How To Be Social in a Smart Way to Generate Leads: Interview with Mordecai Holtz

Refreshing the page on your Twitter account will not help you generate leads.   We know that we need to be on social media to create an online presence, build brand awareness, and generate leads. However, being online isn’t enough – you need a plan, and it has to be great.   When I’m stuck for new ideas on how to increase engagement, I’ll look to see what the influencers in that industry are doing. For this reason I’m thrilled that I was able to interview Mordecai Holtz.   Mordecai is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategist of Blue Thread Marketing, a boutique digital agency promoting brands through strategic content marketing and effective management of digital platforms. The agency’s global client list range from startups to the city of Jerusalem and spans across five countries.   Mordecai is an avid blogger and an active contributor to the digital marketing space. His content has been featured on industry leading sites including Social Media Today  Business2Community and Post Planner, and coschedule. His writing has been featured on several tech blogs including Technologer and TechAcute. Mordecai has also been featured on DukoscopyTV a leading forex trading television channel.   Mordecai is a key opinion leader for Huawei. He’s also recently been invited to serve as the first international board member of the National Institute of Social Media. ———————  

Q: Which social platforms do you recommend for B2B marketers when it comes to advertisements?

A: When it comes to building a marketing plan, it’s important to allot a portion of your budget to social media advertising. While organically growing a social presence is important, it’s not enough to fully reach your target audience.   For B2B marketers, focusing ad dollars on specific platforms is more beneficial than spreading your budget too thin across multiple platforms. Personally, I like Facebook for its data rich and granular data targeting. With Facebook comes Instagram, which while not directly B2B it merges well. Ideally, Twitter and LinkedIn both support targeted campaigns, making them the best choices for B2B social ads.   One of the best features of social ads on both Twitter and LinkedIn is how specific you can tailor the targeting. Twitter, for example, allows you to target based on categories that include age, demographics, interests, keywords and specific user handles. This allows you to place your ads in front of a specific audience. Having total control over who you reach with ads supports any type of goal.   Twitter also allows ads to include a customized “website card,” which gives the ad even more customization by including an image, headline and CTA.  

Q: How do you keep a balance between over engaging with customers and not enough engagement?

A: Achieving engagement with a customer or fan base is not so much about tactics but how a brand leverages these opportunities into meaningful interactions with their consumers.   Successful consumer engagement is dependent on knowing the value of each online interaction and equating it to an offline, traditional experience and how the two complement each other while remaining in some way independent.   Optimal growth means delivering the high-level experiences that customers are seeking while understanding their digital needs and infusing it with personality.   Finding a mix that is strategic of both online and offline that allows consumers to engage in multiple ways.     For the sake of clarity, the digital consumer is impatient. Contrary to most theories, these digital-first users are also seeking non-screen based interactions. It just means that companies need to maintain a high level of interaction and give them no reason to drop out.  It could mean that fishing for customers via digital marketing campaigns may be the wrong approach. Customer experience will always trump a paid ad campaign. According to Accenture, to re-balance digital and traditional customer service channels, companies should:

1. Put the human and physical elements back into customer services by rethinking investment strategies to focus on delivering satisfying, integrated customer experiences across all channels.
2. Make it easy for customers to fluidly move from digital to human interactions to get the experiences they want.
3. Identify the customer experiences that have the greatest potential downside and leverage those insights to guide investment strategies.
4. Guarantee personal data security so that customers will be more willing to hand over personal information which can be leveraged to deliver better experiences.

 

Q: What tools do you use and recommend for social media marketing?

  A: Tools: Ideally, I’m a fan of going au natural. Yes, it takes more time but it also enables the digital marketing professional to have the highest level of control and ability to use each platform for its strength without relinquishing any of the impacts to a third party. If you think going natural is tough, here’s a step-by-step guide on building an organic audience.   For those looking tools to manage social media, here are 9 badass tools that I use.  

Q: What type of content have you found earns the most engagement throughout your different social networks?

  A: A good content campaign has many goals. Increasing visibility is a plus, as is building a better brand reputation. People want to interact with brands that are authentic, genuine, not driven by pure sales.     The old-school style of pushy sales just don’t work for the modern digital user. Offering quality content that is data driven and relevant is what makes users stay interested. Here are four quick tips on how to make sure that brand content attracts readers 1. Know your audience 2. Quality not quantity 3. Stay goal oriented 4. Broaden your content offerings.

Q: What are some of your predictions for social media marketing trends this year? How can marketers prepare themselves?

  A: 1. Content marketing: this has been a trend for 3 years now but it is now moving towards a 4th phase in which personalization and interactive marketing apps, meaning that the apps collect user data and learn from their behaviors to better serve user-personalized driven content. A great example of this in-app AI/ audience engagement is Wombat a startup that is using AI to increase audience engagements and bring drip marketing campaigns to the app world.   2. Big Data: It’s been a growing trend in the past few years but this year it will reach its tipping point. Companies are using market and customer insight to predict future trends and user behaviors.   3. Automation in Marketing: Too many companies are suffering from not automating basic marketing processes that would alleviate so many tasks. In 2017, more companies will learn from their user journeys and refine and integrate automation to make a smoother series of systems for optimal marketing   4. Mobile: Google is forcing sites to go mobile but there’s still a wide gap in how sites are optimising their content and conversion efforts to fit smaller screens. Companies shouldn’t be striving for mobile first, rather they should be thinking multi-device multi-platform marketing strategy.   5. Social media/ social customer care: Social media isn’t going away. Its an integral component of any successful marketing campaign. Now it’s time for businesses to learn how to engage their audiences, not sell to them. In 2017, companies will learn how to use each platform for its strengths, leverage the platform for ideal content offerings, and learn to target and retarget when relevant.   6. CRO/ website improvements: It still shocks me how many companies have an impressive series of data sets in their website backend and ignore it. Use the data and fine tune the user experience based on trends. This year, companies will use a data-driven approach to increase lead potential and sales efforts from within their website.   7. SEO tactics: Mobile search marketing tactics will be critical in 2017. see number 4 about Google’s announcements and mobile index and AMP. Clearly, AMPs are targeted to online publishers but active blogs and businesses with a solid content machine should strongly understand how the AMP can impact their efforts.   8. AR/ VR: According to Forbes magazine, one of 2016’s biggest highlights was watching a screen-afflicted population carry their mobile devices out into the world to catch, yes, Pokemon. The biggest takeaway from this phenomenon was augmented reality’s ability to drive real business results. This has become a seriously viable option for marketers looking to bring the online into the real world.