Advertising – Digital Digest by Erik Penn

3 Examples of Instagram Stories Ads

Posted on June 15, 2017 by penndigital Posted in Advertising, Marketing, SEO .

Instagram opened Stories ads up to all businesses last month, giving brands a new way to tap into the more than 200 million people who now use Stories every day.

The rapid growth of Stories has been the key element of note in Facebook’s various Snapchat cloning efforts – while Facebook (and Instagram) may have come under fire for so blatantly copying a core feature from the formerly ephemeral content app, the success of Stories somewhat justifies their process.

It also shows that while we might debate the merits of such tactics, users ultimately don’t care so much where a feature has come from – if it’s useful for them, they’ll use it, which may sound alarm bells for other challengers considering stepping into the social space.

To underline the potential value of Stories as an ad option, last week, at Facebook’s F8 conference, Instagram showcased some of the brands that are seeing success with Stories ads, providing some interesting lessons on what’s most effective and how the option can work to expand your reach.

As a reminder, Stories ads currently appear between Stories as users swipe through, so they need to grab attention fast.

Here are the three examples, and the lessons Instagram highlights from each.

1. Fido

First up is Fido, a wireless carrier in Canada. To launch their new ‘Fido Roam’ global roaming product, Fido used Instagram Stories ads to get their campaign in front of ‘travel-hungry Millennials’.

As you can see, the ad is attention-grabbing and resembles other Stories content – it tells a story within itself. Instagram says Fido researched the most effective creative elements of the campaign with AdParlor’s Intelligence Tags Technology, giving them more insight into the best background colors and images to use to boost performance.

The campaign had a video completion rate of 24%, exceeding expectations.

2. Moen

Moen is the number one faucet brand in North America. Not exactly the brand you’d immediately pick as the best fit for Instagram Stories, right?

Check this out:

While the product itself may not evoke amazing, creative images, the campaign does, showing the brand in a new light for Stories’ younger skewing audience. Instagram says Moen used Olapic’s Content in Motion tools to create the ad, made especially for Stories.

“This resulted in 45 percent more impressions and a fresh, new way for the brand to create engaging content more quickly and efficiently.”

And while not every brand will be able to afford creative campaigns of this caliber, it once again underlines the need to grab attention, and to use great images and video content to create a scene and tell a story. Users can easily swipe by and keep going, so you need to make them pause from the first moment.

3. Red Bull

As with almost any new social media tool, Red Bull are all over it.

To promote their new ‘Red Bull Flying Illusion Show’, Red Bull ran a Stories campaign which, again, uses striking visuals to grab attention.

Of course, having a highly visual show to draw from is a big benefit, but once again, you can see how the framing and color choices have played a part (all three of the above examples use elements of yellow, pastel tones).

Much like Instagram itself, Stories ads need to be well composed, bold, they need to make people stop and pay attention.

Just as you would spend time composing the perfect Instagram product shot, with surrounding context, you need to consider the same for your Stories ads.

As noted, Stories ads have only just been opened more widely, so not many brands are utilizing them as yet, but given the growth and popularity of the function, it may be worth considering. And if you are looking into Stories ads, these tips might help better frame your process to maximize your success.

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

Facebook Lead Ads

Posted on May 15, 2017 by penndigital Posted in Advertising .

They just got a whole lot more useful with Offline Conversion solution aiming to help advertisers tie Lead Ads to downstream conversion activity.

Facebook Lead Ads just got a whole lot more accountable by enabling campaign integrations with offline systems such as CRMs, POS or call centers. Facebook launched a new Offline Conversion solution on Monday to automatically connect with CRMs and other systems to upload the outcome of leads generated by Facebook campaigns into their ads manager.

Advertisers will be able to track conversion activity through the sales cycle and map it back to specific campaigns and lead ads. In addition to being able to optimize existing campaigns based on offline performance data, advertisers can also create Lookalike Audiences of lead ad segments using Custom Audiences, retarget lead customers with upsells or new products or sequence ads based on where users are in the funnel.

Advertisers need to have the following in order to start using Facebook’s Offline Conversion solution:

Access to a Facebook Business Manager account
A Facebook app
Business Manager system user and access token generated for that system user
An offline event setup

There are several ways to connect a CRM or other system to the Offline Conversion solution:

Use Facebook’s native Upload Offline Events manager.
Salesforce and Marketo now have built-in connections to it.
Use Leadsbridge to connect to dozens of CRMs integrated with that service.
Use Zapier to connect to more than 800 apps, including email services and other tools.
Or build into Facebook’s Offline Conversion API.

The program, now available globally, has been in beta since November.

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

These Are The Top Tech Sellers For The Holidays

Posted on December 15, 2016 by penndigital Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media .

Hitwise, a division of Connexity that tracks online searches, said Fitbit was the most sought-after tech product last week, and No. 2 among all holiday items behind Hatchimals.

Tech in fact dominates Hitwise’s Top 10 chart for the seven days ended Dec. 3, which encompasses Cyber Monday. Other top searches included Fitbit Charge 2 (No.8), Amazon Echo (No. 10) and three Nintendo items, including NES Classic Edition (No. 4).

The lineup changed among tech enthusiasts, who were most enthralled by Google Pixel and Google Home (Nos. 1 and 2), followed by Nintendo Switch, Macbook Pro and iPhone 7, Hitwise said.

But The NPD Group, which tracks actual sell-through at point-of-sale, begged to differ. The Top Five categories for the week prior, which included Thanksgiving and Black Friday, were notebook PCs, home automation, sports toys, games/puzzles and streaming audio speakers.

The market research firm also gave huzzahs to instant print cameras for “noteworthy growth,” and to big-screen TVs which “are also making their mark on the 2016 holiday season,” chief analyst Marshal Cohen said.

Total sales for Thanksgiving week more than doubled from the preceding seven days, but were down 1 percent from last year, NPD noted.

For the bird’s-eye view we turn to D&H Distributing, the national tech distributor. Looking at the year overall, the company reported a whopping 77 percent increase in sales of IoT solutions (smart-home and Wi-Fi or Bluetooth-connected products); a 52 percent spike in 3D printing sales; and a 31 percent gain in TV volume, including streaming models.

D&H also enjoyed double-digit increases in floor care, notebook computers, fitness and exercise devices, and mobile phones, albeit against the backdrop of a “slow-to-grow” year for the distributor channel.

What lies ahead in 2017? To continue driving business, the distributor said it’s investing in programs, personnel and technologies to keep its retail customers competitive, and has high hopes for smart-home automation, home media hubs and augmented reality products as consumers look to “build infrastructures that will help them manage their connected-home devices.”

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

How Consumers Eyes Track Display Ads

Posted on April 15, 2016 by penndigital Posted in Advertising, Marketing .

Do consumers actually notice online display ads served on Web pages? Which format of ads do people look at and engage with the most?

To find out, Meditative conducted an eye-tracking study of 39 participants of mixed ages who were assigned certain search tasks.

Digital display ads were shown in the leaderboard (728×90), skyscraper (300×600) and big box (300×250) positions across both Web-page mock-ups and actual sites.

With data from the study, the researchers were able to generate heat maps showing the length of time spent looking at various parts of the pages, as well as gaze maps indicating where people clicked.

Overall, 16.6% of the ads that were served to study participants were viewed (e.g., 50% or more of their pixels were in view for a minimum of one second). Some 50% more ads were viewed above the Web-page fold compared with below the fold, and ads above the fold were viewed for 87% longer, on average.

Digital display ads were 80% more likely to be noticed by study participants if they were relevant to a task the searcher was currently working on, compared with ads relevant to something the searcher had looked for in the past.

Leaderboards, the horizontal ads served at the top of pages, were seen most (25% more, on average, compared with big box ads) and were also noticed most quickly. However, they were viewed for the shortest amount of time, on average.

Skyscrapers, the vertical display ads served along sides of Web pages, were viewed by participants for the longest amount of time, on average (82% longer than leaderboards).

Big box ads, the square units served in various spots on pages, were seen by fewer participants compared with leaderboards and viewed for shorter amounts of time compared with skyscrapers. However, these units garnered the most clicks (1.6x more than leaderboards and 3.3x more than skyscrapers, on average).

About the research: The report was based on an eye-tracking study of 39 participants of mixed age and gender who were assigned certain search tasks. Digital display ads were shown in the leaderboard (728×90), skyscraper (300×600) and big box (300×250) positions across both Web-page mock-ups and actual sites.

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

Facebook has new Reactions for Marketers

Posted on March 15, 2016 by penndigital Posted in Advertising, SEO .

Last week, Facebook officially rolled out a new feature called “Reactions” to Facebook users worldwide.

The new feature serves as an extension of the Like button. Now, instead of only being able to Like a post, Facebook users can choose from six different emotive reactions: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry.

Why the change? As Facebook’s product design director Geoff Teehan wrote in a post on Medium, not everything that’s shared is meant to be liked. The death of your friend’s dog or an article about an unsavory politician won’t just elicit a single emotion in users – -so why limit them to “liking” it?

The same is true for the posts brands publish to their Facebook accounts, which is why these new reactions are opening new doors for marketers.

Now that we’ve had some time to react to this new feature, we’ve done some thinking about the impact these new reactions buttons might have on both marketing and user behavior. In this post, I’ll first touch on how the reactions buttons work. Then, I’ll walk through a few implications for marketers going forward.

How the New ‘Reactions’ Feature Works

The new reaction buttons are already available to everyone — no need to enable their functionality. They’re also simple to use.

To react to a Facebook post the web, hover your cursor over the traditional Like button on any Facebook post to reveal one of six new emotive icons: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry.

To react to a Facebook post on the mobile app, hold your finger on the Like button until the six options appear. Then, choose an icon by tapping on it.

The act of reacting may seem simple, but there are some nuances to the feature — especially regarding how to analyze it — that are relevant to marketers. Here’s what we know so far.

Reactions are counted the same as Likes. (For now.)

According to Facebook’s announcement, “if someone uses a reaction, Facebook will infer that person wants to see more of that type of post.” In other words, if you react to a post with the “angry” icon, Facebook’s algorithm will treat it as if it was Liked when deciding where to place it in a user’s News Feed. (Learn more about Facebook’s News Feed here.)

Why would Facebook’s algorithm treat an Angry reaction the same way they count a positive reaction like a Like or a Love? A study by Jonah Berger, author of “Contagious: Why Things Catch On,” found that content that triggered an angry reaction in readers is 34% more likely to end upon the New York Times “Most Shared” page, while posts that make people anxious are 21% more likely to end up on that page.

In other words, people want to see the posts that’ll make them angry, just like they want to see the posts that’ll make them happy.

Keep an eye on this, though. In the future, Facebook may choose to rank posts differently based on their reactions. (In fact, some people are concerned Facebook’s already ranking posts differently and just aren’t telling us.)

Limited analytics are available on Facebook Insights.

As of right now, you can’t see the general trends of reactions on your business Page. So if you’re an administer for a business Page and you want to see the number of people who have reacted with a “sad” icon on a post, for example, then have to open the Insights page for that post directly. Also, that number is not currently broken down into organic versus paid, so you can’t see which reactions may be influenced when you boosted a post compared to which ones you garnered organically.

To access Facebook Insights on a post, simply click the reach number of any post. The reach number is located right above the reaction buttons on a post, as shown below:

You’ll be taken to a screen that breaks down the numbers of each reaction net on the post itself and on the post shared elsewhere, if applicable.These posts will still only show interactions on a per-post level. Here’s what the post details look now:

Another way to open Facebook Insights is by clicking “Insights” in your Page’s navigation bar, and then clicking directly into the post you’d like to analyze.

If you want to see which specific users have reacted to your posts and what their reactions were, then go to the post and click on each emotive icon for a list of names.

The same reactions are offered globally.

After first testing a whole myriad of emotive icons in Ireland and Spain, the folks at Facebook settled on the six reactions they believed were the most universally and easily accessible reactions for folks all over the world: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry.

They’d originally tested reactions like “yay” and “confused,” but eventually eliminated them because they proved to be too ambiguous for users. Whether Facebook ever decides to roll out any more remains to be seen, as they’re still testing — but they say there are no specific plans to roll out any other reactions as of now.

(If you want a more detailed breakdown of how the current reaction’s came to be, check out Geoff Teehan’s post on Medium.)

Only the first three reactions people take are shown.

You can click on the number of reactions to see all reactions and the number of each reaction per post, but the first three reactions are the ones that’ll show up to users first, unless they click into the reactions on the post.

You can’t remove a reaction.

Just like you can’t remove a like that another user has left on your post, you can’t remove a “sad” or an “angry” by another user, either.

Now that we have a better understanding of how the new reactions feature works, let’s talk about what it means for marketers.

What Do Facebook Reactions Mean for Marketers?

The introduction of Reactions has definitely changed the Facebook landscape for brands. Now, marketers are armed with deeper insight into how their audiences interact with their content — which opens up a world of testing and experimentation. It also could really diminish the meaning of getting a Like on Facebook, which is something marketers will have to keep an eye on.

You now have deeper insight into how your audience interacts with your content.

Facebook’s reactions feature gives marketers a brand new feedback loop from their audience. Users who may not have previously wanted to Like your content (maybe because they didn’t enjoy it, or didn’t feel it was appropriate) are now able to send more specific signals about how your content makes them feel.

Since any reaction currently counts as a Like in Facebook’s algorithm, people who weren’t previously inclined to touch a brand’s content may now react to it, ultimately increasing the signal to Facebook that the content is worth serving to other audiences. This is going to become extremely important for brands as mobile becomes a bigger deal. Users who may not have wanted to use their phones to comment can now use them to “react” much easier.

Is this more diverse loop a bad thing? No! The exciting thing about this metric is that brands can now pay closer attention to how content is resonating with their audience, and then use that information to take specific actions.

Here are a few ideas for how marketers can gain better insight into their audience with reactions:

a) Test to see whether posts with certain types of reactions perform better.

Do posts that get more “love” end up performing better with your audience? Then create more lovable content. Do posts that “anger” users get more shares? Perhaps it’s time to stir the pot a little bit. (In a respectful way, of course.)

How can you test this? First, determine whether your metric for success is clicks or reach. Then, go into your Page’s Insights panel and sort the posts by that metric, clicking on each post to see which reactions they evoked.

Since Facebook only allows us to view these metrics on a per-post level right now, you may need to use a good old fashioned Google spreadsheet to tabulate results.

Note: Since many old posts may not have additional reactions, skip the sorting for now, and instead click into your most recent posts to determine a baseline.

b) Test the power of “love.”

In his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On,” Jonah Berger writes that people are more inclined to talk about things they love. Test this theory by running a campaign and see how much “love” you can dream up from your users. (Download a step-by-step guide to lovable marketing campaigns here.)

Once you’ve run the campaign, go to the Insights page and assess clicks, views, and shares to see if people are actually reacting to and spreading that lovable content.

c) Take note of “love”-ers.

People who are reacting with “love” to a lot of your posts may make for good brand evangelists. While Facebook currently does not segment these people right now, you may want to dig in to that “love” icon manually to keep an eye out for the names that are showing up over and over again. If you’re starting to notice certain people are “loving” posts often, consider keeping a list of these folks for opportunities so you can take the time to interact with them more on Facebook — and even send them great content later.

d) Don’t discount negative emotions.

in the past, when a Facebook post has triggered a negative emotion for a user, that user has traditionally commented on that post, according to Facebook’s research. Now that users have new emotive options, this may very well change. Keep in mind that users who experience a negative reaction to your posts can now react faster — by tapping a button, rather than typing out a comment.

We may soon discover that this has a big impact on user behavior on Facebook, for negative and positive emotions alike. The biggest implication is that marketers like us may get a higher volume of feedback that is also generally less specific. Keep an eye on how how the comment volume changes compared to typical volume. Pay attention to the types of reactions you’re getting (especially on ads), versus the types of negative comments you may have gotten previously.

At the same time, stay wary of trends in positive or negative volume on your posts as a signal of customer feedback.

The “Like” could become less important.

With all these new emotive options, are Likes going to be enough? In other words, if your posts are only getting Likes now, how do you know whether it’s resonating with your audience?

Don’t get me wrong, Likes are still important — but it’s safe to say the game has changed. Now, the act of simply Liking a post has become the path of least resistance. Yes, some people are still used to using the Like button, so this kind of affinity toward content is something to watch for over time. But as users get more accustomed to these different reactions, the bar for Facebook content quality is inevitably going to rise.

Remember: Any reaction is still better than no reaction. At the end of the day, you want your users to feel moved by your content.

This is only the beginning for Facebook reactions. As Facebook continues to make changes to ads, algorithms, and faces, it’s important for marketers like us to keep getting to know our audiences better, create great content, and appreciate our fans and followers. We will, of course, continue to share what we learn along the way.

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

3 Ways To Be An Expert Facebook Ads Spy

Posted on February 15, 2016 by penndigital Posted in Advertising, SEO .

You want to be a Facebook ads spy. But before you start, know that there are better and worse ways to find out what your competition is up to.

Most people think the best way to get information on their competition by using third-party tools that rely on thousands of fake accounts generating equally fake clicks—it’s not. No matter what tool you’re using, sooner or later Facebook is going to shut it down.

A good Facebook ads spy doesn’t rely on third-party tools because they know that Facebook and other social media platforms give you more than enough ways to learn about what your competitors are doing. These secret tools are hidden in plain sight, available to anyone, with some even built into the platform. You just need to use what’s already out there to your advantage.

Here are 3 tips for how to spy on your competitors ads and get valuable insights to make your ads even better.

1. Get Facebook to Tell You About Your Competition

The best spies don’t make people give up information, they get people to give them information. It turns out, you can get Facebook (and your competition) to give you valuable information about their targeting strategy. A great Facebook ads spy doesn’t need to charm Facebook to get it to reveal important information about their competition: these tools are available to anyone.

How to Spy Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads allow users to give feedback with a little X mark in the upper right corner of each right column ad, and through the V in the upper right corner of every Newsfeed ad. Users can tell Facebook to show them different ads, let Facebook know they found an ad useful, or pose the question “Why am I seeing this?” It’s this last option that gives you a clear path to spy on your competitors ads.

You’ll get at least one key insight, and possibly more, on how they’re targeting people, whether it’s based on geography, demographics, or interests—and these can get pretty specific.

In this case, you can see who Verizon thinks would be interested in a new tablet—people from 18 to 49 in the “Technology early adopters” audience. That can help you refine your targeting so you have a better shot at stealing consumers right out from under their nose, or it will help you set a different plan of attack and avoid advertising your product against Verizon altogether.

Here’s another example for a totally different market, an online delivery service targeting bouquets of roses to men with the relationship status “Unspecified” on Facebook.

If you’re also in the market of delivering fresh flowers to customers, and it’s approaching Valentine’s day, you can see this as a way to gain an advantage over the competition by drilling down your targeting to more effective demographics. You could swoop in and reach more customers by targeting your ad for Valentine’s day roses to people in a specific place, a narrower age range and, who are, in Facebook speak, “in a relationship.”

If your competition is trying to cast a broad net, Facebook will tell you. Armed with that information, you’ll be able to drill down like a real Facebook ads spy and smartly target the narrower subset of people who are really interested in your product or service.

2. Find What’s Already Out There

Spying doesn’t always feel good. After all, your mother probably didn’t raise you to steal secrets. But even if you have misgivings about being a Facebook ads spy, what if you just happen to find valuable information where anyone can see it? Is it even spying when it’s all there in plain sight?

Don’t go looking for new and creative ways to tap into your competitor’s ad strategies until you do the simplest work and see what’s already out there. Maybe they’ve referenced successful ads in a blog post, or someone’s put together a list of ads in your field. Regardless of how you do it, use what’s already out there to start getting inspiration and tracking trends in how your competition is designing ads.

How to Spy

Facebook used to have an Adboard that could list out dozens of ads based on your particular profile. Perhaps because it made it too easy for marketers to spy on the competition, they took it down.

But there’s another way. If you’re looking for tons of Facebook ad examples, AdEspresso’s Ads Gallery has over 15,000 ads searchable by keyword, placement, industry, goal, or attributes, all submitted and categorized by AdEspresso users around the world.

Let’s say you’re company makes custom sunglasses, and you want to advertise a big sale to kick off the summer. You want to show off your product, but you know how effective it is to feature people in your ad. So you want to see if the competition is doing the same thing.

In this case, you can see the big names like Zappos and Warby Parker encouraging people to buy sunglasses with images of people having a great time or living an adventurous, active lifestyle.

You could go down that route, and build an ad around people having a great time while wearing your shades. Or you can treat this as an opportunity to really stand out by promoting your sunglasses with a close up headshot that really shows off their distinctive style. Once you know what everyone else is doing, you can see opportunities for something new and different, and build ads that can appeal to your audience’s desire for something unique.

The more ads you can find and compare, the better. If 15,000 Facebook ads isn’t enough, the newAdEspresso University, a comprehensive site for all things social marketing, has over 10x more ads to inspire and inform your campaigns and keep you up to date on what competitors are doing.

3. Act Like Your Competitor’s Biggest Fan

When you think of spies, you’re not imagining them doing their job from their dining room table. They assume a fake name, grab their foreign passport, and act like they’re someone else to fool the competition. You might be able to do your job from your dining room table (or at least a desk) but to be a great Facebook ads spy you will need to assume a role.

If you want to find out how your competition is reaching out to an audience, go undercover. Pretend to be an interested potential user, and your competitors are going to give up a lot more useful information than you’d expect.

How to Spy

Subscribe to your competitors newsletters and visit their sites on a regular basis. If you’re a regular subscriber or interested visitor, you’ll make it on to one of your competitor’s lists. If you’re a newsletter subscriber you’ll be added to a Custom Audience list, and if you’re a regular visitor to their website you’ll get retargeted and end up on a Website Custom Audience list. You can see this in action when you click “Why am I seeing this ad?”

Once you’re a part of these audiences, you’ll start to see more and more bottom of the funnel ads from your competitors on your newsfeed. Instead of waiting around for information, they’ll be sending their latest ads right to you. You’ll get more information about targeting campaigns (see #1) and see what kinds of different visuals, ad copy, and calls-to-action they’re using on a regular basis. This can get extremely specific, so that if you’re browsing a competitor’s website for a particular product, say a specific style of glasses, you’ll start seeing ads geared to that specific product.

You can take this even further by imitating interest in your competitor’s product or service. If they are a B2C company, buying an inexpensive product could reveal how they move customers through funnels or try to upsell. And if you sign up for a free trial of a SaaS service, you’ll get more ads directed your way built around their premium or paid services.

You can also show interest on Facebook. Clicking on the “This ad is useful” button indicates that you want to see more ads from a particular company, or ads of a similar type.

Tell Facebook that you’re interested, and it will automatically start sending more of your competitors ads your way on a regular basis. Every time you log in, you’ll be doing research on your competition’s latest efforts and continually becoming a better Facebook ads spy. Keep it up, and soon your Newsfeed will turn into your #1 source of incredible information about your competitors.

Bonus Tip: Go Beyond Facebook

With these tips, you’re going to learn valuable new insights about how your competition runs their Facebook ads. But Facebook is just one part of a larger marketing strategy. Look at the rest of your competitor’s strategy to get a deeper understanding of what makes them tick, to learn who they think are key audiences, how they frame their value proposition, and where they think it’s important to reach out to new people beyond Facebook.

How to Spy

There are two key places you should be thinking about spying to build on your Facebook ad insights. First, spy on their content strategy. There’s nothing wrong with trying to learn what sort of content your competition is putting out, and what people find engaging (or not!).

Use a service like Buzzsumo to search based on your competitor’s websites and find out how engaged users are with specific blogs or other content. Seeing what interests people will help you refine ideas for great calls-to-action and engaging language on your ads. If you’re running a personal finance service, you can see what stories on a site like Mint.com are generating the most user interest across different platforms.

You can also spy on ads beyond Facebook. Look at what they’re doing on Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn to see what kind of strategies they’re using across different social media platforms. For instance, on Twitter you can use Twitter lists of your competitors so you can see a single feed of only their messages. Set your list to private so only you know who’s on the list of companies you’re watching.

Let’s say you’re trying to break into athletic apparel and want to find out what the big names in the business are doing on twitter, you can put it all in one place.

Once you have your list, you can turn your Twitter feed into a convenient place to see what how your competition is trying to inspire people to really nail their fitness goals and look great while doing it.

Looking at the competition’s larger social media campaigns can spark ideas that will add value to your Facebook ads. And if you want to go even further, AdEspresso University has already thousands of examples of landing pages and Twitter ads to give deeper insights into how companies are advertising off Facebook and guiding users into the next stage of the funnel.

What Do You Do With All That Information?

With just a little extra legwork, you can use existing services, to spy on your competitors ads. You’ll understand what your competitor thinks are their strong points, and learn the value proposition & features they pitch to users. You’ll also be able to find weak points in their ad strategies that you can exploit with better targeting or a stronger pitch.

Being a Facebook ads spy will give you inspiration and insight, but it’s just a start. You need to take the information you’ve gleaned from your competition and use it to build on all the hard work you’re already doing. Even if you could just imitate your competition, you shouldn’t. There’s no guarantee that what works for them will also work for you.

You’re not your competition. You want to separate yourself and prove that your product or service is best, and you need to know what they’re doing so you can either do it better or exploit the opportunities they’re not taking. But at the end of the day, it’s the time and effort that you put into your own campaigns that are really going to make you stand out.

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

5 Quick Tips to Facebook Videos

Posted on September 15, 2015 by penndigital Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media .

Many marketers who are looking to get started with video marketing will turn to YouTube—and for good reason: With 300 hours of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute, YouTube has huge potential for reaching a big audience.

There’s another equally large and quickly growing video home as well: Facebook.

With 4 billion video streams daily, Facebook has established itself as a force to be reckoned with when it comes to video.

Back in 2014 during its third-quarter earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg stated that he thought “going forward, a lot of the content that people share will be video. It’s just very compelling.”

His prediction seems to have come true. Facebook is showing signs of taking videos more and more seriously.

Now seems to be the perfect time to take a closer look at Facebook and how to use videos to engage more fans on the platform.

Follow along with our Facebook experiments!

Buffer has been experimenting with videos on Facebook lately by uploading videos from our current Social Media Strategies email course natively. You can find all the videos uploaded on Facebook here. We have been experimenting with the time of day the videos get shared and with the post update text.

We are still in the process of gathering data on the performance of the videos. We have started tracking our stats in an excel sheet that I would love to share with you if you are interested in learning with us.

Facebook Finally Supports GIFs: Let’s Celebrate!

Posted on June 15, 2015 by penndigital Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media .

There’s an old saying that goes, “A photo GIF is worth a thousand words.”

And as of today, Facebook is finally allowing users to express themselves via GIF.

[Hold for applause.]

While Twitter and Pinterest adopted GIF support last year, it was starting to feel like Facebook was going to leave us hanging. Sure, they released a Giphy workaround back in 2013 that made it possible to post some GIFs on the platform, but that was just a tease compared to what they’re capable of supporting now.

It appears that the feature is still in the process of rolling out. Most users already have access, but Pages (for businesses or publishers) seem to still be waiting for the go-ahead.

The best part?

The functionality couldn’t be easier.

How It Works

1) Copy the link to your favorite GIF.

2) Paste it into the status update bar.

(It’s important to note that when you paste the link and the GIF populates, you have the option to delete the URL that appears in the status update box to eliminate clutter.)

3) Post.

Seriously, that’s it.

In terms of choosing a GIF source, Facebook supports the whole gamut — Tumblr, Imgur, Giphy, Google Image search, etc. As long as you have the direct link to the GIF image file, you’re golden.

(As we mentioned before, the feature is still in the process of rolling out, which should explain any uploading difficulties you may run into.)

What This Means for Marketers

From a marketing standpoint, GIFs are gold.

For starters, GIFs are super easy to consume. With attention spans shrinking, these short video clips provide marketers with the perfect way to capture the attention of their audience in a otherwise noisy feed.

Not to mention, they aim to elicit an emotional reaction from us. Some make us laugh, others make us cry (mostly from the aforementioned laughter), but most importantly, they make us feel something, which in turn, encourages us to share.

Looking to Express Your Excitement?

We’ve rounded up a handful of our favorite GIFs so you can try out the new feature and show your friends and family just how exciting this news is. Check them out below:

Source for gifs: Giphy

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

Make The Most Out Of Periscope, Twitter’s New Video Streaming

Posted on May 15, 2015 by penndigital Posted in Advertising, Emerging Media, Marketing, Social Media .

There’s a new trend in social media – #Periscope. If you haven’t heard of it yet, then where have you been!!?? you will probably have questions that resemble the following:

What is it?
What does it do?
Can I use it as part of my social media marketing strategy?

Well, firstly, let’s answer that last question first – yes you can (and should). But we’ll get to that a little later as I feel it pertinent to answer questions 1 and 2 before we go any further. Here goes…

What Is Periscope And What Does It Do?

Periscope is the brand new Twitter-owned live streaming video app that lets you upload video to the internet in real-time. What is more – if that wasn’t cool enough already – it also allows users (or perhaps they’ll end up being called ‘scopers’) who are watching the stream to respond and leave comments, also in real-time.

Released at the end of March this year, it’s already proving to be extremely popular online, and in many cases rising above the direct competition.

For it’s not the first app of it’s kind, you understand. Meerkat is the main rival, also released in March this year. But, since Twitter own Periscope, and both apps are primarily designed to be shared specifically on that platform, then one does suspect that Periscope will end up winning out. (Social Media Examiner put the pair through their comparative paces in a recent blog post if you want further insight into how these two similar products pit against one another).

Indeed, despite the fact that Periscope appears to have been rushed out (it does lack some pretty basic functionality to be perfectly honest), the move was obviously designed primarily to halt any early growth of Meerkat – and it worked.

Periscope was launched on a Thursday. By that Sunday it was already a huge hit – creeping into the top-30 chart on Apple’s App Store, by which time Meerkat had slipped down to a pitiful 523 (bgr.com).

Who Is Periscope For?

It’s hard to pinpoint at first (but needless to say there are already emerging the narcissistic masses who feel that their moment has finally come as they broadcast live to the world the contents of their fridge). In fact, the true use and value of Periscope probably hasn’t even been discovered/invented yet. This is both good and bad news.

The good news is that there aren’t any ‘rules’ or etiquette to the platform yet. In fact, you could very well be the person who sets the trend for how people use this brand new social media tool long, long into the future. You could build your career on it.

But the bad news is that, since it’ so new, there’s not a lot of existing innovative users/brands out there to take inspiration from. And in fact, even if you download the app right now and start trying to find some decent people to follow, you will encounter difficulties.

Search/browsing/discovery is not yet fully formed and functional, and so finding something interesting to watch is actually quite hard. There are no categories as yet – music, sport, etc. – which is a shame (though we hope that these will come eventually).

So, at the moment, while we’re all just getting to grips with the thing, and as we’re waiting for updates that will iron out the wrinkles that are inevitable with any new product, the time is now perfect to make some waves with it. You’ve really got the chance to stand out here on something new, and maybe even set the trend for how marketers are going to use this brand new social media in the future.

We’ve been having a play with it, and have come up with a few ideas for how to make the most of Periscope in its early stages of existence, and how you might use it to promote your brand.

3 Tips To Start Making The Most Out Of Periscope

1. Come Up With A Catchy Title For Your Broadcasts

With Periscope you get to give your broadcasts a title before you start filming. Users of the platform will be scrolling through a lot of profile pictures, deciding what to watch (if anything). So, in order to capture their attentions, chose a really nifty title that will really grab their interest amongst all the other junk that they’re scrolling through – make themwant to tune in and know more about what you’re doing.

2. Get The Timing Right

This will of course be difficult at first. But, that’s why you’ve got to experiment. You will want to be broadcasting at various different times of the day at first and making a note of your engagement levels as you go along. Over time, you should see a pattern emerging, so you will know, generally speaking, when the best time will be to broadcast to your growing audience.

In the same vein, if you can come up with a truly innovative concept for a string of great ‘Scopes’ (they might end up being called that – who knows?), then you should be able to dictate to your audience exactly when they should tune in next to catch them going live.

3. Make Your Broadcasts Available On Twitter

Periscope gives users the option of sharing their broadcast on Twitter. At the moment, this is still just in the form of a link, which will include the title that you have given your broadcast. But, currently, this is the best way to start drawing in some of your Twitter following over to Periscope. Your broadcasts will be available for 24 hours after you finish filming and then disappear. When users click on the link after this 24 hour period then they will be directed to a page where they will be encouraged to sign up for Periscope and download the app.

Final Word – Remember It’s Live!!

Ok, so Periscope is new. There’s no doubt that it’s cool, and will almost certainly prove to be popular – especially as the product improves (which it desperately needs to do) over the coming months.

But, in the meantime, while you’re coming up with and perfecting your Periscope campaigns, I think that the best advice I can give you is to try and make sure that you’re making use of the fact that Periscope is live.

Ask yourself every time you start to broadcast – why am I using Periscope here and not YouTube? What’s so special about what I’m filming that it works better live?

If your answer is ‘nothing’, then you will be missing the point of the social media. So, more than any other medium perhaps, start making your marketing reactive to what’s happeningright now, and jump on those trends in a way that has simply never been possible before.

Good luck. We’re all looking forward to finding you on the new platform as you single-handedly invent the most effective marketing method for it. Have fun!!

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

The Ad Images Cheat Sheet

Posted on April 15, 2015 by penndigital Posted in Advertising, Marketing .

It’s said that a picture’s worth a thousand words, but when it comes to digital ads, the right image can mean so much more: the difference between being noticed or ignored, between helping your business’s bottom line or not.

While choosing images for your ad is both art and science, there are some general best practices that can help you along the way. We created the Ad Images Cheat Sheet (click image below) to share those tips. Save it to your desktop, print it out and keep it somewhere handy — whatever you like. We hope it helps you get more value from your ads on Facebook.

If you want to hear what I have to say in 140 characters or less, please follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/erikpenn.

1. Fido

2. Moen

3. Red Bull

They just got a whole lot more useful with Offline Conversion solution aiming to help advertisers tie Lead Ads to downstream conversion activity.

How the New ‘Reactions’ Feature Works

Reactions are counted the same as Likes. (For now.)

Limited analytics are available on Facebook Insights.

The same reactions are offered globally.

Only the first three reactions people take are shown.

You can’t remove a reaction.

What Do Facebook Reactions Mean for Marketers?

You now have deeper insight into how your audience interacts with your content.

a) Test to see whether posts with certain types of reactions perform better.

b) Test the power of “love.”

c) Take note of “love”-ers.

d) Don’t discount negative emotions.

The “Like” could become less important.

1. Get Facebook to Tell You About Your Competition

How to Spy Facebook Ads

2. Find What’s Already Out There

How to Spy

3. Act Like Your Competitor’s Biggest Fan

How to Spy

Bonus Tip: Go Beyond Facebook

How to Spy

What Do You Do With All That Information?

Follow along with our Facebook experiments!

Top 10 Facebook Video Tips for Beginners

1. Upload your videos natively (via Buffer!)

2. Catch people’s attention within the first 3 seconds

Tip: Uploading a Custom Thumbnail

3. Create Content Exclusively for Facebook

4. Create Videos That Are Shareable

5. Tease/Give Information

How It Works

1) Copy the link to your favorite GIF.

2) Paste it into the status update bar.

3) Post.

What This Means for Marketers

Looking to Express Your Excitement?

What Is Periscope And What Does It Do?

Who Is Periscope For?

3 Tips To Start Making The Most Out Of Periscope

1. Come Up With A Catchy Title For Your Broadcasts

2. Get The Timing Right

3. Make Your Broadcasts Available On Twitter

Final Word – Remember It’s Live!!