Every time you post a piece of content that no one engages with (e.g. product content usually gets very low engagement), the social media platform’s algorithm learns that users don’t like your content.

As a result, the algorithm will show your next post to less people, so your opportunities for engagement have now decreased.
Thus, your 2nd post will most likely get less engagement than your 1st post.

The algorithm will now show your 3rd post to even LESS people, which will further decrease your opportunities for engagement.
And this keeps going and going in vicious downward spiral, so that posts that used to get 1,000s of views, now get 100s of views (or less)!

Unfortunately, I’ve seen many companies go down this path by consistently posting product-based content. You can see their engagement dramatically decrease quickly and then you just don’t see their posts at all anymore because the algorithm has learned not to show it to you.


So, how do you avoid this? Post content that will add value to your target audience!


Solve their pain points, give free tips and content and information they can’t get elsewhere. When you do talk about your company, talk about DEI initiatives or things you are doing to help local communities.

The focus your content should be about THEM, your target audience, and what will add value to their lives.

If you do that, you will get more views and engagement, and generate more awareness and more business opportunities as a result.

This is social media, not ANTI-SOCIAL media. To be successful with social media, you have to engage with others. If you only post content, it’s like you’re on the sidewalk shouting things through a megaphone. Eventually people will tune you out, and stop engaging with your content.

Social media is about reciprocity. Engage with the content of others 5-10x as much as you post content. This will ensure you stay top-of-mind, and your biggest advocates continue to engage with your content.

After all, why did someone post content on LinkedIn? They want engagement. They want to be validated! Give it to them – especially if that content would add value to your target audience as well.

This isn’t Instagram. You don’t get 30 likes and 5 comments every time you post a selfie.

Most content on LinkedIn gets 5 likes or less and 1 comment or less. If you consistently engage with someone’s content, they will remember you! In turn, they will engage with your content, and they will be more likely to accept your invitation to connect (and a meeting request) as well.

So don’t turn LinkedIn into anti-social media, engage with others – learn, network and grow. It’s the whole reason the platform exists!

Recently, LinkedIn asked me (since “you’ve been posting some great stuff on LinkedIn” – wow, pretty cool!) what trends I see for 2019.

My answer: MORE

Strategy-level:

MORE mobile, digital, social and more data-driven and customer-centric decision-making and experimentation with innovations like AI and AR.

Tactics:

MORE social selling. I get so many spam calls, I don’t budge when my phone rings now, and I get so much spam email that I only view my Focused folder in Outlook. Social media will go from a “nice to have” to a “must have” for sales + business development.

MORE creativity with advertising. TV and traditional display ads get less eyeballs by the second. Companies will get more and more creative with advertising. For example:

• “In-game” TV ads – so you can’t DVR past them – that appear during sporting events today. These will become more prevalent,
• Ads on voice technology like Alexa – or even sponsored results, which gets dicey because you wouldn’t know if it’s the “best” answer or a sponsored answer
• “Anti-beacons” like Burger King’s new Whopper campaign. I’ve never understood why mall stores don’t have anti-beacons set up for their competitors’ stores. If I’m running Gap, I’m sending someone an offer every time they walk into H&M.
• Ads inside of video games – Roblox already does this. I saw an Aquaman movie ad on the wall of a building inside my son’s Xbox game recently. Integrated video game advertising!
• As automatic cars start to take off, how long will it be before we start seeing ads on our windshields?

MORE automation, and not always in a good way. Everyone wants to automate everything in marketing and sales, but many companies lack processes to support the automation, so they end up spamming the heck out of people, or they never follow-up outside of their automated sends, and thus, miss opportunities.

MORE video. As video comprises more and more of the internet’s content, everyone will be doing video in 2019. Facebook and LinkedIn already favor video over all other content. Those that are reluctant to do video in 2018, will be forced to do it in 2019 to sustain their current reach.

This will be an exciting year with a lot of big leaps forward in marketing in sales. It will be fun to watch it all unfold!

Words matter. For example, “financial advisor” is searched for 10x more than “financial professional.”) When your team writes LinkedIn profiles, websites and sales materials, use words your prospects typically use. This will allow you to get found and be more easily understood.

Other surprising results:

• “Sales” 70x more than “business development” – no one wants to say they do sales, but you are much more likely to be found if you do
• “Innovation” 2x more than “innovative” – craft your content to use that tense instead
• “Strategy” 50% more than “strategies”
• “Online” 10x more searches than “digital” – an oldie, but a goodie
• “Digital marketing” 10x more searches than “online marketing” – but not when it comes to marketing
• “SEM” 20x more than “search engine marketing” – abbreviate this one
• “SEO” 15% more than “search engine optimization” – this one doesn’t matter at much
• “Social media” 80x more than “social networks” – it may not be grammatically correct at times, but using “social media” will get you found more
• “Facebook” 80x more than “social media” – if you are talking about Facebook, say “Facebook”

Want to run some searches on your own? Check our Google Trends (https://trends.google.com) to do comparisons between 2 or more words or phrases.

Every year, LinkedIn brings together sales leaders from around the globe at their annual Sales Connect conference. This year, it is clear that Sales Navigator is a big priority for LinkedIn. They are continuously investing and expanding the capabilities of Sales Navigator, and today they announced a slew of new features focused on 5 key areas to create what they are calling a “System of Engagement.”

1) Tags and Notes – you can now write tags and notes and organize information on leads or accounts and categorize any way you want – such as where you met, how to follow-up, or the contents of your last conversation. Tags and Notes launched a couple of weeks ago. Personally, I’ve been hoping for this one for quite a while, and I have been loving it so far. Here’s what it looks like in action:

2) CRM – LinkedIn announced an integration with Salesforce a while back, and now through their CRM Partner Program, they will be allowing other CRM companies to create apps that plug Sales Navigator into other CRM platforms. The first batch of partners are Oracle, SAP, SugarCRM, HubSpot and NetSuite.

You will be able to see LinkedIn information at the contact level. You can set up leads, and act upon that activity more easily – you don’t have to move back and forth between platforms anymore. This lowers the barrier to social selling. No longer will you have to cut and paste information from LinkedIn into your CRM. This is huge.

You can also write directly into your CRM – more things you will no longer have to copy and paste into your CRM system and vice versa.

3) InMail 2.0 – a group of new enhancements to InMail were announced including:

• The current iteration of InMail blocks the entire window when you are sending a message. Now, the window be on the side of the screen on the desktop, similar to Gmail’s interface.
• LinkedIn will also give you icebreakers – common connections and items to include in your messages to improve likelihood of a response – while you are creating your InMail.
• You can include attachments now. Let me repeat that: You. Can. Include. Attachments. Now. Hallelujah! It’s also through a great, interactive, data-rich service method called PointDrive,

4) Search – You will now be able to search by:

• Spotlights – a group of key sets of information that will give you ways to drill deeper into your search results such as how many of your results have changed jobs in the last 90 days, have been mentioned in the news the past 30 days and have posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days
• Department size and revenue (to determine if a company should be in your target audience)
• Senior leadership changes at companies (new people tend to make changes to personnel and technology)
• Zip code of a company’s headquarters (until now any office would appear in search results, but most decision makers are in a company’s headquarters)
• Growth of both company and department (to see the trajectory of a company and department)
• Content (keywords for content they are posting to see what is important to them)

Some of these enhancement are live (Spotlights, department size and senior leadership), and the rest are coming soon.

5) Sales Navigator for Gmail – this integration of Sales Navigator and Gmail brings Sales Navigator directly into your Inbox. You’ll have all the information you would have in Sales Navigator (connections in common, interests, shared companies, more) that you can use to start a conversation now in Gmail.

This one is already live as well. You can this find plug-in in the app store on mobile (search Sales Navigator) or here:

When I spoke with Derek Pando, Senior Marketing Manager at LinkedIn, he related “the new Sales Navigator features are to enhance the overall customer experience of Sales Navigator, and to integrate it into daily workflows to get people the information they need as easily as possible.”

With these new launches, LinkedIn has showed that they realize the way forward for them is through Sales Navigator, and the best way to do that is to help set sales teams up for success by making it as easy as possible to do social selling.

So, Sales Navigator users, what do you think of the new features?

About the Author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies transform their social media programs from driving engagement to driving revenue. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to set-up a sales-driving social selling program at your organization, contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form below.

I loved cartoons ever since I was a kid. Every Saturday morning, I was up at the crack of dawn to watch and watch and watch until my father would drag me outside to help him on his pet project of the day.

As I got older, one of my favorite cartoons was Ren and Stimpy. In one episode, Stimpy was charged with guarding the “History Eraser Button.” The button that erases everything, and the one button you should never push.

LinkedIn has a button like this as well. It doesn’t erase anything, but whatever you do, don’t click this button!

The one button on LinkedIn you should never click is the Connect button in the “People you may know” section in the top right of your home page. The button seems simple and innocuous. However, if you push this button, it will send a generic “I would like to add you to my professional network” Invitation to Connect to that person. You don’t have the opportunity to personalize the invite.

Why is personalizing invitations important?

Say you were getting an invite to a birthday party. If the invite said “I would like you to come to my party,” and you knew the person really well, you would probably go. However, if you weren’t that person’s best friend, and you received that invite, your incentive to attend would be low.

However, if you received an invite that said, “I would love for you to attend my birthday party. I know you like bounce houses, beer and baseball, and this party will have all three.”

Which party invite would make you want to attend the party more – the generic or the personalized invite?

Take this same approach to your Invitations to Connect on LinkedIn. If you are connecting with someone you have known for a long time, “I would like to add you to my professional network” is probably going to get accepted.

However, if you just met the person at a conference last week (along with the other 100 people that person met), they might not even remember you, let alone want to connect. So, give them some reasons – remind them where you met, how you met, what you talked about, things you have in common (schools, former companies, connections).

Most importantly, mention what VALUE are you going to provide. For example, you want to share thoughts and ideas, or you both belong to the same non-profit and you want to help out. For some specific language for Invitations to Connect, check out Brynne Tillman’s recent post.

So where do I connect then?

Always connect from the person’s profile page. To get there from that same “People you may know” section, click on the person’s photo or name instead of clicking on Connect button . You will then be taken to that person’s profile page. From there, you will see a giant, candy-colored blue Connect button. When you click on that button, you can then personalize your invitation, and your invite will have a much higher chance of being accepted!

Key takeaways:

1. Always personalize your Invitations to Connect
2. Always connect to someone via their profile page, so you can personalize your Invitation to Connect

Related articles:

• NEW FEATURE in LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes company research faster and easier
• The best part of LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index
• 5 common social media content mistakes (and how to avoid them)

About the Author

Robert Knop is a passionate helper of people, and Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping companies harness the power of social media to add value their customers, build trust and drive sales. He’s always happy to talk all things strategy, digital and social selling.

If you’d like to learn how to set-up a profit-driving social selling program at your organization, whether big or small, feel free to reach out to Robert.

Photo: Doug Belshaw

All social media marketers want to create content that resonates with their target audience. However, I have noticed after years in social media that many companies seem to make similar mistakes when it comes to social media content marketing.

Here is a list of 5 common social media content mistakes to avoid:

1) Making it all about themselves.

In social media, content needs to be about the audience – based their needs and what resonates with them. What companies want to talk about is their products and services, and many companies post this content on a regular basis. The problem is, social media users did not log-on to see content about products and services, so social media marketers need to frame their content in a way that will be valuable to their audience.

To do this, social media content needs to be P.U.R.E. – Powerful (compelling, stands out, stands on its own), Useful (provides values, not selling products), Relevant (something pertinent to the target audience at that time) and Engaging (makes target audience want to do something with it – e.g. share it with others, sign-up for a newsletter, buy something).

2) Losing their identity.

When I conduct reviews for companies regarding their social strategy and content, I see many brands posting content that is not aligned with their target audience.

For example, they have a highly-sophisticated client base, but they are posting 101-level content because it gets the most engagement. So, even if they get a ton of engagement, it is not with the audience they want to buy their products and services. Thus, even though it’s “successful” on the surface, it’s ultimately unsuccessful because it will not lead to business.

It’s all about quality over quantity – 10 shares from a company’s target audience is better than 20 shares from people outside that target audience.

3) Not using data enough.

Every company has a plethora of valuable data on their customers from sales, social and traditional marketing, but many companies don’t use this data when they are creating their social content. The most successful companies on social segment their overall audiences and target messages only to certain segments to which it is relevant.

Also, the results of previous pieces and campaigns inform what audiences like, do not like, and what will drive leads and sales. To optimize this further, test, test, TEST different messages to continuously keep up with target audience preferences and changing needs. Data needs to be at the heart of all content decisions from original strategy to end-of-the journey optimization to ensure strong ROI.

4) Designing for desktop.

Per Comscore, 65% of all digital time in the US is spent on mobile. However, most companies are still creating and optimizing their content for desktop, which is a big disconnect with consumer preference.

Companies need to ditch those extra long articles, and especially those enormous infographics! After all, users can barely read those on a desktop device. To use this content, cut those big infographics, brochures and other materials into “snackable” pieces that can be easily consumed on any device. As added bonuses, companies will have 10x the content to use, and it will be much more likely to be viewed and shared this way!

5) Sharing the exact same content across multiple channels.

Many companies with slim social resources post the same content on many different social sites, which is understandable, but not ideal. Although, some things are universal like using imagery and video, the thought leadership content that works on LinkedIn doesn’t necessarily work on Facebook, and definitely doesn’t work on Pinterest.

If resources are scant, optimize for each channel by adding site-specific nuances, like adding a hashtag and/or tagging the appropriate @ on Twitter. Middleware programs like HubSpot and Buffer make it easy to do this.

If resources are not an issue, design for each channel, then look at the type of content that works for each channel, and create accordingly. For example, the content that results in the most engagement and conversations for me on LinkedIn is…content about LinkedIn – big surprise! When I post that same content on Twitter, it receives a lot less interest. The more time companies can take to create content that works with each channel, the more successful their social media efforts will be.

Key Takeaways

To avoid the biggest social media content mistakes, companies need to make sure they are:

• Designing content for their target audience’s needs and preferences
• Using data to shape their strategy and tactics
• Creating site-specific content

Related articles

• The value of social selling
• What should your social media objectives be?
• 4 steps to social media content success

About the author

Robert Knop is a passionate helper of people, and Founder of Assist You Today, a company focusing on helping companies get closer to their clients, build trust and drive sales by harnessing the power of strategy, data, digital and social.

To find out how to set your company up for long-term success in this new digital age, and generate more sales using strategy, data, digital and social, contact Robert at 323-972-3566, or simply complete the short form below.

  [contact-form] 

Photo: Andy Roberts

I recently attended the Digital Marketing for Financial Services Summit (#DMFSToronto). Digital leaders from Citi, Facebook, Wells Fargo, MetLife, Allstate, Salesforce and more were there talking about what is working, not working and what is coming next within digital marketing for financial services.

5 accelerating trends:

1) It’s all about the data.

It has ALWAYS been about the data in digital marketing, but now with so many advancements in programmatic advertising, real-time media buying, CRM, data lake technology and data visualization services, it’s easier than ever to track results, test, learn and optimize your marketing efforts.

Hari Pillai from Invesco spoke on a panel about a struggle many companies have – being data rich, but knowledge poor. His keys to success were to create a strong infrastructure for your data, and an API to simply and effectively leverage your data, so you know where the customer is in the journey. In his words, “Data is the secret weapon to move the customer down the journey.”

2) Customers matter more than ever.

As we all know, the dynamic has flipped to a customer being in charge more than ever in the buying process. 57% of the purchase journey is done before a customer ever contacts a supplier per the CEB, so you need to listen to the key needs of your customers and figure out how to solve those needs.

Ramy Nassar from Architech had a great presentation about focusing on customer needs instead of financial products. My favorite line from his presentation was “Think about the need, not the transaction. No one wants to buy a mortgage, they want a house.”

3) Social will soon rule the world.

The typical North American adult checks social media 17 times a day. SEVENTEEN! That seemed high when I first heard it, but now that I think about my own daily habits, that seems a little low.

Combine that with the fact that cold calling and emailing response rates are hovering around 3-4%, and millennials preference for social as the #1 method of contact, and social will soon be taking over as the primary communication vehicle for marketing and sales.

Any financial professional or salesperson that does not have a complete LinkedIn profile, which is optimized for search will slowly begin to lose their client base.

I spoke on the value of social selling to financial institutions in this new digital world, and how to use the power of social media to generate leads and sales.

4) Wearables are not going away.

If you are looking for the next big thing, wearables are it. How long is it until that Fitbit we use on a daily basis to track our steps starts feeding that information to doctors? Insurance companies? Retail stores? It’s a matter of time until everyone knows everything about everyone else. Enjoy your 15 remaining minutes of privacy! And be prepared to have everything measured and managed in real-time.

Rachid Molinary of Banco Popular de Puerto Rico presented an informative use case on how they quickly integrated mobile banking into wearable technology. Now you can check your BPPR account balance in a matter of seconds on your Apple Watch. What was even more impressive was the processes and systems they have put in place to bring this new tech to market in a short period of time.

5) The pace of change is fast (and will get faster).

Mitch Joel gave a fantastic keynote about how fast the world is changing, and how every company thinks they are being innovative. However, to truly create innovation is to “create something that the market did not know that it needed, that then becomes adopted (and paid for) in a way in which we could have never imagined our lives without it.” Not many companies are doing this today.

Erin Elofson from Facebook spoke about their roadmap, and how VR is playing a huge role in their future. To get a small glimpse of their VR capabilities, check out the first film shot with the new Facebook Surround 360 camera. This is just the snowflake on the tip of the iceberg.

So, how will you and your company react to this new digital world in financial services? These changes are coming sooner than anyone expected. Those that adapt quickly, will thrive, those that don’t will struggle to survive.

Related articles

• The value of social selling
• Invalid traffic becoming a bigger problem in programmatic advertising
• 4 steps to social media content success

Photo: Alberto Garcia

We all know programmatic advertising is much more targeted than direct buying. With programmatic advertising, you only pay for the audience that you want, and can negotiate much better deals than with direct buying because of real-time bidding. So, you get:

• Better targeting
• Cheaper costs

Programmatic advertising a no-brainer…or is it?

Invalid traffic (IVT) has been a problem for years in display advertising, and the problem is getting worse. What is most interesting, though, is that based on new data from comScore, IVT is worse for programmatic advertising – especially for video ads – and getting worse.

Based on these numbers, direct buys get more views than programmatic. Thus, to get the same views with programmatic that you do with direct buying, you will need to get 22% more impressions with your programmatic ads than your direct buys.

The problem is even worse with video ads. Your programmatic video ads would need a whopping 63% more impressions than your direct buys to achieve the same number of views.

Now, I’m not recommending a move back to direct buying. As we all know, we should be measuring results based on bottom-line impact. However, if our ads are not being seen by real people, the top of the funnel gets that much smaller, which decreases our overall opportunity.

In addition, IVT is a problem that – just like programmatic advertising – is getting more and more sophisticated. A rising amount of IVT requires advanced analytics to even detect it.

So, we, as marketers, need to be more diligent than ever when it comes to media buying and the sites and partners we work with to make sure our ads are actually being seen by the audiences that we are paying for.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

About the author

Robert Knop is a strategy, digital marketing and social selling guru, a passionate helper of people, and Founder of Assist You Today, a company focusing on helping companies add value, build trust and drive sales by harnessing the power of social media.