The advantage of building open-source based communities
Value: [rating=3]
Our commentary: Open source - some marketers cringe, others will cheer. What's the best option for your web strategy? According to Marketing Prof's open source not only offers the collective creativity of a large, vibrant community but also promises a new level of customer engagement, brand equity, and a competitive edge for today's marketers - faster. However, determining how and where open source fits into your marketing mix may be more challenging. According to Lynne Capozzi, the biggest advantages are around social media.
Marketing implications: Using open source technologies in the social media space has huge advantages, not least speed, cost and minimising the need for "IT". There's an even bigger argument that the products are better, more up to date and empowering - but then you'll be the judge of that.
Recommended link: Open-Source Social Publishing Opens Doors for Marketers…
Integrating social media is the key to success
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: eConsultancy commentator, Matt Owen, writes "...traditional media is still huge and it"€™s concerning that some of the hype surrounding social media could eventually be doing more harm than good for businesses".
Just as some businesses are still very slow to take social media seriously, the path runs two ways and there's no advantage to ignoring traditional media. Social media is not a magic marketing pill - nothing is. So what's the story? Integration - the expanding usage and growth of one media does not mean a decline in another.
Marketing implications: It's integration, and understanding what you are using social media for. Marketers need to remember that while there is massive potential the emphasis now needs to be on integrating successfully with other marketing channels and creating a multi-channel presence rather than disparaging the effectiveness of other channels. As Owen notes: "If…
Using The Social Media Balance Sheet"„¢ tool to measure social media presence - for sector and competitor research
Social Media Metrics have to date mainly focused on the view of their effectiveness from inside the company. At Evonomie we"€™ve been looking for a while for an external qualitative method to measure companies"€™ online activities as part of a strategic review.
Internal or in-company quantitative methods are in abundance and focus on activity, surveys and return on investment (ROI). These are certainly valid metrics and there is a comprehensive list in Jim Sterne"€™s book Social Media Metrics. The real question when conducting research is how can you capture the metrics if you"€™re outside the company? You don"€™t have access to their analytics so need to make a judgement on what"€™s important and whether the information is available.
Benefits of benchmarking competitor use of social media
Reasons we want to measure the social…
Richard Pentin (of TMW) has done some sterling work by teaming up with the IAB Social Media Council to tackle the hottest digital marketing potato; measuring and benchmarking social media ROI. Well, more specifically measuring social media activity that in turn impacts ROI.
Despite the very serious sounding name of the IABSMC, we feel that this provides some great thinking that in a framework could well help us all to formalise a way to manage, measure and compare social media performance.
The SlideShare presentation talks through each step of the process from establishing your intent, assigning the most relevant KPIs around the 4 As "€“ Awareness, Appreciation, Action and Advocacy "€“ and references other benchmarks in order to draw meaningful comparisons.
What do you think are it"€™s strengths and weaknesses? It would be great to hear your feedback and ideas.
A framework for…
Answer:
I"€™m assuming your asking about engaging with Twitter +- Facebook +- Linked-In +- your own blog or community? Here are three dimensions for you to think about...
Be Relevant
You"€™re right that it"€™s the initial engagement which is so difficult, and this is the case for any channel. Start with your audience - what do they need? They"€™re pressed for time and likely looking for something - what purpose do they have on your web site or web service? You have to offer them something that"€™s value-add and ideally inspiring "€“ maybe something entertaining that makes them sit up and take notice, or something extremely useful that solves a problem or answers a question. So, what is it that your audience will value - research it, ask them and then deliver it in whatever format that makes the most sense. Equally, use parts of that content on other web sites where your…
It"€™s about customers
People who influence me, people like Brian Solis, Jay Baer, Seth Godin and Doc Searls suggest that social media is best suited to engaging customers, as typically it helps develop some form of emotional connection which makes it more likely customers will form a deeper relationship with a brand. It"€™s not that social media cannot help with new customer acquisition, far from it, it"€™s how you go about it.
Have a framework that informs strategic integration
There"€™s so much advice on social media tools and tactics that it"€™s sometimes difficult to see the big picture. Our new RACE framework defines a simplified, strategic approach to digital marketing, including social media within it as a key part of today"€™s marketing.
An Extra Dimension to RACE - Listen & Participate
RACE is similar in its approach to a Social CRM framework in that is can…
Targeting different demographics with Facebook advertising
You will be aware that Facebook is one of the largest potential sources of Internet traffic and engagement; it's more popular than Google in some countries! You've probably also heard that if the number of Facebook users were equivalent to a country it would be the 3rdlargest country in the world after India and China with 400 million users.
So if you're not looking at Facebook to engage your audience and promote your products and services, you are missing a big opportunity.
You will know you can set up a Facebook Page for your company. But did you know you can advertise on Facebook, using Facebook Ads on a pay per click (CPC) or impressions (CPM) model?
This is a similar option to Google Adwords but the main difference is you can micro-target your audience with the a number of features for which I…
Question: What are the basics of using Facebook effectively to promote an integrated campaign?
Smart Insights Answer: Ultimately you"€™re looking to foster an ongoing relationship with someone, somewhere if you"€™re using social media. Facebook Fan Pages can be both "€˜home base"€™ for a brand (the place that will help you foster the ongoing connection with your audience online), and/or it can be one social media "€˜outpost"€™ (a channel where you are ultimately driving traffic from and through). I am assuming more an outpost since that"€™s most common.
What are your objectives?
Set your objectives clearly - WHY are you wanting to leverage Facebook as a communications channel, it"€™s important to be clear about why and how you"€™ll measure success before you start, what part of the campaign will Facebook play for you - traffic, awareness, lead generation...?
Who are you targeting?
Facebook is huge with over 500m global users logging in at least every 30 days…
By
June 30, 2010
I created this presentation for a workshop I ran recently for around 20 different UK brands that were looking to use Twitter as part of their marketing mix.
Most of the companies had done very little in the way of marketing on Twitter and they were looking for guidance on how best to approach something that many just didn"€™t see the value in. It's called Twitter Marketing Basics and looks at lots of examples of how companies are using Twitter with practical tips on how to setup or improve your existing Twitter account. It covers:
What Twitter is
Jargon buster
Setting up your profiles
The roles that Twitter can play
How to write the perfect Tweet
The Twitter ecosystem
Managing and monitoring
Who to follow
I hope you find something useful in this presentation. Drop me a line if you would like to know more or add any questions below. Thanks.
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Twitter has reached 100 million accounts yet only 20 million are active. How do you keep your Twitter account active and relevant to your customers and partners when you also have a day job? How do you get others involved? And what do you talk about?
In this article I'll show 7 ways Twitter users can better manage and make more of this social media tool.
1 Delegate and share!
There are several tools that help you to manage twitter accounts, after all if people are talking about your brand or speaking to you via Twitter, you need to know what they"€™re saying.
Tweetdeck works at one level. It"€™s free, easy to use but the downside is you need the user name and password for the account. That"€™s ok if you have a company account "€“ it seems to work ok with several people having the same account open…
