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If you have a computer, tablet, and smartphone, chances are you’re probably logged into Facebook on multiple devices. Sure, it’s convenient. But logging out of Facebook is an easy way to protect your privacy.

There are a few ways to do this. You can log out of each device individually. Or there’s a way to log out of all devices at the same time. We’ll break each one down.

Log out of all devices at the same time

Click the icon of the downward-facing triangle in the top right corner of your screen.

Then click “Settings & Privacy,” and then “Settings.” That will take you to the settings overview page.

Click on “Security and Login” in the lefthand column, then find the section that says “Where You’re Logged In.” From there, you can log out of each device individually, or click “Log Out Of All Sessions.” A window will pop up prompting you to confirm this — click “Log Out” and you’re done.

Log out on a computer

Click the downward-facing triangle in the top right corner, then click “Log Out” in the dropdown menu that appears.

Log out on the Facebook mobile app

On your smartphone, it’s also pretty simple to log out. Tap the icon of three parallel lines. Scroll down to the bottom and tap “Log Out.” You’ll then be prompted to confirm that you wish you log out.

Log out on a mobile browser

If you’re using Facebook on your phone’s browser, not through the app, locate the three parallel lines icon on the top right corner of your screen. Just like before, scroll down to the bottom and tap “Log Out.” A prompt will pop up asking if you want the browser to save your login info when you log out. Choose “Save and Log Out” or “Don’t Save and Log Out” to complete the process.

Reblogged 5 days ago from feeds.mashable.com

For more than a decade, I’ve carried on with a number of truly pathetic, one-sided DMs. I type, send links, share photos, and pour my heart out in these chats, but I’ve never once received a response.

It sounds embarrassing, but don’t worry, I’m not being ghosted or anything. I’ve just been DMing myself.

OK, now that I’ve typed it out, I realize that does sound a little embarrassing. Before you judge, let me explain.

People who send direct messages on social media primarily use them to communicate with friends, family members, acquaintances, even strangers. While I do exchange messages with other people, I also frequently use the DM features on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to send myself messages. Occasionally, I’ll text or Slack myself too. I send posts that intrigue or resonate with me, articles I want to read in the future when I have more time, and sometimes I DM content from my phone to my laptop if it’s easier than using iMessage or AirDrop.

Sliding into my own DMs is a convenient, practical, helpful way to collect and save information. The problem is, I never remember to check back and read all of the DM-worthy stuff I send myself. As a result, robust feeds of personally curated, long-forgotten content are tragically relegated to digital black holes of my own creation.

So I set out on a journey to catch up on years’ worth of messages to make things right with my past selves and restore integrity to the self-DM process. I learned a lot about myself.

If you self-DM, you could too. If not, maybe you should.

Ghosts of forgotten DMs past

The realization that I never check my DMs to myself hit recently, when I accidentally clicked my own Twitter direct message thread and was greeted by a tweet I’d sent a few days prior. I’d loved the tweet, wanted to revisit it at some point, and was afraid it would get lost in my ever-growing sea of liked tweets, so I took the extra step of DMing it. The tweet was only a week old yet, sadly, I’d already forgotten it. That made me wonder what other long-lost treasures were hiding in the stack of DMs to me, from me.

I scrolled up from 2021 DMs to the very first Twitter message I sent myself, in June 2017. Among the archives were helpful threads of advice, ideas for pitches I’d intended to flesh out further, relatable reaction screenshots shared from out-of-context TV accounts like @nonewgirlcontxt and @nocontextroyco, what claimed to be a recipe for the best gluten free chocolate chip cookies, and roughly 25 tweets about Chris Evans’ sweater in Knives Out. It was a trip down memory lane so fascinating that I had to keep the journey going.

Next up? Instagram. I scrolled back to the first DM I sent myself in June 2016 — past an array of sentimental photos, gorgeous art, and inspiring quotes. I’d sent myself lists of small businesses to buy from, accounts to follow, books to read, tips for managing anxiety, and that one deeply soothing Cillian Murphy Calm ad, so I’d always have it on hand. It was like Content Christmas.

I know what you’re probably thinking: Can’t I just save Instagram posts to folders? It’s easier and only requires a single tap, whereas DMing myself requires me to hit the share button on a post, type my own name in the search bar, and hit send. The answer is yes, I could just save to folders. But I like the absurdity of sending myself a message, and it’s become a habit I can’t seem — or don’t want — to shake. Consider this: If we weren’t meant to send ourselves DMs, then why have the social media gods made it possible?

If we weren’t meant to send ourselves DMs, then why have the social media gods made it possible?

I can’t remember the first time I sent myself a message. Maybe I used my silver Motorola Razr to text myself important reminders in middle school. Or perhaps I blew up my own DMs during my AIM, Myspace, or Tumblr years. The earliest self-DM I could locate was on Facebook, the social media platform I’ve begrudgingly been using the longest.

On June 23, 2008, I Facebook messaged myself a perplexing Kanye West lyric that what would later become my high school yearbook quote. I sent an article about Michael Phelps dominating the Olympics that year, a StubHub confirmation for concert tickets to Beyoncé’s 2009 I Am… World Tour, an essay I wrote for a Spanish class in 2010, a variety of emo song lyrics I probably intended to set as my status some day, a 2013 Buzzfeed listicle about John Krasinski, and other oddities.

Much to my surprise, the trip into my DMs, which started as a joke, left me overcome with emotion. I was prepared to feel foolish after seeing just how many messages I’d sent myself and forgot to read over the years. What I hadn’t expected was the swell of nostalgia that would come from scrolling back through years of my digital life. I mean, I Facebook messaged myself the final copy of my 16th birthday party invites. Talk about a blast from the past. (Also, semi-formal? Teen Nicole, please!)

Revisiting special collections of content that touched me over the years was like gazing into digital time capsules or reading old diaries. I was so thankful I’d sent myself all those DMs. I only wished I’d checked them sooner.

Was this a me problem? I wondered. Or did other people out there DM themselves and forget to check the chats, too?

The common, chaotic practice of self-DMing

I put a call out on Twitter with a poll to learn if other people slide into their own DMs. Of the 297 votes cast, more than 66 percent of people said they DM themselves all the time. Phew.

Tweet may have been deleted

It was reassuring to learn the practice is somewhat common, and several people replied to admit that although they constantly message themselves, they too forget to check their own DMs. Chaos. At least our intentions are pure.

For those who love DMing themselves or want to start, I recommend setting aside specific times in your schedule to check your DMs on a regular basis. Consider setting reminders so you don’t miss out on this impactful content. One Twitter user who said she usually forgets to check her DMs shared that she’ll read them whenever she gets stuck or feels like she’s hit a creativity lull. She uses them as an “inspo thread,” an idea I adore and intend to start doing myself.

If sending self-DMs isn’t for you, people also shared some helpful alternatives in the tweet replies. Try texting or emailing yourself instead of DMing, that way you can easily pin or mark your messages as unread, which may make you more inclined to give them a look. You can also try bookmarking pages that you want to revisit to your browser or use any bookmark or save features that are built into social media platforms. (Keep in mind you still have to remember to check those.)

If all else fails, you could download an app like Pocket, which lets you sync your personal accounts and save content from different devices, social media platforms, and publishers in one handy place.

A single app for all my saved content sounds super convenient, but I know myself. I’m not going to magically remember to check another app just because all my favorite tweets, Instagram posts, and articles are in one place. More importantly, I don’t want to. I like the excitement, the challenge, the unconventional nature of sliding into my own DMs, and I’m not ready to ditch the self-DM life just yet.

Plus, I’m not about to ghost myself. That’s just rude.

Reblogged 5 days ago from feeds.mashable.com

If you thought you’d never be able to make your own TV series, think again.

Well, it’s IGTV. Which is kinda like TV, except it’s on Instagram, which, if you think about it, is basically tiny TV. Forget writing out a whole pilot and pitching it into the digital void hoping that by some semblance of a miracle it gets noticed by somebody important and they actually like it enough for a TV network to spend who-the-hell knows-how-much money to cast, produce, and broadcast it.

Yeah, forget all that. You can make your own series on IGTV. Here’s how.

1. Go to your Instagram profile page and tap the “+” button in the top right.

2. Select “IGTV Video.”

3. Select a video from your library to upload.

4. Scroll across the bottom to pick a cover image, and tap “Next.”

5. Title your video and add a description.

6. When you’re done, tap “Add to Series.”

7. On the next screen, tap “Create Your First Series.”

8. Title your series and give it a description. Then tap “Create.”

9. Now, in your video menu, your series title and episode number should appear under the “Add to Series” option.

10. Tap “Post to IGTV” at the bottom.

Your new series will appear on your profile page between your “post” section and your “tagged post” section.

There ya go! You’re now the creator/writer/director of your own IGTV series, so…you’re a TV executive if my math adds up right. And as far as I’m concerned, it does. Don’t forget about the little people, Big Shot.

Reblogged 5 days ago from feeds.mashable.com

Instagram Stories let users post temporary updates to their profile that disappear after a day.

Snap a pic at a cool restaurant? Add it to your Story. Hanging inside watching movies on a rainy day? Add it to your Story. Take a really shaky video at a concert with incomprehensible audio? Add it to your Story *forces a smile.* That’s the kind of content we love to see *forced smile intensifies.*

Many people use Stories to post minor updates to their day or life that they don’t necessarily feel the need to commemorate with a permanent post. Followers can view the Story to check in, see what’s up, and then be on their way.

There’s probably a million other reasons people use Insta Stories. We could try to list them all, but you probably just want to know how to make one, right? So without further ado…

There are a bunch of different ways you can start. All will get you to the same place.

1. From the home page (where your feed is), tap your profile picture in the top left where it says “Your Story” with a little plus sign next to it.

OR

2. From the home page, tap the “+” icon at the top (to the left of the heart icon).

OR

3. From your profile page, tap the “+” icon in the top right corner, then select “Story” in the menu that pops up.

OR

4. From the home page, simply swipe across your screen from left to right.

Any of those options should get you to your camera feed. Just make sure “Story” is selected at the bottom.

Now that you’re here, this where the fun begins. You have access to a multitude of tools and features you can play around with to create your story. We’ll give you the most important three steps and some basic info about the features in between. You’ll have to play around with everything to create the specific Story you want.

1. Generally, you’d start by snapping a pic or a video.

But you don’t have to. You can scroll across the bottom to pick out a fun filter. You could also tap any of the features on the left to start. Here’s a quick guide on what they can do.

Create

• Add text with a background

• Create a special occasion/shoutout post for someone (birthday, anniversary, etc.)

• Add a GIF

Boomerang

• Creates a back-and-forth effect from a short video

Layout

• Allows you to take multiple pictures and include them all in a layout of your choice

Hands-Free

• Records video segments in 15-second intervals until you hit “stop”

• -Lets you decide which segments you want to use after

Multi-Capture

• Lets you snap up to eight pics, one after another

• Decide which ones to keep and which ones to discard after

Level

• Provides a grid on your camera view to help ensure the view is level

• Middle segment lights up when the view is level

2. Once you have your picture or video, use the features at the top to edit it.

Symbols from left to right:

Save

• Saves the content to your phone’s library

Add music

• Search for a song you want on your Story

• Choose which 15-second segment of the song you want

• Include lyrics in different fonts/colors or display the album artwork

Add stickers

• Add location-themed stickers

• Emoji

• GIFs

• Use search bar to find a sticker you’re looking for

Draw/paint:

• Tap to draw

• Use different colors

• Draw arrows easily

• Add glow effects

Add text

• Type custom text to overlay on your Story

• Apply background

• Use different colors

• Center or align however you want

3. Once your masterpiece is ready, tap “Your Story” in the bottom left corner, and your content will be uploaded to your story!

You can also choose to send it directly to somebody you follow. But otherwise, it’s up on your Story for your followers to view for the next 24 hours.

Reblogged 5 days ago from feeds.mashable.com

Discord, the Slack-like chat and streaming app that’s become a preferred gathering place for online gamers, is about to get a little less musical.

The music-streaming bot called, Rhythm, a third-party plugin for Discord servers that lets users stream in music (or really any audio) directly from YouTube, is going offline. The service will cease functioning on Sept. 15 in response to a cease and desist legal demand from Google.

“One way or another we knew this was due to happen eventually,” Rhythm creator Yoav told The Verge. “Which is why we started working on something new a year ago.” The same report also notes that the death of Rhythm comes only a few weeks after Google moved to kill off a similar music bot, called Groovy. (The fun ended for Groovy on Aug. 30.)

Yoav hinted that work is underway on something else “in the music space” that will tie to Discord in some way, but the specifics beyond that aren’t clear at this point. But the Rhythm creator also sees the death of their bot, along with Groovy, as sort of canaries in the coal mine for other cease and desist requests aimed at music bot creators.

It’s just the nature of how Discord works. Plugins like Rhythm integrate with the platform seamlessly. I’ve used Yoav’s creation extensively myself, and piping music into voice chat is as simple as pointing the bot to a list of links or even just one link to a pre-made YouTube playlist. The bot isn’t officially endorsed or supported by DIscord; the platform is just flexible enough to allow the thing to exist.

That means Discord has an easier time dodging any responsibility for how people use the platform. But it also leaves the creators of music bots and other quality-of-life features exposed to potential repercussions themselves.

Though in truth, it’s not clear exactly what Rhythm (or Groovy, or any other music bot) does that’s such a problem. Discord servers — that’s what each privately curated social space on the platform is called — can be monetized, but most of them aren’t. So the most common use for something like Rhythm is friends streaming music together while they game.

It’s possible that YouTube is making these moves because it may have a Discord-connected offering of its own in the works. At the end of 2021, Discord revealed that it’s toying with new options for partying up and playing games together on a server, and that feature appears to include a YouTube Together watch party bot. But it’s not something that just anyone can use at this point.

This is one of those natural growing pains that all social media platforms tend to endure as they grow in size and in profile. Rhythm essentially got too big for its own good; The Verge report notes that the bot lives on more than 20 million servers. There are still plenty of native options built into Discord for people who want to pipe audio or video into their group voice chats. Bots like Rhythm and Groovy simply streamlined that process and made it easier. Hopefully, Google’s eventual officially sanctioned successor will do the same, assuming it comes to fruition.

Reblogged 5 days ago from feeds.mashable.com

How we began cleaning up canonical tags after the MarTech site consolidation migration.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Reblogged 5 days ago from feeds.searchengineland.com

Plus, how to drive the funnel through content marketing and link building

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Reblogged 5 days ago from feeds.searchengineland.com

Brands today have more options available than ever when launching multichannel marketing campaigns—which may be both a blessing and a curse, considering over half of marketing leaders say they struggle to effectively execute them.

The benefits of multichannel marketing are clear. It creates more opportunities to:

• Expand brand awareness.
• Reach prospects and returning customers.
• Generate qualified leads.
• Tailor content to each specific channel and audience while also maintaining a coordinated strategy.
• Maximize marketing ROI.

But just because you show up on multiple channels, does not guarantee a successful multichannel campaign—especially if your social media team was left out of the planning phase.

According to the latest Sprout Social Index™, 86% of marketers believe social media influences their bottom line. However, social teams are still frequently left in the dark about larger marketing campaigns until late in the game.

Instead, social marketers need to be brought into conversations early and often to support cohesive multichannel marketing.

3 reasons to include social teams in multichannel campaign planning

1. Social data can strengthen your campaign strategies

The best multichannel marketers know where their target customers are, why and what kinds of content resonates in each place. Social marketers are inherently multichannel marketers as they strategize, publish and engage on several social networks at a time. As a result, they have a direct view into customer preferences thanks to social data.

When social teams are brought into multichannel campaigns from the start, they bring data to the table that can refine your campaign goals and personas, inform your messaging and dictate which channels you show up on.

Going forward, social media is expected to become organizations’ primary source of business intelligence. Tap that data source and the experts on it now to get ahead of the curve.

2. There’s more than one way to post on social

Just as audiences differ from network to network, so do the features and formats. Sending a last-minute request to “just post this” boxes social marketers in and may limit how they can promote a campaign. When the social team is in the loop from the beginning, they can plan a social media mix of posts, stories, long or short-form videos and other content that boosts the visibility, creativity and overall impact of a multichannel campaign.

Social networks also have specific dimensions and limitations for what you can and cannot post that non-social marketers may not be aware of. By taking a social-first approach to creative production, businesses can avoid pushback from their social teams, last-minute requests for resized assets and low performance.

3. Social marketers are in tune with the voice of the culture

Social provides a view of culture at large. Breaking news, viral memes, hot takes, social justice movements and other trends constantly swirl around social, making social marketers cultural connoisseurs. By tuning into the voice of the culture, they can surface perspectives and provide insights that result in relevance and true business impact. Their ability to read the moment and consumers’ mindsets can also help businesses avoid social missteps.

Social listening, and listening to social marketers, gives businesses the power to reject assumptions about their customers or culture and instead use compelling, real-time insight to build multichannel campaigns.

Create a social media mix that complements other channel investments

Deploying a campaign on every channel possible is not only cost-prohibitive–it’s unnecessary. Marketing teams need to strike a balance between the channels that complement one another and the campaign at hand. How you determine that balance depends on your goals and, of course, your target audiences.

Let’s say you’re a direct-to-consumer, e-commerce brand looking to promote a new product launch with sights set on attracting prospects, qualified leads, web traffic and sales.

Together, marketers that specialize in email, paid search, digital advertising and social media can share expertise and data from past campaigns to decide which investments will be most effective.

Diversify content across platforms while maintaining your campaign identity

Once you’ve identified your channels of choice, marketers need to create a mix of content that is cohesive and tailored for audiences on each channel.

Spotify’s annual Wrapped campaign, which spans digital and traditional channels, gives customers a personalized review of their listening habits and the world at large a rundown of the year’s top songs, artists, playlists and more. It’s a master class in multichannel marketing.

Here are a few ways the streaming giant’s 2020 campaign built brand awareness, inspired customer loyalty, generated leads and compelled businesses to advertise on Spotify.

1. Email marketing and in-app notifications alerted Spotify users that “Your year in music is here.” The messaging is simple, direct, puts the focus on the customer and includes a CTA that drives right to the campaign landing page, where users have to sign in to gain access.
2. The colorful, personalized and interactive experience is optimized for social, encouraging users to share their Wrapped report with their networks. As a result, users spread brand awareness for Spotify and inspire enough FOMO among the have-nots to get them to sign up for the streaming service.

3. In addition to social ads and UGC, Spotify used organic social content as an opportunity to hype the campaign before launch day and extend engagement after.

4. Billboards were placed across the globe with streaming data and messages of gratitude to the artists, podcasts and playlists that got us through the year.

5. For Spotify users, the Wrapped campaign is all about their personal listening habits, but there’s another audience that this campaign intrigues–advertisers. In addition to the swell of Spotify users sharing their listening accomplishments, Spotify publishes a Wrapped report for advertisers that’s chock full of consumer data and insights and concludes with a lead generation form.

Spotify’s Wrapped campaign is a massive multichannel campaign. While your business might not be able to go quite as big, the takeaways here are transferable:

• Coordinate your strategy in collaboration with various marketing disciplines.
• Create an identity and core concept for your campaign that carries over from channel to channel.
• Customize messaging and content for the audience, features and goals of each channel.

Don’t overlook social data and social experts

The success of any campaign hinges on showing the ROI, which has long been a challenge for social marketers. However,  only 29% of marketers use social data to assess campaign performance. The other 71% are missing out.

A social media management tool like Sprout simplifies the process of measuring campaign performance and sharing analytics across teams. Marketers can use this social data, combined with insights from other channels, to test, learn and refine campaigns for maximum effectiveness.

Don’t just take the social data and run though. Giving social marketers a seat at the table to share their knowledge, ideas and creative vision are critical to the success of your multichannel campaigns, even when social is just one component.

If your next campaign is around the corner, prepare to launch with a social media campaign brief that empowers and aligns your team. Download this template to get started.

The post Break the “just post this” habit: How the right social media mix enhances multichannel campaigns appeared first on Sprout Social.

Reblogged 6 days ago from feedproxy.google.com

Of the billions (maybe trillions) of forgettable posts that are published on social every day, there are always a few social media campaign ideas that we can’t seem to forget.

You know what I’m talking about. That successful social media campaign that goes viral for days and inspires a slew of copycats who wish they thought of the idea first. For example: the #SpotifyWrapped campaign is something I look forward to every year. Another campaign I love is the recent collaboration between the NBA and NBA paint, a fan account with over 70,000 followers, to announce the teams’ regular season schedules.

You don’t have to be a creative genius to dream up the next brand campaign to break the internet. There are a number of tried-and-true elements marketers can borrow from campaigns that have gone viral before, from short-form video to audio-first content to inclusive marketing. In this article, we’ll break down six standout social media campaign ideas from the past year to learn what makes them so successful and what they reveal about the future of social campaigns.

6 social campaigns that captivated the internet in 2021

1. Apple’s #ShotOniPhone

Despite launching in 2015, Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign continues to delight users by showing off the quality of photos taken with the iPhone camera. The campaign has taken off on platforms like Instagram where people are asked to submit their best pictures using #ShotOniPhone, with select images appearing on billboards around the world. In addition to generating buzz around the latest iPhone release, the campaign also helped Apple build a community of loyal customers.

What this means for 2022: By leveraging user-generated content for social campaigns, brands can build trust and credibility with their target audience while demonstrating the capabilities of a new product. It also gives prospective customers an opportunity to see a product or service in action. Seventy-one percent of consumers say social posts by friends or people they know influence their purchasing decisions. By building campaigns around UGC, brands give audiences the authentic testimony they need to commit to a purchase.

2. Anheuser-Busch’s #LetsGrabABeer

To support President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine initiative, Anheuser-Busch launched its “Let’s Grab a Beer, America” campaign offering free beer to anyone who gets vaccinated. This tactic is a favorite of the brewing company, which has a history of hosting sweepstakes for the Fourth of July and major sporting events. Giveaways are an effective, low-lift way to drive online engagement and by pairing them with current events, Anheuser-Busch ensures their brand is always top of mind for consumers.

What this means for 2022: People love free things, and that’s not going to change anytime soon (as evidenced by the number of brands promoting freebies during a pandemic year). Hosting the occasional social contest or giveaway is an effective way to grow your brand’s following and generate awareness across a large or geographically distributed audience. And given how much of 2022 is still up in the air, marketers can quickly stand up giveaways in case their original social plans go awry.

3. McDonald’s Saweetie Meal

Following their wildly popular collaboration with South Korean pop band BTS, McDonald’s partnered with rapper Saweetie to launch the Saweetie Meal and accompanying merchandise line. The latest collaboration builds on both Saweetie’s growing popularity as well as her die-hard fanbase, who already have generated hundreds of thousands of Likes and Shares for McDonald’s social posts. Partnering with young artists and creators not only drives awareness but real business results for fast-food chains. Thanks to their collaboration with BTS, McDonald’s saw restaurant visits grow 12% over the previous week during the first seven days of promotion.

What this means for 2022: Given the buying power of fanbases, don’t be surprised if you see more brands embrace influencer and celebrity collaborations for future product launches. Activating a celebrity’s followers gives brands access to hundreds (if not thousands) of consumers who are ready to engage and spend with that brand. By partnering with BIPOC celebrities specifically, brands are able to reach diverse communities they otherwise might struggle to connect with.

4. YouTube & BTS: Permission to Dance

To promote its short-form video functionality, YouTube partnered with K-pop band BTS on the international Permission to Dance Challenge, exclusively on YouTube Shorts. The collaboration has since generated over 148,000 video submissions across 84,000 channels and BTS’ English announcement Tweet has pulled in nearly a quarter of a million Likes. By capitalizing on the growing popularity of short-form video and joining forces with BTS, YouTube created a social campaign that captivated an international audience.

What this means for 2022: According to the latest Sprout Social Index™, 54% of marketers said video was the most valuable content for achieving their goals. As brands start thinking about their 2022 campaigns, both short- and long-form video content will play a significant role in supporting goals like awareness and community engagement on social.

5. Dove’s Self-Esteem Project

The Self-Esteem Project is Dove’s ongoing initiative designed to empower today’s youth and help users navigate social platforms with confidence. Thirteen years after its initial launch, the Self-Esteem Project has since given way to smaller social campaigns like #TheSeflieTalk and the #NoDigitalDistortion challenge on TikTok. Overall, consumers are responding positively to Dove’s latest body positivity message, generating millions of views for videos tagged with #DoveSelfEsteemProject.

What this means for 2022: Inclusivity is one trend that never goes out of style and consumers want to see brands cater to more diverse audiences. One survey revealed 62% of US adults say diversity in a brand’s advertising impacted the way they perceived that brand’s products or services. Consider who is represented in your brand’s social content, amplify the voices of marginalized people in your campaigns and question who makes up your target audience. The people interacting with your social content aren’t a homogenous group of consumers and are actively looking to see which brands are prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion on social.

6. American Eagle & Snapchat: Back-to-School

In preparation for back-to-school season, American Eagle created an augmented reality try-on experience with Snapchat and enlisted the help of influencers and actors like Caleb McLaughlin. To further connect with their Generation Z audience, the retailer also created a digital clothing line for Bitmoji, giving consumers the chance to personalize their Bitmoji with AE clothes. The back-to-school campaign marks the third collaboration between AE and Snapchat, with AE’s winter holiday virtual shopping experience bringing in $2 million in revenue and revenue for first-quarter sales reaching $1 billion.

What this means for 2022: With Millennial and Gen Z buying power poised to increase, brands would be wise to embrace the social platforms and features that most appeal to these digital natives. Even if your brand isn’t quite ready to be on a platform like Snapchat or TikTok, laying the groundwork now and testing visual content ensures you’ll be ready to pursue new formats and platforms when the time is right. By keeping a pulse on the trends most relevant to digital natives, brands are better able to build lasting connections with this younger generation of shoppers.

Bring your best social media campaign ideas to life

Planning and executing successful social media campaigns can be daunting, but the long-term impact they can have on your brand is well worth the effort. With so many moving parts to keep track of, consider breaking your campaign approach into four clear steps:

1. Start with a brainstorm

Effective brainstorm sessions draw inspiration from multiple sources and incorporate feedback from your immediate team, leaving you with plenty of social media campaign ideas to choose from. In addition to looking at your favorite brands and closest competitors for inspiration, consider tapping sources like newsletters, webinars and customer feedback to fuel your creativity.

Social listening is another tool marketers can use to support their brainstorming sessions. With listening, marketers can uncover trending topics, popular influencers and other themes relevant to their target audience and industry. It’s also an effective tool for measuring audience sentiment and identifying customer needs, insights which can be applied toward your brainstorm to be as consumer-centric as possible.

2. Develop a campaign brief

With your social media campaign ideas in hand, it’s time to pull together your brief. This is where you’ll outline the goals and objectives of your campaign, who the key stakeholders are and what creative assets you’ll need. Your creative brief should also include your campaign distribution details and how various assets will support parts of the buyer journey.

For example, consider using your brief to outline your target audience with details like age, location, interest and as well as their preference for social networks. List out which social networks you plan to use for organic and paid social distribution, and treat your brief as the single source of truth for all stakeholders to refer back to come launch time.

3. Build your content calendar

Once your creative assets are finalized, you need to plan when and where you’ll publish each throughout your social campaign. Creating a social media calendar will not only save you time but also enable you to track and test your publishing strategy to identify what resonates strongest with your audience.

Instead of picking arbitrary dates, times and networks to round out your calendar, an analytics tool like Sprout Social can help you make more selective, informed decisions. Conducting a social media audit, for example, generates insights like engagement and publishing metrics that tell you what types of content perform best on specific networks. And with a tool like Sprout, you can dig even deeper into each of your brand’s networks to further refine your content publishing strategy.

4. Measure and optimize in real-time

Your campaign is finally live—congratulations! But just because your plans are in motion doesn’t mean you’re quite ready to leave your social campaign in the past. Keeping an eye on how your campaign performs is key to ensuring you meet your goals and can address any unexpected challenges as they arise.

Social analytics and listening solutions enable you to measure in real-time how your campaign paces toward your goals as well as your audience’s sentiment toward your marketing efforts. For even easier tracking, Sprout Campaigns allow you to build, evaluate and optimize your campaigns in one seamless experience. The Campaign Planner enables you to quickly identify top- and low-performing content so you can make adjustments accordingly based on how your overall campaign is trending.

Don’t sleep on tomorrow’s social campaign

Social campaigns have the power to grow your audience reach, create memorable consumer experiences and positively impact your overall business goals. As daunting as it may seem to pull off a successful social media campaign, the reality is you have all the tools and inspiration you need to get started. With plenty of inspiration to draw from and a clear roadmap outlining your goals and next steps, bringing your social media campaign ideas to life is more feasible than you might think.

To ensure your next social campaign is a success, check out the Content Benchmarks Report to make sure the content you’re creating is guaranteed to resonate with your audience.

The post 6 lessons and predictions from the best social media campaign ideas of 2021 appeared first on Sprout Social.

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You’ve spent hours learning the most effective SEO tactics, but they won’t be useful if you can’t measure them.

Measuring SEO return on investment (ROI) involves two factors: KPIs (key performance indicators) and the cost of your current SEO campaigns. Tracking these key metrics monthly enables you to tweak and optimize your strategy, as well as make educated business decisions.

To get the most bang for your buck (or time), consider using Google Analytics (GA) to calculate your ROI. With GA, you can pinpoint where your audience is coming from, set goals to stay on track, and incorporate the most attractive keywords to rank better in search engines.

Ways to calculate your SEO ROI using Google Analytics

#1 Page value

Page value is an important aspect to consider when talking about ROI.

Think about it like money. In the US, paper money has been dated back to the late 1600s as a way of symbolizing the value of something. Instead of bartering, citizens began attaching a value to a 10 dollar bill or a 100 dollar bill to obtain an item they needed that was worth the equivalent value.

Page value assigns an average monetary value to all pages viewed in a session where a transaction took place. Specifically for e-commerce sites, it helps assign a value to non-transactional pages such as articles and landing pages. This is useful to understand because although a blog didn’t necessarily produce revenue, that doesn’t mean it didn’t contribute to a customer’s buying decision in the future.

With lead generation pages, a value can be assigned to a goal like the contact form submission, so you can more accurately measure whether or not you’re on track.

Below is a visual that depicts how page value is calculated according to Google:

In the first example, Page B is visited once by a user before continuing to the Goal page D (which was assigned a value of $10) and Receipt page E (which generated $100). That means a single pageview of Page B generated $110, which gives us its Page Value.

In equation form, this is how it looks:

Page Value for Page B =
E-commerce Revenue ($100) + Total Goal Value ($10)
Number of Unique Pageviews for Page B (1)
= $110

But not all pageviews lead to a conversion. That’s why it’s important to keep track of data and recalculate your Page Value as more information comes in. Let’s see how this works with the second example.

Here we see two sessions but only one converted to an e-commerce transaction (session 1). So even if we have two unique pageviews for Page B, the e-commerce revenue stays the same. We can then recalculate our Page B’s Page Value using this new information.

Page Value for Page B =
e-commerce revenue ($100) + Total Goal Value ($10 x 2 sessions)
Number of Unique Pageviews for Page B (2)
= $60

With more sessions and more data, you’ll get a better idea of which pages contribute most to your site’s revenue.

#2 E-commerce settings

If you’re not managing an e-commerce business, skip this section. For those of you who do, there’s a more advanced feature on Google Analytics that can prove extremely useful. By turning on the e-commerce settings, you can track sales amounts, the number of orders, billing locations, and even the average order value. In this way, you can equate website usage to sales information and better understand which landing pages or campaigns are performing the best.

How to turn on e-commerce settings

• In your Google Analytics left sidebar panel, click on ADMIN > under the VIEW panel (rightmost panel), click on “E-commerce Settings” > Enable E-Commerce > Enable Enhanced E-commerce Reporting.

To finalize this go over to where it says, “Checkout Labeling” underneath the Enhanced E-commerce settings, and under “funnel steps” type in:

1. Checkout view

2. Billing info

3. Proceed to payment

Below is a picture to better explain these steps:

If you have Shopify or Woocommerce, make sure to set up tracking over there, too, so that Google Analytics can communicate and relay this crucial information to you.

Once you have the E-commerce tracking setup, you’ll have access to the following data:

• An overview of your revenue, E-commerce conversion rate, transactions, average order value, and other metrics

• Product and sales performance

• Shopping and checkout behavior

These give you a better understanding of how your customers are interacting with your site and which products are selling the most. In terms of calculating SEO ROI, knowing the steps that your customers take and the pages they view before making a purchase helps you analyze the value of individual pages and also the effectiveness of your overall SEO content strategy.

#3 Sales Performance

Again, this is for e-commerce only. The sales performance feature shows sales from all sources and mediums. You can view data for organic traffic only and identify its revenue.

How to view your sales performance

• In your Google Analytics’ left panel, click on “Conversions” > “E-commerce” > “Sales Performance”.

This gives you an overview of your revenue and a breakdown of each transaction. Tracking this through time and seeing how it trends guides your content strategy.

What is the average transaction amount and what does it tell you about your customers? Does tweaking your copy to promote up-sells or cross-sells have an impact on your per-transaction revenue?

Another set of data that helps you calculate your SEO ROI and optimize your content strategy is your customers’ shopping behavior.

How to see your customers’ shopping behavior in-depth

• Click over to “Conversions” > “E-Commerce” > “Shopping Behavior”

At a glance, you can see how effective your purchase funnel is – how many sessions continue from one step to the next? How many people went to your page and didn’t purchase, or added to the cart but didn’t follow through with payment?

This helps you identify areas that need more SEO attention. This also helps you draw projections on how much your revenue can increase by optimizing your copy and implementing SEO to boost organic traffic, which helps you get a better idea of your SEO ROI.

For instance, if there’s a high percentage of users visiting your page but not going through the buying cycle, maybe you need to tweak your copy to include searchable keywords or copy that resonates better with your audience.

Additionally, it’s worth remembering that while this does show organic sales, you can’t identify the keyword that led to that sale, but organic traffic can be an indicator of holistic marketing efforts working. For example, PR may increase brand searches on Google.

Quick tip: you can get an idea of which keywords bring in the most traffic to your website with Google Search Console and then follow the navigation history from Google Analytics in order to connect specific keywords with sales.

Overall, to truly measure the ROI of your SEO you need to discover which keywords are working for your business, because although people may be interested in your business due to some amazing PR exposure, they might not actually be interested in your services. To really hit this one home, select keywords that have purchase intent. That way you can attract more qualified leads to your site.

#4 Engagement Events

If you’re not working on an e-commerce site (hint, hint, my fellow B2B marketers), here’s where you’ll want to pay attention. Both e-commerce and lead generation sites can make use of engagement events.

Align with your sales team to assign a value to a goal based on average order value, the average number of sign-ups, and conversion rate. Although useful for e-commerce, these analytics are likely to be most beneficial for lead generation sites who have longer sales cycles and transactions that occur off-site or after multiple sessions (for example, B2B SaaS or a marketing agency).

Examples of engagement events include:

• Newsletter sign up

• Contact form submission

• Downloads

• Adding to a cart

How to view your campaign engagement data

• Click on “Behavior” > “Events” > “Top Events”

Below is an image so you can follow along:

This type of tracking gives greater insight into how people are interacting with parts of your website, and how engaged they are at different parts of the journey. Use it to set goals for your lead generation and investigate whether or not your SEO efforts are paying off.

Let’s say you find that your website gets a ton of traffic to your services page, and a high percentage of those visitors download a case study. This means they’re interested in what you have to offer and would like to see more case studies from you.

Use ROI calculations to make better strategic decisions for your business

Ultimately, when using Google Analytics for SEO, you should work to align business goals with specific measurable metrics so that you can create a long-term plan for sustainable growth. It’s no secret SEO is a powerful tool for your business, but putting it into an actionable and personalized plan to get the train continuously going uphill is what counts.

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