WINNING AT SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN 2022

Are you looking to win big at social media marketing in 2022? If so, you’re far from alone. Business owners and marketers across all industries use social media to connect with their audience, enhance brand awareness, and of course, secure more sales.

There are many things you need to consider when developing your social media marketing strategy. If you don’t understand critical factors like the needs of your customers or which social media platforms your target audience uses the most, you’re going to have a tough time building a substantial social media following.

Beyond the basic best practices mentioned above, there are other ways you can get more website traffic and engagement from social media. Today, my focus is on sharing several tried and true strategies that helped us grow our following on popular social channels like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.

I believe that these tips can help business owners and marketers across all industries get more value from their social media profiles while dramatically increasing the value offered to their audience.

Are you ready? Let’s get started!

Share Content from Your Blog

Sharing content from your blog is one of the most cost-effective and powerful ways to amplify your brand’s value on social media. A whopping 77% of internet users read articles online, so you can bet that people will click through to your website if you share relevant, actionable content.

The key to promoting clickable blog content on social media is understanding your target audiences’ specific goals and pain points. Every company should have a list of buyer personas that define the people who shop with their business. If your posts help visitors solve an industry problem or learn about a new topic, you can expect to see a surge in traffic, engagement, and sales.

It’s clear that promoting blog posts on various social platforms can help you keep existing customers engaged, but did you know that it can also help people discover your brand for the first time? When followers share your post, there’s a good chance their peers will click through to your blog.

If you want to know how this translates to sales, consider this; Research shows that 47% of shoppers read between 3-5 blog posts from a business before purchasing a product. Your goal is to offer first-time visitors and loyal fans alike value from your brand. Sharing high-quality content from your blog is an excellent way to get started.

Make Live Video a Marketing Cornerstone

Live video is an excellent way to build rapport with your customers and grow a substantial following on social media networks like YouTube. For context, over 1.9 billion people use YouTube every single month. You can safely assume that your target audience is out there and looking for a product or brand just like the one you’re offering.

The fantastic thing about hosting videos on social media is that there are countless options and strategies to grow your brand. Every business is different, so it’s always nice to choose marketing strategies that are flexible and effective.

We’ve had tremendous success using a combination of events, including:
-AMAs (Ask Me Anything)
-Educational webinars (We provide broad, industry advice)
-Product demonstrations (We show off our product and share insider tips that help users make the most of our products)
-Games / Interactive events (For instance, giveaway announcements)

You can use your live videos to do things like grow your email list, educate your audience, and secure more sales. The key is to choose events that align with your goals. For instance, giveaways give you the opportunity to ask visitors to subscribe to your list for a chance to win.

Partner with Influencers + Other Brands

How you choose to engage with Influencers and brand partnerships will play a pivotal role in your success. Despite wanting to build your business without “outside help,” sometimes, you need solid partnerships if you hope to build momentum and grow your social media presence.

When partnering with influencers, there are several things worth keeping in mind. I suggest watching their content so you can determine if your product is a good fit for their audience. For instance, a makeup company likely wouldn’t reach out to a video game steamer to promote their product. Similarly, game companies rarely reach out to health and beauty influencers to sell their latest release.

You’ll also want to look at how many followers each influencer has on their channel. Smaller influencers can help you reach a targeted audience, which could lead to more direct sales. On the other hand, Prominent influencers have a lot more followers with more varied interests. As a result, working with well-known influencers can lead to more traffic and followers but not quite as many sales.

If you want to partner with another brand, the key is to find a company that sells products that complement your own. For example, an email marketing company and a hosting company would likely make a good fit because users typically don’t need email marketing software unless they also have a hosted website.

Think carefully about the partnerships you choose to pursue on social media. One final suggestion on this topic; start each partnership on a short-term basis. You don’t want to sign a lengthy contract only to find out that your brands don’t mesh well together.

Add a Social Wall to Your Website

Another way to amplify your presence on social media is to make sure your website visitors can quickly and easily follow your brand on their site of choice. In my experience, social walls are the perfect way to keep your on-site audience engaged with your social media account while ensuring that they don’t bounce from your site.

Essentially, social walls are a live list of your recent tweets, comments, and videos, as well as how followers are interacting with your posts. You can add this feature to your site as either a standalone page or contained to your sidebar.

There are quite a few advantages that come with adding a social wall to your site. For starters, your live feed will act as social proof for new visitors. Imagine visiting a website for the first time. You can’t see a single thing other visitors are saying about the brand. Do you give them your debit card information? If you’re like most people, you’re a little skeptical, and reasonably so!

Now, imagine the same scenario, except you can see the business actively engaging with social media followers on the sidebar of their site. Odds are, this would impact your opinion of the company and lead to you trusting them sooner.

You’ll also have the ability to keep your site visitors in the loop about upcoming events, such as giveaways or live video events. If you time your marketing posts, you can easily get more value from your other social media marketing strategies with this addition to your site.

Monitor Feedback and Keep an Eye on Your Analytics

Finally, I want to talk about how monitoring user feedback and your analytics can help you truly win at social media marketing in 2022. We send every user who interacts with our business a feedback form, including email subscribers, on-site visitors, and social media users.

The good news is it’s easier to ask for feedback on social media than ever before. You can create a post that acts as a poll on sites like Twitter and YouTube. Simply ask your followers questions about future content, your products, and upcoming events. Use this time to learn more about your followers’ goals and pain points, and you’ll have an easier time keeping them engaged with your business.

You’ll also want to review the analytics on your website and across all of your active social channels. You may notice trends that are not immediately noticeable in surveys. For instance, if one subtopic gets little to no engagement, while all of your other posts get hundreds of shares and likes, you can use this data to restructure what kind of content you create and share in the future.

Back to You

There you have it! These are the tried and true strategies that I believe all business owners can use to win big with social media this year. I suggest tracking your progress as you implement these strategies on your social channels. You’ll want to learn what works well with your audience and what doesn’t. If you regularly check this information and keep your audience in mind when posting on social media, you can find success across many different social media platforms.

THE ECONOMIC INDICATORS YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT IN 2022

With a new year comes new beginnings -- and new ways of looking at things. As we enter 2022, we were wondering what small-business owners could be looking at to find information that helps them.

To get answers, we spoke to a well-known figure in the world of financial and economic analysis, George Pearkes of Bespoke Investment Group. He regularly appears on financial-news TV shows to talk about the latest developments in the markets and has a reputation for digging deeply into obscure data to generate uncommon insights.

Before digging into specific information, Pearkes said that it can be more important to know what to filter out. "There is a lot of room to present economic data and analysis from a perspective that's motivated," he said, and it's important to keep in mind that a great many offering insights are "selling a product or advancing an ideological agenda." 

When Pearkes looks at data measuring small-business owners' sentiment, he sees evidence of the influence of these sources. When the NFIB asks small-business owners how they feel about their business, Pearkes noted, there are wild swings due to political changes that have little to do with anyone small business's prospects, while economic news produces less volatility in business-owners opinions.

We asked him to turn his lens toward the world of small business and tell Inc.'s audience what he would spend his time looking at if he were a small-business owner in 2022.

An approach to economic analysis for SMBs

If Pearkes were going to create a dashboard of economic indicators for small businesses to look at to assess their business's near-term prospects, he'd start with:

• - State and local employment data
• - Homebuilding data

Why those two? "It's definitely helpful for businesses to know, 'Is the population rising? Is consumer spending rising?'" Pearkes said, "anything more generalized than [housing and unemployment data] is just not available with public datasets" that are updated on a frequent basis.

Beyond those more immediate indicators, there's an opportunity to develop a "medium-to-longer" look at local demand, he said, specifically "population consumer spending and gross value added."

The thinking behind those is generated from an underlying theory of what generates demand for a small business. Pearkes asserted, "If the economy is on a good path, if employment is rising, that's going to fundamentally change the things that you look at as a business owner in terms of basic strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis." 

The broad themes worth tackling start by asking one question: "What's the trajectory of aggregate demand?" according to Pearkes. "From there, you then spill down into other problems, like 'How do I expand my margins or improve my return on capital?' and asking 'Where are we in the economic cycle -- how fast is the economy growing?'"

For many small businesses, local economic indicators are especially important, and, he said, "Local is tough because we have decent state-level data that isn't super lagged, but at the metro level it's [often too] lagged to be useful." Sticking to just the numbers that are well-covered, like the numbers mentioned above, is a way to get data that's reliable, meaningful, and fresh.

Finding a theme in broader data

What about national data? Depending on your industry and what's going on in the broader economy, the specifics relevant to your business could vary broadly. Pearkes recommends working backward from a national issue that affects your business and then finding a metric that tracks it closely.

For example, during the supply chain crunch that the U.S. is currently experiencing, "auto production is a really interesting thing to keep a close eye on," Pearkes said, because "understanding how many finished cars are rolling out of factories is really helpful for understanding the supply chain." It's an indicator important enough to the national economy to be regularly tracked and publicized, but can be used by any business as a proxy for how the supply chain crunch will affect them.

Other statistics to keep in mind:

• Prime-age employment to population, which tells you how the 25- to 54-year-olds are doing. This data is valuable both for tracking demand and for figuring out how difficult it will be to hire.
• Actual GDP data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the more-frequently updated, but less accurate, Atlanta Fed GDPNow tracker. This tells you where overall economic growth is going.
• The New York Fed's Weekly Economic Index, a seasonally adjusted composite of economic data.
• "A whole bunch of cool underlying data sets from the ISM," which tells you about supply and demand in manufacturing.
• A wide range of data from the five regional Feds that produce manufacturing data.

For all of these, you can look at your own business's trends over the past number of years, and what these indicators looked like at those times, to get a sense of what your demand and hiring picture will look like when the metrics go this way or that.

Think about who speaks for you

Adding up all of his thoughts about operating as a small business and looking at economic data, Pearkes warned that it's easy to get confused about what exactly is being talked about when talking about small business. "A full-service restaurant in a major metro area is subject to competitive forces in a way that a fast-food chain in a rural area just isn't," he said, but economic reporting and agencies that claim to speak for small business often conflate the two.

When someone calls themself a "small-business owner" or says they "speak up for the interests of small business," the fact that the world of small business has some large, very distinct groups of businesses means that those people or agencies might not be speaking of businesses at all like yours.

As one indicator of this difference, Pearkes spoke about how differences in measuring small businesses can produce very large discrepancies. "If I'm a franchisee and I own 10 restaurants," there's the opportunity to be seen as many small businesses or one larger business, he said. Two different measures of employment in small businesses take different approaches: Payroll processor ADP measures employment at small businesses at the individual-restaurant level, "on the basis of establishments, not firms," he said, and recently had a tally of 32.3 million people employed in small businesses in the U.S. The Bureau of Labor Statistics takes the reverse approach, measuring by the firm instead of individual establishment, and has a number that's a third smaller: 21.2 million people.

When reading economic analyses of small businesses, it's important to keep this difference in mind, because the takeaways and advice might be speaking to a category of small businesses that is quite different from your own.

FOUR INNOVATIONS THAT GIVES A SNEAK PEEK INTO METAVERSE

Meta, the company is formerly known as Facebook, has been on a tear filing patents to realize its vision for the metaverse.

The company has been awarded hundreds of patents in the past four months aimed at increasing the realism of its planned interactive virtual world, according to a review by Insider. The new technologies could enable a user's avatar to pick up and put down objects, for example, or wear clothes that actually wrinkle as it moves. As Insider notes, there's no guarantee the company will develop the new products, but they may be a good indication of its strategy.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the metaverse will be mainstream in five to 10 years. However, as experts tell Insider, there are many challenges with virtual and augmented reality: uncomfortable headwear, lack of things to actually do in the virtual world, and technology that is not advancing quickly enough. But Meta--which has long been a VR advocate--seems determined, despite concerns from privacy advocates over the project.

"This is the future I want and I'm going to push to make it happen," Zuckerberg said in October at the opening of Connect 2021, a VR/AR conference. Here are four things that the future might allow you to do.

1. Throw things at people--and bring in your laptop

Several patents show that the company wants people to be able to interact with objects realistically in the metaverse, which would render in real-time. The company also seems to want to make it easy for people to throw, pinch, or otherwise engage with objects that exist in the metaverse, a feature called "gesture-based casting and manipulation of virtual content." Another patented technology would let users bring a real-life object into the metaverse. Imagine, for instance, conducting a Zoom call with your laptop, while remaining in the virtual world with your colleagues. 

2. Look like yourself

One patent is for "generating accurate and realistic clothing" that wrinkles as your avatar moves, with sensors that detect body movement to do so. Another is designed to create "avatar fidelity and personalization," which suggests that avatars in the metaverse could closely resemble their real-life counterparts. 

3. Share your view

One patent focuses on something called "spectator images." That would allow you to invite someone to share your view of something, like a live concert, even though they aren't there in person. Combine that with "pupil-steering," which would track your eye movements and use them to steer you around in the virtual world, and "notification triggers"--notifications you can get rid of just by looking at them--and your eyes have a lot of power in the metaverse.

4. Share even more data

As the Insider article notes, putting yourself in the metaverse might require sharing even more personal data than you do now. The new patents are designed to track everything from your eyes to your body movements--all data that Meta would then have access to. There were no patents regarding consumer safety or privacy in this batch, according to the review. 

THESE ARE THE 5 COVID-DRIVEN A.I TRENDS THAT ARE CHANGING HEALTH CARE

For all of its ills, Covid-19 has supercharged consumerism in America's health care system, offering tantalizing opportunities for companies interested in lowering health care costs and increasing access to quality medical care. 

Speaking at CB Insights' recent Future of Health Conference, Deepa Varadharajan, a senior managing analyst at the New York City-based research and analytics firm, explained that consumers can look forward to improved access and quality of health care, in addition to lowered costs--courtesy of artificial intelligence spurred by the coronavirus.

More than 170 startups are driving "anytime, anywhere care," said Varadharajan, noting that she expects the trend to continue. In addition to providing a growth industry for those working to further A.I., improving accessibility and lowering the cost of care could make the lives of time-crunched workers far more convenient--especially if the technology cuts down the time it takes to see a doctor or get a test done. 

Here are the five trends shared by CB Insights that are affecting health care:

1. Bridging the gap between virtual and in-person care

Telehealth visits are lauded for their convenience, but a major limitation with virtual visits surfaces when it comes to manual exams. For obvious reasons, a doctor cannot perform a physical exam virtually, which limits a patient's full assessment--for now, at least.

Enter report monitoring devices. Digital health company Eko offers A.I.-powered stethoscopes along with a hand-held electrocardiogram, a test that evaluates a person's heart health. A patient can, for instance, live stream their heart and lung sounds for their doctor during a virtual visit. 

Together, the tools, which are proliferating after the pandemic proved a heightened need for virtual care, bringing the medical field closer to completely remote checkups that supplement in-person visits.

2. Expanding lab test accessibility for patients 

The pandemic is normalizing at-home Covid-19 rapid testing, and that could further other at-home diagnostics testing. Remote clinical testing company Healthy.io uses computer vision, artificial intelligence, and colorimetric analysis so that patients can conduct at-home urinary tract infection tests or annual urine tests. Varadharajan expects that artificial intelligence will gradually edge out third-party laboratories, at least for certain types of tests.  

3. Driving down radiology costs 

Artificial intelligence isn't making just radiology faster; it's also driving down the costs associated with pricey scans and other imaging. That's thanks in part to the use of A.I.-assisted computerized tomography scans, which have grown in popularity for diagnosing Covid-induced pneumonia.

But looking to the next wave of artificial intelligence suggests that A.I. will go beyond diagnostics to improve patient experience, Varadharajan says. This could translate to quicker magnetic reasoning imaging. In collaboration with the New York School of Medicine, Facebook is working to improve MRIs and aims to create new methods to expedite the scanning process. Varadharajan explains that hour-long visits could drop to just 15 minutes. And shaving off a patient's time spent in an imaging device that emits radiation, such as with x-rays, can dramatically reduce exposure. 

4. Picturing computer vision

Another unintended benefit of the pandemic: Computer vision is making inroads in specialty care. With computer vision, which is a form of A.I. that allows computers to learn to recognize and interpret visuals, fields including physical therapy, where patients almost exclusively rely on the direction of a physical therapist, now see the promise of making virtual connections. 

But as long as a patient is armed with a smartphone camera, they can now access care almost anywhere. Kaia Health, a digital therapeutics company in the musculoskeletal space-based in both New York City and Munich, is using computer vision for motion and posture tracking, which provides patients with real-time feedback on their exercises. And the Austin-based DentalMonitoring is providing A.I.-powered technology to dentists and orthodontists, which the company claims can reduce the need or frequency for in-person follow-ups. 

5. Deploying passive monitoring technology 

Apple Watches and Fitbits are some of the more classic examples of wearables, but the evolving wearables space is crowded. Too many options can become overwhelming for consumers required to keep track of different devices, charge them, and monitor separate applications that their devices use.

But A.I. passive monitoring technology may disrupt the wearables space by bringing technology that doesn't require patients to wear a device around the clock. When Google entered the sleep and wellness tracking with its smartphone device, its mantra was "Nothing to wear or remember to charge." 

One newer approach to monitoring patients is using contactless in-home monitoring systems, which can keep track of a patent's sleep activities and respiration with the help of a sensor.

"Big techs and startups are breaking ground here in passive monitoring and as this technology takes off, we'll head toward more proactive intervention--especially in the senior and acute care settings," Varadharajan says.