How to overcome company resistance to social media marketing?
I read the title of this blog somewhere in the Now Revolution (a great book by Jay Baer & Amber Naslund) and it occurred to me again recently on train journey home. You see, I have spent a lot of time over the last year working with a number of fantastic people to improve their social media marketing and I've often left feeling a little frustrated for them. Despite their talent, hunger, professionalism and creativity they're held back by the brand(s) that they want to shout about, despite sometimes seeing their competitors trail-blazing ahead in social media. The worst part is that it's a common problem, so far as I can see.
The problem is a lack of trust
The leadership team are clearly not daft people, and yet there's no trust in management, trust…
How big is social sharing? Very big!
ShareThis and Starcom MediaVest collaborate to release the first study on social sharing. The study focuses on ShareThis’ database of sharing activity for it's widget in March 2011 and includes a detailed analysis of more than 7 billion sharing signals across all major sharing channels, specifically looking at the sharing patterns of more than 300 million monthly users across the top 1,000 publisher websites of ShareThis. The analysis is based by the proportion of people who share via the different options on the widget.
Sharing is big, no surprise
Social sharing now produces an estimated 10 percent of all Internet traffic and 31 percent of referral traffic to sites from search and social. Search is around twice as big.
Facebook dominates as channel used to share
There are two sets of numbers here, this is because some content is…
and is it something we should be doing?
Social media optimisation or SMO isn't a new term or a new approach, far from it. As the Wikipedia definition of SMO explains, it's been around since 2006 when the search engine marketer Danny Sullivan first used it and Rohit Bhargava developed his 5 rules of SMO which are featured at the end of this post with my suggestions on how to scope SMO activities more broadly.
With many companies now having social media marketing in place, SMO is a logical next step to improve the effectiveness of social media marketing. So I thought it would be interesting to see marketers views on SMO - is it a narrow view about optimising integration with a website, is it mainly related to SEO or is it a broader view?
What do you understand by SMO?
These are the results of the poll - thank you to…
Where do you start with such a big area? "It's about relationships", says Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group. There are some great slides in her presentation and the overall message I hear is: are you, your business or your organisation ready for the necessary change required in a truly 'open' social media strategy? A strategy that goes beyond marketing. Our summary of the slides are below - the full presentation is inserted right at the end. There are some big themes to take on here - what's your take? Let us know.
Strategy
Learn: Invest in analytics to learn from your customers once you understand their socialgraphics. This process requires listening, having the right software in place and using metrics that are relevant to your business.
Dialogue: Have the conversation with customers that they want to have, think specifically off-site and in sites and communities where they already are. Be responsive to…
There are two new buttons available this week, well technically one new and available now and one evolved and still in the off-ing unless you're in the US...
Google +1 is now launched for websites and we'll see it rolling out globally with several early US partners. We covered Google's +1 in a Google round-up several weeks ago, it's essentially a "Like" button for search results and now websites. The launch on 30 March 2011 was about the button appearing next to Google's search results and adverts only, this new feature takes the +1 as a button that can be embedded on your own web site, the same as a Facebook Like. Clicking on any +1 button will allow users’ friends to see what they liked and also add the +1 to anonymised public data. Of course the…
Though one of the worst designed infographics in the world, yet there's some very interesting food for thought here from Focus in regard to:
Budgeting and planning resources for running social media marketing, it does of course cost! Interestingly no cost of content on here, which I find very odd as what's fueling social media marketing otherwise?
Finding ways to understand the value and deliver ROI from that investment - the idea that a Facebook fan or Twitter follower is worth more is fascinating to go quantify in your business
Be clear on the benefits, I am not surprised at all as to the order of perceived benefits and how low down lead generation is
Make sure that you click to enlarge it!
…
Interesting infographic from Advertising Age in the US. It certainly appears that Facebook is the place to engage with married mums! What gems can you spot?
[caption id="attachment_5287" align="alignleft" width="600" caption="Social Media Demographics from Advertising Age"][/caption]…
Facebook release new best practice guide for Facebook Pages
This week Facebook released a new guide titled "Best Practice Guide: Marketing on Facebook". We think it's really helpful since it has different models to help you think about how to market better with Facebook. But these aren't details on advertising rather the frameworks help you plan or review your Facebook strategy - thee five guiding principles are particularly useful I think. For each, they give you give steps of tools you can use to reach and engage your audience.
The Facebook Ecosystem
Facebook suggest that your Facebook page is at the core of your Facebook marketing. As you post content and offers and interact with your audience then you can engage and amplify. Naturally they suggest Facebook Ads are a big part of this.
They don't highlight the importace of understanding your audience and developing the right types of content and offers to…
6 ways to use social media marketing to support your marketing activities
Getting social media marketing right is THE most common challenge mentioned by marketers I speak to today. But what are the biggest strategy challenges within social media marketing? At a strategic level, we all know social media marketing is about much more than getting more Likes, Follows and Shares...
So which activities, which need to be managed as part of social media marketing strategy, are the most important challenges (or you can look at them as opportunities)?
Looking across different types of organisation, there seem to be some common issues everyone is grappling with to try to work out how social media can be applied. I think every organisation has to decide how to best manage these 6 core activities as part of social media marketing strategy.
So I asked how you rated these challenges - thanks to everyone who completed the survey
…
The now ubiquitous and copied Like button just got a sibling - the Send button. One word for this simple addition by Facebook - nice, in fact very nice (OK, that's two words).
Facebook announced this new feature over the Easter weekend in its developer blog with a neat travel marketing example. Typically the button lives next to a Like button at the beginning or end of a page or post. It's purpose is, of course, to let you share content that you are reading or watching directly with specific contacts or to a Group.
It's like the "Send to a Friend" or "Forward to a Friend" which has been used for years to make emails more viral. So you could say Facebook has an even stronger viral effect now since these are direct recommendations to an individual or group.
If you look at the screen grab below (from Mashable in this case)…
