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We’ve got to come up with a better name for social media. When people hear that phrase, most immediately think of the “what I had for breakfast, aren’t my kids great, isn’t my life fabulous” world of Facebook. And that is overwhelmingly what social media should mean to many people. And that can make talking about social media to C-level executives a challenge. It doesn’t change the fact that social media can be – and is – a great business tool, both for B2B and B2C organizations. It just means that we have to do a better job of explaining to skeptical clients how social media can work for them. It’s not, “Look at me.” It’s, “Check out this information that’s valuable to you.” In the end it is about me in some sense: as a marketer I want you to notice me, but I stand a much better chance of building a strong relationship with you if you’re noticing me because I’m providing you with useful or insightful information. So am I talking about social media now? It kind of sounds like I’m talking about content marketing. Really, I’m talking about both because one isn’t really effective without the other....
Investing time and money on social media is necessary for all types of businesses nowadays. Here are nine examples of small businesses using social media for branding. Social media is the new way for the word to spread: from product recommendations to advice on what to do, where to go, and what to do. From little conversations that mean nothing to meaningful revelations that could change lives, from stupid pictures to inspiring profiles – social media has it all. Customers have the final word now. News gets out faster. Other users and buyers are now the trusted sources. Social conversations are now the holy grail of business reputation management. Social media is social proof that materializes quickly. Small businesses are indeed tapping into the power of social media....
It is very easy to confuse social media and social business. The graphic in this post, created by my colleague David Armano, is a great illustration of the differences between a social brand (for the purposes of this post, this is synonymous with social media) and social business. At a very high level, a social brand is what we all do from a communications perspective to include marketing, public relations, customer support and so on. So what is a social business strategy? It helps evolve the thinking and preparedness of an organization by bridging internal and external social initiatives, which results in a more collaborative company and shared value for all stakeholders (customers, partners, employees). If you study the above graphic, a social business is very much focused on the internal dynamics of a company, from training and governance to knowledge sharing and culture. Social media policies and employee engagement also play a pivotal role in shaping a social business. A social business strategy can almost be considered an enabler, because if you have your internal process and structures sorted out, it is much easier to scale your social media initiatives externally. Whether it is launching a global Facebook page or empowering employees to engage in social media, having a solid social business plan will help minimize mistakes. As a marketing guy by trade, I will try to communicate the value of how a better social business strategy enables a better social brand....
There are tons of rumors floating around about how Google Plus will help you with your SEO rankings. While this may or may not true, it shouldn't be the sole reason to use G+. The reason to use G+ is to connect and converse with your audience. If you only take one thing away from my engagement series, it should be this: each social network is unique in its own way, with its own personality and set of best practices. Knowing how each social network operates is going to give you a head start in your social media marketing by allowing you to connect to your past, present, and future audience in an acceptable manner. As I continue my engagement series, in the next two posts we will switch focus to Google Plus. Google Plus is the newest of the group, and like it or not, it is Google, and thus should not be ignored....
Here's the thing. Search works, but only if, as a brand, you know what it's worth to you. Too often brands allow outside influences (competitors, corporate vanity of presence, top-line revenue) to shape their buying strategy. Just as damaging is taking what eBay has published as anything more than one unique company taking a curious public position around corporate buying choices. It's not dissimilar from GM's declaration of Facebook failing it. Brands need to understand what search is worth to them. Accepting this study as gospel is no more palatable than accepting the long-standing Google view that if it's delivering, you should just keep writing checks. There's a proper brand point of investment in search for any company, just like any other media channel....
A recent survey from J.D. Power points to the risks associated with monitoring: 51% of consumers simply do not want companies to eavesdrop on their conversations and 43% believe that monitoring is an intrusion on their privacy.... Social, at its core, is about getting closer to the customer and monitoring enables it. It explores customers thinking, and how they are communicating across their networks and the marketplace. This is essential for developing a strong brand and a close relationship with those customers. Monitoring is not inherently bad, but companies need to remember why they do it. It is to get insight into consumer needs, not just to monitor what they say. Meeting consumer needs, above all, is what defines a social media strategy. J.D. Power recommends the following when in comes to implementing a social media monitoring strategy...
By now, if social media isn't a critical element in your online marketing strategy, it should be. Having a presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can add value to your product, to customer service and ultimately to your brand. But simply having an account and broadcasting company news isn't enough. To attract and keep customers -- and to build a strong brand online -- business owners need to be active on social media. They have to provide valuable information and engage with their followers. Here are four things businesses should be doing on social media in order to grow the brand online...
We've all read that social-media ROI is weaker than other traditional marketing channels. Recently, social media came under fire again in an articles in which Unilever aired their concerns in Marketing Magazine. Unilever marketing teams are questioning the logic of shifting big budgets to social media, when the equivalent spent on in-store promotions can deliver an ROI up to 50% higher. This statement suggests a lot about the mindset of some marketers who work for big companies. Social media has been developing for about a decade, but these marketers still miss the point. Consumers are no longer passive targets that you can simply feed with coupons and vouchers. People want their purchases to be inspired by stories that matter. And they're even ready to trust brands to tell their stories, if brands are sincere. They want to know how a brand is trying to change the world. Naive? Maybe. But, maybe not....
Modern marketing success requires more than great commercials. Outside of live televised events, advertising is easy to avoid. People can skip ads, and 46% of American homes are now equipped with DVRs. The on-demand life is only becoming more on-demand. Dish Network's Hopper with Sling DVR lets you skip ads entirely, and technically won Best in Show at CES this year. Netflix just released David Fincher's new original series, "House of Cards," to much fanfare, and instead of following the traditional release model, made all thirteen episodes available at once: when, where, how you want it, and ad-free. As Mary Meeker pointed out in her presentation on the state of the internet, digital is disrupting virtually every aspect of life — from photography to entertainment to education to transportation to shopping to publishing to the very concept of ownership. You name it. Advertisers have to imagine more and more scenarios in which traditional ads just don't have a place anymore. We need to invent new models and find new ways to connect with consumers around the content they love....
...Today a new entrant into that ecosystem is creating a lot of buzz with what may be the greatest launch strategy since Gmail. The Mailbox App has been featured in media for the past several weeks and its launch teaser video has already been viewed more than 2 million times in less than two months (see below). What makes their launch strategy so good? The product looks great, but like Gmail – it is the decisions they have made about HOW to launch the product that are helping fuel so much excitement. Here are a few of their smart choices that you might be able to learn from...
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Although social media has been around for a few years, plenty of businesses and entrepreneurs still get it wrong. When planning your social marketing strategy and being active on social channels, avoid these 5 common content mistakes....
You must understand that social media marketing does not see you as equal to everyone else. Whether you are a blogger who has just started out, or a professional, then you must realize that in order to produce results on these platforms, you’re going to need certain social marketing skills to obtain the traffic, and finally the sale. I will be doing a series of guest posts on this blog that will cover major social update strategies for different platforms. Today I want to focus on driving traffic from Twitter, posting tweets, and using your blog as a mixture of success in social media....
Video apps: Discover 5 video apps to boost your online engagement and market your business.... Do you want to use videos to market your business? Are you wondering if there are simple mobile apps to make this possible? In this article I’ll review five mobile video apps and share how they can boost your online engagement. Why Mobile Video? Vine, Twitter’s mobile video app, has business and marketing professionals considering the numerous ways video apps can be used to increase engagement. Ekaterina Walter, social innovator at Intel and author of Think Like Zuck, recently predicted that “2013 will be the year of visual marketing”. Walter based this prediction, in part, on the fact that “…visuals and video done right are highly effective in cutting through the noise.”
Excerpted from article on HubSpot:
"Marketing Pilgrim published a great blog post by Michael Lieberman called "10 Ways Inbound Marketing Drives Results This Month."
The best inbound marketers do, indeed, play a good long game, but you can use inbound marketing tactics and strategies to move the needle immediately, too. So to add to Lieberman's already stellar list, here are ten more ways you can borrow from inbound marketing to see immediate positive changes in your marketing.
Michael Lieberman's 10 Ways for Inbound Marketing to Drive Results This Month [http://bit.ly/10cQwj9 ]
To catch you up to speed, here's an abbreviated version of Lieberman's recommendations.
- Make sure your website has the right messaging to help visitors pass the blink test.
- Add visual calls-to-action to your site.
- Add offers to your website that appeal to visitors and leads in all stages of the funnel.
- Start blogging, and strive for a frequency of three to four times a week.
- Share your blog content with social media followers.
- Share educational content with relevant LinkedIn Groups.
- Create dedicated, conversion-optimized landing pages.
- Nurture leads with campaigns that bring them further down the funnel.
- Share educational content on sites your target audience frequents.
- Track and test all of your activities so you can get a more accurate gauge of what's working.
10 More Ways Inbound Marketing Drives Results This Month (by Hubspot)
1) A/B Test Elements of Your Email Marketing Campaigns;
2) Implement a List Re-Engagement Campaign;
3) Identify a Long-Tail Keyword Phrase With High Search Volume;
4) Newsjack;
5) Invest in a Social Media Ad Campaign;
6) Build a Free Tool;
7) Respond to HARO;
8) Start Using Tracking Tokens;
9) Create a Blog Subscription Landing Page;
10) Create Social Media Visual Content."
Each way mentioned by Hubspot is analyzed with more information. Read full article here: http://blog.hubspot.com/get-instant-results-with-inbound-marketing
In addition, check out also full article on Marketing Pilgrims: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2013/03/10-ways-inbound-marketing-drives-results-this-month.html
Via Giuseppe Mauriello
... What is it going to take to realize there's a better way to do things? It strikes me as odd that we've taken the old style of mass marketing, which itself has been competing for attention and eyeballs for years, and simply moved it over to digital marketing - and then, to make matters worse, have transferred that to social media. If we weren't satisfied with the results we were seeing in the primary model, what makes us think that repeating it elsewhere would solve our problems?...
A few weeks ago, I had a chance to talk with Sam Decker, the CEO of Mass Relevance. His company helps brands involve and connect with their audiences by bringing social media directly into their marketing and advertising efforts. Prior to that he was the founding CMO of Bazaarvoice and spent seven years in senior leadership at Dell. He’s also written two books on marketing. So he’s well worth listening to. As usual, Decker was full of ideas. Most of all, he talked about how companies can better integrate social media in pretty much every aspect of their businesses. I thought his ideas were interesting enough to share. So here are Decker’s six steps to a more social business...
Twitter was never meant to be a social network. In fact Twitter started life as an internal messaging service for a podcasting company just over seven years ago. But how things have changed. On the social web we live on a diet of fast change and rapid media evolution. Twitter’s slow burning maturation often flies below the radar and Facebook changes such as the new timeline and graph search attract numerous blog articles, comments on Facebook and mass media attention. Twitter has become a multi-media social network without anyone really noticing....
I want to be honest with you. By reading this post you’re now part of an experiment An experiment designed to test a hypothesis. So in the spirit of transparency, I’ll tell you what it is: Marketers, publishers and entrepreneurs would like to spend less time producing valuable content while still achieving the same outcomes. If that is true and there is a painpoint, requirement, demand, I have a solution that makes solves it. I’m going to explain, explore, discover Lean Content Marketing and how to apply it to your own business. Starting with a blog post. A short blog post too. Which may or may not grow into a larger blog post, or a blog post series – depending on how you, the reader, engage with this first experiment....
We used to turn to witch doctors when we felt angry and powerless; now we tweet. Those who feel wronged by corporations have increasingly taken to social media to get their revenge. For business, this represents a threat — and an opportunity — that obviously can't be ignored. A 2012 Nielsen survey found that people value advice from online peers on both what to buy as well as what to avoid. Almost two in tree of those who review products online say they do so to protect others; an additional one in four use social media to punish corporations for their own bad experiences. This disciplining of brands through social media is a global phenomenon, but there are important regional differences and corporations would do well to localize their response....
Are you wondering how consumers are using social media? Would you like some insights to help your business better understand people’s social habits? In this article, I examine a report published by Edison Research focused on people’s latest social habits. These findings provide useful insights about consumer behavior and how your business can respond. Here are 9 of the most interesting findings from the study....
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The most important thing content marketing can do is to provide "useful or insightful information." Great advice.