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One of the big themes of my Top New Social Media Tools from 2011 was the maturation of social networks like Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest as well as the trend of automation to auto-creation. As popular social networks continue to mature, gone are the days in which we post something and hope that it “sticks” or becomes viral. We can now take calculated risks and posting and sharing has become more intelligent and efficient.
2012’s social media theme centers around metrics, analytics, and tools that are helping us create deeper connections with consumers. Content is the underlying current that many are trying to navigate more successfully using the below list as their support team...
When it comes to social media’s impact on America’s largest financial institutions, one can’t help but think of the ways that the Occupy movement and other consumer activists have used platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to grow their ranks, organize their efforts, and disseminate scathing critiques of the industry. But as reported last week in the Wall Street Journal, at least one major financial services provider is embracing social media to get closer to its customers. When Citibank customer Stacy Small tweeted about being left on hold for 40 minutes during a routine call to the bank’s customer service department, a Citibank agent responded within minutes with a message that read “Send us your phone number and we’ll call you right now.” Not moments later, Ms. Small was speaking to one of approximately 30 Citibank customer service representatives who have received special training in social media monitoring and response. The experience was so overwhelmingly positive that Ms. Small doesn’t even call Citibank customer service anymore. Instead, she simply tweets the address @askCiti whenever a question or problem arises.... [Impressive social media adoption and worth reviewing ~ Jeff]
This infographic details how social media interruptions impact employee productivity. How often does the social media monster swallow you whole? More than you may think, according to Red e App, which lets consumers get notifications from businesses without having to provide their personal information. The company developed an infographic, below, that details how interruptions impact employee productivity. “Is it possible to be too connected in this digital age?” Red e App asks in a blog post. “Research data indicates, yes.”... [WHOA! BIG numbers! Now, you better get back to work - JD]
Biz, Ev and Jason were the founding team behind Twitter and it looks like they are back. The Obvious Corporation is their new venture that has a small portfolio of companies all looking at a new vision for how we can publish content. Why should we care? Well when the team that launched blogger which helped bring blogging to the masses and then Twitter which has gripped the whole world do something, then you need to sit up and take notice. Most of the companies have just the most basic of sites outlining their vision but you can enter your details requesting access to the beta versions when they are ready to let you. I would recommend all PR professionals to do this as I am a real believer that you need to understand these new tools and their potential value for clients as soon as possible. There is nothing worse than being in a meeting and the client asking you what you think of X and not being able to at least offer the most basic of opinions. Of the new projects they are involved with the following three are the ones that I feel communications professionals need to take a look at. 1. Medium
2. Branch
3. Lift...
Tips from the Search Engine Strategies conference about how social media can make your business run more efficiently.Get the latest blog articles on business... For busy business owners, managing your brand on a growing list of social networks can be time consuming, if not stressful and frustrating. The good news is that there are a small army of tools and apps that can help simplify the process.... Here's a look at five of the low-cost tools Buyer suggested online marketers add to their social media arsenal... [Good suggestions worth exploring - JD]
Several social media celebrities seem to be recommending that measuring social media efforts is unnecessary. It's time for a smackdown. Why you MUST measure. Here are four reasons why you MUST measure the results of your corporate social media activities....
Review sites like Yelp can offer a helpful service to the general public and give small local businesses a chance to gain word-of-mouth momentum no ad money can buy.... But this open platform also means any grumpy customer can slam your business, affecting your reputation and, ultimately, sales. The good news is you are not powerless. Not only can you can make customer service lemons into lemonade by proactively mining your Yelp profile to address customer service issues before they break your business, but your active care and concern will gain you more social cred. So, if you’ve had a cranky customer slam you on Yelp, follow these 5 steps to get them back on your side — and maybe even add a few stars....
Lots has been written about the success of Tumblr. Hard not to love an easy to use blogging platform especially suited to visual content. Teens, trend setters, politicians and activists all love its simplicity, design flexibility and e-mail-or-text-based publishing system. Posts can automatically be shared via Facebook and Twitter and just announced features like Fan Mail (a interblog messaging service) reinforce the social aspect of Tumblr. So what’s the executive summary I share with our clients?... [Good snapshot of Tumblr - JD]
...There is a significant difference between customers and a social media fan base, says Abraham. “The people who you have historically always thought about as your franchise that you’re going out to build a business around are often very different from the ones who seek you out on social,” she said. The online fan base for Starbucks, for example, is strikingly younger than its regular customer base. Knowing the demographics of your fans is particularly important, Abraham said. “That has an impact on your messaging strategy, it has an impact on what you would want to say to these people, and how you want to say it,” she said....
Everywhere I go now I see people advertising hasthtags and trying to get things trending on Twitter. I saw about ten examples at the weekend alone. Movie trailers. On outdoor advertising, pushed during TV shows. On food packaging and in restaurants. People have suddenly gone #hashtag mad. The aim that most people have is to create “word of mouth” marketing where lots of people are mentioning something with a hashtag and then linking it back to their product. Hashtags were actually created by the Twitter users themselves as a way of grouping conversations together, but it is marketeers who have embraced them most recently....
There is a new darling in the social media world and her name is Pinterest. A virtual, interactive bulletin board where individuals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations can pin their interests and drive traffic to their website....
Get account control now –or risk a career of continual social media sanitation. To match the growing consumer adoption of social media, many companies have launched social media efforts with little planning. As social media spreads beyond corporate communications and marketing, business groups are deploying social media without a standardized process. In fact, enterprise class corporations (those with over 1,000 employees) have an average of 178 social media accounts and this number will only grow if left unchecked. Companies that don’t control these accounts are at risk of having abandoned accounts, lack of consistent experience, or untrained employees creating a crisis....
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Social media has been around for a while and has become an integral part of many consumers’ lives. As a result, the composition of older social media networks has changed. For example, Twitter is now 53% female. As a marketer, this maturing of social media has serious implications for your business. For competitive reasons, you must be present and engaged on a cross section of social media platforms because over 90% of businesses have established outposts there. Shouldn’t your boss know this? Doesn’t your boss want to know about social media? Here are five things your boss doesn’t want to know about social media and strategies that will win him over.... [Heidi: offers actionable tips to convince senior management of the value of social media ~ Jeff]
Marketing Research and Data: Download for free over 120 marketing charts, graphs and other data for your own use. HubSpot has compiled a brand new collection of 120 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts & Graphs based on original research and data from a variety of sources, including analysis of our 6,500 business customers, surveys with hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses, and dozens of top-notch publications like MarketingSherpa, eMarketer, Pew Research, McKinsey, and more. ... [This is an exceptional social media & marketing resource from HubSpot. Ideal charts for presentations, proposals and blog posts. Highly recommended ~ Jeff]
Companies don't get social media - ain't it the truth. Social media is still relegated to a ‘function’ within a ‘division’ at many organizations, a somewhat mysterious bothersome marketing function that defies quantification.
The potential for social media to transform an organization, at minimal cost, is huge. It takes a different way of thinking, and a strategy – two things lacking in many social media programs. The skill set to merge social media with PR and marketing does not exist – and there is opportunity. Social media has become over saturated and stale (like Facebook’s IPO?). What’s the next wave?
Steve Nicholls gets it right and offers some guidance in Why Most Companies Fail at Social Media — Understanding the Three C’s. The three C’s are Content, Context, Conditions. An excerpt... [Good read from Mark Rose - JD]
Instagram’s community quietly passed the 80 million member mark with almost 4 billion photos shared while its owner Facebook has 300 million photos uploaded daily. Despite it’s relative youth and size compared to social media heavyweights like Facebook and Twitter, there’s research related to Instagram to give marketers insight into the platform’s importance and how to use it.... From a brand perspective, the investment doesn’t seem high relative to other forms of social media. About two out of five businesses have an Instagram profile and have posted at least one image.... [An excellent research resource for Instagram data and social media proof points - JD]
Author Geoff Livingston recently mentioned how average citizens are using social media to activate themselves online and demand change. He defines the phenomenon as the Fifth Estate, which is an extension of the media being considered the Fourth Estate.... I think public relations professionals ought to be afraid.... All of this was an inevitable outcome as the Fourth Estate began to shift away from objective journalism and toward affirmation media, which embraces and elevates public opinion.... [RichBecker's thought-provoking post]
From surprising a fan with a free steak to creating a Pandora station for a TV show, these five companies know how to succeed on social media. Take a look at how they do it. An infographic from Voltier Digital neatly illustrates how five companies—Dell, Morton's, Unisys, KLM and ABC—successfully use social media. From customer service and PR to knowledge-sharing, these companies are rocking the world of social....
The After Action Review is a reflective practice that can be used for anything, but I find it especially valuable for social media pilots and experiments. The After Action Review (AAR) is a structured way to capture the lessons learned from any project, with the intent of improving future performance. It is an opportunity for a group to reflect on a project, activity, event or task so that they can do it better the next time. It can also be used in the middle of a project or strategy to learn while doing....
Speak to any senior corporate comms exec about the barriers that prevent them from using social media more in their organization, and I guarantee that the issue of ‘risk’ will usually come close to the top of the list. This raises a couple of questions; what exactly are the risks posed by social media, and how can we negate, or at least mitigate, them?...
A solid social media community can be an enormous asset to any company, but don't expect to grow one overnight. Heed these 10 tested tips. Building a community around your startup can be one of the cheapest ways to create momentum for your product. A community is much more than a one-time marketing campaign, and can help you throughout your company’s life cycle if you take the time to grow it right. Here are 10 tips for getting started....
Content creation (23%), is the most time consuming task for community managers, beating out Facebook engagement (19%) and customer service (13%), according to a survey... ...released in January 2012 by Social Fresh. Another content-related task, managing an editorial calendar, came in fourth on the list, on par with comment moderation and Twitter engagement (all at 10%). Community engagement (5%) and analytics/reporting (3%) also appeared on the list, but were voted the most time consuming task by a much smaller proportion....
Follow these key golden rules in social media case studies from brands, to develop a sound social strategy. Despite the near absolute adoption of social media technologies in companies, for both internal and external communications, it seems that many are still unsure of the benefits of social media tools and indeed whether the strategy they’re employing is actually working for them.... If use of social media by businesses continues in this way, it will only get the marketing dollars it deserves for a short amount of time. So what are the components of a good social media strategy, that can help you achieve what you need to?...
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![5 Things Your Boss Doesn’t Want to Know About Social Media [& Strategies To Win Him Over!] | Heidi Cohen | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/Fb6avkzMAqlW0566qWACdTl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
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An exceptional list and several tools you should test-drive. Great analysis by Jason Keath and a must-read for all.