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Millions and millions of consumers are expressing likes on Facebook, tweeting about products on Twitter, and pinning on Pinterest every single day.
Retailers and brands are therefore increasingly focusing their attention on social commerce.
But, many struggle with the question: how do you convert a "like," a "tweet," or "pin" into a sale?
In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we look at successful examples of businesses and business models for generating commerce via social media-based strategies, analyze Pinterest's success as a social commerce platform, look at Facebook's potential as a social commerce contender, and examine the e-commerce conversion and order value gap....
Content is the fuel of social interaction on the Web: Nearly one-quarter (23%) of all social media messages and one-half (47%) of industry-specific social messages contain links to content, according to a new study by AOL and Nielsen. The amount of content shared via social media varies by channel: - 42% of all Twitter posts contain content-sharing links; 73% of Twitter posts related to a specific industry (auto, tech, finance, and entertainment) contain sharing links. - 41% of all blog posts contain content-sharing links; 64% of industry-specific blog posts contain such links. - 12% of all Facebook posts contain content content-sharing links; 22% of industry-specific Facebook posts contain such links....
Brands' goals for facebook ads may be evolving past racking up followers and likes, according to ad age and citigroup's survey about facebook marketing.
Marketers who buy ads on Facebook are more focused on building brand awareness than accumulating fans, according to a new survey of Ad Age subscribers by Ad Age and Citigroup.
Asked to identify their primary goal in Facebook ads, 45.9% of respondents put building awareness and sentiment for their brands at the top. Driving traffic to brand websites was the second most-cited goal, with 17.6% of respondents saying it is their most important objective, followed by building fans or likes, staying in touch with customers, generating sales leads and social commerce....
We still seem to be in a bit of a conundrum when trying to understand the value of social media for brands....
...Social media, with its countless channels that seem to emerge every week, has become over-crowded, cluttered and, frankly, obnoxious. For what has the potential to be an honest platform for an authentic, two-way conversation between people and brands, social media has become a platform to shamelessly flog one’s services with little time or consideration left for listening. This tends to be especially frustrating for brands, as even when they attempt to engage with a community, they are often met with an exhausted audience that questions the intentions of their messaging.
Hope and High ROI However, much to my glee, IAB UK released a new study on Independence Day that gives hope and relief – or at least the promise of a big ROI - to companies who engage with social media. The new study, conducted on behalf of the IAB’s Social Media Council and carried out by Marketing Sciences, focused on three FMCG brands’ (Heinz, Kettle and Twinings) social media strategies. Here are the quick-and-dirty highlights....
The social network's popularity is subsiding, especially among younger users. Is Facebook fading, and what does this mean for how we connect with members? Although the social media behemoth is probably not receding into the internet abyss any time soon, its popularity is subsiding, especially among younger users.
What does this mean for how we connect with members in the future?S igns of Facebook’s waning popularity have been circulating recently. Over the last year, the social media site has lost 10 million U.S. visitors, according to The Guardian. If the younger generation is part of the scope of members you are targeting, you might want to start transitioning into different levels of connection....
With all the marketing technology available it is much easier to track key marketing metrics, leverage marketing analytics, and measure the influence of marketing programs....
With the B2B customer journey being almost 70% digital, marketing program results can be measured more than ever before. But what’s curious to me is that most CEOs are not insisting on showing how a company’s investment is paying off. Manufacturing is measured, sales is measured, customer service is measured. But measuring marketing and its impact on revenue is not standard fare.
Most CMOs can tell you how many leads their organization generated last month or last year. But most can’t tell you what happened to those leads. They can tell you how many Website hits this month and whether the number of interested parties is growing or shrinking. But CMOs often don’t know how that activity is connected to revenue. Many CMOs can tell you how a nurture campaign is working to drive new leads but they can’t tell you if the quality and quantity is sufficient or whether sales has done an effective job in following up and developing sales from the leads. Mostly I think this is a lag in technology adoption. Here’s how I see it....
The perennial cry from CEOs around the globe is that they are focused on their customers. It’s their A-#1 mission. Everything emanates from understanding what customers need and want, and then delivering on it.
However, without up-to-date information trending profitable versus non-profitable customers and the issues driving the best customers away, CEOs and their businesses are unable to manage customers as assets. Guerrilla metrics give leadership five questions for commanding customer accountability inside their organizations. - Create a cultural shift to make customers the asset of the business. - Supply leaders with a platform to stand behind and reinforce. - Establish a language for CEOs in how they ask about customers; placing the customer front and center on their agenda. - Are a potent first step to kick-start or reenergize a faltering customer ‘focus.’...
...Inevitable is the classic "quality versus quantity" debate. In rebuttal to the pushback that Vaynerchuk's comments received, he astutely asks, "why not both?" Why can't brands create a lot of high quality content? Sure, some of this content will work and some will miss the mark. Not all attempts will result in a viral homerun, but we live in a real-time world, where individuals are increasingly looking for more context from their content.
Content providers are going to have to play a very different game. A personal case study comes to mind. On May 21st, I published my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete. Along with a digital experience to compliment the launch of the book, my digital marketing agency, Twist Image, took the interesting stats and data from this experience and created a SlideShare. Instead of simply tweeting and sharing the link throughout my online social spaces, I shared some of the unique stats (akin to Vaynerchuk's tripling down). I expected this deluge of content to upset my online community, provoking negative comments and pushback.
Much to my surprise, the SlideShare quickly surpassed 100,000 views, and the number of new followers and friends coupled with the retweets and shares sent my overall analytics through the roof. Creating what Monty refers to as "digital clutter" seems to have been the most effective strategy to get the word out. How did this happen? People aren't "on the ready" just because I decided to hit a publish button. The frequency of posting matched with the quality created greater attention and focus on the message. It's a tough lesson for new media thinkers to hear: traditional tactics like frequency and repetition work....
Content marketing evangelists have spoken – “Create great content that appeals to your customers and you’ll profit.” While this is true, marketers often forget the importance of promoting their content – people don’t find content by mistake, or by accident. Every content plan needs a complementary promotion plan that combines paid, owned, and earned media....
Building a small business content marketing strategy is hard work, but it’s probably about to get much harder. Many subject matter experts believe that our current state of content overload is just the calm before the storm. As Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners spectates, “the rush to content marketing in every industry will make it harder and harder for your brand to rise above the noise.” If your entire strategy to date has relied on doing what you competitors already did, a few weeks later, it’s definitely time to pause and reset. To inspire you to a more original small business strategy that’s built to weather an era where literally every company blogs, Tweets, and pens eBooks, we’ve taken inspiration from some of the hardest-working companies on the block: B2B companiess with brilliant content.
Social Media plays an increasingly important role in many business marketing efforts. It’s one of the pillars of a successful Inbound Marketing strategy, and with as little as 6 hours of dedicated effort a week, a small business can see improved sales results. While increased usage is great sign that business is adapting, there are some all-to-common errors that prevent business owners from taking full advantage of everything social media offers. It’s particularly important since recent research has shown the average time spent using social media is increasing. According to research from HubSpot, more than 85% of Internet users have Facebook accounts and 49% are on Twitter. In other words, your prospects are using social media. Since social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing, it’s important to eliminate the stumbles. Here are 5 simple tips that will help you reach your prospects more effectively using social media:...
When all you do is talk about yourself, you send people running in the other direction. If you don’t care about other people they for sure won’t care about you. This was how the old school way of marketing worked. Megaphone style. Many of you might not think of your blog as a business and I understand, but one day you might want to create a ebook, product or use your blog to leverage a new career. When you improve your engagement your blog it becomes a tool to help you level up your life and career....
...He's also a data guy. An MIT alum and lecturer, Brian knows how to separate useful data from vanity metrics, and he's quick to let you know what truly counts as an indicator of how our company is faring at delivering on its promise. While we proudly think of Brian as a unique leader, this laser focus on measuring the right metrics is something I'd wager he shares with CEOs across the board. And when it comes to social media, in particular, vanity metrics abound. So here are some social media metrics that actually matter to our CEO --- and likely yours, too! ...
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The ongoing debate about the value of social media engagement remains unresolved. However efforts have been made to assess the value of social media as “earned media” and to assess the ROI of social media marketing. After applying these recent calculations to our business and to our clients’ businesses, we find the assessments reasonable. At the very least, these calculations create a starting point for analysis of individual business results. ...
What is ROI if it’s no longer just return on investment? According to Gianandrea Facchini, CEO and founder of the social analytics platform Buzzdetector, it’s return on engagement, return on trust and return on influence.
For every £1 spent in social media, a potential value of £3.34 can be generated, according to a study by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) into FMCG brands including Heinz, Kettle and Twinings.
Research found four out of five consumers would be more inclined to buy a brand more often in the future after being exposed to its social media presence, while 83% of consumers exposed to social media said they would trial a brand’s product.
The study of the social media activity of Heinz, Kettle and Twinings over an eight-week period found there was a 22%, 17% and 19% uplift in sentiment respectively when a consumer was exposed to the brands’ social media presence....
Many online marketers get too wrapped up in measuring data that, though useful, is not the most important for understanding how your website is performing as a marketing channel.I say that because each investment of your time, money, and people should have a very solid ROI expectation attached to it. Without ROI, there's no pot at the end of rainbow, so you have to focus on those activities/metrics that provide the largest gains.Therefore, here are five online marketing metrics you should be looking at every day....
Within his recent LinkLove presentation, Will Critchlow talked about this idea of becoming a ‘full stack marketer’ and it’s an idea that resonates here at Distilled and the kind of direction we are working towards as a company.
When it comes to being a smarter online marketer, it’s important to start thinking beyond SEO, particularly when it comes to analytics. Even if your job is just that, you can learn from other channels and the data they provide. If your client or company does more than just search engine optimisation, then they they need to be tracking as much of these efforts as possible.
With a new Analytics module now live in DistilledU, this post serves as an introduction to tracking different marketing channels such as - Organic search - Paid search and display - Email marketing - Social - Conversion rate optimisation...
Stats indicate that while marketers know why they need to be active on social media, they don’t necessarily know how. Only 37 per cent think their Facebook efforts are effective – that’s barely more than one in three! Most are still unsure of social media best practice or how to develop effective strategies – creating a social strategy is still a major concern for 83 per cent of marketers.
Even more shockingly, only about one in four agreed they were even able to measure their social activities.It seems marketers are being social. They’re just not very good at it.We’re still destined for social success.There are, however, some positive indicators. Marketers have indicated at least 10 benefits of social media marketing – and the results aren’t half bad....
Here you are, blogging, tweeting, and celebrating your new YouTube video tipping past 5,000 views when you realize…Where are the sales?Without hard facts – dollars earned per dollar spent – your “successful” content marketing isn’t going to be “successful” for much longer.
But isn’t measuring the ROI of your content marketing supposed to be impossible? Don’t you have to hire a really expensive analytics firm to get answers?No and no.
Your content strategy does produce results, and those results can be measured. You don’t have to hold a degree in computer science or a fat wallet either. Here’s how….
A lot of search engine optimization professionals are incorporating PR tactics into their optimization strategies these days, and there’s a very good reason for this trend: the search engines are placing premiums on authentic earned media.The very nature of earned media has evolved, however. In addition to pick up in the mainstream media, earned media credibility also occurs when content generates social shares and develops high-quality website traffic.
So, as we are writing press releases and other content intended for online publication, it’s a good idea to be thinking about how to encourage social sharing and to keep readers on the website page posting your content. And to achieve these objectives, first and foremost, it’s crucial to attract readers are truly interested in the message topic....
Is your company using the power of social media to its full potential? In both a personal and business space, social media can be used to start meaningful conversations. However, many business owners do not take the medium seriously enough to invest in it. If social media is used correctly, it could have a positive impact on a company’s sales. How? Since social signals are becoming a more influential factor in determining placement in search results, using social channels properly can play a role in getting your site found more easily online. And that has positive correlation to sales. Here are three examples of methods to garner sales from multiple social media channels....
...The key for B2Bs, especially SMBs, to delight their consumer is by producing, say it with me: content. But, you can’t just throw out content that only serves to clutter an already polluted digital space. It must be delightful. It must give your consumer information and education that they actually want and need. Abigail Posner, Head of Strategic Planning And Agency Development at Google, has some great advice when it comes to delighting the consumer: “Create content that reminds us of our own capacity for excitement, happiness, and vivacity so we want to share in it with others.” That’s delight, folks. How might a B2B do that? Just like a B2C would. Let’s talk about it:
I have been doing a little research on the use of social media for competitive intelligence. I have done this type of exercise in the past but thought I’d be a little different this time and actually make a blog post out of the sites I came across that I found to be useful in some way. These are 30 blog posts that I found that talk about competitive analysis using social media. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think....
Terms like agile marketing, infographic and gamification aren’t marketing buzzwords, they’re actual terms that every marketer needs to fully understand. Some of the other terms are buzzworthy, but still not that bad. The folks at Mashable have put together this infographic on 30 days of Marketing Buzzwords. As a guy who can’t stand marketing speak, I always appreciate when we take a good look at marketing BS. I’ll be honest, though, and admit that I think this infographic just may be full of it.Terms like agile marketing, infographic and gamification aren’t marketing buzzwords, they’re actual terms that every marketer needs to fully understand. And my biggest problem is with the term Return on Investment being listed as a buzzword. ROI isn’t a buzzword… it’s an absolute necessity. ...
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Thought it already had!