The NBA Winning at Social Media

The NBA is a great example of doing social media marketing correctly and effectively. Even though they are not selling an actual, tangible product or service, they know how to reach out to their target audience and how to engage with them through the use of social media. They have been successful in almost every major social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube). The amount of followers the NBA has across the different platforms demonstrates that they are doing something right.

The NBA is leading in the amount of likes, followers, and subscribers when comparing them to the other three major U.S sports leagues, (the NFL, MLB, and NHL).

Here are some quick numbers:

Facebook

NBA: 31.6M

MLB: 6.7M

NHL: 4.2M

NFL: 14.9M

Twitter

NBA: 23.6M

MLB: 6.4M

NHL: 5.1M

NFL: 20.5M

Instagram

NBA: 19.5M

MLB: 3.1M

NHL: 2.2M

NFL:  7.7M

YouTube

NBA: 7.2M

MLB: 700K

NHL: 686K

NFL: 1.5M

The strategies the NBA has developed through social media has created an even bigger fandom of the league and the sport itself. They have built a strong relationship with their audience simply by creating content that is captivating, useful, and entertaining. Some of this content includes graphics and simple infographics with player or team statistics, videos and GIFs, and simple images.

Here are some examples of their content.

Graphics and Infographics:

🤔🤔🤔

A photo posted by NBA (@nba) on Nov 23, 2016 at 11:19am PST

Join us in wishing NBA legend Earl "The Pearl" Monroe a HAPPY 72nd BIRTHDAY! #NBABDAY

A photo posted by NBA (@nba) on Nov 21, 2016 at 11:20am PST

Going into the weekend...

A photo posted by NBA (@nba) on Nov 18, 2016 at 7:42am PST

These graphics are captivating and entertaining; there is a lot of thought put into these images. The NBA graphic designers know how to make graphics that will generate many sharings and comments. 

Videos and GIFs:

@3jmccollum cuts backdoor for the @masonplumlee dish! #PhantomCam

A video posted by NBA (@nba) on Nov 17, 2016 at 5:33pm PST

Dame Lillard puts up 40 points, 11 assists & 7 rebounds for the @TrailBlazers! #RipCity pic.twitter.com/9OiQJfvOOg

— NBA (@NBA) November 24, 2016

Mood in Cleveland. pic.twitter.com/zuV9Ar6Qga

— NBA (@NBA) November 24, 2016

The NBA has mastered the use of video throughout every major social media platform. These videos mostly consist of game plays and this is something that the fans enjoy watching. They are very consistent on every platform and post multiple videos throughout the day. This is something that the other three major U.S sports leagues are not doing and they are missing out on this opportunity. 

Images: 

The @warriors defeat the @raptors 127-121 on @stephencurry30's 35p & 7a.

A photo posted by NBA (@nba) on Nov 16, 2016 at 7:48pm PST

The @lakers defeat the @brooklynnets 125-118 on @juliusrandle30's 17p, 14r & 10a.

A photo posted by NBA (@nba) on Nov 15, 2016 at 10:10pm PST

The @trailblazers defeat the @nuggets 112-105 on @damianlillard's 32p, 8r, 6a & 4s.

A photo posted by NBA (@nba) on Nov 13, 2016 at 8:37pm PST

The images posted on the NBA's social media accounts are simple, yet they include so much detail and focus. These images are mostly action shots that are very appealing. 

Almost every post on the NBA's social media accounts are of some use to the audience; these posts have information that is valuable to the audience. And this is an important aspect of social media marketing as it creates engagement and essentially builds a stronger connection with the audience. 

Although the NBA is not the most popular sport, it is definitely gaining much attention through social media, and that is something the NBA is winning in. 

7 Tips for Excellent Social Customer Service

Social media has become more than just a place to connect and share things with friends and family and follow your favorite celebrities or favorite sports teams. Many consumers have turned to social media platforms as a means for customer service. In fact, about 67 percent of customers are using social media for customer service and 33 percent prefer to contact a brand via social media rather than speaking with brand representatives through the phone.  Contacting brands via social media is a lot easier and faster than trying to reach a representative through the phone.

This means that businesses must adapt to customer wants in order to make them happy. It is no longer enough to just use social media to promote products and services; businesses must now utilize the social media space to engage with customers in a different way to build an even stronger relationship. Only about 62 percent of businesses use social customer service. If your business is on social media, which is most likely the case, you should be taking advantage and provide excellent social customer service. This will only make your customers like your brand even more.   

Here are some important ways to create superb social customer service:

1. Make it Easy for Customers to Talk to You

If the customer cannot reach you, then your social customer service is nonexistent. Make sure your social media accounts allow for customers to send you messages. When customers cannot reach you, you will not know what their problems or concerns are; there might be a big problem and you will not know of it and you can potentially be losing customers this way.

2. Listen to Your Customers

Once your customers are able to reach you, make sure you listen and understand their problem. Often times, brands respond with a standard message that does not help at all; it often times leaves the customer confused or feel irritated because the automated message was of no help. Instead, take the time to resolve their problem.

3. Resolve Their Problem Through Social Media

If your customers contact you via social media, then that means they expect for their problem to be resolved through that social media platform. Don’t send them to your website to read your FAQ’s or have them call elsewhere. Try your best to fix the problem and ask enough questions to be able to resolve it.

4. Personalize Your Responses

When replying to your customers try to make your responses somewhat personal. For example, respond to them using their name and perhaps using a bit of your brand persona into the messages can make quite a difference in customer service.

5. Reply in A Timely Matter

You should be checking your social media accounts often. Customers have access to social media all day long and can contact you at any time of day. So you want to make sure you are replying to them as soon as possible; don’t make them wait hours to get a reply from you. They want to get issues resolved soon.

6. Admit To Any Mistakes

When customers have complaints, its okay to apologize. It is better to respond to their complaints than to just ignore them.  You do not want those complaints to turn into something really negative.

7. Delight Your Customers

Also included in social customer service is responding to happy customers. For example, if they mention your brand on Twitter, and they tweet out that they love one of your products or services, you should reply and thank them or simply reply with a positive message. By doing this, your customers will appreciate your brand even more, therefore creating a better relationship with them.

7 Social Media Marketing Trends Coming in 2017

This year is almost coming to an end, which only means that there will be new trends coming in 2017. As always, some trends stay, and others go and get forgotten. The world of social media changes so quickly and as marketers, you need to be able to keep up with these trends in order for your brand to stay relevant.  

So what are some of the things that will be coming in 2017 in regards to social media marketing?

1. New Opportunities Coming with Snapchat

Snapchat has gone through a great evolution. It started off with inly being able to send snaps to friends, to being able to post on your story, to creating filters, and so on. Snapchat has been able to develop into a platform where the content being shared is “in the moment,” which is a huge trend and it’s what consumers enjoy. Now, Snapchat is trying to start up their spectacles glasses, which will create many marketing opportunities.  

2. Twitter Will Keep Fading Away

Twitter has not been performing very well. It might not completely fade away in 2017, but it will definitely have less attention. This platform has not had many major changes throughout its course and the users want to see more exciting things within the platform.

3. Users Will Want More Vicarious Experiences

As the social media world changes, users get accustomed to constant changes. And one of the recent social media changes has been the live experience of events that brands share on their social media outlets. Users really enjoy real time postings because it makes them feel as if they are there. This trend will only continue to grow next year.

4. New Areas of Communication

Social media came about as a means of communicating with one another, sending messages to one another. Once brands started to get on board with social media, it allowed them to also communicate with their consumers. Some platforms have been utilized to create a means of customer service, which allows brads to have a great relationship with consumers. More of this will be coming in 2017, as more brands realize the importance of a customer relationship.

5. Rebirth of Ads Will Occur

Organic posts have been on a decline, making it difficult for brands to share their message. This is why many brands have resorted to paid advertisements and social media platforms have benefited from it. Paid ads will definitely stick around and become more visible in the coming year, as brands will keep trying to stay relevant.

6. Inspirational and Imaginative Content Will Rise

There are many types of posts that get a certain amount of attention on social media, such as practical and emotional posts.  But inspirational and imaginative post will gather much more attention; these posts are artistic and nice to look at, which is what users enjoy. 

7. Brands Will Choose Platforms That Fits Them Best

With so many social media platforms emerging every year, it is sometimes difficult to determine which ones will be best for a brand. Brands cannot spend too much time and effort on different platform that will eventually not do anything to the brand. So in 2017, many brands will focus on a single platform that works best for them and put more effort into that platform instead of spending too much time on other platforms that wont generate much attention.  

These new trends and strategies can be helpful for any brand for the upcoming year.

Shopping Coming to Instagram Very Soon

We previously talked about the new features coming to Facebook. This week we will be talking about the new features coming to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Beginning next week, Instagram will be testing out a way for consumers to make purchases of the products they see on Instagram posts.

Since many people nowadays use their mobile devices to do everything from checking their social media accounts, sending emails, shopping, doing research, and looking at product reviews, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to be able to shop straight from your Instagram feed. Consumers are already shopping from their mobile devices, in fact, “more than 84% of smartphone users in the US browse, research or compare products via a web browser or mobile app.” Instagram wants to make it easier for consumers to shop for products they see on the platform, instead of having to do extra research to find those products elsewhere.

Instagram will be testing out this new feature by having 20 U.S based retailers including JackThreads, Kate Spade, and Warby Parker participate. These retail brands will be posting content that will make it easier for consumers to review the product(s) in that particular post, and learn more about the product in order for them to be able to make a purchasing decision.

These posts will include a “tap to view” icon, once this icon is tapped, a tag will appear on the various products on the post with their prices (products are being limited to only up to 5 per post).  Once a tag is selected, a new window will open will more details on the product, this part of the new feature is important, as I helps the consumer make certain decisions without having to leave the Instagram app to make separate research. Once they have made a purchasing decision, they will have the option of clicking on the “Shop Now” link at it will take the consumer straight to the website to make the final purchase.

Take a look at this video of Kate and Spade products for a clear visual of how this feature will function:


Kate Spade from Instagram for Business on Vimeo.

The Executive Vice President and CMO of Kate Spade & Company stated, “With this seamless shopping experience launching on Instagram, the possibilities for selling our products are endless.” Not only will this feature allow consumers to shop online a lot easier, but it will also be helping out brands in exposing their brand and products and creating a whole different experience.

For the next couple of weeks, a group of people with iOS devices within the U.S will have the opportunity to check this new feature out. As time goes on, Instagram will be perfecting the feature. Instagram sates, “We want to understand how to deliver the most seamless shopping experience for consumers and businesses on Instagram, and ultimately mobile.”

We are so close to being able to shop directly from Instagram, this will make the shopping experience a bit easier.

Tasty Videos Taking Over Your Facebook Feed

If you are on Facebook, I’m sure you have seen food content, primarily videos, on your feed. Either you follow pages with food content or your friends are sharing these posts. I personally have encountered numerous food videos from Tasty on Facebook.

Tasty was created in July 2015 and it is run by BuzzFeed; it is also one of Facebook’s biggest publishing brands. The focus of Tasty is on food lovers, targeting all food enthusiasts. Their Facebook page has over 73 million likes and each video reaches views in the millions count. It was averaged that each video gets about 22 million views in the first 30 days. In September, it was reported that Tasty had over 1.7 billion views on Facebook. This page is performing a lot better than BuzzFeed’s main Facebook page and it was stated that BuzzFeed’s Facebook success is “the fastest-growing part of theBuzzFeed Entertainment business in terms of monetization.” This is huge, and it is only going to get bigger because they really know how to target their niche audience.

Why has this page been so successful? Well the most obvious reason is its content. People really enjoy food, not only do people like sharing food content on their social media accounts, but they enjoy seeing food content. Tasty provides comfort food videos and some of these videos might remind them of their childhood.

Most importantly, Tasty has been so successful because their content is perfect for the platform. The videos are short and straight to the point, they last from 30 seconds to 2 minutes long; they include captions with the ingredients needed and instructions. These videos automatically play without sound, which is a Facebook feature, and consumers do not need to listen to the video in order to understand and enjoy the video. The only sound in these videos is music, which is obviously not necessary to understand the videos.      

Take a look at these two videos:

Most of their videos are like the ones above, they are very simple, shot from an overhead angle with hands doing all the work, they are fast paced and very visually appealing. But BuzzFeed is looking into doing new things with Tasty. Last week they started on a new series, “Tasty Stories,” which is a video series where celebrity chefs and other celebrities take part in sharing a favorite recipe.

The first video in this series was posted on October 20th, featuring chef Marcus Samuelsson. Take a look at the video below:

This video has received about 17 million views in just about a week.

Tasty is also on other platforms; they are on Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. But the most successful platform would be on Facebook. 

New Changes Coming to Facebook

Facebook is the social media platform that a majority of people uses. This platform is used for numerous things, including but not limited to posting and sharing pictures, updating your status as to what you are currently doing, live streaming, and asking friends and family for advice or recommendations for new places.

Facebook recently announced it will be adding some new features to the widely used social media app.  These new features include a recommendation option on a status, an easier way to find local events, and introducing a new way to connect with local businesses.

Lets take a closer look at these new Facebook features.

Recommendations

Since many users already turn to friends and family for recommendations, let it be for new restaurants, hair salons, or places to travel, Facebook is making it easier to ask for recommendations from your friends. Instead of having to post a status and ask for the best restaurants in town and sorting through comments, users will now be able to turn on a recommendations section when posting a new status. This will make it a lot easier for users to organize those recommendations all in one place.

Local Events

Facebook already has a section for events, where you can look for and discover events around you and see what events your friends will be attending. But now, it will be easier to find local events that would be of interest to you. Facebook has revamped the events bookmark; users will now be able to see and catch up on which events their friends are attending or hosting and look through event recommendations based on what is popular amongst your friends.

Interaction with Local Businesses

Facebook will also be introducing several new ways to interact with businesses, including the following:

• Order Food: Users will be able to order food directly from a business’ Facebook Page. The business must be using Delivery.com or Slice and users will be able to simply click the “Start Order” button to order their food. 
• Request an Appointment: For businesses that require booking appointments, such as a hair salon or a spa, users will be able to request a time and will also be able to see all the services the business offers. These businesses will then have to get back to the user via Messenger to confirm appointments. 
• Get a Quote: Some local bussiness’ Facebook Page will have the option of “Get Quote” button at the top of their Page that will allow users to instantly request a quote from that business. 
• Get Tickets to Movies and Events: Users will also be able to order movie tickets directly from the movie’s Facebook Page via Fandago. As for events, users will also be able to get tickets directly from the event page on Facebook, this is made possible through their partnership with Ticketmaster and Eventbrite. 

Facebook is now making it so much more convenient for users to do almost anything they need to do from just one app. There will soon be no need to jump from app to app to get certain things done.

All theses new features will be introduced to the US in the next couple of weeks and months, as well as other new features being introduced in the near future.