Whatever the reason, dark social is quickly surpassing an interesting topic of conversation, instead becoming a critical tactic that needs to be part of the conversation when it comes to planning social media marketing strategy.

What is it?

Dark social – for those who aren’t up to speed – is social sharing that creates inbound website traffic from sources that web analytics tools like Google Analytics are not able to track. According to Simply Measured, inbound traffic typically comes from one of the following sources:

• Native Mobile Apps
• Email
• SMS/Chat

When this traffic lands on a website, analytics suites will log it as “Direct” traffic:

At last count, nearly 70% of “social” sharing took place in the dark. People don’t take linear paths to your content any longer – they share a link with a friend on Facebook Messenger that they found on Buzzfeed that got sourced from Reddit. Finding an attribution model in that mess is a hurdle to get over for marketers – you want this type of sharing taking place (and it probably is if you’re doing your job well), but you’re going to be hung out to dry come reporting time if you can’t claim ownership of any of the results. And, as apps like Snapchat and Kik continue to grow in popularity, it’s a safe bet that you’ll only have more of this traffic to deal with in the coming years.

Great. So what now?

Digital traffic attribution problems aren’t new – they’ve been an issue for search marketing for quite some time. Things like HTTPS implementation and link shortening have been causing headaches for marketing analytics practitioners for ages. This “new” problem for social traffic attribution is more a function of the maturation of social media as a whole. Welcome to the wonderful world of digital reporting, social practitioners!

So, here’s the thing. There is no silver bullet to fix direct traffic attribution from social sharing of your content. It’s a problem for every company that’s trying to track it effectively right now. What does exist are small steps you can take as a practitioner to reduce the amount of unattributable traffic hitting your website.

Here are some of the best places to start:

• Social Media Today has five outstanding tips for tracking dark social, including
  segmenting traffic out in Google Analytics, and four third-party tools for
  social marketers to add to their toolkits.
• GetSocial.io is one of the tools that Social Media Today recommends above, but it deserves its own bullet. The tool adds tracking data to your website’s URLs that allow it to track social shares through SMS, Facebook Messenger, and an assortment of other platforms. It’s a great tool for almost every social media marketer out there.
• Increase the number of social sharing buttons on your website, and tag them with UTM parameters to encourage users to share trackable links. You can then attribute those tagged pieces of traffic as social sharing, and start getting a better handle on where traffic is coming from.

Okay. My traffic is starting to sort itself out. Now what?

So long as you understand that you won’t be getting a perfect picture of attributable data, now is where you begin looking at your dark social traffic to figure out exactly what it’s doing for your business.

First off, make sure you’ve set up your analytics suite to track every bit of data you can. If this is something you need help setting up, check out our blog on measuring intent through Google Analytics.

Start assessing, month over month, how much dark social is impacting your bottom line. Are people more inclined to spend time on the site and read your content when they come from dark social sources? If you’re an eCommerce organization, how well do these users convert?

If your dark social traffic performs markedly better than, say, your paid search traffic or paid social traffic, it may be time to consider investing less in those avenues and more money into strategies that take new media into consideration. Perhaps Influencer Marketing on Snapchat or Instagram, or contests on social that promote sharing with friends.

Dark social as a means of driving conversion and awareness is only growing in popularity, so it’s critical you get a handle on it now.

The post Dark Social – The Marketer’s Guide appeared first on Portent.

How many times a week do you get hit by ads on Facebook that mean absolutely nothing to you? 10? 20? Broad ad targeting on the internet is nothing new, but something about that approach just feels off on an otherwise highly curated platform like Facebook.

The obvious issue at play here is that, with over $17 billion spent on Facebook ads last year, there’s no shortage of marketers tossing ads into the ether. At any given time, you might be targeted by agencies managing campaigns for clients, social media specialists trying to boost their company’s reach, or even Redditors looking to help other people “Feel the Bern”.

Anyone can throw together a Facebook ad campaign. If you have a credit card and the time to write a sentence, your ads can be out there for the whole world to ignore in less than 15 minutes.

It’s a completely different story if you want to do it effectively. Using compelling creative and writing clear copy should be a given when we talk about “good” ads. Luckily, there’s a formula you can follow if you want to be a good marketer, make friends, and influence people with Facebook Ads.

Here are three simple rules to follow.

Establish a Clear Goal.

Did you know there are 11 different types of campaigns available through the Facebook Ad Manager? Beyond boosting post reach and acquiring Likes, skilled marketers can create ads that garner email leads, promote online apps, or even drive website conversions.

The truly talented can take these 11 options and mold them to their specific needs. Think video ads that drive the installation of an app directly from the Google Play Store. Or the hyper-local promotion of a coupon that measurably gets new customers in the door.

While this flexibility can be enticing to aspiring Facebook marketers, it’s important to remember that the variety offered by Facebook requires marketers to come ready with a goal in mind.

Are you going to try and promote awareness of your brand? Drive sales on a specific product? Earn foot traffic to a physical location?

Before you charge boldly into the creation of a Facebook campaign, think about your overall business goal. What are you hoping to accomplish through the use of Facebook advertising? Then think about which campaign best fits your needs.

You’d be surprised how many marketers skip this simple step.

Study Facebook’s Targeting Options.

Alright, you’ve nailed down your goal. You know exactly what kind of campaign you want to run. Now you just need to get your ad in front of the right person.

So have you thought about whether you want to target domestically or internationally? Do you want to target Baby Boomers, or Generation X? Do you think affluent spenders will respond better to your ads, or coupon clippers? Have you thought about retargeting people who have already hit your website?

There are more targeting options available through Facebook Ad Manager than any sane person really ought to know about. For the mad scientist marketers, there’s even third-party targeting you can layer on top of what Facebook offers. While acknowledging that fact, let’s also acknowledge that baseline targeting options are what separate poor or “just-okay” campaigns from excellent campaigns.

Spend time studying the targeting options Facebook provides. Use whatever resources you have available – customer data, industry research, purchasing behaviors – to determine which categories could best help you achieve your overall campaign goals. Too many marketers fail to research the available targeting parameters until they’re actually making their ads.

Don’t be that kind of marketer.

Lastly, think about whether it makes sense to bring an agency partner into the mix. Some agencies have access to even more targeting parameters from partners like Experian, and can help you optimize your targeting efforts efficiently enough to be worth the extra budget.

Track, Optimize, Refresh, Conclude. 

A hallmark of effective Facebook advertising is tracking your campaign results, and adjusting your ads as needed throughout the campaign.

Most marketers know to keep an eye on CPC and click-through rates. But Facebook metrics like Negative vs. Positive Feedback levels, as well as Facebook’s Relevancy Score, are critical to the overall health of your ad campaign. If your ads begin showing significant negative feedback, and if the Relevancy Score starts dropping, it’s obviously an indication that a change needs to be made. Being mindful, and knowing where to look is truly half the battle.

Ultimately, you’ll be the best judge of the quality and strength of the creative you’re using, but don’t be turned off by negative feedback or poor campaign results. Often times it can provide valuable insight into either your targeting efficacy, or the creative direction that you’re heading.

This is worth saying again: positive results are what we’re all shooting for, but negative results can be just as valuable if you properly track the data and use it effectively moving forward.

Track, Optimize, Refresh, Conclude.

Bringing this all the way back to the beginning, the foundation of any great Facebook campaign lies in the strength of the creative and copy that you’ve crafted. But the simple rules above, followed consistently, will help you take that great foundation and reach the people who truly matter to your brand or organization.

The post How to Win Facebook Friends and Influence People (with Ads) appeared first on Portent.

Sometimes it works. Usually… not so much.

Reality check: Throwing a few videos together and putting them up on a YouTube channel isn’t going to move the digital needle.

There’s no magic formula. But here are five YouTube best practices you can put in place today to maximize your chances:

1.) Remember, YouTube is social media.

This might sound trite and ridiculously obvious, but hear us out. We’re not trying to condescend. Over the years, we’ve worked with a lot of businesses who’ve come in with fully formed YouTube campaign plans in hand. They’ve documented everything from the editorial calendar, to paid advertising rates, to retargeting frequency caps, and more. But when we ask about their strategy and resources for participating with the audience they’re about to engage, we get blank stares and mumbles about how that’s still “TBD.”

At its core YouTube is a platform designed to let you engage with an audience through two-way dialogue. Imagine the experience without comments, social proof, or sharing. Now, big brands typically don’t have the desire to engage at this conversational level, but most of us aren’t big brands and can’t afford to drive untold millions of views through virtually unlimited advertising budgets.

As a scrappy, value-conscious marketer, have a plan ready for how you’re going to talk to your fans. Decide early on the tone you’re going to strike. How much human time will you allocate? Engaging with your audience in a meaningful, genuine way is one of the most effective ways to achieve that critical, early growth.

Pro-tip: This is one of the single best spots to get into Portent’s core philosophy.  Be Weird, Useful, and Significant.

2.) Organize and Optimize Your Channel

This sounds like something you can probably knock out in a few minutes “whenever you feel like it…” Stop! Do it now! It’ll never be easier to set and keep a plan and organizational structure that leads to scalable marketing bliss.  

Allstate isn’t a brand that’s going to get you out of your seat when you land on their channel. But they’ve worked hard to organize their videos and lay out the UX in a way that shows you exactly what they want you to see the moment you land on the page:

Allstate can teach us a lot:

• Test the best performers. They’ve got a hero video that they rotate regularly
• Feature those winners. They’ve put their most popular videos right above the fold
• Link to other social networks. The rest of their social media pages are easily & clearly discoverable
• Play up the brand. They’ve prominently placed a branded, platform-optimized image front & center

3.) Cross-Channel Integration of Videos is Not Optional

Targeting your content distribution to different –and specific– channels can be an effective tactic for reaching a target audience. But that does NOT mean that you should let content published to YouTube exist as an island unto itself. You’re leaving gads of money on the table in the form of lost reach and missed ROI on your videos, unless you’re thoughtfully and intentionally leveraging your best video content across channels.

A few ridiculously easy things you can do, which we see businesses miss more often than they should:

• Share your videos out to your Twitter followers
• Embed a video in a post on your blog
• Feature hero pieces (your best, most popular stuff) on your website
• When it makes sense, rebroadcast on Google+, Tumblr, or LinkedIn
• Within YouTube, interlink at the end of each video to give viewers the opportunity to easily pick out and play that next, perfect piece of content. Or be lazy and let Google spirit your potential customer away to someone else’s Jingle Cats video.  

Pro Tip: Did you notice we left out Facebook?  In a “how to weave together social channels” section? Sacrilege! But before the pitchforks and torches come out, the reality is that video distribution on Facebook needs a full blog post to unpack at the time of this writing. In a nutshell, Facebook will give nearly 10x the viral reach to videos posted natively vs. external YouTube links. Meaning that unless you just don’t care about the potential audience on Facebook, YouTube links have absolutely no place on your Facebook (or Instagram) properties. If those 1.5 billion users do interest you though, you absolutely need to invest time in getting a Facebook video program running in parallel to your YouTube distribution plan.

4.) Take Advantage of Video Tools

As video content marketing continues to grow, the toolkit for marketers can’t help but grow right alongside. Keep these tool-specific tips in mind as you publish your videos:

• Utilize YouTube Cards. They’re engaging, and are critical calls-to-action to leverage the audience you’re cultivating.
• Properly optimize your video’s “About” section. Like any other piece of content that Google can read and index to show in Organic search, descriptive keywords and overall clarity play a huge part in getting your videos found in the enormous number of searches that begin outside of YouTube..
• Leverage YouTube Analytics. How do you learn more about your audience? Or when you should end a video? Ever wondered if there are key moments when people stop watching your videos en masse? If you’re not using these tools, you’re leaving an enormous amount of money on the table.. Decent video content is expensive and time consuming to produce. The info you need to do it better next time, or to refine what you’ve already shot, is sitting at your fingertips.

5.) Consider Paid. Even if You Can’t “Afford” It.

The future of social as a whole lives in paid. The writing is on the wall. It’s an offputting reality for those of us who grew into these platforms organically, but it’s a reality nonetheless.

As if it weren’t painful enough that every platform artificially restricts your organic reach, remember that your competitors are using paid to gobble up that additional reach. If you’re not thinking about leveraging paid boosts to your organic efforts, you’re likely stunting your growth before it even starts.

We’re Marketing Cynics
If you’ve read many of our posts, you know we’re not immune to geeking out over shiny things. But we’re not dumb, either. As a social amplifier, YouTube is for real.

But you need to build and work a clear plan for how you’ll produce, converse, disperse, measure, amplify, rinse and repeat. That’ll help you convert these paid and earned impressions into loyal followers on platforms that you truly own.

The post YouTube Best Practices – Five Things You Can Do Today appeared first on Portent.

The simplest solution in the past was using third-party social management tools – Hootsuite, Buffer, Cyfe, Sprinklr, to name a few – and managing employee access through those platforms. This provided a solution of sorts, but there are some outstanding issues with this approach:

a.) third-party tools can be prohibitively expensive for smaller organizations, and,

b.) the company still needs to give someone administrative access to the company page.

Fortunately, there’s a free solution that supersedes the need for a third-party tool. Enter Facebook Business Manager.

Intended for use by organizations and agencies alike, Facebook Business Manager allows for the oversight of Facebook business assets (Pages, Ads, Applications) without the need to share personal login details. Instead, ad-hoc sign-ins are created for employees within the platform, all overseen by the owner of the Business Manager account.

This provides an elegant solution for companies to manage internal access to their Facebook Pages and Ad Manager accounts. It also provides agencies like Portent the ability to run all client page access through their own Business Manager portal, a significantly more seamless approach than requesting access through personal Facebook accounts.

We highly recommend this approach to Facebook for every one of our clients. It’s a simple way to separate the personal aspect of Facebook from the business side of the platform, and can be implemented in as little as a few hours.

Portent offers training on the full range of Facebook Business Manager – everything from integrating Ad Manager accounts to using this platform in conjunction with third-party social management tools – and we’d love to schedule a one-on-one session with you or your team today to explain the tool further. Be sure to give us a shout on our Contact page if you’re interested.

The post What Is Facebook Business Manager? appeared first on Portent.

Here in the Pacific Northwest,  mentioning “seismic activity” brings back memories of the 2011 NFL playoffs, and a run that not only remains one of the best plays in Seahawk history, but also as the seismic event by which all other seismic events in the area are measured by.

No, seriously.

Ladies and Gentlemen… Marshawn Lynch and his Beast Quake:

Fans at the game cheered so loudly during and after Lynch’s run, they registered on the Richter scale. You know, the same one that measures earthquakes:

“…cheering and jumping [of the fans] shook the ground enough to register as a small seismic event on a nearby seismometer, part of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.”  (source: Discovery.com)

So, alright. We now know what constitutes a “great” play here in Seattle. Cue last Saturday, and what’s now being referred to as the KamQuake:

A game-clinching interception and touchdown in the first round of this year’s NFC Playoffs set Century Link Field on fire (not literally). The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network was kind enough to compare 2011’s record setter with this year’s quake:

Not quite on par with what we saw during Marshawn’s run, but it’s still impressive. For the sake of all the drivers on the 99 Viaduct, we better hope we don’t have a nailbiter of a win this weekend, or that sucker might come down prematurely. But we digress…

Well, believe it or not, the Seahawks create seismic activity on more than just the Richter scale. Check out mentions of the team on Twitter during the same exact time that the KamQuake shockwaves were reverberating through the ground on Saturday:

The correlation was a striking observation for the social media marketing team here at Portent. We wracked our brains trying to come up with a similar phenomenon in social media, but came up blank.

Helping our clients anticipate and utilize spikes like what we highlighted above is an important part of the social media coaching we do here at Portent. While we can’t predict exactly when massive spikes in social chatter will occur – anyone who says they can is either psychic or grossly overestimating their foresight – monitoring and analyzing events like Beast Quake and KamQuake provide us the insight needed to give our clients a leg up in the intensely competitive world of social media.

As you work to boost your organization’s social media profile, keep an eye out for these “quakes.” Approached properly, they can provide impressive short-term gains in the form of immediate engagement, and long-term gains in the form of followers and platform visibility. And if you need a little extra coaching, we’re here to help.

*Those polled at Portent refused to confirm or deny seeing 2012,  but a whopping 9/10 agreed it was definitely, maybe, the worst movie of that particular year.

The post Shockwaves in Seattle: KamQuake and the Twitter Correlation appeared first on Portent.