The end of Autoplay video?
Have you already seen on your Iphone the statistics of your screen time? You will be certainly chocked by the results and especially when you will realize that scrolling social networks represents your main screen time. To avoid this addictive behavior, the Senate in the US wants to ban autoplay video on social media. The UK is also following it. More generally are we facing the end of autoplay video?
How Policy-driven restrict autoplay video on social network?
On July 30, the Republican US Senator Josh Hawley offers a bill called The Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act to forbid autoplay video and infinite scroll on social platform. Social media refer here to Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter. This bill was taken after many controversies about the compulsive behaviors of social media’s users. Indeed, the screen time keeps increasing. Top managing teams of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have even admitted that they did not use on a private sphere their social media because of the existing risks. This bill points at the fact that these technologies have strongly decrypted the human psychology to exploit their loopholes. Autoplay video consists to launch a video without the agreement of the user. Following the collected data of the visitor, Facebook prepares a playlist of videos that will scroll automatically after one video finished. The purpose is to improve the engagement of the user meaning that he stays as long as possible on the social network. By studying human psychologies, these platforms know how to attract him. Thus, this bill wants to prevent abusive behaviors by limited these technologies. This could give ideas to other countries and extend this law.
But what about autoplay ads videos?
However, this bill leaves apart advertising video content. Over the last decades, ads videos have flourished all over the internet. This has been the best technology to increase the revenue of advertisers by 20% to 50%. Even if the user is generally annoyed by these ads, it is still the most relevant method. Advertising Autoplay is when video ads are launched automatically. In May 2018, Google Chrome banned autoplay video with sounds on. Ads with sounds on were used to attract visitors towards the ad visual or as a signal. This shows that change are happening commonly. So social media have to evolve. For example, Instagram turns the sound of an ad on only if the user clicks on the video. Moreover, ads videos are still a huge source of revenue for social media which represented $6.81 billion in 2018.
How to re think new sizes of videos?
Autoplay videos are not ready to disappear at least for ads. But the perspectives could be reduced, so advertisers should already think of their evolution. First, ever more countries are in favor of a limitation of autoplay videos. For example, the US bill wants to constraint social media to a neutral presentation of the video. The button “delete this video” should be highlighted in the same way as the button “play”. Also even if it remains the most attractive ads technology, consumers become less and less receptive to autoplay video. So agencies need to think about a more targeted and catchy content. For example, some advertisers privilege Gifs size which are short animated content. It tends to be very trendy among millennials and could differ from ads competitors.
So even if the spread of autoplay video seems limited, there is still a huge opportunity for video content that you need to follow. In fact in 2020, 80% of the screen time will be on video content, so press play!
The best 7 Graphic Design tools for non-designers
Here is the situation. You are running a small business, you need a graphic designer for your social media campaign but you can’t afford one. In this kind of environment, each team members should wear different hats. Which basically means that you have to take care of the design part for yourself. But the graphic design notion can sounds terrifying, mostly when you literally have zero experience in this field…
You need to create professional-looking visuals but you’re not a designer? No problem !
Here are the 7 bests Graphic Design tools you can easily use without any technical know-how.
1. Canva
With more than 15 million of active users per month, Canva is THE graphic design tool for non-designers. This free web and mobile application gives the opportunity for beginners to create professional-looking visuals in few minutes.
Providing millions of images, hundreds of pre-sized templates, icons, shapes and other design assets, it also allows you to create your own visuals by uploading your personal images and logos.Business card, flyers, newsletters, social media visuals, photo editing, infographics, everything is possible with Canva.
But if you want to go deeper and learn some tips and tricks about creating stunning visuals, you can to their Design School; they will freely teach you through tutorials and articles.
Although, Canva has wide collection of free templates and images, others are cost $1 each. You can upgrade your account to have more features.
Besides all those services, they developed Canva Pro allowing teams to work, collaborate and comment on designs. You can also schedule your social posts, save all your designs, create your own templates to reuse them afterwards. With the mobile app, you are able to access your team templates at any time. This premium plan starts at $12.95 monthly and $9.95 annually.
2. Snappa
Snappa simplifies each steps of your visual creation !
You don’t need any design experience to create professional content. Snappa provides hundred of pre-made templates, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
You can also have access to a wide selection of high quality photos and customize your design with effects, shapes, fonts and vectors.
You can select the platform you want to post your work on - emails, social media, blogs- and it will resize it to perfectly fit the dimensions required.
Snappa offers 3 different packages : a free version with access to more than 5 000 templates and more than 1 millions photos. The paid version start from $10 per month and you can choose the Team version to collaborate on the same project with your colleagues.
Finally you can publish your creation within Snappa or by connecting your Buffer account to organize your posts.
3. Pixlr
Some people compare Pixlr at Photoshop but in much more simpler and free version.
This sophisticated tool is not made for people looking for really simple photos editors but more for those willing to learn photo modification and spend time on it. Some tutorials and blog articles are available on its website if you want to discover more.
With Pixlr you can freely edit photos, create own visuals at any dimensions - whether for Facebook, Twitter, for a banner or a blog - but also upload your own pictures and fonts.
You can use this graphic tool on your desktop but it comes as mobile app as well; enabling you to use Pixlr Express and to design what you have in mind in few minutes.
4. PicMonkey
PicMonkey allows to create social media illustrations helping non-designers to communicate better on their platforms. You will be able to design from scratch but also to edit your pictures, to create collages. It includes many choice of fonts, filters, templates and overlays.
This program is available on desktop as well as on mobile making it easy to retouch, improve and publish a picture from your phone. PicMonkey comes with a free trial allowing you to use their services for 7 days. You can level up and sign up to paid version starting from $7.99 per month.
5. Over
Over, only available as a mobile app, allows you to create simple, professional looking and trendy social media graphics. Intuitive and easy to use, it offers basics templates that you customize by changing colors, the font style, the size or uploading your on photos from your camera. The app separates every elements, making it easier for you to add your personal touch.
Over is free to download however there are many in-app purchases to make. So, to have access to unlimited features, you have to subscribe to the Pro version for $16 or $106 per year.
Like Canva and Snappa, the app has an option for teams collaboration. Indeed, with Over Teams, you have access to all templates, illustrations, icons and you can interact with your colleagues. It allows a group of person to comment in real time, to work on the same design and save it as a template. Subscriptions for this service cost $67 per month and give the ability to include as many members as you want - no need to pay for each person.
6. Pablo
Available on desktop but also as a mobile application and Chrome extension, Pablo is a free image editor simple and easy-to-use; especially for those who already worked on Buffer. If you want to create minimalist image for your social media, this tool is ideal. For more sophisticated, complex or creative design, we won’t recommend it.
Pablo provides royalty free images, but you can upload yours. You have the option to crop them at the right dimensions based on the platform you want (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter). Finally you can add texts, logos and filters.
7. Stencil
After reviewing 6 different tools to create your own visuals, is Stencil really different from the others ?
Well, it is different because if you’re aiming to have more engaged prospects on your social media, Stencil is what you need !
Thanks to Stencil, you are easily able to create ad graphics, social media posts and images that will generates involvement from everyone.
To do so, it offers templates and fonts that you can easily customize to include your personal touch, as well as graphics and icons. It also provides over a million of images and illustrations - they add thousands new ones every day.
In addition, you can specify which social media you want to post on and it will instantly resize your visual according to the platform requirements. Finally, you don’t need to use another tool to put your creation online since Stencil gives you the option to schedule and publish it.
The program has both a free and paid version which starts from $10. With the free one, you can use 10 images per month and a limited amount of templates and icons. The Team version, at $12 per month, will ease your team collaboration.
To sum up
Back in the days, graphic design could only be done by highly trained graphic designers. Nowadays, with internet, creating visuals, infographics and editing pictures is within reach of anyone.
No matter which types of business you are running, those tools can help you to improve your social media campaigns or even to start them.
You no longer need to hire professional but you just need to choose the right tool that will boost your social media.
With all those tools, and many others, graphic design becomes easy !
The end of Facebook likes ?
Likes counts could soon disappear from all social media. This experiment is already underway on Instagram and is being considered by Facebook.
Jane Manchun Wong is an engineer specialized in data app research. In one of her last blog post, she was guessing that Facebook is considering removing Likes after finding out, within the Android app, code allowing to hide the number of likes of a post to the users. The screenshot below, published on her Twitter, shows that the person who created a post can still see names of people and their emojis reaction but a number won’t be revealed anymore. Instead, it would be written “liked by [friend’s name] and others”. For Wong, these moves “indicates that Facebook/Instagram have confidence the pros of hiding like counts outweigh the cons".
(Image credit: Jane Manchun Wong on Twitter)
Mirroring Instagram's test
After being contacted by TechCrunch, Facebook recently confirmed Jane Manchun Wong’s speculation and is considering launching Likes-removal trials. A couple of months ago, the group already tested a similar approach on Instagram in several countries : Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zealand. These actions are aiming to make users to be more focus on sharing experience and no longer on competition.
Improve mental health issues
Just like for Instagram, Facebook wants to improve well being of its users. Some of them, especially younger ones, are always looking for likes and fame on social media.There is a huge amount of studies, showing how these platforms can have an impact on mental health and even lead to depression or anxiety.
In 2018, a study published by Pew Research Center revealed that 37% of teens sharing social content feel pressure about having a lot of likes and comments. To overcome these mental health issues, hiding likes counts might be a solution.
How can Instagram help you to boost your brand?
Instagram has currently a growth superior to Facebook. This social network represents a great opportunity for business as 71% of companies are already using it whatever their sectors. It is important to acquire some tips to maximize your visibility.
Create a certified professional account for more credibility
It allows to have access to insights about your account performance and statistics. For example, you can see data on your audience or graphics about your popularity. But on the other side, you must make public your phone number, email and address.
Create engagement with the users
Engagement is the key of the relationship with the users. It means that your brand is capable of interacting with the social media members through for example likes, comments or share. This variable can be taken into account by the social media since Instagram does not show publication on your news feed chronologically but following the engagement rate. For example, you can repost publication from the users of your brand, ask or answer questions to your subscribers. The purpose is to create a close relationship to involve the users. You can also create a hashtag with a motto that people could subscribe.
Present the real identity and values of your business
Your account must reflect the story and values of your brand. You should prefer the quality of your publication instead of the quantity. Each publication must be an exclusive content. Ideally you should publish once per day. Be careful of the aesthetic of your account: a high quality of picture is absolutely necessary. You can also define the theme and the tone of your filter. You can also follow, comment and share similar business and contents to increase your visibility. People could share publication with your services or products.
Share your news
Instagram helps you to inform your clients of your company’s different events such as sales period for example. It is important to take care of the content: we are not talking about a newsletter here. Posting stories is a good way to transcribe your event in live or not, with an attractive way. You can more easily show who you are and what you are doing through this way. You will also look more accessible to your subscribers.
Sponsored Publication
You can buy sponsored publication (appearing on a news feed) or a sponsored story. You can schedule at which hour it will be published and target a specific audience (following its age or its location). The prices are based on a bidding system in CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per one thousand of impression).
Better than a collaboration with another brand, you can call on an influencer. This person will publish a sponsored publication on his account and your services will appear to a wide audience with a direct link to your account. Be careful to choose an influencer which fits with your brand identity.
These tips will help you to find the right combination, it is your turn to create your account!
5 Essential Tips to generate Leads on LinkedIn
Have you already received a cold message on LinkedIn from a vague contact that looks like more a spam to you? You have here the perfect example of Don’t to prospect on LinkedIn. So what are the solutions to generate leads?
1. Target your audience
LinkedIn has a huge resource of executives with 590 million users. Moreover the social media provides detailed information about the person’s background but also about a company or a job advertisement. The coding system of LinkedIn also allows you to maximize your research and to offer you a concrete content and contacts with common factors. A lead is an established contact that could be transformed into a potential client. But it can be difficult to create a real commitment with your audience and you can often be disappointed by your return on investment. You must be active and develop a true marketing strategy to generate leads. Many business developers think they must gain as many connections as possible by adding people without checking if it has an interest. So you must target particular prospects to generate more leads.
2.Use tools for research
Once you have targeted the profile of your audience, you can use the LinkedIn search features. It represents a great opportunity as you can select different criteria. For a person, you can choose the name of his company, his location, his job and see shared connections. For a company, you can search by sectors or following the employees working here.
Added to this tool, you can also use the LinkedIn sale navigator which was especially created for sales teams. With this tool you can add your list of leads and use further research filters. LinkedIn also provides you prospects’ suggestions, a dashboard of your deals and news.
3. Optimize your profile and content
Your LinkedIn page must appear credible for your contacts. It is important to provide a maximum of information about your activity. Your account must also be active. It is relevant to create content, articles that answer the questions and issues of your audience. Your content can show the different events in which you were involved. Do not hesitate to engage with your contacts. For example, you can like, comment or share similar posts of your contact. In your post, you can tag recommended people to attract more leads.
4. Create and maintain a relationship with your leads.
When you meet a new potential client, instead of giving a visit card that has huge chance to get lost, you can give your linkedin QR code of the app. It is the icon on the right of the search features.
Once you have a connection with him you can try to contact him. Too often people send to their leads an informal message which is only a copy paste addressed to thousands of them. It has no interest to send an email immediately after a connection established. On the contrary, you should personalize your message. For example, you can begin it such as : “Hello (Name), I saw that you are working at (Name of the company)”. Once the client has answered, you need to evaluate if he is ready or not for a meeting. Do not relaunch too frequently, no more than twice a year.
5. Use sponsored content and inMail
Sponsored content is posts that appear on the news feed of the user, without being connected to the author. LinkedIn has expanded the functionality to mail. This option can send to a targeted audience a personalized message. For example, you can send them invitation for an event or a sales promotion.
These advices represent a basic and easy method to generate Leads. It is the most optimized way to gain clients so now let’s try it!
Why you should use Instagram Stories for your business ?
Instagram Stories allows users to create pictures and video that disappears after 24 hours. You might think at first that this is useless and unworthy to spend times on this tool. But, it's more than 500 millions of user per day makes it one of the most popular social media features in the world. Knowing that 80% of instagramers follow brands, it’s an opportunity you must seized.
The ability to post a wide range of content
Instagram Stories gives you the freedom to create various content. You can literally post whatever you would like, without needing to be worried about spoiling your Instagram feed. Unlike pictures you post to a regular Instagram profile, people you post to a Story can be decorated using drawings, emojis and text ; making your content more eye catching or in accordance with your branding. You can also tag people on Instagram Stories by putting a @ symbol in front of users' names from the article description or comments.
Do you want to present your new product or service? Do you want to provide your followers a behind-the-scenes of your office ? Announcing the winner of one's social networking competition? From promotional photos and videos to more fun or serious content, everything is possible. So what are you waiting for ? Let your imagination run wild and create !
Boost your visibility and your audience
Being an organization, your main concern should be searching for new ways to increase your visibility and your audience. Growing brand awareness is one of Instagram's major strengths.
Stories appear on both the home page (people you follow), and also in searches (people you don’t follow). So whether users subscribe to your account or not, your stories take up space on the social network, which increases your chances to be seen.
You can use the location tags onto your Instagram Stories boost your company's fame and visibility in local or worldwide. Just like in regular captions, you can include hashtags in your stories to make your business easier to find among other users.
Engage your audience
It is critical to maintain the communication with your followers and to get them more involved. Instagram stories is the perfect tool to have real time interactions and create a real community, more easily than by conventional posts.
Stories make it possible to make them react to several proposals by setting up polls. It's also a good method to collect information and see what your own followers like (or don't like).
With the “Ask me anything” feature, you will be able to directly interact and ask them questions - and vice versa. Again it’s an opportunity to learn more about your audience and to build a real relationship.
Finally, you must tag other brands or influencers because it will raise awareness and your odds to be seen and to be tagged in return.
Drive traffic to your own website
Yes Instagram Stories can also bring more traffic to your website by posting content to redirect your followers so shop your products or services. To do so, you can use the “Swipe up” item. If you incorporate it with some catchy call to action, its will to automatically guide them to your landing pages, blog, e-commerce business, …
Instagram provides product stickers too. Users can click on the notification of the item they want and directly access and shop it to your website.
Wrapping up
Instagram stories gives you more freedom and flexibility. If you’re aiming to boost your audience and create a real community around your business, then, it should definitely be part of your social media strategy.
There are much more existing tools you can use, such as lives - they are becoming more and more powerful these days.
It’s up to you to show your creativity with unique and original content by using all Instagram features whatever you're aiming to achieve.
Over 50% of Google searches result in no clicks. The end of SEO ?
Because it became the world's leading search engine, ranking well on Google is crucial for many companies. SEO can be critical for their achievement. But, last june, for the first time, less than one out of every two Google searches is followed by a click on the results.
How many times a day do you use Google as a search engine? And how often do you find the answer to your question on the first page ? More and more often ! Either because Google provides it directly (translation, hotels, flights...), or because you just have to read the summary of the most relevant pages (the rich snippets), gathered on the right column.
Zero-click trend
According to Jumpshot's datas - marketing analytics firm - Rand Fishkin, founder of the specialized search engine Sparktoro, came up is this analysis : 50.3% of requests made on Google in the US in June 2019 did not result in any click.
Credit: Rand Fishkin / SparkToro
Looking at the figures of second quarter of 2019, 45.25% resulted in organic clicks, 4.42% led to clicks on ads. but nearly 6% of clicks were directed to domains owned by Google (Maps, Youtube, Images, etc.). Which leaves just over 44% for the rest of the web.
As reported by Jumpshop’s data, here are several reasons of these changes:
- Clicks are being encouraged by google's increased use of snippets in search results. When customers can obtain the information that they're looking for straight into search results, they're not as willing to click on search outcomes.
- Changes Google has generated to ads have contributed to a growth in the amount of searches which lead to clicks on ads.
According to Fishkin, the share of these “zero-click” searches has been steadily increasing since 2016 – they represented 43% of the total. In three and a half years, sponsored research results doubled from 2% to 4%.
A trend even more obvious on mobile
This trend is important because the majority of searches are done on Google. According to Jumpshot figures, 94% of online searches are carried out through a search engine belonging to Google (classic search, Google Images, Youtube, Google Maps, Google Shopping, etc.). Google’s competitors are struggling to convince Internet users, who are visibly satisfied with the results.
Credit: Rand Fishkin / SparkToro
Another factor to consider is that we are increasingly using our mobile phone (and less and less often a computer) to do internet research. And on mobile, the zero-click trend is even more obvious: in June 2019, nearly 62% of searches stopped at the simple reading of the results obtained (vs. 33.7% on PC). Clicks so-called «organic» results (not sponsored) decreased by 14 points compared to 2016 and sponsored content have more than tripled.
Several factors can explain this phenomenon, such as the nature of mobile requests and the imposing place taken by the enriched results on our small mobile screens. This trend is not without consequences for users and publishers of Internet sites.
The end of SEO ?
Jumpshot's data makes it crystal clear that SEO is changing and is no longer the same it was even just two or three years ago.
Zero-click searches don't necessarily mean there are not any opportunities for companies.
Your business is still in front of consumers eyes by showing up for keywords. Appearing in a SERP can still provide authority and visibility and can be compared to being on an advertisement poster.
Fishkin pointed out the opportunities which are still reachable for SEOs by saying that "The big goals of advertising have always been to create awareness, increase exposure, and share information”.
He ended up with several options for companies such as :
- To capitalize on zero-click searches
- Submitting and optimizing content for properties like Google Images, Google Maps and Youtube
- Identifying keywords that have greater CTR
- Reducing investment in SEO and invest in paid ads
Wrapping up
SEO as we knew it is disappearing and evolving. Agencies and businesses will have to adapt if they want to move forward. Behavior is an ever-changing thing, that's the reason why it's essential for companies to invest in long-term search engine optimization campaigns to follow up situations like this.
3 Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs Social Media
Whatever it is, one thing is sure: not taking advantage of social media is a huge loss for smaller companies.
Despite the fact that it’s been proven by numerous studies, you will still find small business owners that are not using the power of social media. Indeed, almost 30% companies do not use them. The profile of those firms is SME.
But here are the significant reasons why you, as a small business, you should use social media.
For your business visibility
Many entrepreneurs think that only the perfect product or services matter to succeed. In fact, you also must think in your business plan about a strategy to attract your customers. Otherwise, your company will fail. You must look after your potential clients. This is why you must implement a social media strategy. It is the easiest and cheapest way to increase your visibility. This “Inbound marketing” consists in publishing content so that more visitors go to your website and increase your visibility, especially on the google search bar.
You must present the services and values of your company. This strategy is also applied by large corporate. For example, Dove is very famous for its campaign #Realbeauty. It promotes beauty whatever your body and reach the 70% of women that did not feel represented in advertising. Dove was a pioneer for self esteem and no retouch photographies. The brand called Ogilvy, an advertising agency to achieve the campaign. They spent a huge budget but they were elected as one of the best ads in the world and it increased their profits by $3B in three years.
Credit to Dove's Real Beauty Campaign
You do not have to spend a huge budget but you can ask for community and social media management services that fit with your budget and advisers that help you to find the best strategy for your company.
It creates engagement
Your presence on social media will make you gain trust among potential clients. If you nurture a link between your audience and your brand by commenting, liking, answering to questions, sharing content, you will have a better engagement rate. If you show that, behind your company, there are humanity and values, it will boost your sales.
Studies also show that it is harder for a brand to gain a new client than keeping a current one. So it is relevant to prioritize and manage your clients’ engagement.
Increase your website traffic and sales
You should prefer the quality over the quantity of your content. Patience is the key of success because you must nurture your audience before you succeed in transforming it into clients.
You should study the different opportunities that offer social media. For example, Instagram is the most effective social network to boost your traffic. Instagram has a traffic growth increasing by 114% per year (from leading social networks to US websites) while it has only improved by 9% on Facebook.
So in e-commerce, Instagram seems to have more opportunities for your business. Indeed, in this social media, you can add tags on your pictures that are directly link to a product in your website. It represents a source of information for the client. Once trust is acquired you will convert it into sales.
Today, the competition is so big that you need to take every opportunity into account. Social Media is one of the key for success so you should not neglect it.
Top 5 paid social media management tools
As a company, you are most likely to have at least one account on social networks. If you have several, this is where the difficulties start. Most people create their profiles or pages but fail to manage their publications.
So the need for effective social media management (SMM) tools - that allow you to easily manage one or more profiles at the same time- is increasing. These tools can help you to schedule and supervise your captions/ posts from, most of the time, a single dashboard. In addition, they boost your traffic, likes and followers - all in one tools !
But you might wonder what are the best SMM tools ? We listed the top 10 most crucial social media management tools to guide you in making the right choice. Through this article, you'll learn about different tools and their prices.
1)Buffer
Buffer is a very good SMM that can helps you to set up a consistent planning of your posts for your different social media. You are able to easily schedule and add to the queue different contents like photos, videos, articles, even from your mobile. It’s also available as Chrome or Firefox extensions which allows you to get valuable information about the traffic generated on your content.
With Buffer Reply, you’ll be able to respond to conversations on your different platforms, answer customer requests and share an inbox with you team members for a better collaboration.
The last product is Buffer Analyze which, as the name suggests, allows you evaluate your performance, provides you reports and insights to improve yourself.
Buffer has several plans according to its different products (Publish, Analyze and Reply). All of them offer a free trial of 7 days to 14 days maximum.
For the “Publish” package, it starts from 15$/month to 99$/month. The “Reply” one to 50$ to 225$/month and “Analyze” has just one plan for 50$/month.
Buffer supports: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest. It also gives the opportunity to use Pablo, a tool to create your design even if you’re not a designer. It’s really easy to use and quickly to understand. Finally, it’s a big reference on the social media market, with Hootsuite.
2)Hootsuite
With Buffer, it’s one of the most popular SMM tools. If you’re looking for commitment, good publishing features, relevant performance analysis and a tool to manage your campaigns, then Hootsuite is THE tool you need. Integrated into more than 25 networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, YouTube etc), it allows you to measure and follow the performance of your posts thanks to a dashboard. It enables you to plan messages and tweets, track conversations, manage an unlimited number of profiles and display Google Analytics.
But on its biggest strengths is to facilitate public engagement. Hootsuite utilizes numerous Streams instead of an 'inbox' to manage involvement. It's possible to set up streams for each social media to monitor its own content. It facilitate also collaboration within a team. Indeed, on a single dashboard, anyone on your team, can respond quickly to messages, mentions and comments. You have the possibility to assign one specific person or a team.
Another Hootsuite useful feature is its ability to target your posts and share content with your clients based on your location, language and demographics, allowing you to reach and communicate with your online audience in an intelligent and efficient manner.
For each of its plans, Hootsuite offers a 30 days free trial in a first time. You can then switch to the professional account for 19$/month. If you are a team, you can use the «team» package at 99$/month to be able to delegate tasks directly on the dashboard.
Hootsuite can be a complex platform for young social media beginners and it can take little time to get used to it.
3)Sendible
Sendible allows you to manage your messages and comments from networks such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. By using a single platform, Sendible makes it easy for you to manage your different online accounts. using a single platform.
This all-in-one tool is great for a marketer as it helps you create content and keep your editorial calendar active. You’ll be able to track each mentions of your company and even respond immediately to comments. Moreover, each message is analysed, highlighted according to their urgency, which enables you to prioritize important mentions and to process messages requiring an immediate response.
Like other Buffer and Hootsuite, Sensible allows you to communicate with your followers but also to follow, analyze and measure your campaigns’ performance. It provides detailed reports about the commitment of your audience and finally some automation tools such as automatic answer to messages on Twitter or Instagram for example.
Sendible prices vary depending on whether you subscribe for monthly or yearly package (with a discount of 15% for yearly subscription).Each plans are designed for one type of businesses, from entrepreneurs to startup and large companies.
Unlike Hootsuite, geographic keyword monitoring is not that accurate and if you intend to manage an account with a high volume of messages in real time, it might not be the best tool as it might take hours to appear.
4)Sprout Social
Sprout Social is another very effective SMM tool that has a publishing system to post your messages on social networks. You can plan them and it will redirect all messages to a single inbox so you can easily manage multiple profiles at the same time.
You can also obtain analysis reports of your activities which are quite detailed as you can see the performance of your posts as well as the growth of your community and demographics.
Besides, Sprout Social enables you to collaborate with all your team and assign tasks to the most appropriate team members.
Sprout Social offers 3 types of packages: Standard - 99$/month, Professional - 149$/month and Advanced - 249$/ month. “Standard” plan has all the basics features and allows you to manage up to 10 profils. In the “professional” one you can add 15 profils and have access to detailed reports. Finally, the “advanced” can have 20 profils and all Sprout features.
The main cons of this tool is the price that can represent huge amount of investment for some teams.
5)Agorapulse
Agorapulse is the perfect tool if you’re aiming to listen to your followers and to build a real relationship with them. It collects all the incoming comments and messages on your different social media, rank the most important ones and it makes sure that you respond to them.
It also provides updates on your social content and uses a social media inbox.
In addition, you can receive custom reports with the details of your performance which are presented in Powerpoint.
Like Sendible prices vary if you choose monthly or yearly packages (with a 10% discount for yearly subscription). The medium plan already starts by allowing 2 users and 10 social media profiles but is quite expensive - 89$/ month. The rest of packages - Large, X-Large and Entreprise - are more adapted for agencies or bigger companies.
The main cons of Agorapulse is that it doesn’t support Google + and Pinterest and it can be quite complex for beginners.
Design The Perfect Call To Action
Have you already seen a button at the end of an article or of a website page saying “subscribe here”? It is used to attract visitors to do a precise action: for example, subscribe to a newsletter, to an offer or a link towards a contact form. Some methods must be followed to convert a visitor into a prospect. Indeed this can be a good way to collect data about potential customers.
1. Find the good format
It can be a button or a banner with texts on it… You have multiple choices, but you must think what is the most relevant for your audience. You should ask the question: Would it be more catchy if you put this banner at this place? You should not put too many CTA so visitors do not get lost. It must not be also too big so that it does not seem aggressive.
For example on the Pimsheep landing page, you can see two different types of CTA : a fixed one in the middle and an animated button on one side.
2. Find the position of your CTA
Your CTA can be static or on the contrary animated. It can be a static bar that is rooted on the website or an animated one that appears on the side of your page. The purpose is to catch the attention of your visitors. You can also animate your CTA, for example once you click on the Pimclick button, a chatbot appeared so the visitor can interact. It is important to adapt your CTAs to all your profile of audience. Also it must be available on mobile phone as today 60% of the traffic is on this device.
3. Text or image?
Studies show that the conversion rate is weaker for a CTA image than for a text or a button. It can be relevant if you want to show your product. You can add an animation so that the visitor understand that it is a CTA.
4. Personalize your Text
Your text can be totally explicit and clear for the user: “Click here”. Or, it can describe an action “try a Demo”, “Download here”.
It is important to conjugate your verb at the imperative form
If your CTA represents an occasional event such as sales, you can play on the urgency: “-50% until XX” or “Only two models left”.
You can also personalize your website depending on users’ location, the gender or following the way your audience enter the page.
Another idea is to create a catchy sentence that will surprise and attract the curiosity of your visitor.
These tips can help you to design the best CTA, you just have to add a bit of your imagination now.