Today's Guide to the Marketing Jungle from Social Media Examiner...
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It’s National Pfeffernuesse Day, Reader! Who wants a delicious and spicy cookie?
In today’s edition:
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LinkedIn companies hub
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YouTube addresses clickbait
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🗞️ Additional industry news from OpenAI, Snapchat, and more
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First, record several 5-12 second videos of yourself doing anything. Working at your computer, writing in a notebook, cooking, walking, etc. Save these videos in your camera roll or a dedicated storage folder.
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How to Use Boosted LinkedIn Profile Posts to Create a Sales Funnel
LinkedIn recently announced the ability to "boost your posts on the LinkedIn feed to increase your visibility, grow your followers, and get more website clicks. You can select your budget and target audience to boost key posts, increasing visibility to target audiences by selecting from facets including: location, language, job title, job function, company industries, and job seniorities."
Why Boost Posts From Your Profile Instead of Your Company Page?
We've all heard the phrase, "People buy from people." This new feature allows you to put yourself front and center as the face of business your prospects can connect with.
While organic reach might favor certain types of content, boosting your posts allows you to ensure that all parts of your content strategy, including crucial CTAs, reach your intended audience because boosted posts can be targeted.
Another valuable aspect of LinkedIn ads is maintaining the social proof from the original organic post; all existing likes, comments, and shares remain visible on your boosted post. Any new engagement generated through the boosted post is added to the original post.
Follow these steps to create a comprehensive funnel from your personal profile posts, moving people from initial awareness to specific actions or conversions.
Audit Existing Organic LinkedIn Profile Posts
To start, audit your existing content. Review the posts you've already shared on your personal LinkedIn profile, looking for those that performed well organically. Solid organic performance signals that a post is a good candidate for boosting.
Caveat: Due to algorithm preferences, posts with calls to action or offers often perform poorly in organic reach, but they're excellent candidates for boosting. By putting ad spend behind these posts, you can ensure they reach your audience and drive the desired actions. To find your best CTA posts, you may need to analyze their performance against each other rather than the rest of your posts.
Map the Analyzed Posts to Your Customer Journey
Next, categorize your high-performing posts into four categories. Each category serves a specific purpose in your funnel strategy and will be leveraged at different stages of your audience's journey. When selecting content to boost, use a mix of these categories.
Story and Journey
These posts focus on your personal experiences and how you've reached your current position. By sharing your journey, you connect with your audience, making them feel like they know you better. These posts are excellent for boosting as they help build a personal connection with potential clients or collaborators.
Thought Leadership
These posts showcase your expertise in your niche or industry. They're particularly effective as "cold awareness drivers," meaning they work well for introducing yourself to new audiences. Demonstrating your knowledge and insights establishes credibility and attracts those interested in your expertise.
Social Proof
This category includes posts about awards you've won, client testimonials, and case studies of your work. These posts are most effective as retargeting ads, shown to people already familiar with you. Once someone knows who you are and what you do, seeing evidence of your success and others' positive experiences with you can significantly boost your credibility.
Calls to Action and Offers
These posts promote specific actions you want your audience to take, such as subscribing to your newsletter or visiting your website.
Create Posts to Fill In Gaps in Your Customer Journey
Review the posts you've mapped, and look for areas where you need more content. After composing these posts, you can either publish them organically and boost them or boost them when you post.
Tips for Targeting Your Boosted Posts
Setting up targeting for your ads is crucial. LinkedIn offers many options that go far beyond simply reaching your existing followers. Focusing your targeted posts on these specialized segments will help you attract new audiences that reflect your ideal customer.
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Company Industry: Target professionals in specific sectors, such as healthcare or software.
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Company Size: Reach employees at small businesses or large companies.
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Job Title and Function: Target specific roles (e.g., VP of Marketing) or broader job functions (e.g., all marketing roles).
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Seniority Level: Focus on entry-level, senior managers, directors, or other levels.
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Skills: Target professionals who have specific skill sets.
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Interests: Use LinkedIn's predefined interest categories.
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Groups: Reach members of particular LinkedIn groups.
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Geography: Target by location.
Creating a retargeting strategy is also essential. Set up retargeting audiences to show additional boosted posts to people who engage with your initial boosts. This helps nurture leads through your funnel. For instance, you might show social proof content to people who engaged with your thought leadership posts and then offer a free consultation to those who engaged with multiple pieces of content.
Today's advice is provided with insights from Anthony Blatner, a featured guest on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
OpenAI Announces Two Reasoning Models: The o3 and o3-mini models demonstrate improved performance over their predecessor o1, with o3 scoring 22.8% higher on coding benchmarks, achieving near-perfect scores on advanced math tests, and solving 25.2% of complex mathematical problems that stump other AI models. OpenAI is implementing "deliberative alignment," requiring the models to process safety decisions step-by-step, which showed improved safety guideline adherence in testing with o1. While not publicly available, OpenAI is accepting research community applications for testing. The jump from o1 to o3 naming reportedly avoids potential trademark conflicts with British telecom O2. Source: The Verge
LinkedIn Launches Companies Hub in Campaign Manager: The new features enable marketers to track how companies interact with their brand on LinkedIn, helping them target audiences more effectively and improve ad campaign returns. Companies Hub provides three core functionalities: audience building based on engagement, buyer targeting by engagement level, and campaign impact measurement. The platform allows marketers to analyze metrics through multiple filters, including engagement level, organic and paid interactions, company data, activity dates, company lists, and campaigns. Companies Hub is now available worldwide to all Campaign Manager customers. Source: LinkedIn
Sensor Tower's State of Digital Advertising 2024 Report: Across all 11 countries analyzed, ad spending saw double-digit year-over-year increases. In the US alone, total digital ad spend climbed by 17%. Social media platforms proved to be a dominant force, with channels like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok leading the charge and achieving a 15% year-over-year growth in the first eight months of 2024. The report highlights several key trends shaping the industry. Source: Sensor Tower
How We Snap Report: Snap Inc. and Alter Agents conducted extensive research across 12 countries, surveying over 18,000 consumers to understand how different age groups use Snapchat. While Snapchat reaches 90% of 13-24-year-olds, half of Snapchatters in many markets are over 25 years old, challenging the perception that the platform is exclusively for young users. The study examined four distinct user groups: Students, Early Jobbers, Parents, and Childfree Adults, revealing that daily users across all age groups primarily use the app to connect with friends, family, and their community. The research provides insights for brands to better target and engage with diverse audience segments across the platform. Source: Snapchat
YouTube Tackles Clickbait: YT is strengthening its enforcement against clickbait by targeting videos where titles or thumbnails make promises that aren't delivered in the content, especially for news and current events. The platform defines egregious clickbait as content that deliberately misleads viewers with false promises in titles or thumbnails. The enforcement is rolling out in India first, where violating content will be removed without issuing channel strikes while creators adjust to the new policy. Source: Google
YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program Expands to India: Content creators can tag products from retailers like Flipkart and Myntra in their videos, Shorts, and live streams. Creators earn revenue when viewers purchase tagged products through retailer websites. Creators can enhance their content with YouTube Shopping features like timestamps, allowing them to direct viewers to shop at specific moments. Source: YouTube
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