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

Tuesday Tip: Social Media Image Sizes

Did you know that every single social media channel has different requirements for image sizes? As part of your content marketing strategy, you should be creating content that is best suited for specific social media channels, anyway. Make sure you take the extra step and create the image at the correct image size before using it. It is very important that your visual content is optimized!

I have curated a few resources that provide the details on image sizes and requirements for each of the social media sites, with sizes for most frequently used tools: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, and Google +

• http://makeawebsitehub.com/social-media-image-sizes-cheat-sheet/ MakeAWebsiteHub has the 2016 Social Media Image Sizes Cheat Sheet
• http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ultimate-guide-social-media-image-dimensions-infographic#sm.001i631ebiqje1110nf1uaxg8pr2w Another version of that same cheat sheet, but it looks a little different.
• http://www.mainstreethost.com/blog/social-media-image-size-cheat-sheet/ MainStreetHost's image size reference guide
• http://blogs.constantcontact.com/social-media-image-sizes-2016/?CC=SM_PIN Constant Contact's super easy to read, simplified social media image size guide
• http://louisem.com/2852/social-media-cheat-sheet-sizes Louise Meyer's cheat sheet has minimum, optimal and maximum sizes.
• http://www.ph-creative.com/blog/social-media/the-ultimate-social-media-image-cheat-sheet/ Ph Creative has a visually gorgeous infographic for images sizes.
• http://thepinkgroup.co.uk/social-media-cheat-sheet/ The Pink Group's "super speedy all you needy" social media cheat sheet

Strategies for Direct Sales Facebook Parties

Let's have a party! Facebook virtual parties can be just as effective, if not better than home, in person parties. It's easy to get this party started. I'm giving you some great ideas on how to make Facebook parties work for your direct sales, especially if you have been trying Facebook to promote and it's just not working the way you want.

Facebook is fussy. Many representatives in direct sales are finding Facebook advertising challenging or not providing the return expected. Some of this has to do with Facebook's policies and algorithms. Some of this has to do with content that the direct seller chooses to push. Part of the problem is that Facebook's "Events" feature is meant to promote live events, not virtual events. I think that's a design failure on Facebook's part, but that's neither here nor there.

Considerations when creating a Facebook party: Event, Guests, Content, Engagement. EGCE doesn't spell anything cool, sorry. CEEG or GEEC either.

Event

To create a Facebook party, first make sure you have a Facebook business page for your direct sales business. (Creating business events from a personal page can cause problems with Facebook because it may violate their terms of service). From your Facebook business page, Create a new, PUBLIC event. I cannot stress this enough. So many people create social media content that is hidden behind their privacy filter. Make your Facebook Events PUBLIC. Make your Instagram PUBLIC. No one can see your content if it's not.

The Event Photo should be carefully crafted. You want something visually interesting, not busy, and low on text overlays. Guests will see this as a small thumbnail at first, so make sure it represents your event in a visually stimulating way. Also, adhere to the 1920 x 1080 image size in your design.

Make your Event Name powerful and relevant.

The Location should say Virtual, or Online.

Date/Time can be a single date or a time frame. On one hand, a single, short event will create a sense of urgency with guests. On the other hand, a time frame of several days expands guest participation because they can jump in at any time. A single, several hours long event or a 2 or 3 day stretch are the ideals;  anymore than 5 days can get annoying.

Co-hosts is useful if you are partnering up with another representative, or if you have a hostess. Another trick for Co-hosts? Add yourself, and as many friends as are willing to "co-host". What this will do is broaden your invite reach. Keep the invites low-ish though, or it will be id'd as spam.

Ticket URL is meant to purchase real live tickets to a real live event. I'd like to say use the link to your estore here, but I have to admit I have not tested this, and I'm not 100% sure what the policies are. If I discover this information somewhere, I will surely update you!

Description is very important. Copywrite this carefully. Your description should give specific information about what guests will experience, as well as the products or product lines you will be sharing.

I would choose Community > Shopping as the Category. Just making your event goals transparent may increase participation. Do not mislead your guests.

Leave Only hosts can post on the event wall unchecked. You want people to post; conversation is engagement and engagement leads to sales!

Guests

You want as many guests to join your event as possible. Invite all of your friends, ONCE! Don't be a spammer. Have your co-hosts invite their friends, once.

Promote your event outside of Facebook, with the linky back to the Event page.

Send out reminders leading up to the event to encourage more people to jump in.

Content

Have a purpose when you create a virtual Facebook party. Are you trying to:

• Introduce a new product or product line?
• Create a community?
• Answer questions about your opportunity?
• Promote a specific campaign?
• Acquire new leads and customers?

Make sure you focus your content on that purpose. Answer questions about other products and services, if they come up, but make sure you have a niche focus for your party. Focus on one product, or a newly released product, or successes customers have had. Even make it a problem solving event, if multiple customers have had questions about something.

Engagement

Your shares are critical. Share content that is related to the focus of your Facebook party, and work to create guest engagement. If people are posting on the wall, asking questions, making comments, participating or responding, those crickets mean no sales for you.

Hold Party Games to Make Guests Feel Like Individuals

OK, so there is this social media concept called "gamification". Essentially, humans want to enjoy their experience, so when interaction is turned into a game, they tend to engage more. I'm not going to go into this in too much detail (yet) because I haven't learned enough about it, but the same idea holds true in educational settings. (If you have kids, ask them if they have ever played Kahoot! in school and see their reaction.) Get kids involved by making learning fun. Get adults involved by making social media fun. Have party games about your products and about your customers. Make the games personal and relevant to individuals. Make guests feel special. Bring them in, and make it about them.

Take a look at my list of Facebook Games!

Offer Promotions Coupled with a Call To Action

When people shop, they want products that will work for them, but they also want to feel like they are getting something special. Offer as many promotions and discounts as you can. Give them exclusivity. Encourage action based on losing the opportunity to a discount. "20% discount on x product, available only from 6pm to 7pm today!" or "Free shipping coupon code expires Tuesday. Order now."

Provide Explicit Product Images, Information and Instructions on How To Order

Sounds crazy, right? Sell more product and get more customers by saying, explicitly, THIS is my product, THIS is what it does for you, and THIS is how you can get it. Don' make potential customers hunt for how to buy, or work to get the products you are promoting. Engagement that leads to sales will decline if it's too hard for them. Make it super simple to spend money on what you are selling.

Want to promote more and get more sales? Go create a Facebook event, and engage your guests with great content!

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.

Create and Share Content on Social Media

create content

I try to create high value content and product content. This is an example of product content. I made a video using Animoto. I used text and product images of boots to create a short product promotional video about relevant trends. This is just ONE example of content: a short YouTube video. I try to create at least ONE piece of content every day. It doesn't always happen.

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SHARE CONTENT

Then I shared the video to YouTube. From my Animoto phone app, I also downloaded the video and then shared a snippet to Instagram. I pinned all of the products in the video to one of my Pinterest boards. From YouTube, I tweeted the video to my Twitter, adding some hashtags. From YouTube, I shared the video to my Facebook page. The idea is to maintain a consistent brand image across all social media accounts. I would use the same share process for a blog post, infographic or any other valuable content created.

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creating and sharing content frequently is the number one strategy to increase sales online.

TIPS

• Make sure all paths lead back to your estore
• Frequency is really frequent, like way more frequent than you think
  
  • Facebook 1/day
  • Twitter 5/day
  • Linked In 2/week
  • Pinterest 5/day
  • Google + 5/week
  • Instagram 1/day
  • Blogs 4/week
  • Youtube 1/week
• Content should be a mix of product promotion, valuable information and curating content found on the internet
  
  • 1/3 create your own
  • 1/3 share product
  • 1/3 curate other content

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:

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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!