Ten ways small businesses can use social media to generate leads - The Globe and Mail

Ten ways small businesses can use social media to generate leads - The Globe and Mail:

According to research conducted by LinkedIn, 94 per cent of small businesses who use social media use it for marketing, and three out of five small- to medium-sized businesses say they’ve gained new customers by using social media. With over 1.39-billion active users on Facebook alone, your SMB is bound to have prospective customers on one of the many social spaces.
The key is being able to identify the most relevant leads, and reach out to them in the right way to drive your business forward. Read on...

Creative Ways to Boost Your Facebook Organic Reach - Hootsuite Social Media Management

Creative Ways to Boost Your Facebook Organic Reach

BY RITIKA PURI | 2 WEEKS AGO | STRATEGY | NO COMMENTS

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In January 2015, Facebook implemented an algorithm change that limits the number of promotional Page posts that show up in users’ News Feeds. Now, users see much fewer ‘like my product’ announcements, promotions, or sweepstakes. The algorithm change also targets brand posts that “reuse the exact same content for ads.”

Changes like these have created a rumor that organic reach is dead. Like many things in marketing, there’s more to the story—much more. Organic reach isn’t ‘dead’ per se; it’s simply shifting with algorithm changes that draw clearer distinctions between ads and socially-driven content. Small businesses can still use Facebook to build brand awareness and generate organic reach. The tactics will just need more creativity than a simple ‘check out our product or service’ status update.

Think about Facebook’s changes from a ‘glass half full’ perspective, instead. As Kurt Wagner of Re/code points out, these changes will ultimately yield a better News Feed experience.

If the News Feed becomes a giant ad, Facebook users will likely stop engaging with it—which will hurt your business’s marketing strategy anyway. By implementing these algorithm changes, Facebook reduces the very real possibility of ‘banner blindness’—the well-established theory that people avoid engaging with things that look like ads.

Long story short, Facebook’s recent algorithm does introduce new constraints—but these constraints have the potential to foster creativity. Small businesses can achieve success on Facebook by becoming more conversation-oriented.

Here are 3 creative ways to boost your Facebook

A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Advertising - Hootsuite Social Media Management

A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Advertising - Hootsuite Social Media Management:Last year, internet advertising surpassed newspaper advertising spending for the first time. Advertisers spent $5.1 billion on social media advertising in 2013and this figure is expected to exceed $14 billion by 2018. In the third quarter of 2014, Facebook brought in $2.96 billion in advertising revenue, 66 percent of which came from mobile ads. Twitter generated 85% of its total revenue from mobile advertising in the same quarter, representing about $320 million.

Still not convinced of the value of social ads?

The Next Generation of Content Marketing: 6 Insights About Intelligent Content

The Next Generation of Content Marketing: 6 Insights About Intelligent Content:

By MICHELE LINN

In a few of the interviews I have done recently, people have asked some variation of the question: What gets you most excited about content marketing these days?

While I’m constantly interested in and thinking about content, one of the ideas that excites me most is intelligent content and the conversation that surrounds it.

Yes, it may seem like the company line, as Content Marketing Institute recently purchased Intelligent Content Conference, but I’ll be honest. When I heard the acquisition news, I wasn’t all that excited. I thought the topic of intelligent content would be boring – not to mention that it wasn’t immediately evident to me how it tied in with content marketing. And, to be even more frank, I was a bit hesitant to dive into a world that I thought would be very technical and heavily focused on things like DITA and XML.

But you know what? The more reading I do and the more I talk to people, the more excited I become. Yes, I’m a content nerd by nature, but I truly believe that intelligent content is “next generation content marketing.” It’s an ideal way to get smarter about the content we spend so much time and money to produce.

Intelligent content addresses a key content marketing challenge

Before we delve into what I find so fascinating about intelligent content, I think it’s important to understand why CMI is so passionate about this evolution. Joe Pulizzi recently shared:

Read more: The Next Generation of Content Marketing: 6 Insights About Intelligent Content:

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Social Media Explained

"People don’t buy “revolutions.” They buy “aspirins” to fix the pain or “vitamins” to supplement their lives, so localize the pitch and keep it simple." -Guy Kawasaki

"People don’t buy “revolutions.” They buy “aspirins” to fix the pain or “vitamins” to supplement their lives, so localize the pitch and keep it simple." -Guy Kawasaki
#Socialmedia

Studies Confirm the Power of Visuals in eLearning

We are now in the age of visual information where visual content plays a role in every part of life. As 65 percent of the population is visual learners, images are clearly key to engaging people in eLearning courses. 

Moving and still images have been included in learning materials for decades, but only now has faster broadband, cellular networks, and high-resolution screens made it possible for high-quality images to be a part of eLearning visual design. Graphic interfaces made up of photos, illustrations, charts, maps, diagrams, and videos are gradually replacing text-based courses.

In this post, we will dig deep into some statistics and facts to further convince of why eLearning developers should embrace visuals when creating their courses. 

1. Visuals Stick in Long-Term Memory

Both the short-term and long-term memory store information in chunks, but the former is limited. One of the easiest ways to ensure that learners store information in their long-term memory is to pair concepts with meaningful images. Research has found that this tactic increases recall better than when courses deliver information through aural or textual form. Visuals help people make sense out of the content and direct attention, increasing the possibilities that the learners will remember.

According to Dr. Lynell Burmark, education consultant who writes and speaks about visual literacy: “…unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear. Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about seven bits of information (plus or minus 2) […]. Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.”

Furthermore, this effect increases over time. One study found that after three days, a user retained only 10-20 percent of written or spoken information but almost 65 percent of visual information. Another study showed that an illustrated text was 9 percent more effective than text alone when testing immediate comprehension and 83 percent more effective when the test was delayed.