Social Pros Podcast

Jill Paider, an award-winning photographer and creative director, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss the importance of sharing photogenic content on Instagram and how ‘social photography’ has impacted the industry. Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Emma Full Episode Details When most people think about creative minds, they recall world-renown artists, novelists, architects and so on. However, what you might not realize is that social pros are creatives too. It takes a lot of creative thinking to produce and publish great posts and come up with effective marketing strategies that can propel a brand’s growth. But, can creativity be taught? Or, is it something that only the Leonardo da Vinci’s and Steven Spielberg’s of the world are born with? Jill Paider is an award-winning photographer and creative director. She has published 21 books and believes that inspiration fuels creativity. The only problem is that if you are a creative, inspiration isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. You have to learn how to spark inspiration to keep doing the work that you love. You can’t wake up one morning and procrastinate because you weren’t feeling inspired. You’ve got to train your brain to fire on the cylinders and keep the creative juices flowing no matter what. In This Episode: 06:55 – How to train your brain to get into a creative routine 09:16 – Why and how to silence the voice of your inner perfectionist 12:19 – Tips for balancing travel and work 14:03 – How the professional photography industry has been impacted by social photography 19:24 – Why photography is deemed as 80% creative and 20% technical 22:39 – How to use social to promote books 30:28 – How to be patient as a photographer and social media professional Resources Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce  Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners Learn how to use emma to help you design stunning emails that ‘win the inbox’ Read Jill Paider’s book, “Getting Ahead: The Creative’s Guide to Staying Inspired & Doing the Work You Love”  Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Greg Hounslow, Emerging Media Manager at WestJet, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss how the airline has propelled their online presence to become the number one brand on social in the airline industry. Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Emma   Building a Number One Brand on Social Influencer marketing has definitely made its mark on social. But, as with most things in life, there’s a right and wrong way to do influencer marketing. Many businesses make the mistake of pursuing influencers just because they have a large following, but that doesn’t always mean that they can add real value to your business. According to Greg Hounslow, the Emerging Media Manager at WestJet, you should also consider the content output an influencer provides and whether it can actually help drive your brand and ROI forward. WestJet is the number one airline on social media, winning multiple awards for their strategy and performance. Other brands in the airline industry struggle to rival their success and their secret is simple – rather than stick to the same strategy year after year, they’ve continued to evolve alongside social media. In This Episode: 07:17 – How the social programme at WestJet is organized 11:56 – How WestJet’s team expectations have shifted over the last five years 15:00 – The benefits of evaluating organic reach through fan engagement and evaluating paid from a revenue generation perspective 17:06 – How WestJet’s content strategy has evolved 20:37 – How the customer care team responds to negative feedback 29:22 – Greg predicts the future of chatbots 34:40 – When influencer marketing works and when it doesn’t Resources Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce here. Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners here. Learn more about how emma can help improve your email marketing strategy Listen to episode 107 of the Social Pros Podcast to hear Greg discuss how WestJet uses social media to enhance customer relations Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Jen Hartmann, the Public Relations and Social Media Manager at John Deere, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss how a 180 year old brand leverages paid social.  Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week: Salesforce Marketing Cloud  Emma   Social is no longer a free marketing tool  There was a time when social could be used as free marketing. The only price you had to pay for some engagement was time and maybe a little bit of luck. However, putting the same message on multiple platforms and hoping for the best isn’t going to cut it anymore. Paid social is arguably the most effective way for brands to expand the reach of their content. Instead of saturating your audience with content, you need to consider targeting the right audiences, at the right time and on the right social platform. Jen Hartmann, the Public Relations and Social Media Manager at John Deere, agrees that social is no longer the free marketing tool it used to be. As you can imagine, it was a challenge for her and the social team to transform the corporate strategy of a business that has been in the game for 180 years.  Tune in to find out how paid social helped John Deere target their specific audience with the right message at the right time and how to make it work as part of a much larger marketing communications program. In This Episode:  08:25 – How to work with multiple social media stakeholders from different countries 13:07 – How to know when you’re one of the best social brands in the world 16:46 – How to balance the content you share with your audience 21:25 – How brands can insert themselves into conversations on social without being tagged or invited 26:58 – Why brands should stop looking at social as free marketing and start seeing the benefits of paid social 31:31 – An insight into John Deere’s influencer marketing strategy Resources  Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce here. Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners here. Learn how to stay connected with your email marketing subscribers using Emma Find out more about John Deere’s heritage and equipment Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Marissa Sharpless, Sr. Manager, PR and Social Media at Cinnabon, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss the power of storytelling on social media.  Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week:  Salesforce Marketing Cloud  emma   Storytelling on Social People have been telling stories since the dawn of time. A great story has the power to bring people together and foster meaningful relationships between brands and customers. But with no recipe to follow, how can you use social for storytelling? The good news is that you don’t need a massive following to start connecting with your audience via storytelling. Even if you only have a handful of followers, knowing how to tell a good story on social can make waves that resonate outside of your community. As Marissa Sharpless, Sr. Manager, PR and Social Media at Cinnabon rightly says, your storytelling ability is what will help you transform your fans into brand advocates. You don’t need to turn yourself into the next George R.R. Martin to be able to tell a story people will connect with. Your story could be something ‘small’ or as big as changing the world one Cinnabon at a time.   In This Episode:  04:23 - How Marissa went from being a reality TV star to the Sr. Manager of PR and Social Media at Cinnabon 09:39 – How Marissa’s background in broadcast journalism has helped her fuel Cinnabon’s success on social 11:00 – What it’s like working with multiple franchise owners 16:05 – How Cinnabon views paid social and use it to boost customer advocacy 19:03 – How to incorporate UGC in your brand storytelling 23:33 – How to use Twitter Chats and social listening to bond with your community 34:18 – How Cinnabon utilizes data when it comes to sales attribution   Resources Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners Learn more about how emma can help you take your email marketing strategy to the next level Find out more about Cinnabon Bakery and their tasty treats!   Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Amrita Gurney, the Vice President of Marketing at CrowdRiff, joins the Social Pros podcast to discuss how brands can leverage the power of user-generated content to build their audience. Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week:  Salesforce Marketing Cloud Emma    Defeat the challenges of UGC User-generated content has equipped brands with an infinite pool of videos and images to share with their audience. But, there’s a lot to think about when it comes to building a user-generated content strategy and making sure you’re not stepping on any legal toes is just the tip of the iceberg.  A simple search on Instagram is all it takes to pull up millions of photos and some of them are good enough that brands want to use them. The combination of different educational resources available to help improve your images has led to this renaissance of photography that many of us could never have predicted, according to the Vice President of Marketing at CrowdRiff, Amrita Gurney. With a software platform like CrowdRiff, you can find UGC images that you can license and reuse for other purposes, helping your brand to promote authenticity, build trust and drive purchasing decisions.   In This Episode:  03:52 – How brands can use CrowdRiff to get smarter with the way they use visual content to attract audiences 05:34 – How to get permission to use UGC photos 08:43 – Different ways that you can use UGC photos to promote your brand 10:26 – How to approach licensing and securing the rights to use UGC images 13:25 – How CrowdRiff uses AI to curate relevant images 15:54 – Tips for choosing visuals that perform well on social 26:21 – How the quality of images has evolved over the years   Resources Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners Learn more about how Emma can help you reach your email marketing goals Discover how CrowdRiff can help you get smarter with the way you use visual content to attract audiences Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

David Armano, Global Strategy Director at Edelman, joins Social Pros to discuss the relationship between word of mouth and influencer marketing. Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week: Salesforce Marketing Cloud  Airtable   Consumers Trust Influencers Did you know that 63% of consumers trust influencers about brands more than they trust brands about brands? This has got to be one of the most undeniable proof points for the viability of peer to peer influence. Yet, so many brands still shy away from influencer marketing. The truth is that consumers are more likely to believe what they hear about a brand via word of mouth than what the brand says about themselves. Consumers listen to influencers because they trust them, and they’re entertained by them in some way. However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in the influencer space. As David Armano cautions, the influencer marketing space has a lot of rampant fraud. Yes, brands can leverage influencers to get in front of the right audiences. But, technologies also have the power to drive fake followers and engagement using bot farms, which can damage the authenticity of the results. In This Episode: 06:08 – How Edelman structures their social digital team 08:34 – How social campaigns have evolved over the last decade 15:36 – How much testing and experimentation brands should do in social digital 20:17 – How Edelman’s Trust Barometer works 25:07 – The relationship between influencer marketing and word of mouth 29:28 – How to assess whether a spokesperson is suitable for a brand promotion 35:48 – How issues in crisis communication has changed in the era of social Resources Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners Find out more about how Airtable can help you organize your work and get your free guide on how to use your social media calendar better Learn more about Edelman and how they can help you earn trust through communications Download the results from the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer   Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Blake Lawrence and Adi Kunalic, Co-Founders of opendorse, join the Social Pros Podcast to discuss their incredible athlete marketing platform and how its revolutionizing the way the sports industry use social. Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Pattern 89   Power Comes with Content The influencer marketing landscape is at its pinnacle with brands seeking help from ‘prized’ influencers to drive their message to audiences large enough to pack out hundreds if not thousands of sports stadiums. But not every influencer is a born marketer.  Athletes are prime examples of influencers who, despite not being natural marketers, get worldwide attention from their social audience. Thus, brands and sponsors see athletes as the “golden chalice” of influencers who have the unique power to reach millions of sports fans with every post they publish on social media. According to Adi Kunalic and Blake Lawrence from opendorse, the ability to reach the masses on social isn’t exclusive to the most influential entities in sports media. The average athlete has a 6% engagement rate on social compared to the average sports team, which has an engagement rate of just 0.3%. In This Episode:  03:58 – How athletes use opendorse to share content with their audience 08:34 – Why more employee advocacy platforms should consider personalizing the experience 12:39 – How opendorse can help you build your brand 18:03 – What type of content works best for engagement 22:39 – How to use reporting and analytics to get more value from influencer marketing 32:23 – How opendorse can help brands establish relationships with athletes Resources Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce here. Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners here. Learn more about how Pattern 89 can help you reduce costs and increase revenue with your social ads. Find out more about opendorse and how they can help you share content with athletes here. Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Ryan Thompson, CMO of Blue Heron, joins Social Pros to discuss social strategy in the hospitality industry and why you should keep tabs on what your guests are saying on review sites. Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Airtable    Listen to your customers online! The hospitality industry can use social media to strengthen relationships with existing customers, promote their hotels and attract new guests. However, many hotels haven’t grasped the concept of social as an effective marketing communication tool. While they’re busy catching up, companies like Caesars Entertainment use social to swarm its customers and boost their online presence.  Social is a window into your customers’ lives and if you’re in the hospitality industry, you need to pay close attention to what your guests are saying about you online. 95% of travelers read online reviews before booking. So, if you roam in the travel and hospitality space, you need a frontline social team to respond to reviews whether guests are singing your praises or not. As our guest, Ryan Thompson, says, if you’re doing a good job of attracting the right people with your offering, your guests will help define the voice of your brand. Surprisingly, as Caesars Entertainment has proved, you don’t need an enormous team to surround your customers on social. In This Episode: 06:44 – How to structure a frontline social team and maintain a range of tonality across all social channels 13:01 – Tips to help hospitality businesses improve reach and engagement 16:30 – Why hospitality businesses need to pay close attention to review sites 19:11 – How to work with social influencers and brand ambassadors 24:03 – How email marketing can assist your social strategies 29:16 – How to use geo-based marketing and long-term campaigns to attract customers 33:34 – How to approach budgeting in a multifaceted organization Resources Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce here. Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners here. Learn more about Airtable and get your free template here. Listen to this Social Pros Podcast episode featuring Carlos Garcia, CEO of HYP3R – “How Location-Based Social Chatter Unlocks Your Fans” here. Find out more about Caesars Entertainment here. Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Oz Etzioni, the CEO and Co-founder at Clinch joins the Social Pros Podcast to unveil how hyper targeting works in digital advertising. Please Support Our Sponsors: Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Emma How Hyper-Targeting Works in Digital Advertising With the right data, you can learn more about the user you want to show an ad to and give them an experience tailored to the individual. Whether you’re an advertiser, agency or publisher, data-driven personalized ads will boost performance and deliver higher ROI because people simply like content that is personable to them. If you want to crack the code of hyper-targeting in digital advertising, you’ve got to unearth and leverage the data that social platforms offer. Social ecommerce is the future and if you want to see an upward sales trajectory, your ads must reach the right person at the right time with the right message on the right channel. Oz Etzioni is the CEO of Clinch, an innovative omni-channel AI-powered personalization platform that delivers ad experiences tailored to the individual. If you want to communicate with customers in such a way that they want to do business with you, you’ve got to start offering an individualized creative experience. In This Episode: 04:20 – The value of crafting hyper-targeted digital ads 09:55 – How an omni-channel works 13:11 – What creative permutations drive the best results from personalized ads 18:22 – Addressing the potential invasiveness of this level of personalization and the associated privacy issues 20:22 – How the intersection of ecommerce and Instagram has grown 28:49 – Common objections related to hyper-targeting your creative ads online Resources: Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners Find out more about Emma, the go-to email marketing platform Learn more about how Clinch can help increase return on ad spend using data-driven personalized messages with real time optimization Visit the client portal on Clinch to see lots of great case studies here. Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Senior Marketing Executive and Food and Hospitality Influencer, David “Rev” Ciancio, joins the Social Pros Podcast to talk about how to increase engagement on Instagram with a fine-tuned social media strategy.   Please Support Our Sponsors: Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week:   SalesForce Marketing Cloud   Pattern 89   Posting with Purpose  Are you hungry for more engagement on Instagram? There was a time (long, long ago) when all you had to do was post a half-decent photo with a short, preferably funny caption and that was it. Nowadays, if you want to be classed as an ‘influencer,’ you’ve got to sharpen your game and make sure every post provides value to someone, somehow.  As our guest, David (Rev) Ciancio says, “you’ve got to have a reason why you are creating and sharing content.” If your posts don’t provide any value, you’ll continue to see tumbleweeds roll through your Instagram feed. Know your audience’s pain points and give them content that they actually want and need.  Rev is a Senior Marketing, Branding and Digital Strategist (and expert burger taster), who helps brands and businesses up their game on Instagram. As one of the country’s leading food and hospitality influencers, what he has to say about marketing on Instagram is taken as gospel by many, especially for those in the food and restaurant space. So, if you’re curious to find out more, grab a fork and dig in!    In This Episode:  06:46 – Common mistakes to avoid with your Instagram bio  10:37 – What works when it comes to food marketing on Instagram  15:03 – How to use video effectively on Instagram and the importance of conveying customer experience  19:15 – Why UGC (User Generated Content) is so important when creating a successful Instagram marketing strategy  23:09 – How to take high-quality images to share on Instagram  27:12 – Rev shares his predictions for food trends    Resources:  Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners Learn more about how Pattern 89 can help optimize your Facebook Ad campaigns Get David’s (Rev’s) FREE guide, “5 Mistakes That You’re Making on Your Instagram Bio"  Visit Rev’s website, ‘Burger Conquest’ for more marketing tips Find out more about Rev’s company, ‘Yeah! Management’ Follow Rev on Instagram to keep up with his delicious posts Connect with Rev on Twitter Check out Weird Al Yankovic’s Instagram profile   Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.