Why marketers aren’t giving social media marketing the credit it deserves
Despite how important social media has become to marketers, Adobe are suggesting that it still isn’t being recognized for driving website traffic, engagement and conversions like it should be. The solution, Adobe suggest, might be as simple as making adjustments to how its contributions are captured and measured. In short, some attribution modelling might help you see social media marketing in a whole new light.
Remember that you don't need a paid service like Adobe Sitecatalyst to apply attribution thinking; you can demonstrate the value of social media marketing through Google's new Social Reports (tutorial) which helps show assisted conversions influenced by social media.
Because social marketing is still so new, and let's not forget that, best practices for measuring the effectiveness of social efforts are still evolving. We've written before about ROI of social media, the IAB also developed…
Showing how Facebook apps can increase engagement - will we see these due in Google+ soon?
A new report from social media software vendor Wildfire (recently acquired by Google) uses some of their latest data to offer a few useful tips for Facebook marketers. You can dig into the case studies in the report right here.
We're sharing it, since it's not just about Facebook Page Likes, it's about deeper engagement with a social media application hosted by Wildfire such as competition and quizzes and includes examples. Can we expect these types of applications in Google+ soon?
It defines three levels of engagement with the app: joiners who participate (83%); sharers who simply share (15%) and advocates who share and advocates who share and then encourage others to participate (1.5%). So this gives some figures to benchmark against and help build…
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August 22, 2012
Key issues and 11 questions to consider when selecting a social listening tool
To help with social media monitoring, it's possible to track and trace, in real-time, any digital communication if it’s in the public domain. Social media have, of course, created an explosion of trackable online and public dialogue.
Herein lays an amazing opportunity to gain an endless amount of market and consumer insight and intelligence. But herein also lays considerable new challenges for marketers.
The technology is not the issue
In response to the anticipated market opportunity for monitoring and analysing what consumers are saying on social media there has is a plethora of software tools developed that can perform these tasks.
A colleague dedicated over a year to the creation of a taxonomy and guide summing up the main features, functions and benefits of 250 different social media monitoring tools.
Despite the…
8 practices and examples that show how savvy companies are using Pinterest to engage and sell
Now it’s even easier to get started on Pinterest,. Previously you had to be invited to join, but now Pinterest have opened up membership to all and so “pinners” are likely to rise so now could be the time to get onboard and see what it’s all about and how it can work for you.
More and more businesses are signing up with varying levels of success. Both B2C and B2B are giving it a go, although not all businesses seem not to be using Pinterest to its full potential because their isn't a planned approach leading to sale. In this post I’ll look at examples of eight key practices to make Pinterest support online and offline sales.
Recommended…
Showing how great content generates more backlinks AND social shares
Value: [rating=4]
Recommended link: SEOmoz post by DanZarrella
Dan Zarrella, the “social media scientist” who works for Hubspot these days, has created a lot of interesting analysis over the years which is great for giving practical ideas of how to improve social media communications - the infographic at the bottom of this post on what is effective in Facebook is one example.
He recently wrote a guest post on SEOmoz I thought was worth sharing since it gives some evidence to help answer the often-asked question - “(How) does Social media marketing support SEO?”
Of course, the number (and especially quality) of inbound links is vital to effective SEO in competitive markets, so this research looks at the correlation of sharing on the social networks with number of backlinks for content share. The results show some positive correlation:
…
Pinterest to soon become the fourth largest referrer of traffic?
In February 2012 I shared data suggesting the potential of marketing using Pinterest to increase awareness and sales for companies. Shareaholic have now updated their referral report and this coincides with some interesting developments in Pinterest and our new Smarter Guide to Pinterest Marketing.
New Pinterest developments
These are the recent changes to the Pinterest platform to be aware of which are aimed at encouraging further adoption of Pinterest.
August 8th 2012: Pinterest opened registration for all; it was previously by invite only.
August 14th 2012: Pinterest introduced new apps for Android, iPhone and iPad.
June 2012 referral report
The latest data from Shareaholic shows that Pinterest referral traffic will soon overtake Yahoo! organic traffic and Pinterest will become the fourth largest traffic source in the world after Google, Direct traffic and Facebook, although significantly lower than these.
…
HootSuite leading the way in the social media tools market even amongst large companies
Source: Royal Pingdom survey
Value: [rating=4]
Our Commentary
Recent data compiled and released by website monitoring business Pingdom looked at the top 100 brands in the world and which Social Media Management Tools (SMMT) they are using. While the survey reviewed Twitter, many of these tools support multiple social networks including Hootsuite, are service of choice at Smart Insights and First 10 (it support Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, but not yet Google+.
While a typical Twitter user would use the Twitter website or one of the Twitter owned applications to publish to their profiles, naturally businesses require a little more management. For example, they need multiple people to have access, the requirement to schedule & monitor results.
Most popular social media management tools & the companies that use them
HootSuite – 20 accounts (20.8%). Used by @hm, @tiffanyandco, @gap, @hp, @ebay, @porsche,…
A platform for true relationship building?
I wrote recently about what I had learned about Google+ for content marketing; Google+ remains a channel that's largely new to me, and as I delve deeper into planning my own personal (and +Smart Insights) foray into Google+ there are some very specific themes that are emerging and worth mentioning.
Google+ wins on user sentiment
First, the wider, changing picture of user satisfaction with social networks. Google+ has just entered into the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) on 78 out of a 0-100 scale, just as Facebook's score falls from 8 points to 61. It rates higher than LinkedIn or Twitter too. Not a big deal or in any sense the start of the end for Facebook with its 800 million user base, yet certainly a flavour of the ever-changing social environment and suggests that Google is getting the experience right. You can only imagine it's…
Measures to benchmark engagement of Facebook brand pages
Some interesting insight was published by Social Bakers this week where they look at engagement rates of Facebook pages in the UK.
Of course, Facebook admins can see the level of engagement of their own company page through Facebook Insights which gives measures like Reach and PTAT (People talking about this). However, this doesn’t allow you to benchmark against other companies.
Social Bakers uses two simple measures of engagement that can be used to benchmark sites. The first measure, Average Post Engagement, is based on the Post average, the second, Daily Page Engagement rate is based on the total daily interactions:
The useful thing about this compilation for UK brands is that you can calculate engagement for your own Facebook page using these measures and then compare to other similar pages, or simply…
Currently for big brands only
Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Google employee announcement
Google Plus has announced via the G+ page of employee Saurabh Sharma that brands can now use specific URLs to promote their Google+ brand or company page via offline media. About time too! Although to be fair, it took Facebook and LinkedIn a while after launch to offer this for company or brand pages. It was certainly clunky before.
The vanity URL uses a "+" (what else?). For example, Toyota can now use this URL…
http://plus.google.com/+toyota
(which redirects to http://plus.google.com/+toyota/posts)
rather than…
https://plus.google.com/110937137992985950150
You can find out more details about this update via the post on Saurabh Sharma’s profile:
Marketing implications of this change for company Google+ pages?
Most companies will have to wait until Google announces further details to make…
