Going Social - what does it do to your brain?

Gone are the days when we received advice from our friends and neighbours on a ocial media treet corner, or perhaps at the most recent neighbourhood block party because face-to-face conversations are becoming a thing of the past. I must admit that I have texted my friends from the next room on more than one occasion. Back when I was an adolescent, baby boomers like myself grew up with telephone conversations with a phone which was anchored to the kitchen wall, and further restricting us with a twisting and tangled cord. Now landlines are also becoming extinct with almost half of us ditching them completely for our wireless and hand-held devices.

Enter the world of Social Media

This is where social media comes into the picture, as now our dialogues have shifted to these platforms.…

8 ways to integrate social media into your email marketing

Rather than email becoming obsolete, widespread use of social media updates via email has, in many ways, reinforced how email is an even more powerful marketing channel. I'm sure many of you already use email and social media separately to help promote your business but how many of you integrate your social media and email marketing? Including and promoting social sharing or share with your network options in an email campaign is beneficial for a couple of reasons: They extend the reach of your emails: The more people who share your email, the more potential you have for opens, clicks and conversions. They provide an opportunity for list growth: The more eyes on your emails, the better chance you have of gaining new subscribers. So how do you integrate email and social media? Here…

A briefing on modern social selling

The age of social selling is upon us, although one could argue that it's always been that way. When people make a purchase they tell others. When people have a good or bad experience with a brand they tell others. When people love your products or services they tell others. It's safe to say that people love to share, which is exactly why social networks are so popular. Selling has always been social, but networks like Facebook and Twitter take that element and amplify it. Today's social selling is completely different, and when you implement it properly, it can do wonders for your brand.

 What is modern social selling?

The modern form of social selling involves integrating sale prompts or direct links via social profiles. For example, Amazon allows Twitter users to add items to their shopping cart…

Are you missing out through not advertising in social media to ensure content success with Paid Social Amplification?

In our industry, good content is invaluable. But good content is also hard work. From planning to Quality Contro, content must be researched, nurtured, analyzed, and improved on an ongoing basis to make it as suitable as possible for your target audience. But if no one is finding your content, then regardless of the quality, it won't have an impact on your business's bottom line. This is where paid amplification comes into play. [Editor's note: The Smart Insights research report on Managing Digital Marketing in 2014 showed that many businesses are looking to increase their paid advertising on social media this year, so we hope these tips on how to do this are helpful] Pushing targeted eyeballs to quality content is something our team has had success…

Introducing The App Map - a useful tool to compare different social media marketing services

With the incorporation of social media in many parts of business, from sales to customer service to marketing and more, the social software market has also advanced to support various job functions. These systems provide a variety of capabilities, including social media monitoring, CRM, social advertising and collaboration.

As these applications are all called 'social business,' such a diverse product landscape can create a lot of confusion for buyers.

However, this situation also presents many benefits. First of all, social app vendors are working hard to deliver very advanced tools for understanding your audience and/or followers, helping you find opportunities you might not have been able to spot on your own or with more traditional methods.

Customers have already adapted to being serviced via social, and it’s the social software vendors who are enabling sales, customer…

I recently covered the main trends in social media marketing which should affect your approach in 2014 in a webinar. If you couldn't make it, the Slideshare gives a summary of the 7 key issues that I covered in the webinar: 1. Google+ will be a major player among the social networks 6 2. Facebook isn’t going anywhere! 12 3. We’ll think twice about what we publish 17 4. Social Networks will crack down on promotional material 22 5. Social Media will be viewed as a sales tool, not just a marketing tool 25 6. It will be accepted that you can measure ROI on social media 28 7. Content will be key to the success of your campaign 32 Social media marketing trends 2014 from Smart Insights…

How is Amnesty using social media for campaigning?

To coincide with this week's new Guide on the social media for charities, we thought we would take a look at these examples of how Amnesty International are using social across the main platforms Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. Of course, Amnesty have been enthusiastic adopters of digital media and social media for campaigning from the outset, and need to manage many presence around the world, so they're an interesting case. For each network we have pulled out some examples of good practices for positioning a Not-for-profit on its page, status updates and encouraging interaction and action. As an international organisation, Amnesty also have the challenge of managing a different presence in different countries, so we will use a few different examples although this doesn’t illustrate the integration across channels which they seem to manage well within an individual region.

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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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5 time-saving tips to make your social media activities more efficient

Social media can be perceived to be time-consuming given its returns and we can all have limited resources to manage our social media platforms.  I hope my 5 tips give you some ideas to make your use of social media more efficient and effective. Please share your approaches in the comments.

1. Define a clear social media strategy

Being active on social media does not require you to activate 20 different accounts across various platforms. If you are just getting started or have not ventured much beyond Facebook and Twitter, venture slowly and give yourself time to develop the best practices on each of your chosen core platforms. To start, take the time to: Focus on 3 or 4 relevant platforms where you know your customers or key influencers are engaging. Create a spreadsheet of all the accounts, complete with the usernames and…

Our experiences with using Social Bakers for social media management

Community management is not an easy job. Anyone responsible for an active Facebook and/or Twitter profile will tell you that. The skill set has evolved quickly and was summed up well in Get Satisfaction’s recent Community Manager infographic. Despite this skill set emerging there are a number of challenges that community managers face. Facebook and Twitter users want near real-time answers to a wide range of questions which can be on any topic from sales enquiries to specific customer support issues.  At TUI, I've believed for a long time that sales questions on Facebook or Twitter should be answered by our sales team, customer complaints should be looked after by our customer services team and so on. [caption id="attachment_20117" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Content feedback within the Social Bakers dashboard[/caption] An increasing challenge…