is popular with today’s teenagers. Musical.ly is a site that allows its users to lip sync or dance to a song for 15 seconds and post it. According to Adweek, it is starting to rival other social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. Even Katy Perry is using it to promote her music.
Vero
Vero, which means truth, is the most recent social media platform to get a big break. It has become very popular and has got a lot of hype as of late. Vero is a place to share all sorts of media and ideas. Its feed is chronological, which has been lost on other platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Vero is also ad-free at the moment which is hard to find on other platforms.
Hive
Hive is a platform that allows its users to connect and follow people with similar interests. Users create a profile based on their interests, and Hive connects them to people nearby with similar interests. It is being marketed as a way to connect people and to create new friendships. It will also be a spot to get advice on those topics of interest. It has recently been promoted by football player Terrell Owens, and Peter Kraus of the Bachelor.
These platforms are making some headway in the social media world. Who knows if they will thrive as much as Facebook and Instagram have, but they are finding success despite how hard it is to make it. The platforms are unique in their own way which has brought them some success.


 

Join the Social Media for Non-Profits Panel with Brandi Bothe at #MDMC18


Brandi Bothe is Digital Marketing Specialist at Midland University in Fremont, NE. At her job she plans and executes digital marketing strategies and campaigns across web, SEO/SEM, email, paid search, social, and display. She also oversees social media across all channels, manages web presence and targeted landing pages, and assists in content strategy creation, and development.
Brandi is a member of the Barrientos Scholarship Foundation Board of Directors, and a volunteer Marketing Manager for Love Pack. She also teaches social media and email marketing for small businesses and beginners via the Interface called “The Web School”. In these workshops, she speaks about the strategy, shares free online resources for scheduling posts, stock photography, email platforms and more.
Brandi is going to be a panelist at the MDMC18 panel called “Social Media for Non-Profits”, together with Aleshia Patterson, Katie Stuckenschneider, Shuntae Shields Ryan, Mich Hancock, Stephen Schenkenberg, and Chris Strub.
 


In the pre-conference Q&A session Brandi shared some of her thoughts about digital marketing:
Q1. What are some big mistakes a business could make when it comes to digital marketing?
B.B.: The biggest mistake a business can make when it comes to digital marketing is not keeping up with current trends and standards. This is the biggest mistake because this one inaction can create a variety of challenges stemming from outdated sales tactics, subpar visuals, low performing content, and missed storytelling opportunities.
Q2. What do you think is the next game changer in digital marketing, such as a new, modern tactic, tool, or aspect of marketing? How will it evolve in the coming years?
B.B.: In addition to the game changers technology will continue to offer, brand responsibility will continue being a game changer in the digital marketing landscape. In recent years, the focus has been on authentic storytelling with a de-emphasis on hard selling. This has already begun evolving to include a focus on socially responsible marketing, which is essentially practicing business sustainably and ethically.
Q3. What is your favorite marketing book you have read lately? Or, what are a few of your favorite marketing blogs?
B.B.:
Book
Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson
Blogs
https://searchengineland.com/
https://neilpatel.com/blog/
https://trackmaven.com/blog
Q4. What are some social media time management tips that help you stick to your campaign goals without losing a lot of time?
B.B.: Plan! Plan! Plan! Planning ahead and scheduling regular content gives you more time to create, curate, and improve future content. If you don’t have a content calendar, that’s the #1 thing you can do to improve your social media time management.
Q5. If you were looking to hire a digital marketer, what are the top 3-5 skills you would be looking for in a candidate?
B.B.: The top three skills I’d look for if hiring a digital marketer would be 1) willingness to learn: the desire and eagerness to stay current, 2) strategy and analytics: the ability to see the big picture while making results-driven decisions, and 3) copywriting: the ability to tell compelling stories.
Q6. What’s the industry buzzword that annoys you the most these days and why?
B.B.: Innovation. Businesses that are truly innovative don’t have to announce it on their packaging or say it in their ads.


Learn more about the 2018 Midwest Digital Marketing Conference! 

The Future of Live Streaming

By: Chidu Subbiah
Untitled designLive Streaming has become a buzzword of late, but the history can be traced back to the late 90’s and early 2000’s when computing power became cheaper and powerful. The bandwidth of networks grew dramatically in this timeframe which increased the number of people and computers with access to those networks, creating the Internet as we know it today. Early live streaming efforts were mostly single-event broadcasts and were more focused around audio streaming. Continue reading “The Future of Live Streaming”

Learn How to Become Social Media Savvy From #MDMC17 Speaker Raashi Rosenberger From Pinterest

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By: TJ Sheffer
The Midwest Digital Marketing Conference or MDMC is an upcoming event that will be hosted in St. Louis, Missouri. The event will be taking place on April 12th & 13th at Union Station. In preparation for the conference UMSL Digital had a Twitter chat with Raashi Rosenberger of Pinterest. Continue reading “Learn How to Become Social Media Savvy From #MDMC17 Speaker Raashi Rosenberger From Pinterest”