Exactly why this is happening and what to do about it is confounding to marketers. Do they need a new social media strategy? A new team? The likely answers to why the reduction is occurring suggest that a shift in thinking maybe in order.

Many Social Media Apps Remove Referral Data

Yes, you read that correctly. Many social media mobile apps – including Facebook — strip out the referral data your analytics software seeks. Without the referral data, those referrals appear on your analytics dashboard as direct visitors, not referrals.

This situation came into view for Relevance when they realized that in spite of adding 50,000 subscribers in only 6 months, their social media referrals had dropped by 17%. Several major blogs are reporting similar results. For Moz, Copyblogger, and Buffer, the decline in social media referrals was as high as 50%.

When Chad looked at all the data, he found that the number by which social media referrals had declined was very close to the number by which direct website traffic had increased. Clearly, this looked to be an attribution error.

At first glance, it may seem counterintuitive for a social media platform to block that data, but is it working? Much as reducing the organic reach of brand posts has helped Facebook enjoy tremendous growth in ad sales, limiting the available data makes Facebook the only reliable source for quantifying referrals from Facebook. Check out Facebook’s stock price. The more they limit organic reach, and the less data they provide, the higher the stock climbs.

And that explains why other social media platforms are getting into the act. Twitter has said they are going to ratchet down the organic reach of tweets, and there are signs that Pinterest is doing it as well.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Agency-Link”]

Content Shock

BuzzSumo investigated and determined that what Mark Schaeffer calls “Content Shock” may be at least partially responsible. The idea behind the content shock is that brands now produce more content than humans have the capacity to handle. Perhaps that’s why BuzzSumo found that social shares had dropped for major brands, even as the amount of content they published increased by 78% in the same timeframe.

A Proposed Solution

As Chad explains, the solution is not to produce more content. Rather, it is to spend more time promoting content and less time creating it. Many brands today spend as much as 90% of their effort creating content, which leaves only 10% to promote it. Chad recommends spending at least 40 – 60% of your time, energy, and effort promoting your content.

Chad’s comments on the decline of social media referrals were just one part of a podcast in which he presented 6 Audacious Digital Marketing Predictions for 2016. Tune in to learn about all 6 predictions and get a head start on what’s coming in 2016.

The post Why Website Traffic from Social Media Will Decline in 2016 [PODCAST] appeared first on Relevance.

In a recent podcast, James Moat, Director of Global Digital Communications at Avery Dennison, discussed how the brand’s social media strategy evolved over the last two years and why their “Get Social” initiative to mobilize employees on social media is so important to the brand.

Emergence of Earned & Shared Media

In the digital space, owned and paid media (websites, advertising, etc.) have held sway for 20 years. But in the last five to seven years, earned and shared media have created huge opportunities for both B2B and B2C brands. However, taking advantage of that opportunity can be expensive, especially if the brand is outsourcing all of its content creation.

By training and mobilizing employees on social media, brands can develop internal sources of content that ring true to users.

Educating & Mobilizing Employees

Whether a company has 10 or 10,000 employees (Avery Dennison has 25,000+ worldwide), mobilizing them on social media can amplify the brand’s story and reduce content costs while simultaneously boosting engagement and developing relationships. Users appreciate having an authentic interaction with an employee whether they’re discussing personal interests or business matters.

In addition to marketing, social media has become a key component of talent acquisition and customer service for many brands. Avery Dennison actively develops employee-produced content that resonates with existing and prospective customers and employees.

But before associates are mobilized, they must be educated about the brand’s social media initiatives and how each individual fits in to those initiatives. Each participating employee will require training on how to use a given social media platform professionally—whether it is Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or some other popular platform.

Providing employees on social media with a repository of content assets they can share will make their participation less burdensome and increase the likelihood that their experience will be successful and enjoyable.

Identifying the Audience

As with any communications program, identifying the people with whom you want to converse is a vital step. Various studies have pointed to the existence of seven different types of social media users.

1. Creators
2. Conversationalists
3. Critics
4. Collectors
5. Joiners
6. Spectators
7. Inactives

The first three categories include the people with whom a brand can expect to realize the most engagement and develop the strongest relationships.

Another key for identifying the audience is the 90-9-1 rule, which states that 90 percent of all content is created by one percent of users and the next 10 percent of all postings are from nine percent of users. That means that 90 percent of all users are creating less than one percent of content.

While each brand can form their own approach, it seems likely that their ideal audience will be made up of Creators, Conversationalists and Critics who fall into the top one percent of contributors. This audience can be further divided into four primary categories.

1. Customers
2. Shareholders
3. Communities
4. Employees

Employees may seem out of place here because we are talking about mobilizing employees to amplify the brand’s story in social media, but it’s equally important to make sure the company story is told to employees as well.

3 Keywords to Success

As James says in the podcast, it is important to keep the process fun, engaging and simple for participating employees. Giving them the appropriate education and resources can help them become passionate ambassadors for the brand on social media, and that is an initiative well worth the effort.

On This Social Business Engine Podcast Episode You’ll Discover

• How Avery Dennison started using social media with a strategy in place, and the two lenses they approached it from.
• How “Get Social” is a centralized employee resource and ambassador program to mobilize employees as advocates.
• Why Avery Dennison aims to educate employees on the basics of social media, and what they share to train employees to leverage social media personally and professionally.
• Why James says, “The power of social media can be so big for any company on the B2B or B2C side, regardless of size.”

Featured On This Episode of the Social Business Engine Podcast

• James Moat on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Download Social Business Journal Vol. 6: Inclusive Design in a Cognitive Era
• Subscribe to the Social Business Engine show
• Write a review of this podcast in iTunes
• Bernie Borges on Twitter: @bernieborges
• Social Business Engine on Twitter: @sbengine

You can listen to this podcast now by clicking here or, you can listen through a podcast player on your mobile device through iTunes or Stitcher. Subscribe to the Social Business Engine podcast to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox.

The post How and Why Brands Should Mobilize Employees on Social Media appeared first on Relevance.

My co-host for this podcast is Mel Attia, V.P. of Marketing at Vanilla Forums.

Fans First

For any brand ambassador program to succeed, a brand needs to first develop a cadre of enthusiastic fans on social media. Typically, these are connections who use the brand’s product, share their content, and respond positively to the opportunity of having a closer relationship with the brand and the people behind it.

This last point is especially important, because a brand may not be willing to forge the deep connections with its ambassadors that are necessary to keep their brand ambassador program active and alive. Without that commitment, long-term success is unlikely.

Choose Your Ambassadors Wisely

Brand ambassadors can play a valuable role in extending a brand’s reach in social media. Many social media users may first become aware of the brand via an ambassador. That means trusting ambassadors to create the right first impression.

Obviously, you can’t let just anyone become an ambassador. You need an application process, which means you also need standards. One way to develop those standards is to make a list of the characteristics of a perfect ambassador, such as:

• Enjoys a favorable reputation among a high number of connections/friends/followers
• Uses the brand’s product(s) well and often
• Posts frequently
• Shares the brand’s content on a regular basis
• Desires a stronger connection to the brand

Add as many characteristics as you need to describe your bran’s ideal ambassador.

Balancing Quantity & Quality

Since most applicants will not come as a package deal with all of the traits you seek, you will need to determine which characteristics you can live without, and which are absolute prerequisites.

If your program is fairly new or has yet to attract a lot of ambassadors, the focus should be on quantity, and you will need to be more accepting of applicants who do not meet all of your criteria. This is true for two reasons:

1. Creating a critical mass will give the community of brand ambassadors some energy of its own. This energy will spark new and innovative ideas and will feed the enthusiasm of your ambassadors.
2. Until the program has a meaningful sample size, you can’t really be sure which characteristics you’ve specified are most relevant to the outcomes you seek. There will be a lot of learning involved.

From day one, you will want to track how much each of your ambassadors contributes to the success of your program. This information will help you refine your criteria for acceptance in the program.

As your brand ambassador program grows in size and becomes more influential, who should be an ambassador (and who should not) will be clarified by the data. At this point you will want to change the balance of your recruitment from relying heavily on quantity to being more driven by applicant quality.

Justine Velcich describes in our podcast how Hootsuite, which at first cast a large net for ambassadors, is transitioning from a quantity-driven to a quality-driven brand ambassador program.

On this Social Business Engine podcast episode you’ll discover:

• How the Hootsuite Ambassador Community has grown from 55 users to 1,400 over three years
• Why the Hootsuite Ambassador Community is now a part of the marketing organization’s makeup
• The type of individuals that comprise the Hootsuite Ambassador Community and how their desire to communicate with each other has benefited Hootsuite
• What you should look for in a brand ambassador, and the necessity of considering how you can help them

Featured on this episode:

• Justine Velcich on Twitter
• Hootsuite Community Website
• Hootsuite Community on Twitter
• Download Social Business Journal Vol. 5: The Community Playbook
• Mel Attia on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to the Social Business Engine show
• Bernie Borges on Twitter: @bernieborges
• Social Business Engine on Twitter: @sbengine

You can listen to this podcast now by clicking here or, you can listen through a podcast player on your mobile device through iTunes or Stitcher.

The post Balancing Quantity and Quality in a Brand Ambassador Program appeared first on Relevance.