Wednesday, July 29, 2015

How to Use Video Storytelling in Your Social Media Marketing


By Tom Treanor
Published June 10, 2015 Printer-Friendly

social media how toDo you use video on your social channels?

Looking for ways to connect with your audience?

Telling stories with video increases engagement, triggers social sharing and gives people a reason to talk about you online and offline.

In this article I'll highlight eight ways to combine storytelling, video and social media.

use video storytelling in social media Discover how to use video storytelling in social media marketing.

On Airbnb's Facebook page, the company posts video stories about places around the world, as told by Airbnb hosts. This is a great way to produce engaging and interesting content, and create an emotional connection between your customers and prospects and your company.

Post video stories from your customers to create a personal connection with other viewers.

Creating a fictional video series is another way to integrate your brand with a story that entertains your audience.

Kate Spade New York created a video series called #missadventure, which it hosts on Facebook, Instagram and on its own website. The series, which stars actress Anna Kendrick, combines the company's products with an engaging storyline that follows the character's misadventures in and around a ritzy hotel. And of course, her handbags and accessories are from Kate Spade.

Create a fictional series to promote your brand while you entertain your audience at the same time.

You don't have to hire a professional actor to produce a fictional video series, but decent acting and a compelling story definitely go a long way.

Gary Vaynerchuk is known for stories and video from his Wine Library TV days, and he's always innovating in the online video space (including his recent experiments with Meerkat).

On Facebook, he regularly posts videos that include personal stories as a way to connect with his audience. His videos motivate viewers and teach important, hard-won lessons about entrepreneurship and marketing.

gary vaynerchuk video post on facebook Use video to tell your personal stories that connect with your audience.

Another way to tell stories with video is to shoot in a documentary style. This can be a short documentary video or a series of true stories about something that would interest your audience.

Chipotle created a documentary-style video series around Major League Soccer, featuring Harry Shipp of the Chicago Fire.

Shoot a documentary-style video to tell a story that will interest your viewers.

Documentary-style video can be very intriguing, and it doesn't have to involve a star. It can feature anyone who is involved in something of interest to your audience.

An interview or video podcast is a great way to draw out stories from industry thought leaders, customers or partners. Michael Hyatt posts portions of his video podcast interviews on his Facebook page as teasers.

michael hyatt video post Do a video interview or podcast with influential people in your industry your viewers want to learn more about.

Video interviews don't require a big budget. Just make sure you have good questions and an engaging guest.

People love to see "how the sausage is made." Behind-the-scenes videos work for businesses that sell services (for example, show how your company creates a social media strategy) and products (see the example below).

Ed Sbragia, an internationally recognized winemaker, tells the story of a wine set in the barrel room. The video is short and inexpensively made, but this is the kind of content that engages viewers.

sbragia video post Give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at an intriguing aspect of your business.

If you're interested in giving viewers a peek at your business, look for natural storytellers on your team who can get in front of the camera and tell stories.

Another option for social videos is to develop an animated story, similar to what Chipotle has been doing with its video series Back to the Start and The Scarecrow.

You could hire a video production company that specializes in animation, but there are also a number of tools you can use to create animated videos, including GoAnimate, Powtoon and MakeWebVideo.

Tell a compelling story through animation.

The Home Depot does a great job of telling project-related stories from the customer's point of view. In this video, Caitlin takes viewers through her project from start to finish and provides visuals to go with her story.

home depot video on facebook Show viewers how to complete a project.

Seeing people accomplish their goals will inspire many of your viewers. Your videos can teach them how to do a project and highlight the tools they'll need to gather to do the job.

There are a lot of interesting ways to integrate storytelling into your social videos. In addition to those featured above, here are some other stories that are well suited for video:

Create a single video or a series of videos to highlight humorous situations related to your business or industry.If your company's beginnings would make an interesting story, have the founder tell that story on video.Are your employees involved in interesting activities or challenges? Consider featuring those stories in your social videos.Tell a fictional but realistic story on video to educate viewers about your industry.Find a way to combine reality TV–style video with something relevant to your audience.

Over to You

According to the 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 72% of marketers plan to use more video in their social channels. What types of videos will get the attention of your audience? Creating videos that tell stories is a powerful way to connect with your audience on an emotional level and increase engagement with your content.

Although the examples in this article focus on Facebook, you can apply many of these ideas to other social media platforms, as well as to your blog.

What do you think? Have you integrated video storytelling into your social media marketing efforts? Do you have other ideas for telling stories in your videos? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

how to use video storytelling in social media Tips for using video storytelling in your social media marketing.

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Tom Treanor is the director of content marketing for Wrike, project management and collaboration software for marketing teams. He provides actionable tips to help other marketers be more successful. Other posts by Tom Treanor »

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Original source: How to Use Video Storytelling in Your Social Media Marketing.
http://www.jretechnology.com

Killer Marketing Strategies That Will Make Your Startup Look Like an Established Brand


Just because your business is still on its startup phase doesn't mean your audience should treat you as one.

There is a way for you to create the illusion of making  your business seem like an established brand even if your business is still new in the industry.

How exactly do you do that, you might ask?

Check out these killer marketing tips.

In most cases, authority websites won't take the time to mention your brand (or any brand for that matter), if it isn't worth their website's real estate.

I mean, why would they talk about your business (a startup), when they can feature other businesses that are familiar to their audience, or those that really matter (at least to their audience).

Unless your business doesn't have enough clout, the chances of these authority websites talking about your business is close to nil!

That might be heartbreaking, that is, if you are looking at this fact negatively.

If you look at the other side of the coin, you will realize that IF by some sort of luck your brand gets mentioned on these authoritative sites, your brand's clout will SKYROCKET!

The good news is, I am not about to tell you right now to rely on luck.

There is a way for your business startup to be mentioned on these websites. And you do that by… guest posting.

The chances of these authority websites accepting your guest post is also quite slim. However, it is by no means impossible.

Allow me to share with you a couple of strategies that will drastically increase the chances of your guest post pitch to be accepted by the webmasters.

Give them an incentive for accepting your guest post. Not only that, also make your incentive as irresistible as it can be to the webmasters. You can share things like doing a free coverage, sharing a free product, hiring them as one of your long term service providers, etc…Make sure that your article is crafted really well. No one likes crappy content, and you can bet your family jewels that these authoritative websites are especially keen on things like these.Make your outreach email, simple, short, and punchy.These 3 tips alone will do you TONS of good. So be sure to consider them when doing guest posts.

One of the best strategies that I use to land guest posts is to start with a round-up of influencers. At this point, once the round-up has already been published, I should have already built a relationship of some sort with the influencers. This then makes my guest post pitch really easy for them to accept.

An article I recently published at Lyreka.com is a very good example. From this round-up alone, I managed to acquire close to 600 social shares, and have guest posted on some of the musicians' blogs.

Just last week, I was reading the book, Thick Face, Black Heart by Chin-Ning Chu. While I have learned a couple of things from having read the entire book, there was one concept that I couldn't forget.

The author was talking about how foxes do not command the same authority and influence, compared to that of a tiger in the jungle. And how, although that is truly the case, there is a way for the fox to obtain the same clout (or something really close) to what the tiger possesses.

How does the fox do that?

He simply needs to ally with the tiger. If he can walk beside the tiger as the tiger walks around the jungle, the other animals (who respects the tiger) will end-up respecting him because of his connection with the tiger.

As you can probably imagine, the fox in the story represents you (the business startup owner); while the tigers are the influencers in the industry that you will be interviewing. By doing so, or the very fact that you are seen together with them; the people in your industry (the other animals in the jungle) will tend to give you the same respect that they are showing to the influencer, simply because of your connection with them.

Pretty interesting, huh? Now the question is, how do you obtain a list of influencers in your industry?

If you are new to internet marketing, and aren't quite sure how you can go about finding the influencers in your industry, you can use this influencer outreach software. Ninja Outreach has always been my go-to software when doing outreach because of how user-friendly it is, and how it can easily get me hundreds (even thousands) of influencers in my industry in just a couple of clicks.

You're probably asking yourself, "What on earth is he talking about? What does he mean by sharing a badge on the shared pages?"

No idea?

I don't blame you, what I am about to share with you right now is a secret strategy that I'd dare say very few marketers are using.

What am I talking about?

StartaFire

This app allows you to add a branded badge with every external link you share.

When your audience clicks the external links that you shared in your social media profiles, or your personal blogs, they will see your badge on the actual page.

At this point, all you need to do is use StartaFire when sharing articles from authoritative websites, and wait for the traffic to come-in.

Here's an article from Entrepreneur.com about how to make money online that I used StartaFire on.

Can you see my badge on the lower right part of the page?

Killer Marketing Strategies

I know. Amazing, right?

Because your audience can see your branded badge on the articles that your share (articles from authority sites of course), they can easily associate your brand with these top tier sites.

Even if your business is still on its startup phase, if you use the strategies that I shared above, you can easily create the illusion of making  your business look like an established brand, even if it's still new to the industry.

If you have questions, tips, or additional strategies that you'd like to share, please do so in the comments section below.

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Original source: Killer Marketing Strategies That Will Make Your Startup Look Like an Established Brand.
http://www.jretechnology.com

5 Facebook Advertising Tools That Save Time and Improve Your ROI


By Larry Kim
Published June 29, 2015 Printer-Friendly

social media toolsDo you advertise on Facebook?

Looking for more efficient ways to manage your campaigns?

Facebook ad tools can make a world of difference in the amount of time, effort and money you spend on your ad campaigns.

In this article you'll discover five Facebook advertising tools that save you time and boost your return on investment (ROI).

facebook advertising tools Discover five Facebook advertising tools that save time and improv ROI.

Facebook has offered Ads Manager for mobile devices since 2014, but earlier this year they launched a stand-alone iOS Ads Manager app with some pretty necessary features for advertisers. Now you can track ad performance, edit existing ads, revise ad budgets and schedules, receive push notifications and create ads from the app.

facebook ads manager ios app placeit The Facebook Ads Manager app enables you to manage ad campaigns on the go. Image: Placeit.

It was nice to be able to manage ads with the first iteration of the mobile manager, but the stand-alone app is more convenient and powerful. It's designed for small- to medium-sized advertisers and allows you to create ads from your existing page posts or from images and photos on your device.

If you're using Android, you'll be happy to know a version will be released later this year.

Facebook continues to add more precise targeting options to their ad platform, making it possible to market to incredibly granular groups, right down to specific individuals.

Often though, it's beneficial to exclude certain segments to get your ads in front of the right audience.

facebook exclusion audience Exclude a certain audience from seeing your Facebook ad to improve your targeting.

Enter Facebook's Exclusion Targeting, a tool launched to help you avoid targeting the same people twice. For example, you can exclude your existing customers from a promotion designed to generate new leads. Or target your website visitors (as a custom audience), but exclude those who've already converted.

Facebook promises that exclusion targeting can help you lower your cost per action or cost per click, reduce money spent on wasted clicks and reach people who are more likely to buy or convert. It works with regular Facebook ads, as well as the newer (and awesome) carousel ad format on both desktop and mobile.

See Facebook's Help resource for instructions on setting up exclusion targeting.

Sure, you can split test Facebook ads on your own, but if you're attempting to glean useful insights from it on any scale, you're going to want a tool to automate the process.

Qwaya is a paid tool with a ton of features including ad scheduling, performance-based rule setting, autorotation of ads and a campaign organizer. But one of its best features is its ability to automate split testing (A/B testing) for both creatives and audiences.

qwaya facebood ad split test feature Qwaya lets you automate A/B testing for your Facebook Ads.

If you're already using Facebook Power Editor, you know that the ability to split test audiences, as shown above, is sorely lacking. Qwaya also helps you determine which combinations of imagery, text and targeting make up the best-performing ads with its split testing feature.

AdEspresso's Facebook Ads Compass is like a report card for your Facebook ads account. If you're agency-side, don't worry; it lets you choose which account and which campaigns you'd like to analyze so you don't get a mass of information for all of your accounts together.

adespresso compass report Facebook Ads Compass analyzes the performance of your Facebook ad campaigns and benchmarks them against others in your industry.

If you're already using a tool to analyze your ads' performance, the Compass report might seem redundant. But it's a great starting place if you're a small business and have been doing the bulk of your Facebook ads optimization based on manual analysis.

You have to factor in your time spent managing your Facebook campaigns into overall ROI, so a tool like this can help you save time and enhance performance (if you act on its recommendations!).

AdEspresso has analyzed over $290 million in Facebook ad spend to create industry benchmarks against which your campaigns are compared in the Compass report. It's a great way to see how you stack up against other businesses in your industry.

Hootsuite recently announced they were partnering with Facebook to offer you a way to automatically generate Facebook ads, based on your existing organic page posts.

hootsuite facebook post ad objectives After you choose a goal for your ad, Hootsuite Ads will find your best-performing posts and promote them to help you achieve your goal.

Hootsuite Ads scans your Facebook page to find the best ads to promote, and then applies automated targeting and a bidding algorithm to launch them as ads (promoted posts).

Hootsuite says this product (which is currently in beta) will turn even an advertising rookie into a social ads expert, but I wouldn't go that far. In general, it's still a best practice to understand the basics and have a good grasp of what the software you're using is doing and why, even if it's automating some of the work for you.

With that said, you're already putting time and effort into creating visuals and messaging for your page, so it may make sense to have your best material automatically converted into ads. Test it out and see if the ROI makes it work for you.

Over to You

Facebook ads, once almost universally dismissed as low intent and not nearly as valuable as Google AdWords, are now a massive market, to the tune of $3.3 billion in revenue in Q1 2015. New ad formats, with a greater emphasis on native/in-stream and super-precise targeting options, have made Facebook ads a valuable addition to any digital marketer's arsenal.

With the Facebook advertising tools in this article, you can automate processes, perform A/B testing, target with more precision and generate awesome ad creative. Some are free, others are paid, but each one is worth checking out.

What do you think? Do you have a favorite tool for Facebook ads? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

save time and improve roi with five facebook advertising tools Tips for saving time and improving ROI with five Facebook advertising tools.

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Original source: 5 Facebook Advertising Tools That Save Time and Improve Your ROI.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Twtrland Re-Brands as Klear


Twtrland Re-Brands as Klear | Social Media TodayHave you ever used Twtrland? It's a social data platform which started out by providing insights on Twitter profiles, but has since expanded, now analyzing Instagram and Facebook, along with Twitter, to provide a more comprehensive view of a user's social media presence. Twtrland is particularly helpful in getting an overview of activity across the three, providing stats on connections on each platform, posts per week and likes/RTs per post, which is great for comparative analysis.

Twtrland Re-Brands as Klear | Social Media TodayTo reflect the extension of their services beyond Twitter alone, Twtrland has now re-branded as Klear. In an official announcement, Klear outlined how it has completed a $1.5 million round of funding, which the company will use to expand its global sales and marketing team in order to meet demand. Klear has also unveiled a new look for the site, with improved interface, new achievement badges and updated report layouts.

Twtrland Re-Brands as Klear | Social Media TodayKlear also plans to expand its analysis options to include Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn in the near future.

In the official announcement, CEO Eytan Avidgor said:

"Our mission is to measure the social web and make it universally accessible and useful to brands across the world so that companies can effectively use social media to build and enhance their brand in a meaningful way. The new funding will be used to further accelerate business growth by developing the sales and marketing team."

Klear, which serves more than 2 million monthly visitors, is now working with a range of brands and agencies like IMG, MSL and McCann, providing data on influencer marketing, social media monitoring and competitive analysis. The company is planning to target companies seeking less complicated analytics and SMBs looking for social data options. It's social profile database has grown to more than 200 million users divided into 60,000 categories, all searchable via Klear's search capabilities (which also enable users to search and analyze their competition).

The added capacity of new network insight, in Instagram and Facebook, is definitely an solid addition, and it's worth having a look at Klear and checking out their latest offerings in this regard. The basic version of Klear is free and provides a good general overview of a person's social media presence. Pro and business versions of the application, providing in-depth data and reporting functionality, are priced from $99 per month.  

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Original source: Twtrland Re-Brands as Klear.
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7 Ways to Track Your Social Media Marketing Activities


By Vince Chiofolo
Published June 30, 2015 Printer-Friendly

social media toolsAre you tracking your social media marketing results?

Do you know where to find metrics to help you improve?

Tracking social activity helps you attract a higher-quality following, communicate more effectively and provide content that resonates with your audience.

In this article you'll discover seven ways to track metrics and improve your social media marketing.

seven ways to track social media marketing Discover seven ways to track your social media marketing activities.

Use a tool like SumAll to track metrics such as what times of the day you get the most engagement and which content types work best for your social posts.

sumall display Find out when your social media posts get the most engagement.

As you gather these insights, start scheduling your posts at optimal times. Make other changes as well, such as a different content type or voice, to connect with and grow your audience.

To track the reach of a specific keyword or hashtag on Twitter, use a tool like TweetReach. For example, if you're running a campaign with an associated hashtag, you can determine how far your hashtag traveled over a given time frame. TweetReach's free service will look at 1,500 tweets for a given keyword.

For example, below are the results for a search for the hashtag #MondayBlogs. The results show that the term had a reach of nearly 211,000 accounts.

tweetreach display TweetReach analyzes tweets that match your keyword search term.

TweetReach also shows you the most influential accounts that help spread your message and makes it easy for you to engage with them.

With the premium service, you can track a hashtag over weeks or months to see how your campaign is spreading on Twitter.

If you want to know where your competitors excel and where they're falling short on social, use a tool like Rival IQ to find out.

Why is this good to know? If your competitors are tanking on Snapchat, for example, chances are you will too. Or if your competitors aren't on Snapchat, it might be worth a look to see why. Maybe they were on the platform previously and it didn't work out, or perhaps it's just a venue they haven't explored yet.

rivaliq display Use RivalIQ to research your competitors' social presences.

A recent blog post from Rival IQ reveals engagement rates for Shopify and their competitors, complete with detailed graphics showing where each company has a social presence and where they get the most interaction.

You may find some of the results surprising. For example, Shopify gets the most engagement on Instagram. That's probably not the first place you'd think people would go for an ecommerce solution, but Shopify is connecting well there.

Use a tool like BuzzSumo to identify who the influencers are in your field and what they're talking about. Then connect with those people, talk to them and make sure you're responding to them when they tweet you.

Beyond that, you can use BuzzSumo to find out which posts are getting the most action, discover relevant keywords you may have been unaware of and find new Twitter chats to participate in. You can also see who shared the best content so you can target your following habits in the hope that they'll follow you back.

buzzsumo display Discover influential users, content and keywords.

Filter your results if you want to see what video is performing best or for details on infographics, for example. You can go back for a year, which is particularly useful if you have season-specific content.

All in all, BuzzSumo gives you insights on how to word your posts and whom to engage with for growth on which social platform. It's a great tool for fine-tuning how you present your content on social media. Check out how your own posts rank to make sure that you're improving over time.

With a customized landing page, you can measure many metrics, the most basic of which is just where website traffic is coming from.

Say you're spending 10 hours a week crafting Twitter posts because you're certain that your audience is there. If you then discover that your Facebook landing page is driving more traffic, you can streamline your efforts either by reducing the amount of time you're spending on Twitter or by fine-tuning your efforts there to get a better click rate.

As you extend your reach, you can use custom landing pages to experiment with sales language, incentive offers and sign-up methods.

Many social media marketers use ManageFlitter as a Twitter unfollow tool. It tells you which users aren't following you back so you can take those people off your list and move on to folks who are more likely to engage with you. But this tool does so much more than that.

manageflitter display ManageFlitter analyzes tweets that match your search term.

It helps you find your ideal customers on Twitter, making it easy for you to follow them. Later, you can check whether those folks have followed you back. If you discover that a lot of them aren't following you, it may be time to tweak your message or your bio. More relevant users are not only more likely to reciprocate your follow, but also more likely to engage with you and become customers.

Klout measures your influence by looking at how your social media posts drive the actions of your followers.

On Twitter, Klout takes into account the number of active followers you have and the value of those who retweet you. So, if you're retweeted by someone with a Klout score of 75, it has more value (to Klout) than a retweet from someone with a Klout score of 35. Klout also looks at how many Twitter lists you're on and who curates those lists.

On Facebook, Klout looks at either your page or personal profile, and how many followers or friends you have contributes to your score. According to Klout, they process 12 billion social signals a day from 620 million scored users.

klout display Your Klout score fluctuates daily, so checking it every day isn't particularly insightful. Instead, look for solid growth over the previous month.

If you're not sure what your Klout score is, you can see it by logging into Klout.com and attaching your Twitter and/or Facebook account. The more social networks you connect, the better, because it's a more accurate measure of your influence.

Final Thoughts

Measuring various social media metrics can seem like a daunting task.

If you're overwhelmed at the thought of using multiple tools to measure these metrics, try incorporating one new method each month. That gives you time to see what kind of information you can gather. Make sure the tools you use offer meaningful information for your social strategy.

What do you think? Do you track any of these metrics? Which metrics are most important to your social media marketing? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

tips for tracking your social media marketing activities Tips for tracking your social media marketing activities.

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Vince Chiofolo is a digital marketing strategist, Twitter influencer under @Vince_Tech and founder of Boom Digital, a boutique marketing agency specializing in growth marketing through social media, content marketing and design. Other posts by Vince Chiofolo »

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Original source: 7 Ways to Track Your Social Media Marketing Activities.
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Can Algorithms For Hiring Employees Improve Our Workplaces?


When it comes to getting hired, people always say, "It's who you know." More than that, it's what you have in common. A shared alma mater or mutual friend is often the deal-sealer in job interviews when the recruiter is forced to choose between two equally qualified candidates. But such chummy behavior can sometimes mask hidden prejudices: the fact that two people went to the same school can often reflect their socio-economic similarity.

A recent New York Times article described the emphasis on cultural similarity as latent discrimination. "A cultural fit is an individual whose work-related values and style of work support the business strategy," according to Lauren Rivera, a researcher at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. "When you get into a lot of the demographic characteristics, you're not only moving away from that definition but you're also getting into discrimination."

Now, with tech companies like Facebook receiving criticism for their lack of diversity (only 31 percent of Facebook's employees are women, and at 57 percent, most are white), growing tech companies with roles to fill are wondering if algorithms might be able to find the most qualified candidates in a hiring process that seems, at first glance, blind.

There are a few different companies offering different algorithms at this time. Gild, for one, scours the web for publicly available job data posted on sites like LinkedIn or GitHub and looks to match skills to the company's job description, searching beyond what's listed on a resume. That means that if your hobby is relevant to the job description, but not listed on a resume, you might still appear in search results (if, for example, you're a barista who writes brilliant code at night). Gild also takes career patterns into account — searching for candidates who are likely ready to jump ship soon, for example, based on how long they've been with their current company.

Doxa caters to women in particular who are looking to work at tech companies that will actually appreciate them. In addition to matching skills with company needs, their algorithm uses anonymous employee surveys that describe the nebulous, off-the-page qualities of companies (how often employees work nights and weekends, time spent in meetings, whether there is perceived gender bias) to match candidates with compatible company cultures.

Another service, GapJumpers, allows companies to write questions that applicants answer anonymously. The answers are then ranked based on how well they match the company's, who is then given a list with the identities of the candidates revealed so they can start scheduling interviews.

A Harvard Business Review analysis looked at 17 hiring studies that used algorithms and found that they outperformed human recruiting by about 25 percent. The data was based on post-hiring stats, such as the supervisor's ranking of the hiree after having been at the job for a while, the number of promotions, and how well the employee did during training.

The study noted that without an algorithm, recruiters are 85 to 97 percent likely to rely on intuition when assessing candidates.

"We don't advocate that you bow out of the decision process altogether," the researchers concluded. "We do recommend that you use a purely algorithmic system, based on a large number of data points, to narrow the field before calling on human judgment to pick from just a few finalists—say, three. Even better: Have several managers independently weigh in on the final decision, and average their judgments."

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Original source: Can Algorithms For Hiring Employees Improve Our Workplaces?.
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Thursday, July 2, 2015

Social Networks and the Majority Illusion


use your majority illusion

via Shutterstock

MIT Technology Review has a summary of a fascinating recent study on the behavior of networks, and how they can lie to us, or at least make it seem like a majority of people believe something is common when it is not actually the case. The study, conducted by Kristina Lerman and others at the University of Southern California, also provides insight into how some things can go viral and spread like wildfire while similar content or ideas can't seem to get off the ground.

Basically, the study examined how ideas spread on networks with complex connections. If a number of people who have an average or lower number of connections (Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc.) post or share something, it probably won't go very far, because of the lack of connections. But, if a few of the people who have a very large number of connections share or post something, it is far more likely to spread. This may seem obvious, but what is counter-intuitive is that the number of people with large followings needed to create the effect is actually incredibly small.

The article gives the example of a network of 14 people. Most have a few connections to others, but a few have a very large number of connections to almost all the other people in the network. If just 3 of the people in the network (the ones with a large number of connections) share something, to other people on the network it can suddenly seem like everybody is seeing and talking about it.

The authors of the study call it the 'majority illusion.' The ideas, whether they are memes or pictures or anything else, shared by just a few of those people with large followings will, overall, look downright common (one could even say 'viral') not because a majority of people are sharing it, because the people sharing it have a large number of connections.

The article provides the excellent example of how on Facebook, other people on the average have many more friends than you do, simply because a small number of Facebook users have an extraordinarily high number of friends, throwing off the curve. It's a common enough occurrence that it has a name, the 'power law.' This law, when applied to social networks, can make it seem like everyone is talking about something or believes something when it's just a small number of powerful users.

In a way, this thinking has already been addressed by marketers in the form of influencer marketing (although the MIT article refers to them by the much-more-fun moniker influencerati) but also provides insight as to why this type of marketing doesn't always work, because one influencer plugging a brand seems like just that, a plug. The key is not just to get an influencer to endorse you, but to get several of them to do so around the same time. This will help create the 'majority illusion,' and have a much more viral effect.

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Original source: Social Networks and the Majority Illusion.
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