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Some people go to great lengths to find the best ways to share to social media.Social media management tools definitely help, and so too do the workflows and tactics that social media marketers discover to save time each and every day. This is especially true for busy marketing agencies who run social media marketing in addition to a host of other duties. The folks at iM Image Marketing, a digital agency from Youngstown, Ohio, most definitely fit this description, juggling social media management on top of web design, branding, and so much more. Their team manages more than 100 social profiles! And they do so with some really smart workflows that help them save time and gain great results for their clients. The iM team was kind enough to sit down with us and share some of these secrets. Here’s a bit more about how they do it....
The ever-evolving media landscape presents significant challenges to marketers.
Brands are now required to work out how best to communicate across a growing number of channels ranging from traditional media to digital environments, all the while maintaining a consistent message and identity.
To find out how marketers are adapting to deal with the change in the way that people engage with media channels, Econsultancy and Mediaocean have today published a new report entitled Managing Media Convergence. The report is based on a survey of 124 agencies as well as in-depth interviews with 18 executives from agencies and brands, all with significant interest and experience in managing media.
It covers how to define the convergent environment, identifies pain points in managing new workflows and examines how the measurement of media is evolving as a result. The author identified four key trends running through the report....
The best overall brands in health and beauty, and food and beverage categories are Crest, Gillette, and Dove; and Kellogg, Heinz, and Kraft, respectively, according to a pair of new Forrester rankings based on online surveys this year of 4,500 adults. The Boston-based market research firm argues that brand health comes from the extent to which it is trusted, remarkable, unmistakable, and essential. If you turn that into an acronym, you get Forrester's TRUE formula for brand equity....
Overall usage on social media platforms is exploding. Millions and millions of consumers are expressing likes on Facebook, tweeting about products on Twitter, and pinning on Pinterest every single day. Retailers and brands are therefore increasingly focusing their attention on social commerce. But, many struggle with the question: how do you convert a "like," a "tweet," or "pin" into a sale? In a new report from BI Intelligence, we look at successful examples of businesses and business models for generating commerce via social media-based strategies, analyze Pinterest's success as a social commerce platform, look at Facebook's potential as a social commerce contender, and examine the e-commerce conversion and order value gap. Here's an overview of the converging trends that promise to transform social media into a viable commerce platform....
Imagine if you had a best friend who knew everything. That would be so helpful right? Well you kind of do, thanks to Facebook. All you have to do is find a Facebook group related to your question and then ask. And that is exactly what I did yesterday when searching for help with increasing conversions. The only thing industry bloggers ever talk about is traffic. It’s super important, I get that. But what if, instead of focusing even more time on more traffic, why not increasing conversions?
Your business is unsustainable in its present form. It doesn’t matter what you make, or sell, or offer. If you continue to embrace “business as usual,” you are doomed. That was the bottom-line message offered by Alexander Osterwalder, co-author of Business Model Generator, in his Day Two keynote at the Front End of Innovation conference in Boston this week. As I learned in my days at Forrester Research, whether you are writing a research report or giving a speech, there’s nothing like starting off with a little fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) to get people’s attention. Osterwalder introduced the crowd to his Business Model Canvas (BMC), which is a tool that allows people to make existing or new business models tangible so they can be discussed. There are 9 components to the BMC: Customer Segments, Customer Relationships, Channels, Value Propositions, Key Activities, Key Resources, Key Partners, Cost Structure, and Revenue Streams....
As marketers, it is our jobs to assure our clients that the time and money that they are investing in social media is not in vain. Therefore, we are constantly tasked with searching for studies and statistics that suggest that social media is still heading for world domination. One particular source I like to turn to for said stats is AllTwitter.com by MediaBistro. They frequently feature studies done by excellent social media companies. Recently, they featured an infographic by Balihoo that had some great and validating social media statistics. As we know, infographics are meant to present data in a quick and easy to digest way, so let’s apply some context to the data....
Secrets to millennial marketing success? ... Fromm recommends small businesses constantly make “little bets,” taking small risks on novel products and services that might hit big. “If you’re going to win with millennials, you have to temporarily suspend your notion of ROI and EBITDA,” he says. “You have to make little bets and see if they win or lose in the real world. Test things that are way beyond your definition of normal and see if they work. Technology allows you to do that every day.” Social channels will tell you quickly if your wagers are effective or not. “The little-bets theory is based on the fact that millennials are willing to experiment because it’s part of their adventurous DNA,” Fromm says. “And if it’s a hit with millennials, others will follow.”...
...Naturally, it’s common sense that businesses want to see if their social media campaign is helping them reach their goals. Social media is all about the community which you do your business with, and actually has little to do with “media”. So in truth, if you are measuring your social media campaign, it must focus on and reveal insight about the members of your community and how engagement with them impacts your business. Social media is a medium that works because it allows people to communicate with each other and it’s not about disruptive communication where you don’t have a say. With social media it is key to continuously evaluate and monitor what people are talking about that is relevant to your company and respond to them appropriately. There are hundreds of tools available that you can use to measure basically everything regarding your social media campaign, but in reality it’s a waste of resources, time, and money if you fail to monitor only selective metrics that matter to you. There are many metrics you can use to measure your campaign and many of the tools that measure this will have their own metrics, but which actually matters? Find below a couple of metrics that I use as a baseline for all my social media campaigns....
Starting a social media campaign? Check out these top 32 tools that will help you manage the campaign, via Jamie Turner and Erik Qualman.... The e-book was so popular that our good friend Shelly Kramer suggested that readers of the V3 blog might benefit from it, too. So, with that in mind, here’s an excerpt that includes 32 of the most important tools to help you manage your social media campaign. (If you’re interested in downloading the entire e-book, just click 83 Top Social Media and Mobile Marketing Tools)....
Brafton reported that 60 percent of B2B brands say their greatest marketing challenge is generating new leads online. Fifty-five percent say they fail to reach their audiences in the right ways, despite engaging in multiple marketing techniques. Businesses may see the value of high-quality internet marketing efforts, especially with custom content, but they may not have a defined strategy behind their campaigns. The flashiest website content in the world may draw readers in, but if marketing collateral doesn’t communicate anything of substance, then lead-gen opportunities miss the mark. With many business-facing organizations focused on acquiring new customers via web marketing practices, Ascend2 and Research Underwriters conducted a survey to understand what practices help organizations achieve their goals. The study looked at most effective channels and most difficult to implement tactics....
Yowza! Take a look this huge list from Beth Kanter. Includes social media monitoring and a long list of tools for every social media need. Fill your hat... and your toolbox.
While social media appears to be ideally made for budget conscious marketing small business, the reality is that social media can be a resource hog. During 2012, small businesses stepped up their social media activity across a variety of social media platforms. With the exception of Facebook, where small businesses, like their larger counterparts, had followed the masses, these firms had limited participation on social media. More than four out of five small businesses had staked out their turf on Facebook as of December 2012, up seven percentage points from May 2012. While Facebook can be effective for consumer-oriented businesses and not-for-profits seeking to engage a mass audience, it’s not ideal for every business. Without time to examine the options available, many small businesses aren’t necessarily selecting the optimal social media platforms for their firm. While about 30% use LinkedIn, the top professional social platform, it’s mainly for their ability to reduce hiring costs, not marketing. The omission of blogs is surprising and may be attributable to the fact that many companies consider it content marketing, not social media. Blogs should be at the center of your social media strategy since they provide information that answers customers questions and shows them how to use their products. Further, beyond creating the posts and distributing them, blogs don’t require constant engagement like other social media venues. As a bonus, they support search optimization!...
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In recent times, I’ve noticed a rise in discussions around the “death of social business” and also an increase in alternative “fill in the blank but don’t use the word social” businesses. Some of those discussions have been hosted here recently. There’s strong merit to the discussions of course, especially those I’ve hosted (be sure to read the comments). But as an analyst tracking the evolution of social businesses and equally the cause and effect of digital transformation overall, I’m learning that the most advanced organizations see social not as a technology movement but instead one of culture and philosophy. Openness, collaboration, transparency, communication…these aren’t buzz words. Among those leading change, these words represent a way of business and it all starts with vision and the ability to see how relationships and experiences with customers and employees can improve or accomplish new and greater goals.
Along the way, I’ve also learned that pushing for social adoption because of technology misses the point of change. The true catalyst isn’t whatever the latest trend in social media is this week. That’s reactive and almost impossible to leapfrog. The truth is that change is fueled by the affect that social media, mobile, and other forms of disruptive technologies have on customer behavior. Whether it’s B2B, B2C, B2B2C, or whatever model you prefer, as long as we’re talking about connected human beings, you can bet that social and digital in general are influencing discovery, decision-making, and impressions in every moment of truth.
Millions and millions of consumers are expressing likes on Facebook, tweeting about products on Twitter, and pinning on Pinterest every single day.
Retailers and brands are therefore increasingly focusing their attention on social commerce.
But, many struggle with the question: how do you convert a "like," a "tweet," or "pin" into a sale?
In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we look at successful examples of businesses and business models for generating commerce via social media-based strategies, analyze Pinterest's success as a social commerce platform, look at Facebook's potential as a social commerce contender, and examine the e-commerce conversion and order value gap....
Just when you got your SEO mojo, out comes Penguin 2.0, trippin' up your flow. Here's what to do about it! ... Post-Penguin 2.0, the message is clear: if you want to rank and drive real traffic, you need to build your online brand. By strong branding, I’m not talking exclusively about giants like CNN and Zappos et al. I mean a strong brand in relation to the other sites in your industry fighting over specific SERP territory. Say you're a local dentist trying to rank for your best keywords. You won’t ever have brand recognition equal to that of Apple. But you can have an amazingly strong web brand for your local market. And if you do, you’re much more likely to rank. When you think about branding as a ranking factor, it makes a lot more sense. Google is trying to replicate the logic of the “real world” and apply it to the online world, after all. For instance, if you have a business and you’re trying to build your brand as part of a local marketing blitz, how would you do it? What constitutes a strong brand offline? Well, you might have printed ads in the local magazines and newspapers, or maybe radio and television ads -- you know, the kinds of things that might help create some brand recognition for your target market when they're not at a computer or mobile device....
If you run a small business, one thing that you probably don’t have a lot of- is time. You don’t want to spend a huge amount of time learning how to find and learn how to use the best tools to achieve your goals. Since my business is social media and web development I actually enjoy researching the best tools and have developed a portfolio of great tools and a workflow that works well for me. In this article I list the main tools I would recommend to most small businesses. Of course every situation is unique so I do recommend tailoring a system that works for you...
Valuable measurement perspectives and advice. The influential economist Albert O. Hirschman argues that customers can have a disciplining effect on companies and markets through their exit and voice behaviors. Instead of simply “quitting” a product, Hirschman urged customers to voice their complaints so companies could improve and learn. Hirschman would be a happy camper these days because social media puts a megaphone on the voice of the customer. Results from The CMO Survey® show that companies, in turn, are also starting to see the value of emphasizing voice-based metrics. The CMO Survey® investigated which metrics companies are using to measure the impact of social media investments. In August 2010 and then again in February 2013, top marketers were asked to share which metrics they use to evaluate social media. Looking across the results, we can see which metrics companies most often use. The survey did not, however, ask respondents to rank or rate each metric in terms of importance....
With a defined social media strategy in place, marketers can rock social media in 30 minutes a day. Sound too good to be true? It is actually possible if your daily use of social media is built upon a well-developed social media strategy. But, a strong social media strategy does not mean that your brand has to be on every single social media channel out there. Instead, focus on the social media channels that the majority of your customers frequent. The infographic below explains how having an over-arching social media strategy in place can save you time and make you a more effective social media strategist....
"Freemium" often backfires Trying To Hook Consumers With A Free Product Is A Dicey Strategy Seems like every third startup nowadays is using the “Freemium” business model: The lowest service tier is free, and the business is designed to get those users hooked and then upgrade to a paid plan. It can work wonderfully of course, but usually it crushes and destroys companies, not only because it costs more than anticipated but because the founders didn’t realize the business model itself caused them to make incorrect decisions....
From obsessing about real-time data to buying advertising based on ad impressions/page views to celebrating Likes, learn how to avoid eight common mistakes.... I'll expand my purview a little bit in this post, from just looking at silly metrics to also looking at silly data "things." My hope is to use these eight examples to illustrate to you how, if you are spending 30% of your time with data, you can use crazy cool data strategies/metrics to ensure many, many promotions. Eight data things that marketing people believe that get them fired…. 1. Real-time data is life changing. 2. All you need to do is fix the bounce rate. 3. Number of Likes represents social awesomeness. 4. # 1 Search Results Ranking = SEO Success. 5. REDUCE MY CPC! REDUCE MY CPC NOW!! 6. Page views. Give me more page views, more and more and more! 7. Impressions. Go, get me some impressions stat! 8. Intent beats demographics and psychographics. Always....
Knowing which social media channels to use to build your brand and engage your audience is crucial. Study your market and your social media platforms to create social media solutions unique to your company.... In an increasingly “social” world, having the right communication channel for your company is more important than ever, and the list of social media platforms grows longer. The choices seem endless: Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, YouTube. These are just some of the channels dominating social media marketing services. But which ones should you choose? While any social media channel will be an extremely useful tool in your company’s inbound marketing strategy, there are a few broad trends you should be aware of. The type of social media solutions your company will want to use depends on the depth of your brand messaging and the demographics of the group being targeted. The latter can be a bit tricky, so analyzing the age, interests, and other characteristics of a company’s target market is an important first step in determining which social media channel to use. A young, hip student is likely to spend more time checking out new content on Tumblr or Pinterest, and exploring predetermined pages on YouTube or Facebook. A more mature audience, however, is likely to be found on LinkedIn Groups and Google+ Communities....
Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are on a meteoric rise, and so are social data. Here are five insights social data can provide for businesses.... With social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook on a meteoric rise, companies are beginning to incorporate data collected from these social sites and their users into many aspects of their business from marketing to internal Human Resources issues – and with good reason. The sheer volume of social media data makes it incredibly difficult to analyze. However, various data services are popping up to answer the challenge of making sense of all this potentially advantageous consumer information. Here are five insights social data can provide for businesses....
After years of significant growth, social networks exhibited mixed results last year. It was bound to happen. Here are 10 reasons social media has peaked. Maybe it concerns you if you are in the social media business, but I will give you 8 reasons that it’s a relief that social media has peaked....
A recent study conducted by the online marketing firm Vertical Response and reported on in Forbes concludes that small businesses are spending more time on social media but struggling with the added workload it represents. Perhaps as a consequence, most are doing social media marketing in a vacuum because they’re not tracking results, which means they have no way of quantifying if their time and effort are paying off. “Our survey confirms that small businesses are understanding the value of social media,” says Vertical Response CEO and founder Janine Popick. “They’re spending more time doing it, and investing more money into it at a faster rate. But the extra work will likely lead to time management issues, especially for the small business owner who’s handling social media on top of all the other responsibilities of running a company. This implies that small businesses are in need of tactics and tools now to help them save time.”...
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Kevan Lee shares a story of social marketing agency iM and practical tips on how to make 100 + social profiles.