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It is easy to hop on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and every social network out there. It’s not so easy to answer the question WHY. Why do you want more fans? More likes? More shares? How is it going to help you meet your business goals? Most importantly how is it going to bring your audience value?
We consult with business owners and brand of all sizes, from entrepreneurs and startups to Fortune 100 brands. One of the first things we ask when conducting a social media audit or developing a social business strategy or marketing plan is WHY. It’s amazing how many brands can’t answer this simple question....
There aren’t many companies in the world that generate 1 million visitors and over 60,000 leads through their website each month. Especially B2B. HubSpot does.... HubSpot has figured out that Google wants great content, and lots of it. So rather than gaming the system with lots of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, (which I rant about in my #1 Forbes article ‘The Death of SEO, The Rise of Social, PR, and Real Content) they do the obvious… They generate lots of really good content....
Business is a warzone: If you stand still, you die. No matter how good your product or service, you’re at the mercy of cause and effect. The market’s evolving needs must be met by evolving products. ...But perhaps companies like Microsoft aren’t like yours? They deal in products that constantly change and have a short shelf life; change and fluidity are normal in their particular market.
So what happens when you’re not one of these companies? How do you deal with the speed at which social media and the spread of connected devices has changed the balance of power between a company and its customers and made it difficult to market using traditional advertising tools?... In the transition from Jerome McCarthy’s 4Ps of Product, Place, Price and Promotion to what he calls the 4Es of Experience, Everyplace, Exchange and Evangelism, we also see the morphing of traditional businesses into social ones... [This is a really thoughtful article on how business must evolved from traditional into social business models ~ Jeff]
Social media statistics from The Social Habit by Edison Research includes several very interesting data points about Facebook, Twitter and beyond. You think social media is reaching maturity, and the whipsaw behavioral shifts that change like a Dwight Howard trade request are things of the past? Uhhh, no. Released yesterday at Blogworld New York, findings from social media behavioral researcher Tom Webster and the team at Edison Research show some shocking changes in how Americans use and consume social media. You can access the entire presentation at The Social Habit microsite, but 11 social media statistics in particular stood out for me. Two quick notes: This is not data dredging. This is real, random sample, tightly controlled research from the same company that is the exclusive provider of Presidential exit polls in the USA.... [There were some social media research surprises worth noting ~ Jeff]
Social Media Tools: Here are three tools to better manage your online comments and conversations, Facebook and Pinterest marketing. Are you looking for powerful tools to manage your social media efforts? How do you keep up with blog post comments, responses to LinkedIn status updates and Twitter interactions? Social relationship management is about managing these relationships. And you need the right tools to help. In this article, I’ll show you 3 new social media tools to help manage your online relationships and grow your presence on social media platforms.... [Ian Cleary offers really helpful tps for managing your social media channels. ~ Jeff]
Instagram is most definitely its own beast. Businesses thinking they can parlay a Pinterest strategy into Instagram will be sorely mistaken, thanks to strikingly different user engagement styles on the two platforms. Without clear “transactional” support, Instagram is proving to be much more about brand building and brand allegiance. If your company doesn't hold the term "brand" highly, simply stay off Instagram for now -- there are other platforms more worth your transactional-based time. However, for the brand-conscience, recent metrics show Instagram might be a worthwhile marketing tool.... [Bryan Boettger offers insight into marketing on Instagram ~ Jeff]
Kotex identified 50 women, who were active on Pinterest. They researched what they pinned, how they expressed themselves, and then sent them a box of gifts that was customized to their taste. It was essentially a creative influencer outreach campaign, that used Pinterest as its launch pad. Clearly, Kotex targets women as their customers. Pinterest makes a lot of sense for this campaign, since it holds such a high percentage of women users, and has so much growing media and user attention, right now. Kotex used repins to opt-in the Pinterest users for the campaign. And, the women who received the gifts posted about them on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They sent out 50 total gift boxes, and saw over 2,000 interactions that created close to 695,000 impressions. [Useful Pinterest marketing case study ~ Jeff]
Via Jess Seilheimer, theMediaPod
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Are you wondering how consumers are using social media? Would you like some insights to help your business better understand people’s social habits? In this article, I examine a report published by Edison Research focused on people’s latest social habits. These findings provide useful insights about consumer behavior and how your business can respond. Here are 9 of the most interesting findings from the study....
We’ve seen a lot of changes in media this year: from new devices and multiple screens driving responsive design, to the rise of native advertising, and the importance of imagery on social networks. The media is an industry that, for the most part, tends to innovate quickly, at the risk of dying. And most of the trends and disruptions that media face usually affect marketers shortly thereafter. So with that, here are three things the media has learned this year that marketers ought to pay attention to as they head into 2013....
According to stats-meister Nielsen, in July 2012, US consumers spent 121 billion minutes navigating the shark-infested waters of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and the rest — up 37% from July 2011 and that’s quite a feat. The majority of the time was spent using a traditional computer, but look at mobile. The larger square represents Apps, the smaller, cell phone looking icon represents browser use through a mobile device. Together, they show a 63% increase over last year.
Breaking the numbers down, Nielsen found that women were responsible for most of the social media usage both on the PCA and through mobile. Ages 18-24 ate up the most minutes on the PC but Ages 25-34 snuck ahead on the mobile site, but not by much. Ethnically, speaking Hispanics were way out in front on mobile usage with PC usage being fairly evenly divided.
[Valuable insight into social media trends and booming mobile sector for marketers, social media, PR pros ~ Jeff]
As content creators look to keep audiences interested and clicking on more assets, they would do well to consider audience composition, as research suggests demographics can have a substantial effect on how web users behave once they have found interesting content. Research from content optimization firm nRelate shows that age is one major factor in how users engage with content online. An October 2012 survey found that younger US web users, especially younger males, had a high propensity to click on related articles and videos after reading online content. Older users tended to click on links to related content on a weekly basis, and women—especially older women—were more likely to be drawn to a story that featured a photo.... [Useful social marketing insight ~ Jeff]
Retailers are mining personal data to learn everything about you so they can help you help yourself to their products. Black Thriday is over. So is Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Today, in case you didn’t know, is either Green Tuesday or Giving Tuesday, depending on whether you feel like eco-shopping or giving to charity. Not sure what tomorrow may bring (How about Weird Relative Gift Wednesday?), but I suppose shopping does feel less chaotic if someone’s organizing it into theme days, although that doesn’t always stop it from devolving into a contact sport. Can you imagine American shoppers embracing something like iButterfly, a mobile app popular in Asia where customers earn coupons by tracking down virtual butterflies with their smartphones? Me neither. In the U.S., it’s about cutting to the chase and here the chase is after the sweetest deals, pure and simple, without having to bother with running after faux flying insects. And retailers have ratcheted up the competition, using the latest tracking technology to closely monitor their competitors’ pricing decisions and undercut them, in close to real-time, on their own websites. When Best Buy, for instance, published advertising saying it would be selling a $1,500 Nikon camera for $1,000, Amazon responded on Thanksgiving morning by cutting its price for the same camera to $997.... [Smithsonian offers a valuable marketing context for Black Friday shopping phenomena ~ Jeff]
The CEO is not exactly tripping over themselves to integrate social media into your company's marketing plan. So, where does that leave you? You are the chief marketing officer at your company and you have to approach the big man or woman about trying something out. The goal, to get them to sign off on putting major time and effort into a social media campaign. Yes, the company is doing well overall, but you and others know it could be turning an even bigger return on investment. The sticking point, however, the CEO is not exactly tripping over themselves to integrate social media into your company’s marketing plan. So, where does that leave you?... [How to make the social media case ~ Jeff]
American Family Insurance took about a month to decide whether the image-centric site was the right place for it on social media. Now, the company's figuring out what works best there. It makes a lot of sense to always link social media with immediacy. After all, it just takes one click to send a message or a photo to the world. But American Family Insurance doesn't think about it in terms of lightning speed. It's looking for lasting connections.
For example, the company's social media team of eight people took about 30 days to determine whether Pinterest, which has grown by a factor of more than 20 over the past year, was a good place for the company to branch out on social media.
"We think there's a long-term opportunity here, or else we wouldn't have gotten into it," says Michele Wingate, American Family's social media manager. The company is taking its time on the site, building up a presence organically before really kicking into high gear with messaging next year. The fact that it has 17 social media presences, reports Andy Sernovitz on SmartBlog on Social Media, while other companies maintain dozens, is even more of a motivation.... [Interesting to see the payback over time ~ Jeff]
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This is a thoughtful look at why social media matters to business of every size.