This is the last chapter of volume one of the Digital Marketing Superhero’s Club Podcast. It will return later in 2019 with volume 2.
I love influencer marketing. There you go, I’ve said it.
I know it’s an unpopular opinion. I know you could bury me in examples of bad influencers, but when it’s done right, with the right people, it will reach parts of your ideal audience that no other marketing will.
Caitlin E. Jenkins and Amy Tischler from Simply Social Media™ are specialists in influencer marketing and they’ll show us how one hotel is benefitting from their Instameet influencer campaigns.
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Superhero Tips – Grab Attention With 3 Lines Of Text
Facebook are cutting your post text. What can you do?
You had 7 lines of text on Facebook to capture your audience’s attention. 7 delicious lines that let you space your updates and wrap viewers in a story.
But things are about to change, on mobile at least.
Starting August the 19th according to a Facebook announcement those 7 lines of text are to become 3.
Facebook say that this will:
…drive increased ad effectiveness and make it easier to use the same assets on Facebook News Feed and Instagram feed.
The challenge for you as a marketer is to be amazing in those three lines of text. To write something so compelling that your audience will either want to click to read more or take an action.
How can you do this?
I’ve got some ideas, but before I share those, let’s look at what 3 lines means.
How long is 3 lines?
The exact number of words you can fit into three lines varies. It will differ depending on the device, the length of the words and the length of the update.
If your final update takes up more than 3 lines, it will hide some of it behind a ‘..see more’ link. This gives you less space for your text.
If you are going for a long update, your first few lines will need to tease your audience.
Give them a taste of what will follow, make it irresistible to click ‘see more’. If you pull this off your readers will spend longer with your content.
With the ‘see more’ link you get around 23 words of text (depending on the length of the words). If you can get your whole message into 3 lines you’ll get around 25.
Now let’s get back to your update:
Your job is to grab attention in 3 lines or less.
You need a hook…
What you need is a hook. Words that will stop someone scrolling and get them reading.
What does a hook look like? I’ve got some ideas.
1. Ask a question
Questions make great hooks. Even if people don’t answer it on social, you’ll get inside their head, they’ll give you moments of thinking.
Write a list of simple questions that relate to specific problems your audience have or they have an opinion on.
2. State a fact
It’s easy to hook people with facts and statistics. Start with something surprising to draw them in. Avoid those tired statistics that you see mentioned repeatedly.
89% of people said they hated seeing the same stats quoted over and over again. (this isn’t true but you can see what I did there right?)
3. Start a story
Do you hide our hooks under paragraphs of waffle? I know I do. When I edit blog posts, the first thing I do is scan through the waffle until I find the real hook. The one thing that would make the reader want to read on.
This doesn’t mean scrapping the rest of the post, you’re just reordering it with a statement that will grab attention right at the top. I’ve talked about this before and included examples in this post.
4. Be controversial
Tread carefully with this one. Some brands thrive on controversy others die by it.
If you feel it fits your brand to stoke controversy, it’s not hard to find bones of contention.
You remember when your granny told you not to talk about something in polite company? Ignore her advice and you’ll get buckets of inspiration.
5. Tell people what they will learn from your post
Why should someone bother with your post? What will they gain?
If you can identify the one key thing that your audience will get, you’ll be rewarded with attention. Maybe it solves a problem, maybe it will trigger an emotion, whatever it is, lead with it.
Could your hook be as simple as ‘This will make you laugh’? Yes, it’s almost a challenge to your reader.
For longer updates you could address a more pressing problem.
‘It’s that season isn’t it? When cat hair gets everywhere, you can’t move without getting a covering of fluff. We’ve been testing some ways you can keep the cat fur away.’
Emojis are shorthand and that’s what you need when you have limited space. They also add a bit of colour to a post making them harder to ignore.
I use Emojipedia for emoji discovery. It’s a search engine of emojis. Search a keyword and you’ll find a good match. If you use emojis a lot, put together a set that you will use in updates.
Feeling/Activity
Add context to your Facebook posts and lose none of your text space with the ‘Feeling/Activity’ button. It doesn’t take up any of your three lines and adds a colourful emoji to the top of your post with a caption.
Just like the emoji, the ‘Feeling/Activity’ button adds colour ad shorthand to your post.
What tricks do you have for writing short but compelling copy? I’d love to know.
Superpower of the week – Power Words from FOMO
Because we’re talking about copywriting today it seemed sensible to have a copywriting tool for our Superpower.
Actually, it’s not a tool as such, it’s spreadsheet of power words. These words should trigger a response of some sort in your reader so there’s no harm trying to squeeze a few in to your social media copy.
Superhero Interview – Caitlin E. Jenkins & Amy Tischler
Simply Social Media™ is a Santa Fe, New Mexico based social media marketing agency formed in 2014 by Caitlin E. Jenkins and Amy Tischler. They create community, connection and conversation through influencer & social media marketing.
They offer our clients a unique blend of services including social media strategy creation, workshops, personalized training, and influencer marketing. They utilize their macro-influencer Instagram accounts @SimplySantaFeNM and @TravelNewMexico to engage with the community by promoting the ideas of community, connection, and local-centric philosophies.
Amanda Webb:
This week on the Digital Marketing Superheroes Podcast, I have two superheroes. It’s our first ever duo. It’s Amy Tischler and Caitlin E. Jenkins from Simply Social Media. Welcome to the show.
Caitlin E. Jenkins :
Thank you for having us.
Amy Tischler:
Yeah, thanks so much. Exciting to be here.
Amanda Webb:
It’s great to have you here and I think you’ve got a really interesting campaign to share with us today. Who’s the client? Let’s start by talking about who’s the client that you’re working for or the type of client that you’re working with for this campaign.
Amy Tischler:
This client is a spa resort client, Sunrise Springs Spa Resort here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We are in our second year of working with them through influencer marketing campaigns. We put together what are called Instameets. Caitlin, would you like to share what these are?
Caitlin E. Jenkins :
Sure. An Instameet is a gathering of people from a community. We bring them from mostly Instagram to an event, where people with influencer levels that range from nano-influencer to mega influencer, to come and experience an event at a location and photograph it to promote it on social media.
Amanda Webb:
Cool. So the idea is I suppose that they take photos in this one location you bring them to, is that it?
Amy Tischler:
Yeah, and then we have a hashtag that they use so we can track that hashtag. Then there is a collection of all of those images for people to find on Instagram, and we offer them exclusive experience at the spa so they can really share what is happening there and what makes this property unique and special.
Amanda Webb:
What sort of special experience would that be? What extra are you offering? Just thinking if anyone wants to replicate this, what do you have to do to entice them in?
Caitlin E. Jenkins :
We’re very lucky because our clients like to roll out the red carpet for the attendees of our events. For example, this specific client, they have all inclusive packages, and so they have a girls’ getaway package, a spiritual awakening package, and so those are usually, they’re above and beyond an average stay at the resort. It includes spa treatments, it includes meals, it includes for example the awakening journey one that we just did, was we got to meet with an intuitive who did readings, and it was a whole well-rounded event and something that we were offering them to be able to experience the entire experience, event.
Amanda Webb:
That sounds amazing. I’m thinking how do I get on that list? How do you choose who to invite to these events?
Amy Tischler:
Well, we really specialise in finding and cultivating a community of local micro influencers, and so we are still looking for people with higher numbers. However, the real motivating factor for us in wanting to work with an influencer is their engagement. If they are creating conversation on their posts, that is really what we’re looking for, because that’s the whole concept of using influencers, is to actually create real engaged conversation. Because people trust people versus brands.
Amanda Webb:
So true, isn’t it? Are you looking then at engagement rate or are you just looking at posts and seeing what sort of conversations are happening?
Amy Tischler:
All of it. We look at all of it. We definitely calculate the engagement rates just to make sure that those numbers aren’t funny, you know, because you can still buy followers of course. But really, we’re looking at the level of conversations, we go into posts, it’s a time-consuming process.
We also create our own relationships with them. We almost never reach out and invite someone to an event unless we have already established a relationship with them and know what we’re getting into with that particular person.
That’s really important for this client because we did a cleanse getaway, and we needed to focus on people who would be able to message that appropriately.
We were looking for people, chefs or foodies or people who would gravitate towards that type of a package versus the one we just did, awakening journey, we were looking for people who were more interested in spiritual opportunities. It’s really important that we know these people really well to make sure they fit that niche.
Amanda Webb:
Absolutely. I suppose it really is finding the right influencer for the right job, isn’t it?
Amy Tischler:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amanda Webb:
With the people that come, is it an ongoing relationship then, or do you get a bunch of new people? I know you’ve got your different sectors, but it there any ongoing relationship with them afterwards, or is it kind of a one off?
Amy Tischler:
No, that is where our strength lies and what we love most about this work, is that we do create relationships that are ongoing. In fact, this most recent year that we’ve done these events, we have stayed overnight.
So we’ve had a lot of time to get to know each other, and now these groups are actually very close and we have private Facebook groups that are just for these particular groups of influencers, and everyone stays in touch.
Relationships have been formed through that. People making friendships, and we are planning many reunions with these groups. Then as we cultivate these relationships more and continue that, then we can also plug them into other opportunities because we have other clients who we do similar work with. It’s a really ongoing relationship for us.
Amanda Webb:
I love that, you’re building a community there. It’s not just, because I think that’s one of the mistakes people make with influencer marketing. They hire someone to do a post and then that’s it, they go away. I love the fact that you built a community around it. That’s great.
Amy Tischler:
Yeah that’s something that’s very important to us. Caitlin E. Jenkins and I actually met through Instagram, so we really, we really love building and maintaining those connections.
Amanda Webb:
I know Caitlin is a photographer also. So you have talent in the group.
Amy Tischler:
Yes, we do. We are also our own influencers at these events as well.
Yeah, it’s great to see when people all come together, the different perspectives that they bring to the events. Not only in the words that they type in their captions, but in the way that they photograph the experience and share it on social. It’s really great.
Amanda Webb:
Yeah, it must be fascinating to see that, because everyone is so different with their styles. I suppose that’s part of it. They’re using the hashtag and they’re posting to their own accounts. It’s not going on the spa’s website or, or is that part of the deal as well, the spa’s accounts?
Caitlin E. Jenkins :
They are going to be posting it on their own accounts and using the hashtag. However, every influencer is aware that the client is allowed to repurpose their pictures on social media with appropriate photo attribution.
Amy Tischler:
Yeah, that’s absolutely one of the benefits to doing this type of format, is that not only do they have access to the influencers’ accounts for posting, but then there’s a lot of user generated content that then is available afterwards. It’s really a gold mine of content.
Amanda Webb:
That’s a real dream for anyone that’s in the tourism sector or hotels or destinations, isn’t it really?
Because even today, I was looking, I’m going to Newcastle this week and I was looking for places to eat and we were looking at different photos and we’re like, “Well, this one doesn’t look very good and this one looks great.” It was one of them had good photos.
That was the difference. It wasn’t the food, it wasn’t where it sat on the list. Actually, those user-generated photos that you see on reviews are always the ones you go and look at it straight away. I think there’s real power there, particularly with micro influencers as well, because I think don’t people trust them a lot more?
Yes, absolutely. Again, people trust people versus brands, and that’s why when we’re looking for influencers, we’re really looking for that genuine conversation that’s happening.
Amanda Webb:
Okay, so the difficult question now, what are the goals for the campaign and how are you measuring the success?
The goals for Sunrise Springs, they are very lucky in the fact that they’ve gotten national and international awards and accolades.
They’re very well known for people who want to travel here to Santa Fe, but their goal was to reach more of the local community, which is one of the reasons why they reached out to us because we’re so ingrained in it and we’ve built such a great community here.
They wanted to have us reach out to a group of influencers and bring people who will talk about it on their channels, who also will reach out to their local community and talk about it.
Amanda Webb:
Fantastic, and then metrics and measurement, is it like a reach measurement or an engagement measurement, or how are you…?
Amy Tischler:
Yes, that’s also part of why we use that hashtag, is we track the analytics of that particular hashtag. So the reach and the impressions and the engagement on all of those posts are calculated and presented in a final wrap report. Included, a lot of the influencers will also use other platforms. It’s not just Instagram, and they’ll also blog.
There’s a lot of that content that’s also happening, so all of that is collected and delivered to the client in a wrap report along with high resolution copies of all of the photography, again for that user generated content.
Caitlin E. Jenkins :
We also asked each individual if they had heard about the location before they came, if they had been there before, and if they had, if they’ve ever stayed the night before. Just to kind of give that information to our client as well.
Amanda Webb:
I love that you’re using local influences for this because I think anyone that’s worked with a hotel will know that those are the people that are, if you can reach local people, they’re coming in for dinner. Well, I suppose for a spa, it’s slightly different, but they’re coming in for dinner, they’re coming in for treatments on a more regular basis.
To get somebody from a long distance to come, that’s great. They’re going to be there a week, but if you’ve got somebody local who comes in regularly, that’s the dream really, isn’t it? That’s your regular income coming from those people. I love that you’re doing that.
Amy Tischler:
Yeah, we love that we’re doing it too. It’s a dream job. Yeah, because we also get to go. Caitlin and I attend these retreats as part of it, and so we get a weekend at the spa as well, and also share about our experience. So really it’s just a win, win, win, win, win.
Amanda Webb:
But obviously you have to work while you’re there as well. You can’t just take photos.
Caitlin E. Jenkins :
Oh, yes.
Yes, it is work, but it is good work to have.
Amanda Webb:
That’s fabulous. Thank you for sharing that with me. Tell me where we find out more about Simply Social Media and about both of you.
Caitlin E. Jenkins :
You can find information about us, all of our social media channels are SimplySocialNM, and then our website is simplysocialmedianm.com.
On there you’ll see a nice and shiny award. We actually won an award for this campaign, we are the first place social media campaign for the New Mexico Hospitality Association. So we’re very proud of that.
Amanda Webb:
Congratulations. That’s fantastic.