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A recent CMO Survey indicates that marketers plan to double their spending on social media in the next five years. Yet IBM’s C-Suite Study reports that nearly half of CMOs believe they are not prepared to manage the challenges of social media. This disparity highlights an important, and potentially costly, problem: Marketers continue to increase social media spending, yet many are still uncertain about management, strategies, and integration. A quick Google search returns 140 million results for “social media marketing tips,” but no matter how many headlines promise it, there really is no one-size-fits-all social media strategy. Some articles indicate that stories are an effectivemarketing and advertising tool. But what story will you tell? How will you integrate it with your traditional efforts? Other articles advise using social media networks, such as Pinterest. But what will your brand post? Is your target audience even on Pinterest? Still more articles offer a glimpse into other brands’ social media strategies. But what worked for Comcast or Best Buy or Universal Studios probably will not work for a bank, tech startup, or retail company. What marketers need is a process that leads to individual solutions. They must use fundamental marketing concepts and modify them for this new two-way, consumer-empowered medium of social media. Here’s a framework for doing that, adapted from my book Social Media Strategy....
Understanding the art of social media. Bryan Kramer joins #bufferchat to share his thoughts on social media success, plus books and inspiration.Marketer, speaker and author, Kramer talks about the art (and impact) of sharing...
Do you want to improve your social media marketing? Are you curious about what works for large companies? The best way to add techniques to your repertoire is to look at what brands with high levels of engagement are doing.
In this article I’ll share 26 tips, an A-Z guide, from brands doing an excellent job of social media marketing and getting results to match.
Do you want to get more business through social media?
Are you looking for new ways to generate leads?
As marketers and business owners, you’re constantly looking for potential customers.
In this article you’ll find 16 resources to help you generate leads with social media ...
Are you looking for ways to enhance your social media marketing?
Do you want new tools to simplify your job?
We asked a group of social media pros for the hottest social media tools they use today. Check them out to see if these social media tools are a good fit for you!...
... What if instead of a score, you could visualize the impact a person, business or topic has in a social network? What if instead of using complicated listening tools, you could see in an instant who is talking about your company or its products and how you’re connected to them? What if you could tell who the major influencers or connectors are that everyone else is listening to? From what I’ve seen from the social network maps from NodeXL, this is all possible and a whole lot more....
There have been valid business reasons to use hashtags for years. Twitter started it off. Pinterest added to it. Google+ mastered it in many ways. Instagram, Tumblr… the list of social sites on which hashtags are relevant is long. Facebook was the last major holdout. Now that they’ve joined the bandwagon, it’s go time.
Mastering the use of hashtags takes practice, testing, experimenting, and more practice. Thankfully, there are few things you can keep in mind that will make the journey much easier. Here are some basic techniques for using hashtags that should help you find your own strategy pretty easily…
With so many individuals and companies competing for attention on social media, it can seem nearly impossible to make your voice heard above the crowd. However, compelling social media content is a quick way to earn attention and brand loyalty. So what can you do to take your social media strategy from “blah” to viral? Here are some tips...
In the social media workshops and trainings I facilitate, one of the most frequent questions I get is: What kinds of things really get a lot of attention on social media? Or, the dreaded: How can I make my posts “go viral?” These questions are especially difficult for folks working in advocacy fields, where updates and news aren’t always rosy pictures, or captivating soundbites. They see a funny video go by, and they sigh, “But how can we do that?” First, you’ll have to start chanting one of the mantras that I put forth in my classes: Social media tools are not communications tools. They are relationship management tools. It’s time for us to talk about the Ladder of Engagement. This diagram (via Beth Kanter) could also be titled, “How Relationships Evolve Online.”...
If you follow a large amount of people on Twitter it can be hard to keep tabs of Tweets on important topics. Tweetdig lets you filter Twitter by topic, user and more... like me you follow a massive amount of people on Twitter it can be hard to keep tabs of Tweets on topics that you don’t want to miss. Twitter itself offers us lots of tools to help us mange our feeds, lists have become indispensable for me as have saved advanced searches. I use Hootsuite to manage my Twitter feed and this also gives me lots of options including search and list columns. Tweetdig however does do something a little different with your searches, giving you an easy way to stay on top of news stories, users and more. By creating filters you can easily keep up with the latest news as it breaks. For example this morning there is lots of talk about the Superbowl last night both from a sports perspective and an advertising/social media perspective. If I want to keep tabs on this I can easily create a filter within Tweetdig....
As a large proponent of Twitter marketing for businesses, I say this with a slight bit of shame: I hate #FollowFriday. Not because I don’t like the concept or the positive nature (I love both), I feel like it’s become a painful chore that actually does nothing for the people I want to shine a light on. There is a good chance that I’m alone on this but I wanted to bring it up because I’ve been wondering who feels the same way. Our article “The How & Why of #FollowFriday On Twitter” was one of the top 10 popular blogs on the site last year and although I stand by the best practices I outlined in it, I can’t help but wonder…how many #FollowFriday shout outs actually turn into something relevant for businesses?...
Autotweeting and constantly sending promotional links won't help you see ROI on social media marketing. Use these tips to avoid becoming a social media robot.
If you missed the social media news last week, Twitter launchedVine; a standalone IOS app allowing users to share 6-second video clips in an Instagram-esque way. The Vine iPhone app has rocketed up to the 14th most downloaded free app; so many brands have begun to take notice. With all the buzz, I decided to take a look at Vine’s engagement numbers over the weekend to see how many public tweets contained a Vine link, if use increased since launch and to determine what the major conversation themes were. In order to pull all of the public tweets I searched for the term “vine.co” using the Cision Social Media Dashboard. This pulled all the tweets that contained the unique URL associated with a Vine video. While this won’t give us every Vine video that was produced (not all content is shared publicly or on Twitter), it can be a nice indicator on how often and what content was shared. As of this morning over 100,000 tweets were sent containing a Vine URL since the January 23rd launch, when Twitter’s Dick Costello sent out a tweet of steak tartar. As you can see from the graphic below the total amount of tweets containing a Vine link increased fairly drastically throughout the weekend with the coverage spiking on Saturday, Jan. 26 at noon, with over 11,000 tweets sent!...
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Think about your social media strategy in the context of the seven Cs.
A lot of people and companies decide, after using social media for a while, that they need a strategy. Of course, that approach is like putting the cart before the horse.
To ensure success, you should think about your social media strategy in the context of the seven Cs....
So Buzzstream and Fractl got together to survey close to 900 people to understand why they unfollow brands on social media.
Let’s consider the data together. Are you ready?
Who unfollowed me on Facebook: THE STATS - 25% said they unfollowed at least one brand in the last month - 20% said they unfollow if posts are too repetitive or boring - 19% said they unfollow if brands post more than 6 times per day - 7% unfollow after finding a competitor’s page - 20% went as far as to hide posts from the pages they unfollowed...
...I admire NPR because it is an ever-flowing source of great content. Its content is so good that it can run a pledge-drive every few months. This promotion is heinous because it interrupts programming to do the most pedestrian of things: ask for money. And yet we tolerate, if not participate in, the pledge drives!
NPR earns the right to promote its need for money, and this is a beautiful and enviable scheme. My adaptation of the NPR Model is to provide good content that people would not have found, or would have found at great effort, without me. By doing so, I earn the right to sporadically promote Canva, my books, or anything else that I please....
Are Social Media strategies part of your overall marketing plan? These recent facts show how many opportunities there are right now.
Just when you thought you couldn’t be blown away by another Social Media statistic, along come the latest facts that are even more incredible. Businesses who are relentless in building a following on social media are in fact creating their own publishing platforms, growing their marketing channels and content distribution networks. You’re building a digital asset that grows year over year.
Social Media is how we communicate now. As a marketer for your business (or for yourself as a sales professional), this list of 12 mind-bending Social Media facts (with strategies on how to leverage them) should help you find your way...
Finding new and different ways to market yourself can be difficult. Fortunately, one effective way is through social media. Read on to learn of how to leverage the power of social media to your advantage. Whether you have a traditional or online business, these tips should help you get started....
For many businesses, especially small ones, social media is a time-suck. Being active and creating relevant content has a way of unintentionally consuming precious time. Added to this, businesses can’t easily track or attribute social media activity to sales and profits. In fact, more often than not, social media incurs hidden costs.
So what’s a business to do?
Despite these drawbacks, your small business can leverage the power of social media to get prospects, customers, fans and the public engaged with your brand and content by being selective and targeted in your use of these platforms based on the different phases of the purchase process....
.... Fortunately there are ways to dramatically cut down on the time spent trying to grow your social communities and spreading your brand awareness throughout the numerous social networks.
In this post I will cover four smart ways you can automate the growth of your communities and drive fresh, qualified traffic to your store so you can spend more time on other areas of your business.Implementing the tactics covered in this post will result in more traffic driven to your site, more sales and faster growing social communities....
Social media and content marketing are must haves for any business. This need is more important among small and mid-size businesses where additional marketing requires a trade-off for other scare resources. ... Due to this time crunch, small businesses tend to move from one business fire to another without fully thinking through a longer-term marketing plan to support business growth. UMass Dartmouth’s research, "2012 Inc 500 Social Media Settles In", supports this point in terms of social media. The research found that about three out five small and medium size businesses couldn’t track financial results for their social media efforts. As a small or medium-sized businesses person you know that it can be difficult to find the time to brainstorm marketing initiatives – specifically social media, content and search marketing initiatives that you can track. Here are seven questions you can ask about your small business marketing efforts. By answering these questions, you can direct your time and resources to where they’ll yield the best results....
Let’s start with a test: type Coca Cola into the magic Google form. The results are just a calibrated mix of brand websites and PR initiatives such as micro-sites, social media accounts, news, images and videos. One new feature you might notice however, is the latest introductions to Google+ – the authorship mark-up. Among its functions as a social media platform, is that the authorship system makes it possible to connect online journalists’ Google+ profiles into their published articles. In turn it provides journalists with abnormal ranking power for articles they are signing off on, using their Google+ profile These can quickly build up ranking levels proportionally to the importance of their publishers and to the number of people in their Google+ circles. Journalists with a high number of Google+ followers are gaining huge visibility online and their articles can jump straight....
Lessons learned from Oreo on how improvisation, combined with Big Data, can cut through the media clutter. While there will always be debate about which TV spots deliver the most ROI, one thing is certain: no matter how much you've planned ahead, and no matter how deeply integrated your campaign may be, there's no better (or cheaper) way to cut through the clutter than to improvise. The idea of improvisational marketing is a dangerous one to many of the big brands that advertise around the Super Bowl, for obvious reasons. Even the slightest misstep or off-color remark can go viral and forever damage a brand within minutes. But responding to events in real-time, as they unfold, and weaving your brand into the conversation in a way that entertains and supports your brand proposition, can be the most powerful marketing of all. Sunday's power outage provided the perfect surprise for brands to pounce on creatively. Tide shrewdly tweeted, "We can't get your #blackout. But we can get your stains out." In a dig at their luxury car rival, Audi tweeted, "Sending some LEDs to the @MBUSA Superdome right now..." At Mondelēz International, our Oreo brand team and their agency partners sat together in a war room and came up with this gem, which has since been re-tweeted more than 15,000 times....
Despite their corporate standing, CEOs aren’t on social media, according toBrandFog’s 2013 CEO, Social Media, and Leadership Survey. These findings echo earlier research by The 2012 Fortune 500 Social CEO Index that found 70% of the Fortune 500 CEOs had no presence on social media! Why are CEOs missing from social media? They’re afraid of making a PR misstep or they don’t think it’s worth their time despite the fact that customers believe that CEOs who are on social media are more trustworthy....
In a typical organization, the social media tweets away in one department while content writers toil away in another. The social team links to fresh content, sure… and that’s about the extent of their interactions.
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According to Harvard Business Review, here’s where to start in taking your social media back to basics.