Does the Conversation Prism help or hinder understanding of how to manage social media?
You might have seen the Conversation Prism has recently been updated to version 4 by Brian Solis? It’s always been a very useful reference to me - if only to help realise the potential of social media marketing, and the opportunity beyond that of Facebook and Twitter, the platforms that dominate social media plans.
Is it useful or confusing?
I read this post where the author, Richard Stacy, implies that graphics such as the Conversation Prism add to the confusion somehow. Stacy’s argument is a great insight that social media is an opportunity to evolve your marketing away from ‘channel and message’ (traditional media) and instead to a ‘behaviour identification and response’.
Stacy identifies 4 simple options for how a brand can be mentioned in social media:
People saying nice…
A tutorial to getting ready to take advantage of this new feature
Google is readying to add company logos in their search results and they appear to be making it relatively painless to implement. It is easy to test to see if your site is correctly set up to allow Google to use the company logo. This short tutorial shows you how to test if a business ready and set it up if it isn't. Although this feature hasn't been released yet, you may have noticed that Google is displaying a logo, link to the Google+ page and recent updates using the preview box on the right for a brand search. So it's also worthwhile checking whether you have this covered.
HOW to get your logo into SERPS:
1: Create a company GOOGLE+ account
Many businesses to date have avoided or overlooked setting up a…
Simple ideas to review for more impactful Pinterest, Google+, Facebook and Twitter Posts
We like useful infographics that prompt you to think about the way you do things and change them. Myclever Agency have designed a 'clever' (excuse the pun!) practical infographic to showcase how to create the perfect social media post and timings for engagement, across Pinterest, Google+, Facebook and Twitter, gathering insight from sources available on Bitly and Salesforce.
One size doesn't fit all for different networks, so it's interesting to see their point-of-view on how you should communicate differently through the different networks. Their infographic addresses key points for layout, content, CTA across the different platforms to leverage engagement and social sharing. We like it as it's simple and most of all practical.
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Ideas on how to engage customers from Dr Michael Lu
With brands busy beavering away on social media activity, precious little thought is being devoted to how sustainable their strategies are. And the reality is that while their social media strategies may be scalable, the vast majority are certainly not sustainable.
That was the message from Dr Michael Wu of Lithium and author of The Science of Social II). This post summarises his advice from different conferences. He challenged attendees of the London show to think beyond the existing social media thinking. Necessary because spikes in social activity such as Views and Likes only ever equate to a 'tiny blip' that doesn’t last long from a financial perspective.
Successful brands must adapt a strategy that is both sustainable and scalable, he explained. But there is a problem with this...
'Not many people think about sustainability,' he told…
5 practical techniques to help get your message through...
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Recommended link: Research from Bit.ly Blog
I remember reading a while ago in Tim O’Reilly’s book on Twitter marketing that most people most responses or tweets happen within 5 minutes of the original tweet - scary! Much worse than Email marketing where at least you have responses for hours rather than minutes.
I’m not sure companies using social networks realise this unless they’ve looked at specific social media marketing reporting tools like Bit.ly which give hourly reports. The reason is obvious, most people have so many sources they follow in their stream and if they don’t see the message while browsing their stream then it’s gone. Life is too short to browse your whole stream
To show how big this challenge is URL shortening service Bit.ly published some interesting research across different media. It's useful too, since…
In order to run a successful social media campaign, your offline activity matters as much as your online activity.
Whilst businesses find it relatively easy to set up social media channels, they struggle with the next step, attracting followers. And it’s not just small businesses that find it a challenge. Even major brand names have Facebook and Twitter pages that struggle to get their fan numbers beyond double figures! In this, the first in a series of posts, I'll explain some practical approaches to gain more interaction on you social channels.
If you want to understand the difference between those who attract fans and those who don’t, take a quick look around you next time you travel to the shops. Look at the number of advertising billboards that include social media references. Then look at the packaging of some of the products you buy and there’s your answer. Many businesses forget to…
Get to grips with a little used but highly effective ad type
Sponsored Stories have been one of the most consistently effective ad types I use to get people to click to my Facebook Page. The reason these work so well is that they point users towards a Page or piece of content that their friends are engaging with.
When someone interacts with your Page, app, or event it creates a story that their friends may see in News Feed but it's also quite easy to miss. Brands can of course pay to sponsor these stories so more people will see it when their friends have engaged with you on Facebook. Of course this brings a level of social proof or tacit recommendation which is one of the reasons Sponsored Stories are so effective. Here's a typical right hand ad created by a conventional Sponsored Story:
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The End of PTAT and Virality measures as they are broken out?
Value/Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Facebook blog announcement
If you’re a Facebook Admin, watch out for changes to Facebook Page Insights, the analytics tool for monitoring the performance of your Facebook Pages. Product Marketing Manager Galyn Burke told Techcrunch that this is the first time the Page Insights interface has been updated since October 2011.
As with many Facebook changes, this has not been rolled out internationally yet, we’re not seeing it yet, but will update this post when it becomes more widely available. In the meantime, here is a preview of the new interface:
The relevant update from Facebook is shown below - this suggests that, in what looks to me a backwards step, PTAT will be retired in favour of breaking out its components. Having an aggregate engagement measures is…
5 ways to innovate for the collaborative economy: examples
Social media marketing is increasingly ubiquitous for most brands, and if not, it is on the radar. We are on our way to mass adoption among businesses. Early adopter brands are now focused on social business. I am certainly talking to a lot of companies about how they can bring more of the outside world back into the business, restructure and be more connected to customers, employees and stakeholders. It seems that the eventual evolution of social media is as a communications channel inside and out.
As I talk and work with companies, we see a wide range in the level of adoption and innovation in using social media. Our Social Media Innovation S-Curve, similar to the Gartner Hype Cycle, shows the maturity of process and innovation we see in different companies. Where do you lie?
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12 tips and examples from using Instagram to market a restaurant
If you haven’t heard of Instagram already then:, where have you been?! It’s a popular photo sharing app available to both Android and iOS smartphone users? Instagram was launched in 2010 by co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and has enjoyed phenomenal growth, helped in part by Facebook purchasing the app in 2012 for a mere $1 billion in cash. But even with this social giant becoming their owners, Instagram continues to stand out on its own as a very credible social network that should not be ignored.
If you need convincing of its potential value to marketers then just take a look at these current stats:
100 million Monthly Active Users
40 million Photos Per Day
8500 Likes Per Second
1000 Comments Per Second.
So how can you…
