If you’re looking to grow your social media presence, influencer marketing could be the best way to go about it. After all, the effectiveness of influencer marketing can’t be disputed – according to Forbes, businesses who partner with influencers are 55% more likely to have positive ROI than their non-influencer counterparts. But this strategy can be complicated if you don’t know where to start. Here are 5 ways to use influencer marketing in your social media strategy to maximize your business’s return on investment.

Social media influencers are individuals who have reputations in their industries, have a huge fan following, and can influence the perception of their fans with impactful sales recommendations. If used properly, influencer marketing is fast evolving to become a key tool for brand promotion.

Before you start reaching out to social media celebrities and Instagram influencers, you need to determine what your social media goals are. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Generate leads? Sell products? Once you know what you want to achieve, you can start developing your influencer marketing strategy.

The outreach impact goals will help you shape the kind of influencers you want to collaborate with. Mega influencers with more than a million followers enjoy celebrity status. They are the ideal influencers to endorse global brands with a potential digital marketing budget. For regional brands, mid-level influencers with 50k to 1 lac followers can work, depending on the budget. Finally, Nano and micro-influencers are the best to help leverage popularity amongst niche communities and work well when geo-targetted. Suppose you are struggling to put a budget in place; better start with a micro-influencer.

The influencer marketing approach is layered with aspirational motives rather than direct sales pitch. People tend to listen to those they like. Influencers work as trustworthy or credible sources who lead people to trust a brand. Recommendations, reviews, and personal commentary are some of the popular structures influencers use to promote brands.

Before you jumpstart collaboration, analyse the influencers’ engagement rates, content, and audience to see if they’re a good fit for your brand. For example, social media allows fake fan purchases, and some influencers might take that path to increase their fan base. Therefore before contracts are signed, look into this aspect. After all, you don’t want to associate your brand with a personality with credibility issues. To find social media celebrities, search hashtags, look in blog directories, or contact companies that specialise in social media marketing.

Since influencers know their consumers thoroughly, they should be able to give you an original promotion idea. At best, provide them with the marketing objective, the budget, and the end goal. It’s no secret that social media has taken over the world, and how brands can interact with consumers through social channels is growing exponentially. Influencer marketing is not only increasing, but it’s here to stay! If you’re not using this tactic yet, it’s time to take notice of its benefits like positive brand impact, a spike in organic reach, and excellent ROIs, and get started today.

Life ceases to be exciting when you are in a repeat mode – following the same old routine compounded with an evident lack of excitement! At that moment, what would you not do to add a little spark of unhinged fun! Similarly, when brands repeat their marketing strategies over decades, the consumers go ‘meh’…- company messages are ignored, online engagement does not drive past the ‘Like’ button, and sales dip. During such times, disruptive marketing can be the perfect rescue plan for brands. As disruptive marketing stands for everything exciting, new, & innovative, it can help prevent brands from nose-diving into a pool of negative impressions. However, the success of innovative marketing is not limited to the strategy itself but emerges from its experience.

When Nike stood up against racial discrimination in its campaign, it projected Nike as a just, empathetic, brave & honest brand. This altruistic character drew enormous support from people resulting in increased fan-following, positive press, and sales.

Today’s consumers exercise their frank opinions to shape brand impacts. Therefore, it has become increasingly important for brands to stay connected with fans. The need to have incessant conversations creates the need to do something new once in a while. The idea is to break the monotony in an unsettling way. In the age of TikTok, Facetime, InstaReels, Facebook Stories & YouTube Shorts, disruptive marketing is deployed as a path-breaking activity that creates viral reactions.

Brands also use it as a damage-control tool to bypass traditional approaches and become age-appropriate.

The element of ‘Surprise’ is the core around which disruptive marketing strategies are planned. The degree of surprise is what decides the success of such campaigns. Like when Shahrukh Khan was featured in the Disney Hotstar ads, he expressed disappointment in not being able to draw as much attention as the channel; people were rather amused. Likewise, when Venkatesh Prasad was featured in the ads of CRED fancily dressed as a boy band member, people applauded the idea.

Build a positive curiosity around the promotion by working on concepts not far removed from what consumers experience in their day-to-day lives. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential buyers and think simple. Then, wrap that simple idea up with an excellent disruptive presentation.

Earlier, every brand wanted to be a niche name in the market, but right now, the challenge is to be a disruptor!

To connect instantly with the TG, brands need to understand the pulse of the time. Every age has its medium. Disruptive marketing tactics are great tools to endorse your brand prominently at a lower cost with real-time responses and immediate conversations. Break free from conservative narrations and go beyond the expected. Consumers are not passive buyers anymore. They are forever watching; give them something worthwhile.

Serving consumers in ‘the nick of time’ is a challenge for all marketers. To keep up and keep pace with the fast-moving invents of advertisement techniques, marketers worldwide embrace multiple apps that promise quick and quality output and faster delivery.

Try these top apps to create and manage a variety of marketing activities.

Grammarly: Grammarly can be your favourite, professional content guide to help you scan & edit grammar, spelling, punctuation, complex sentences only with a click of a suggestion! Polish your writing and communication skills with the best choice of words, whether at work or for personal improvement.

Google docs: Quick formatting, instant, easy sharing, content collaboration are some of the most prominent features of Google docs. This is an excellent tool for multiple project creators who need to share notes and information on the go constantly!

Draft: Want to keep track of content changes and edits? Download Draft and keep managing content with track records easily. One of the best features, Draft, allows you to integrate with other online writing apps to refine language, check grammar and format content as and when you please.

Canva: Now start-up ad firms can compete professionally with big shot companies, thanks to Canva! With a few taps on the phone, it’s possible to create beautiful designs and impress the audience without much fuss.

Adobe Photoshop: A powerful tool with features like 3D modelling, 3D printing Adobe Photoshop is one of the most sophisticated design apps for modern-day advertising agencies. Unlike Canva, Adobe Creative Cloud is a little expensive but absolutely worth it!

Affinity Photo: If you are looking for an intelligent solution to image editing, retouch, and manipulation, Affinity Photo is pretty much the app for you. A wide variety of vector tools and pixel design capabilities make Affinity Photo a low price excellent solution to instant design woes.

Buffer: Stay ahead of the social media game with Buffer. This app helps schedule posts across multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linked. You can also follow up on social media performance statistics in a hassle-free way with Buffer.

Hootsuite: If you wish to micro-manage and plan your social media advertisement, try Hootsuite. Like Buffer, it allows you to schedule posts but puts you in control of the advertisement campaign at every level.

Mention: Monitor client reputation and ‘social presence’ online with Mention. This app is designed to scan the internet and find what the world is saying about you. If you link social media channels to this app, you will get a timely notification with customized statistics every time someone mentions you.

To get started, first align your social media requirement and strategy to streamline the choice of apps. Next, it is essential to measure results from the app function before you proceed to extend the subscription. While every app has its pros and cons, intelligent use and innovative application make a significant difference in online marketing.

Remember to keep it simple, sensible and sophisticated.

Keep discovering; keep growing with us!

A professional hotspot, the hub for global news, trend-setting alarms & more – Yes, it’s TWITTER!

Twitter is the perfect example of the saying – keep it short & simple. Designed as an SMS based communication platform, Twitter format filters out the unnecessary, feeding the public insight based information, instantly. The twitter strategy perhaps foresaw the overpowering influence of digital media and addressed precisely the requirement to be to-the-point, because honestly, who has time to read illustrious Victorian flim-flam these days? No one!

What made the twitter strategy a standout apart from the character-based format is the way people address search – via Hashtags. Relevant content-related tags or labels as we can call it otherwise, make it so much easier for people to filter content. Looking for sports news? A simple search with #SportsNews and bingo Twitter will provide you with all related news feeds.

The hashtag used on Twitter has click-started what we know to be “Trends”. What’s hot? What’s happening? – That’s what Twitter trends are all about!

Is there an Ideal Twitter Strategy for Your Brand?

Now integrate the three magical Twitter approaches in one – To-the-point content + Contextual hashtags + Trending topics and you have cracked the ideal twitter strategy to make more connections every single day.

Below are Top Ten Insider trends to build a robust Twitter Marketing strategy for your business:

1. Establish a well-defined brand voice

Create a distinctive brand voice, select a language style and build on a flawless pro-active communication. Create niche tags for your brands and be social & vocal. Your user base will judge you, so prepare well and never back-down.

2. Add that personal touch

Design communication to address users in a personal, unique way. Build rapport and practice social listening – what do your users say, what do they like, what they dislike, learn and build a repertoire tuned to company goals and keep it original, always.

3. Connect through replies

If someone leaves a reply to your tweet, don’t forget to engage with the person then and there. It is important for your customers to know that you are listening and you intend to help. Responding to replies fosters trust with the user.

4. Create editorial calendars

If you are not pro-active on Twitter, you are lost under the pile of multiple influential brands who keep engagement kicking, every single day. The best way to practice this is to maintain a content calendar. Revising, updating, scheduling and never forgetting to follow-up is an important twitter marketing strategy.

5. Retweets

Even as a brand you need to inspire followers by following other handles. Why? Because who you follow is representative of who you are on a digital platform. This is where re-tweeting comes handy. Don’t have content? Focus on reusing what others are saying if that is of relevance and value to the brand. A simple yet tricky Twitter marketing strategy this is!

6. Initiate and participate in Twitter chats

There are chats on almost every topic, select and participate with the goal of fostering connections and converting them into loyal brand spokesperson. Once the chat session ends, don’t forget to reply and follow people simply to keep the relationship going.

7. Be flexible with your content bank

Planning ahead is good, but being flexible is one of the key twitter marketing strategies for businesses. Follow the latest twitter trends and speak out loud. Remember no topic is irrelevant, un-related – the game is all about how you place it to your user base.

8. Keep it visually relevant and appealing

Sharing content on Twitter, if backed by engaging images can create 2X impact and increase viewership and organic fan-following. Gifs fall under the latest twitter trend category as they entice audiences quickly. Also memes capture quite an attention.

9. How paid content works

Paid ad is a great twitter strategy but to reap profitable results, you got to invest long-term. Paid campaigns if crafted and planned well can elevate brand positioning and impact organic tweets

10. ORM practices

Address customer grievances openly to build transparency, be empathetic and human-like because business only sells if people like your digital personality. Practicing ORM to support customers is a vital strategy that you cannot overlook.

Shatter that corporate business image and make real connections with people through Twitter business accounts. The ability to chat, reply, search business related content puts you in control of communication, so make it count. However, there is no ideal one way twitter strategy that assures quick hits and instant fan following, the digital media game is all about having a long term plan and acting/ responding on the go.

Appoint an expert twitter marketing strategy planner to reap more benefits.

Today, it is no secret that social media is a very powerful tool that can help you expand and empower your brand in numerous ways. So, whether you like it or not, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have now become mainstream communication tools for brands and businesses. Never before has connecting and sharing real time information, both on a personal and professional level become so simple, fast, and effective. According to the latest statistics by Pew Research Center, almost 74% of internet users can be reached by blogs and social media. That is an incredible number of people and many of them are providing brands with insights and suggestions on how they can win over more customers. In fact, if brands are not in sync with their following on social media, it can damage their reputation, because fans won’t be able to associate with them in a convenient manner. So understanding and monitoring social media is one of the main methods by which brands can build their reputation online and achieve real success within the social media marketplace.

After having established the importance of social media monitoring, let us have a look at some of the tools that can help a brand to monitor social media in a successful fashion. When looking for a tool, it is always better to try a couple of them and then choose the one that suits your needs in the best possible manner.

1. Hootsuite: One of the best free social media management tool, it covers multiple social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress among others. The weekly analytics report and well-integrated team management facility allows users to delegate tasks and send private messages which are highly useful, especially when there is more than one person handling the social media account.

2. Google Analytics: Another impressive social media monitoring tool that will help you find out which social networks are referring traffic to your site. Further, Google Analytics will also help you find out the conversion rate for your website as well. Aside from finding out general traffic and social activity, this tool can also help you find out specific data through Google’s URL builder and create goal tracking to see the conversion rate of each page in your website. This will enable you to see which traffic source converts best.

3. Cyfe: Different social media tools allow users to track different things and keeping a track of all of them can be quite challenging. It is here that Cyfe is ideal as it allows brands to create their own customized dashboard. Cyfe also has a number of pre-built widgets for social media platforms like Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Further, Cyfe allows customers to track their emails and marketing campaigns as well. This tool is however not completely free and unlimited usage requires a fee of USD19/month.

4. Social Mention: A very popular tool among social media enthusiasts, Social Mention monitors more than 100 social media sites. One of the best free listening tool in the market, it analyses data under four categories namely strength, sentiment, passion and reach. As a result the data collected is comprehensive and detailed.

5. NOD3x: Another great social media tool for in depth analysis is NOD3x. This tool is more focused on YouTube and Google+ platforms. There are plenty of great features in NOD3x that are particularly helpful for social media monitoring such as brand monitoring and social listening, sentiment analysis and page insights (includes both profiles and brand pages)

6. Oktopost: Another great social media tool, especially for digital campaigns, Oktopost makes it easier for brands to track the progress of each campaign, rather than relying on metrics or statistics of individual social messages. There are numerous other features in the tool but the biggest advantage of Oktopost is that it allows brands to see how well their campaigns are performing at a glance and which networks are driving results.

Social media is changing the way brands conduct their businesses. And the sooner a brand adapts to this rapidly changing scenario, the faster it will be able to use it to its advantage. Therefore, it is time for brands to not just track and monitor social media, but engage with it as well. And more importantly, they have to do it in real time as being part of the social media conversation gives them a unique opportunity to positively influence public perception. Therefore, smart companies have learnt that monitoring social media is the key through which they can track their role in the digital world, understand consumer behavior, and gain insights into both their digital successes and failures. After all, if you’re not actively listening, how can you truly connect with your customers?

The entire world is going social today. In fact, digital growth continues to gather pace around the globe, with more than 2 billion people having access to the internet. Among these, almost one billion people are active social media users. Naturally, the growing use of social media has impacted the policies and functioning of brands across sectors. So while some trends and ideas may have worked in the past, now brands need to expand their knowledge to create campaigns that are creative, engaging, inspiring and effective at the same time.

Here are 5 trends that we feel will impact the field of digital marketing in the coming year.

Social media is a popular & vast medium, so invest your resources intelligently!

 The Potential

Social media is widely used, with innumerable users registering their activities every moment. Every 60 seconds, 104, 00,000 photos are shared on snapchat, 2, 78, 00,000 new tweets are added on Twitter, 72 hours of video is uploaded on YouTube and 3,600 photos are added on Instagram.

How to Milk the Opportunity?

The heart of any successful social media campaign lies in proper understanding of the target audience. So, as there are multiple social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. available, it is immensely important for brands to choose the correct social media platform and the correct target audience, so as to deliver high levels of engagement and loyalty.   

Social listening is the key to connecting with your market.

 The Potential

In a rapidly evolving social media landscape, a conversation about your brand has the potential to enhance or destroy your reputation in the market. A bad word spreads like wildfire and can devastate a brand. Social media pages have eliminated the need of having suggestion/complaint boxes. Now, customers praise/criticize a product or service (which may become viral) on the social media profile page of that brand. In the coming year, social listening will become an integral part of all social media campaigns.

How to Milk the Opportunity?

Listening constitutes an important element of good communication. It means that brands must convert their social media platforms into venues for sharing and conversation rather than turning them into monologues. Brands need to continuously monitor the customers’ posts; answer their queries and resolve issues instantly; and express gratitude for any compliments received! For celebrated branding, investing in social listening skills and keeping ears and eyes open will be a welcome idea in the coming year. 

The importance of Real Time Marketing, especially for social media will increase!

 The Potential

Real time marketing is based on up to date events, trends and customer feedback. It can be a reaction to a particular event or a brand’s own updates. With the evolution of social media platforms, real time or right time marketing has gained multifold importance. Companies believe that with strategically structured and quickly executed marketing plans based on current events or feedbacks, customers will feel more involved with the brand and believe that the brand is updated, responsive and cares for their opinions and feedbacks. According to CMO.com, real-time marketing is very important for any campaign and provides a dramatic lift to consumer sentiment (16 percent lift), purchase intent (14 percent lift), interest (18 percent lift), likelihood to recommend (18 percent lift), and seriously consider the product/service (18 percent).

How to Milk the Opportunity?

Long before the social media platforms gained currency in India, Amul Butter used the strategy of real time marketing. In the coming year, real-time marketing will become essential for marketers and brands. Brands must react to current events and have real- time communication with their potential and existing customers! They must create platforms where the consumers can voice their opinions in the forms of likes, shares, retweets, etc. and maintain them qualitatively. Big brands may also employ specialized ‘real time marketing teams’ to achieve the purpose. 

Content is the backbone of good social media marketing.

 The Potential

“Our words are our currency”– Beth Dunn

Relationships are created and maintained on the basis of what, how and when you communicate. Likewise, advertising content can make or break a brand in the social arena and decide the fate of ambitious marketing campaigns. Words directly impact the psyche and mood of the consumers, thereby affecting the success of your campaign. Thus, framing a perfect content strategy is not a luxury today but a necessity.

How to Milk the Opportunity?

Content has and will always remain the king, across all forms of digital campaigns and platforms. Good content is the one that is written according to the segment of target audience. Companies must judiciously hire quality copy/content writers, who are excellent in not only minting beautiful words and assembling them into grammatically correct sentences, but are also pros at out of box ideation and conceptualization. The ability to write engaging content that can inspire real emotions and connections will help companies get noticed and amplify their message across various platforms.  Companies must draft their content well, especially on social media, and ensure that it is engaging to such a degree, that it gets shared by your target audience, thereby increasing brand promotion and engagement.

Facebook and Twitter ad pricing will increase due to their enhanced reach!

 The Potential

Facebook has more than a billion registered users while Twitter has more than a million users. In the coming year, the number of users on both these platforms is set to increase substantially. As both of them are popular social media platforms, brands can use them to effectively promote their goods and services. Facebook ad pricing has already gone up 10 percent since 2013 and this trend will continue in the coming years as well. Similarly, Twitter is also growing as a popular medium of marketing, especially among brands that have limited budget and want to reach out to a particular segment. Further, as they allow targeted advertising, brands can reach their target market at a fairly affordable price.

How to Milk the Opportunity?

With increasing advertising costs on popular social media platforms, brands must allocate decent social media marketing budgets and carefully design their campaigns for better ROI. They must hire experienced digital media professionals or outsource their social media marketing to specialized digital marketing agencies. Bringing on board such specialization will lead to correct audience targeting, perfectly worded and designed communication across the appropriate social media platform, and elimination of any probability of hit and trial by amateurs.

#NewYear2015 will bring new hopes and ambitions, and also higher sales targets! Keeping the above trends in mind, brands can meticulously plan their social media campaigns that may work wonders for their sales.