Live Streaming and its uses

Hi all

Today I’m writing about the values of live streaming. Live streaming video content can be an important part of social sharing. its great way to bring your customer base or social media followers closer into you social circle. I’ve talked many times about the importance of building relationships in business and in social media and using videos is one of the ways that you can develop these relationships.

Live streaming can be used to increase engagement also since it is one individual sharing something of value with their social circle. I’m going to discuss just a few content ideas for live streaming and their benefits. I will focus on Hosting Q&A’s or interviews, taking your audience behind the scenes, introducing new products and Finally training, how to video’s or sharing knowledge.

 

Hosting Q&A’s and interviews 

Companies or sites can interview other people relevant to their brand or subject or you can personally host a question and answer session to explain certain things to your followers or customers.

This can be a great way to create a two-way dialogue with your audience. You can address issues your customers have raised, interview experts in an area you know matter to your followers or just take the opportunity to explain who you or your company is. Some video sites even allow for viewers to comment on the live video as it’s being streamed which can give you an opportunity to address your audience directly. All in all this way of creating dialogue is not only positive for engagement but also for allowing both sides to get to know one another better which builds relationships.

 

Taking your audience behind the scenes 

if you are having an important event or just want to introduce people to further to your company and its work, you can take people behind the scenes and show them how an event is pulled together or what takes place every day in your offices.

This can be a great way to expand you pages presence and advertise an event or simply give people a better idea of the work your company does. Today people on social media like to feel involved and personal touches such as this can be a great way of breaking down the barriers that can make a company seem impersonal.

 

Introducing new products 

When you as a business are trying something new or has a new product to introduce, live streaming can be a great way to share this with your audience.

This can be a useful method advertisement for a new product with either an in-depth description or a short punchy video to attract people to your product. Sharing new methods or areas of work can also beneficial on both sides since it can provide businesses with useful feedback and can keep customers up to date on current processes.

Training, How to videos or sharing Knowledge 

Videos that instruct on how to do a particular task or teach someone on a specific subject have become very popular and its well worth using live streams to take advantage of this successful trend.

whether you use the live streams to train employee’s remotely, to demonstrate a craft or skill, share presentations or speeches or even just to advise on local home repair this can be another way of forming that direct two-way communication since it one person passing on their skills or knowledge to another. These videos can be very informative and an excellent way of boosting your brand since you’re not just selling products, you are providing learning.

 

There are a number of sites that facilitate live streams from sites that permanently store content such as YouTube or Vimeo or Apps such as Meerkat or Periscope that keep videos for a short period of time. There even sites such as Blab that allow for multiple users all in the same stream. This trend is gripping the world of social media fast so it’s well worth jumping on the bandwagon and taking advantage of the engagement and communication benefits that live streaming has to offer.

 

 

sources:

How to Get Started on Blab: Group Video Broadcasting for Marketers

and various video’s from Lynda.com that I can post here since only members can watch their content.

Looking deeper into Linked-In

Hi all

Lately, I have been some research into Linked-in. as regular readers will know it is one of my core platforms I’m learning about. Also, my own personal profile needs a small amount of updating. This research has given me the opportunity to build on my Linked-in Knowledge here as well. So here is just a short piece on some of the things I’ve now learned. I will be talking about 3 features in particular; recommendations and endorsements, Linked-In posts and finally Linked analytics. So here my Linked-In update:

 

Recommendations and Endorsements

Linked Recommendations is basically this platform’s version of a personal review, Job reference and positive word of mouth all rolled into one. Endorsements are where people in your connections can corroborate that you have the skills that you have listed on your profile.

Recommendations can be very valuable because it’s someone else talking about your abilities and work ethic. This can be useful for both personal and business accounts. An endorsement can be useful for similar reasons because often someone else’s word is more credited than our own. However, perhaps it could be argued that endorsement is similar and easier to collect because it’s less of an effort on the other person’s side. Both of the features combined can allow you to build up a whole database of previous employers or customers testimonials.

Linked-In posts 

Linked-In posts is a feature that allows you to create articles and content on your page. This can allow you to display a number of things such as your writing skills, important knowledge, or even business and product information.

There are a few advantages to this such as displaying vital information to potential employers or customers or even just allowing you to write more about topics that interested you. The basic undercurrent is these post can help to show more of you as a person which can be very important in building relationships, which is part of being on these platforms.

 

Linked-in Analytics 

Analytics is Linked-In way of providing profile data to its users. It allows you to keep track of your profile and post views and who is viewing them. While they are not as advanced as Facebook Insights they don’t need to be since Linked-In has a very different function as a social media platform.

Knowing who is viewing your profile or posts can be useful for both business and personal accounts since it can show you your audience so to speak. On a platform, your viewers become your audience and it’s important to put on a good show for that audience in order to generate a positive response. On a personal profile, analytics can allow you to form business connections and make sure your profile is appealing to the right people and the same is true for business pages.

 

All in all; I believe that as a platform Linked-In has a lot of great features that can allow a person or business to generate useful leads in the business world and three features are currently my favourite. Feel free to comment and tell me your favourite Linked-In feature.

My Profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rowena-price-92931a10b?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile

My Source:

 

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/how-make-most-linkedin-recommendations

Twittering about Twitter polls

Hey all

Back in October Twitter introduced a new feature called twitter polls which enables a business to asks followers simple questions. The polls are restricted to four option answers and can only stay open for votes for 7 days but in this article, using real examples, I hope to show you the power of these polls. Regular readers will know I did a simple piece on facebook polls and how they can be used for market research. Now Twitter has added this tool to its platform as well I want to talk about how this social media market research can benefit businesses. So without further ado:

• Polls can be adapted to weekly routines so that followers are always engaging with the page on a regular basis. Such as on Marvel Twitter page where they used the simple question of which weapon from the Asgardian comics would you want and gained over 17,00 votes, over 100 shares and over 400 likes. This can prompt regular engagement because as explained in my competitions = engagement article your followers become part of this regular loop of site traffic where they answer the question, tune back in for the results and then come back the following week for the next question.
• Another polling idea is giving people a say in various business decisions. Amazon used a Twitter poll to ask its followers to choose what subject to cover in an upcoming event which gained them over 3,000 votes, 30 shares, 50 likes at the final result. This provides feedback  to the brand and includes followers in the social community of the company which helps to build better relationships between the business and its followers.
• You can use twitter polls to advertise the event as the Huffington post did for the democratic debate by asking who won gaining a total of 21,961 votes, over 900 shades and over 800 likes. which was useful to them in two aspects; they gained valuable information about their followers political views and higher engagement rates on their page.
• Another way you can use polls is to conduct basic product research. An example would be taco bell who asked followers to pick a favourite taco and gained 16,955 votes, 103 shares and 186 likes; giving them valuable data about their products. You can also use polls to advertise new products such as krispy kreme which promoted its new doughnut for the super bowl by asking followers in advance which was their doughtnut of choice which gained 2,196 votes, 26 shares and 35 likes and enabled them to choose the better performing doughnut so to speak.
• Finally, Twitter polls can be used to put your brand out there which could increase sales by getting people thinking about your business and its products. Airbnb airline used the polls as a form of free advertising; by asking followers what their weekend plans were. This question generated over 600 votes, 15 shares, and 20 likes. So in total, that’s ruffley 630 people thinking about booking a holiday which could be very powerful to a brand.

 

In conclusion, these are just a few ways that the new twitter polls can be used to generate engagement and gain valuable information. Just like Facebook’s poll if used correctly can be a great tool for businesses to promote their brand and completely market research for free. Remember people; competition = engagement and when people are engaging with you there is always information to be gained.

 

Here are my Sources:
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/twitter-provides-tips-how-brands-can-use-twitter-polls

Simple Market Research

Competitions = Engagment

a Report on Reporting systems

Hi all

Today I’m just going to do a quick piece on creating a social media reporting system. a reporting system is an overview of your pages performance which can identify positive and negative actions in order to improve your pages overall. As regular readers will know I have done a piece on Facebook insights but this article will take a broader look at reporting systems in general.

From my research into reporting systems I have Identified 4 key elements to constructing an effective system; goals, figures, program, and time period.

1. Goals 

when creating your system it’s important to know what figures you want to track, the statistics you will be reporting on a regular basis. So in order to narrow in on these figures, you need to know what you want to learn about your pages performance. For example; how many likes or followers your page is attracting or how often your posts are being engaged with. It’s is also significant to decide what action your are hoping to perform based on this information. so to identify these crucial figures you will need to set some page goals. These goals will give them report purpose and allow you to keep the page moving forward in a positive direction.

    2. Figures 

Once you have set these page goals it will be easier to isolate your desires figures based relevant statistics. For example, if you want to measure the size of pages audience the report would need to focus on page likes or followers but also page and post reach. Theses figures would give you an accurate idea of how large your audience is. What figures you chose to study it is important to consistently measure them over a wide time period. Since a one of report won’t be very meaningful. Once you have been collecting these figures for a while you can create an average for each statistic which will give you a better overall view of the measurement you are tracking then you can apply that information to your goals or objectives.

3. program 

There are many programs you can purchase to report on social media sites that will produce measurable data. Some sites offer their own ways of collecting this data such as Facebook insights but sites don’t have a statistical center yet. So to measure data across all social media site many admins buy software.  It’s important to choose a program that provides the figures that fit with your goals. This can be difficult since there are many programs to choose from, so there are certain factors to consider. Factors such as how it works with the sites, what metrics it includes and is there a customer support system can help you to chose a program that works for you and your report.

4. Time period 

The final element is over what time period you will measure this data. As I have briefly mentioned in the previous points you need to collect the measurements over a period of weeks or months in order to gather enough relevant figures, so you can draw helpful conclusions. So before setting out to report on your social media platforms you need to decide on often you are going to produce these reports and over what time period. That way you can produce consistent reports with relevant figures to help you achieve your page goals.

 

Creating regular social media reports is one of the best ways to improve your pages reach and engagement since it can help to see both the positive and negative aspects of your page. Put crudely you can use these reports to see what you are doing right and see what you doing wrong. Following these four elements can help you to produce accurate and helpful reports. As always please feel free to comment your thoughts and my information source is below.

 

My source:

How to Develop a Social Media Reporting System

Correcting with Grammarly

Hey all

Just  a quick endorsement for the app Grammarly

https://app.grammarly.coHeym/

Grammarly was recommended to me because I have Dyslexia and as such I have a lot of difficulties with correcting my own Grammer and spelling. Grammarly works with Google Crome to electronically correct as you type. I have been using it for about a week now and everything is working great. In addition, to correcting my writing, it also teaches me about the errors I make most commonly so I can prevent then in the future.

Since Grammarly had been working so well for me I have also gone back through all my old blog articles and corrected the issues.

Finally, the basic Grammarly app is completely free for all users, so if you also struggle with grammar and spelling I would really recommend installing Grammarly on your devices today.