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But according to LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman, many of its users are not using it to its full potential. In a recent Wired Magazine profile “For LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, Relationships Rule the World,” Hoffman said:“They think it’s a place they keep their CV online and maybe have some connections with people they know professionally. They don’t think of it as a place to get business intelligence, to research problems, to establish an online presence where other people in the network can find them. It’s as if we’re a screwdriver in a world where people don’t quite understand screws.”If the above description sounds like you, below are some tips to employ to better utilize LinkedIn....
...We’ve all heard of them; the brands that have spotted a hashtag trending and, keen to cash in (quite literally!), have quickly thrown together a self-promotional tweet, attached said hashtag and excitedly pressed ‘tweet’ – only to find themselves in a bath-load of hot water. Or the brands that hurriedly created their own hashtag as part of their social strategy and failed to think twice before unleashing their creation to the social-stratosphere, only to be left red-faced and facing a very public social backlash.When hashtags go wrongHere are five of the best (or worst!) hashtag howlers we’ve come across at The Social Penguin...
Social media marketing is about engaging with your customer, listening to their wants, and being able to really respond to your consumer as authentically as you can. It is not about pushing them your products, bombarding them with too much information, or ignoring them when they want to connect.In an article I recently wrote about How to Use Twitter to Drive Traffic to your Blog. It outlined 12 best practices on how to tweet to generate clicks and engagement.
In this post, I will show you 8 worst practices on Twitter, and what common mistakes to avoid at all costs.Get your business trending on Twitter – for all the right reasons.Here are nine fixable methods of how not to tweet....
... 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....
Ian Cleary founded RazorSocial.com and built it into an award-winning blog in only six months. I invited Ian to Marketing Smarts to discuss his approach to content creation, as well as the tools he used to build his blog audience, email list, and social media following.Ian is a social media tools and technology specialist; he is also a respected speaker on social media, technology, and blogging. His blog, RazorSocial, was named one of the Top 10 Social Media blogs of 2013 in the annual Social Media Examiner blog awards after only six months of operation. Here are just a few highlights from our conversation....
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…
What’s considered “young?” Anyone who falls in the age range of 16 to 34. New research from ondevice showed that one in 10 people surveyed have been rejected for a job because of their social media presence. And, the majority (two-thirds) are not concerned that their use may harm future career prospects....
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...
Coca-Cola says social media accounted for only 0.01 percent of Coke's direct sales. Other research and sales professionals suggest the exact opposite trend.... Coca-Cola has been on the vanguard of using social media to drive sales; it created a Facebook Page in December of 2008 (almost a full month before rival brand Pepsi) and to date has 62 million fans and growing. It joined Twitter in March 2009, and has cultivated an active presence on Tumblr, Pintrest, MySpace, YouTube, and Instagram. But according to Mr. Schmidt, all that social media engagement has directly affected sales by only 0.01 percent. Has the entire commercial mechanism been hoodwinked into believing in social media’s sales effectiveness? In our interviews with the following industry professionals, we discover that social media actually is an effective tool in the sales process, but there is a lot more to it than initially meets the eye....
To reduce the risk of social media blunders gone viral, develop a company-wide policy that defines acceptable (and unacceptable) social media behavior, and dictates how employees can effectively communicate your brand culture, voice, and message.... Does the saying "There's no such thing as bad publicity" apply to social media blunders gone viral? Your brand ending up as a gag skit on "SNL" because of a social media mishap is probably not part of the PR strategy. As opposed to the social media sentiment when you land an interview with Oprah that trends on Twitter, gets replayed on YouTube, and shared on Facebook with a behind the scenes shot on #Instagram. If you think social media and public relations are two different departments with separate agendas, think again....
Before you dive into creating your social media marketing strategy, know who’s in your audience and where you can find them. Once you’ve done your research and have answers to these questions you can create asocial media persona to guide you in planning your editorial calendar and promotional campaigns. To that end, here’s some recent research that you might find helpful....
There are a lot of things you can measure about you social media efforts. I have compiled a list of KPIs (key performance indicators) that you can consider for you specific activities. One thing to remember is to remember that you should set at least some metrics that indicate if you are turning profit. Otherwise you can reach your KPIs and still loose money. Before you begin be sure to set the baseline. Look at the set of your chosen social media KPIs and and record the current value. These numbers are important but the rate of change is the main indicator for most of these metrics. For example it’s fantastic if you get 1000 followers in a day but not so if you get them over the year.
Concentrate on the rate of change of your chosen key performance indicators....
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....
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In the latest of our posts looking at how major brands use the four main social networks I’ve decided to turn the spotlight on Pepsi.
The drinks brand is forced to play second fiddle to Coca-Cola’s global dominance, and is unlikely to ever match its rival’s huge social following.
However it should still make an interesting case study, particularly with its long list of brand ambassadors. This post follows on from similar blogs looking at brands such as McDonald’s, Nike, Burberry and Walmart.So without further ado, here is a quick overview of how Pepsi use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+...
Stars like Kim Kardashian are still routinely paid five figures for a single tweet promoting a product, but how else can they carve out a profit from millions of social-media followers?
Luigi Picarazzi is president of Digital Media Management, a 25-person shop in Los Angeles that's dedicated to helping stars answer that question. The company focuses on securing deals with brands to do content integrations on celebrity websites, deals such as Mattel getting a writeup in Felicity Huffman's WhatTheFlicka.com; Vidal Sassoon represented in a Vanessa Hudgens Tumblr post with a #selfie photo of her curls; and Kate Walsh giving tips on running a small business in a post sponsored by financial planning service Learnvest .)
The company also works with an ad-tech vendor called Bre.ad that can show a full-page ad to users upon entering or exiting a site, or from links posted to social-media accounts. (Bre.ad shares ad revenue with its celebrity and publisher clients; its CEO Alan Chan says that some clients are making as much as $20,000 a month.)...
A comprehensive study from market research firm Vision Critical indicates just how important social media is (and will continue to be) for brands, especially when considering product sales. Called From Social to Sale: 8 Questions to Ask Your Customers, the report reveals — based on 6,000+ survey respondents — that consumers are often more likely to purchase items after seeing them and/or interacting with posts about them on the social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
More specifically, “4 in 10 social media users have purchased an item online or in-store after sharing or favoriting it on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest,” according to the report. Additionally, it found that Pinterest is the site most likely to drive “spontaneous purchasing.”
An article about the report on Cantech Letter summarized some key findings, noting that “social media drives both in-store and online purchases in almost equal numbers. 38% of people who have liked, shared or commented on a product on Facebook have gone on to buy the product. And 43% of people who have favorited or shared a product on any social media platform ultimately purchased it. Facebook is still king in terms of volume, with 75% of respondents logging in daily, compared with 17% for Twitter and Pinterest.”...
...One of the latest trends (or fads..depending on how you look at it) to come about within the past few years is the “single page” or “one page” website.
What is a Single Page Website? A single page website is comprised of a single HTML or dynamically generated page with a horizontal navigation that leads you to different sections of the page instead of your traditional navigation buttons that when clicked would take you to a new page. The user just scrolls down the one page to that particular content’s section or clicks a link and “jumps” to the correct section. The effect is pretty cool, kind of like being on an elevator and whizzing past the other site sections to arrive at your destination....
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....
Want to get your c-suite using Twitter and Facebook? Use these tips to help get them on the hook.... Getting executives in social media isn't as simple as signing up for a Twitter handle and asking them to tweet. Instead, you've got to be strategic if you want to get on board. By following these five steps, you can develop a socially savvy executive team; 1) Pick the right executives for the job. 2) Show them why they should care. 3) Let the benefits get personal. 4) Set them up for success. 5) Maintain momentum by checking in periodically....
Which Social Media Tool is Best for My Small Business? Social media marketing is a vast landscape. When you decide it’s time you started making better use of social media to promote your small business, it’s easy to get distracted for hours looking at all the different social networks and wondering: ‘Which of these should I be using?’ Let’s break this down and look at the big networks one at a time....
What do you know about your audience? Are your fans, friends, or followers engaged? Do you have a plan>? What are others saying about you and how are you responding? Use this checklist to determine how healthy your social media strategy is.... You may be posting on a regular basis and growing your list of fans, friends, and followers. But is it really enough? A healthy social media strategy will take into consideration the needs of your prospects and customers, as well as finding ways to efficiently plan, track, and measure your efforts. But the question remains, how can you really determine if your social media strategy has a pulse?...
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....
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.”...
The winners of the first-ever PR Daily Digital PR and Social Media Awards are diverse—they include a couple of nonprofits, one of the world’s largest automakers, several PR firms, a casino, an airline, and a bitchin’ kitchen.
Despite their differences, all of the winners share a common trait: They were bold.
Whether it was a tech company’s bold attempt to hijack its competitor’s conference or a nonprofit communicator’s bold reporting trip to the Horn of Africa, the winners reveal a courageous streak among PR and marketing people in the digital age—it’s a brave new world, and they’re not afraid to dive in....
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I learnt from it.
Great blog. It is a must read.