social media

Misc

jim wilde — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:53:07 +0000

The miscellaneous page is where we mention certain pages that are useful and popular with our audience. Some of them are under the misc. tab on the navigation bar (above).

There is a lot of content on the site, especially in my blog. I started blogging back in 2004/2005. Use the site search. It is pretty good and has advanced features.

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social media

Misc

jim wilde — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:48:52 +0000

Social Media:

social media

5 Ideas For A Social Web Marketing And PR Strategy

jim wilde — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 09:31:55 +0000

All social media activity should be mindful of search engine optimization. We use Drupal for our client sites, so managing seo ties in nicely with web analytics.

1. Identify audience

Identify who it is you are trying to influence. Once you've defined them, start to gather data about them. Your potential data sources include, but are certainly not limited to:

Current website analytics
Google search trends
Data aggregation (apps like BlogPulse and Trackur)
Data analysis (apps like Radian 6 and Techrigy)

After you've uncovered the data, what exactly do you do with it?

2. Define objectives

What are your end goals from this audience? What is it you want from them? Just a few example objectives I've worked with include:

Increase organic leads
Build thought leadership
Inspire publicity
Increase organic search engine traffic

Of course, your objectives will vary depending on your business. Social media marketing application is only limited by your creativity.

3. Develop strategy

After audience is identified and your objective(s) are fleshed out, you are now ready to define a strategic approach. This is driven by audience data + objective + industry insight + creativity. All tactics implemented in the next steps should be driven by the strategy. Consider common digital strategy development mistakes prior to finalizing this.

4. Implement tools/tactics

Only at this point should you define tools/tactics. As Matt Dickman stated previously â€“ if you want better digital strategy, ban these 7 dirty words. Most marketing and PR pros skip immediately to this step. And while it makes sense to experiment with different tools/tactics, they should still roll to the strategic approach (which needs to be locked down first).

Activate SEO intersection

All social media activity should be mindful of search engine optimization. 5 basic tips to keep in mind include:

Create a social media keyword glossary of popular social terms, cross reference with your search keyword glossary.
Title/tag social content appropriately.
Conduct digital asset optimization on images, PDFs, and videos.
Leverage/repurpose content across channels.
Create linkbait/social media friendly content.

Of course feed your content into your social channels, but ultimately realize your community has greater power to do this than you. Inspire a group to organically raise your brand's search equity naturally.

5. Metrics/measurement

Measurement is key with a social web strategy, and defining the KPIs that matter to your brand is vital.

Some potential metrics to measure include:

Number of subscribers
Overall unique visitors
Conversions/conversion sources
Branded searches/non-branded searches
Search engine traffic
Visitor to subscriber conversion ratios
Followings in outposts
Referral traffic
Quality and quantity of engagement across platforms

For much more details on measurements/KPIs, check out my post at Online Marketing Blog on web analytics reporting.

I snagged these ideas from futurebuzz. "The Future Buzz provides the latest insights, trends and strategies to help you build buzz." From futurebuzz by Adam Singer, "Architecting A Social Web Marketing And PR Strategy"

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Revenue Per Unique Visitor

jim wilde — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:31:42 +0000

Internet site owners love to brag about their unique visitors. The more unique visitors, their story goes, the more the site is worth.

One of the best and easiest ways to get your unique visitors is to use google's web analytics - free to use. For measuring social media, see below.You can also figure out your costs and revenue per unique visitor.

"The value of a site's uniques depends entirely on what the site does. Specifically, it depends on how the uniques are monetized.

The chart below illustrates the value of a unique from several different types of web properties. Not surprisingly, Google's uniques (search) are the most valuable: $18 of revenue per monthly unique per year. Facebook's uniques (social networking), meanwhile, are worth a paltry $3.50. Twitter's uniques are worth almost nothing."

From Silicon Alley Insider, "CHART OF THE DAY: Here's How Much A Unique Visitor Is Worth".

On the other hand, measuring social media requires a different approach. "Twitter is amongst new media channels that are challenging how we communicate, with whom we communicate and perhaps most fundamentally how we (Marketers) influence people. From the Occam's Razor blog, Social Media Analytics: Twitter: Quantitative & Qualitative Metrics".

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search engine optimization

B2B Marketers Up Spending on Social Media

jim wilde — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:21:37 +0000

Interactive marketing spending will climb 9.2%, to $51.5 billion.

I hope all of you small to medium size business managers are using web analytics to track your ad roi?

From emarketer, B2B Marketers Up Social Spend

Facebook rated most effective

According to research from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA), B2B product marketers were spending an average of 3.4% of their marketing budgets on social media in February 2010, and B2B services marketers were spending 6.5%. Respondents expected those proportions to reach 7.4% and 11%, respectively, over the next year.

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b2b marketing

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ad roi

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Business Development Ideas

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Small to Medium Businesses Get more Traffic From Facebook Pages With Video & Images

jim wilde — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:42:48 +0000

Video clips, pictures prove more effective for driving traffic for small and medium size businesses.

Business owners who are wondering how best to attract the attention of Facebook users might want to favor video and images over lots and lots of text. Fresh Hitwise data shows that Facebook users prefer broadcast media over print sources when it comes to news.

Heather Hopkins recently looked at what news and media websites Facebook users most often visit after getting their social media fix. The list includes the Weather Channel, CNN, Yahoo News, MSNBC, People Magazine, Fox News, Google News, AccuWeather, Topix, and the Drudge Report.

Hopkins observed that, "A larger proportion of Facebook's News and Media traffic is directed toward Broadcast Media websites compared with Google News. The following chart illustrates this point nicely. The chart shows upstream visits to Broadcast Media websites from Facebook and Google News over the past year."

Small and medium size businesses that have Facebook pages and can produce videos cheaply should consider the option using more video and images.

See my previous post on, Google Releases B2B Marketing Best Practices Guide for Youtube

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Google Releases B2B Marketing Best Practices Guide for Youtube

jim wilde — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:35:52 +0000

Are You Missing Out on Opportunities from the 2nd Largest Search Engine? How-to Youtube marketing guide for businesses.

Google has put together a best practices paper for B2B marketers who wish to utilize YouTube as a tool in their strategies. The paper, which is free to download covers basics about using YouTube for marketing. "YouTube: Best Practices for the B2B Marketer".

YouTube is a destination not just for youth audiences and tech enthusiasts, but for the business community as well.

â€¢ 1.5 million business searches daily on YouTube globally, making it the second most visited destination for business-related searches after Google2

â€¢ 1.4 million out of 3.4 million UK small business owners visit an online video site each month - they are 32% more likely to visit an online video site than the average user3

â€¢ YouTube reaches half of online UK small business owners, more than 7 times the reach of FT.com3

â€¢ 47% of IT professionals watch videos to research technology solutions on YouTube4

â€¢ 25% of C-level execs prefer video format over text.

Specifically, the paper gets into:

- Uploading all video assets

- Creating great content

- Getting found

- reaching your target audience

- building a home for your brand on YouTube

- tracking, analyzing, and improving - innovating and integrating.

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, and that is reason enough not to ignore it, unless you have a business that simply doesn't cater to interesting videos (the key is to make them interesting...I know...easier said than done).

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how-to youtube for business

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social media

What is Social Media?

jim wilde — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:35:05 +0000

Social media enabled websites and social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.) are playing a big role in driving traffic and converting site visitors to customers.

The all-knowing Wikipedia defines social media as "Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings." But really, social media is about connecting, interacting, and sharing online.

From a promotional and marketing perspective, things are not so clear cut or easy. The biggest problem is that some people think of social media as just one more channel to push sales. You can but you have to do it gently and with your customers interests first. This is not a position for an intern.

SEO - Social Media Search - Real-Time Search - Online Marketing

I snagged the above graphic form readwriteweb. They have a great post about, Google's New Social Search Is A Big Chess Move Against Facebook.

Web 2.0-Based Marketing Strategies for Small to Medium Businesses

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Social Media Influences Searchers

jim wilde — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:18:54 +0000

Two ad impressions are better than one - get higher conversion rates.

"Research has shown that display ad exposure can lift consumer response to paid search. Data from comScore, GroupM and M80 indicates searchers are also more likely to keep a brand in mind if they have seen a combination of paid search ads and social media.

The research firms found a 19-percentage-point lift in searches on the campaign brand among users who saw social media relevant to the brand in addition to the campaign's paid search ads compared with those who were exposed only to the search placements. And there was a further 13-point lift among those exposed to social media influenced directly by the brand.

"Every day consumers express their intent via search. Now, we better understand how that intent is established via social media and the interplay between the channels," said Chris Copeland, CEO of GroupM Search The Americas, in a statement.

The effect was even more pronounced when it came to searches for product terms rather than brand terms. Users were almost three times as likely to search after seeing influenced social media plus paid search, compared with paid search ads alone."

Above info is from eMarketer -"The Synergy of Search and Social Media"

If your website Drupal, check out Drupal SEO.

A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples

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conversational search

website drupal

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search engine optimization

Small Business Not Hot On Social Media

jim wilde — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:02:50 +0000

Owners are too busy with running the business!

(Reuters) - "Few U.S. small businesses have adopted social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter for business uses, according to research released Thursday.

Three-quarters of small businesses say they have not found sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn helpful for generating business leads or expanding business in the past year, according to a survey conducted for Citibank Small Business of 500 U.S. businesses with fewer than 100 employees. Small business, social media not mixing"

The article goes to say that they, small business owners, are making greater use of their websites to generate sales.

Hopefully, small business owners have used or plan to use Open Source CMS for their websites so that they are in a better position to move in to social media when the time comes.

Ask These Questions Before Website Redesign

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Big Changes Coming for Social Commerce and Social Shopping

jim wilde — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:34:36 +0000

You could almost take your friends shopping with you

From eMarketer - Paul Dunay is global managing director of services and social marketing at Avaya and author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies. He talks to eMarketer about the future of social commerce as it shapes up on brand Websites, Facebook and Twitter.

eMarketer: How do you define social commerce?

Paul Dunay: Social commerce is working with or using your social graph, which is defined as your followers or your friends, and allowing them to help you make buying decisions.

eMarketer: What role does Twitter play in social commerce?

Mr. Dunay: Social commerce can be anything from a buying suggestion or recommendation perhaps a tweet from a Dell outlet saying, "Hey, we have a special on this" to something like Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect would allow you to go to a Website like Dell.com and authenticate yourself using your Facebook profile, allow your identity to be known and access your friends so you could spark up a chat. So I could say, "Hey, Jeff, I'm looking at this new fancy laptop or this netbook. I heard you bought something. Would you recommend this to me?"

"You could almost take your friends shopping with you."

So you could almost take your friends shopping with you. That is the potential with this example.

We're in a period now where we're all starting to get comfortable with Twitter and get comfortable with using Facebook and LinkedIn and a lot of these other tools, and now we're about to expand.

Read more about, The Future of Social Shopping

This is all about collaboration... He goes on to talk about Facebook Connect, which is great, but I think Google Wave will be the real killer app for social commerce and social shopping.

"Recommendations by personal acquaintances and opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising globally. The Nielsen survey shows that 90% of online consumers worldwide trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trust consumer opinions posted online." Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey

Two-Minute Video Makes a Lot of Sense of Google Wave

From WSJ, Why Email No Longer Rulesâ€¦ nd what that means for the way we communicate

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Tips for Measuring Display Ads

jim wilde — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:55:36 +0000

Is the long-used click-through rate now officially useless?

(AdAge.com) -- The number of people online who click display ads has dropped 50% in less than two years, and only 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks, according to the most recent "Natural Born Clickers" study from ComScore and media agency Starcom. As the pool of people who click on banner ads rapidly decreases, it begs the question: Is the long-used click-through rate now officially useless?

What to Measure? Only16% of the Web Is Clicking Display Ads

Tips for living in a post-click world:

...it's important for marketers to ask their agencies how display ads fit into the larger marketing plan. "With the media mix, how do you set up overall metrics?" he said. "It's unrealistic to look at one element of one media for success. Since online media is so trackable, it's is held to a higher standard. The reality is no one looks at print advertising like that. You can't measure print that way or TV because they don't have built-in capacity. It's a little unfair that display becomes the whipping boy."
In the digital space, look at how elements like display and search coalesce, Mr. Spanier said. How do people end up at a website to make a purchase? Look at sales of a product on-site with consumers' exposure to ads. "There is no way display advertising is wasting money," he said, "even if people don't click."
Clicks are a direct-response measurement. For display campaigns, look at brand-awareness studies, purchase-intent lifts and engagement rates. "Users might work with an ad, but not click on it," said Paul Gunning, CEO of Tribal DDB Worldwide.
Look at display view-through rates. "CTRs have a value, there is still a hand being raised, but view-through is more important," Mr. Gunning said. "How many people actually end up where you wanted them to? How much time are they spending?"
Look at the creative. While consumer attitudes online have undoubtedly changed, think about how messaging does or doesn't demand clicks. If you want to measure success against click-throughs, include strong calls for action. Or, if you have a rich-media experience, other metrics such as engagement time are probably more telling. And that may be the case as more banners include innovations such as embedded video and rich media, said Atmosphere BBDO's Warren Griffiths, group account director for Visa, Emirates Airlines, Hertz and Starwood. "More banners have become the destination. I don't believe that would account for a 50% drop in clicks, but this may have had some impact."

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Social media requires a real budget

jim wilde — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:42:13 +0000

It's not really cheap, or free.

This is great... " While many social media tools are free, knowing how to use them takes experience and perspective. " Sez B.L. Ochman. She has a great post on Adage, "Six Reasons Companies Are Still Scared of Social Media". Check it out if you have second thoughts about social media.

Here's more... "The boss' friend's high school or college kid can't integrate social media into the company's overall marketing. That requires experience and perspective. Having a large social network and a stellar online reputation helps too.

Just as there are carpenters who can knock together a bookshelf and master carpenters who can create objects of genuine and lasting beauty, there are thousands of social-media gurus (of all ages) who've never worked for an actual client. Hire them at your own peril."

Although, B.L. is talking about social media and how it applies to marketing, the same can be said about using the so-called free tools, especially the open-source ones. Many people now the basics but few know how to integrate them with CRM and other applications as well as "create objects of lasting beauty".

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Online shoppers looking for better deals.

jim wilde — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:07:23 +0000

Web retailers grappling with high cart abandonment rates

Money is tight. Yep. Even for the people, you know, the rich, that used to have it but now have a lot less. See, "Rise of the Super-Rich Hits a Sobering Wall" from the NYTimes.

Now, the average person, you and me, are ditching are online shopping carts. I did this at Dell.com, and HP but went ahead and made a purchase at at Lenovo simply based on price.

More from the NYTimes article... "Bricks-and-mortar stores can't do much but clarify prices on products to prevent sticker shock in the checkout aisle. Web stores are taking bolder actions, including sending e-mails to remind customers about abandoned items, simplifying the online checkout process and offering extra discounts to lasso would-be quitters.

Web retailers have always grappled with high abandonment rates because of confusion and technology glitches. Plus shoppers are less invested in the process because they didn't have to drive anywhere. But even online stores say orphaning has escalated.

Internet research company Forrester Research estimates as much as 59 percent of online purchases are being dumped during checkout. Those rates had ranged from 47 percent to 53 percent in the past six years, according to industry surveys."

One more option is to keep the cart active for a longer period of time, say 30 or 60 days as well as fix any technical glitches. For more ideas, search this site or search through our twitter feeds.

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Costly Lessons From Business Failures

jim wilde — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:23:36 +0000

The number one cause of failure is misguided strategy

Business failure is hard to swallow. I once founded a small software business that initially achieved some success but failed after we hooked-up with another software business whose products we introduced to our market. We failed because there were no synergies, their technology sucked (Intersolv - formerly Sage Software) and we simply did not change course.

I was reminded of this venture when I recently read an interview, "Examining the Costly Lessons from Business Failures", from Knowledge at Emory. From the interview, "Between 1981 and 2006, 423 major companies with combined assets totaling $1.5 trillion filed for bankruptcy. Hundreds more took huge write-offs, were acquired in fire sales, or just called it quits."

Paul Carroll: "There are a number of mistakes being made, but the number one cause of failure is misguided strategy—not sloppy execution, poor leadership, or bad luck. In Billion-Dollar Lessons, we break the strategic errors into seven categories, including pursuing non-existent synergies; moving into an adjacent market that really isn’t adjacent; misguided consolidations; faulty financial engineering; rollups, or buying up businesses to create a monopoly; staying the course instead of adapting; and chasing the wrong technology.

The one mistake I see repeatedly today is staying the course.

How can a manager avoid costly mistakes and failure? Carroll recommends that a business set up an informal devil's advocate process using anonymous surveys.

Of course, since we our in the internet consulting and software development business, we see a lot of out-of-date web sites. So, one aspect of business failure can be neglecting the company website. And, it seems, the problem is with both the site's technology foundation as well as the content that supposedly represents the business.

I wonder if this could be a leading indicator of business failure?

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