The United Kingdom is a hotbed for innovative and quality digital agencies. A digital agency is an advertising/marketing agency that understands the needs to market and promote through digital technology. Digital agencies focus on a broad range of services such as search engine optimization, social media marketing and online brand development. Digital marketing is the best way for a company to reach a specific audience and quality digital agencies help these companies to succeed with their specific goals. These are the top 50 digital agencies that the UK has to offer.
Top 25 Social Media Analytics Tools: The Definitive Guide
It can be a daunting task.
You’ve asked everyone and every query tool for the best social media analytics tools and you’re still unsure which to use. And you don’t have the time and money to waste using a tool only to find out later on that it doesn’t suit your needs. Whether you’re asking other marketers or searching on Google, it can be quite confusing — with every brand making enticing promises.
How do you know which of them would deliver on their promise? A good complete guide is a great place to look.
Here’s a guide showing you the top 25 social media analytics tools, and how they work:
Read moreTop 25 Social Media Analytics Tools: The Definitive Guide
Social Media Content Distribution Tactics that Work Like Magic
I’m sorry to say this, but you’ll never stand out like a digital peacock in the social media realm — that is, if you’re oblivious about how to distribute your content effectively.
If you’re into the whole publish and pray strategy — if you can even call it one — then your content will easily be drowned out by the millions of posts published on social media daily.
For you to succeed, you need to have a carefully crafted content distribution tactic when publishing your posts in social media.
Allow me to share with you four tactics that you can use for just that.
Let’s hop right in.
1. Build strategic partnerships with influencers.
I’m not really a huge proponent of the whole, “It’s not what you know, but WHO you know that counts” rationale. However, when it comes to marketing your content on the internet, I have to admit that it’s hard to ignore this reality.
Such is especially the case when you’re operating in the social media space where a single tweet or share from an influencer, can easily skyrocket your content views and even online sales.
That being said, it’s crucial that you pair your social content distribution endeavors with influencer marketing.
To find the right influencer, you can use Keyhole.co to gain a bit more insight into the influencer that you’re thinking of partnering with.
Here are some of the data points you can learn about an influencer if you run them through Keyhole.co:
- Average likes
- Average retweets
- Average number of posts
- Average engagements
- Their top posts based on engagements
Here’s a glimpse of how Keyhole.co looks from the inside.
(An overview of the influencer.)
(The account statistics.)
(Top posts by engagement.)
These are just some of the many things you can learn about your prospective influencer.
When you have these details, you can judge better if the person is an ideal partner to help you distribute your content through their followers or not.
2. Leverage employee advocacy.
Before anything else, let’s define the phrase “employee advocacy.”
According to Smarp.com, it is “the promotion of a company’s messages by its employees.”
Based on the definition alone, I hope you can see how this can be important for your content distribution on social media.
Let’s face it: Your target audience might not support you immediately when you reach out to them. After all, they don’t know your company through and through so it’s quite normal for them to have doubts about you.
The same can’t be said when you ask your employees for support, however. In most cases, they will welcome the idea since they are proud to be a part of your company.
That’s why employee advocacy is crucial in your social media content distribution endeavors. You’ll barely need to convince any of your employees to help you with sharing or promoting your company’s message.
The good news is, there are online platforms that can help you streamline your employee advocacy efforts.
Smarp is one of them.
You just need to create an account, do your initial setups like creating your channels and adding people to it, and you’re pretty much set to start posting.
Here’s how the platform looks from the inside.
(When creating new channels.)
(When editing/tweaking your channels.)
(When adding subscribers or employees to your channel.)
(How you can add your posts.)
With the help of social advocacy platforms, it’ll be easier for you to manage your marketing efforts and even measure the results you get out of them.
3. Leverage social scheduling.
There are a plethora of benefits to be had from using social scheduling platforms when distributing your content via social media.
For one thing, it enables you to repost your content multiple times. Also, you can control when your posts are published.
Both aspects are crucial for succeeding in the social media space.
After all, your target audience is most likely flooded with truckloads of content every day, that’s why you need to repost your content multiple times.
Also, as you study your audience, you’ll realize that there are certain times in a day where they log in. As you uncover this information, you can use the social scheduling platform to schedule your posts at the most optimum time.
4. Find out where your audience is.
Before you even start distributing your social media content, you need to know where exactly to distribute them.
I mean, sure, you can certainly post all of your content in your social media pages. However, that alone won’t do you much good.
You need to go out there, look for your audience, and distribute your content in places or groups where they frequent on.
Remember, where your customers are, there you should also be. This is a timeless lesson that businesses or marketers should never forget.
To help you with finding your audience, one of the best tools you can use is Facebook Audience Insights.
From your Facebook’s personal profile, click “Ads Manager” > the burger menu on the top left part of the page > hover to “All Tools” > click “Audience Insights.”
You will then see this page.
After you enter your interest and hit “enter,” click the “Page Likes” tab. (For this example’s sake, I entered the keyword “pastry” in the “Interest” section.)
You will then be able to view the pages relevant to your niche (and their audience sizes) as you scroll down.
At this point, you now have access to the list of niche-relevant pages where your audience is most likely hanging out online.
The only thing left for you to do is engage, build relationships, and distribute your social media content in these pages.
It’s worth pointing out that Facebook Audience Insight has several more features that you can use to help you with your content distribution. Be sure to check out the tool and experiment with it.
What’s next?
You don’t need to have decades of experience to succeed in the social media space.
Just by following the tried and tested strategies that seasoned social media marketers are using, you’d be able to formulate your very own system of distributing your content effectively (and efficiently) via social media.
If you follow the tips that we covered — or build on them — you’ll be able to get better results out of the content you’ll publish in your social media accounts.
If you have questions and ideas that you’d like to share regarding content distribution in the social media space, feel free to add them in the comments section below. Cheers!
6 Critical Steps to Avoid a Social Media Crisis
Social media is an enormously powerful tool for managing customer relationships, broadcasting positive brand stories and introducing new products. But while the benefits of this free, fast and intuitive marketing channel are virtually limitless, it also has some potentially serious risks.
But there’s good news; with proper planning you can avoid the most common mistakes that lead to a social media crisis.
What Causes Social Media Crises?
Common Mistakes — Just about anything can spark social media outrage and bring out the trolls, but the most common slip-ups include:
- Spelling and grammar mistakes made by professional organizations
- Accidentally liking an inappropriate post
- Tweeting a personal message from a professional account
- Unintentionally making an offensive statement
Serious Problems — Employee sabotage and hacking are much more serious offenses. While businesses can, and do, shift responsibility for the malicious post, they’re often criticised for allowing their login credentials to be compromised.
Catastrophic Events — Intentionally racist, sexist, or malicious comments made by companies or individuals ignite the worst type of social media crisis. These statements can significantly impact a brand’s revenue and reputation, and recovery could take years.
Look no further than Roseanne Barr for a trending example of how powerful one tweet can be.
In the days following her comment, Barr’s television contract was canceled, her reputation was heavily damaged, and she lost an estimated $3 million in revenue.
So, how can you avoid a social media crisis? Here are 6 steps you can take.
1. Have a Crisis Communication Plan
The most important steps toward preventing a social media disaster are understanding what crisis management means for your business and creating an action plan to address your risk factors.
While you can’t predict every crisis, you can train your social media team to prepare for, and effectively manage, potential problems.
Since social media is your front line of communication during a crisis, your plan should include specific guidelines to protect your brand. Most importantly, always have a second set of eyes on every post before it’s published. Companies should also train more individuals in crisis communications and social media management than you think you’ll need.
2. Monitor your Social Media for Trouble!
Identifying problems as soon as they arise is critical to crisis prevention. Unfortunately, you may never know about the biggest issues facing your company because 96% of angry customers don’t complain to brands directly. Many of these upset customers prefer posting about their poor experience on their own timeline. These “dark” complaints could go unnoticed, causing negative impact, without proper tools and training.
Social listening tools allow you to monitor keywords and indirect brand mentions as well as direct mentions. This gives your company a much more holistic view of what your customers are saying across all social platforms.
Keyhole’s Intelligent Notifications feature is an excellent example of how brands can set up alerts to detect direct and indirect (‘dark’) posts with negative sentiment.
Keyhole AI detects any tracked posts with negative sentiment made about your brand, and you automatically receive an Intelligent notification in your inbox, which allows you to react to the post before the negative sentiment escalates.
For instance, United Airlines would have seen this tweet and its volume, the first mention of the United Flight 3411 incident, with Keyhole.
This would have given the airline an ample runway to handle the crisis before it escalated.
3. Always Engage with Your Audience
Social profiles are frequently viewed as sales tools instead of powerful customer service platforms for building brand loyalty and customer care. By solely pitching products rather than having meaningful conversations with your followers, you could miss opportunities to address customer experience problems early on.
According to Maritz Research, 49% of customers expect companies to respond to Twitter complaints, yet only 29% of those who complained received a reply.
Additionally, customers who complain expect a response within 4 hours, while the average brand response time exceeds 10 hours.
It’s crucial to respond quickly and professionally when negative comments about your company are discovered. Ignoring criticism, even when it isn’t posted directly to your page, sends a message to your followers that you don’t care enough about them to respond.
4. Respond to Criticism Professionally
Knowing how to properly handle criticism in a public forum is essential to protecting your reputation. A single rude response to a genuine complaint will do far more damage to your image than the original comment could.
Deleting comments and blocking users may seem like the quickest way to fix a problem, but doing so could cause your customer to become more outspoken. Instead, make an effort to understand what caused the situation and show a willingness to make things right.
Consumers typically complain on social media when their problem has not been properly resolved. You may be able to prevent your customers from complaining in public by providing a seamless resolution process on your website or over the phone.
Angry customers want to express their frustration quickly, so they usually avoid email. Adding a simple feedback button to your site may prevent them from firing off a raging tweet for all to see. Just make sure it’s easy to find and effortless to use. You could even offer visitors incentives for leaving feedback if it they’ve been poking around your site for a while.
5. Choose the Right Person to Manage Your Accounts
Assigning your brand’s social media strategy to an intern or an inexperienced employee may save you money, but it could also be a recipe for disaster.
A great social media manager has a level head, is capable of handling a crisis, and is well-organized and detail-oriented. Finding someone with public relations experience adds another layer of insurance against mistakes.
Prefer to outsource the work? There are many companies specializing in managing social media accounts for businesses. This option may be the most impactful if you have room in your budget.
6. Draft an Employee Social Media Policy
Most people might think their private social profiles are safe for ranting about work stress, but negative posts can have serious consequences if customers or coworkers see them. Distribute guidelines about how to reference your brand online, but don’t scare your team away from posting. Happy employees are some of the best recruiting tools you can ask for!
Closing thoughts
The benefits of using social media intelligently will always outweigh the risks. Remember to monitor for problems, listen to your followers, react quickly and compassionately, and plan ahead, that way you’ll be able to maximize the benefits of this channel while avoiding potential crises.
How the National Museum of African American History and Culture Transforms Conventional Narratives Through Social Media
Recruited before the museum even opened its doors, Lanae Spruce has become
The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s influential voice on social media.
As the Manager of Social Media and Digital Engagement, Lanae focuses on finding creative ways to take the rich stories that live within the museum walls and spread them far and wide online.
For the past four years, during a crucial time in US history, Lanae and her team have led transformational conversations about race and national identity on social media, subverting stereotypes and changing “minds & hearts”.
Social Justice Leads the Conversation
One of the unique things about monitoring social media through hashtag analytics in the long-term is that clear patterns begin to emerge.
“We use Keyhole to monitor our hashtag campaigns and engagement. We also use it to find and look at our influencers, reshare content and find new stories.”
Lanae’s team (pictured below), for instance, finds that leading the conversation on issues of social justice attracts their highly-engaged audience.
“Through our analytics, we’ve been able to determine that we have one of the highest engaged audiences on social media in the museum industry, and that’s informed our practice directly. We’ve found that commenting on issues related to social justice really resonates with our audience. Whenever we can offer historical context for any of these contemporary issues they love it. By being timely and also by standing up for what’s right we continue to engage our followers.”
For instance, on National Watermelon Day (August 3), the team found an opportunity to subvert a common stereotype.
“Watermelons are a stereotype associated with African Americans. What we were able to find through our research with historians here is that at one point in time, many African Americans owned watermelon farms. And it was seen as a symbol of empowerment because they were able to create their own wealth and lifestyles by buying and selling watermelons. So we were able to take a stereotype and flip it on its head.”
Tracking the Pulse
By listening to the goings-on of social media, Lanae’s team also keeps on top of fresh stories and adds their voice to relevant conversations as they emerge.
“I think for us we’re very in tune with the pulse side- what people are talking about right now, and how we can use that to create moments to educate the public”
For instance, Lanae shares that after the horrific events in Charlottesville last summer, her team thought a lot about the best way to respond on social media. Ultimately, they created a thread on Twitter that spoke about the history of terror for African Americans in the United States immediately following the civil war period, “during reconstruction”.
The impact?
“We got thousands and thousands of retweets, and Twitter created a stand-alone moment for that particular Twitter thread because it was so important and it led the conversation for what everyone was talking about at that time.”
Click this image to see the Twitter Moment
Of course, the NMAAHC is in a unique position to lend their voice to this conversation, both as an educational institution and as experts in African American history.
“I remember one of my peers asking me, how can a museum tweet using #BlackLivesMatter? The answer is: because we directly have collections and exhibitions and programming that support the issues there, and as long as we are able to offer context on these issues we are doing our job at the Smithsonian as an educational institution.”
The Power of a Post-It
The intention that Lanae came to this job with has continued to inspire an approach to social media that transcends common marketing objectives. Far beyond any metrics or KPIs, the NMAAHC is leading an important conversation online.
“I think for me one of the things that really drew me to the role is that my boss at the time posed a question to me that has stuck with me throughout this role (I still have the sticky note from our conversation!):
‘How do we honor African American experiences outside the common narrative?’
This question has since driven this team’s approach and guided how they choose to communicate online, the types of stories they highlight, and the content they create.
“I really thought about that: how can we create an impact and tell stories about LGBTQ African Americans, about the contributions of women and children during the struggle for African American civil rights?”
Key Take-Aways
The NMAAHC team has done extremely well through their social media channels, launching social campaigns like ‘Our Hidden Hurtstory’, daily ‘This Day in History’ content posts, and creating unique hashtags like #APeoplesJourney and #OurNationsStory that have, for instance, been used by 4 US presidents to date.
They are using social media differently, and in all their conversations they are reaching audiences with a message that is educational, progressive, and inclusive.
Using social media analytics, and specifically, hashtag analytics to monitor their conversations, they have created an approach that furthers their mission while also highly resonating with their audience.
We are thrilled that Keyhole is part of the mix that helps this museum regularly create significant conversations that move the needle.
How PROJECT 375 Uses Keyhole to Track the Conversation Around Mental Health
Erica Jellerson gives us her expert insight into how the conversation around mental health is changing on social media, and how she and her team are using social media analytics to lead the conversation.
PROJECT 375
PROJECT 375 is a non-profit organization centered around reducing the stigma around mental health.
The organization was born out of the experiences of its co-founders, NFL star Brandon Marshall and his wife– mental health advocate Michi Marshall.
In 2011, Brandon was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and spent 3 months in an intensive outpatient program at McLean Hospital.
After his experience, the critical need for stigma reduction and mental health education was immediately apparent. That’s why he, his wife, and the team are now dedicated to changing the conversation around mental health through PROJECT 375, which aims to “unlock human potential through conversation, education, and inspiration”.
The 375 Team at a Mental Health First Aid Training:
Mental Health on Social Media
Social media is one of the primary channels where the conversation around mental health is taking place, and, thanks to the public nature of social, it is also the one we have most visibility into.
According to Erica, who has been using Keyhole to monitor the conversation around mental health for years, we are currently experiencing a positive shift in its tone.
“I think we have been seeing a shift in the kinds of conversations surrounding mental health on social media. Just looking at the number of conversations taking place on these platforms, we can see it has grown instrumentally over the past couple of years. We are witnessing celebrities and everyday people alike, looking to social media to tell their stories.”
.@MensHealthMag, The Rock Just Opened Up About Mental Illness and Suicide: https://t.co/1KSJTilt1s
— PROJECT 375 (@PROJECT375) February 23, 2018
Naturally, social media is also one of the main ways that PROJECT 375 leads the conversation about mental health and connects with and understands its audience.
“We believe in meeting people where they are at. The fact is people are on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all day long! Our presence must be robust on these social channels to continue to galvanize the community and move these critical conversations forward.”
Self care is not selfish! #RT if you agree.
— PROJECT 375 (@PROJECT375) November 18, 2017
The organization uses its platforms to amplify news, celebrity posts, and studies that support its messaging and further a positive dialogue around mental health, using Keyhole to track, optimize and understand their own success.
Creating Success with Keyhole
“Keyhole is my go-to for all things analytics. Knowing our audience, their likes and dislikes, the kinds of content they prefer and the times they are looking at us is mission critical. I am constantly looking at the data to see what patterns emerge and the different ways we can tweak our strategies to best serve our supporters. Social media is ever-changing and Keyhole gives us the ability to change in lockstep with the latest trends and audience preferences.”
With Keyhole, Erica and her team are able to look at key social media account and hashtag analytics that give them insights into their audience and industry and help them amplify their message.
Knowing Your Audience: Likes, Dislikes & The Content They Prefer.
Knowing your audience is key.
In a non-profit space, this helps build ideal content to increase engagement and brand awareness. By targetting the right people by demographics or location, you can also improve your success with fundraising, petition signing, or event attendance.
Some of the Insights that PROJECT 375 uses Keyhole to measure are:
Follower Location (Worldwide & US-specific):
Keywords in Bio (to gauge personas, understand interests):
Top Engagement Times (to optimize content scheduling):
“Keyhole offers us information that we can’t get by attempting to just pull analytics from each channel. It is the most user-friendly, targeted program we have used. As our communications strategies have changed over time, Keyhole has allowed us to make the most informed decisions to achieve our goals.”
Keyhole helps PROJECT 375 understand the changing conversation around mental health, as well as their own content efforts. The Marshalls, Erica and their team are then able to use this data to further their mission, reducing the stigma around mental illness through awareness and community building.
Follow PROJECT375 on Twitter to continue listening.
If you are interested in tracking conversations on social media, try Keyhole for free!
SportQuake’s Data-Driven Recipe for Sports Marketing Success
SportQuake is a go-to international sports marketing agency that provides strategic brand ideas, insight-driven campaigns and executional expertise.
Worthy of note:
- A unique ‘360° Style Review’ that sets them up for success.
- Their use of sentiment data to drive influencer partnerships.
The 360° Review
Before SportQuake even takes on a new client, or starts a new campaign, they first consider the full scope of the project by overlaying key client data like average engagement, share of voice, and follower demographics with Sports Marketing data and insights into the sports ambassadors (#influencers) they connect their client with.
“We do it in 360° review style, which involves research and insight. This is where we use tools such as Keyhole to analyze our Key client data and overlay that with sports marketing data to provide 360° view of everything in the market that is relevant to our client.”
This helps deliver a full-scope strategy that is customized and specific to their needs. By taking all these factors into consideration at this early stage, SportQuake can predict success with high acuracy, making sure their clients get the best ROI possible.
Sentiment and Influencers
“There are certain [Keyhole] features that we didnt know about before, and they opened a new lens for us to look at campaigns through. One of them is sentiment, which is underestimated.”
This new lens has given Oliwia and her team have a unique approach to selecting influencers: using sentiment to drive decisions alongside common metrics like engagement and reach, and best practices.
“It’s about the feeling and likeability. Especially with content creators like influencers.”
Now, when considering top athletes to connect their client brands with, they
look at sentiment to understand how likeable influencers are in the eyes of their followers.
“But, it’s hard to understand Sentiment just from scrolling through someone’s profile and posts, and it would take you ages to analyze the profile enough to figure out average sentiment. So it’s great that Keyhole does this job for you: basically taking the wording and context of posts and reactions and using the algorithm to analyze the sentiment behind the copy.”
Olivia’s Tips for Choosing Influencers:
When looking for influencers, consider:
- Is this person heavily commercialized?
- Does their lifestyle represent the brand?
- Are their followers in the same demographic as our target audience?
- Are they likeable?
“At the proposal stage we want to be as efficient as possible when it comes to gathering data. Keyhole is definitely an advantage to save time. Before, we would collect data from each social account or influencer separately and it would take ages. It was in excel files, and as you can imagine everyone has their own way of managing this data. It would be one big mess, whereas now, everything is there.”
In a Nutshell
In sum, SportQuake’s approach shows us that a clear path to success in marketing efforts includes taking all relevant data ♥️ into account up front.
Also, consider following Oliwia’s advice and utilizing sentiment to drive powerful, successful partnerships and campaigns, and don’t forget to share your successes with us @keyholeco!
Attention: These Keyword Research Tips can Skyrocket Your Website Conversions
Website getting traffic but still not getting conversions?
If you think your content’s fine, then perhaps you need to take a look at your keyword strategy?
Yes, you sometimes need to go all the way back to make sure you’re drawing in quality leads from the right channels.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the most brilliant and engaging pieces of content in the world. If you targeted the wrong keywords, none of your PPC, SEO, or content marketing strategies will consistently produce profitable results.
The good news is, keyword research doesn’t necessarily have to be extremely difficult. With the right tools and tactics, you can definitely discover lucrative keyword opportunities without breaking a sweat.
In this post, we’ll show you the best ways to do keyword research so you can bag winning keyword suggestions every single time.
Let’s get started.
1. Turn Seed Keywords Into Long-Tail Keywords
Regardless of niche, keyword research always starts with a seed keyword that’s too broad and competitive to be feasible.
That’s why you need tools like Ubersuggest to expand your seed keyword into hundreds of long-tail keyword ideas. These are keywords that are at least 3 terms long and target a narrower audience.
To use Ubersuggest, simply enter your seed keyword and click “Look Up.” Don’t forget to adjust the localization of your keyword to generate suggestions that are relevant to your place of business.
Within seconds, Ubersuggest will generate hundreds of long-tail keywords as well as present the metrics that can determine their profitability.
To keep things short, here is a brief explanation of each of the three metrics you’ll encounter in Ubersuggest results:
Search Volume
The first metric measures the average monthly searches. This can be directly used to gauge a keyword’s popularity and demand.
CPC
Short for cost per click, the CPC metric denotes the average amount that advertisers are willing to pay for PPC advertisement actions. A high CPC often signals that a particular keyword can be monetized and converts well.
Competition
Lastly, Ubersuggest measures the competitiveness level of keywords on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0. For faster results, it’s recommended that you target keywords with a competitiveness score of around 0.4 or less.
At this point, you should be able to come up with a fresh lineup of long-tail keywords (whether for PPC or SEO) based on the initial results.
But don’t get overexcited — there’s still much work to be done to make sure your keywords lead to conversions.
2. Pluck Out Commercial or Transactional Keywords
A rule of thumb when doing keyword research is to find the balance between search volume and competitiveness.
Of course, you don’t want to target keywords with barely any demand at all. You shouldn’t go with the flow and pick up a keyword that everyone else uses, either.
What you want are long-tail keywords that pertain to a user’s desire to take action.
You can do this by injecting commercial or transactional terms into your Ubersuggest keyword suggestions. Just enter terms like “buy,” “price,” “service,” “shop,” or whatever term makes sense for your seed keyword in the “Filter Results” field.
After applying your filters, Ubersuggest will then refine and drastically reduce the number of keyword suggestions. This makes it much easier for you to spot profitable keyword opportunities:
3. Track Trending Keywords on Social Media
If you’re trying to build traffic through social media, then you’ll need a slightly different approach when doing keyword research.
The main issue is that social media networks use internal search engines that don’t use the same keywords as web platforms like Google. As such, you need to use a keyword tracking tool that’s specifically tailored to social media networks.
Keyhole is, without a doubt, an excellent tool for this job. It allows you to find and monitor trending keywords as well as hashtags on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram — two of the biggest social media networks in terms of user engagement.
Just like Ubersuggest, you can start using Keyhole by entering a seed keyword. This time, however, you need to specify if you want to track a hashtag, keyword, URL, social media account, or brand mention.
To fine-tune your keyword tracker, click “Advanced” to reveal the filters you can use to refine results. For example, if you want to ignore posts from a direct competitor, click on “Ignore posts” and fill in the rest of the details.
Let’s say you want to track the keywords “WordPress,” “web design,” and “blogging.”
After the initial data is produced, you should be able to see pertinent information, such as the number of posts with your keywords, their collective reach, and even the overall sentiment of users.
Before you save your tracker, don’t forget to specify how you want to receive alerts. This will enable you to be always in tune with social media users when it comes to your target keywords.
Remember that tracking keywords on social media can improve conversions in two ways.
Apart from letting you gauge the demand for a keyword, it will also give you opportunities to initiate and close conversions yourself whenever your brand or product gets mentioned. For this, simply, track your brand name or social media handles via Keyhole.
4. Get Suggestions from the Keyword Cloud
Once your Keyhole tracker is up and running, it’s time to snag yourself some keyword ideas.
From the main dashboard, navigate to “My Trackers” and select the tracker you want to work with.
This will pull up real-time data based on the tracking options you’ve set earlier.
Now, to locate new keyword opportunities, scroll down to the “Related Topics” section to view the hashtag and keyword clouds. Here, you can visually observe the popularity of keywords that are related to your seed keyword:
How can social media keywords boost your conversions?
Good question.
Remember that most if not all online users only transact with brands they trust.
By participating in conversations and offering your expertise to social media users, you slowly build your brand’s authority in your niche. Of course, researching hashtags will also allow you to extend the social reach of your content whenever you share something.
To learn more how to leverage social media networks to win your audience’s trust, you can refer to more guides here.
Conclusion
Keyword research is a fundamental piece of online marketing that marketers love to overlook.
Hopefully, the guide above put keyword research in a new light. It’s not necessarily the most difficult aspect of online marketing, but it can have the biggest impact when it comes to the visibility of overall profitability of your website.
Do you have other suggestions on how marketers should perform keyword research? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!
How to X-Ray Social Media, According to Manu from Jelly
Jelly is a cutting-edge Digital Agency based in Santiago, Chile.
They distinguish themselves with an almost exclusively digital focus, being “99.9% digital”, and flaunting big-deal clients like Toyota, Lenovo, and Mallplaza among others.
“Digital rules. If you focus on digital in the next 3-5 years you should be able to make it. That’s why digital is our core.”
Manu Chatlani
Executive Director
But with the exceptional amount of digital content out there today, Jelly’s challenge is to consistently deliver groundbreaking campaigns that stand out from the noise.
This is how they do it:
First, by promoting “rested brains” for their employees. This includes 5-week vacations for everyone on the team and working from home every Friday (because, as Manu told us, “ideas are not tied to a desk”).
The second step is putting the rested brains to work, milking every second of at-work time to make sure that any campaign they put out on social is being seen and well-received by any of the 3.03 billion social media users who may see it.
But, as you can imagine, managing these many impressions is not easy.
“Have you ever seen Guardians of the Galaxy from Marvel? It’s like you are in that spaceship. You are traveling, you know where you’re heading and you have no one ahead of you.
Then, suddenly, you have 20 enemy ships and you need to make a decision. Do you shoot, run, hide? My job is a lot like that. I am always making decisions on how to handle situations that come up. It’s non-stop.”
Luckily, Keyhole makes analyzing social media much easier ?.
“Keyhole gives you a simplified view of what’s happening with a current issue: it could be a hashtag, a trend, it could be an account. Whatever it is, you can go in and get a quick snapshot of what’s happening.”
For example, Jelly recently launched an awareness campaign that resulted in over 23 million impressions on social in 90 days. These numbers are almost impossible to track manually.
Using Keyhole, Manu’s team (as well as their client) was able to instantly see this kind of key information about their campaign’s performance both as it happened in real-time and at review stages once the campaign was done.
By analyzing all social media interactions and displaying the data in a simple way that takes out the guesswork, Keyhole helps Manu’s team to focus on what’s important. This way, brains don’t get over-tired with the nitty-gritty numbers, but simply use the data to make the best decisions possible.
This is why Manu sees Keyhole as a kind of social media X-ray. You can quickly get to the bottom line that you’re looking for without having to do extra digging.
“It’s like an X-ray at an emergency room. Even if there’s no time for something very exhaustive at first, you need to move quickly. If we are promoting a campaign we can know right away if it’s working or not. I can find out easily without having to take in the full volume of the conversation.”
With this kind of approach, where every member of the team can dedicate their full work time to what’s important, Jelly’s continuing success is no wonder. Check out their website to see what they are up to, and the type of results that can be produced by this kind of company.
Using Popular Hashtags To Grow Your Business
Do you use hashtags — catchy, attention-grabbing conversation anchors that people want to be associated with? If not, you can learn how here.
Hashtag 101– If you already know what hashtags are, skip this part and proceed to advanced hashtag uses below.
How hashtags work: When you use a #hashtag, you are adding your post to a list of all other posts that use this tag on that social platform.
For example, if you post a picture of your dog with #puppy in the caption or description, your post is now grouped with all other #puppy posts. Whenever someone searches #puppy on instagram for example, they will see all #puppy posts.
Popular hashtags are a major deal. They engage social media users on a higher level.
No wonder Instagram images or videos with at least one hashtag generate 12.6% more engagement than posts without hashtags, and tweets with hashtags receive 2x more engagement than tweets without them.
This doesn’t mean hashtags are an automatic ticket to social media success, but they can and do engage people by allowing them to become part of something larger than themselves.
Hashtags impart a sense of belonging — and encapsulate people’s beliefs, cultures, and professional brands. In an article on Salesforce, expert digital marketer Ann Smarty listed three hashtags that people follow for news on social: #twitternews, #socialmedianews and #socialmedia.
When people use or follow hashtags like these on social, they get to feel they’re a part of some huge; that’s the power of hashtags.
There are two main ways to use popular hashtags to grow your business:
- Start your own branded hashtag and make it popular. Or…
- Latch onto already popular unbranded hashtags and exploit them to grow your business. The three hashtags I mentioned from Ann Smarty are good examples of unbranded hashtags.
I’ll be sharing how to use these two different hashtag types to grow your business in this post.
Ready?
Let’s begin with unbranded hashtags.
These are usually popular hashtags that weren’t necessarily started by your brand.
They’re often industry hashtags like #marketing, event hashtags like #SXSW or day-related hashtags like #MusicMonday or #TuesdayInspiration. These are the basics. Tagging your posts with relevant industry, event and day-related hashtags will help you be a part of key conversations for your brand.
Here are three more advanced strategies for using unbranded hashtags to grow your business:
1. Look out for CTA (Call-to-Action) hashtags
Just as its name implies, CTA hashtags encourage people to take an action. Example: #BeYourOwnBoss or #StartABusiness.
These hashtags tend to work well because they encourage people to participate in something fun or rewarding — and everyone likes fun and rewards. More importantly, they persuade people to take an action on your tweets or posts.
You want to look for popular CTA hashtags that are related to your brand or product and engage prospects with them. These hashtags are especially rampant on Instagram and Twitter.
Example: Call-to-action hashtag #tagafriend skyrocketed Twitter engagement for Chocolate Picture:
Of course, it wasn’t just the #tagafriend hashtag that drove this level of engagement for the brand. Chocolate Picture added some other hashtags and, perhaps more importantly, asked tweeters to follow and RT to get a chance to win the contest promoted in the tweet, which contributed to the success of the tweet. (Note: while hashtag functions are available on most platforms, they are particularly effective only on Twitter and Instagram)
The CTA hashtag #tagafriend, however, encouraged people to take an action — tag their friends.
Plus, the CTA hashtag exposed the tweet to an audience that follows the #tagafriend hashtag and who may not have heard about Chocolate Picture before.
2. Twitter trending keywords and hashtags
Twitter gets over 300 million users per month, and the platform has a section called Trending. On a smartphone, Twitter Trending can be found once you click the search tab in your Twitter app. And it’s either on the left or right side of your desktop screen.
These keywords and hashtags represent what people are talking about at any given time on the platform. You can see how this easily creates an opportunity for you to chip in your tweets on the matter discussed, and expose your brand to a new audience.
How you chime into these trending conversations, however, can make or break engagement for your tweet. Your tweet needs to be timely and relevant to the topic being discussed. Any irrelevant or untimely tweets will be ignored by tweeters and get buried under other tweets.
This doesn’t mean you can’t participate in conversations outside your industry; you can, but you need to ensure it’s relevant to the topic being discussed.
Example: when #FashionWeek was trending, sometime in 2013, cookie brand Oreo sent out a tweet with the hashtag:
Oreo has nothing to do with fashion or Fashion Week; they’re clearly not a clothing brand, but they promoted their brand using the hashtag while making sure it’s related to the topic being discussed. Pretty clever.
Remember, Twitter trending tweets can stop trending at any time — they might be popular anywhere between minutes to a few days. You want your entry into trending conversations to be relevant and timely.
Another classic example is how duo music band Facing West took advantage of #MusicMonday on Twitter. The band used the hashtag to promote their new song on a Monday — March 5 — when the hashtag was trending:
This exposed their brand and music to a new audience and enthusiasts who follow the hashtag.
Twitter users use the Twitter Trending to stay abreast of what’s hot right now. They want to be in the know and not the last person to hear about some hot news. Do your brand a huge favor by chiming in on trending conversations and taking advantage of the lively engagement there.
3. Popular niche hashtags
Hashtags are crazier on Instagram than they are on Twitter, or any other social platform for that matter.
“…consider using popular hashtags like #tbt (throwback Thursdays) or #instagood (a showcase of a user’s best photos) to attract new followers. — Bryan Kramer“
Using more than two hashtags on Twitter can make your engagement rate plummet. But on Instagram, the more hashtags, the merrier your engagement.
Head of Social Strategy at Canva, Peg Fitzpatrick, recommends adding your hashtags in multiple comments under each Instagram post:
You can use up to thirty hashtags on each post. I’d recommend sticking to three or four in the comments and then adding more into a comment below. It seems strange, but this is acceptable on Instagram.
If you want to use eleven hashtags in total per post, that works best on Instagram.
Enter niche hashtags. These hashtags are often used by people who are not just in your industry, but are in the same niche with you.
For example, #foodstagram is used by everyone and every business in the food/restaurant industry on Instagram. But a niche hashtag in the same food industry would be narrower. Take #foodblogger; the hashtag is apparently used by food bloggers on the platform, not every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the industry:
Instagrammers who are interested in seeing pictures from food bloggers — but not restaurants or random food lovers — they’ll use the #Foodblogger hashtag to narrow down their search that finds just the food bloggers they’re looking for.
Your industry hashtags are often used by everyone in the industry, so they naturally get more impressions than niche hashtags. But you want to use niche hashtags to engage with your own target customers.
To see what hashtags are relevant to your specific industry of brand, tools like Keyhole can be very helpful. You can insert a trending #hashtag or keyword into our tracker, and the Word Cloud feature within the main dashboard will show you what other hashtags or Keywords people are using along with it.
For instance, our WordCloud shows that when using #foodblogger, people also use these hashtags:
Now, branded hashtags.
These are hashtags started by your company. You know, the one you can lay a 100% claim to and enjoy all the benefits.
Branded hashtags don’t have to have your brand name in them, even though they sound like they should. But they should be related to your product or campaign name — so customers can link the hashtag to your business ultimately.
And if done right, they can become very popular hashtags that will take your brand to a higher level. Here are three strategies for growing a business with branded hashtags.
1. Require customers to use your brand hashtag to qualify for entry to promos and contests
This is one of the most common hashtag marketing strategies out there. You start a contest and require target customers to use your hashtags in their posts to qualify for the contest.
It’s like you’re starting a party and you’re asking everyone to come and eat. Everyone loves free food and drinks, right? That’s the idea.
Where it gets a little difficult is coming up with the perfect hashtag that people can relate to your business. One of the most successful branded hashtag so far is #ShareACoke — though, it wasn’t exactly a contest as we’re discussing here.
Three things make this hashtag awesome:
- The hashtag is simple, which makes it memorable.
- It clearly flaunts the brand’s name.
- It’s a call-to-action (CTA) hashtag — as it encourages people to take an “fun” action, share a coke.
You can learn from this and make an effective and memorable hashtag for your business. Make it reflect your brand name clearly, make it simple and make it a CTA — you know, like #DoSomethingFun.
To get even more juice from this, you can ask contest participants to tag your business handle in their entries.
This may reduce the amount of people participating in your contest since you’ll be stressing them more by asking them to do more tasks. But you’ll be getting more bang from your investment — 54% of users surveyed by Twitter reported that they had taken action after seeing a brand mentioned in Tweets (including visiting their website, searching for the brand, or retweeting content).
In plain English, you get more ROI when users tag your brand in their entries for your contest or promos.
2. Ask event attendees to share, using your hashtag before and during the event
If you’re organizing an event, you can create a hashtag and ask your event attendees to share the post on social using your event’s hashtag. Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media Studios says it’s best to announce your event hashatag right at the start of the event:
“Tell the audience about it before the opening keynote.”
This means that you must have planned this hashtag ahead of time — it should have been ready long before the event day. In fact, planning it out long before the D-day gives it greater chance for good publicity.
Before the popular Social Media Week starts in every country, the #SMMW18 hashtag always has enough time to get in the hands and consciousness of people. Perhaps that’s because the hashtag has been planned and publicized months or weeks before the event starts.
And it’s one of the main reasons why virtually all marketers in many countries don’t miss out when the event date finally hits.
The beauty of this is that once multiple people start tweeting with your hashtag during an event, Twitter notices the spike for that hashtag and adds it to their Trending list — which exposes your hashtag to Twitter users who like hot news.
This means more people will be seeing your hashtagged posts. It can lead to a massive explosion and brand awareness for you. And you may also attract people who haven’t heard about you or your hashtag before. They can become curious as to who you are why you’re trending on their Twitter.
3. Get people to like your hashtagged tweets and posts
Social networks want to feed their users with the best content their platforms offer. And it’s the same for your business. You want your best content consistently visible for optimal customer engagement.
Google, Youtube, and most other platforms also operate in this way. They all have top posts in a category on their platforms so more users can find them. When your tweets or Instagram posts get significant engagement, they are ranked in the top sections of the platforms they’re on for the hashtag(s) they contain.
For example, if your your post on Instagram with #musicmonday gets healthy engagement, say 200 likes and 20 comments, it can get ranked on the top posts section of Instagram.
If you’re already a popular brand, your hashtagged posts will naturally get hundreds and thousands of Likes or Favs, retweets, and replies in no time. And this will move your posts to the top sections of social networks. And, to amplify your reach, you may use influencers.
But if your brand is not so popular yet, you need to go to a little more work. You especially need influencers who will spread the word about your brand and hashtag. Ask your network — existing followers, customers and friends — to Like your posts so they reach more people.
Conclusion
Popular hashtags are a big deal. They raise an entire village of brand advocates, like what’s happening with Coca-Cola’s #shareacoke today.
The drink company is still enjoying all the brand awareness and sales that come from the hashtag, as many of their customers are eager to take fancy pictures with a bottle of coke and share it on social using the hashtag. It’s the same for every other brand that has worked to create popular hashtags.
Businesses that latch on to unbranded hashtags they didn’t create themselves also enjoy some level of success as seen with the Oreo example above. In the end, whether you create your brand hashtag or latch on to unbranded hashtags you didn’t create, your business is bound to see an uptake in engagement and sales if you hit the right combination.
Take a chance and experiment with hashtags. Learn to capitalize on what’s trending and help your business by becoming part of the hashtag trend.