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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....
If you work in digital, you're probably getting a bit tired of the ROI question by now. We are all tasked with justifying our pitches and projects with proving where the ROI lies directly. ...Since it’s physically possible to buy from the place that you’re running your digital campaign, we’ve assumed that this is how we judge success. That’s where we’ve gone wrong, and where we will keep going wrong. We’ve thought that because you can just be a click away from buying a product or converting on a website, if users don’t do that straight away, it’s a failure. So the ‘trust’ remains in costly methods such as TV, which will never be expected to prove this because they can’t. Buying Behaviour To understand this, we need to think about the process of how we buy something versus what we engage with online. A recent study released by Invodo found that consumers are 174% more likely to buy something after watching a video about it online. While this is a wildly encouraging figure that will probably need to be toned down a bit, this finding in itself is significant. The fact that we’re more inclined to buy something from a brand after engaging with it online is what’s important. An increased likelihood to buy is all that should ever be asked of an online campaign, particularly one that is content led. To force a transaction at that point, or to judge that as an indicator of success is detrimental....
At this point, online marketing and SEO are part of almost every business’s marketing budget. However, in order to make your online marketing efforts truly successful, you need to make sure you don’t limit how many customers you can reach. If you’re still holding back because you don’t know what to do, there are some basic tips that can get you in the game.....
While putting together our recent series of posts looking at how major brands use the four main social networks I’ve somehow managed to overlook Coca-Cola, so today I have rectified that startling omission. Coca-Cola is one of those instantly recognisable brands that would rake in fans and followers without even trying, so it’s to its credit that it has active account across the social web. So, here’s a quick look at how it uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+....
Pinterest has a higher concentration of people who are in a ‘buy’ state of mind, while Facebook users are more interested in interacting with friends - and brands.... Understanding what people do on different social networks is the key to effectively using those networks for marketing. Companies currently spend 8.4% of their marketing budgets on social media, and that’s expected to grow to 21.6% in the next five years. But with so many social networks competing to grab marketing dollars, determining the most effective channels can be extremely difficult. To illustrate, let’s look at how Facebook and Pinterest stack up against one another. Different Networks For Different Reasons While both Facebook and Pinterest offer deep customer segmentations and user engagement, it would be a mistake to target audiences in the same way across both networks. For example, you wouldn’t market your product to someone shopping at a trendy boutique the same way you would to someone walking down the street with their friends. In a store, you’d likely look to make a sale, while on the street you’d probably have more luck building brand awareness....
In the wake of Monday's Boston Marathon bombings, it's apparent that we need to continue the conversation about how people and brands communicate during times of tragedy and crisis. Here are some social dos and don'ts to help prepare for a tragedy.... Let’s face it, social media isn't always in the hands of accredited public relations professionals with years of crisis management experience on their resume. Does your community manager know the answers to these questions? Chances are if they don’t then neither does the organization: - Do we comment when there is a natural disaster or national tragedy? If so, what does that sound like? - Cease all scheduled or planned content for X period of time. - Check ad schedule and pull content promotion or campaigns for X amount of time....
The rapid growth of the social media in the recent past made it an indispensable tool in the hands of marketing managers around the world. Social media improves the opportunities to connect with your customers and facilitates two way communication between you and your customers. Social media strategy when properly implemented can boost both your internal and external brand. Below are some of the benefits of social media for your brands...
Social media is a great way for businesses to market their products and services and to increase awareness of their brand. However, social media marketing is often a long-term play that does not generate an immediate increase in sales. In fact, it may not be obvious that social media is helping you at all for quite some time, and you may be wondering why you should even bother continuing to implement your social media marketing strategy. Before you give up on social media altogether, consider these measures for evaluating the impact that your social media campaign is having on your business — or the potential impact it will have on your business...
A guide to understanding your customers and how your product meets their needs.... The better you understand your customer, the faster your business will grow. But new ventures often struggle to define their target market and set their sights too broadly. "We often overestimate the market size, and in many cases there may not be one at all," says Robert Hisrich, director of the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz. Here are 10 great questions that can help you determine whether you have a target market and what it is...
The Kardashians are social media marketing and branding superstars. Here's how you can Keep Up with the Kardashians on your own social media networks.... Love them or hate them, the Kardashian family knows how to market themselves. Okay, so they have a reality TV show, or four, that helped propel them to the highest levels of fame. But they are still social media marketing and branding superstars. So here's how you can Keep Up With The Kardashians....
...Anyone working in social media marketing appreciates the unique challenges of attempting to budget and plan for the upcoming year’s social media strategy. How can we know the type and level of resources we’ll need to be successful when the mix of social content is evolving so quickly? And when most social marketers have only recently secured budgets commensurate with the amount of time and resources required to succeed in social media marketing, how do we stay ahead of emerging trends in 2013? Did we know we’d need a Pinterest budget a year ago? Probably. Do we need a Vine budget today? Probably not. Still stressing? Don’t worry, there is help. While no one can claim to predict the future (if that were the case, I’d be quietly investing in commodities markets and/ or making outrageous sports wagers from the tropical island I owned), we can share perspectives from the very real emerging trends we’ve seen from customers and consumers. Here are five ways social content is evolving for brands in 2013....
Traditionally, news readers first picked a publication and then looked for headlines that interest them. Google changed that process with its computer-generated Google News site. Google News aggregates headlines from many news sources, groups similar stories together and displays them according to each reader’s personalized interests. Articles are selected and ranked by computers that evaluate, among other things, how often and on what sites a story appears online. Google News also ranks based on certain characteristics of news content such as freshness, location, relevance and diversity. Google’s Maile Ohye further explains how Google News works in this video. Google News provides 100,000 business opportunities to publishers every minute or 4 billion clicks each month. They also have 50,000 competing publishers and with competition this fierce everything that can give you an edge counts. Here is a list of editorial tactics that journalists can employ to increase traffic from Google News....
If you’re an Inbound Marketer (or aspire to become one) who understands the importance of content and a well constructed content strategy, you’ve almost certainly done some research or had some conversations about the need to create personas that represent your best targets. The emerging importance of personas in content marketing supports the point of view that content should be written first for your target, and second for search engines, which definitely wasn’t the case just a few years ago. But learning that personas are important doesn’t mean you’re going to actually doing anything about it, right? From the conversations we have with clients and prospects it seems lots of people stop right there, with the question “OK, I know I need it, but what the heck is a persona and where do I get mine?”...
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Yowza! Take a look this huge list from Beth Kanter. Includes social media monitoring and a long list of tools for every social media need. Fill your hat... and your toolbox.
Content Marketing is the new buzzword. And as with buzzwords, every agency is trying to capture a slice of the action – but this means they all have their own definitions. Which leads to confusion. Naturally SEOs were the first to jump on Content Marketing as content and links are so intrinsically linked to success, but there’s a lot more to it than SEO. So to try and ease this confusion I spoke to our resident SEO specialist, David Freeman and we came up with this advice....
A recent study conducted by the online marketing firm Vertical Response and reported on in Forbes concludes that small businesses are spending more time on social media but struggling with the added workload it represents. Perhaps as a consequence, most are doing social media marketing in a vacuum because they’re not tracking results, which means they have no way of quantifying if their time and effort are paying off. “Our survey confirms that small businesses are understanding the value of social media,” says Vertical Response CEO and founder Janine Popick. “They’re spending more time doing it, and investing more money into it at a faster rate. But the extra work will likely lead to time management issues, especially for the small business owner who’s handling social media on top of all the other responsibilities of running a company. This implies that small businesses are in need of tactics and tools now to help them save time.”...
A new report from online business community Manta shows that, desperate to increase sales numbers in 2013, American small business owners are turning up on the social web in droves. The trouble is, no matter how much time they spend, they’re simply not seeing a return on investment. HESocial media use is trending upward according to the survey of more than 1,235 small business owners, no surprise given the attention paid to the various social platforms by big businesses and media outlets. Nearly 50% have increased time spent on social media this year and nearly 55% say they’re using platforms like Twitter and Facebook as a primary tool for either acquiring new customers of generating sales leads. It all sounds promising until this head-scratching result: despite their dedication and belief that social media is the Hail Mary of small business owners everywhere, more than 60% of small business owners say they haven’t seen any return on investment from their engagement online. None....
Social media marketing is the fastest growing area of influence in the digital world. It encompasses social media campaigns, strategy and optimization, and increases brand visibility, engagement and conversions. 83% of marketers say that social media is important to their business. That number continues to elevate as Internet capabilities advance, necessitating a brand social presence. At ZOG Digital, we have quite a lot of experience in digital marketing (In fact, our CEO, Jeff Herzog, started iCrossing before Google was around!). So we decided to share our compiled social media marketing “wisdom” in the list below...
In a digital and social age, pipes are less important. People are the channel. You don't own or rent them. You can't control them. You can only serve and support them. This new world is disorienting because pipes and people work very differently as channels. Pipes flow out; people flow in. Content is pushed out through pipes, but pulled in through people. This reversal is shifting the balance of power. Individuals have access to information, tools, and resources once reserved for institutions. Externally, this means a shift in the relationship between customers and brands. Internally, this means breaking down the silos that once divided functions and departments. What used to be a hierarchy with the company at the top is now a network with the customer at the center. For marketers, this of course changes everything. As part of an awards program that one of us (Cara) created and the other (Mark) helped judge, we had the opportunity to see how hundreds of top marketers in Silicon Valley are engaging customers and growing revenue in this new era. The two most important principles that emerged are that customers make the best brand advocates, and entire organizations make for the best marketing teams....
To answer the question about the future of content, I think it’s important to think about the relationship of information, technology and the human experience with content. A good place to start is understanding how your target audience discovers, consumes and acts on information. This effort towards empathizing with the consumer information journey provides the essential cues for meaningful content marketing planning, promotion and performance optimization....
Business success means mastering the six layers of customer engagement. Are you ready? Over the past few years I have been giving a speech about the “six layers” of customer engagement. It has been a hit with my audiences and it occurred to me that I have never shared this idea with you. So, let’s change that. We are in the process of creating increasingly complex layers of digital distance between our companies and our customers. Mastering these six layers represent both enormous challenges and opportunities…
The iOS legion has been able to play around with Cinemagram since February of last year, but now it's finally time for Android users to also experience what the app's all about. And while there are certainly other animated applications on the platform that are somewhat similar, Cinemagram stands out from the majority due to its built-in social features -- think of it as an Instagram of sorts, where other users can easily comment on and keep up with your recent four-second creations. What's more, the app allows other tidbits like special effects to be added to videos, while the ability to share these "GIFs on steroids" to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are also options within Cinemagram....
For the latest in our series of posts looking at how the world’s biggest brands use social I’ve turned the spotlight on Microsoft. Bill Gates’ empire still looms large over the global software market, though its fortunes are often overshadowed by Apple’s astonishing level of success. And much like Google, Microsoft also runs a few of its own social platforms – enterprise network Yammer and Pinterest clone Socl. So it’s interesting to see how Microsoft makes use of other social networks to promote its products and maintain its fortunes....
Mobile marketing on social media, where to spend you dollars... Mobile use is on the rise, and so are mobile advertising opportunities. The analyst firm Gartner estimates that this year, more people will use their mobile phones to access the Internet than they use their PCs, making it crucial for brands to be advertising in the mobile space. According to Gartner’s forecasts for mobile advertising, worldwide mobile ad revenues will top $11.4 billion in 2013, up 19 percent from 2012. But where is the best place to put your mobile ad dollars? There are many options, particularly on social media. Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, three of the largest social media platforms, offer advertising opportunities to reach their mobile users. There are also options for Windows Phone 8 operating system, though they are less-discussed and for this article, we’ll stick to the main three above. Let’s take a look at the difference between mobile advertising on these three social media giants....
Technology could be entering a brave new world with the advent and adoption of 3D printers. The machines are highly versatile and their uses are only limited by our creativity. 3D printing is wowing entrepreneurs and enthusiasts because of its extreme flexibility. It has applications for almost any industry or field. Matt Petronzio on Mashable has a wonderful write-up explaining just exactly what 3D printing is, as well as mentioning that by 2015 the market is expected to reach $3.7 billion, up from $1.7 million right now. Looks like there’s obviously a market here to take advantage of. But how exactly could 3D printing help businesses and agencies reach consumers? I’ve got a few ideas. Printing to Reach Customers For businesses and agencies looking into the future, adopting 3D printing for marketing could very well be viable. If 3D printing becomes widespread and cheap enough for consumers to have their own printers, it will create an entirely new way to reach customers and fans of your products, brand, or business....
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