It’s incredibly hard to get hardcore data around the number of entrepreneurs in the world, but at the beginning of 2012 – the number was pegged to be around the 400 million mark. Two years later, I\’m positive that that number has dramatically increased.
With hundreds of millions of entrepreneurs around the world kickstarting their business and trying to get things moving for them, digital media has become the number one source for them to execute their marketing campaigns on. It’s cheaper, it’s faster, it’s easier and it’s measurable. What’s more, there are now excellent social listening and media monitoring tools available to help with the process.
For entrepreneurs looking to save time and money on the products that they use for marketing – this list should come in handy. I picked out the five marketing tools that all entrepreneurs should be using to make their marketing efforts a lot more efficient.
1. Buffer
This is probably the only… “straightforward” marketing tool you’re going to see on this list.
We love Buffer, we use Buffer. Buffer is love, Buffer is life. All of that. Jessica Wysocki of Beta21 did a really neat cover piece on Buffer a while ago, talking about what’s great about the service and what works on it. What I like the most about Buffer (and what will come in handy for entrepreneurs) is that you can very easily schedule all the posts you want to put up on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and G+ channels very easily with Buffer.
Analytics as an offering in here is incredibly useful as well.
Depending on the amount of updates you have on a regular basis, Buffer works really for you to quickly (10-15 minutes) schedule your updates for the day and for you to come back at the end of the day and see what worked and what didn’t. The ability to also attach images to your tweets natively is a big bonus.
Buffer has various plans you can choose from, ranging from a free one to a $10 plan to ones that go much higher if you’re looking at connecting 100+ accounts. Their social media customer service is fantastic as well, any time we’ve had any problem with Buffer we tweet to them and they get back to us within minutes.
2. Post Planner
Sure, while Post Planner can count as a marketing tool often mentioned by various people as well – the usability of the product and what it does for you means that I’m going to list this out here. Coming up with what to post on your Facebook page can at times be a real hassle. Creating content calendars and coming up with “timely” content is a big pain – and PostPlanner does just that for you.
No, it doesn’t automatically throw up a content calendar for you. But it definitely gives you some amazing suggestions. I’m not going to go into a deep review of the tool, instead I’m going to link to Amy Baumcratz’s post – who’s done a fairly good job of reviewing the tool a few months ago.
She also put together a really interesting little graphic with pointers that list out everything that you need to know about Post Planner and what it does for you!
3. Social Media Hangout
Wait – what the hell is this? Isn’t this SMHangout, that group of communities on Google+ about Social Media? How is this a marketing tool?
Forget about going through every single article on your Feedly, you no longer have to comb through all your RSS feeds to find that right piece of content which is worth your time. Four amazing Google+ communities ensure that you get all the information you need (along with expert opinions) in one place.
A quick look at the Social Media Strategy community.
As the above screenshot might suggest, it’s a great place for you to take a look at what’s going on in social media, what’s being talked about, what you should do, and interpretations of the latest social media news. The traditional way of getting information was for you to dive into an article, analyze it, understand it and then wait for expert opinions to surface on other websites and blogs.
Thankfully, due to the incredibly active staff of the G+ communities, you only get the highest quality content in each of these communities – along with a really informative and insightful comments section where people discuss ideas and interpretations of what\’s happening. You need to join those communities right now – and stay abreast with what’s going on in the social media and marketing world!
4. Circus Social
Facebook reach has dropped. Facebook post and page likes now mean a lot less than they used to, and there’s no point in you chasing after those vanity metrics. So what do you do? Facebook has now morphed into a traditional marketing platform for brands and companies – there’s no denying it.
Giving your fans an “experience”, like we did with the Social Marketer’s Quiz is one way to get the attention of your fans and to engage them, but you can also use simpler contests like Photo Contests, Sweepstakes giveaways, Video contests etc that really engage your fans – Circus Social has a free tool for you to create these!
Set up photo contests like these!
That morph now means that you should pay very close attention to the data you gather from it. The importance of being able to collect your customer’s e-mail addresses to reach out to them in a better manner cannot be overlooked either. Facebook apps allow you to do this exact thing.
5. Google Analytics
The importance of GA has to be stressed. In fact, this point stems from one of the discussions I had in the Google+ communities I mentioned above.
While most think of GA as an analytics and as a tracking tool – the kind of insights it can give for your marketing should not be underestimated. It shows you where your important traffic is coming from, where the quality traffic is coming from, which piece of content is generating the most amount of value for you in terms of SEO, which websites are sending you high quality referral traffic, and a million more insights.
A lot of marketers often overlook the value of GA in their marketing plan and stick to measuring metrics like likes, shares and comments – but the incredible value of GA needs to be stressed.
While there are tons of tools out there that help you with your marketing, I feel these are the very essentials that you as an entrepreneur can focus on to get more out of your content marketing and marketing plan. Plenty of tools out there provide insights, allow you to manage accounts and it all comes down to your preference and what your basic needs are – but these will definitely reduce a lot of the headache that comes with digital marketing in 2014. 🙂
For those of you that have been living under a rock for the last two weeks, Circus Social’s Social Marketer’s Quiz has got the entire online marketing community buzzing. Spread over 10 rounds, the quiz asks marketers questions about how well they engage, how good their content marketing and SEO skills are, how ethical they are – and tons of other stuff. You have GOT to check it out. Over 1,300 marketers have taken the quiz so far!
Questions such as this appear in the quiz!
We caught up with two of the top 20 scorers in the quiz, Johanna Both and Allan Vazquez, to pick their brain about the quiz and ask them what they thought about the experience.
The Quiz! How was it overall? Did you get bored at any point?
Allan: It definitely was challenging, a lot of apparently pretty basic stuff but OH SURPRISE! There were a lot of questions with misleading answers, it was all about picking the best of the lot. I didn’t get bored, the whole concept of “little SM city” was a fine detail.
Johanna: The quiz was really challenging and in the same time fun to do, so no time to get bored.
2. Do you remember the toughest question that totally stumped you?
Allan: It was definitely in Analytics Compound, so much data and so little time to think that well, I can’t remember a single question though but there was one about creative campaigns (arts about products) – very tricky.
Johanna: I don\’t really remember the exact question but pretty sure it was somewhere in the ethical part, where I got pretty confused with the different possibilities, sometimes at a first glance not even one answer seemed to be the right solution, or more of them did.
3. Which round do you feel has the hardest questions of all?
Allan:Â Analytics.
Johanna: I\’m really bad with names and dates and stuff like that, so the last section, the Knowledge Nook, was kind of a nightmare for me, i think i actually passed only the 3rd time!
4. Which round do you feel has the easiest questions of all?
Johanna: For me \”crisis castle\” was somehow so natural. I do that all the time in my life (not especially in social marketing), solving problems while multitasking. And i love Analytics as well, so that part was kind of fun to do, although I didn\’t quite get maximum points like in the crisis part.
Allan: The early stages, about engagement, many basic facts & questions about plain theory.
Take the quiz and find out!
5. Do you feel the quiz adds any value to marketers? What do you feel marketers are getting out of this quiz?
Johanna: I think marketers are always eager to learn and they also have to keep themselves updated. I personally like challenges, especially if it gives me some information about where I am right know with my knowledge and experience and also what should i brush up a little.
Allan: I do, I actually posted it in many Social Media groups I manage in Mexico and OH BOY, people couldn’t pass through many questions or stages. It definitely makes us think again and never take anything for granted.
6. Which voucher code / reward can you not wait to take advantage of!
Johanna: Absolutely the Circus Social voucher. I don\’t have too much experience with Facebook Apps, so experimenting with them would be cool and also can get a picture which one would fit my social activities. The other one is SocialBro, as I already heard a lot of good things about the tool and would like to try it.
Allan: Well, I saw many attractive stuff but can’t remember one right now, will have to check them all out at some point.
7. If you\’d like us add one more round to the quiz – which one would that be?
Allan: There should be one building for DIGITAL BRAND DEFINITION, you know, for briefing, for understanding and analyzing target audiences, content definition, topics, etc.
Johanna: Maybe something connected with advertising, PPC ads. I think it was a question in the Facebook part which was mentioning it, however i think it still needs a big amount of knowledge from the marketers side.Â
So there you have it! With such endorsements for the quiz, we can’t believe you don’t want to take it for yourself and figure out how good you are. 🙂 Take the quiz now!
The debate about Facebook’s organic reach drop is still in full swing. Many still believe that there is hope for some free marketing on Facebook, and continue to pump time and effort into creating effective content for their pages. A lot of marketers have either given up, or simply accepted that Facebook is pay to play – and have started allocating a larger budget for Facebook advertising.
In my quest to find reason in this world of an ever changing social media landscape (yes, I’m dramatic) – I stumbled upon the door of EdgeRank Checker’s Chad Wittman, someone who’s been tracking page engagement metrics on Facebook before Mark Zuckerberg himself understood what it was. Chad is quite obviously, on our expert panel in the Social Marketer’s Quiz.
The Engagement round is the very first one in the quiz, which of course, stresses on the importance of social marketers having the right skills to engage with their audience. I chased Chad around and got him to share some insights on social media engagement with us!
Let’s tackle the major question that’s on everyone’s minds, after the fall in organic reach and everyone crying foul, should brands continue to use Facebook as their primary marketing platform?
A brand’s primary marketing platform should be the platform that is most in line with their goals. For a majority of brands, it is still Facebook. Every brand should be asking this question for every campaign they are doing. This should be a question that is always asked, and should continue to be asked.
The quality bar on Facebook continues to rise. The reality is that it will continue to rise. The space in the news feed is limited, the brands and the content they produce is constantly growing. Ultimately, this “problem” will never be solved. Humans have 24 hours in a day, I promise you that brands will produce content that far exceed anything anyone could ever consumer. This creates an ever raising bar.
With the recent Facebook newsfeed changes, how does EdgeRankChecker make everyone\’s lives easier?
We try to make things easy and fast to get the insights you need to improve your strategy. It’s one thing to tell you how you’re doing in general, it’s another to try to improve that. We keep tabs on as much data as possible to keep you informed and on the right track.
It’s about constantly trying to improve, while avoiding things that Facebook dislikes. We keep our customers constantly informed so they can focus on doing what they do best, instead of trying to moonlight as a data scientist.
Based on the amazing analysis you\’ve continuously done with EdgeRank Checker, what would you call the four pillars of a marketing strategy on Facebook?
News feed, ads, customer service, intel. The news feed is the battleground that you want to win. It’s constantly changing and is an obvious challenge. The brands that dominate this space have huge leverage with the rest of their strategy.
Ads can really amplify small wins and turn them into big wins. Ads can get you started from Step 0 to Step 100 a lot faster than the news feed. The key here is balance and being effective with your budget.
Customer Service is an underlooked value-add on Facebook. People will go to their platform of choice (not yours!) to talk about your brand. Giving people a space they can bring up issues and a space that you can actually help them is undervalued in our industry.
Intelligence, specifically competitive intelligence, is a great asset on Facebook. There is a plethora of data on Facebook publically available, it just needs to be accessed and analyzed. This data can be used to learn from the mistakes of your rivals or tap into new opportunities in the future.
From all the questions in the quiz in the Facebook round, which one stood out for you as the most interesting and why?
I think the questions stood out, as a whole. The preparedness that goes into being a social media manager is often overlooked. There is a lot to know and be prepared to react to quickly. There is also the reality that each brand is different and deals with these issues/challenges differently. Again, the key is tie this back to the business’ overarching goals as much as possible.
It’s clear that brands should stop obsessing over likes on Facebook, what metric on Facebook should they truly obsess over?
None. Obsessing over any particular metric leads people and brands astray. Human’s minds are fascinating as they tend to want a single variable to better understand the world around them. We see this in sports constantly, is a player “good” or “bad”? The answer is that it always depends, it always changes, and it is always subjective. I feel the same about Facebook marketing.
The key is to not get tied up in the novelty of another metric. Focus in on what helps your business the best, and figure out how to maximize the metrics that improve that goal. It’s most likely a blend of Reach, Engagement, Clicks, tied back to goal conversions in your site.
Not entirely sure about you guys – but this was one of the most crisp and useful interviews I\’ve conducted. You should print out this interview and paste it on a wall, or perhaps utilize the quote images and splatter them all over your desk. Some incredibly valuable insights from Chad on what we should keep in mind going forward in our social media efforts.
For those of you who haven’t taken the quiz yet, you’re missing out! Click here to take the quiz!
Most people believe that only four people in the entire history of humanity have had any sort of liking towards numbers, and one of them was Pythagoras. As marketers, we don’t like numbers unless they say things like 400 shares or 800 comments. Those are numbers we can deal with.
But each time a client asks us to give them a report on the CTR over the last month, the bounce rate on a particular landing page, we all start panicking. Spreadsheets in general, are something that Satan himself put on earth. All that said and done, there is nothing more important today to marketers than data. It should be the backbone of your marketing plan, the backbone of your content calendar and what you base your business decisions on.
If you don’t have hard data to back up your plan or justify what you’re doing, you’re shooting in the dark. We learnt that the hard way. The Social Marketer’s Quiz has an entire round dedicated to Analytics, and it’s no surprise that it’s proving to be the hardest one to cross. Our Analytics Expert, is Alex Peiniger, one of the most efficient people on the planet, and CEO of Quintly.
We caught up with him to figure out how important analytics truly is today, and what marketers are missing out on if they’re not paying enough attention to it.
For marketers who don’t pay too much attention to analytics, what are they missing out on?
Analytics is basically the only way how you can measure the success of what you are doing. In the current environment it is key to understand which channels work well for you and which don’t. By measuring the return on invest you can distribute your budget in the right way and make sure that you get the most out of your marketing strategy. When you ignore the analytics part, you basically throw money away, which could be better invested somewhere else.
What does Quintly provide in terms of analytics that no other tool out there is able to?
We focus especially on giving you one central dashboard that brings together all the data from currently six different networks. On top of that we offer a broad range of features to benchmark your own performance with that of your competitors. Only by looking at the numbers of your direct competitors you can differentiate your own performance from general market influences. The combination of a high data quality and an easy to use interface lets quintly stand out from all the analytics tools around.
Do all marketers need to be come data scientists? How much is too much obsession with data?
Of course you can always go over the top, also with your analytics approach. In the end you should only measure and look at the numbers that drive action, meaning that the data tells you what you should do next. But in general I think that marketers should put more focus on the data science side and learn languages like SQL or understand how Map-Reduce works, to really leverage the big amount of data they have access to.
Traditional marketers tend to advocate a gut feeling to a campaign. How much stress should be given to a gut feeling when analytics is also in the picture?
The gut feeling is of course really important, because there is much more to a campaign than just the numbers, for example positioning of the brand and other things. But from the huge number of campaigns I have seen there is definitely a lot of room to put more focus on the analytics side and try to find out which campaigns actually work and which don’t. In the end it’s all about the goal that you are aiming for. If your goal is to drive conversions, definitely go for a really deep analytics implementation.
Some marketers dive into data every day, some every week, some every month – is there an adequate amount of time or an adequate amount of visits after which one should look at data insights?
I know you can spend hours and hours diving deep into the data. The goal should be to use technology that helps you optimize these processes and filter out the data points that are most important and don’t spend time on numbers that don\’t help you. This is also our mission with quintly. We want to save our clients’ valuable time, we handle all the data collection, aggregation and analyses for them. Regarding a frequency I think it makes sense to look at the data every day or at least every few days to see what happened. This doesn’t need to take long, a few minutes should be sufficient and if you see something interesting you can dive deeper.
Some amazingly insightful answers from Alex, hopefully this will make you pay attention to the analytical side of what you’re doing with your marketing! How good are you at marketing? Take our quiz and find out! There’s a dedicated round for Analytics for you to figure out how good you are when it comes to analytics specifically, and the questions have all been vetted by Alex himself.
One of the trickiest questions you can ask a marketer is how good they are. The question makes them say bizarre things like, Oh, well. I got 19% ROI on the last campaign I ran. or I manage about 9.4% engagement on my Facebook page. – answers which might make a little bit of sense to those of us associated to the industry, but mean nothing to those not in it.
Traditionally, marketers have been judged based on the campaigns they’ve been associated with, or the creative ideas they ve come up with. In a world dominated by social media, it\’s not quite the same. The size and reach of campaigns largely depend on the brand associated with it, the marketing budget of the campaign and of course – the business goals. A good marketer will tell you that he hits 95% of the business goals assigned to him each and every single time right down to the last number.
But is that truly the right way for us distinguish a good marketer from a bad one? Most marketers would argue that if they were given $20,000 to play with, they wouldn’t have any trouble getting a brand\’s message out there to 500,000 people overnight. Some would argue that with an easy” product to market, something like say – an iPhone, they can come up with 500 ideas. In my mind of course, the iPhone is an incredibly hard product to market. But that’s a story for another day.
So – how good are you at marketing?
To answer this question, and to help marketers understand themselves – Circus Social created the Social Marketer\’s Quiz. Spread across 10 rounds, the quiz asks you close to 100 questions that test your knowledge across the various realms of digital marketing, varying from content, advertising, analytics, SEO, Twitter expertise – and so much more.
The Social Marketer’s Quiz
While the quiz may not give you a straight-up answer like You are X good at marketing – it definitely tells you what your strong and weak suits are, and after 10 rounds – it lets you gauge where you stand compared to marketers around the world. After all, quizzes that give you a definitive This is how good/what you are answer are best left to BuzzFeed.
So why should someone take a quiz like this? What is it measuring?
1. How Good Are You Truly, At Marketing?
It’s not as easy as just throwing an answer out there. If you’re marketing an amazing product, it\’s going to be a walk in the park. If you\’re marketing a horrible product, then it’s going to be much harder. Is a guy who can market a horrible product successfully call himself better at marketing than the guy coasting along with the amazing product?
What if the guy with the amazing product made $500,000 in sales from a $50,000 budget, but the guy with the horrible product made $100,000 in sales from a $50,000 budget? Sure, the guy with the amazing product managed more in sales with the same budget, but how do you factor how \”good\” the product is in this equation? There’s never a standard footing for both marketers.
2. What Are You Amazing At?
Would you rather just run Facebook ads all day to achieve a CTR of 3.409% or would you rather write content all day that gets shared 500 times? Would you rather write content? Cool. What if some marketer could get 1,500 shares instead of those 500 with the same content? He\’s not better at content is he, he\’s probably better at marketing it.
Again – too many equations here. Most would say that if someone got 1,500 shares versus 500 shares on an identical piece of content, the guy with 500 won. But – what if those 1,500 shares were not from the intended target audience, and the 500 were. Who\’s more valuable now? With this quiz – you\’re answering the same questions as other marketers, you’re going through the same case studies as other marketers.
3. What Do You Suck At?
Do you suck at making conversions? Have you spent $500 last week on Facebook ads and managed to get 2,000 clicks out of which only 20 converted? Do you suck at conversions, or choosing the right target audience? Or maybe you suck at ad messaging. Heck, maybe you don\’t suck at all. Maybe the product you\’re selling is ridiculously overpriced and there are better alternatives out there. Which is it? You can’t compare yourself to another marketer can you. Yes you can, if you both took this standard quiz to see who ranked higher.
And of course, for you to figure out what you truly suck at. If you fail the Analytics round in the first try (like most people probably will) – then perhaps its time you stopped obsessing over the content you create and beef up your Analytics Knowledge instead.
It\’s important for marketers to do some self-evaluation every now and then, understand what they’re good at and what they’re not good at – and therefore, it becomes important to go through a self-evaluation tool like the Social Marketer’s Quiz.
Analytics as an offering in here is incredibly useful as well.
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