I watched an online presentation this week by Jason Falls - he's founder of Social Media Explorer if you wanted to check him out - it's relatively basic stuff but he gave some great pointers about the different ways to measure social media and how goal setting is the first key to success.
I believe that it's important to put clear goals to any marketing including social media. You will hear some purists talk about "conversations" and social media is all about being "human", I agree 100% with that sentiment and yet not having a clear purpose and measuring progress seems crazy to me. Especially when you consider how can be to persuade senior management to release investment into 'new' areas like social media.
The importance of a plan
Although some guru's like Guy Kawasaki might disagree with me, my belief is that social media marketing has little impact without a plan…
Twitter is about answering the question "€˜what are you doing"€™ in less than 140 characters. That"€™s about 12 words. In this article I suggest 10 quick wins to get you started in Twitter or to review your current approach. I hope these wins work for you whether you're a business or personal tweeter or both.
Before we get to my 10 quick wins, here's a quick refresher of some of the Twitter commands since I find that many small and medium businesses are still picking up on Twitter.
Twitter jargon buster
Tweet "€“ a post, message or update on Twitter
@username + message "€“ an open tweet that can be seen by your followers and by @username"€™s followers
DM username "€“ a private tweet that can only be seen by username
#hashtag - a Twitter keyword. Adding # makes the word searchable.
RT "€“ repeating a Tweet, known as a ReTweet
Ten Quick Wins to create a…
Social media is hot and being adopted by small and huge businesses alike - as a channel transcending the middleman and connecting brands directly with people it can only gather more momentum.
Yet, despite all the hype and potential - how much are you actually doing in social media? My guess is not very much or at least not as much as your gut tells you that you should be doing. Why?
The F Word (again)
My experience is that it"€™s primarily fear of the unknown that is preventing faster adoption because there are simply so many questions for a busy team to answer:- how much to spend, how much time to invest, which tools to use, how to resource it and how to measure success. There"€™s a lot to learn before investment can be justified to senior management and an already massive agenda of work.
Well, some help is at hand - this…
Ignoring the power of LinkedIn to drive new business and build relationships is missing a big opportunity for companies small and large alike.
LinkedIn is the first place many larger businesses check out potential suppliers and new hires. Using LinkedIn makes you more visible to existing and potential clients as well as your peers. These reach and growth figures are undeniable:
LinkedIn has over 65 million members in over 200 countries.
A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.
My ten practical tips are aimed at helping you to get more out of LinkedIn.
1 - Complete your profile
Improve how people can find and connect to you by adding past places you have worked, details of your higher and further education (leave out schooling before 18), activities and professional memberships.
You have 1895 characters to create your LinkedIn profile. Do include:
BACKGROUND
HOW WE CAN HELP YOUR COMPANY
CONNECT…
I don't have to explain to you that a big part of human communication occurs without us even knowing it. We smell and sense fear, affection, tension, pressure and even love.
We "read" body language and we have a gut feeling about the person we are communicating with. First impressions, a sense of attraction, trust or maybe disgust.
And of course there is the way we have learned to look at the world and people, ages ago. Education, culture, early experiences, you name it. We often call all these abilities and ways of interpreting the unconsciousness, "that what we cannot explain", the unreadable, allow me to call it the sixth sense.
How you call it depends from your way of looking at the world and life. Are you religious or an atheist? Are you a sociologist or marketer? Do you prefer the views on mankind of Freud, Jung, Maslow or Seth Godin (the…
I'm finding that marketers are increasingly hungry for information on how to best exploit Facebook to reach and engage prospects and customers. The reasons are obvious - you have to "swim with the fishes" - an expression that often arises when discussing Facebook marketing.
There was further evidence of Facebook's importance this week with the announcement that in the US, Facebook has ousted Google as the most popular site. In the UK, Facebook is still at Number 2, but growing rapidly.
Today's example of Facebook engagement ads with sampling
I'm writing this post since I've been asking Facebook for more info to share on campaign best practices, and my contact has said there is a new example campaign launching today for St.Patrick's Day.
Here's the creative, background info on campaign below:
Engagement Ad from 3 mobile on Right
Direct-response form on…
Social media marketing and Online PR essentials are our weekly round-up of what's new if you're looking to apply social media and online public relations in your marketing. We select the best posts on best practice and developments from the main social media players from the many we scan each week so you don't have to.
We include updates about new services from the main forms of social presence, i.e. Facebook, Linked In and Twitter and also best practice articles advising how to develop and implement social media marketing strategies.
Do let us know any developments that you think we're missing by tweeting @SMARTinsights. Sign-up to our enewsletter if you'd like a reminder through the updates each Friday.
Our recommendations on the latest developments from week starting 30th August 2010
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Thanks to the power of Twitter and with especial thanks to my followers on Twitter, this post is a showcase of businesses from a range of sectors who are using the recently revamped (Feb '09) Facebook pages which now look more like individual profile pages.
The Facebook pages page doesn't really give any good company examples - just the NYT, so in a Tweet I asked "Do you know good examples of Facebook company pages please?"
Retweets previously
recommending this post
on DaveChaffey.com
before Smart Insights
launched:
//
Since I wrote this article in February 2009 - see 10 business examples retained at the bottom of the post, there have been some more good company examples and tips. Econsultancy have highlighted these in their 2010…
The surge of interest in social media over the last two or three years has been accompanied by a surge in social media books seeking to demystify the topic - and I have had lots of requests for recommendations of the best books.
Everyone's preferences for books to help improve marketing practice differs, but I think what most look for are practical guidance and tips; tools to apply to help analyse and improve performance and a framework to bring all the tactics together to help with planning and process. Examples of companies who have successfully applied the principles are also essential and learning from failures is good too, although those aren't naturally publicised.
For social media, I think marketers also need guidance on how to use the specific types of social media presence and how they integrate with other digital media such as email marketing. A useful framework for types of social media…
A comparison of 36 social media monitoring software tools
There are a bewildering number of social media monitoring tools to choose from. A 2015 comparison of social media listening tools from Ideya Ltd shows that there are around 250 tools available. Of these 191 are paid, with the remainder free or using a combined model.
How to decide which tool(s) is best for you?
Knowing how to decide on the best tool is certainly challenging. This post isn't as comprehensive or up-to-date as the latest Ideya report, thanks to all the merger and acquisition activity in this area, but it compares 36 of the best known social media listening tools including free and paid. If you want to know the free tools go straight to category 4.
The bulk of the work on the original post was completed by a specialist, Michael Brewer of Clerestorey who compiled this comprehensive directory of…
