Branded Mission: How to Leverage TikTok's New Ad Solution to Boost Brand Awareness TikTok has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool for businesses. In fact, the platform generated an estimated 1.9 billion in revenue in 2020 alone. And the popularity of the app is due to its creators. Which makes TikTok's new advertising solution — which is solely focused on crowdsourcing the best content from its creators — an incredible opportunity for brands. Here, let's dive into what Branded Mission is, and how you can use it to boost your brand awareness and sales. What is Branded Mission? Branded Mission is TikTok's new advertising solution, and the idea is pretty simple: Branded Mission enables brands to select their advertising requirements, and then creators can submit original videos that meet those requirements. The brand then accepts their favorite video, and amplifies it through boosted ad traffic. It's a win-win: Creators have the opportunity to reach new audiences with boosted content, and brands can leverage high-quality content that aligns with their goals straight from the TikTok community. As TikTok's Newsroom states: "This new form of two-way engagement between brands and creators enables the TikTok community to have a creative hand in the ads that are a part of a brand campaign and helps brands discover emerging creators broadly across TikTok." Image Source Essentially, Branded Mission creates easier opportunities for brands to work with TikTok influencers. Rather than sourcing and conducting the influencer outreach themselves, marketers can simply post their requests...

Which Social Networks Should You Advertise on in 2022? Whether you use it to supplement your existing inbound marketing efforts or to reinvigorate your entire strategy, social media is an effective tool to meet your marketing objectives. There are various social media platforms to choose from, and each comes with an audience that brings different advertising potential. Even though there are so many platforms, HubSpot's Senior Manager of Social Media, Kelly Hendrickson, doesn't think that you should be using all of them. Featured Resource: Digital Advertising Training Course Hendrickson says, "When it comes to choosing which social platforms to invest in, there’s often not a one-size-fits-all answer." This is because, based on your business’s buyer personas and marketing goals, certain channels will help your advertisements gain more traction, while others may not be as impactful. Here, we'll cover three different social media platforms to help you decide when you should and shouldn’t elect to use them in your social media advertising strategy. Which social networks should you advertise on? When deciding which social networks to use, it can be difficult to recommend one platform over another. Instead, it’s best to take a holistic view of your needs, research what each platform has to offer, and go from there. That said, some social networks are better equipped for meeting overall marketing needs than others, and we’ll discuss those below. 1. Facebook Facebook has almost 2 billion daily active users, making it one of the most popular social media platforms...

6 Short-Form Video Trends Online Marketers Should Watch in 2022 Short-form videos are everywhere nowadays. They first took off with TikTok. Instagram caught on and launched Reels then YouTube followed with Shorts. In early 2020, Google piloted a search feature in which they surfaced short-form video content from popular social media platforms and now they’re testing in AMP-based web stories. Even more recently, LinkedIn announced it’s scraping Stories to develop short-form video features and Pinterest added a "Watch tab" for short content. So, how can you leverage short-form content to grow your business? And what are some trends to look for in 2022? See what HubSpot marketing experts are saying, below. But there's no universal number that everyone has agreed on. For instance, TikTok used to allow up to 60 seconds and now that has gone up to 3 minutes. a short-form video on Twitter can be up to 2:20 minutes. On Reels and Triller, it's 60 seconds. Brandon Sanders, former digital marketer for HubSpot Academy, highlights that what's considered short-form can also depend on the platform. "With the rise of platforms like TikTok, Reels, and Vine, short-form video is actually getting shorter and lending itself more to 60-second to two-minute videos," he said. "I think the perception of short-form content on platforms like YouTube is actually around that 10-minute sweet spot because content on YouTube tends to be more comprehensive and longer." So, when you’re thinking of short-form videos, Youtube is the exception, whereas TikTok and other growing...

The True Impact of Social Analytics on B2B Funnels For B2B sales and marketing teams, few metaphors are as powerful as the sales funnel. It's a near-supernatural, multi-layered vortex that pulls in leads from the wider world, then draws them down toward closing. At the top of the funnel (TOFU) are fresh new leads who are just discovering your offerings. In the middle of the funnel (MOFU) are leads who are interested to learn more. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) are those leads who are poised and ready to make a purchase. Modeling your sales funnel so you can better target and nurture leads at each layer is critical to increasing your conversion rate. But for accurate modeling, you need a lot of reliable data. And one major opportunity for collecting that data lies in your social media tools. The importance of social media in marketing is unquestionable. In fact, businesses that market on social media are 40% more likely to hit their sales goals. Plus, a whopping 95% of buyers purchase from sellers who provide content that addresses their concerns and questions at each sales funnel level — and, nowadays, a lot of that content is posted on social platforms. But the question remains: How can you measure and analyze the true impact of social activity on your sales funnel? Here, we'll explore what social media data is, and how you can use that data to strengthen your B2B sales funnels. What is social media data? Social...

How to Create a Sensible Social Media Strategy for Your Business Many businesses find social media overwhelming — there are so many networks available, and they’re always adding new features for you to learn and integrate into your plan. If you don’t have a full-time team of social media experts at your disposal, your success depends on creating a simple and sensible strategy that fits your resources and goals. By the end of this guide, you'll know how to develop a social media strategy that'll not only drive traffic but will also quell that overwhelming feeling you get anytime you open Instagram or Twitter. What is a social media strategy? Your social media strategy is your master plan for how you create, post, and engage with your social media content. It encompasses your social content guidelines, posting cadence, social media marketing campaigns, creative plans, and engagement strategy. Why You Need a Social Media Strategy The top three challenges that social media marketers face include reaching their audience, measuring ROI, and reaching business goals. Crafting a social media strategy can help tackle these challenges and more. Social media strategies also equip you to set goals and guardrails, track their performance, and tweak your benchmarks over time. Without a starting point, you can't measure what's working and how to shift your activity to hit your goals. A social media strategy also helps you set expectations for broader team involvement and get everyone aligned on what they should (and...

8 Simple Ways to Segment Your Social Media Audience Segmentation is not a new concept for marketers. We use segmentation to send personalized emails, create buyer-specific pricing models, and understand the behaviors of our most loyal customers. It is also a valuable tool for generating more leads on social media. While publishing more often and posting different types of content is great for generating engagement with your audiences, segmentation can bring additional benefits, like.... New to social media? Check out this featured resource: Social Media Certification Course  This post will show you how you can apply the principles of segmentation to social media, outline the benefits it can bring to your business, and give you tips for accurately segmenting your social media audience. Segmentation is important because it increases your marketing success. When you know the key characteristics and desires of your target audience, you can become more focused with your brand messaging and create hyper-targeted advertisements that speak directly to your audience's interests. Then, when your advertisements are tailored to their interests, customers are more likely to interact with them and take further action. Let’s go over eight strategies for segmenting your social media audiences. 1. Understand your audience. Just as with any marketing strategy, understanding your target audience is the key to accurate, relevant social media segmentation. Without knowing who your customers are, what they want, and how they like to be marketed too, it will be challenging to devise other strategies to help you succeed in...

How to Analyze Facebook Data to Understand Your Audience With over 2.7 billion monthly active users and 1.82 billion daily users, Facebook is the largest social network in the world. What began as a way for college students to network has become an essential marketing tool for more than 90 million small businesses. All of those users generate a lot of data. To help companies harness the massive amount of information created within the platform, Facebook released their Insights tool, which shares data about the best day to post, the ideal time to post, and what posts are performing well. If you're marketing on Facebook, understanding how all those numbers relate to your business and audience can be confusing at first. But worry not. This post explains how to analyze Facebook data to get valuable metrics about who's coming to your page and clicking around. By the end, you'll have a better understanding of how Insights can help you connect with both current and potential customers. Running a new Facebook Business Page? Find everything you need to know to elevate your paid and organic efforts in this Facebook Marketing Course. How to Analyze Facebook Data Facebook Insights is separated into two main categories: Audience Insights and Page Insights. Audience Insights gives metrics about your Facebook audience, which helps you create relevant content, improve ad targeting, and attract more people to your Page. Page Insights shows analytics for your Page, so you can see which posts are...

How To Use Twitter for Beginners Twitter, launched in 2006, is a microblogging social media site where users create short-form content, known as tweets, to share with others. Users who have an account can post their own tweets and interact with others.  Unlike other social media platforms, Twitter is often where breaking news is shared by individual users, rather than notable businesses. Users take to their personal accounts and tweet about their experiences, like when a 5.9 earthquake struck Virginia in 2011. It was first reported by individuals on Twitter who sent out 40,000 tweets related to the incident, all in less than a minute.  Twitter is also known for being the home of countless viral memes, like one from Carter Wilkerson in 2017. He asked Wendy’s, a fast-food chain, how he could use the power of Twitter to get free nuggets for a year.  He didn’t meet their 18 million retweet requirement, but they granted his request after achieving 3 million. Wilkerson has since used his Twitter experiment as an example of social sharing engagement for his marketing course. Others have since used this format, like this user, who asked The New York Mets to let her take prom photos on their baseball field if she reached 500,000 retweets.  Considering that Twitter has significant power in influencing trends and generating engagement, some brands have taken to the platform as a means of social media marketing. If you’re just starting on Twitter, this post will outline how to use...

What is TikTok For Business & Should You Use It in Your Marketing? Musical.ly, created in 2014, was a music sharing app whose users would share short videos of themselves lip-synching to different music snippets. The platform was among the top 100 downloaded apps for two years straight, and users posted around 13 million videos per day. In 2018, Musical.ly was purchased by Chinese tech firm Bytedance and merged with the firm’s new app, TikTok. TikTok, like Musical.ly, is a video sharing social network where users share short clips of themselves lip-synching and dancing to trending music. It’s since expanded to house more diverse videos, like short comedy skits and how-to home improvement videos. After the merger, TikTok’s active user base grew by almost 800%. With such sizable user activity, marketers have realized that the advertising potential on the app is high. The creators of TikTok have also realized this and recently launched a new platform called TikTok For Business. The platform’s stated goal is to help businesses unleash their creative side by teaching them how to use the app through their e-learning service and guiding them through making advertisements on the Ads Manager platform. Marketing Options on TikTok For Business The sole marketing format for businesses to use on TikTok is video advertisements. The TikTok For Business Ads Manager platform helps marketers create these advertisements, and they can choose from five different formats. TopView Ads TopView ads on TikTok are videos that appear once a day, immediately...