Tuesday Tip: Ideal Content Lengths for Social Media

Blogs

To write effective blog posts, choose content ideas that reflect the needs of your consumers. Direct the content as you want, using how tos, high quality journalistic style, personal storytelling, lists, product reviews, curated content, etc. Try to keep your blogs evergreen, meaning they will continue to be relevant in the future. Be sure to have an interesting title, headings, calls to action, links to your offer, and images.

Blog post lengths:

• Short 500-800 words
• Medium 800-1500
• Long 1500+

The ideal blog post length is 1500 words, with 50 character titles.

Facebook

Facebook posts should be short, only 1 or 2 sentences, but jam packed with valuable, engaging content. Offer current information, a newly released product, or pose a question. Include an image and a link.

Ideal length for a Facebook post is 1 or 2 sentences.

Twitter

To write killer tweets, you have to think short and sweet. To master pith, draft your message and then edit your word choices carefully. Take advantage of verbs, sensory descriptions with adjectives, and avoid filler words, like "very". Right before you are ready to click Tweet, edit one last time.

Twitter limits posts to 140 characters, but the ideal length is between 75-100 characters.

Instagram

The key to Instagram is clearly visual.  Instagram requires an image, and that is the showcase of your post. The caption that accompanies your visual image should also be productive. Keep your caption short, use two hash tags at the most, and your call to action can't be an active link. Storytelling can supplement your image in the caption. It's also OK to go caption free and let that showcase visual tell the whole story.

While images are the most important, captions of 100 characters or less are ideal.

YouTube

Video content is currently king. But, that video should be highly valuable and short. 3 minutes is an ideal length, because videos should be engaging and snackable. Video is great for tutorials, how tos, behind the scenes, informative explanations, product demonstrations, sharing expertise, narratives or live events. Combine video/visuals, text and your active or voice over audio, plus background music to add mood. The challenge with video is quality-high definition, great lighting, clear audio, and professional looking scenery.

Ideal video length: 3 minutes

Pinterest

For perfect pins, combine an attractive image with readable text. Text should be large enough don't, and high enough contrast to be legible while scrolling through a Pinterest feed. Your caption should be descriptive, with additional details about the pin, and a call to action plus link to more information. How tos, info graphics, categorical interests, and mini "ads" (think food photos with a call to action to click a link for the recipe) are all really successful on Pinterest. Pretty, inspirational photographs also garner a lot of Pin It attention, especially when someone is trying to curate ideas on a board.

Ideal Pinterest caption length is 200 characters

Seeking: Blog Writers, Lifestyle Photographers, Product Testers, Influencers

Business has changed. Social media has been accelerating at breakneck speed, and it is literally everywhere now. Businesses have been using content marketing through social media networks, and over the past few years, social has risen to become THE primary marketing tool for companies that sell consumer products over the internet. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and others, are all tools to promote and communicate socially. And this format of marketing is not going anywhere.

This is a HUGE opportunity. Many companies have a very specific marketing plan for television, print and radio. However, companies are struggling to move into the social space because it is such a different way to market.

Companies that sell through direct representatives have an opportunity to really excel in the social media space. Why? Because social media is about two things: individuals and relationships. Social works best when it is individual people connecting through relationships within the social media space. This is ideal for direct sales because the individual representatives can really showcase themselves and the companies products in conjunction.

The true opportunity comes because more content is needed. Content creation is still an enormous opportunity, and the more content that can be created around a product or a company, the more that company will excel within the social media space.

What does social media content look like? It looks personal, it looks unique and it looks valuable. It is authentic. And it looks different for every single platform, which is part of why more of it is needed. Facebook content looks different from Tweets, which look different from Instagram, which is definitely different from video social like Vine and YouTube. The mood is also something to consider. Is the content funny, inspirational, informative, promotional, educational? New, fresh, authentic, valuable content is very needed.

Content forms can include:

• blogs

• photography (all types, but flat lay photos, especially in Instagram, are on trend in social)

• tweets and retweets

• Pinterest images and infographics

• product reviews

• videos (short, highly engaging videos are really starting to define social media this year)

• interactive, such as quizzes, games, tools, and apps (a true need: there are nearly none for beauty, but people are clamoring for them!)

Would you like to blog?

Do you want to write informative blog posts about people, products and your love of beauty? Like to share everything that's going on? new products, news, promotions, and sales? As a blog writer, the name of the game is share, and often. Blogs should have editorial schedules: write about new products on Sundays, write about the upcoming week's promotions on Fridays, and so on.

Blogs should be an engaging blend of text and images. The content should be useful to the reader... people should be able to get something valuable from the blog post. If you like the idea of researching expert information, writing quality, fresh content, consistently, then start writing blogs!

Qualifications:

• Grammar and writing skills
• Able to create original and engaging blog content
• Passionate about sharing your love of beauty

Want to learn more about being the best blogger?

Are you creative with a camera?

When you are out, are you the type of person to pull out your smartphone and start shooting pictures? Do you love taking selfies, or photos of your makeup hauls? As a photographer, you really have a lot of fun, creative things you can do and then share on social media channels like Instagram.

Photographs about beauty come in a variety of formats: lifestyle photographs of people, well lit professional style photographs, even flat lay product photographs. (Which are really hot on Instagram right now, by the way). If you love the idea of using your smartphone, digital camera or even high end SLR camera to take gorgeous photographs, then start shooting!


Qualifications:

• Creative photography skills
• Enjoy shooting photographs of people 
• Able to setup a creative scene

Looking for some great lifestyle photography tips?

Do you love trying new beauty products?

Do you pick up the newest lipstick, eyeshadow palette or beauty gadget (BeautyBlender anyone?) just to see how it works? Would you love to try new fragrances or fit new clothing styles? As a product tester, you try out new products for quality, look, feel, and other consumer focused characteristics.

Product testers are usually the first to buy something that has just been released to market. Often, the new products are part of a product review - sometimes done using video and shared out to YouTube.

Qualifications:

• Connected with beauty news, new products and trends
• Like reading or watching new product reviews
• Love to try out new products when they are released

Check out some pretty intense tips for top product review writing.

Are you an influencer?

Image makers are at the top of their industry. They are the people that influence what others do, and they are very much trendsetters. Becoming an influencer takes expertise and patience in order to build a loyal and trusting following.

Influencers have the ability to create action, and are often the go to resource in their industry. To be a beauty influencer, you have to focus on developing ultra high quality content, network and build a strong presence over time. It can be done!

Top tips for becoming a social media influencer.

Qualifications:

• Want to be a leader in beauty
• Reliable image maker and able to share expert news with many people
• Connect with people... daily

If this business lifestyle sounds great to you, you can do it. Right now. Build your very own business online, write blogs, take photos, test new products and influence others through social! You have the power to create this rockstar social media presence, and you can do it in conjunction with a wonderful company that offers amazing beauty products.

Selling With Social Media: Creating and Pushing Content

I've already started to talk about social media, here: Social Media Network Marketing, Simplified What we want to get out of social media, as direct sellers, are network connections that will help us grow our business, and customers who are interested in our products. Those network relationships should be long term, or at least longer than a single sale. Obviously, social media connections will come and go, but you want to focus on developing long term relationships, trust and credibility on social media.

Of the four key social media networking marketing activities, this blog will focus on the first: creating and sharing content. In my first social media blog post, I mention spending 10+ hours a week creating content, and that you begin to see engagement after about 6 hours a week of work. Spend as much time as you can creating original, quality content.

Since this is a two step process (1. Creating Content, 2. Pushing Content) you will see details on how to accomplish both parts of the process. In addition, you will find a summary of the top marketing Social Media Channels, the best time of day to share and the frequency of sharing.

Creating Content

The quickest, cheapest and easiest path to creating content is to create a blog. A blog will keep all of your content in one place, it is technologically one of the least challenging, and it offers one of the highest values. Another benefit of a blog is that you begin to build your personal brand. (See my blog post about personal branding, here: Personal Branding Yourself For Direct Sales)

Here is the challenge with creating content, such as a blog. You need a few content creation tools.

Social Media Accounts. Yes, you share your content on social media accounts, but you also acquire content from those same accounts. Spend some time setting up social media accounts, and begin following people. (I am currently on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube.) It is highly recommended that you use your own name for all of your social media accounts, in order to develop a strong personal brand. Follow the people you are interested in. If you want to focus on nails, follow ALL the nail artists and nail art people you are inspired by. See what they are talking about, read their blogs, view their images, and see who they follow. As you begin to follow people, you will begin to experience follow for follows. Be careful about this: if you spend too much time following, and not start to provide content for your followers, they will begin to fall off over time. As you develop followers, make sure you begin to give them content, too.

A Spiral Notebook. I am a professional writer. Yet, I surprisingly do not always go straight to my laptop to write - I pull out my old school spiral notebook. Physically writing does a few things for your brain that computers are not able to do. (There is a while bunch of brain science research on this.) With your spiral notebook, begin to collect ideas. Write down things you want to blog about, things you want to research, and ideas you have for content. If we are still talking nails, maybe your list would look like this: tools used to create nail art, my favorite spring nail artists, how to make suchandsuch nail art step by step. Start with your passion, and you will quickly have a list of things to write about! I also use my spiral notebook to outline or draft my content, but not everyone likes to do it that way.

Technology. The tools I recommend are: a computer/laptop with a full size keyboard and mouse (makes the content management process much easier if you have access to this tool), a smartphone, a Google account. That's it! I use my Google account for email, Google docs, sheets and slides, and Blogger (though some people prefer WordPress).

Images. Finding images can be tough, but people are visual and images are a necessity. Be careful about using other people's images, as there are copyright issues. I have had the most success with either taking photographs myself (of products, of myself, of things I like) or creating images by layering text on top of backgrounds. Images up the ante on your content - it attracts people to your textual content with visual enticement. Images help people to connect to your content, and if there is a product involved, seeing the actual product encourages people to purchase.

Pushing Content

PUSH your content. Once you have created your content, you need to get that content in front of people. Share the link to your blogs on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, everywhere you have social media accounts.

"Sharing quality content across your social channels is one of the most important things you can do to engage your audience and attract new followers." 
Source: http://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-editorial-calendar/

Editorial Schedule. The biggest tool you should be using is something called an "Editorial Schedule". What content will you be posting on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? An editorial schedule will include your blog posts, and it will also include all of the content *around* your blog post. Share key products related to that post, industry news, inspirational images, trends, summaries from other people's blogs, headlines from related magazines, images you curate, Pins that are in the same category. Try to share the minimum recommended below for each channel. (It's not easy, I know BUT the closer you are to that goal, the closer you are to building your social media presence to where you want it.)

I use a tool called Hootsuite to schedule my content shares throughout the week. I know other people prefer to use Buffer.

One more time, for people in the back: THE MORE ORIGINAL, QUALITY CONTENT YOU CREATE AND PUSH, THE MORE ENGAGEMENT YOU WILL SEE.

Social Media Channels

Channel	Content	Times	Minimum	Maximum
Facebook	I like this new makeup.	between 1pm and 3pm	3x per week	10x per week
Twitter	I'm wearing #makeup	noon, 5pm-6pm	5x per day	none
Pinterest	Here's an infographic of makeup.	2pm-4pm and 8pm-11pm	5x per day	10x per day
Instagram	Here's a filtered photo of me wearing makeup.	1pm-4pm	3x per week	10x per week
Google+	I can't find any makeup here.	9am-11am	5x per week	10x per week
LinkedIn	My skills include wearing makeup.	7am-9am and 5pm-6pm	2x per week	5x per week
YouTube	Here I am showing how to apply makeup.	2pm-4pm	1x per week	5x per week

(Content ideas modified from The Cyber Advocate's "donut" example.)

How do I know it's working? Measuring your social media efforts can be done in a few ways. Many social media channels, blog tools, offer some kind of analytics that show you how many people have viewed that content. When you shorten your links back to your estore, use bitly, which will also track how many times people click on that link. To measure your personal brand and social media health, use a tool called Klout, which gives you  a score based on your social media presence strength. Finally, the key indicator whether your social media content is working is customer engagement: are people communicating with you? are there sales happening on your estore? If you are not seeing that, focus on creating and sharing MORE content. I read somewhere that you will not start to see customers until you have at least 1,000 blog posts! It will take time. Be patient.

Personal Branding Yourself For Direct Sales

Personal branding is the idea the YOU are the brand. Brand You. You are not just a direct sales consultant, you are a... makeup expert, jewelry lover, home decor fanatic. Focus on your passion. For example, choose one category from the Avon product offerings (makeup, jewelry, Avon Living home goods) and focus on creating a presence around that category niche. Your passion for that focus will show, and it will become part of who you are as a personal brand.

Use a blog to build your personal brand

If you have a blog or a social media presence, you should spend your efforts promoting, creating content and curating other information about your niche. A blog is one of THE best ways to showcase your personal brand. How does this work? Well, take home decor as an example. Go through the products for home decor. (Avon Living is THE place to go if you love home goods!) Start writing blog posts about those products, about that lifestyle, about home decoration, about entertaining, etc. Pin the products, but Pin MORE than those products. Pin current trends in the home decorating industry. Share home decor ideas through magazines and home decorating websites. Curate home decor photos. Create lists of easy ways to decorate (plugging in a few Avon Living products, of course). You are building your personal brand not by only promoting your Avon Living products, but also by creating a niche expertise and establishing long term trust as a source of valueable information. People WANT to know what the Top 5 Spring Decorating Trends are. They WANT to know how It's Easy To Entertain for Afternoon Tea. (Include the Bright and Cheery Tea Kettle photo and link to your estore). They NEED the super helpful information in your Floral Pillows For a Fast Spring Refresh (Include the Watercolor Fleurs and Bird Pillow Covers photo and link). THIS is the type of information people want, and the more of this you create, the more customers you will see. The more of YOU that you put into it, the more personal it becomes, and therefore more desirable.

Create an image

Let's talk about image a little bit. Brands have logos. Brands are not logos. Your brand should be your beautiful face. And your name. (Not Avon's logo.) You are your brand. If you want to design a "logo" make it your name.

Back to that Avon brand question... selling Avon is what you DO, it is not you. You DO other things, too. (Whatever that might be.. family, dogs, sports, cooking, etc.) So when you brand yourself, you have a title with Avon, you can use the Avon banner on your headshot photo, but you are not the Avon brand, and you can't use the Avon logo for yourself. When you develop your brand presence, you want to share who you are, not only that you sell Avon. People buy from people. It sounds crazy, but instead of saying, "Hi my name is Sarah, and I would like to share the Avon brochure with you." try saying, "Hi my name is Sarah Smith, and I want to help women feel beautiful."

It is important to keep your personal brand consistent. So, if you have a blog, a Facebook page, Twitter, Pinterest... keep those all looking and feeling the same. They should all have your name, your photo as your profile picture, and the same image look and fonts used for images. While you are at it, consider reserving your social media account with your name for all social media tools, even if you don't setup your profiles on those accounts yet. KnowEm? is a super useful tool.

It's official - your brand is you, your presence, and your personality.  (Online and offline). So now what? What exactly are we supposed to do with that?

How to Create Your Personal Brand

Start with the story.

• Your personal story and your personal values. Master your own story first because when you do, you can more easily empower others.
• Why you joined Avon and started your own beYOUtiful business. You have to feel confident with your own reasons before you can persuade others. Make it real and engaging.
• What your "mission" is. Your personal mission. What do you want to accomplish with your beYOUtiful business?
• The Avon story (make sure to leave this one for last - nail who you are first, then you will be better prepared to share the Avon story.

Begin with engagement.

• Share your story on social media. Any and every social media you feel comfortable with. However, make sure if you have a social media, you work it. If you never Tweet, shut down your Twitter for now.
• Talk to everyone about who you are and what you do. In person, online, everywhere!
• Get your target market to engage; ask them to share what their favorite nail color is, or what they wear for sunscreen.

Develop an image

• Get a good headshot photo and use that everywhere. If you have a friend that loves to take photographs, enlist their help! Otherwise, work with a local photographer to get yourself a couple of professional looking headshots. Try to update them seasonally, if you can.
• Pick a visual "look". The color scheme, the images, the personality of your look should be consistent everywhere you have a presence.
• Choose 2 to 3 colors to always use in the content you create. There is a psychology to color, too...
• Select 1 or 2 fonts to use consistently, including 1 font to always always use for your name. Avoid frequently used and outdated fonts like Comic Sans, but don't go so fancy that the letters can't be read easily.

Create content

• Think like a journalist. Create an editorial schedule.
• Write blog posts. The more the better.
• Try to create content in a doable quantity, but to gain a following your content also needs to be quality. (Hint, pure promotion is NOT good quality.)
• Not sure where to start? Set a goal of one blog post per week. If you find you can do more - awesomesauce! Try to avoid doing less (52 blogs a year is not that many). Also, when a post has more than 1,500 words, it gets more social media engagement.
• Expand your content into ebooks, infographics, videos, etc.

Curate content

• Think like a museum director. Share relevant, pretty content with frequent rotation.
• Share content created by other people, and share product information from other companies. I know this sounds counter intuitive, but curating industry knowledge actually creates more credibility for you and customers trust you more.
• Some marketing speak: "Position Avon as a thought leader." What this means: In your curated content, make Avon an expert, and showcase Avon products as the best choice.

Promote content

• Think like a marketing executive. Have a plan and a "look".
• This is where most new reps focus all of their attention. Promotion should be about 1/3 of your total content. Any more than that and your content will be flooded with sales type stuff and people will be turned off.

Dos and Don'ts

What to do

Be real. You are you and nobody else is you. Be authentic. (But not TOO authentic - refer to drama llama)
Be online. Even offline customers will look you up online. make sure your online presence reflects your offline business.
Be valuable. Write a mission statement.

What NOT to do

Be a drama llama. Do not share personal details, like your dog's poop or your recent breakup. Don't ever talk about politics or religion. Customers don't care and it will turn them off forever.
Be everything. You need to create a niche and focus on one thing. If you try to be everything to everyone, you will be spread too thin and you won't be able to focus your efforts.

3 key words to make personal branding amazing:

Social Media Network Marketing, Simplified

What is Social Media Network Marketing?

Social Media Network Marketing is a type of marketing that leverages social media tools, like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram, to build network connections for the purpose of selling product or recruiting individuals to a direct sales company.

Top Social Media Network Marketing activities:

• Creating and sharing content
• Listening to social media buzz
• Building networks through comments, Likes, Follows, Tweets, etc.
• Finding more leads online

AVON ISRs are in somewhat new territory. We want to navigate the social media waters, identify the best tools, engage prospects and drive customers to buy at our youravon page or sign up to sell at our startavon page, and we want to be able to measure how all of that is working.

Tool	Description	Effectiveness	Ease of Use
Facebook	connecting and sharing	- hard to tell - FB logarithm changes have reduced views - pages do have stats	Takes Some Effort
Blogs	writing and sharing content	- has to be good, relevant, interesting content - best when it's mobile optimized	Takes A Lot Of Effort
Twitter	short "tweets", micro blog	- can quickly become viral via retweets and hashtags - offers engagement	Easy Peasy
Linked In	professional networking	-good for building connections	Takes Some Effort
Google +	networking (actually most ppl aren't really sure?)	- Google is making some changes	Takes A Lot Of Effort
Pinterest	"Pin" to organize and share visuals	- Very engaging - Repins and links drive traffic well	Easy Peasy
Instagram	Visuals sharing	- Engaging - Can drive traffic well	Easy Peasy
YouTube	Video sharing	- Versatile - Edutainment videos work best - Call to action helps drive traffic	Takes A Lot Of Effort
Tumblr	Micro blog, sharing	- Engaging - Can drive traffic	Easy Peasy
Others, like Vine, Snapchat	video sharing, visual messaging, etc.	- Varies	Varies

With any of these social media tools, one significant factor is CONSISTENCY. Whatever you create and share, do so consistently, on a schedule, with as high a frequency as you can manage. Fresh, interesting, engaging content is so important.

Four Key Social Media Network Marketing Activities:

---

Spend time creating and sharing CONTENT

Spend most of your time creating high quality content. You should be spending at least 10 + hours a week creating content, though increased traffic and lead generation usually starts at around 6 hours a week.

Write quality blogs, and push blogs out to social media sites, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter. Always provide links back to youravon estore! This is incredibly important; prospects can't engage and become customers if they don't have the path to your estore.

Content should be written, but you can enhance and elaborate through visuals and videos.

Share product and opportunity directly from your estore, and leverage the sharing tools available through the Social Media Center!

---

LISTEN to people on social media 

Listen to the buzz. Don't comment until you have really listened! Listen to what online prospects are saying. Listen to their concerns, their comments, their complaints. THEN, carefully craft responses that fill their needs.

Listen to individuals through comments and messaging. Respond with professional solutions, but don't push product. Help solve their problems!

---

Build RELATIONSHIPS

Make friends, not enemies. Try not to be overly aggressive... people want to buy from a person not just someone who can post about their products. People want to know that you have the knowledge they are seeking.

Make online customers a priority, just like you would if you were helping them face to face. Treat online prospects and sales exactly like personal sales.

Be professional, and always communicate like everyone you meet online is a customer. If you wouldn't say something to a customer while standing on their porch, never say it online! Never be rude, and always respect everyone. Avoid commenting about religion, politics, controversy and never use any inappropriate content on any publicly viewable social media!

---

Find more LEADS online 

Drive leads to you by creating quality content. LINK, LINK, LINK directly to your estore or opportunity page.

blogs, infographics and video

Seriously, write a quality blog post, create a valuable video, or pin an infographic you have created EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Online events can rapidly expand your leads. Host a Facebook party!

You can also use tools such as SEO and SIGs to help find more customers online. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is using keywords within your content to help people find you. (This is not the same as Google Adwords, which is not allowed by Avon). These are keywords that you use as a rich way to enhance your content by placing them within your content and as tags/labels on your blogs. Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are niche sites where people go for specific interests they have. These can be within Facebook groups, Pinterest interests, Twitter hashtags, and niche websites such as Ravelry or CafeMom.

---

Bonus!

Integrate all social media tools, starting with the quality content and sharing out everywhere! For example, for every blog post you write, share it to Facebook and Twitter. Create a companion board and infographics for Pinterest. Plan videos to post through YouTube. INTEGRATE your Social Media Network Marketing efforts!

Be aware that every social media site has its own policies, and Avon has its own policies. Make sure you read, understand and follow those policies!