How to Customize Slack for Social Media Teams

Is more than one person involved with your social media marketing?

Are you looking for a way to improve collaboration on marketing projects?

Whether your team is within an office building or scattered around the world, Slack's third-party app integrations make it easy to create a customized collaboration center.

In this article you'll discover how to customize Slack for social media team collaboration.

Discover how to customize Slack for your social media team.

Slack, an online communication tool for teams, is designed to replace email.

Team conversations take place in chat rooms, or "channels." You can create channels for different projects or topics. You can also direct message individuals and select groups of people. All of the content that you post on Slack is searchable, including files, conversations, people, and notifications. Just enter a keyword or two in the search box at the top right and press Enter.

Slack will integrate with many third-party tools, such as Google Drive, Trello, Dropbox, Heroku, Crashlytics, GitHub, Runscope, and Zendesk. It also will support community-built integrations.

Slack will integrate with a variety of third-party apps that your team is likely already using.

Here's how to integrate third-party tools with Slack and use key Slack features to communicate with your social media marketing team.

Slack allows you to connect a variety of third-party apps. Explore the directory to find apps that will help your team. Screenhero and Google Hangouts are two communication apps in particular that you'll likely want to connect to your team's Slack account.

Screenhero

Screenhero is an app that lets your team use screen sharing for collaboration.

Screen sharing is an easy way to present your ideas to the group without having to send files back and forth. Everyone can jump in and get problems solved quickly and efficiently without wasting time on logistics.

You can initiate screen sharing with your co-workers by using the "/username" command. Coolest of all, Slack allows everyone to use their own cursor to point out elements in the shared screen.

Sharing your screen with other members of your team makes it easier to collaborate.

Google Hangouts

No matter how much you love using Slack, not all of your vendors and clients are going to feel the same way. This is where Google+ Hangouts' Slack integration comes in handy.

Google+ Hangouts chat is the perfect way to communicate quickly and efficiently with people who work outside of your Slack environment. You can also integrate a Hangouts chat with any communication method on Slack: channels, private groups, or direct/group messages.

You don't have to switch between the two applications, which is a huge timesaver. Plus, it provides everyone with easily searchable instant messages. Both you and the other party keep a record of each conversation.

To connect third-party apps with Slack, go to www.slack.com/apps. In the search box at the top of the page, enter the name of the app you want to integrate with Slack.

Go to the app directory, and type in the name of the app you want to integrate with Slack.

Once you select the app, you see a page with details about it. Click the Install button to install the app to your team's Slack account.

Install the third-party app to your team's Slack account.

On the next page, click the Add [app name] Integration button, and the app will be installed.

Click the Add [app name] Integration button to complete the installation.

Next, you have the option to customize the username and icon for the integration. You can customize the integration settings if you want.

After you make your changes, click Save Settings.

Three of the most useful (and fun) built-in Slack features are Quick Switcher, Recent Mentions, and Create Your Own Emojis. Here's how to use and access these features.

Quick Switcher

Quick Switcher is the fastest way to jump to a conversation in Slack. To open the box below, press Command+K on the Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows.

Open the Quick Switcher to see a list of Slack channels and conversations for your team.

You can now quickly navigate a list of your channels, groups, and direct messages.

Tip: Quick Switcher is just one of many features you can access with a keyboard shortcut. To see the full list of shortcuts, press Command+? on the Mac or Ctrl+? on Windows.

There are keyboard shortcuts for many Slack commands.

Recent Mentions

Another handy feature is Recent Mentions. When you want a specific team member to take notice of a conversation, @mention him or her in your message.

To check your recent @mentions, click the Mentions & Reactions icon (@) in the top-right corner. You'll see a list of every time your name has been mentioned in a conversation. Click on one of the mentions to go directly to that conversation.

Create Your Own Emojis

Custom emojis are easy to create, although you need administrative rights to do so. To get started, click on your team's name to open the Team Menu and then select Customize Slack.

To get started creating a custom emoji, choose the Customize Slack option from the Team Menu.

On the next page, click on the Emoji tab and type in a name for your custom emoji.

Type in a name for your custom emoji, upload an image from your computer, and then click the Save New Emoji button.

Next, click the Choose File button and select the image you want to use for your emoji. When you're finished, click the Save New Emoji button.

Conclusion

As we move away from a physical office culture towards an online communication style, tools like Slack continue to emerge. To get the most out of it, you'll want to connect the third-party apps your social media marketing team is already using and get to know key Slack features.

What do you think? Do you use Slack with your team? Are there other apps or Slack features that you use regularly? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Tips for customizing Slack to improve collaboration with your social media marketing team.

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Original source: How to Customize Slack for Social Media Teams.
http://www.jretechnology.com

4 Little-Known Tools to Curate and Publish Content

Is curated content part of your social media marketing?

Looking for new ways to collect and share curated content?

New tools are changing the way marketers compile and deliver handpicked content to their social media audiences.

In this article you'll discover four unique ways to curate social media content on Medium, Twitter, SlideShare, and your blog.

Discover four unique ways to publish curated content on social media.

Medium is a great platform for marketers because it allows you to distribute content quickly. You can write long-form articles, short pieces and tweets, and upload videos to share with the Medium community. When you publish articles, they're shared with your followers and a network-wide feed where people find content based on tags and the amount of engagement posts receive.

Medium also offers a content-curation opportunity that many people overlook. You can create your own publication and curate articles from authors around the web.

Create a publication and add curated articles.

To create a publication, go to the Publications page and click New Publication. From there, fill in the details for your publication and design the layout. You can choose the layout style (Grid, Stream, or List) and how many stories to include on the homepage.

To curate content, search Medium for articles that are aligned with your publication's message. If your publication is about satire, for example, research "satire" and look for relevant posts.

Once you find an article that you want to republish, scroll to the bottom of the story and click the ellipsis icon. Then select Request Story from the drop-down menu and choose the publication you want to publish it to.

Select the Request Story option to send a request email to the author.

Once you've selected the publication, you'll see a request email to send to the story's author. If the original author decides to let you use the story, they will submit it to your publication. You'll receive an email from the author, and can click through to the story.

From there, click on Edit at the top of the page then click on the Publish button. Now the story is added to your publication.

Some of the most popular Twitter accounts don't necessarily share their own content. They seek out the best articles, videos, pictures, and stories related to a specific topic and share them with followers.

To curate content on Twitter, you can share links or curate tweets from others. The first approach is the most popular. You find links to content online and share them as tweets on your account.

The second approach is to use Twitter's Curator platform. With this tool, you type in a few keywords, hashtags, or individual users and Twitter will deliver the most relevant or engaging content in a real-time stream.

Enter keywords, hashtags, or usernames to filter your Twitter stream.

Once you've identified content you want to curate, you can publish your curated content directly to Twitter.

SlideShare recently rolled out their Clipping tool, which lets you clip and save the best slides from presentations to view or share later. It's a great way to keep curated content organized by topic so you can deliver only the best insights.

To get started, sign in to SlideShare and click My Clipboards in the SlideShare navigation bar.

Click My Clipboards on the navigation bar to access your SlideShare clipboards.

On the next page, click Create a Clipboard.

Now enter a name and brief description for your clipboard and choose whether to make it public or private. Your clipboard name should be related to the story you're going to tell with your slide collection.

Fill in a name and description for your new clipboard and decide whether to allow other users to see it.

Once you've saved your new clipboard, it's time to find slides to add. When you're browsing SlideShare and find a slide that you want to save, hover over the top-right corner of the slide and click Clip slide.

Hover over the top-right corner and click Clip Slide to add a slide to your clipboard.

The slide is then added to your clipboard.

Curate clips to custom boards as you read through SlideShare decks.

Once you're satisfied with the content you've curated, you'll want to organize your content to tell the story in a compelling way. Include some of your own slides in the clipboard to achieve some of your objectives. Then share it with your followers on social media.

If you want to see what a public clipboard looks like, you can check out Michelle Mazur: Presenting Tips & Tricks or Ann Handley: Content Marketing Truths.

From roundups to influencer quotes, content curation through blog posts is a tried and tested approach. The key is to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack and make the most of those influencer mentions.

Whether you curate an ultimate resource guide, a series of quotes on a hot news story or a collection of informative posts on a topic that's relevant to your industry, be sure to include the Twitter username of everyone you source content from in your attribution.

Then paste the URL of your post into Notifier. As Notifier scans your article for mentions of those Twitter usernames, it will create a pre-filled tweet to let each source know you've mentioned them.

Curate clips to custom boards as you read through SlideShare decks.

As you send each tweet, you effectively publish your curated content to Twitter because it includes a link back to your article.

Wrapping Up

Both content creation and curation have a role in content marketing. The number of companies and individuals who've been able to leverage this tactic successfully is growing.

If you want to build authority in your industry, you can establish yourself as a leader by curating only the best and most unique articles in a specific space. Take advantage of these tools and insights to propel your content curation to the next level.

What do you think? What tools are you using for content curation? How do you share and publish your curated content? Please share your thoughts and tips in the comments below!

Tips on four little-known tools marketers can use to publish curated social media content.

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Original source: 4 Little-Known Tools to Curate and Publish Content.
http://www.jretechnology.com

4 Tips to Improve Your YouTube Marketing

Are you marketing on YouTube?

Could you use some new ideas to improve your YouTube results?

Perhaps you should reconsider your YouTube approach.

In this article you'll discover four tips to make your YouTube marketing more effective.

Discover four tips marketers can use to improve their YouTube marketing.

People aren't going to click on your video to see a boring infomercial. They may be willing to tolerate a dry tutorial if it offers unique advice that they won't find elsewhere. The most successful YouTube videos, though, tell an original and interesting story. This ad from Android is a good example.

It may be easier to come up with great content ideas if you don't limit yourself to videos that relate directly to your product or business. This is particularly important if you're in an industry that's hard to get people excited about (such as asphalt contracting).

Consider this video of a young girl dancing, which was used to promote the Samsung Galaxy 580 phone. The video is seemingly unrelated to the product, yet still reflects positively on the company.

The video conveys the excitement that Samsung wants its customers to feel about it's phone. It helps set the mood for people to take the next step, which is to visit the URL at the end to learn more about the product. Your goal is to keep viewers engaged long enough to soften them up for your call to action.

Don't go overboard with this type of content, though. You've probably seen some commercials and had no idea what the message was until the very end, which left you confused about the company. Make sure that your videos evoke the emotions you want customers to feel about your company, even if there isn't a direct connection between your video content and the product you're ultimately promoting.

When marketing on YouTube, it's important to recognize and consider your audience's stage in the buying process. Some marketers try to cold-sell to customers and prospects who might be interested in their products. The problem is that people who find your videos on YouTube are usually in the discovery stage and aren't ready to commit to a purchase.

For this reason, it's important to choose keywords that are relevant to people who are looking for new information and to provide video content that educates based on those keywords. You can use the AdWords Display Planner tool to research keywords for your video descriptions and ad targeting.

Identify keywords that are targeted to your core buying group, rather than keywords that are simply relevant to your audience.

What types of keywords should you look for? Consider words and phrases that are relevant to both your industry and products. For example, if you have a car repair shop, you could target keywords such as "how to change oil" and "auto mechanic."

Testing Keyword Performance in YouTube Ads

Your keywords need to receive enough exposure for you to properly test them. Choose keywords with at least 1,000 monthly impressions, and you should be able to gather enough data to gauge their effectiveness.

During the initial keyword testing phase, you want to collect data on the performance of keywords in your ads in a cost-effective way. Some of the keywords you're bidding on may generate more volume than you expect, especially if you're bidding competitively.

Start with a small budget so you don't spend too much on a single keyword target.

YouTube is a massive site, so it's easy to quickly blow your ad budget, especially if you choose high-volume targeting options. Unless you're working with a big budget to start with, set your budget low enough to ensure you don't spend too much on a single keyword target. You can always raise your budget after you've had a chance to optimize your campaign and know which keywords offer the best ROI.

The goal of your video should be to prequalify viewers and send fully interested prospects on to your website to learn more about your products and services. You'll have an easier time converting website visitors after you've warmed them up to your offers.

So how do you warm up and qualify a prospect? Focus on providing video that engages and educates people, but leaves them hanging a little. Use the video to convince them that they need to visit your website to get the information they require.

Close your video by saying something like: "We describe this in more detail on our site. Please visit yourbranddomain.com for more information."

Many advertisers focus exclusively on monetizing traffic to their video pages. While most viewers will find your video content first, they'll also look at your YouTube channel page. Take advantage of those channel page views to drive traffic to your other online properties.

Make sure you include links to your website and your other social profiles on your YouTube channel page.

To optimize your channel page, provide relevant information about your company and include links to your website and other social media profiles.

Also make good use of your banner header, where you can insert four clickable links. Be sure to add appropriate calls to action there.

Add clickable links to your YouTube channel banner.

Conclusion

To determine which YouTube advertising and marketing strategies are working for you, it's important to test your campaigns and collect data on what techniques are most effective. Try testing your content in these areas:

Video content ideasDifferent contextual keywordsVarious video lengthsSeveral audience targets

Trial and error play a key role in YouTube advertising, so take some time to brainstorm different variables to test in your campaigns.

Try the tactics above to improve your YouTube marketing campaigns and increase brand recognition among your target audience.

What do you think? Will any of these tips work for your business? Do you have other tips or tactics that have worked well for you? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

Tips to improve your YouTube marketing efforts.

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Original source: 4 Tips to Improve Your YouTube Marketing.
http://www.jretechnology.com

How to Use Flex Targeting to Optimize Your Facebook Ads

Do you want to improve your Facebook ad performance?

Have you heard of flex targeting?

Flex targeting lets you serve Facebook ads to people who share a highly customized combination of interests, behaviors, and demographics.

In this article you'll discover how to use flex targeting with your Facebook ads.

Discover how to optimize your Facebook ads with flex targeting.

Flex targeting allows you to significantly scale up conversions while making sure that only a highly tailored audience sees your Facebook ads.

For example, suppose you sell a product for dogs and you want to advertise to families that own dogs. The easiest way to do that is to edit the ad set of your Facebook campaign and choose both dog owners and families.

Specify your targeting options by starting with Detailed Targeting.

With these targeting options, your ad will be served to people who match at least one of the targeting options you select.

If you look at the bottom of the Detailed Targeting section, you'll see two additional targeting options: Exclude People and Narrow Audience. This is where flex targeting comes in.

If you click on Narrow Audience, an additional field appears: Must Also Match at Least One of the Following.

When you click Narrow Audience, you can refine your targeting to include people who share an additional demographic, interest, or behavior.

If you click on both Narrow Audience and Exclude People, here's what you see.

You can also take advantage of the option to exclude segments of people based on demographics, interests, or behaviors.

You can now target more than one audience instead of either/or. Below, I filled in some audiences to show what this targeting looks like.

This example shows what an audience refined with flex targeting might look like.

With the targeting options above, your audience will include people who match either Dog Owner and Family-based Households, and will exclude people who are Unemployed.

Now that you understand what flex targeting is, here's how to use it to narrow the audience for your Facebook ads. Like all targeting methods, you set flex targeting at the ad set level. To get started, you need to create an ad set in Power Editor or Ads Manager.

Open the Ads Manager, and select the ad campaign you want to work with.

Selecting your ad campaign in Ads Manager.

Then click on the Create Ad Set button.

You want to create a new ad set.

Next, type in the URL you want to promote and click on Create New Ad Set.

Type in your URL and click Create New Ad Set.

If you're using the Increase Conversions on Your Website goal, you'll need to select the conversion action that you want to track.

After you've created your ad set, you'll need to edit it so you can access the flex targeting options.

First, select the campaign you want to work with.

Select your ad campaign.

Then select the ad set you want to work with.

From within your campaign, select your ad set.

Finally, click on the ad set Edit button.

Clicking the pencil icon lets you edit your ad set.

You can now work in the Audience section of the ad set and use flex targeting. You'll find out how in step 3 below.

If you're using Power Editor, log into the Ads Manager and click on Power Editor.

From within Ads Manager, click on Power Editor.

Download the latest changes to Power Editor.

Be sure to download any changes to Power Editor before you begin.

Next, select the campaign that you want to work with and click on Apply.

Select your campaign and click Apply.

Then navigate to the Ad Sets menu and click on Create Ad Set.

Click Create Ad Set.

Type in a name for your new ad set and click Create.

After you've created your ad set, here's how to edit it so you can access the flex targeting options. If you're using Power Editor, select your ad set and click on Edit.

Select your ad set and click on Edit.

You can now move to the next step and use flex targeting in your ad set.

After you follow the steps above to edit your ad set, scroll down to where you can edit your audience. (Note that the steps below are the same for both Ads Manager and Power Editor.)

Select the option to edit your audience.

In the regular Detailed Targeting section, select the interests, behaviors, or demographics you want to target.

For example, if you're selling high-end Italian food, you want to target people whose behavior indicates that they'll buy premium food. Under Detailed Targeting, you might select Italian Food and Italy as interests.

Select your initial targeting options.

However, not all people who buy premium food necessarily like Italian food, so you want a narrower audience. To do this, click on Narrow Audience.

Click Narrow Audience for more targeting options.

Select an additional targeting method within the interests you already selected and save your changes. For example, you might narrow your audience to people who live in Family-based Households.

Add parameters that narrow or exclude specific target options to refine your audience.

Now only a highly tailored audience will see your Facebook ad.

In Conclusion

Flex targeting radically changes how you can target potential clients for your Facebook ads.

Not only can you boost conversions by serving your ad to highly targeted audiences, you'll also reduce the cost per acquisition because less of your budget is wasted on people who aren't interested in your product or service.

As great as flex targeting is, if your flex targeting results in an audience that is too small, you won't get much traffic and might end up paying a lot, especially if you're using cost per thousand impressions (CPM) bidding.

What do you think? Have you tried flex targeting with your Facebook ads? If so, did you find it useful? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Tips on how to use Facebook flex targeting to optimize the performance of your Facebook ads.

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Original source: How to Use Flex Targeting to Optimize Your Facebook Ads.
http://www.jretechnology.com

Sonic Creates Square Shaped Milkshakes Exclusively for Instagram

To capitalize on the audience interest around the upcoming Coachella Festival, Sonic is releasing a range of square-shaped milkshakes. Why square? Because Instagram is focussed on square shapes, and the campaign is aimed purely at the Instagram audience – the shakes are designed for Instagram, can be bought on Instagram and will be delivered to consumers at Coachella free of change, with the only cost being that you post a picture of the shake to your Instagram account.

As noted in the video, the square shakes campaign is aimed at promoting Sonic's new 'Creamery Shakes' products which were introduced last month and feature premium flavors and ingredients. In order to boost awareness of the new offering amongst a younger audience, Sonic's working with Instagram influencers, including chef Christine Flynn, and, as noted, will deliver the shakes to people at Coachella Base Camp free of charge, using geo-fencing to locate people who click on the 'Shop Now' button on the Instagram images.

It's an interesting campaign for various reasons.

For one, Sonic's working exclusively with a specific social platform, aiming to boost the appeal of their products – and the shareability of their content – by honing in on one, specific platform, rather than trying to reach across all, with Instagram likely to be one of the most used social apps during the event. By providing users with great looking, highly 'Instagrammable' content, Sonic will no doubt generate a heap of impressions through this activation, the reach of which will offset the associated costs on their part in giving away their products for free.

They're also working with Instagram's improved discoverability features – in the middle of last year, Instagram introduced a range of new ways for people to discover relevant content around events and hashtagged conversations.

It's pretty safe to assume that Coachella's going to feature high on that list, which will boost the exposure of Sonic's milkshake images even further.

In addition, the strategists behind the campaign have taken the time to understand what users want out of Instagram, what users on that platform will best respond to. As part of this, they're working with influential creators on both the backgrounds and the shakes themselves, but they're also giving users something that has a high visual appeal, that fits into what people want to see on Instagram and will stand out in feeds.

It's a clever strategy, and one which works on several levels – no doubt it's taken a lot of time and effort to put together, but you can bet that square milkshakes are going to be a big hit at Coachella, and will lead to a significant boost in interest for the new products as a result.

And one last interesting note on the campaign – in an interview with AdWeek, Sonic's president and chief marketing officer, Todd Smith noted that selling more milkshakes wasn't necessarily the main objective of the campaign.

"We're looking at adding Instagram followers and building a community. We want to push our brand into spaces where it hasn't necessarily been before." 

Another interesting element to consider in what's a truly social activation. Wonder what the cross-correlation is between fans of both Guns N' Roses and milkshakes?    

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Original source: Sonic Creates Square Shaped Milkshakes Exclusively for Instagram.
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What a Burrito Taught Me About Customer Service on Social Media

It began like any other Takeout Thursday at the Metis Communications office. We chose a restaurant, placed a group order on DoorDash (a food delivery service), and eagerly awaited the arrival of our burrito lunch from Boloco. When said lunch arrived, however, there was a problem: Melissa, our agency's managing partner, found her custom burrito missing. In its place was a teriyaki chicken wrap. After filling out a form on the DoorDash website, we were assured the correct order would be delivered quickly.

That update turned out to be half right. Melissa's replacement lunch was indeed delivered quickly. Unfortunately, it still wasn't the order she had placed. We decided to air our grievances on Twitter:

@boloco We all loved eating our lunches today except for SVP Melissa – her order arrived wrong (twice!) via @doordash. 3rd time's a charm?

— Metis Communications (@MetisComm) January 7, 2016

The events that followed, in roughly the order described below, provided us with firsthand insight into the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of customer service on social media. As the socialverse continues to become a hub for customers to praise and grieve about the products and services they use, these are important lessons for any brand, whether you sell software or Sofritas.

Within 15 minutes of sending our tweet, we received a response from @doordash_help asking us for a direct message about our situation so the DoorDash team could right the issue. This quick response time is critical, especially when your customers are in the midst of a debacle and need a solution.

If you set email notifications for Twitter mentions or enable desktop pop-ups from Twitter (or a platform such as TweetDeck), be sure to have a system in place for tracking customer outreach and responding in a timely manner.

We sent a message about the order mix-up right away, to which the DoorDash Twitter account responded with an apology and a promise to credit our account. Immediately, we replied: "Can we get the right order delivered?" Then, the account went dark.

The lesson here: be consistent with your communication on social. If you're going to reply to a customer, make sure you're around to continue the conversation.

For example, Dana Miller, senior vice president of client services at Crimson Hexagon (a Metis Communications client), often highlights WestJet as a company that readily maintains this consistency. The Canadian airline shares its social customer service hours in its Twitter bio, so customers know exactly when they can expect a response.

Our spirits rose when we received a tweet late in the evening from the Boloco CEO himself, John Pepper:

Immediately, the situation gave us a feeling of, "He really cares". 

While it's not always realistic for a CEO to respond to every incoming complaint, it is possible for company leadership to play an active role in driving positive customer experience on social. This can come in the form of proactive outreach, thanking customers for feedback or welcoming new clients as they come aboard.

Along with Pepper's tweet, we also received a tweet from Boloco asking us to email the details about our situation. We did, and we also let John know via direct message that we had done so. Here's what was cool: John already knew what was going on. He said, "Looks like someone on our team is helping now", and promised that he would "watch what happens". Too often, there's a disconnect between brand representatives engaging on social media and support teams. Because your customers may have multiple communication touch points, it's important that your internal team has a system in place for coordinating efforts and ensuring customer experiences are seamless.

So, what happened next? Not only did Melissa finally get her burrito, but Boloco delivered a free lunch for our entire team the following week. Talk about delighting your customers. Listening, responding, being nice – these may seem like no-brainers to PR and social pros who've been in the business for a while, but, some brands continue to struggle with how to get it right. Thanks, Boloco, not just for the feast, but also for reminding us how great customer service looks, feels and even tastes.

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Original source: What a Burrito Taught Me About Customer Service on Social Media.
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