Honor is totally on the get-go in welcoming our students for the new school year. The company is more than willing to collaborate with the students to aid them with their studies and achieve their educational goals.

This year, the Honor Back to School 2020 offers amazing discounts, deals, freebies, and lots of surprises in store. Here are the reasons why you should check out their latest offering.

You’ll get highly discounted gadgets.

Honor is currently offering discounted gadget deals that you can’t surely miss for this school season. Prices dropped for over 50%, offering the most affordable deals to date without compromising its products’ quality. These discounts are only available for a limited time, and you definitely should take advantage of it. With bigger savings, you can spend that money on other supplies that you will need in school.

They offer awesome bundles in one.

With the back to school sale, Honor provides an extensive bundle offering for the school year. You can get Honor’s 15-inch MagicBook that comes with a Bluetooth mouse and a Bluetooth earphone for only £499.99! Or if you need a smartphone, they also have a bundle, for example, with Honor 20 Lite smartphone, and you’ll get a free Honor earphone or an Honor MagicWatch, maybe for only £169.99. Without spending that much, you’ll get more than just one item for their bundle deals.

They also offer free gift vouchers.

As long as you’re signed up with a Huawei ID account and subscribed to their latest weekly newsletter, Honor will allow you to win gift vouchers for up to £50. This voucher can be used for any Honor featured product for the back to school deals. The vouchers will lessen your payment upon check out on top of the discounted rate of the product. That’s a discount on discount for just one purchase!

All products are on sale right now.

From MagicBooks, MagicWatch, and Smartphones, Honor has it all. They dropped prices for all of their products, even the newly released gadgets, such as the Honor 9X, which only costs £199.99 with freebies and other benefits! You’ve got more gadgets to choose from depending on your need for this school season. Rest assured, it will all be worth it and worth spending.

Limited free delivery offer

When you purchase Honor products above £39.99, you will get a free shipping fee with your order. The delivery is also fast and efficient and gets to you of no more than two days of waiting. That’s an absolutely perfect way to shop online safely and efficiently. Honor offers a free 31-day return whenever you experience an unprecedented problem with the item that you ordered. That’s optimum customer service at its finest.

If you want to learn more about Honor’s exclusive, limited back to school offering this year, visit Honor’s official website. You can also visit Honor’s nearby accredited stores to check discounted gadgets in person. No doubt, this school year will be more fun with Honor.

Social media offers an incredible platform for businesses of all sizes to engage and interact with new and existing customers and clients. In this guide, we’ll look at how to come up with social media content that is relevant and useful to your target audience.

Before creating anything

Before you create or share anything, it’s essential to consider three key factors: your target market, your reason for sharing content and the value you’re offering your readers and followers. By answering questions and ensuring you have a clear focus before you begin, you can maximise the chances of achieving your desired outcomes.

1. Define your target audience

Before you start conjuring up ideas or writing articles or putting posts together, it’s vital to define your audience. Who are you looking to attract? This is crucial because it will affect the content focus, the networks and platforms you use, the way you present your content and the tone of voice. Once you have established an ideal buyer persona, use analytics and research Internet usage and buying habits to boost your chances of creating high-quality leads and ensure you reach people who are likely to have a genuine interest in the products or services you sell.

1. What is your why?

Whenever you post or share content on social media, there should be an objective. Think about what you want to achieve with your social media campaigns. Once your targets are clear, you can figure out the best ways to hit your goals.

1. What value are you giving?

The most effective content serves a purpose. Before you start creating content or writing for the web, think about what you’re offering your audience and how you can add value to your posts. You could provide useful advice, product demonstrations, outfit ideas or answer frequently asked questions, for example. This will have more impact than a generic post.

Content creation methods

There are several methods you can use to generate social media content ideas. You might already have ideas whizzing around in your head, but it’s also wise to plan strategically and to use research and monitoring to inform your choices. You can analyse audience behaviour and evaluate how people react to different types of post and content to update and refresh your strategy as you go. If you’re wondering how to come up with social media content and looking for inspiration to create captivating, useful, engaging content, here are some suggestions to consider:

Creating content that answers questions or solves problems

Often, web users open search engines or social media feeds looking for the answers to questions or advice or tips to solve problems. As a content creator, you can add value to your posts, enhance customer service and increase consumer confidence by providing accurate information, easy access to guidelines and demonstrations and offering rapid responses. Examples of content ideas include help guides, step-by-step instructions or tutorials and frequently asked questions answered in short interview clips. By providing answers and solving problems via social media, brands can build buyer confidence and increase the chances of converting leads. If customers have questions about an item in their cart, they may abandon it if they can’t find the answer quickly.

Engaging in other people’s posts

According to the latest statistics, there are currently over 3.5 billion active social media users in the world (source). Social networks actively encourage communication and facilitate interaction and engaging in other people’s posts can trigger ideas and help you develop and build on content strategies that target your ideal buyer or customer. Building a network of contacts and virtual friends and followers can open doors and provide inspiration, as well as enabling your business to take advantage of establishing relationships with customers and potential business clients. Take ideas from other posts, interact with users and start conversations. Rather than leaving simple comments, like ‘great post,’ delve deeper into the subjects that are up for discussion, read other people’s feedback, share posts and use the debate to formulate new ideas, which will appeal to and attract those who are already involved in the conversation.

Share your problems and experiences

One of the most advantageous aspects of social media marketing is the opportunity to display a human side and showcase the personality and ethos of your brand. By creating visual content for social media and curating posts, you can share your own experiences and talk about problems you’ve encountered and solved to build deeper connections, tell people more about your business and what it stands for and facilitate engagement. Being open and honest about issues and negative experiences can also improve transparency and foster trust. Figures show that 86% of shoppers prefer brands to be transparent and authentic on social media (source).

Find low competition long-tail keywords

When looking for content creation tips to make your social media posts more impactful and accessible, it’s beneficial to consider finding long-tail keywords to write about. Long-tail keywords tend to be less popular than shorter search terms and keywords, and as a result, competition is not as fierce. The upshot is that long-tail keywords often convert extremely well because they offer more specificity and relevancy. According to research conducted by Wordstream, the average conversion rate for the top 10% of landing pages is 11.45%. For long-tail keywords, the figure rises to 36% (source). People who have search queries don’t want to trawl through pages of generic results that aren’t actually useful. Using long-tail keywords enables people to gather more relevant information and access content that serves a purpose. As a content creator, you can utilise search engine analysis and keyword research to find low-competition long-tail keywords that are linked to subjects, products, services or topics you want to discuss or share on social media.

Take notes on everything

Flashes of inspiration can come out of the blue when you’re thinking about creating content, and it’s useful to get into the practice of taking notes and carrying a notebook or your phone around with you so that you can jot down ideas on the move. You might find that articles or books you read, conversation topics that crop up in the office, TV shows you watch or discussions you happen to overhear on the bus or in a cafe inspire you. When you come to create posts or share stories, you can read through your notes and start creating outlines and developing your ideas.

Take topics out of existing blog posts and expand on them

Blog posts generate reactions and provoke thoughts. Even if you’ve written the post, you might find that you have ideas that spring to mind once you’ve shared an article, or that your opinion changes or the situation develops over the course of time. Going back through previous blog posts, looking at reader comments and reactions and exploring topics that seem to trigger debate or encourage people to interact with the article is an excellent way to develop content and to ensure your posts are relevant to your target market. Expand on what you’ve already said, provide updates if you’re discussing an event or a scenario that is ongoing and consider looking at popular subjects from a different angle or perspective.

Clustering and brainstorming

Brainstorming is a technique that enables you to note down ideas or thoughts freely, and it can be instrumental in creating content and laying the foundations for an article or a series of posts. Through brainstorming, you can start clustering, building on ideas that are linked and intertwined to create a more specific approach, theme or subject. For businesses, it can be useful to explore brainstorming and clustering topics that are discussed within the industry or sector to produce content that is relevant to the target buyer and interesting to the audience.

Loosening up

Social media provides an outlet for brands to loosen up and strike a balance between talking and writing about business and building relationships with customers and followers via techniques like storytelling. Social media users respond positively to brands that they follow and interact with on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Statistics show that 90% of consumers who connect with businesses on social media buy from those brands (source). People buy from people and injecting personality and telling stories followers can relate to can help to boost conversion rates and enhance brand image. With features like Instagram Stories and the option to add images and video clips to text, storytelling is an incredible way for brands to connect with audiences and encourage them to share posts and buy products and services. Over 90% of mobile users share videos with others and 64% of web users make a purchase after watching brand videos on social networks (source). It’s beneficial to use social media to develop relationships and let followers and virtual friends get to know your brand.

Summary

Social media content can be extremely powerful, but it’s critical to ensure you produce the right type of content to connect with your audience and achieve your objectives. Before you start thinking about how to come up with social media content, create an ideal buyer persona, think about what you want to gain from your posts and how you’re going to use social media to benefit your customers and offer value. When drawing up plans for content creation on social media, consider your audience, look to build on and expand previous posts, think about solving problems, answering questions and using your own experiences and take notes constantly. Analyse reactions to different topics to trigger further discussion, add a human side to your business through your posts, engage with others and look for long-tail keywords to write about. Be original, be creative, always ensure your posts are valuable and use platforms to strengthen ties and encourage interaction.

Have you been putting off creating a social media calendar? Never fear—here’s what you need to put together a social media calendar that helps you get the job done.

There are two things guaranteed to cause social media managers to sigh: setting social media KPIs and creating a social media calendar. A social media calendar keeps your channels organized, pumping out content, and ready for future events.

But the problem is this: Everyone tells you that you need one, but nobody tells you how to do it.

What should you include? How do you find the content? And how do you schedule ahead? In this article, I’m going to share my hacks on how to create a social media calendar.

Do I Really Need A Social Media Calendar?

If you’re managing social media channels professionally for a social media marketing agency or digital agency, you need to create a social media calendar. At Contentworks Agency, we create a social media calendar that plans 4-6 weeks ahead, and it absolutely saves our sanity. We do this for each client and for our own social media accounts.

Here are some of the benefits of making a social media calendar:

• It’s a great opportunity to audit your channels and align your content with your strategy and KPIs.
• Advanced planning allows time to create awesome graphics, GIFs, and videos for your channels.
• You will stay ahead of trending days, celebrations, and sector-specific dates.
• Running out of things to talk about won’t be a problem when you research and plan.
• Organizing your paid ads in advance is so much easier.
• Content can be created in advance, including matching blog posts.
• You can take a vacation—yes, a real live vacation!
• Your compliance or legal teams can approve posts ahead of time avoiding a bottleneck panic situation.
• You will boost sales if you align your messaging to key sales opportunities like Christmas or Black Friday.

So, now you know why a social media calendar is necessary, how do you make one?

Creating a social media calendar can be fun. You’re in control of what goes into it, and it’s your chance to be creative. Let’s get started.

1. Create a Posting Schedule

One of the important reasons we create a social media calendar is to stick to a posting schedule across different social media channels.

When you’re inconsistent, results aren’t usually great. Post infrequently … and your brand awareness, web traffic, and sales drop. Post too much at once, and fans will probably get annoyed and unfollow you.

Here is my posting schedule. Yours may look different depending on your resources, sector and audience demographic.

My weekly schedule template is …

• Facebook pages: 3 per week–Monday, Wednesday, Friday
• Twitter: 5+ times per day–Every day
• Instagram: 1-3 times per day–Weekends and one weekday
• LinkedIn: 3 per week–Monday, Wednesday, Friday

Tips about a social media calendar from the experts

Curate content. Remember content doesn’t have to be yours. Content curation can form part of your content calendar. Just make a note of some reputable sites that are not competitors from which you can share content.

Vary the times. Repeat content at different times. This is one of my favorite hacks for evergreen content and Agorapulse makes it so easy. Choose to repeat the content once or schedule it regularly, for example, 5 times every 4 days. (Not convinced? Here are reasons for reposting on Instagram and republishing content on LinkedIn to ponder.)

Use a digital calendar. Don’t write it all down in a notepad or bits of paper. (I see you!) Use a proper online calendar that can be accessed by your team. Download this great social media content calendar from Agorapulse.

Be aware of time zones and cultures. Your posting schedule will depend on your target region (country and time zone), user behaviors, and the nature of your business. Always remember your target audience!

Example: I’m in Europe, but I want to promote a restaurant in Sydney Australia. I need to work on Sydney time and create content that hits user feeds when they’re thinking about food. So, 11AM for lunch or 4PM for dinner. There’s no point in posting about your mouth-watering burger at 3AM.

This ad for a Burger King croissants went out just before breakfast to hit those hungry commuters:

Agorapulse’s reporting shows you when your fans are most active. Once you see a pattern, use it to your advantage and schedule posts for those times:

2. Know Your Sector Events

The content that goes into your calendar will depend on your sector.

Each sector has specific days, hashtags, and events associated with it. For example, if like me, your clients are predominantly in the finance sector, you need to consider regular monthly events, hashtag days, one-off events, and then trending.

• Regular events.Nonfarm Payroll announcements, Monetary Policy meetings, consumer confidence, and ECB meetings
• Hashtag days. #WorldMathsDay #financialawarenessday #FibonacciDay (yes, it’s a thing)
• One-off events. Presidential Elections, Brexit, or a finance conference/expo
• Trending. You can’t plan for these. Trends pop up each day, and you will decide whether they are relevant and should be included in your social media.

Big events like a presidential election can form several weeks of planned posts and content. Some events are only for the day.

Tips about a social media calendar from the experts

Use a free tool like www.daysoftheyear.com to easily see what’s coming up for hashtag days. Be selective, though. You don’t need to be celebrating #tophatday if you’re a bakery! (That said, I love this post from Pizza Express that nails #LeftHandersDay!)

Bookmark websites that provide information about events in your sector. For finance, it might be a site displaying an economic calendar for example. Be sure to check on them at least one month in advance.

Create a library of images for regular recurring events or generic use. Here’s one from our library of “trending” images. This allows us to create the text fast and add a great image without needing to wait. You can create images in different online tools if you don’t have a designer and size them for different channels.

3. Listen to Your Audience

Creating a social media calendar means preparing content in advance. But that doesn’t mean you can’t look back for inspiration. And your audience metrics can really help you out here.

To get started, conduct a social media audit of the past year. Look at what performed and what didn’t. Perhaps you ran a contest that got tons of sign-ups and great engagement. Or you may have authored a series of posts that inspired click-throughs. Utilize platforms like Google Analytics for your website content stats. These stats from my analytics show me which content performed well during August.

Or use Agorapulse for reporting on the performance of past social media posts.

Tips about a social media calendar from the experts

Go with what your audience likes. If a piece of content or post worked well, repeat the style or topic. Repurpose old articles with fresh images, GIFs, or a rewrite. Upload top-performing eeooks to Slideshare and reshare them.

Research hashtags. Search for hashtags or keywords in your industry and see what content is getting the most engagement.

Look for audience questions or comments. You can utilize competitor analysis techniques to help you here.

Craft posts that are highly relevant to your audience. Ask your sales or customer support team what customers are asking. Perhaps they are asking how to perform an action or about store opening times.

Create a FAQ. Answer frequent customer questions to fill out your social media calendar.

4. Share Your Social Media Calendar With Your Team

Experienced social media managers know that it’s essential to collaborate with their marketing team and the wider organization. And when you create a social media calendar, you can share it with other people too.

But (and it’s a big but), be selective.

Here are some basic rules for sharing your calendar …

Implement a clear chain of command. For example, social media manager Sophia creates the posts on Friday, and compliance officer Jack approves them every Monday.

Add your designers to the social media calendar. They need to know what’s coming up and the designs or videos they need to create. It’s likely that you will need to send a proper email brief about this, too.

Add your writers to the calendar. The same goes for copywriters. If you plan to create a series of posts about Halloween, your writer may want to create a blog article that you can link to. Timing is everything as you will need the blog link in advance.

Don’t add everyone. Your entire marketing team does not need access to your social media calendar. Similarly, not everyone needs to be able to edit it … and it’s better that they don’t.

Tips about a social media calendar from the experts

Share your reporting with others. This is likely to inspire confidence, reinforce your strategy, and emphasize your expertise. It will also force you to look at your analytics if you haven’t been already!

Start each week with a look at the calendar and what’s coming up. Doing so will remind you of any outstanding actions or activities you need to complete.

Know who is in charge of what. With AgoraPulse, you can set clear roles within the content calendar. That allows you to document actions and easily track approvals and schedules.

Draft template replies ahead of time and have them approved and ready to go. This will save you tons of time later. Replies might be about how to return a product, your shipping times, etc.

Ask other departments for their input. They don’t need to be added to your social media calendar, but they might help you to formulate it. For example, human resources might be holding a recruitment day. Or your development team might be launching a product update or bug fix.

5. Factor in Live and Trending Content

We can’t schedule everything in advance. If we did, we would miss out on the minute-to-minute trends and the excitement of going live.

Your content calendar should factor in live posts and tweets each week where possible. These might include:

• Breaking news (retweeted or curated from reputable sites)
• Funny trends, memes or challenges that you want to participate in
• Instagram pics of your team members, pets, or kids
• Live videos from your company (Perhaps something exciting has happened unexpectedly or your production team has broken into song!)
• Coverage within your industry, such as photos from an event or webinar
• Flash sales and promos (can sometimes be scheduled, but actual photos cannot)
• Crisis management or company responses to a situation

Tips about a social media calendar from the experts

Don’t passively wait for trending news to hit your desk. Be the first to learn about it first by having a trending tab open on Twitter. If you’re using Tweetdeck you can add it in your left column so you don’t miss anything. You can also set up media monitoring using Google Alerts or listening via Agorapulse.

Vary the content images. Breaking news might be important enough to share across all your channels. But that doesn’t mean you should use the same content, image, or hashtags. Your messaging needs to be different, and you may choose to use a different image, too.

Always look to create FOMO for promotions. You can schedule them in advance, but they shouldn’t look that way. Use phrases like “last chance,” “10 left in stock,” or “1 hour to go” when talking about promotions or sales. Be sure to get your timing right when you schedule in advance.

In Conclusion

A social media calendar is your ultimate planning and organization tool. It keeps your posting consistent, your approvals on track and your content relevant and engaging.

As a marketer, you’re continually looking for new ways to expand your customer base and engage with your audience. And you probably already know that social media is one of the best places to accomplish these goals. But have you expanded your social marketing strategy to YouTube?

Why YouTube?

With over 1 billion active users, YouTube allows you to reach a massive audience with video content. By getting creative and crafting videos that are engaging and informative, you’ll have a dependable and exciting way to grow your email list and establish your brand as an industry leader.

In fact, about 72% of B2B marketers are already using YouTube as a video marketing platform. Following in the footsteps of the top brands and tapping into the potential of YouTube can help give your business the growth it needs.

But to succeed, you need to take the right steps to ensure your content connects with viewers.

5 Steps for an Effective B2B YouTube Strategy

Step 1: Optimize Your YouTube Channel

There’s a lot more to YouTube than the video content you post—and one of the most important elements is your channel page, which serves as your profile page on the site.

Much like every other social platform, your channel page is where viewers will go to learn more about you and your company, so it’s crucial to set it up with as much detail as possible and keep it in-line with your branding strategy.

Here are some components to pay attention to while setting up your YouTube channel:

• Set your channel’s picture to your brand logo unless you are a personal brand, it which case use your headshot so that you’re easily recognizable and memorable.
• Create a custom banner for the top of the page.
• Write a thorough description in the “About” field. Make sure your viewers can quickly understand what your brand and YouTube channel are all about. This is also the perfect place to put a CTA or a link to your website.
• Organize your video content into dedicated playlists that will display on your channel page. This helps viewers find what they’re looking for quickly.

You’ll also want to take the time to optimize your channel for SEO purposes. Include industry keywords where you can. Since YouTube is included prominently in Google searches, an optimized channel can significantly increase your chances of ranking high in relevant searches.

Check out Adobe Creative Cloud for an excellent example of profile optimization.

Step 2: Execute Your Video Marketing Plan

Don’t just post videos at random. Formulate a plan which aligns your marketing goals with the needs of your target audience. Schedule video brainstorming sessions to come up with ideas that will pique the interest of your intended viewers.

Here are a few questions to consider:

• Who is your target audience?
• What types of videos do you want to create?
• How are your competitors attracting audiences in your niche?
• How will you advertise and promote your channel?
• How much (if anything) will you spend on promoting your videos?

Also, follow a schedule that ensures you are consistent with your video marketing efforts.

Social marketing expert, Jeff Bullas, tried YouTube marketing for one year. His team initially lacked consistency and generated a mere 16 to 30 views per day. Interestingly, they began posting two to three times per week and instantly gained over 1,000 views within a month. This proves that consistency is critical in growing your channel.

For example, Adobe Creative Cloud’s YouTube channel features interviews with industry professionals, design tutorials and live sessions. They consistently upload several videos within a day so their channel remains interesting and relevant to their viewers. This success has led to over 91 million views at the time of writing this article.

Step 3: Optimize Your YouTube Videos

The process of optimization doesn’t end with your channel. You’ll want to optimize every video you post to the channel to have the best chance at ranking high in searches and appealing to viewers. Here are a few things to keep in mind when posting your videos:

• Create a custom, eye-catching thumbnail for each video you post. This is what people see when they’re browsing the search results.
• Write an engaging and unique title. Try to include keywords whenever possible.
• Write a creative and thorough video description. Include keywords, a CTA, and a link to your website.
• Use plenty of tags that are relevant to your brand and the content of the video.

Since YouTube is one of the largest search engines in the world, taking the time to optimize all of your video content will greatly boost the chances that it gets found and ranks high in search results—both on YouTube and Google.

IBM optimizes all of its videos for SEO purposes, and so they should.

Step 4: Creatively Showcase Your Expertise and Experience

Don’t make your videos a sales pitch. Focus on creating content that showcases how you can help others and illustrate how your products and services can help them solve their problems.

Content that feels too salesy won’t perform well on YouTube, so it’s important to get your creative juices flowing and make unique content that will capture the viewer’s attention.

Here are a few examples of video styles that perform well on YouTube:

• Behind the scenes videos. Give your audience a chance to learn more about the people who make up your company and what a day in the life might look like.
• Product demonstrations. Your products are fantastic, so use videos to show people why. Don’t turn them into a commercial – just give your audience a look at what sets you apart from the competition.
• Testimonials. Do you have satisfied customers who are willing to talk about how your product worked for them? Ask them to do a video testimonial. It’s an engaging way to build trust with your audience.
• How-to videos. What is your audience interested in learning? What types of questions are they asking? Cover these in your videos.

Thankfully you don’t need a lot of professional recording equipment and editing software to film videos that are high quality. Most of the equipment you need is what you probably own. If you don’t have a dedicated camera for filming, your smartphone likely has a camera-equipped to film in HD or 4K.

When it comes to editing software, most computers come with basic editing software that is more than capable of getting the job done.

If you aren’t confident in your filming skills, there are many tutorials and books available that will ease you into the process. You’ll be able to get the hang of titles, transitions, and other basic video elements in no time.

There are a few key items you can invest in that can significantly enhance the production value of your content.

• Tripods. With a tripod, you’ll be able to make sure every shot you take is steady and eliminate the shakiness that many videos shot by hand tend to have.
• Microphone. A high-quality microphone will allow you to do clear voice-overs that your audience can understand and will eliminate the hollow audio that sometimes comes along with using the built-in microphones on phones or computers.

Step 5: Utilize Analytics to Improve Your YouTube Strategy

To understand how your videos are impacting your viewers, you need to monitor your analytics and understand what your strengths and weaknesses are. Once you do, you’ll start to see trends and reactions, and you can better gauge how your target audience is interacting with your content.

The Most Important YouTube Statistic

When it comes to analytics, YouTube is quite different from other platforms. On social platforms, you’re probably used to looking out for statistics like likes, shares, follows, and retweets. On YouTube, you can still like and share content, but other statistics make an even bigger impact on your channel.

YouTube wants its users to like the content they see and engage with it, so the most crucial statistic you’re going to see is your viewer retention. This is a measure of how long people who click on your videos watch them. YouTube values the quality of the content its users produce, and higher quality content that keeps viewers interested is more likely to rank high in search results.

To achieve the best viewer retention rate, you’ll need to create content that not only inspires people to click on it, but also encourages them to keep watching.

Video Marketing: Learn and Improve

Understanding your analytics is one of the most important parts of optimizing your YouTube marketing strategy. Monitor your analytics regularly and learn from what you observe.

Are a lot of people clicking on your video, but not watching for long? You might need to adjust your content. Are not enough people clicking on your videos? You might want to revamp your title and optimization strategy.

No matter what your statistics show you, don’t shy away from experimenting and trying new things out regularly. This can give you some great insight into what your audience wants to see more of and what they might respond to down the line.

YouTube is the perfect place to give your B2B business an outlet for video marketing content. With the right strategies, you can reach a large audience and expose your content to new viewers. Optimizing your YouTube channel and your videos, creating engaging content, and learning from analytics will allow you to grow your following and increase your new leads.

Video content is one of the most effective forms of content. It’s crisp, engaging, and gives a lot of information in a short time. As many as 85% of all internet users in the US watch video content every month.

Due to its many benefits, as many as 87% of all marketers use videos for marketing their brands. 83% of marketers also use video marketing because they think that it gives them a good ROI.

Let’s take a look at how you can increase the ROI of video content even further.

1. Set Goals

Just like all other forms of marketing, effective video marketing also requires that you set clear goals. These goals need to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.

Your goals can help you channelize your efforts and create better video content that can benefit your brand.

Your goals can be to:

• Increase your sales within a certain time period
• Improve your brand awareness
• Increase conversion rates to get more sales
• Generate more leads within a stipulated time period

Once you’ve set your goals, you’ll be able to develop videos that will help you reach them. At the same time, all of your teams will be on the same page to help you drive better video marketing ROI.

2. Understand Your Target Audience

To succeed with video marketing, you need to understand your target audience thoroughly. Figure out who they are and what they like and dislike. Based on that, you’ll be able to craft more effective content.

You need to find their pain points and create content that can resolve them. When they see that your content is giving them genuine value, they will keep returning back to you.

After all, your videos need to connect with your audience emotionally. They will return to your brand only if they find that your videos are useful to them.

3. Create Great Content

Once you’ve figured out more about your target audience, your goal should be to create great content that will resonate well with them.

Create videos that are informative and engaging. Aim to create high-quality videos that can solve their problems.

Use bite-sized captions in the video to further elaborate on what’s being displayed in each clip. You can also consider adding subtitles to your videos so that your audience will be able to understand everything that’s said in i.

Additionally, you need to keep the video duration in mind as well.

HubSpot analyzed thousands of videos and found that:

• Videos that got the highest engagement were only about 26 seconds long.
• The best videos on Twitter averaged around 43 seconds.
• On Facebook, the audience engages most with videos that are 1-minute long.
• YouTube videos which are about 2-minutes long see the most engagement.

Thus, you should create videos by keeping these factors in mind.

For Instagram and Twitter, try creating short videos that deliver information quickly. On Facebook, you have the liberty to make slightly longer videos.

Lastly, on YouTube, you can create videos that give in-depth information to viewers. This gives you a chance to be more creative with your content as well.

4. Add a CTA

It’s crucial to add a CTA (call-to-action) to your videos, especially when you want your viewers to take a particular action.

It’s better to tell viewers to take action rather than leaving them to guess. The CTA can be something as simple as, “Share this video with your friends.”

When you recommend what they should do next, there are more chances of them taking that action. This way, you’ll be able to drive engagement, reach, leads, and even conversions. This, in turn, can help in improving the ROI of your videos.

For instance, GoPro wanted viewers to become their subscribers on YouTube. For that, they added the words “Subscribe” at the end of their videos to push viewers to subscribe.

5. Have a Distribution Strategy in Place

Creating great videos isn’t enough. You need to have a distribution plan in place to get these videos to your target audience. Otherwise, you won’t be able to find viewers for them.

So, you need to figure out where your audience is the most active. Analyze your audience and find out the social media platforms where they engage with content the most.

Based on this research, zero-in on one or two platforms and put all of your effort into reaching your target audience there. Doing so will get you the most engagement.

You must also tailor your videos to the platform that you’re targeting to improve your engagement further. This can help improve your ROI.

You can, of course, publish your videos on other platforms as well. A great way of doing this is by creating templates for each platform and then scheduling them for publishing. It’s a great idea to post videos on your blog as well. Adding them to emails and landing pages can help too.

6. Repurpose Content

One of the best ways of using your content is by repurposing it. If you want to improve the ROI of your videos, you can repurpose them into other forms of content and get more out of the same piece of content.

It can be quite a task to come up with engaging content that can resonate will with your audience. By repurposing content, you can reach out to different segments of your audience that may prefer various content formats.

For instance, you can create blog posts out of your videos and vice-versa. Alternatively, you can cut the video into multiple parts and share those on social media. In some cases, you may be able to create infographics or albums from your videos as well.

To improve your ROI even further, you can reuse your videos. By publishing the same video on different platforms, you’ll be able to really get the most out of it.

It’s also an effective cost-cutting method as you’ll spend less money on creating videos. The key, of course, is to create great videos that your audience will like.

7. Track & Optimize

Like all other types of marketing, you need to track the effectiveness of your videos as well. By doing so, you’ll get an idea of what’s working and what’s not. This will help you improve your future videos to get better results.

Some of the most important metrics that you need to consider are:

• Play rate: This is the percentage of plays as compared to the number of times the video was loaded. A higher play rate indicates that the video is extremely relevant to your target audience, and that’s why people are watching it.
• Average viewing duration: This figure gives you an idea of how long your audience watched your video, on average. The longer the average viewing duration, the more engaging and relevant your video is.
• Click-through rate: This shows you the percentage of viewers who clicked on the call-to-action during or after watching your video. A higher CTA means that your viewers are taking the action that you wanted them to take. You can track the effectiveness of each video by adding a UTM code to the URL in the CTA. These codes can be easily tracked using tools like UTM.io.

Final Thoughts

Videos can help your brand reach greater heights if used well. You need to ensure that you create top-notch videos and distribute them in the right places.

Make sure that your audience sees them and that your content resonates with them. Use CTAs wherever possible to push them to take action.

It’s also a great idea to repurpose your content to get the most out of it. Lastly, make sure that you track and optimize your campaigns to improve your results even further.

Are there other ways marketers can increase the ROI of their videos? Let us know in the comments.

I can imagine why you’re keen on learning about Facebook Ads.

25 percent users who see a social ad respond by visiting that website or store. This makes it a must-have strategy in 2020. With 2.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook has a captive audience, for you to market your offers to.

Facebook Advertising comes with micro-targeting features that attract your target demographics. However, you must familiarize yourself with the different aspects of Facebook Ads and proceed step-by-step with your ad campaign to achieve great results.

Here is a step by step guide.

1- Open a Facebook Business Manager Account

Facebook’s numerous advertising options can be overwhelming. Cut through the clutter and set up your Business Manager profile. Remember, incorrect account details can thwart your Facebook advertising efforts even before you begin your campaign.

Head over to business.facebook.com and click the ‘Create Account’ button.

Enter your business’ name, your name, email address, and Facebook business page.

If you don’t have a Facebook business page, just head over to ‘Create a Page’ and click ‘Get Started’ below the Business or brand option.

Now, create or add your advertising account.

Select ‘Business Settings’ in the Business Manager menu, then go to ‘Accounts’ and ‘Ad Accounts’.

Businesses that have never advertised on the platform before should press the ‘Create a New Ad Account’ button.

Set up the Business Manager and connect it to your Facebook ad account and business page to view a home screen similar to this:

Think of this advertising hub as your ad campaign’s command center. Navigate to any area of your business across Facebook.

2- Install Facebook Pixel

Want to know whether your ads work? Use the Facebook pixel to know if your ad drives sales on your website.

Create the pixel as a tracking code in your Facebook Business Manager account and add it to your website before you pay for ads.

View all actions being taken by visitors coming to your site via your Facebook advertisements.

Find out whether your ads drove results as well as the audiences and creative pieces those conversions came from.

3- Pick Your Objectives Wisely

Never lose sight of your campaign objective when using Facebook Ads Manager. In fact, the platform will prompt you to select an objective for the campaign.

Take your pick from 11 objectives. Go through the list and select the most appropriate one to give Facebook a better idea of what your business wants to do, including:

• Brand awareness
• Site traffic
• Engagement
• App installs
• Video views
• Lead generation
• Messages
• Reach
• Conversions
• Catalog sales
• Store traffic

Help the platform present you with the most relevant ad options to achieve your business objective.

4- Set Up Your Ad Set

Once you decide your campaign objective, establish your ad set, including:

• Right audience to target.
• Budget you wish to spend
• Placement of ads in Facebook products

Provide more details so Facebook can optimize for the type of event you want.

Target the Right Audience

Avoid wasting money by broadcasting ads to random Facebook users. Harness the power of Facebook advertising to choose your target audience and show your ads to people interested in your products and services.

Facebook’s expansive built-in targeting includes options like:

• Locations
• Age
• Gender
• Languages
• Job Titles
• Relationship
• Education
• Work
• Financial
• Home
• Ethnic Affinity
• Generation
• Parents
• Politics
• Life Events
• Interests
• Behaviors
• Connections

Check out the Custom Audiences option as well. It lets you target Facebook users who exist in your business’ contact database, visited a site page with a tracking pixel, or used your app.

Narrow your targeting criteria with Facebook’s audience definition gauge. Use the tool to know your potential reach number by evaluating all your selected properties.

When you find a group that responds positively to your ads, save the audience for later use.

Consider your objectives if you cannot choose between a broad audience or a specific one.

Core Audience

Find customers based on demographics, gender, interests, location, and behavior. Give your ads the best chance of conversion by hyper-targeting your audience. Increase effectiveness by establishing customer personas beforehand.

Custom Audience

Upload the contacts of existing or old customers you wish to re-engage with. Blend your business’ physical activity with your online presence to develop a better relationship with your target audience.

Lookalike Audience

These include people you have not engaged with earlier, but who fit the criteria of your ideal audience based on comparisons with existing customers.

Decide Your Budget

Select between a daily budget or a lifetime budget.

Daily Budget

Go for this option if you want your ad set to run 24 X 7. Use a daily budget if you want Facebook to pace your per-day spending. Please note the minimum daily budget is $1 and must be twice your CPC at least.

Lifetime Budget

Want to run your Facebook ad for a specified period? Select the lifetime budget option so Facebook paces your spend over this time frame.

Turn on the advanced options for more budgeting specifications.

Schedule: Select whether the campaign runs continuously or immediately. Also, customize the start and end dates, and modify parameters so your ads run only during certain hours and days of the week.

Optimization: Bid for objectives, impressions, or clicks as per your business needs. Pay for your ad to be displayed to your target audience. However, Facebook controls the maximum bid.

Select manual bidding to prevent Facebook from setting optimal bids. You can still view a suggested bid based on the behavior of other advertisers to get an idea of what you should aim for.

Delivery: Select standard delivery if you want your ads to be shown all day. Accelerated delivery, on the other hand, helps you reach the audience quickly for time-sensitive ads.

Select the Placement

Decide where you want the ad to show up apart from the News Feed. Your ad can appear in other Facebook-owned properties such as Messenger and Instagram via the Facebook Audience Network. It all depends on your target consumers as well as the type of ad.

Ideally, choose automated placements for your ad. This way, Facebook can optimize for your campaign objective using every placement available to achieve the best results.

5- Create Your Ad

Facebook ads take different forms, each of which is designed to help you achieve your business objective and resonate with your target audience.

Select your preferred ad format. Then enter the ad copy as well as the associated media components. Choose formats based on your campaign objective.

Be certain your ad text provides all the information viewers want. Also use Facebook hashtags as an opportunity to interact with your followers. But make sure any text above the fold is extremely compelling. Hook them right from the top!

Find the preview tool near the bottom of the page and use it to ensure your ad fits every potential placement, including right column, desktop news feed, and mobile.

When you are satisfied with your selection, press the ‘Confirm’ button for submission. You will soon receive an email from Facebook notifying you about the approval of your ad.

6 – Pay Attention to Ad Specs

Keep numerous details in mind while preparing images and videos for your Facebook ads. Remember that these details change often.

Please notice the recommended character counts while creating your Facebook ads. Any text beyond the limit will get cut off.

Include a suitable headline, link description, body text and campaign objective for your image ads, video ads, Facebook Stories ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, collection ads, instant experience ads, and Messenger Inbox ads.

Track your Facebook ad’s performance via the Facebook Ad Manager and your marketing software.

Check Your Ads

Once you have created your Facebook ads, it’s time to check them.

If you have created location specific campaigns then you can use a VPN to bypass the Facebook location restrictions to see your ad.

For example, if you want to see your ads in Australia then you can use a VPN for Australia to bypass the geographic restrictions and see your ad.

What’s Next?

Use Facebook ads to grow your business. The platform is easy to use without any digital marketing experience. Simply learn the basics of Facebook advertising and set up your account correctly to launch a successful campaign. Trust Facebook ads to fuel your business as it grows!