Last week I had the opportunity to go to the iMedia e-Commerce Summit in Salt Lake City.My main take away - Marketers are no longer in the Ad business; they are in the Relationship Business. Brands need to spend less time advertising to their customers and more time connecting with them.Building a brand-to-customer relationship is very similar to someone building a friendship. Both are developed over time with casual, light conversations leading to bigger events.Charlie Cole, CEO of The Line (www.theline.com), has started a new company that is a cross between Vogue and Gilt.com. He is engaging people in world-class fashion content, then slowly converting them over to buying products. His fashion magazine / e-commerce site takes a four-step approachto converting consumers:Step 1 - Read an article

Step 2 - Get them to come back because they like the content

Step 3 - Capture their e-mail or some type of CRM

Step 4 - Convert to Sale

Consumers who visit The Line are first presented with a beautiful image to entice them to engage within content.

The whole premise of the site is the antithesis of the hard sale. It's all about building the relationship by gaining trust through content, leading to the eventual and continuous sale of products. The average transaction on The Line is $500 with some months averaging $850.Laston Charriez, SVP of Marketing for Western Union, also understands the value of content creation leading to sales. He realized that his customers were big fans of animated movies so he produced a collaborative, multimedia, and global marketing partnership with the movie, RIO 2. The content captured the attention of customers then led them down the sales funnel. Revenue saw a nice uptick during the campaign.Laston also made reference to his past job at P&G where he transformed Charmin's advertising from 21 years of Mr. Whipple commercials (remember "Don't Squeeze the Charmin") to a different type of marketing, one that asked:How do I make my customers lives better while remaining relevant to my brand?His answer:Solve their number one consumer bathroom problem--dealing with dirty public restrooms. Laston's solution involved the creation of Plush Porta Potty trucks that were driven into highly trafficked areas such as NFL football games and crowded holiday shopping areas to make both experiences more enjoyable. These luxury porta potties were the rave of both tailgaters and holiday shoppers who were given the opportunity to avoid ugly public restrooms in exchange for a Charmin Posh Bathroom experience.

Just like The Line and Western Union, Charmin sought a softer approach to marketing, one that connected with consumers by solving a problem in their lives, leading to more sales and massive word of mouth marketing.Carlos Gil, Head of Digital and Social Media for Save-A-Lot (a 1,300 grocery store chain in St. Louis) is also passionate about the "Relationship Business". In my conversation with him over dinner, he had many quotes worth repeating. Here are two that I particularly like:

"If someone does not engage with it, it's advertising" (versus more authentic content marketing that builds connections with consumers).

"Not responding to tweets from customers is the equivalent of going to The Cheesecake Factory and not being greeted."

On the flip side, I did speak with a Fortune 50 VP who thought it was was crazy to answer more than a very small percentage of direct fan questions in Social Media. "Do you know how many people ask us questions, and how much it would cost to answer all of them?"To that, I asked him what's the cost of not answering them and what if your competitor is? I continued, "If someone was in your aisles and asked a question to a store clerk, would the clerk turn his back and walk away? Now think of that clerk turning his back with an audience of 10,000 customers watching. That is social. Think of the risk as well as the lost opportunity of not investing in the Relationship Business." At the end of the conversation, he seemed to agree.While developing long-term relationships with customers with the intention of sales is nothing new, I think we are at a tipping point where brands are just starting to really get it. Whether it's delivering Plush Porta Potties or answering every question in social, I believe brands will begin to shift their focus away from delivering an onslaught of inauthentic, self-serving ads and more toward offering value that improves people's lives, and makes the world a better place.Why should the brand-to-consumer relationship be so different than friendships among people? Should we live in a world where brands advertise, persuade, manipulate and hard sell in order to receive?Or, it is simpler than that - You give, you receive.As marketers, if we can begin to think more about how to make the lives of our customers better while staying relevant to our brands, think of the value we could create while simultaneously, making our brands more loved and much more successful.Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.

As an analyst, the number one question I get about a brand’s page is timing; “When is the best time to post?” “What day of the week is the best?”. Those are the requests that litter my inbox, and they are reasonable requests. Why wouldn’t you want to know the best time to reach your fans? But as we get smarter about social, it becomes more and more clear that what you post matters so much more than when you post it.

That’s the crux of the problem with the Day of Week/Time of Day request. If I post my best content on Wednesday and get a ton of engagement, that does not mean my fans are most available on Wednesday. At Socialtyze we run regression after regression to see what variables are significant predictors of success. The most common results are:

1. The Media attached to the post (Photos Vs. Text Vs. Video Etc)

2. Post Type (Questions Vs. Products Vs. Fill in the Blank)

3. Whether or not there is a CTA to click

4. Time in Between Post

5. Photo Type (Young Women Vs. Family Vs. Product Photo)

6. Character Count

The order varies by brand, but Time of Day never makes that list. Neither does Day of Week. It goes back the great Guy Kawasaki quote about SEO “The best SEO tip is to write something good,”. Because of its algorithm, Facebook is a meritocracy. Create a something that people love and it will find a way to your fan’s news feed.

Facebook’s recent addition of the story bump - where old stories that match particularly well with the user are brought back into the Newsfeed - further nullifies the timing analysis. It just does not make sense to labor about posting at 10AM vs. 11AM when Facebook’s own algorithm doesn't particularly care.

I’m not suggesting to post at 1AM, every recommendation is within reason. But if you have the luxury of working with an analyst, redirect his or her attention to content based analysis. The results will be more actionable for your community managers, and more fun for your data team.

With the holidays quickly approaching and Christmas just around the corner, consumers are not the only ones looking to find the best bang for their buck. Brands and marketers are beginning to increase their Facebook advertising budgets for the holiday shopping season, given the 375% jump in click-through-rates from the third quarter in 2012 to 2013. [1]Mobilize the ExperienceTo capitalize on what this holiday season has to offer and leverage the highest ROI for your brand, we leave you with a few stocking stuffers sure to optimize your campaign’s success.78% of Facebook’s daily users in the U.S. are on mobile devices, so it comes as no surprise that focusing promotion on mobile versus desktop is the way to go.2 Not only does mobile promotion help in driving traffic to online shopping sites, but it also provides consumers with their own personal guides when shopping in-store. Brands can further leverage mobile usage by promoting their retail-oriented applications living in Facebook to streamline user experience.Stay on TargetReaching the right audience is another critical piece to effectively market your product this holiday season. To really hone in on your most valuable customers, here are the top targeting methods to capitalize on.Facebook ExchangeFacebook Exchange is an increasingly popular method using cookie-tracking to re-target users on Facebook who have already visited your website. To glean the best results, it is important to start building the cookie pool a month prior to campaign launch in order to generate enough site traffic. Strategic pixel placement is equally important to consider, as a higher number of pixeled pages might yield a larger cookie pool, but limiting pixels to the most important pages of the site (e.g. checkout page) could also produce a more relevant targeting pool.Custom AudiencesIf time is of the essence, another way to capitalize on your already-established consumer base is through Custom Audiences. This targeting type allows advertisers to focus on users who have previously engaged with the brand via e-mail lists, phone numbers, Facebook user ID’s, or app user ID’s. It also opens up the opportunity to reach Lookalike targets, who are users likely to be interested in your brand based off the Custom Audience list provided.Keywords + Partner Category OverlayAnother effective tactic to maximize performance in your holiday campaigns is targeting users through traditional keywords with a Partner Category overlay. Teaming up with Acxiom, Datalogix, and Epsilon earlier this year, Facebook launched Partner Categories to give advertisers the chance to target users based on groups such as purchase history, lifestyle, and job title. Utilizing Partner Categories alone to target users can sometimes prove to be too broad, so the combination of keywords and Partner Categories allows marketers to really fine-tune their key audience.Keywords + Fans OverlayIn the same way that targeting users with a Partner Category overlay boosts performance, pairing keyword targets with a Fans overlay also helps contribute to campaign success. Fans targeting concentrates on those consumers who’ve already proven to be loyal brand advocates on Facebook. One of the advantages of running the Fans instead of the Partner Categories overlay is that there is less risk involved in predicting ROI performance. At the same time, however, if you’re looking to grow your consumer base Partner Categories is the route you want to take.Engage Your AudienceArguably the most important piece to the puzzle of holiday marketing on Facebook is the content used in the ads. Facebook offers a wide selection of ad types to choose from, but the challenge is to implement them intelligently.Unpublished Page Post Ads are a no-brainer when it comes to the optimal ad type to use this holiday season. These ads mimic traditional posts that live on brands’ Facebook pages, but allow advertisers to customize the content specifically for the campaign without over saturating users. With Facebook’s recent ad spec changes back in September, it is important to keep these key pointers in mind:

• When using a photo post, include a bit.ly link within copy composition for best conversion results
• Use images with high-resolution specs:
• Link posts: 1200 x 627
• Photo posts: 1200 x 900
• Focus on Newsfeed placements
• Keep the copy short and incentivize users with time-sensitive promotions

While there is no sure-fire recipe for a successful Facebook campaign, these best practices are helpful to keep in mind when considering how best to invest your Facebook advertising budgets this holiday season. Whether you’re looking to reach entirely new consumers or to simply capitalize on your current customer base, remembering to mobilize the experience, stay on target, and engage the audience will give your brand a strong base to help your campaign jingle all the way!Citations1 http://www.nanigans.com/2013/10/16/benchmark-report-retailers-facebook-advertising-roi-holiday-shopping/2 http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/13/facebook-mobile-user-count/3 http://www.nanigans.com/2013/06/17/how-page-post-ads-in-the-news-feed-drive-direct-response-and-roi-study/

We are living through a transformational shift in the way the world communicates. The development of social platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, have helped to inspire that change. The traffic on these platforms is huge - 700MM daily active users on Facebook[1] and 100MM daily active users on Twitter[2]. Pinterest is driving more referral traffic than LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit & Google + combined[3]. This is obviously not a new trend; some brands like RedBull and CocaCola have been leveraging social platforms for years now. But, there are many brands that haven’t even begun to take advantage of what social media has to offer. For some, it’s the lack of resources. For others, it’s the lack of understanding of how social media can benefit them and drive key marketing objectives.Since 2007, we've spent spent years working with marketers in all phases of social media adoption. We've worked with brands who have active communities of 1MM+, and brands that are just starting to dip their toes in the social media water. Our goal at Socialtyze is to help marketers understand the true value of social media and to help them strategize and execute programs that align with their goals.Oftentimes, brands will try to cut straight to the social execution without doing any of the “pre-planning” work. It is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to social marketing. Although we’ve seen success with specific ad types and engagement tactics across the board, we believe that it is extremely important to “pre-plan” for every objective. We suggest that brands follow this 5-step approach when determining their next move in the social space. You might be able to skip a few steps depending on how far along your brand is in the social media adoption process.

1. Identify Yourself.

The first thing you need to do as a brand, is figure out who you are. This probably sounds obvious or idealistic, but there are some brands out there that haven’t come to terms with what their value is to the consumer or how they truly differentiate from the competition. A few questions to ask yourself during this phase of the process:

• What industry are you in?
• How does your service or product benefit people or businesses?
• Who are your competitors?

2. Identify Your Customers.

The next step in your social planning is to identify your customers. Some social platforms make more sense for certain brands and certain industries. For example, if you’re in B2B, you probably want to make sure your leveraging LinkedIn. If you're a Fashion or Food brand, you want to make sure you’re on Pinterest. There might be reasons to leverage a wide variety of platforms, but you need to make sure your audience is there.A few questions to ask yourself during this phase of the process:

• Who are your current customers?
• Who are your prospects?
• What are their demographics/psychographics?
• What social platforms do they frequent?

If you don't know the answers to these questions, a partner like Socialtyze can help you to understand who your customers are and identify the best places to reach them.

3. Establish Your Goals.

What do you want to accomplish within social? This is a big question, because there are so many different ways to use social media – from gathering insights and crowd sourcing, to providing customer support, to improving the user experience with your brand across multiple platforms. Do you want to focus on just a few of these objectives or do you have the budget to do it all? Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can go about planning the right social strategy to meet those goals.4. Choose Your Buddies.

Sometimes it might make sense to choose your partners early on in the process, but in my opinion it’s best if you’ve answered steps 1-3 before trying to find the right partners and tools to work with. This is the phase in the process where you decide what you can handle internally and what you need to use your agencies and partners to handle for you. There are great resources out there to help with this, such as:

• Social listening tools to understand the conversation around your brand
• Posting and moderation tools
• Customer identification and insights tools
• Community management services
• Social strategy
• And more….

Take your time picking the right partners that you trust and think will keep you ahead of the game in social.

5. Plan, launch & measure.

Now that you’re done with the pre-planning, it’s time for the actual strategy and execution – getting out of the planning stage and into the nitty gritty. The key here is to launch, test and optimize based on what’s working best so that you can successfully reach your goals. Are you seeing a lift in engagement and positive sentiment after launching a certain type of offer on your Facebook page? Are your sales increasing month-over-month now that you have a consistent posting strategy? Take what’s working and expand upon it and drop what’s not. As Facebook would say – “Fail fast.” While we've tried to simplify the process of planning a social strategy, it’s still very complex. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach and your strategy should be tailored based on your brand, industry, customers and goals. And, partners like Socialtyze are here to help make that process a little more simple. Interested in seeing what we can do for you? Email us! Cheristy@Socialtyze.com

[1] http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/07/24/facebook-users-q2-2013/

[2] http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2013/10/03/twitter-says-it-sees-215-million-monthly-active-users-100-million-daily-users-and-500-million-tweets-per-day/

[3] http://mashable.com/2013/10/15/pinterest-referral-traffic/ 

As marketers, nothing makes us happier than when Facebook releases a new way to target consumers. Not too long ago we were limited to profile targeting, which restricted us to target users only by the information they chose to include within their profiles. However, in Fall 2012, Facebook released Custom Audience targeting, which allows marketers to find their offline audiences among people who are on Facebook via email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or app user IDs. In addition, in Spring 2013, Facebook took a huge step forward launching Partner Categories, which enables brands to target users based on their activity outside of Facebook. Each of these targeting breakthroughs has helped marketers reach their consumer on Facebook more effectively.

However, amongst the glitz and glamour of these more advanced targeting techniques, you might be overlooking a key audience within your social campaign strategy. When it comes to conversions, no target group performs better than a brand’s own fan base. Here are a few examples of that methodology in action:Driving SalesThis summer, Socialtyze was challenged with helping a publishing brand drive magazine subscription sales. We targeted the brand’s consumers whose subscriptions had expired via Custom Audiences (email matching), Magazine Subscribers identified by Partner Categories, and the brand’s fans. As a result, we found that fans were nearly 2x less expensive at converting to subscribers than both Custom Audiences and Partner Categories.

Email LeadsIn another campaign, Socialtyze ran ads targeting Fans, Partner Categories (Magazine Subscribers), and Broad Categories (Magazines) with the intent of collecting email leads. Socialtyze found that fans were 4x more likely to submit their emails than the other targeted audiences.

Contest SubmissionsIn addition, we have found that fans are the most likely to enter contests and sweepstakes. In a recent Dairy CPG brand campaign, fans were 771x more likely to submit an entry into the contest than other targeting, including Likes & Interests, Friend of Fans, and Partner Categories.

For another sweepstakes campaign for a different vertical, the Fans’ sweepstakes entry rate was 1.27%, which was 4.5x higher than the strategic Likes & Interests targeting. Fans comprised of more than 60% of the sweepstakes entries.

Nonetheless, it’s still important to utilize a variety of targeting methods to reach your ideal consumer. Just don’t forget to leverage your biggest brand evangelists that are right under your nose – your Facebook fans!Want to know more about our unique Social Advertising methods? Contact us! Linda@Socialtyze.com