Convert Big Data into Insight to make really useful Marketing Decisions

3m to read / 

Companies today use Big Data for their digital marketing efforts. But unless any data is analysed and converted to useful marketing and business insights, it remains as a large volume of meaningless numbers.

Most every one in marketing and advertising has seen the Tesco South Korea virtual stores in subway stations case study. Most translate the case study as an example of using technology in a new way. What they don't see is how Tesco used 'big data' coming out of that exercise to gather valuable information about their customers – their shopping habits, their preferred products, their buying frequencies, typical shopping basket content, order histories and more.

Data converted to Insight

Tesco's subway virtual stores were electronic billboards which mimicked stocked supermarket shelves packed with products – each with an unique barcode. Customers who were on the platform used a phone based application to scan the codes and add products to their online basket. They could choose a delivery time and have their shopping delivered to their doorstep – often inside of an hour. It was a great boon for the hyper busy South Korean urban consumer. It was a greater boon for Tesco in terms of data. Big data. Converted to useful insight – a distinct business advantage.

Most businesses today are interested in big data. There are many case studies of successful use of so called big data, but not all of them are winners outright. Data and information is a deep dive game, and one needs patience to see the fruits of labor. A survey of more than 100 executives conducted by Insead reports that a majority of businesses are still in the planning phases of using big data or have not even started to consider the potential, with less than a third already executing some big data projects.

Big data to support business decisions

Big data is not necessarily just about digital and marketing strategies. Most businesses are looking at data for developing true cost advantages. There is a real value to this innovation of using deep data converted to insight – because it supports sharp business decisions – ones that can have remarkable effects on productivity, product cycles, marketing calendars and consumer information driven business strategies. Marketing and sales are the early adopters in the game, but many other departments are beginning to see the potential. Businesses that are leveraging big data do understand their customers better and provide them with better tailored products or services in real time across multiple channels are the ones who are already seeing huge returns.

Big data is not just useful for customer oriented information. In the long haul it is helping business leaders decide on new markets, new lines, new products. 

Customer Insights is your First Step in Digital Marketing

According to a recent study of executives in Asia-Pacific by the Economist Intelligence Unit, more than 40 per cent are not even sure their companies have any big data strategy, and only 6 per cent consider their companies as well advanced in adoption. However, well over 70 per cent do believe in the potential of big data to improve business performance.

The South China Morning Post in an article on big data says "The opportunities are endless. But the reality is that most companies have not even started their journey into the data world and executives are still not clear what the potential of big data for their organisation is. What are the key challenges and where to start from?

Big data needs open thinking

Big data often requires breaking through organizational silos and challenging owners of information. As always, effective adoption of new technologies is also about effective organizational change. Technical challenges are of course not absent: with data stored in legacy systems in non-standardised ways, with endless data quality issues, any data analytics project suffers from the barrier to first create high-quality, complete data before using it at all.

Data today is telling us about customer or target audience intent more than anything else
Intent is the new black in digital marketing. In-the-moment marketing is what's hot.

Finally, but not least, given the speed with which big data and analytics are adopted by organisations and the new necessary data science skills that are different from traditional information technology ones, a key bottleneck becomes the availability of talent for such initiatives. When it comes to analytics, productive action is mainly a product of speed. Focusing on quick decisions and execution, which circumvent long discussions, leads to insights the front line can actually use.

Data made simple: What is first, second and third party data?

The labour market of data scientists is nascent, making experienced experts highly sought out - and highly unavailable.

As always, there is no silver bullet for successful adoption of big data, but early evidence indicates that experimenting and then maturing the organizational capabilities in analytics has great benefits not only to improve business decisions, but also develop new businesses and sources of revenues." Having an expert to help with the process of insights development is key sometimes...

Why every brand and every agency needs a Digital Insights Manager

Companies are beginning to monetize big data – and that's where this boom is headed. Most leaders want to see how they can get big ROI out of big data. Wee hope that this does not follow a boom-bust pattern like the early internet did. Because, this time it's way beyond just Silicon Valley. The big data advantage is out there for us all.

And that's the basics of digital marketing strategy. That's 101. Please share this post with your friends and colleagues today... And do comment if you feel you want to add to this.

Read more

Twitter just launched Dashboard – a dedicated app to help manage business accounts

2m to read / 

Twitter has just launched an app  that will help businesses manage both communication and engagement with their followers. Called Twitter Dashboard, it’s available in beta for those in the U.S. on both iOS and as a desktop app.

Twitter, in their blog post said that businesses have a difficult time creating “authentic” connections due to lack of time and resources. That's why they developed and launched yesterday Twitter Dashboard. “It gives business owners a clear picture about what’s being said about their businesses, lets them schedule tweets, and offers insights about their tweet performance.”

Twitter Dashboard will enable companies to create their own feed, and a clear picture of what’s being said about their businesses, lets them schedule Tweets, and offers insights about their Tweet performance.

Easily engage with your audience

You can create a custom feed to find out what’s being said about your business.  Use your custom feed to get right to the Tweets you want to see first and better engage with your community. For example, if you work at a cafe, you may see a Tweet from a customer who has a question about your hours. Or, if you’re a boutique owner, you might see a Tweet from a potential customer talking about one of your products. The ability to see these Tweets at a glance offers endless opportunities for you to connect with customers and potential customers with responses that add value.

Now you can schedule tweets

Now you can schedule Tweets to reach your audience when they’re online and you’re busy doing other things. If you want to edit your scheduled Tweets while you’re on the go, you can use the iOS Dashboard app to update your Tweet queue, according to Twitter.

Get ideas and inspiration from Twitter directly

Twitter says Dashboard will inspire and give ideas. "Kickstart your creative process with Tweet tips geared just for businesses. They can help you start conversations and engage your audience in those moments when you’re not sure what to Tweet. For example, if you work at a restaurant, a tip like, “Your team is as unique as your business. Tweet a surprising fact about one of your team members,” might remind you to share some recent recognition your chef received. Or, if you’re an interior designer, seeing, “Share the love. Like and Retweet kind words from your customers,” might prompt you to Retweet a customer’s excited reaction to one of your recent projects.

5 Cool Ways to use Twitter for Real Time Marketing

Also remember that you can use tools like TweetReach to monitor how our brand is doing...

And that's the basics of digital marketing strategy. That's 101. Please share this post with your friends and colleagues today... And do comment if you feel you want to add to this.

Further reading on Twitter for Brands

Power up your Twitter content in these easy ways

Build a Winning Twitter Strategy for your Brand in 2016

3 quick ways to improve your Twitter performance

Read more

10 Essential Steps to Influencer Marketing Success for your Brand

5m to read / 

As a marketer, you need to learn how to play the Influencer leverage game to amplify your brand's social media efforts.

Influencer marketing harnesses the influence or social clout of key individuals to meet specific marketing goals by building mutually beneficial relationships. It's reaching out to those who have voice that’s heard and followed. It’s preaching to the preachers.

An Influencer is an individual who has the ability to influence or change behavior or impact purchase decisions of those who follow him or her in a social context. These influencers have usually earned and built an engaged audience over time by producing content on specific topics that have expertise on.

Certain verticals in marketing have taken to influencer marketing like ducks to water. Around 60 per cent of fashion and beauty brands have some sort of influencer strategy in place. Getting influencer marketing isn’t easy. If your brand is looking to influence that really tight slice of your audience — and who will then cast a magic spell on the rest of your target group — you need to have a pretty good strategy in place.

Here are ten steps to make Influencer Marketing work for your brand...

1. Identify your overall audience first

The first step is to identify your overall target audience. What influences them? What impacts how they are decide, evaulate and buy? What solutions are they looking for? Where do they turn to for advice?

Customer Insights is your First Step in Digital Marketing

You'll need to continuously listen to what your audience is asking for, sharing, talking about.
The importance of listening in social media, and how to get it right

2. Now find the right influencers

Identifying the right influencers is first up the biggest challenge today. And there’s no magic list somewhere. You can’t wiki them, there’s no easy find on Google search, and while there are some tools that identify them on Twitter and Instagram, one still needs some hands-on hard work to be able to spot the right influencers. Who are the people who produce, share and amplify content that can impact awareness to purchase decisions that affect your product.

3. Keep an eye out for opportunities with influencers

Once you have a list of influencers that you want to enlist to help your efforts, monitor their content. What are they talking about and in what context? What and how do they share? What social platforms are they most influential on? What are their audiences asking for? How are they interacting with their audiences? This is how you spot the opportunity to position your brand or product in the right context with the right influencer.

4. Start building relationship with influencers

Once you know that a particular influencer's content is relevant to your product, take action. Get to know them, build a sense of trust leading to mutual benefit. This is where you can propose and develop initiatives that you can work on together.

5. Understand and build their audience 

An influencer has worked hard over time to build an audience. You need to help them provide value for their audience. Remember, it's nit about just you this time. In the competitive market, influencers need to be convinced and won over with products, ideas and strategies that are attractive to them. Influencers are brands themselves, and today, they are savvy enough to recognise what works with ‘their’ audiences, what doesn’t, what makes them look credible and interesting, rather than just coming across as a mouthpiece.

6. Create special content and experiences

They will want to look good when they talk about you. You need to create unique experiences for them around your brand or product that resonates with them, their audiences, and that they are proud to share and amplify. Create content for them that fits their style, or let them do the talking...

7. Have them develop influencers and UGC

This is simple amplification. You can ask your trusted influencers to build a network. While they usually are very competitive, they themselves have influential social following which can help expand your network. Remind them to ask for user generated content as well. Coming from high profile influencers this will certainly get you better results and a load of free content.

8. Let the influencer do the talking

This changes the paradigm quite a bit — it is after all a shift, a hand over of power to the influencer. Brands need to pander to this shift, and form meaningful on-going relationships with their influencers. It's ok to take a back seat this time.

9. Compensate the Influencers

Influencers, just like any other channel, need to be compensated. You want your influencer to feel rewarded, acknowledged, loved, important, and respected – including by your brand and your brand's audiences as well. Some ways to compensate the influencers you work with may include:

Product discount or giveaway. Offering a discount on your service or giving them a free product from your brand will really incentivize an influencer to keep talking about you. Let them sneak preview a product they're an expert on, let them keep it.

Financial.  This is increasingly becoming common, and difficult to manage at the same time. Buying content endorsement isn't always ethical or transparent, unless of course your influencer is really passionate about tour product or service. 

Social reward. Sharing a post they write about you on your social media outlets will get more traffic to their site and make them feel important. Also, something as simple as a post that says “Thank you for mentioning our camera, coming from an expert like you, it means a lot” (or something to that effect) works well.

Commission for leads and sales. Influencers today often ask for commissions based on leads and sales arriving directly from their content (it is trackable with simple codes).

10. Measure results, build on or re-strategize

Influencer marketing has the potential to give you a solid ROI. You need to keep tract of the initiatives that work, the one's that don't and be able to work together to further build on them or re-work them as needed. Influencer marketing is a long term game.

Read about how influencers are the new power force in marketing these days: The sheer power influencers get to wield these days.

Consumers today are looking for authenticity of influencer opinion. The millennial generation in particular would believe a trusted word of mouse rather than a direct brand voice.

Influencer marketing is a leverage game. For every influencer that you can reach out to and influence, their opinion, their word will influence thousands of others in your target audience in a way that the audience is willing to relate to and resonate with.

Of course, it does not work in silo, you have to get your social media and content strategies right for it to work in tandem.

Get this right, and it’s really worth every post, every unboxing video, every 140-character tweet.

And that's the basics. That's Digital Marketing Strategies 101.

Read more

6 Ways for Brands to Use Snapchat: The Fastest Growing Social Platform

4m to read / 

With 200 million active users, and over 9000 snaps shares every second, Snapchat is taking social media by storm. As a brand, specially, to connect to younger audiences, you really need to get on Snapchat and use it connect and engage your audiences.

McDonald's and KFC were quick to get on board with branded filters. Pepsi also got in on the act early, creating a ‘Chelfie’ filter, transforming snappers into cheeky cherry faced cherubs. These days, 'Geofilters' are upping the content ante. Only available for Snapchat users within a set radius and for a set amount of time, they can be specifically targeted and run in parallel with wider PR campaigns.

As well as filters, brands are also creating stories of popular events, often adding branded content between snaps. Snapchat makes brand 'advertising' more integrated and natural: rather than a ‘hard sell’ – and Snapchat audiences resonate to that.

Snapchatters tend to ignore the "branded experience" for the most part. Don't re-purpose your existing social content for Snapchat. Your content should be fresh, created for Snapchat and keeping the user in mind. Audience and Customer Insights is your First Step in Digital Marketing.

Here are six ways to use the power of Snapchat for your marketing:

1. Offers and Promotions

Offers and Promotions work really well on Snapchat. Brands send snaps of offers: the audience can take a screen shot, and use them either in store or online. It's easy to measure the success of a campaign by how many people used the snap or the code.

The instant here and now nature of Snapchat incentivises your target audience to shop right away. A call-to-action like “20% off today only!” or “Screenshot this snap and present it at the register for $2 off every sandwich.”  works well. These enticing offers encourage your customers to shop while making them feel like they have a unique advantage and that they're special.

2. Teasers

You can create a sense of expectation by sending teasers. Today's younger audiences love content they haven't seen, or when you create anticipation of what's to come. It's the reveal factor that engages them. Teasers on Snapchat create a buzz around new products and new ideas, and can be a great way to get customers engaged before a launch. Brands can also do offer teasers, revealing , say, a code or discount at the end of the story.

3. Story telling

Today, content marketing on social is all about brand story telling.

By using ‘My Story’ brands can add snaps or videos that are visible to users for 24 hours. This format gives you the opportunity to share a creative and engaging message. Brands often create a succession of videos (each 10 seconds long), and create a ‘multi-story telling’ effect. This is a great way to get your brand’s message across in a more unique and interesting way.

4. Fast, immediate and memorable

Snapchat is all about the fast and the immediate. The ability to see something just once, and for a short period of time, clearly adds to the fun of Snapchat.  Since your snaps can only be 10 seconds long, which is a considerably short window to capture the customers’ attention and effectively deliver your message, you really need to sit down and think about what exactly it is you want to push in front of them. This is why it's important that your content adds value and is useful and memorable.

Read about: Winning Content Strategy: Always share something valuable and useful

5. Interactive and engaging

Snapchat is a great way to have your audience interact with your brand product. This is a great way to keep your Snapchat audience engaged. Try regular competitions, contests, unique to Snapchat product sneak peaks, coupons. Do this on a specifically timed basis "Fun Fridays" could mean, that's the day you give away clues to a freebie.

Sending “Snaps” around special promotions or events should help drive traction, especially if you include an exclusive coupon or freebie. Or, get your audience to send in snaps of them doing various things with your product. That's great user generated content. These can also be reused as other pieces of social content on other platforms as well.

6. Filters

Snapchat ‘filters’ or ‘lenses’ are stickers, frames, images and movement sensitive animations that can be layered over your images or videos. Snapchat has added cool filters to make images more fun. Location filters, for example, change depending on where you were, with each place having it’s own fun, and contextually relevant filter. You can be creative with location specific campaigns and micro-target audiences – making content more relevant to them.
As marketing on Snapchat is still fairly new, huge opportunities exist for companies that decide to take the leap now. Not only will you be able flex your creative muscles, but your campaign may also prompt media coverage, expanding reach and visibility for your brand.

If your marketing efforts isn't using Snapchat yet, read:
Power tips on how to get on Snapchat for brands

Read also on audience building, which is key to Snapchat marketing:
4 ways to build a cool Snapchat audience for brands

Those are some points to keep in mind for your brand to successfully engage with the powerful audience group consisting of millennials and Gen Z folks. Remember they aren't just a powerful demographic. They're cool, savvy and hungry for content. Stay fresh. And that's the basics. That's Digital Marketing Strategies 101.

Please share this with your friends and colleagues, and do add your comments below...

Read more

How VR and 360 degree video is changing advertising and content marketing

4m to read / 

Virtual Reality (VR) and 360 degree video has the power of changing how brands can better engage their audiences with advertising and content marketing. While VR and 360 degree video is in early stages of adoption by brands, the potential is immense.

Brands and content creators need to know that today's content hungry and tech savvy consumer is hugely interested in VR. Global search interest on Google grew by nearly 4X in the last year. And Google are doing a great job in empowering this new technology. Google has shipped millions of Google Cardboard viewers to help bring the VR experience to everyone. As have many other brands like Etihad Airlines and Volvo recently.

Google says that the "technology has the potential to change our daily lives—from how we communicate to how we spend our leisure time. It's early days, but it's already happening, and now is the time for brands and creators to understand what it all means." While Google Cardboard was an initial step, Google's new VR platform "Daydream will enable even more powerful, mobile, high-quality experiences with a headset that's comfortable at an accessible price."

What VR does

Google says that the "promise of VR is what the industry calls "presence"—the feeling that you're really somewhere else. VR cameras like Jump can capture the entire experience of a place—every corner, every angle. In the not-so-distant future, cameras like these will be capturing experiences all over the world. What does this mean for audiences? How about access to the best seats in the house at any event—floor seats at the NBA playoffs, a box at La Scala, front row at the Beyoncé show?" Imagine how this empowers brands for their content marketing initiatives.

VR and 360 degree Video

Google already has made impact with 360 degree video. "Viewers can see video from every angle just by swiping or moving the phone or tablet around—with no headset required. Uploads of 360-degree videos continue to grow and have doubled over the past three months. Brands are forging the way, using 360-degree video to film big events or get creative with ads. BMW used this technology for an ad featuring a 360-degree car race. The "School of Rock" musicalcreated a 360-degree music video. AT&T simulated a car crash to drive home its phone safety message."

Virtual reality takes the 360-degree video experience a step further by adding a sense of depth. When viewed with a VR headset images become three-dimensional, which adds to the feeling of immersiveness. On top of that, spatial audio lets people listen to audio from all directions, just as in the real world. That's what drives interaction and therefore engagement.

For content creators, the potential of 360-degree video and VR is immense, but it'll require a shift in thinking. VR lets viewers be active participants; they can look wherever they want.  This makes VR and 360-degree video an incredibly powerful tool to create empathy. When a viewer feels like they are there, they have a greater sense of the situation. Messages become more impactful."

Google reminds us that on YouTube, creators are using the medium to create truly transportive experiences across sports, news, education, and fashion. The New York Times puts viewers in the shoes of displaced children around the world. Virtual field trips let teachers take students places a school bus can't. Fashionistas can get a front row seat at the latest runway shows from Jason Wu, Hugo Boss, and Dior.

Virtual reality is no longer a novelty. It has real applications for brands today. But is it worth pursuing? And will it make sense and add value to your target audience?

As in any aspect of digital marketing, Customer or Consumer Insights is your First Step in Digital Marketing with any video content you create. Google suggests brands examine the potential first in their post:

Four questions for brands interested in VR:

Here are some questions brands should consider before investing in VR technology according to Google:

Will VR give viewers an experience that they otherwise couldn't have? The subject matter should truly take advantage of the medium—transport people to a place, immerse them in a world, and compel them to explore. 

Could you give shoppers a better feel for your product? According to a study from Ericsson ConsumerLab, shopping was the top reason worldwide smartphone users were interested in VR, with "seeing items in real size and form when shopping online" cited by 64% of respondents. This doesn't just apply to retail brands. Cadillac is already using VR to create virtual dealerships. 

Will your recording environment be rich with things to see? If you're shooting in a simple white room with nothing on the walls, probably not. If you're at a sports event or a music festival, there's likely plenty to see. 

Will viewers want to continue watching beyond the initial "That's cool" moment? It can be a challenge to get viewers to stick around after a minute or so. Make sure you have a compelling hook that will keep them engaged.

Winning Content Strategy: Always share something valuable and useful. No matter how cool your content is formatted – using 360 video or VR, if it does not provide value, it's just not going to work.

And that's the basics of digital marketing strategies. That's 101. Please share this post with your friends and colleagues today... And do comment if you feel you want to add to this.

More reading on 360 video and content

YouTube unleashes 360 degree Live streaming – takes on Facebook

Facebook launches 360 and Panoramic Photos in News Feed

How to use Facebook Live video like a pro. The essentials of getting it right.

Read more

6 Simple Tips to get your Email Marketing in Top Gear

3m to read / 

Email marketing has not lost its shine just yet. It is re-shaping itself, becoming more intelligent, getting mostly automated, and emerging as a nice little 'responsive' and 'creative' marketing tool for brands. Here are six sure shot ways of getting it to work for you.

1. Get your Subject Line to Open the Door

The subject line in an email that you send out is the most important part of the communication. It's the first thing that someone sees, and often it is the last thing, unless, of course you get subject line marketing done right.

First impressions count, and you better find ways to make that impression be attractive and effective enough for your email to be actually opened, to be read, and then clicked through to the desired action you want.

Keep your subject line short and make it effective. Every word counts, so use them wisely, spend time on this. Rule of thumb: around 50-60 characters, tops. Minimize to maximise the chances of the mail being opened.

Get to the point. Being honest, being precise is key. Remember to be clear on what the email is really about. State the offer. Define your goal for the mail out, and stick to achieving that goal.

Make the benefit absolutely clear in your subject line. How will the recipient actually benefit by opening and reading your mail? Why should they believe you? Use numbers, use value. "Increase your readership by 50% today" works better than "Better readership for blogs".

Read more about Subject Lines here: 10 ways to get your Subject Line work harder in email marketing

2. Stick to one message, one topic

Stick to what you promised in the Subject line. Deliver on that singular promise rather than cram in everything into one email. You'll confuse the recipient. Remember that email is actually a simple form of content marketing.

Content marketing, when done right, is about giving something away – for free – sharing something with your audience that is useful and valuable for them. That's how you create an experience that your target audience will enjoy, benefit from, and look forward for more. Make sure your email delivers value for your audience.

Winning Content Strategy: Always share something valuable and useful

3. Segment your audience, avoid the generic blast

Few marketers segment their audiences when sending emails. Sending emails to the entire database asking them to buy in general is a mistake. Instead, a more effective strategy is segmenting by customer interests when they sign up for more information, or from what you know their interests are on your website, for example.

As in any aspect of digital marketing, Customer or Consumer Insights is your First Step in Digital Marketing with any emails you send out as part of your marketing effort. Find out, segment, and hyper target.

4. Follow up. Always.

There's no point of investing in lead generation if you don’t do anything with the information. If someone visits your website for the first time, you can’t always assume they will buy. Instead, it’s your job to follow up. You can do this with email automation such as cart abandonments, up-sell recommendations or customer surveys.

5. Use a responsive email format

With such a large percentage of mails today being received and opened on mobile, it was quite a surprise to notice that most brands that use email, less than 50% were sending out "responsive" mails or had a device compatibility focus. This will need to change. Increasingly, emails that are hard to read on a handheld device are not going to be read, or even in case of drip feed mails, be opened the next time.

Today's savvy consumer is most likely to open your email on mobile. It's a given that we need to go responsive asap. It's not an easy one step process, because one needs to create and develop simplified responsive templates. But once that's done, it's really about making it a habit. Usually, a good developer will develop dynamic modules that will deliver auto-adjust mails across all platforms – tablets inclusive.

6. Send emails when the lead is hot

Be prepared to send emails to your customers and audiences without sticking to a pattern. Your marketing (email) team needs to be agile. Customers and target audiences need to get that email when they are interested, not every month-end. It is so simple.
Intent is the new black in digital marketing. In-the-moment marketing is what's hot.

Email marketing is a powerful medium that can really boost your marketing efforts when used to its full potential. Monitor your email content, and follow the tips above. It doesn’t matter how good your products are if your customers unsubscribe.

And that's the basics of digital marketing strategies. That's 101. Please share this post with your friends and colleagues today... And do comment if you feel you want to add to this.

Read more

Here's how to Power up your Facebook engagement with Video

4m to read / 

You can really power up your brand's engagement on Facebook with the compelling power of video content.

Video is really gaining traction on Facebook. An executive at the company just predicted that's all Facebook will be in five years. Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook's VP of European, Middle Eastern and African operations, said at a conference last week that in five years, Facebook "will be probably all video," Quartz reported. Mendelsohn added that video is "the best way to tell stories in this world" and "helps us to digest much more information."

Mashable tell us that "Facebook Live has exploded in popularity since it became open to the public this year. Numerous attention-grabbing videos have gone up on Facebook Live, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg's recent conversation with astronauts on the International Space Station.

As GIFs, photos and moving images have become increasingly popular replacements for text reactions, Facebook has responded by allowing users to post videos as comments on the social network. "

Over 4 billion video views happen on Facebook everyday. Make the most of your video strategy with these best practices as suggested by Facebook...

Upload videos directly to Facebook

Facebook reminds us that by uploading videos to Facebook directly, you can take advantage of these two benefits:

• Your videos will play automatically in News Feed – Native videos start playing immediately as people scroll through their Feed. Videos initially play silently, but people can tap the video to play it with sound in full screen.

• Your videos will have view counts – Public videos from people and Pages will now show view counts to help people discover them.

Facebook direct upload left vs YouTube link on right

Create rich content. Make quality count.

Make sure you create great engaging video content for your audience. Make sure that the video content actually resonates.  As in any social media, Customer or Consumer Insights is your First Step in Digital Marketing with any content you create for your audience on Facebook. You can have the best video content, but is it relevant to your audience?

• Focus on quality from the first frame – Since videos auto-play silently in Feed, you should lead with imagery that will catch a person’s eye from the very beginning.

• Premiere exclusive video content – Post exclusive video content to your Page to reward them with something that they can’t get anywhere else,

• Provide context – Set context by pulling out a key quote or moment from the video as the text component of your post. This will help set expectations for the experience ahead.

Get better engagement with a video Call to Action

Use a call-to-action to invite people to visit a destination such as a website where they will find more information, watch more, or purchase something. This makes it easy for people to connect more deeply with the stories and content they love and drives referrals back to you. Examples for the call-to-action include Learn More, Watch More, Shop Now, and Sign Up.

Use the power of Tagging other pages in your video posts

Tag the Pages of people that appear in your video or that you want to make aware of your video to drive up organic reach. These people's pages will automatically "re-distribute" your video.

Learn from Video Insights

For each video you post to your Page, you can view metrics like video views, unique video views, the average duration people viewed your video and audience retention. These metrics are designed to help you learn what’s resonating with people and tune the length and content for your video audience.

Fine tune your content based on this feedback. It's incredibly useful as you go forward.

Use Facebook's APIs 

You can use Facebook's API's to upload, set a call-to-action, and get insights for Facebook videos.

The APIs make it easy for you to upload videos, read videos, set video call to action, and get video insights.

Upload Specs

As you think about sharing video on Facebook, keep in mind these recommended upload specs as shared by Facebook:

• We support almost all types of video files, but recommend using the MP4 format.
• Resolution should be 1080p or under. To optimize the quality of your videos, upload HD video.
• Although we support file sizes up to 2.3 GB, there may be longer upload times associated with larger files on slower Internet connections.
• Videos must be less than 60 minutes long. The longer your video is, the larger its file size will be. This may affect the quality of the video and the time it takes to upload.
• We also recommend Stereo AAC audio compression with 128kbps, or more, preferred.

Use Facebook Live for those special video posts

Live video is changing user consumption of news and entertainment and is further connecting TV and social media. More brands and news organizations are using live video to augment their digital reach.And, now Facebook Live is impacting the whole spectrum as a platform both for real-time storytelling and journalism. You cannot deny the awesome power of Live Video – if it's done right.

First of all, is your audience going to appreciate the Live video format? Will it add value and enhance their experience? What's the kind of live content that your target audience wants. What resolution to their need or problem will you provide with your live video? You need to plan your live 'broadcast' around that.

Read more on: 

How to use Facebook Live video like a pro. The essentials of getting it right.

People watch video on Facebook to connect with moments shared by their friends, catch up on news from the day, and much more. More than 65% of all views are happening on mobile devices as people turn to Facebook at different times and places throughout the day. Video is compelling on mobile, as well as desktop. And, video, specially when directly uploaded on to Facebook makes for winning content. Use the Power of video now.

And that's the basics of digital marketing strategies. That's 101. Please share this post with your friends and colleagues today... And do comment if you feel you want to add to this.

Read more on mobile: 5 Ways to Develop a Consumer Focused Mobile Marketing Strategy

Read more