5 Social Media Pitfalls to Avoid Social media is now an active reality for marketers. No longer something to consider as an option, marketers are rapidly increasing their budgets in this space and trying to leverage social media to best connect with consumers. Many marketers believe social media is a low risk, high reward channel. However, these 5 pitfalls will increase your risk and lower the reward, leading you down the path to social mediocrity. Pitfall #1: Forcing traditional metrics on social media Social media is evolving, is not a one-size-fits-all channel, and allows for unprecedented interaction with consumers. The social media ROI model is different from models for traditional channels, such as television, which have been proven and tested over time. Pitfall #2: Culture clash The Web created an always on environment where consumers expect to have 24/7 access to brands. United Airlines uses Twitter to connect with customers online and to build a reputation as being customer-centric. Pitfall #4.
Andy’s Answers: How BlackRock uses social media for internal collaboration BlackRock — the largest investment-management firm in the world — faced a challenge companies of all sizes face: How to get valuable information to staff who need it, and efficiently. At BlackRock, this problem was especially affecting their sales team. Everyone was trying to feed them information. That’s when Jonathan Haley and his team turned to social tools to solve the disconnect. So far, they’ve seen a measurable decrease in support calls, increased conversion rates and an increased perception of their sales team as advisers. This internal success has led to big things externally, too. At our recent BlogWell event, Haley shared the details of how they pulled it off. Getting familiar with social tools takes less time than you think. Watch the case study: Slides from this presentation are available here. And if you like this presentation, be sure to check out our upcoming BlogWell events in New York and Washington, D.C.
Five Creative Ways to Use Social Media More than a Marketing Tool Social media is more than just a marketing tool for your business. It helps us promote our products and services. As small business owners, social media is more than having presence on Facebook. It’s a place for us to level the playing field with the big brand companies. So you understand how to use this stuff and most likely, you know why you’re on certain social programs. You get all that stuff but how do you take your marketing to the next level. Related Resources from B2C» Free Webcast: Bye-Bye Solution Selling: Why Sales Teams Are Moving To Insight Selling Let’s get your creative on There comes a time when your marketing feels a bit boring. { trumpets sound – I had to write that in because I’m not sure how to write out what a trumpet sounds like but that noise keeps going off in my head as I’m typing this part. } 1. Are you promoting an event or a promotion with a specific hashtag? Whatever you’re promoting, add the hashtag into your promotional artwork. 2.
Twitter's International Growth: Becoming the World's Water Coole Not to be outdone by Facebook's impressive global growth trend, Twitter's just revealed some statistics about how many people Tweet around the third rock from the sun. Get this: More than 60% of Tweeps aren't American. Matt Sanford, Twitter's head honcho engineer on its International Team, presents the stats (mainly in the form of that graph shown above) on the company's blog. But peeping at that graph up there, the growth in international membership of Twitter has been nothing short of phenomenal. Specific events around the world sparked peaks in international growth, Sanford notes--with the February 2010 Chilean earthquake prompting a 1,200% spike in member sign-ups. Although Twitter is regionalized into six languages, and small sign-up spikes have been observed when, for example, Spanish was added back in November 2009, its international growth has been pretty smooth.
Social Media for Social Change — Inside the Organization? How has the activity of organizational change been changed, with the advent of social media? Back when I was an internal OD/Org Change manager in the Soap Plant, we spread ideas about change the old-fashioned ways: meetings, photocopied paper mail, and face-to-face conversations. With the rise of enterprise social networks, and all of those messaging, micro-blogging, meet-up-ing, and connecting tools, the world of an internal organizational change agent must also have changed– but how? Has Social Media Movement Building moved inside organizations? At last week’s Social Media Week events, there were several sessions about using social media to foment change ‘outside’– among citizens, voters, consumers, and audiences. Social media — the latest, greatest tool set for social movement building –is being used outside organizations: No one at Social Media Week really talked about using these very media platforms and techniques inside organizations. But what of organizational social change agents?
How to Find Your Social Media Marketing Voice and Tone 5.4K Flares Filament.io 5.4K Flares × Among the many ways to stand out on social media—killer content, amazing visuals, specific formatting, and more—one that often gets overlooked is voice. We don’t want brands talking at us as if we are dollar signs. We want authentic communication. Finding a voice for your social media marketing can be difficult because the concept is somewhat unlike other optimization strategies online. What is the difference between voice and tone? When you jump into the discussion of voice in social media marketing, you can’t help but touch on tone as well. Voice: Your brand personality described in an adjective. Tone: A subset of your brand’s voice. Essentially, there is one voice for your brand and many tones that refine that voice. Voice is a mission statement. Another way of looking at voice is through a four-part formula suggested by Stephanie Schwab, writing for Social Media Explorer. Character / persona – Who does your brand sound like? How to find your voice
Which Department Owns Social Media? In the past, it was easy for businesses or brands to segment different types of outreach or communication into departments. Marketing and public relations often operated separately from one another; human resources, customer service and technical support all operated in their own distinct branches. While overlap did occur, for the most part, actions and activities adhered to a set organizational structure. But how do you classify social media? This is a loaded question with no clear-cut answer. Marketing and PR Social media is a natural extension of both marketing and public relations. In its November 2009 report on Social Media and Online PR, Econsultancy found that of the companies surveyed, 35% of companies managed their social media resources under the digital marketing team. Social media has proven to be a solid marketing tool, so it isn't surprising that many companies associate the two with one another. In his role as Lead Evangelist/PR, Wong manages all social media outreach.
A Big Picture Social Media Strategy It can be difficult for organizations to see the strategic big picture when it comes to social media, especially if they are focusing all their energy on tools and tactics. Questions abound … How does social media investment relate to business value? What are the real costs? What impact does social media strategy have on organizational culture? This high level framework is designed to illustrate the social media learning curve and to help business and non-profit leaders understand how strategy relates to investment, value and culture. Axis Relationships Investment: As your organization moves along this axis, be prepared to increase your investment.Initially, most social media costs are related to time and labour. Business Value: As your brand moves along this axis towards integration and, possibly, a social business model, value SHOULD increase.Value will vary based on an organization’s definition. Business Culture: Phases of Social Business Evolution Emerging: Tactical: Integrated: Social:
Social Media Marketing World: 17 Super Tools to Optimize Social Media 1.9K Flares Twitter 906 Facebook 233 Google+ 233 LinkedIn 313 Buffer 192 1.9K Flares × Want to make significant improvements to your social media presence to-day? At the Social Media Marketing World conference in San Diego last week I presented to a packed room about a range of tools to optimize social media performance. It contained a range of really interesting and useful tools to help you target the right people, get better results with your content, convert more traffic and improve results. Here is a summary of the tools that I covered: Targeting the right people Social media is amazing for connecting with new people. Without a strategic approach you might end up wasting a lot of time connecting with people that may not benefit your business. Here are some tools that will help you identify the right people. 1. Tactics Cloud is a pretty nifty free Twitter search tool. Here is an example of the type of search: Apply your filters to find the right people 2. 3. This makes sense. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
The History and Evolution of Social Media Social media has become an integral part of modern society. There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries. There are niche sites for virtually every special interest out there. There are sites to share photos, videos, status updates, sites for meeting new people and sites to connect with old friends. It seems there are social solutions to just about every need. In this article, we’ll review the history and evolution of social media from its humble beginnings to the present day. Precursors to Social Media Usernets Usenet systems were first conceived of in 1979 by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. Usenets have no centralized server or dedicated administrator, setting them apart from most BBSs and forums. Group sites such as Google Groups and Yahoo! BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) The first BBSs came online in the late 70s. While there were legitimate BBSs, most were at least somewhat involved in illicit, illegal, or other shady practices. Online Services
Deriving Value From Social Media Referral Traffic There are many who want to look at social media in the same way they might look at search. Some want to see the direct value in social media traffic and when the traffic doesn’t lead to any meaningful conversions they want to condemn social media and proclaim it as valueless. There is value in social media. Consider the image below of some recent referral traffic to this site. Stumblers clearly didn’t spend much time here. More Engagement There Leads to More Engagement Here The answer is pretty simple. While I do maintain a presence at StumbleUpon the mass of the people who found their way here did so when this page randomly appeared after stumbling. Referral traffic from Sphinn likely had a little more familiarity with me and so stayed a little longer and bounced a little less. Now consider both Webmaster-Talk and Teaching Sells. My brand and engagement is stronger in those communities and consequently the communities were predisposed to engaging with me here. The Value Of Social Media
The Future of Social-Media Archiving - Wired Campus The Archiving Social Media conference at George Mason University brought scholars, archivists, and Web developers together on Friday to discuss the preservation of data now whizzing around the Internet on blogs and networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Demand for Web archives has grown as social media has become part of the fabric of social history. At the conference, participants talked about the challenge of documenting social media from a variety of angles, such as copyright, ethics, and how the archives will be used. “This was really intended as a first conversation,” said Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director of George Mason’s Center for History and New Media, and a research assistant professor of history at GMU. “We have a better sense of the kind of work that would need to be done.” Mr. Keeping archives dark: Deciding what to archive: Achieving uniformity in archives: Co-coordinating Editor Return to Top
The Social Media Frequency Guide: How Often to Post 2.1K Flares Filament.io 2.1K Flares × Subway has this sandwich with Fritos on it. I know this because their commercials play constantly on my TV and computer such that I nearly have the ads memorized. Every time their commercial airs, Subway is flirting with the fine art of frequency. How often is too often to share with your audience? Social media marketers face the same dilemma. If guessing is required for finding the optimal frequency, then at least we can be making educated guesses. Strike the balance between informative and annoying Good content can be found in a multitude of places, and once you find it all, the next question you may ask yourself is how often you can share. Our post on curating content sparked this exact question, asked in the comments by Ryan Battles. I’ve started tweeting content from Buffer, ranging from 3x per day to 7x per day. Informative versus annoying. How frequently Buffer shares to social media Twitter – 14 times per day, from midnight to 10:00 p.m. Predict.
Malcolm Gladwell Is #Wrong Essay Maria Popova Malcolm Gladwell's take on social media is like a nun's likely review of the Kama Sutra — self-righteous and misguided by virtue of voluntary self-exclusion from the subject. But while the nun's stance reflects adherence to a moral code, Gladwell's merely discloses a stubborn opinion based on little more than a bystander’s observations. Gladwell, who has built a wildly successful career curating and synthesizing other people's research for the common reader’s consumption, has been surprisingly remiss in examining the social web’s impact on various forms of activism. In a recent New Yorker article, in fact, he declared that "the revolution will not be tweeted" — that social media are practically useless when it comes to serious activism. Gladwell's argument rests on two main ideas: first, that the social web is woven of what he calls "weak ties" between people, whereas activism is driven by "strong ties." Let’s look at Gladwell's definition of activism, or lack thereof.