How To Build An Engaging Social Network From Scratch? By James Tredwell on September 30, 2019 Most of us know about the social network, it is an online platform through which people communicate or share their views. To start communication, people need to fill their personal details in the account pages to express themselves to the whole world. It is quite essential to survive in this digital world without online communication. People spend most of their time by surfing social channels to check news feeds, messages, comments on different posts. On the other hand, business enterprises are using networks to grow sales & ROI. To understand the social network development process, let’s first understand what the network is and how to build it. Introduction to Social Network It is a platform that provides people the opportunities to interact with others by sharing posts, leaving comments and sending messages on other posts. People expand their business by connecting with others connected already to the platform. Types of Social Network Platform This classification is beneficial for a business to meet their needs. Hybrid Networks Web-Based Networks Mobile Social Networks The process to Build A Social Network The process to build a network completely depends on the business purpose and requirements. In this blog, proper steps are mentioned for better understanding: 1. Analyze Audience Requirements The most important thing to start any project whether it is related to website development is the analysis of the audience requirements. What is this network and who will benefit from it? This is an important question to which answer is required & it helps in making the strategy of the development work. Do some data mining for proper insights regarding the latest marketing trends, competitor strategy, and consumer behavior. It is important to take the analysis on a serious note as it is the base of the complete project. 2. Design & Development A social network website development is a big and complex job to do that needs a dedicated team of developers. When you have analyzed a proper requirement plan about your target audience and shared with the developers, they will begin the coding work. They will design an engaging UI/UX design to engage visitors to the platform and increase customer engagement. In this step, your idea gets converted into reality. This process comprises of other tasks as well like setting up servers, databases, and API. 3. Testing & Quality Check Once the social website is developed, the testing phase starts. In testing, all code and functionality are verified to ensure everything is running appropriately and no errors are present. Different kinds of testing are done including unit, Agile, and module to see the application performance in every scenario. Quality checks are executed by the experts’ team to make sure if any kind of error is present or not. Quality is the utmost factor behind success and can’t be compromised at all. 4. Deployment Once the social network is tested and is performing properly, it’s the perfect time to deploy it over the servers and analyzing its actual performance. The app is released on Google Play and AppStore. Once the deployment is over, the user feedback is studied regarding website working, network layout, performance and engagement. 5. Support & Maintenance After the project is deployed, support & maintenance is essential. If any error occurs regarding the social network performance, functionality, an update is needed, the support team immediately fix issues. For a successful network and proper performance, reliable support is very essential. 6. Build on Latest Technology If you have decided to build a social website, it is important to comprise of the latest technology. The users want a smooth running website for optimized performance. A good technology always improves the functionality of the social platform. A small mistake can lose potential customers and can put a bad impact on business sales. Always hire a team of experienced developers because they know the latest technologies that give the audience satisfaction they are looking for. 7. Marketing It is an important phase which needs special attention and several enterprises assign a specific budget for it. It is a long term process and can be done before the development phase. To reach users and improve business sales, marketing is highly significant. It will take you ahead of the competitors and recognized for sure. It connects a business to the actual user. Marketing is a great way to present yourself to the customer and without this, it is difficult to connect with them. If a user doesn’t know the platform, how will they interact with it? 8. Include Current Trends Users love to explore the latest technologies and trends on their website. It is highly important from the business point to integrate the latest trends on the website. To stay ahead of the competitors and bring users in big numbers you need to be updated. The most popular trends are: Media Sharing: – Users love platforms to share their photos and videos to express themselves. The website users communicate with their friends and family. Messaging Platform: – This completely changed the way people interact with each other. Some social platforms are known for their interactive communication feature. Conclusion: People love exploring social network websites because it connects a user to another in a very appealing manner. To start a social website, it is highly important to know the audience requirements, competitors work and current trends. Once all requirements are analyzed, it is easy to start the development job. Developing social channels for your brand, you will get a perfect business solution for the desired requirements. Hire a team of developers having the proper experience and skills to deal with any challenge with ease. Author Bio – Noor Moore is the Sr Social engine developer in SocialEngine India – Social Network Development provider worldwide. She has great experience in social engine technology and loves to share her knowledge with all tech lovers.
How Social Media Management Activities Can Increase Customer Engagement By James Tredwell on September 27, 2019 Social media has taken over the world, with 31.25 million Facebook messages and 347,222 Tweets written every minute. These platforms provide businesses with a golden opportunity to reach their target audience. One in four social media users say they are following brands from which they may make a purchase, meaning that customer engagement can make a big difference to your sales figures. However, there are lots of other businesses vying for your customers’ attention. Fortunately, you can cut through the noise and help your brand stand out, as long as you understand how to devise a social media strategy that engages your audience. Here are a few general principles to follow: Ask for your customers’ input or opinions Social media should never be a one-way street; think of social media platforms as a means of starting a conversation. Ask your customer base a question, perhaps by setting up a survey. Alternatively, give them an open-ended question. Quizzes also drive engagement. Make them quick and useful, or at least fun. For instance, if you sell purses, you could include a link on your social media feed to a “What Kind Of Purse Are You?” quiz. Be sure to include lots of promotional images. Include a visual element in most of your content Most people skim through social media feeds, focusing on photos, gifs, and short video clips rather than long blocks of text. Be generous in sharing visual content. You don’t have to be a professional photographer to make the most of images, but it’s worth taking time to learn the basics. For instance, it’s usually best to take photos in natural light if possible, and to use the rule of thirds when composing your shot. Editing apps and filters are so readily available that taking and posting a photo can be done in minutes. However, be choosy in what you share. Overloading your followers’ feeds with mundane pictures will drive them away. Include content illustrating how people enjoy or benefit from your products and services User generated content makes your brand relatable, and helps your target market imagine how they would use your products. Encourage your fan base to upload their own photos or videos. People like to buy products recommended by their peers, and this kind of content inspires more trust than your official product descriptions. Localize your content to suit the needs of your audience If you are marketing to people in multiple regions or to those who speak other languages, you will need to make sure that your content is a good fit for their culture and consumer needs. Note that you need a professional translation service for this task; relying on machine translation will end in embarrassment. For example, The Word Point helps businesses of all sizes to localize on-site and off-site content. Organize a contest Contests encourage interaction, and can significantly grow your fan base. Research suggests that competitions boost the number of people engaging with your brand by thirty-four percent. Follow these tips: Choose a prize that is both attractive and relevant to your brand. Set up your contest so that people have to do more than merely follow you or share your content. For instance, you could invite them to submit a photo around a specified theme, or answer a few quiz questions. Set a realistic deadline. Remember, you need time to promote your contest, but you don’t want to allow too much time to elapse, or people will forget about it. Set out the rules clearly, and include a link to the full terms and conditions on your website. Share content, and tag its creators Sharing other peoples’ content is a win-win strategy. It saves you having to create your own material, and it also helps you connect with others. Smart content creators appreciate having their content shared, because they know it will earn them more exposure. If you see that someone has featured your product in some way within their post, tag and thank them. This will get you even more exposure, because the creator will want their followers to know that they were recognized. Capitalize on current events and trends You need to proceed with caution – causing offence will alienate your fan base – but, when properly executed, this strategy can help build your brand’s reputation as modern and fast-moving. A reference to current affairs or a major celebrity can intrigue and engage your audience. You should also use hashtags to share your content. However, keep it relevant to your brand; superfluous hashtags will drive your audience away. Schedule your posts carefully According to Sprout Social, you are likely to engage customers if you post at the following times: Thursday is the most productive day to post on Facebook, whereas Saturday is least likely to reach customers. The 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. window on weekdays tends to work well. For Instagram, the best times to post are Thursday at 5 a.m. 3 to 4 p.m., and 11 a.m., Wednesday at 3 p.m., and Friday at 5 a.m. The most effective times to post on Twitter are Friday, 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Friday should be your preferred day. However, these rules aren’t guaranteed to work in every case. Experiment by publishing posts at different times of day or different days of the week. Keep your branding consistent Use templates for your content, and make sure everyone who creates material uses them. Your followers should be able to recognize your posts immediately when scrolling through their feed. For example, you should use similar layouts and color schemes where possible. You need to strike a balance between consistency on one hand, and originality on the other. Social media management is evolving Social media trends come and go. Always monitor what your competitors are doing, and keep up with industry best practices. It should never be an afterthought; consumers expect businesses to engage with them online. The better you become at grabbing and holding their attention, the more likely they are to become your fans and ambassadors.
Tools to Display Live Twitter Feed in Events By James Tredwell on August 23, 2019 Businesses have many touchpoints through which they reach, attract, engage, and convert consumers into customers. Events are one such touchpoint where businesses present themselves to the audience in a social setting. Twitter’s aesthetics call for Twitter content to be displayed in events as a part of marketing for maximum audience attraction and engagement. And The possibility of reach and exposure to millions of daily users is alluring the businesses to integrate Twitter into their social media marketing strategies. And displaying a live twitter feed on digital screens is the newest & resourceful way to do it. Why display Live Twitter feeds in Events? Twitter is one of the most engaging and interactive social media platforms with content relating to global news, pop culture, events, latest trends, unfiltered user-generated content, and most importantly for brands – the promotions. It is an excellent social media platform that can be combined with the events for productive and beneficial results for your event and the business simultaneously. Therefore, Twitter feed becomes essential for the success of your events. Twitter feed is the aggregation of all relevant content relating to a hashtag or a topic and displaying it in a single feed. Here are some benefits of having a Twitter feed in your event at the display screens. Create a unique hashtag for your event and ask the audience to share their opinions, feedbacks, experiences, etc. using that before, during, and after the event. Display the crucial & influential user-generated content from Twitter in your events and enhance brand image & build social proof. Spread awareness, expand reach & exposure of your event on Twitter & in an offline environment before & during the event. Encourage users to share more & more content about the event and amplify the engagement of the event. Drive interactions & connect with the audience by encouraging them to share as a part of collecting feedback, QnA sessions, discussion, polls, and many more activities. Track & analyze the sentiments of the audience, their experiences, and what they liked. Integrate entertainment by encouraging users to share their photos & videos. Display these visuals as a reward on your event display screens. Display real-time fresh content for better event engagement Promote your brand and event through adding promotional announcements in the Twitter feed. These advantages open doors to many more new opportunities for your business as it can lead to attracting, and conversions for your business. The Twitter feed can be made easily and simply by using Twitter aggregation tools. Twitter Aggregation Twitter aggregation is the process of aggregating content from Twitter using hashtags, profiles, lists, timelines and display these live twitter feeds on a digital screen or signage solution. These tools give you the option to aggregate all-relevant content from Twitter about a particular topic or theme. It would be an intense, thorough, and labor-intensive task to collect & display content without the Twitter aggregation tools. These tools make your work easier, simpler, and effective with many additional useful features. We have listed the best Twitter aggregation tools that are both highly effective & efficient. #1 Taggbox Taggbox is one of the best Twitter aggregation tools that helps you creatively display the influential Twitter content in a twitter feed. It has key elements that help in enhancing the interactivity & attractiveness of your twitter feed. It has the feature to fully customize your twitter feed with diverse feed theme options, adding a brand or promotional banner to your feed, designing the posts display style, its layout & colors, edit feed background, and much more. You can also moderate the content according to your needs & requirements. You can restrict competitors’ content, irrelevant content, and profane content from your feed and can even automate the process. Besides, it gives you additional features to show full-screen announcements, content play, custom posts, gets detailed analytics, show tickers, display content in real-time & many other customizability options. #2 Hootfeed Hootfeed is a dedicated twitter content aggregation tool that has been introduced by the famous social media aggregator Hootsuite. Hootfeed lets your display live Twitter stream on display screens in events. You can display full-screen Twitter feeds, content moderation & profanity filters, easy-to display & share with the audience interface, screen size adjustments to fit the variable display sizes, and increased feed customizability. Increased customization allows you to design your feed in such a way that helps in driving maximum audience interactions & engagement. Hootfeed is an easy-to-understand & simple tool to use for your events. It does not require expert or technical knowledge to set up & can help you make your event successful. #3 Everwall Everwall is a social media aggregation tool that lets you aggregate & display content from Twitter in a unified Twitter feed. Everwall was earlier known as Tweetwall. This tool has diverse options for you to customize your Twitter feed wall with different visuals, colors, layouts, etc. Besides, it has the option of displaying real-time content from Twitter allowing you to display fresh and unique content in your events. Its keywords & hashtag tracking allows you to see users with most engagements & interactions. It has an easy installation with the requirement of the display screen and the internet. You can also moderate the Twitter feed content based on your requirements. Take Away Interaction & engagements are the key elements of an event and they drive the success & impact for the event on the audience as well. With the growing trend of digitization and the influence of social media on the behavior of consumers. It is essential that you combine social gathering and social media together to get the best outcomes. Adding the digital attractiveness & engagement possibilities to your event through Twitter feed will allow the audience to feel more engaged, involved, and gratified. Also, it will help your event to get more reach & exposure on Twitter as well. This gives your event a multi-channel promotion in both offline & online environment Displaying Twitter feed in your events will bring a new life to your event and will enhance the attendees’ experience.
Social Media Stats for 2019 By James Tredwell on August 9, 2019 ‘Social media’ stands for the websites and applications that let users create and share content to get involved in social networking. People make use of a myriad of applications and websites to interact with one another or to look for people with similar interests. The most popular social media websites/applications are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, Tumblr, etc. This piece of writing is an attempt to take a glimpse at some of the statistics that a social media marketing consultant may require to carry out his/her work properly. In recent years, not just individuals but organizations have begun using social media to promote their brand, product or service, to engage with their customers, and to advertise themselves, etc. The effect of social media on our lives has been profound. Never in the recorded history was it so easy to connect with millions of population using simple apps. It is possible to create worldwide campaigns like Fridays for Future and to immediately share information of any kind and in any form (text, graphics, audio or video) despite any number of kilometers between the sender and the receiver. Social media is an extremely powerful tool for an individual as well as organizations. The users have gradually understood its importanceand since they have been utilizing social media for their advantage. Political elections have been altered by sites like Facebook, the Twitter handle of Indian Foreign Minister lent a helping hand to many Indians distressed in foreign lands, businesses of all scale and types are active on social sites to leverage its power to increase sales and carry out activities like customerservice. In short, the uses are varied of social media and its effects numerous. A majority of the people, out of the 57% of the global population using the internet, identify social media with the internet.We go through some of the statistics that arguably are very important in the marketing world: Facebook There are over 2.41 billion monthly active users on Facebook. That’s 27.8% of the entire world population! Facebook is The Most used social media website in the world. That means you can target more than 2 billion people using ads on the website. FB is such a craze that more than half of all of its users, use it daily. It has 1.49 billion daily active users. 500,000 users are added every day, that means 6 new profiles are created every second. It is the world’s 3rd most visited website and that’s why its world Alexa traffic rank is 3rd. There are more than 65 million businesses using Facebook pages for their interests. The number of total people using Facebook as a medium of advertising is over 6 million. 94% of Facebook users access it via the smartphone app. More than a quarter of the world’s total online population, 26.3%, use FB. 45% of people know about the news from FB. 49% of users ‘like’ a FB page to support the brand of their liking. Twitter There are over 326 million MAU on Twitter. More than 500 million tweets are generated every day. 80% access it via the app. Over 100 users use Twitter daily. Katy Perry is the most ‘followed’ person with 107.7 million followers and Barack Obama is the second most ‘followed’ celebrity with 107.2 million followers. 71% of users read the news on Twitter. Twitter is the number one social media platform for politicians. 75% of B2B use Twitter for marketing. 40% of users admit to making a purchase because of an influencer’s tweet. 3pm is the best time to post a tweet on weekdays. YouTube It is the world’s 2nd most visited website. And the most visited social media website now, overtaking Facebook. If you spend about an hour or two on YouTube daily, ever wondered how much time does all the users spend on it collectively? That’s whopping 1 billion hours! Every day! It has 1.9 billion MAU or monthly active users. 96% of American internet users in the age group of 18-24 use YouTube. In the US, not just the young but half of the internet users aged 75 and above use YouTube. YouTube reaches 95% of the Internet as it is available in 80 different languages. Most users are from the US (15.8%), then it’s India with over 8% of all the YouTube users. It was the top iOS app of 2018. Gamers are among the top YouTubers claiming 5 places among the top 10. 70% of views are over a mobile phone. Instagram The number of users here as well is big, with over 1 billion people using Instagram every month. In the US 72% of the teenagers use Instagram. 38% of the users use it multiple times a day. 25% of the smartphone users have the app in their smartphones. 95 million posts are posted every day on this social media application. The ‘Story‘ feature is used up to 500 million times a day. With 148 million followers, Cristiano Ronaldo tops the list. 60% of all the users seek new products via the app. FB bought Instagram for US$715 million. There are over 25 million business profiles on IG. LinkedIn 2 professionals use LinkedIn every second. 154 million Americans have a profile on the platform. 94% of B2B marketers that use other social media publish content on this platform as well. 2 million posts are published every day. Posts that contain images are observed to get more (double) comments. 91% of executives rank this platform as their most preferred for relevant content. 30 million companies have registered themselves on the platform. 50% of the B2B traffic on the web coming from social media originates at LinkedIn. Out of the total 87 million millennial users on the platform, 11 million of them are in decision-making positions. 44% of all the users are women. Snapchat More than half of its users, 54%, log in every day. There are over 100 million users who use Snapchat on a daily basis. About 3 billion snaps are created every day on Snapchat. This is mainly used by the young people aged between 12-24 years. Close to 60% of the college students would be ready to buy a service or a product is they were sent a coupon on Snapchat. Vertical videos are watched more in comparison to the horizontal ones, as many as 9 times more. The app has added 13 million daily active users in the Q2 of 2019. 75% of the users are below the age of 35. For 41% of the US teenagers, it is the most important social network. The app makes $1.68 average revenue per user.
Top 10 Social Media Analytics Tools for Business By James Tredwell on July 24, 2019 Do you know which Pins from your Pinterest account have performed the best? What is the best time to post on your Facebook and Instagram accounts to get maximum engagement? Which Hashtags work best on Twitter? Answering these questions may be difficult without using a social media analytics tool. Any serious social marketer knows the significance of such analytics tool and cannot even think about social media marketing without the use of these tools. But the market has hundreds of such tools available and choosing the right one for your business may be a time-consuming task. So, how do you choose the right social media analytics tool? We have listed down 10 of the best tools available in the market with its benefits to help you choose the right tool for your business; 1. Google Analytics Google Analytics is not exactly a social media tool, but it is still one of the best tools to track your social media campaigns. You can easily set up Google Analytics for your site to monitor and analyze your social media traffic. You can also create various reports for specific social media tracking. The best part of using Google Analytics is that it helps in tracking other analytical parameters of your website as well such as traffic via organic search, traffic from the externally linked websites and exit pages. Other than social media, it can also measure the results of your other efforts of reaching your users such as Guest Posting. So, ‘What is Guest Posting?’ It is nothing but writing an article for another website and adding a link to your website to get inbound links to your site. If you have guest posted on another website and linked it to your website, then the success of the efforts can be measured through Google Analytics. 2. Buzzsumo One of the best social media analytics tools out there is Buzzsumo which shows you the performance of the different social media platforms. This helps you get an insight into the shares of the content and much more details which will help you improve your social media marketing tactics. 3. SproutSocial SproutSocial can be used to access analytics of various social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter from a single place. This is a very effective social media management tool which will help you put in place the right social media strategies for your business. It also provides multiple engagement reports for your social media accounts to evaluate your performance. 4. Snaplytics There is no doubt about it that Snapchat has also been able to grasp the attention of millions of users but not many businesses are harnessing its full potential hence you can be amongst the beginners to take the advantage of using Snapchat to promote your content. But, most of the analytics tools do not cover Snapchat analytics and Snapchat internally does not have a strong analytics tool. Hence, Snaplytics can be the best way to understand the performance of your Snapchat marketing by tracking engagements, replies, and screenshots to help you market better. 5. ShortStack Running a social media contest can be a great way to approach your users hence using ShortStack to run a competition along can help you engage with your users and this app also provides analytics. 6. Keyhole If you have been marketing on social media, you must be aware of the power of a hashtag. To know the performance of your hashtags is also important to understand if you are using the right ones hence to get a hashtag analytics report, Keyhole is a very effective tool. 7. Meltwater If you are looking for a PR- a focussed analytics tool for your social media then Meltwater is the one you should choose as it is all about building your brand image hence it provides analytics related to your brand including top shared content, trending content, etc. 8. Quintly Quintly provides an effective analytics tool for businesses to analyze their social media efforts. This tool offers 350 analytics metrics for social media which can be used by any business to track their social media campaign efforts and results. You can also compare all the social media channels to understand which is performing better and which one is lacking than the rest. 9. Tailwind Pinterest is also a very interesting social media platform to promote your content hence you will also need to track its analytics. Tailwind can exactly do this for you effectively and with some different subscription plans, you can also use it for Instagram analytics. 10. Hootsuite I am sure you must have heard of Hootsuite. It is mainly used to automate your social media posts; it also gives you the analytics of the performance of various posts and the best time to post in various social media platforms to engage maximum users. Final Verdict: A single analytics tool may not be enough to suffice all your social media analysis requirement. We have listed the best in the market hence go through each one of them and choose the ones which meet your needs to the maximum. Choosing the right analytics and using the results to implement relevant changes to your campaign efforts can make a huge positive impact on your customer reach.
