Make It With Michael

By Christina Newberry Imagine the powerful business insights you could gain from an organic form of market research where the focus group was made up entirely of people already engaging with your brand or your industry. Sounds pretty great, right? That’s exactly the kind of business intelligence you can access when you implement a social listening strategy to track, analyze, and respond to online conversations about your brand and your industry. Think you’ve already got this covered because you’re tracking online mentions, engagement, and other social media metrics ? Well, you’ve made a good start, and you’re collecting some key data that will be useful for social listening, but you’re not quite there yet. Let’s get you started with a clear social listening definition and a look at how this important technique differs from your other social monitoring efforts. Bonus: Download a free guide to discover how to get more sales and conversions with social media monitoring on Hootsuite...

By Megan Totka It’s not a new phenomenon to use email marketing to increase web traffic, customers, and revenue. But even if you have a decent-sized email list, how do you make it work for you? If you’re looking to maximize your email marketing strategy this year, there are numerous ways to turn your email list into cold hard cash. Now that you have a following of people that are ready and willing to hear from you, the key is to focus on building relationships, nurturing your list, and providing value through the content that you share. When you combine this with today’s best marketing tools, you position your company to experience the fruits of a fully engaged email list. These are 4 ways you can turn your email list into cold hard cash – and it’s simpler than you think. Cold hard cash tip #1: Invest in growing your email list Obviously, you can’t make money from an email list that doesn’t exist, but don’t be satisfied with what you have. Email marketing databases naturally de...

By Hootsuite Forrester recently conducted an independent evaluation of enterprise social marketing solutions. Hootsuite was named a leader by Forrester including receiving the highest possible scores in the measurement and data, planned enhancements, and pricing transparency criteria. Forrester just published The Forrester Wave™: Social Media Management Solutions, Q2 2017. As you know, The Forrester Wave is one of the most respected analyst reports, helping enterprise organizations make informed technology purchases. The Forrester Wave conducted a 32-criteria evaluation of technologies that help enterprise marketers publish to social networks, as well as monitor and respond to customers. The report also offers a look at where industry trends—such as social advertising, measurement, and integrations—are headed. Here are our five takeaways from the report. 1. ‘Hootsuite’s revamped capabilities officially cement its enterprise status’ Forrester ranks vendors in four categories. Th...

By Emily Copp Good copywriting is necessary for any ad to be successful. But when you’ve got hundreds of tasks on the go, it can be difficult to give the content the attention it deserves. If you take the time to refine your craft, it will pay off with better engagement, more clicks, and lower costs. Our social media marketing specialist Gabrielle Maheux offers up tips to make your ad copy sing. Essential copywriting tips for your social ads 1. Simplify it Whenever possible, simplify your writing. You don’t want to make people work harder than is necessary to engage with your ad. When people scroll through their feed, they’re not always going to stop and click the “see more” button to read the full text. When Hootsuite boosts posts on Facebook, we remove all additional text so that the reader doesn’t have to expand to see the rest of the content. To simplify your copy, try taking out unnecessary adjectives and replacing long words with short ones. 2. Edit (at least twice) Wh...