As the 2020 election ramps up, political ads are likely to infiltrate your social media feeds. If you’d rather they not appear, here’s how to banish them from your Facebook and Instagram accounts.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/353643

Brands and influencers are embracing the power of loop giveaways. Here’s how they work.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/352702

After a couple years of waiting patiently, TikTok has announced they are rolling out their self-serve advertising platform globally.

The tools will give advertisers access to their tools for creative, targeting, and flexible budgeting.

They also note there will be business accounts that provide additional tools, but have not specified them at this time.

According to Blake Chandlee, Vice President, Global Business Solutions at TikTok:

“TikTok’s immersive, short-form videos give businesses a platform to participate and engage with a community known for its creativity, ingenuity, and joy. As our marketing solutions scale and evolve, we’re continuously building for the future and aiming to meet the growing needs of our partners. We’re excited to continue supporting our community by providing the tools and resources for SMB owners to navigate these challenging times.”

The Evolution of TikTok’s Ad Offering

Advertisers have expressed curiosity, along with some frustrations about the inability to simply test ads on the platform.

The meteoric rise of users over the past 2 years made it desirable real estate, particularly as younger users departed Facebook and began to disperse among other apps, TikTok being one of them.

Previously, advertising on TikTok required access to a rep and a commitment via an insertion order (IO), or to be whitelisted for the self-serve product.

When asked the criteria that existed for the beta, a TikTok representative stated, “The team was evaluating based on a number of different factors, such as a brand or agency’s advertising goals and how we were looking to test the platform.”

In other words, it was at their own discretion.

TikTok’s Growth Versus the Norm

Beyond its fast growth, it’s also become more desirable because of the rate at which it’s grown.

TikTok reached the mark of 1 billion users faster than any other social media platform to date.

By comparison, once Facebook opened to the world at large, it took them a little over 4 years to hit 1 billion users.

It took Instagram roughly 5 years to reach a billion users.

TikTok did it in about 2 years.

Why TikTok Users are Desirable

Originally dismissed as another Snapchat, TikTok wasn’t watched closely by advertisers at first, generally speaking.

Snapchat had a quick adoption rate that plateaued, and the younger demographic (at the time) didn’t have disposable income.

Although Snapchat continued to make strides, they struggled overall to get traction due to the niche user base and the episodic nature of app interaction.

TikTok presents an interesting break in what would otherwise be seen as a novelty: it’s starting to follow the growth pattern that was seen with Facebook and Instagram.

It started with the younger demographic who adopts faster, but it’s now spreading to the over-25 age group.

However, the icing on the cake is they have money to spend: 37% of users have a combined household income over over $100,000.

It represents the largest demographic on the platform when it comes to income.

The age group trend also got a bump from COVID-19, with families stuck at home, and adults with more time on their hands.

The 18- to 24-year-old unique visitor pool in the U.S. actually declined between January and April of 2020, which the 25-44 age groups showed stronger visitor growth:

TikTok’s Back to Business Ad Credits

Conveniently coinciding with worldwide availability of their ad platform, TikTok has also announced they will be giving $100 million in advertising credits for small businesses.

The funds are intended to help struggling businesses during COVID-19.

Users can apply for the credits in the Business portal.

How to Access TikTok Ads

Users who wish to get started can access the self-serve platform can do so through the newly-unveiled TikTok for Business experience.

We have a full write-up of the features and offerings within it here, where we (correctly) predicted it signaled they would be making a move for global ad dollars soon.

Let the race begin.

Image Credits:

Image 1: Statista

Image 2: FT Research

Image 3: Marketing Charts

Image 4: MediaKix

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/13707963

Mike Pompeo suggests using TikTok puts your private information ‘in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.’

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/352926

Regardless of whether you’re aiming to foster more leads, email signups or purchases, there are few more effective ways to create more custom than through rigorous testing. 

Given the array of tools at the disposal of marketers, just 22% claim that they’re satisfied with the conversion rates that they amass. 

Fortunately, A/B testing and multivariate testing can seamlessly combine to fully optimize the process of turning your social media traffic into conversions. 

To understand the power of A/B and multivariate testing, it’s important to remember the array of variables that comprise your website. Text boxes, images, videos, call-to-actions and various multimedia plugins all combine to bring audiences an experience that aims to result in a conversion. Testing helps marketers to discover the exact combination of elements that are best placed to encourage visitors to act on the interest that encouraged them to navigate towards your site in the first place. The same practice can apply to just about any marketing approach. From social campaigns to PPC advertising. 

For example, have you arranged the images on your website in an effective manner? Or will visitors feel overwhelmed by the overflow of visuals? It’s virtually impossible to anticipate which layout will be the most effective in keeping visitors on your pages for longer – but actively testing different setups can offer up tangible insights into how prospective customers interact with the various elements that comprise your pages. 

It’s also possible that different layouts can lead to different effects. If your website’s tone is more informal, you might find that you’ll build more engagement with audiences, but could ultimately lack the sales you were aiming for. Whereas more formal imagery could create more purchasing intent but less of engaging customer experience. 

Different businesses will require different levels of website performance, and rigorous multivariate testing helps marketers to see what online features offer varied results for users. 

Adopting A/B and multivariate testing tools can help you to generate more leads, a higher volume of subscriptions, and ultimately attract more sales. But let’s take a closer look at how both A/B and multivariate testing can directly boost your social media conversions:

Learning your A/Bs

A/B testing often referred to as split testing, actively compares two versions of a web page, email or other facets of a business in a way that can actively measure their respective performance. 

This can be done by rendering one version to be observed by one group and another to a different cross-section of users. 

To help illustrate the key concept behind A/B testing, think of yourself as a website owner, and imagine that you have two landing page layouts that you can’t decide on. 

Through tools like Unbounce and Optimizely, A/B testing allows you to test one page by showcasing it to one group while sending another to a different group and studying the results. It’s possible to study the performance of each landing page by consulting metrics pertaining to traffic, conversions or purchase intent. 

Generally, these metrics will show one landing page to perform better than its competitor and you’ll gain a clear idea of which layout would be most effective online. 

Tapping into multivariate testing

Source: Leadpages

While multivariate testing can certainly complement A/B testing, these two practices are not fundamentally the same. 

Where A/B testing helps both website owners and marketers to see which design is more popular within different control groups, multivariate testing allows users to test various campaign elements all at the same time. 

This means that various different combinations of images, multimedia, text, call-to-actions can all be displayed for different users. While some may be greeted with a large image and a sign-up prompt, others may see an introductory video when they arrive on the same website, for instance. 

Given the wide range of element-based combinations that your campaign could feature, multivariate testing is regarded as one of the most efficient ways to gain insights into the impact that your marketing campaign could have once it’s correctly optimized. 

Finteza can be a handy tool when it comes to analyzing the performance of A/B tests, enabling you to see which page performs better from a sales funnel point of view.  

Advances in marketing technology have catapulted the capabilities of multivariate testing tools into the limelight. With the right software, it’s possible to conduct tests in real-time with the same audience – providing a true sample to draw results from. This means that various combinations of elements can be sent to audiences at different times, with analytical software on hand to interpret the results and figure out which blend of elements operate most efficiently.

The value of A/B testing on social media 

Source: MeetEdgar

One of the most effective uses of A/B testing can be found on social media. Campaigns can be optimized for various audiences by sending different messages to different control groups. Where 50% of the control group is shown message A, the other 50% is shown message B. The winning version is determined by which received the highest volume of clicks or impressions. The most effective option is then broadcast to all audiences from there on in. 

Social A/B testing helps to enlighten marketers as to which message is most engaging to audiences, and what type of content creates more meaningful engagements. This form of testing can also help to provide insights into what time of day a message will be most likely to hit home and which call-to-actions are best positioned to generate conversions. 

A/B testing is best summarized by WIRED writer Brian Christian, who explains that A/B helps to generate high-quality focus-groups that can test new ideas in real-time, without any prior conditioning. “Without being told, a fraction of users are diverted to a slightly different version of a given web page and their behavior compared against the mass of users on the standard site. If the new version proves superior—gaining more clicks, longer visits, more purchases—it will displace the original,” Christian surmised. 

The marketing landscape is ever-changing, and very few marketers can seriously claim to have the vision and anticipation required to stay ahead of trends. With this in mind, A/B testing in real-time is essential to gain insights into your target audiences.  

While it can seem like a complex approach to conversion optimization, there are plenty of advanced tools that can aid A/B testing methods. Notably tools like Evergage can help to optimize headlines for linked articles on different social media platforms. Content is an essential part of the process of generating new leads, but A/B testing helps marketers to figure out how best to deliver content on different platforms – leading to greater levels of traffic and subsequent conversions.

Multivariate optimization

While A/B testing can work wonders in helping marketers to decide between two different campaign ideas using quantifiable metrics, multivariate testing can deliver more comprehensive and exponential insights. 

Of course, social media is a rigid place for the testing of different messages and campaigns, but multivariate testing tools have the power to deliver fully customized website experiences for traffic arriving from various social sources. This can be a particularly effective way of catering to the different demographics of social networks – from the relative maturity of the microblogging platform, Twitter, to the more vivacious and vibrant youthfulness of Snapchat and TikTok. 

Source: Online Sales Guide Tips

Given the vast array of elements that can be altered during multivariate testing, it’s important to turn to a tool that can make the whole process of tweaking landing pages and content as simple as possible. 

VWO is an effective platform in undertaking not only multivariate tests but also A/B and split URL testing. With the help of visual editors, marketers and website owners alike can change elements on the pages they wish to test and deploy different landing pages for visitors arriving from different places across the web. Furthermore, the tool helps users to study metrics based on how long a visitor spends on pages, how far they scroll, their exit intent and a host of other custom triggers. 

The marketing landscape is ever-developing due to the arrival of more intricate and engaging technology. While A/B testing has existed in the world of marketing for some time, multivariate approaches can bring unprecedented levels of optimization and insight into the performance of different ideas and concepts. 

For better or worse, the world is in love with social media. But different platforms have evolved to be favored by different user bases. Advanced tools and testing methods can now provide brands with the agility to take on competitors on different social fronts by crafting heavily tested, personalized experiences depending on where their traffic is coming from. The World Wide Web is developing into an increasingly competitive place – advanced testing helps to give conscientious marketers a fighting chance.

Peter Jobes is the Content Marketing Manager at Solvid, a digital marketing agency that specializes in SEO, paid advertising, and website designing.

How A/B and multivariate testing can skyrocket your social media conversions

The social media giant’s attempt to compete with TikTok and Pinterest clearly failed.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/352744

Financial advisor Jeff Rose breaks down his setup for recording videos that appear on YouTube’s Trending tab.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/352507

Comedian and Love Island host Arielle Vandenberg discusses her career trajectory and how she’s focused on the next big thing.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/352496

Social media is a fun place where we can engage with our audience on a daily basis. You’re probably already familiar with the benefits of social media, which means you maintain consistent social media activity. 

Unfortunately, during troubling times like the COVID-19 outbreak that we’re experiencing today, businesses often struggle to maintain an active social media presence. Your budget is low, the workforce is limited, and there’s usually little motivation to produce content with everything that’s going on around you. 

Still, it’s not that hard to maintain social media activity during a crisis, and it is perhaps the only sensible thing we can do. It’s important to stay engaged with our audience during the crisis, and there’s a lot we can do to accomplish that. 

Here are four strategies to maintain your social media activity during a crisis.

1. Repurposing content

If we are unable to create fresh content, we can always work with what we already have. If you had a well-built content strategy prior to the crisis, then chances are you have a lot of pieces to work with. Our goal here is to repurpose existing content into something fresh. 

Start with what you already have: a podcast, a video log, a long-form blog article, a sales letter, anything works. Try to collect all long-form, pillar content that you have. Next, we’re going to use and repurpose that content to create fresh content. A vlog turns into a blog, a blog into an email, an email into a tweet, and so on… you get the point.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a master of repurposing content, he also popularized the content pyramid model that is based on this idea. Gary says he can create 30 fresh pieces of content to be used across his channels just from a single daily episode of his show.  

Using a single piece of content, you can create fresh content for your social media accounts, and it doesn’t have to be a repost. You can repurpose a piece of content to tweet some bits on Twitter, start a discussion on Facebook, post an edited clip on Instagram, or share a concise blog post on LinkedIn. And boom, there’s your content.

Also, there’s no need to feel like a fraud for repurposing ‘used’ content. Most of your followers won’t remember your older posts, and they could always use a reminder, especially during a crisis. Even if we have nothing ‘new’ to say, we can still share our insights from the past. To give your old content a fresh look, you can add some eye-catching visuals to it. You can take the help of a web designing firm to create visuals that can get noticed in crowded social media feeds. 

2. Make use of content creation tools

With everything slowing down, it’s hard to create enough content all on your own. In the past few years, we saw a lot of content creation tools and templates come to life, and perhaps it’s time to make good use of them. Content creations tools help us to minimize the time, budget, and effort needed to create content, and now we need them more than ever.

Depending on your needs, there are various tools to choose from:

• For research, you can make use of Google Drive’s Research Tool to conduct quick research, all it takes is clicking a simple ‘Explore’ button in the bottom right. Also, ‘Site: search’ function is another useful tool accessible from the browser.
• If you need help writing posts for your social media account, you can use writing tools like Evernote to take notes, Grammarly to catch errors,  WriteRack to tweetstorm. 
• If you want to post visual media then you have to try out tools like PicsArt. These tools are easy to use, and you can create great visual content in less than five minutes. Instead of spending hours on design, all you have to do is choose a template and fill it with your brand graphics.

It takes a lot of effort to create great social media content, but we can always make use of content creation tools to save some time or get a few creative ideas. 

3. Utilize user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is content created by people rather than brands, which means you don’t have to create anything. Utilizing UGC is incredibly important for social media, and it can be used to fill the gaps in your content strategy. Brands may not be able to create their own content during the crisis, but can always rely on user-generated content. 

The type of content you repost will vary depending on the media. 

Instagram: The king of user-generated content, Instagram has all kinds of options for brands to share content created by users. You can repost to your own profile, share images on your story, and easily browse using #hashtags and the Explore function. Aerie is a great example of how this should work:

Facebook: Facebook is a fantastic network for sharing stories and videos with your audience. You can invite your fans to contribute stories, images, or videos and use it to invite discussion and engage with the rest of your audience.

Twitter: A great place to utilize user-generated content, Twitter makes it easy with #hashtags and the “Retweet” function. You can simply retweet users and add your own comments to spark a discussion. Food brands do a great job on Twitter:

when you don’t get the toy you wanted in the kids meal https://t.co/dJc4yiAoB1

— Burger King (@BurgerKing) October 8, 2019

LinkedIn: Professionals love LinkedIn, and you can use LinkedIn to promote user content that’s relevant to your brand. You can repost the content or feature some users in your blog posts. 

If you want to search for location-specific content, you can always use a VPN service to gain access to content specific to a certain location. This method helps you to understand how your audience sees things, and you can tailor your content to meet their personal needs. 

4. Keep up with the updates

Posting relevant content is important, but don’t forget to post personal updates about your business. Your audience may want to know how you’re doing, whether there will be disruptions in service, and what to expect in the coming days. 

To add on to that, make sure you understand your position during a crisis. If you’re in the middle of it, you can provide daily updates on how your local community is dealing with the crisis, and that’s a good way to build a relationship with your audience. 

Lastly, don’t forget to show compassion for the victims, and you can even use one of the content tools to create supportive posts and remind your audience that you’re thinking of them. 

What’s your take?

What do you think about the ongoing crisis and what is your strategy to maintain your social media activity in the upcoming weeks?

Four strategies to maintain your social media activity during a crisis

June 24, 2020 5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

If you want your own business to grow and prosper as the world reopens and a new sense of normalcy settles in, getting to know TikTok is a good first step. The video-sharing platform has emerged from relative obscurity to become one of the leading social media companies in the world, and one of the most business friendly for entrepreneurs who know how to make it work. 

TikTok is particularly custom-made for personal-brand building, and many entrepreneurs are using it in just that way. By way of example, in a scant three and a half months, one top TikTok chef has amassed an army of more than a quarter million loyalists, all hungry for new content. This rising foodie star is Nadia Caterina Munno, but her quarter million TikTok fans know her simply as The Pasta Queen. 

The Pasta Queen’s Social Strategy

Always start with the brand backstory, and for Munno, that means being born to cook pasta. She is a true descendant of Rome, and pasta-making is in her blood. In the 1800s, her great grandparents owned a pasta factory just an hour and 20 minutes south of the Italian capital. To this day, Nadia’s family still has the nickname “The Macaronis.”

The online world, however, did not come as naturally. As Munno shares in an interview, “I’ve never been into technology. Honestly, I learned my video editing and uploading mastery by sheer force of will. Today, I edit all of my videos and credit the growth to a combination of drive, purpose and incentive. I truly believe that is where true talent comes from.”

Cynical entrepreneurs may say that the rapid rise of The Pasta Queen and her newfound internet stardom is simply a matter of luck. They may argue that she was simply in the right place at the right time, and that her success will be difficult, or even impossible, to replicate.

What the cynics are missing is that there really is a TikTok formula, one that smart entrepreneurs can adapt to fit their own brands and promote their own products. Those entrepreneurs may not have cooking skills or clever recipes, but they can still learn from others who have found success on the platform and shape the same strategy around their brands.

Related: 3 Reasons TikTok Is Here To Stay

In the internet age, viewers want real actionable information in exchange for their time. Communicating with the larger TikTok world is also critical on the platform. Successful TikTok content can generate thousands of comments and direct messages every single day. The Pasta Queen hears everything from home chefs trying out variations on their recipes to pleas for help from the less culinary talented. Here are several of the ingredients to her success.

Posting Regularly

If you post at least once a day, the TikTok algorithm starts to favor you as a creator and you have an increased likelihood of getting featured on the sought-after “For You” page.

Not Worrying About Your Niche 

Over-analyzing your niche can stifle your content distribution. Munno says to be your authentic self — and let it shine.  

Engaging Your followers 

Engaging your early followers helps build a loyal foundation, which is a critical first step you have to take. 

Going “Live” At Least Once a Week 

By going live, even if you have a small following, you can be discovered on the “For You” page.

Grabbing Immediate Attention 

You have to engage someone from the start and grab them within half a second. People scroll, scroll and scroll almost on automatic — but if they immediately see something impactful or shocking, they’re likely to stick around. 

Incorporating How-Tos

Any time you can teach, educate or inform an audience, the likelihood of traction is significantly increased (views, comments, shares, etc.).

Studying Analytics

You should frequently review your post analytics to see what is working or what can be adjusted. It also helps you understand your audience better to cater content accordingly. 

Keeping it (Relatively) Short 

Munno says 20-30 seconds has been her sweet spot, adding, “It never hurts to leverage a topic which is universally accepted, such as food. I see lawyers giving rapid public-awareness tips, realtors touring homes and accountants giving tips on taxes. You can do anything, as long as it is fast and digestible.”

A Business, Not a Hobby

Overnight growth is not easy, and it can have a dark side for the unprepared. Entrepreneurs and individuals who suddenly find themselves going viral can feel a bit overwhelmed, but they need to stay professional and learn to treat the opportunity with the appreciation it deserves.

That can mean spending half the day shooting, perfecting and uploading videos to the platform, and additional hours answering social media inquiries, responding to questions and engaging with the wider community. The most famous TikTok users are the ones who take the platform seriously and understand its true potential.

Related: The Rise of Social Media as a Career (Infographic)

Leveraging TikTok into a successful brand building operation is no easy task, and there are a lot of roadblocks along the way. There are still misconceptions about what the platform is, who it is designed for, and how it works. Entrepreneurs who hope to achieve the same success they would growing a business should treat it with the same level of respect.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/350958