Archive for the ‘Social Media Marketing’ Category
78 (of the) Best Social Media Marketing Tips, Guides, Tools and Strategies of 2010 (So Far)
Monday, August 16th, 2010With the amount of helpful content about social media marketing growing faster than Facebook’s user base or Lindsay Lohan’s court appearances, it’s tough to keep up. Here’s a modest contribution to help with that effort; more than six dozen of the best, most bookmark-able articles and blog posts about social media tactics, tools and strategies written so far this year, by leading writers like John Jantsch, Lori Dicker, Lee Odden, Lisa Barone, Jay Baer and many more.
Social Media Marketing Tips, Tactics and Guides
Building Social Bookmarking Networks 101 by Search Engine Journal
Todd Heim supplies a helpful guide to best practices for building a following on and generating traffic from social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Mixx and Propeller. Todd’s guidance is straightforward and practical; finding the time to do this well is the hard part.
HOW TO: Create Custom Backgrounds for Twitter, YouTube, & MySpace by Mashable
Matt Silverman steps through the process of creating cool custom backgrounds for popular social media sites, with easy-to-follow instructions and rich example illustrations.
What is Social Media Optimization and Why Should I Care? by Kuno Creative
For those who know little if anything about social media (there are more such people than you may realize; some in rather lofty positions at that), John McTigue offers an excellent primer covering the most popular tools, sites and strategies.
30 Tips: The Productivity Guide of Social Media by WebStudio 13
Andrew Ran Wong provides a valuable list of productivity tips for Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Google and other social networks to help readers get more done in less time.
5 Ways That Sales People Can Benefit From Using Social Media by OPEN Forum
Despite the widespread use of the phrase “social media marketing,” marketing is not the only business use of social media, as John Jantsch reminds us. Here he outlines five ways that sales can use these tools as well, from social CRM to teaching prospects how to solve business issues.
6 tips for connecting with social media content by iMedia Connection
Noting that “Smart and savvy companies have positioned themselves as authoritative experts and trusted sources of information by creating their own content,” Gordon Plutsky outlines a six-step process for consistently connecting with prospects through relevant, compelling content.
10 Principles for B2B Sales by Better Closer
Social media has dramatically altered the buying process as well as marketing practices. In this post, Bill Rice provides sales people with 10 principles for using social media in sales, from setting objectives and listening to creativity and tools to improve social media efficiency. Given the importance of sales-marketing alignment, this is a worthwhile read for marketers as well.
Are you reaching your Best Customers through social media? by Cultivating Your Customers
Mark Price summarizes a Fast Company case study on how restaurant chain Houlihan’s engaged their best customers through some exclusive social media programs to increase sales and profits, and what other social media marketers can learn from the chain’s experience.
A Cheat Sheet to Help You Conquer Social Media by Fast Company
Not sure how to navigate through various social media sites? Addy Dugdale shares this handy CMO guide to the social landscape, which “takes all the major social media sites in the U.S. and analyzes their capabilities in four sectors: customer communication, brand exposure, driving traffic to your site, and SEOs.”
5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You Are Already Doing by Social Media Today
Possibly inspired by Social Media is Simpler Than You Think, John Jantsch explores five ways to use social media for common business tasks such as prospect follow-up and market research.
10 Essential Social Media Tips for B2B Marketers by Mashable
Christina Warren tells b2b marketers how to use Twitter effectively, find their “social voice,” efficiently monitor industry developments through social media, expand their influence and more in this excellent post.
How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day by HubSpot Blog
Rebecca Corliss reveals an easy five-step, 10-minute daily process for keeping on eye on what’s being said about your company across popular social media venues. Depending on how active your company is in social media, it may take a bit more than 10 minutes and may have to be done more than once per day, but at a minimum this is a great place to start.
10 Tips for Using Social Bookmarking Sites Effectively by Online Social Networking
Larry Brauner shows how to use a “very social and spam-free strategy” to dramatically increase website traffic from social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Amplify.
8 brand personalities Facebook and Twitter users hate by iMedia Connection
If you want to be a success in social media, then you definitely don’t want to be part of any of these groups. Kevin Barenblat presentes a taxonomy of social media failure types, including “canned responders,” spammers, lurkers and serial re-tweeters.
More than 50 bookmarks of Social Media Case Studies by Social Media Tactics You Can Trust
Michiel Gaasterland shares his collected list of 500+ case studies, from small businesses to global brands around the globe.
5 Workarounds In Avoiding Social Media Fluster by Social Media Philippines
The always fascinating Rob Angeles how to ramp up a social marketing quickly without simply “jumping in” with no plan.
6 Reasons You’re Not Rocking Social Media by Small Business Trends
For those whose social media marketing programs aren’t quite meeting expectations, Lisa Barone offers several possible reasons (and advice on how to fix things), such as having poor content, putting the wrong people in charge or simply not listening.
10 signs it’s time for a social media makeover by iMedia Connection
Following on the theme of Lisa’s post above, Lori Dicker offers a collection of indicators that your social media marketing has gone astray such as “An intern handles all your social media efforts” and “Your company does not have a (written) social media policy” and how to place efforts on the right track.
3 Simple Steps for Creating Social Media Visibility by Social Media Examiner
For those still struggling with where to start in social media, Denise Wakeman lays out “a three-step formula to get you started creating a visible presence on the web, resulting in more opportunities for your business: leads, prospects, sales, media queries, speaking gigs and joint ventures.”
Taking the First Steps in Social Marketing by iMedia Connection
Contending that “finding exactly which of your customers and prospects are on which social networks and who are the most socially connected, is the first step to figuring out if and how to integrate social media into your marketing mix,” Gary Halliwell illustrates how to tie your CRM data to social media marketing efforts, and why this is crucial to creating value for your company through social media.
Five Rules for Responsible Social Marketing by Fast Company
Just as etiquette is what separates us from the beasts (well, that plus some DNA), so social media etiquette often separates the successful from the spammy, the engaging from the enraging, the outgoing from the obnoxious. David Lavenda supplies five rules here (such as “Respect people’s privacy online, even if you don’t have to”) to help you stay on the positive side of those word pairs.
10 Ways to Cut Through the Social Media Noise and Be Heard by Social Media Examiner
Chris Garrett advises marketers to simplify their messages, use appropriate channels and appeal to ego among other recommendations to make their social media content more likely to get noticed.
The “No Duhs” of Social Media by Social Media Bits
Sharon Lane lays out the basic elements for social media success, such as knowing your audience, being authentic and being patient. Good post for newbies as well as those at the “a little knowledge is dangerous” phase.
90+ Essential Social Media Resources by Mashable
A collection of short summaries and links to a huge list of posts about Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, mobile marketing and business development. It’s sort of like this post, except that all of the links are to other Mashable articles. Hmm. Guess Webbiquity is a bit less about ego and more about sharing the love.
16 Lessons on Using Social Media for Business by Social Media Today
Adrian Swinscoe shares an excellent collection of social media do’s and don’ts such as defining your goals to keep yourself on track, great content is crucial, and perhaps most importantly, “It takes time, persistence, consistency and commitment to generate results.”
The 7 Secrets of Social Media Conversion [INFOGRAPHIC] by The Unbounce Blog
*****5 stars
Oli Gardner reveals key tactics for converting social media followers into buyers, from using a landing page with a clear call to action and offering “social proof” through badges and widgets to optimizing post-conversion opportunities.
4 Social Media Mining Metrics by iMedia Connection
Daniel Flamberg proposes four key metrics that can give marketers “actionable intelligence to identify competitive strengths or vulnerabilities, shape messages, identify informal opinion leaders and influencers or suggest the best choice of media channels” along with suggested tools to track those measures.
4 Ways to Measure Social Media and Its Impact on Your Brand by Social Media Examiner
On the same theme as Daniel’s post above, Nichole Kelly her shares her four key social media metrics and shows how these fit within the sales conversion funnel.
25 Characteristics of Highly Effective Social Media Campaigns by Social Media Today
What sets successful social media marketing programs apart from the failures? Lots of things, and Sosthenes Boame helpfully lists 25 factors such as providing value, being “not spammy,” building trust, consistency, and incorporating visual images.
12 Social Media Marketing Myths by Roxana Portalatin
Social media is cheap or free. It’s a fad. It’s for kids. This post demolishes these and other common social media myths.
Top 10 Social Media “Power Friending” Tips by OPEN Forum
Amber MacArthur condenses her book Power Friending: Demystifying Social Media to Grow Your Business
Top 6 Social Media Mistakes And How to Fix Them by Social Media Examiner
Kristi Hines details half a dozen social media mistakes to avoid (or correct) including having the wrong connections, sending the wrong messages, and restricting your activities to “things that can be measured for return on investment.” She also lists “using social media profiles for link building” as a mistake, though there are situations in which this makes sense; you may want to grab a profile on a lesser-known social media site for purposes of reputation management or brand protection. Even if there isn’t enough relevant traffic on that site to make a large effort in network-building and interaction worthwhile, any links you include in your profile still have value.
50 Tips Granny Never Told You about Twitter & Social Media Etiquette by Social Media Today
Noting that “social media is no different than the social circles that existed in the 20?s, 50?s, 70?s and even 80 ‘s. Yes, the same rules apply. Just executed on a different platform and at a higher volume,” Pam Moore passes along 50 social media etiquette tips from Great Granny Walton. Among these nuggets of fold wisdom: “Be a friend to get a friend,” “Plan yer work and work yer plan” and “It is just darn right rude to auto DM when Tweeters follow ya’!”
Social Media Tools
Social media tools that marketers shouldn’t miss by iMedia Connection
Lori Dicker presents an outstanding list of free and fee-based tools for social media monitoring, measuring and messaging.
Managing Your Reputation Online: 5 Essential Tools by CIO Magazine
Kristin Burnham reviews five excellent tools for monitoring your online reputation, including Addict-o-matic, SocialMention, and the impressively comprehensive Yasni.
Where To Find Social Media Power Users by Search Engine Land
Want your story on the front page of a popular social media site? You need help from the power users in that community. Greg Finn introduces a dozen tools and pages to help identify the most influential users to connect with on various social sites including Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Twitter.
Top 10 Free Social Media Tracking Tools by ineedhits
Rene LeMerle provides mini-reviews of his favorite free monitoring tools, from the obvious (Google Alerts, Social Mention) to the less familiar (Boardreader, Samepoint).
Social Media Glossary by Social Media for the Socially Awkward
Social media jargon can be confusing for newbies, and even seasoned pros occasionally run across unfamiliar terms. To help out, Sean Horrigan has compiled this glossary of social media terms from aggregator, blogs and crowdsourcing to thumbstream, widget and wikis.
The Ultimate Glossary: 101 Social Media Marketing Terms Explained by HubSpot Blog
Speaking of social media glossaries, Kipp Bodnar provides a more extensive list of terms and definitions here.
11 Free Tools for Social Media Optimization by TopRank Online Marketing Blog
The ever-modest Lee Odden reviews tools to help spot trends, research keywords and analyze social media activity to help improve “visibility on standard, social and real-time search.”
8 Social Media Monitoring Tools by Onflow Interactive
A quick list of eight leading monitoring tools, from Alterian and Radian6 to UberVU and Sysomos.
Google: the killer social media monitoring platform by Social Media Today
Trevor Jonas explains how Google’s various tools — from Google News and blog search to Google Reader and Analytics — combined create a powerful and free social media monitoring platform, and how these would enable Google to “absolutely blow away any of the existing monitoring services tomorrow if it wanted to.”
10 Essential Social Media Tools for B2B Marketers by Mashable
Christina Warren reviews 10 tools on her list of social media favorites, including some surprises. Note: most are fee-based, but worth the cost for midsized to large enterprises active in social media marketing.
10 Free Social Media Tools Every PR Pro Should Master In 2010 by the COMMS corner
An alternative list from Adam Vincenzini of 10 key social media tools for those prefer free to fee.
7 Social Media Aggregation Tools To Simplify Your Streams by Social Media Today
Sarah Hartshorn details her favorite aggregation tools — like Hootsuite, Netvibes and Flock — for more efficiently monitoring and managing an organization’s social media presence and activities.
The 39 Social Media Tools I’ll Use Today by Convince & Convert
***** 5 stars
Jay Baer reviews his favorite tools, organized by category: Twitter-related, Facebook-related, Virality & Search, Photos, Tracking, Content Creation, Listening, Email and iPhone. This collection is comprehensive without (quite) being overwhelming.
Master List – A Wiki of Social Media Monitoring Solutions
***** 5 stars
Some day in the future, when social media is a mature marketing channel, there will likely be only a handful of high-quality, comprenhensive monitoring tools on the market for marketers to choose from. Today, however, social media monitoring tools are still in their wild west phase: there are a large number, of varying quality, each of which does something or a few things very well, but none of which are yet the “Holy Grail” of monitoring. Ken Burbary has done a masterful job of compiling this list, currently at 145 social media monitoring alternatives. The list is likely to grow before it consolidates.
195 Social Media Measurement Tools & Technologies by Sales Rescue Team
Yet another huge list of social media monitoring tools.
Social Media Employee Policy Examples from Over 100 Companies and Organizations by Social Media Today
In an organization of any size, you’ll have multiple people using social media sites. In large organizations, this can be hundreds or thousands of employees. While management can’t, and shouldn’t seek to, tightly control all such interactions, it is imperative to have basic guidelines in place. That’s where a social media policy comes in, and if you’re not sure how to write one or what to include, check out this extensive set of examples.
57 Social Media Policy Examples and Resources by Social Media Today
More corporate social media policy examples, this list from Dave Fleet.
11 Free Services for Scheduling Social Media Updates by Mashable
Social media monitoring and interaction activity can be tough to maintain. So Erica Swallow helpfully provides “a list of 11 free services for scheduling social media updates, either across multiple social platforms or just for Twitter. At the end of the list, you’ll also find a quick note on 11 paid services that you may be interested in investigating, as well.”
Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social Marketing Strategies by Brand Nexus
A fact- and statistic-rich SlideShare presentation covering social media reach, growth, demographics, consumer and b2b buyer behavior on social networks, spending levels by industry and strategies for success.
4 ways social media can save you time and money by iMedia Connection
Noting that social media be used for various business purposes (marketing, PR, market research, customer service), Larry Weintraub cuts to the chase with practical guidance, writing “ultimately you want to do one thing: sell more products or services. Let’s take a look at how each of these four components of your social media strategy can help you sell more.”
Razorfish: Social Influence Marketing Trends by Digital Buzz Blog
Another social media SlideShare presentation, this one focused around trends and rich with both useful guidance and examples from brands that have achieved social media success. It also includes a helpful section on metrics, introducing the SIM score.
Is Social Media Just Another Channel? The Potential of Social Media for B2B Markets by The Social CMO Blog
Alex Romanovich contends that social media is far more than just another marketing channel; it is phenomena that is “forcing corporations (brands) to look at how they engage with their clients, how they use information, and how they respond to events…the benefits and opportunities it presents are something we’ve never seen before. It is becoming the connecting thread that links all points of the Value Chain.”
10 Awesome Social Media Presentations by thought leaders of the Industry by Daily Bloggr
Got some time? Here’s a nice collection of 10 exceptional social media SlideShare and YouTube presentations, including “Web 3.0 – This time its personal,” “Content Strategy for Social Media” and “How to make the best use of SEO and Social Media.”
Social Media History Animation by Hai Le
Interesting video filled with trivia and statistics on the growth and current state of social media, such as that there were 90 trillion email messages sent last year (though roughly 80% were spam), Facebook serves six million pageviews per minute (is that possible?) and that YouTube serves one billion videos per day.
Social Media-Integration-Theory-Model by Israel Garcia’s No-Blog
Israel Garcia offers a compact model of how social media has changed the historical pattern of corporate and marketing communications, and how to capitalize on that trends. He also makes a compelling case for doing so, pointing out research showing that “consumers are 67% more likely to buy from the brands they follow on Twitter, and 51% more likely to buy from a brand they follow on Facebook.”
Why we need to kill “social media” by iMedia Connection
Rob Key argues that the term “social media” needs to be killed because (almost) all media is becoming social, and it isn’t the tools or buzzwords that really matter in business so much as what social media can do in areas like risk management, media relations, product life cycle management, customer care, HR, market research, and innovation.
11 Killer Social Media Presentations Worth Watching by HubSpot Blog
Kipp Bodnar showcases 11 outstanding social media presentations from experts like Rohit Bhargava, Marta Kagan, Christina “CK” Kerley and Jay Baer.
9 Ways To Convince The CEO To Use Social Media and Enter The 21st Century by jeffbullas.com
Jeff Bullas offers several suggestions for selling social media to executives. #1, “scare them” is tempting but perhaps not the ideal approach, while #5 (use website grading as a baseline measurement) has real potential. #4 (buy them a book) works well if [italics] you have the kind of boss who actually reads books.
What Can Social Media Do to Improve Your Business by My Venture Pad
Writing that “the intention for gathering (social media) data should NEVER be for spamming but to help integrate your value proposition into what people are truly interested in,” Eric Tsai lays out a framework for gathering data, analyzing it, and using it to make decisions and modify activities so that you can ultimately do “more of what works and less of what doesn’t.”
Social Media Strategy from A to Z by Techipedia
***** 5 stars
Tamar Weinberg has written one of the most thoughtful and creative blog posts of the year, explaing social media strategy through the alphabet from “always be listening” to “zealous” (and yes, she even includes entries for the letters q and x). Simply brilliant, a must read.
Social Media needs a (GASP!) budget by iMedia Connection
Uwe Hook helpfully makes the case that “Social Media is not free. Social Media is not cheap. Social Media requires a considerable of time and resources to make it work.” A toe-in-the-water approach doesn’t work with social media; it requires a commitment and a sustained investment, because while the payback can be considerable, it won’t happen overnight.
B2B Social Media Strategy: 5 Steps to Gaining Executive Buy-in by B2B Bloggers
Michael Brenner provides an outstanding guide to getting executive buy-in for social media marketing, beginning with showing them the numbers behind the new reality and progressing through resources to help you answer the (inevitable) hard questions and developing a social media roadmap.
We Can’t ‘King Canute’ the Social Media Tide by iMedia Connection
Gary Halliwell writes that “there are only three things standing in the way (of social media marketing success). The bad news is these are potentially tricky issues if not addressed correctly.”
12 Reasons to Use Social Media to Grow Your Business by My Venture Pad
***** 5 stars
“Why exactly should we do this social media stuff?” Rather than fumbling to articulate a brilliant answer when you get that question from an executive or client, refer to this outstanding post from Pam Dyer, packed with ammunition like increasing brand recognition, improving SEO, taking your message directly to buyers, and making it clear that you “get it” (at this stage, as Pam notes, “If you don’t have a presence, you appear as if you’re not very savvy.”).
Is a social media bubble ready to burst? by iMedia Connection
If the boss or client remains a skeptic even after following Pam’s guidance above, you may need to pull out this post. “Aha!” your skeptical counterpart will say, “I knew it! Social media is just a fad.” Actually, it’s not that simply, and you may be surprised by the conclusions Michael Estrin draws in this insightful post.
Is Social Media a Big Joke? by The Confident Copywriter
First a bubble, then a joke? Is this more fodder for social media skeptics? Not quite, but Victoria Ipri offers a helpful reminder here to avoid jargon — both when selling social media and when using it. In her words, “simple, to the point, interesting, thought-provoking, but not especially flowery or verbose” messages are key in both situations.
9 Things to do Before Entering Social Media by Small Business Trends
***** 5 stars
In another outstanding post from Lisa Barone, learn what it’s crucial to do before getting immersed in social media marketing. Just as a strong foundation is critical to the long-term stability of a home or building, so steps like crafting a social media policy or rulebook, assigning responsibilities, and making a commitment to responding are vital to social media success.
Three ways to act on your social media monitoring by Fresh Networks
Once you’ve decided on a set of metrics to monitor and tools to use (see the section above), now what? Matt Rhodes notes that “What you do with your social media monitoring is as important, if not more important, than getting the monitoring in place in the first place. Different brands will want to engage with the conversations they discover online in different ways,” and suggests three actionable areas based on monitoring results.
Defining your social media goals by iMedia Connection
Ben Cathers provides guidance on the different approach and metrics to use depending on whether the primary focus of your social media efforts is for customer service or customer acquisition.
5 reasons why brands fail with social media by Engage Sciences
Whether you’re already engaged in social media marketing and not seeing the results hoped for, or you’re just getting started and want to avoid common pitfalls, this post will help you avoid strategic mistakes (such as treaing social media as a silo) and steer your efforts in the right direction.
Conversations that Aren’t about Mel Gibson: the B2B Social Media Case Study, Part 1 by iMedia Connection
Eric Anderson eloquently makes the case for b2b use of social media marketing. “B2B sales tend to be complex and consultative, after all, and where do B2B buyers go for consultation? A surprising number start with simple Google searches, and those Google searches increasingly lead to, yep, industry blogs and forums.”
Why Executives HATE Social Media by The Deming Hill Blog
***** 5 stars
A long but brilliant post on the executive view of social media, starting with, as the title indicates, some of the reasons C-level people hate social media including “don’t feed me another fad” and “eagles don’t flock.” Midway through, however, the tone changes as the author writes “Maybe I don’t HATE social media after all. Maybe I just hate the Quixotic context in which most social media conversations exist, featuring a perpetually moving target, combined with an obsessive, cult-like worship of the default worldview,” then proceeds to detail five of the top benefits of social media from the executive perspective.
How To Create A Killer Social Media Strategy by The Business Insider War Room
Alyson Shontell quotes Nicole Melander, PhD, who teaches American University’s MBA course on social media for business, saying “At this point companies don’t have a choice (about participating in social media). They have to play in the arena somehow. The conversation is happening, it’s just a matter of how much a company chooses to participate.” Melander then presents a five-step guide to creating a business social media strategy.
25 “P”s of Social and New Media Marketing by Social Media Today
Expanding upon the traditional five “P’s” of marketing (product, price, place, promotion and people), Ky Ekinci proposes 25 P’s for social media marketing such as promote (carefully), play, protect, plan, and perhaps most importantly — persist.
Trends with Traction: Meaningful “social” measurement with Net Promoter Score by iMedia Connection
Adam Kleinberg extols the virtues of the Net Promoter score, introduced by Frederick Recihheld in his book The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth
Four Ways to Measure Social Media Marketing Results
Monday, August 9th, 2010While there are unquestionably many ways that social media marketing results can be measured, the debate rages on as to whether it’s truly possible to quantify the ROI from these activities. Some experts contend that because social media activity is rich in metrics, you can and should be measuring ROI constantly. Others argue that social media is a tool, not an event, so applying an ROI to social media is akin to calculating the ROI of your phone, or that at this point the business risks of ignoring social media are so great that ROI is immaterial.
Measuring the ROI of social media is challenging for several reasons, the most significant of which is the problem of “last click attribution;” just because a sale or lead “came from” Twitter or Facebook as the last click doesn’t necessarily mean that site deserves all the credit. The prospect or buyer likely had several other exposure points to your brand prior to that click (visiting your booth at a trade show, hearing someone from your company speak, seeing an ad, reading about your firm on a blog or an industry trade press article or analyst report, etc.). Assigning proper credit to each of these sources is impossible; assigning all of the credit to any one of them is inaccurate.
Still, much of what happens in social media is highly measurable, and these metrics can lead to an least indirect evaluation of the value of different media, activities, topics and tactics. Here are four areas of social media metrics worth tracking, even if they don’t provide direct ROI calculations.
Influence: a.k.a. “reach,” these are high-level measures of your brand or company’s presence in social media, such as number of Twitter followers, Facebook fans, LinkedIn group members, mentions across social media (you’ll want to pick one social media monitoring tool for this and stick with it for a while, for the sake of consistency of month-to-month comparisons). This category can also include metrics like blog visitors and RSS / email subscribers. While larger numbers are generally better, keep in mind that it’s easy to inflate a Twitter following (note all of the spammy “Internet marketers” with ridiculously large follower counts) and that in terms of generating business value, quality is more important than quantity.
Engagement: A level deeper than influence, these metrics include the number of RT’s and #followfriday recommendations you get on Twitter, posts to your company’s Facebook wall, questions answered on LinkedIn or Yahoo! Answers, comments posted on your blog, etc. Anything that measures social interaction. Again, more is generally better (spammy blog comments aside), as engagement is the “social” in social media.
Sentiment: Are the comments, posts etc. being made about your company, brand, product or service generally positive, negative or neutral? This is a very important metric to track, but accuracy can be a challenge, particularly for mid-sized companies. Small companies may have so few social mentions to track that the process can be done manually, leading to theoretically perfect accuracy. Mid-sized to large firms may rely on fee-based social media monitoring tools like Radian 6, Alterian SM2, Cision or Vocus which provide automated sentiment tracking, while global brands can use tools like Neilsen BuzzMetrics or Cymfony.
No automated sentiment tracking tool is perfect (for example, “It sucks having a cold but NyQuil is helping” may be tagged as a negative brand reference for Vicks because of the way that sentence started). Accuracy is most problematic for mid-sized firms that have too many brand mentions to track manually but can’t justify the cost of the most sophisticated tools. For large brands, the number of social media mentions is so large that errors in automated tracking tend to cancel each other out, meaning that overall sentiment analysis can be highly accurate even though individual items may be mis-flagged.
Activity: Most web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, can be used to track the number of visits, traffic quality (e.g. average time spent on site, number of pages viewed, bounce rate) and even conversion (lead or sale) sources. Again, while this information is certainly helpful, it shouldn’t be relied upon as a precise ROI measurement for several reasons, including the last-click attribution issue noted above, and the fact that some analytics packages (Google included) don’t measure social media referrals accurately; Google Analytics dramatically undercounts Twitter visits, for example.
Particularly in this tough economic environment, where every expenditure is receiving even greater than normal scrutiny, numbers matter. The C-suite expects justification for every dollar spent, including investments in social media marketing. You can’t afford to ignore what customers and other influencers are saying about your brand, but need to quantify the benefits of social media monitoring and participation, in some manner, as well. Calculating ROI with any precision is problematic, but there are still many aspects of social media which can and should be measured. These provide a picture of the benefits of specific social media tools, tactics and activities which can justify expenses and help guide activities—even without perfect cost-benefit analyses.
Five Social Media Marketing Reports and Guides Worth Checking Out
Monday, August 2nd, 2010Much has been written about content marketing from the delivery side. As advertising is increasingly looked upon with skepticism if not simply tuned out, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to buy your prospects’ attention; it has to be earned. Substituting thought-leadership content for ad copy—telling rather than selling—should benefit both buyers and sellers, by increasing the knowledge of buyers and shortening sales cycles (though this latter effect may be masked by current economic conditions).
For those whose job it is to generate leads and sales through content and social media, here are five excellent new resources to help increase your knowledge.
A B2B Marketer’s Guide to Great Facebook Pages from HubSpot (29 pages)
Though Facebook is generally more effective for b2c marketers than on the b2b side (as even this report notes), there are nevertheless b2b companies standing out from the crowd by getting results through Facebook. How are they doing it? This report highlights five tips, 15 examples of winning b2b Facebook pages, and eight additional resources on using Facebook for business.
Among the tips: build an active wall by encouraging “likes,” posting useful content on a regular basis, and monitoring and responding to wall comments. Take advantage of the medium using pictures and other media. Companies cited as role models include web conferencing provider Dimdim, HR software provider Taleo and telecom firm Unified360.
Don’t create a business Facebook page without checking out this report. And if your business already has a presence on Facebook, but it isn’t delivering the results you’d hope for, this report will likely give you ideas on how to improve your presence and interactivity.
Social Media Marketing GPS (91 pages)
Insights from more than three dozen social media marketing experts including Ann Handley, Marc Meyer, B.L. Ochman, Yvonne DiVita, Beth Harte, Scott Monty, Peter Kim, Liz Strauss and David Meerman Scott on topics ranging from social media research, ethics and strategy to branding and metrics—all in 140-character snippets. Yes, as Shel Israel writes in the foreword, “It had to happen—an entire book, one tweet a time, and yet it is a real book that will help you understand what SM is about.
SMGPS will tell you the why & how using social media, 1 tweet at a time. You’ll learn essentials in digestible little spoonfuls.
The book will explain why old-school broadcast practices are waning and new conversational methods are on the rise.
This is the way it should be. These days, companies cannot waste money. They need to cut costs.
And SM is MUCH more efficient.
Writing a book in tweets is like writing a very long #Haiku series.
Reading it should be both interesting and useful.”
10 Key Online Marketing Trends for 2010 (3 pages)
As online marketing continues to rapidly evolve, web analytics provider Unica surveyed 155 marketing pros about their technology usage and plans to develop this concise report. While some of the findings are hardly earth-shaking (e.g., budgets continue to shift from offline to online, and “[companies] will expand their social media participation and continue to nurture a wide variety of social media tactics”), others are more interesting.
For example, the report predicts that by the end of 2010, more than 3/4 of companies will use targeting and personalization on their websites. Two-thirds of marketers “complained about IT’s support for marketing’s technology needs,” a major factor driving adoption of on-demand or SaaS applications. And adoption of mobile marketing is expected to more than double this year, despite recent findings from groups such as Forrester that less than 5% of U.S. online users have ever used location-based applications on a mobile device, and only about 1% do so regularly.
2010 Lead Generation Marketing ROI Study (32 pages)
This report explores the state of current b2b lead generation efforts and, more importantly, provides recommendations for marketers on how to improve both the productivity of lead generation programs and the measurement of ROI. Nearly half of all b2b marketers said they can’t predict the impact on lead production from a 10% increase in budget.
But among marketers who do have the information to make such predictions, 6 in 10 indicated they could deliver more than a 10% increase in leads. Lead tracking metrics tend to favor last-click attribution and lead quantity over quality (which will hardly come as a shock to most b2b marketers). Yet marketers recognize that high-engagement tactics (such as webinars) drive higher quality leads than do “promotional” tactics such as incentives and limited-time discounts.
The report recommends using richer metrics to measure not only the last click leading to a conversion, but also the effect of other activities (e.g., social media, PR, advertising) that support that activity. This requires use of exposure and interaction metrics in addition to direct lead conversion measures.
MarketingSherpa’s Top 7 B2B Case Studies for 2010 (64 pages)
As the introduction here notes, “It’s one thing to pick up a workbook that provides you with best practices. But, it’s an entirely different challenge to implement those best practices into the real world…MarketingSherpa know(s) this better than anyone. Sherpa’s reporters spend much of their time scouring the business world for marketing case studies. And not just any case studies—but the ones that offer marketers practical solutions for their companies.”
This report presents seven hand-picked case studies from MarketingSherpa’s vast library showing how companies can improve ROI while increasing leads, generate effective content, improve search engine rankings, nurture leads through the funnel and more.
Disclosure: As a RevResponse affiliate, I receive an obscenely modest spiff for each download of the Social Media Marketing GPS report. The others I just think are helpful and interesting.
Social Media Strategy? Think Like a Reporter
Monday, July 12th, 2010Recent surveys have shown that while businesses are embracing social media in droves, many are doing so without any real strategy in place. Without a strategy, there may be no clear ownership, or definition of success, or measurement, or integration with other marketing and PR efforts—all of which can lead eventually to wasted time and effort, abandoned blogs and Facebook pages, and even the erroneous conclusion that social media doesn’t work for us.
Yet developing such a strategy can be challenging; where does one start? Most of us have, through the classroom, TV shows or somewhere in life, learned about the reporter’s questions: who, what, when, where and why. Just as these questions are critical to solid journalism, so they can be invaluable to social media strategy development.
Who: the first who question is who will be in charge of social media efforts? Responsibility should be placed as high as possible—with the CEO ideally (think Tony Hsieh, or Jonathan Schwartz before the sale to Oracle). If not possible, then responsibility should rest with an executive in marketing, PR, product management or customer service. If absolutely necessary, this leadership can be outsourced, but only as part of a close long-term relationship. Who else will be involved? In all but the smallest companies, there are often multiple individuals tweeting, networking and even contributing to the company blog. In these situations, it’s imperative to have a social media policy in place, encourage subject matter experts (SME’s) to share their unique knowledge, and remember that everyone who participates is acting as a public face for the company—social media isn’t a job for an intern.
What: what type of information will you use to attract a social media following? In b2c, contests, games, apps and coupons are popular content. In the b2b world, thought leadership content is key, but this can take different forms depending on your resources and style: blogs are the most common media, but video, podcasting, online presentations and articles are other ways to share information and education with prospects. What also refers to subject matter—in b2b, that usually means reporting on research, offering a unique perspective on industry developments, solving problems, providing how-to guides, or presenting other information that is of value to your audience and positions your people as the experts.
When: how often will you write new blog posts? Tweet? Update your company’s Facebook page? The answers will be different depending on your company’s resources, the amount of content you have to work with, the number of employees involved in your social media efforts, the specific social media tool and other factors. In general, more is better, and most companies could probably benefit from greater social media activity, not less. There is a risk of over-doing things, particularly on Twitter, but as long as your focus is on adding value rather than self-promotion, few followers are likely to complain. Most companies find that the amount of time they need to devote to social media, particularly to engagement, starts out modestly and increases over time as their blog readership, Twitter following, Facebook fan base and other groups grow.
Where: which social media sites and tools will you use? There’s no question that blogs (which usually mean WordPress), Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have emerged as the “big four” social media venues. According to recent research, these are used by 70% or more of those active in social media (no other single tool was used by more than half of respondents). Twitter is probably the closest thing to a universal social media tool for business, while Facebook is huge in b2c, and LinkedIn is indispensable on the b2b side. These are the tools to start with, but by no means should a social media strategy be limited to these: depending again on talent, resources, corporate personality etc., other tools to take into account include YouTube and Vimeo (video sharing); SlideShare (presentations); social bookmarking sites like Digg, delicious and Propeller; online forums (there are specific forums for almost any industry); Ning (for creating your own community or finding others to engage with); PitchEngine (social PR); and social profile sites like VisualCV and PeoplePond, just to name a few.
Why: possibly the most important question of all. What is your company aiming to accomplish through social media? What are your goals? How will you measure them? There are at least a hundred ways to measure social media success and more than a hundred tools for monitoring them. While measuring social media ROI is difficult to do with any precision, it’s important to use what measures you can to help gauge the impact and continually improve your efforts.
Crafting a social media strategy is vital to achieving success and avoiding wasted efforts. It’s a challenging exercise, but one that can made easier by thinking differently—such as like a reporter.
Three Words That Should Never Be Used With Social Media
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010At its core, social media marketing is still marketing: it requires a strategy, planning, objectives, measurement, and utilization of key messages. It supports a brand, and needs to integrated with other marketing and PR activities rather than treated as a separate island (just as, for example, a company’s search and display advertising should communicate a consistent message). It’s a component (an increasingly essential one) of an overall marketing and PR plan. It has a purpose and needs a budget.
But on the other hand, social media is not simply another channel, i.e. to be lumped into a group such as radio, TV, outdoor, print, and social media. Unlike other channels, social media is informal, interactive and personal. So while some essential components of marketing still apply, social media requires a unique approach. Treating it as just another communications channel or advertising medium is likely to be not just unsuccessful but actually damaging to the brand.
This may spark some arguments, but here are three common terms from traditional marketing and advertising that I believe should never be used with social media.
Mass (as in “mass marketing” or “mass messaging”). For most of the last century, advertising and marketing were about mass–reaching the largest number of individuals possible. While the fragmentation of media (hundreds of cable channels, millions of websites) has made true mass marketing somewhat more challenging, the appeal hasn’t disappeared: witness the exorbitant advertising rates for the Super Bowl and shows like American Idol.
Certainly b2b marketers, whose appeal is limited to specific niche markets, have always targeted their messages more carefully than have big consumer brands. But scale has still been an important factor, as the largest trade shows and highest-circulation publications, even within a specific niche, command the highest prices.
But social media isn’t about reaching the largest number of individuals in a particular group, but rather about reaching and engaging those who are most passionate. It’s about interacting with the 20% of potential customers who are likely to provide 80% of your profits, and the 10% of key influencers in your market space who can shape the views of the other 90%. It’s about narrow but deep rather than broad but shallow. To cite one specific social medium, it’s not about having the most followers on Twitter, but having the most engaged followers.
Automate. Automation certainly has its place in marketing; for example, using marketing automation software which can send specific email content to different groups based on their pipeline position or past behavior. But not in social media. Social media is about building relationships and interacting. Automation can be spotted a mile away and tends to really turn people off. To be sure, there are many helpful social media tools that make certain tasks, such as monitoring, more productive. But the core value of social media is in humanizing your brand and connecting directly with your biggest fans and market influencers. That can’t be automated.
Campaign. This word implies a defined beginning and end. A political campaign starts when a candidate announces that he or she is running for a specific office, and ends with the election. In marketing, advertising campaigns utilize a defined set of creative elements over a specified time period. But social media is, again, at its core, about establishing and building relationships. Talking about social media campaigns makes as much sense as saying you’re in a “dating campaign” or a “friendship campaign.” Social media marketing relationships are different, to be sure, as they are fundamentally about business. But some of the same fundamental principles apply; trust is deepened over time, and there is no predefined, fixed time period planned for the relationship. The business value of blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, LinkedIn connections, etc. increases over time.
One of the keys to social media marketing success is to find the proper balance with other marketing activities. Social media isn’t an entirely new, separate realm. But it does have its own unique characteristics that provide its power. Marketers who focus on relationship building and interaction rather than broadcasting and promotion will achieve the greatest returns.
