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Are you looking to get started with social media marketing? Do you want to reexamine how you’ve been using social networks? In this post, I’ll cover 26 tips, an A-Z guide, to help you understand the backbone of successful social media strategies....
Customers own the story of the brand now. What brands say is far less important than what brands actually do to serve the well being of the faithful. Whereas before, the brand conversation was based on delivery and interruption, successful brand conversations are now participatory in ever more technology driven channels. Storytelling is at the very heart of how we humans share and connect what we value about our heritage, our communities and ourselves. Brand storytelling is about connecting the outer value the brand provides to the inner values of the customer. There must be a deep affinity between the two or the relationship is just a transaction. The foundation for this affinity is built on the shared stories between brands to consumers, customers to brands, and consumers to consumers. Like all relationships, there has to be chemistry. Brands have it or they don’t. How well these collective stories line up with the experience customers have is what creates “insistence without substitutes” in the minds of customers....
Via massimo facchinetti, Jesse Soininen
From "Liking" to Leading. The Rise of Social Business via @IBM #socbiz
So who are these social media front runners? Most of them are the big named brands that you know and love.Victoria’s Secret, Walmart and Adidas lead the Facebook front, while Nordstrom, Williams-Sonoma and Barneys New York lead on Pinterest. Want to slip to the top? Know your demographic, produce engaging content and find the social media platform that’s right for you...
Via janlgordon
Social media networks were supposed to be the greatest marketing machines on earth. It hasn’t worked out that way — yet.... Debates rage as quants accuse one another of counting the wrong things. Take I.B.M.’s Black Friday study. While the numbers indicate that few shoppers clicked directly from a social network to buy a laptop or a fridge, some may have seen ads that later led to a purchase. If so, valuable influence went unmeasured. “I.B.M. is looking at a single point in time,” says Dan Neely, the chief executive of Networked Insights, a marketing analytics company. Neely’s team followed Macy’s Black Friday campaign on Twitter, which started weeks before the big day; it generated a viral flurry on the network, he says. Clearly, many big advertisers are still believers: last week, Facebook shares got a boost from reports that Walmart, Samsung and other boldfaced names have recently stepped up social-media advertising. But gauging the effectiveness of these ads is still a challenge. “It’s hard to measure influence,” says Steve Canepa, I.B.M.’s general manager for media and entertainment. That, in fact, may be the ultimate lesson to draw from the social media marketing miracle that wasn’t. The impact of new technologies is invariably misjudged because we measure the future with yardsticks from the past....
Social Media has had a terrific ride for the past several years, but the days of easy growth are gone. In fact, the days of easy anything in social are behind us. For many brands, 2013 will be a year of social media disappointment.
With so many consumers spending so much time in social media and expecting so much of brands, our investments in social will continue to grow, but that does not mean our results will grow, at least in easily measurable ways. Certainly, all of our brands will earn more fans, see more comments and collect more retweets, but we all know this is no longer enough--our bosses want to know the business results we are delivering, and fans simply are not a business benchmark.
Success in 2013, more than ever, will be measured in difficult metrics and not easy ones, and increasingly, it will come not just from the Marketing department but from every corner of the enterprise. To succeed in 2013 and beyond, organizations must recognize how social media is altering the way we live, work and conduct business and not just the way we kill time on Facebook.
Here is where (I believe) social will grow and where it will stumble and stagnate in 2013...
With all the writing that has swirled around social media in recent years, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and also to assume that all the good, stimulating, provocative questions have already been asked. Yet judging from last week’s Critical Issues Forum, the discussion around social media is far from stale. Panelists, facilitators, and audience-members alike raised an impressive array of burning questions surrounding the use of Facebook, Twitter and the like by companies. These issues touched on the strategic and the theoretical; on political life as well as business implications. Taken together, they represent a coherent agenda for how to think creatively about social media for the next six to twelve months....
[Jay Baer's stimulating interview with Brian Solis on his new book "The End of Business as Usual" - JD] ...The answer is you can’t stop creating the content in the way that people you’re trying to reach consume it. That was the most challenging part of writing this book. You’re an author. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve got to write a book. You have to keep up your blog. You have to keep up your Twitter stream. You have to keep up your Facebook. Now your Google+, your Foursquare. You have these seminated audience or groups of people that are connecting with you because they find value in those channels. But yeah, there’s a fantastic audience for books and the need to have information at their fingertips. But I did design this book a little bit differently, considering that we are wired for distraction. Every chapter has almost tweetable summaries of what the insights were in each chapter. So if you have to go back and just kind of remember what the value was, or just read those, you could still walk away with the value your way....
Social media fatigue, social media frustration, this is all a waste of time, we're not getting anywhere, you've heard it all. ...If you’re not getting the most out of your social media participation, or if you feel like it’s falling flat on either a personal or professional level, there might be a few things at issue. Have a look through the list below for some of the causes behind the symptoms, and what you might to do give your social a shot in the arm....
Social Media Bigger And More Influential Than Ever, Reveals Q3 Nielsen Report [INFOGRAPHIC]... The use of social media continues to grow at a rapid pace, with platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and LinkedIn hungrily consuming the attention of the masses and connecting them with almost everything they buy, watch and read - online and off. State of the Media: Social Media Report Q3, a new report from Nielsen, analyzes the enormous influence that social media now has on consumer behavior. While the report predominately looks at activity in the USA, the findings are also consistent across international markets, and there’s no evidence that the rise of social media is going to be slowing down anytime soon....
I love shiny new technology and social media as much or more than most PR pros. But I’m not afraid to say some of the newest social media “emperors” are not wearing any clothes. The challenge is how do we know which ones will have an ROI?
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Our friends over at MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute recently released The State of B2B Content Marketing in North America. It’s a fascinating report revealing insights into how B2B marketers are using content marketing techniques and the biggest challenges they face. The results reveal that B2B marketers are spending more, using more tactics, and distributing their content on more social networks than they have in the past. Another standout from the survey found that 90% of respondents are doing some form of content marketing, but are not necessarily doing it correctly. The following infographic provides a visual interpretation of the most revealing stats from the report. It clearly shows us thatcontent marketing is not a fad and will continue to be a driving force for marketers, while at the same time indicating that the majority are still struggling to find a process that works for them and are having trouble garnering buy in from the C-suites....
There's a single, fundamental reason it would be harder for an upstart new website to beat LinkedIn than for one to beat Facebook: There is more risk associated with losing your network on LinkedIn....
The question suddenly crossed my mind: what holds more value -- my Facebook friends or my LinkedIn connections (especially if many of them are one and the same)? The answer, simply put, comes down to risk....
Six trends that are changing the way we use social media in marketing and sales. We’ve been at this social game for a while now, you and me. We saw it grow up from a minor phenomenon to a mainstream communication channel. And we were there for the emergence of “pinning” (no longer just a wrestling term), the broad use of Twitter in crisis reporting, and seemingly countless redesigns of the Facebook Wall, err ... Timeline. In such a rapidly changing space, it’s hard not to get pulled into an ongoing analysis of where we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re headed next. In this most recent round of reassessment, a handful of trends have caught my attention. And, unlike the loss of LinkedIn Answers, I’m feeling pretty good about them. So let's take a closer look at how social media is changing ... for the better....
...Unfortunately, many companies fail to take advantage of the benefits social media provides. If only using social media was like using a power tool; Set it up, push a button, and you get magical brand awareness and conversions! Social media still requires work, and most importantly an understanding of how to act online. Yesterday afternoon, Taco Bell showed it understands exactly how to use social media....
Too many businesses take social media a bit too seriously. Being serious all the time is not a great way to take advantage of followers and friends, plus it’s boring. There certainly is a place for serious responses to followers and fans, especially when it comes to customer service. But simple responses to funny requests or sarcastic remarks are just as important....
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....
... In the past year, we've sensed that we're close to a tipping point, where the use of social networking in all aspects of business is quickly moving from novelty to mainstream. In fact, we think business professionals of the future must have a social networking skillset to succeed. One recent study shows this momentum towards social business. In a joint MIT/Deloitte study of global managers, 52 percent of global managers thought that social business is important to their organizations today. These same managers viewed the importance of social business as growing: 86 percent stated that social business would be important in their organizations three years from now. Despite managers recognizing the importance of social business, few organizations are prepared to make the most of social software. According to the 2012 IBM Technology Trends report, only 1 in 10 organizations have the skills they need to benefit from advanced technology such as social software. Additionally, nearly half of the educators and students surveyed in IBM's survey indicated major gaps in their institutions' ability to meet IT skill ne youeds in the social area....
Via Martin (Marty) Smith
[Imagine Bernanke's Blog, The Fed's Facebook page or Ben tweeting? Will social media make the Fed a household name? JD] The Federal Reserve has lately been in the news almost as much for how it makes and communicates its decisions as for the decisions themselves. Beginning with the announcement that it will hold four press conferences per year in order to more clearly communicate the decisions of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Fed has promised to “continue to review its communications practices in the interest of ensuring accountability and increasing public understanding.” To a greater extent than one might have predicted, the Fed kept its promise by ending the year with the announcement that it’s venturing into the social media fray. In late September, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) invited companies specializing in “sentiment analysis” the chance to bid on a contract for creating a system to monitor what people are saying about the Fed online....
Why Employees and Customers Will Be Calling the Shots... Civilizations have clashed in an unexpected way this year, as ordinary people using Facebook and Twitter knocked down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya—and are threatening absolute rule in Syria. A so-called Arab spring brought waves of liberation to a long-oppressed region. Something similar is happening in more democratic countries. In Spain throngs of young people, known as “the indignant ones,” occupied public plazas nationwide, protesting unemployment and exclusionary politics. In Israel ordinary citizens from both right and left united in massive demonstrations against high housing prices. And in India one man’s campaign against corruption went viral, bringing thousands to the streets in support. This social might is now moving toward your company. We have entered the age of empowered individuals, who use potent new technologies and harness social media to organize themselves. A few have joined cause with WikiLeaks and its terrifying stepchild dren, upending the once secure corridors of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon. But most are ordinary people with new tools to force you to listen to what they care about and to demand respect. Both your customers and your employees have started marching in this burgeoning social media multitude, and you'd better get out of their way--or learn to embrace them....
...Metrics are critical indicators of performance and progress yes, but when new media enters the fray, more questions than answers cloud the ability to see beyond the horizon. And, as new media becomes increasingly disruptive, innovation and a bit of clairvoyance are required to serve up new hypotheses that help leaders make decisions in the absence of history or precedence. It is in these times when competitive threat is equal to, or in some cases less than the threat of digital Darwinism. When technology and consumer behavior cause change faster than your ability to recognize and adapt (and lead), we surface the first and potentially dangerous series of slipping points that like the game of Chutes and Ladders, cause us to fall further away from our position or intention....
...In order to sell the field that everyone is talking about, but on which few can illuminate, we first need to reframe the conversation. Instead of striving for Merriam-Webster precision, social media strategists would do better to focus on case studies. Specifically, social media strategist Ari Herzog has argued, when you reach for the term “social media,” don’t spew broad buzzwords like Facebook or Twitter or YouTube....
A lot of folks are considering or do consider themselves social media experts because they do manage various social media channels for themselves or for others. This excellent Day in the Life infographic says it all...
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![Social Media Bigger And More Influential Than Ever, Reveals Q3 Nielsen Report [INFOGRAPHIC] - AllTwitter | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/5T7KJkioZQs-rStI60hq5Dl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
![The Hectic Life of a Social Media Manager [Infographics] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/uaBlBss7a1dbc6kmZ_sTizl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
Debbie Hemley offers an excellent, practical blueprint for those looking at jumping into social media marketing.