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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
Cynthia Boris makes a good point. If you can’t measure the effectiveness of your social media then why are you using it?
This is the dilemma of the modern marketer. Social media has proven to be an effective marketing channel for a lot of marketers. But so has television. That doesn’t mean the medium is a proven marketing channel for everyone who uses it. Any marketing channel requires a knowledge of its use that consists of strategies and tactics that have worked for others and that might work for your situation. Without a solid grounding in marketing principles and your market niche, your chances of succeeding in any marketing channel are pretty slim.
Even then, having the ability to measure your results is necessary if you want to gauge your effectiveness. And that’s what social media has lacked for the most part.
Yesterday, we talked about a new addition to ShareThis – social media analytics. And Twitter has had third-party analytics tools available for it for quite some time. Many marketers report they use traditional tools like Google Analytics and Omniture. These are fine. The bottom line is to use something that will give you a visual on how your marketing efforts are panning out.
Remember this maxim: What you don’t measure you can’t change. So measure your results and the next time someone asks you why you are using social media, you’ll have an answer.
Tags: analytics, marketing, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
You are likely no stranger to Facebook. Almost everyone uses it these days and the company boasts 150 million users on mobile phones alone. The local Groups feature has been a popular Facebook offering since the beginning of the social service and it allows users to connect with people in their local areas. But Facebook Places takes local social networking a bit further.
Enter real time location-based social networking.
Facebook Places allows you to let your friends know exactly where you are located right now. For instance, you’re sitting in a Starbucks at the corner of Fifth and Main. If someone you know is approaching that intersection and sees you sitting there, she could just pop in and say hi. The courtesy of a heads up would be her choice, of course.
The biggest downside seems to be a loss of privacy, but you can change who sees and who can interact with your Facebook Places settings through the service’s privacy settings.
This puts Facebook on the forefront of location-based networking and close to the leading edge on location-based advertising, which is sure to follow. It’s interesting that other location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla see Facebook as friendly to their services rather than a competitor.
(Source) Appearing at Facebook’s announcement, some initial partners, including Foursquare and Gowalla, said they thought Facebook would be an enabler—not a competitor—by introducing a lot of new users to the world of sharing their locations.
Foursquare beat Facebook to the location-based networking space by a year and a half. Gowalla arrived on the scene somewhat earlier but doesn’t have as many users as Foursquare.
Of course, these are not the only location-based networking services online. Facebook Places does have its competition, including Google. Google’s service is called Latitude, which allows you to see where your friends are on Google Maps.
I have a feeling that location-based social networking is just getting started. According to JiWire, more than half of mobile users want to see location-based advertising. That means Facebook Places has a unique opportunity to capitalize and being that Facebook is the most trafficked website online, it has the market clout needed to rival Google in paid advertising services. Places could just be its ticket to the big leagues.
Tags: Facebook Places, social networking
Posted in Display Advertising, Local Internet Marketing, Mobile Marketing for Small Business, Social Media | No Comments »
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
One of the difficulties that many small businesses face is that of competing with larger businesses, especially when it comes to PPC advertising. Larger businesses often work on smaller margins so they can afford to bid a little higher for keywords. This can see smaller businesses priced out of the popular PPC markets. Social media advertising could well be an option worth exploring.
Facebook is a prime example where advertising can be targeted based on demographics rather than keywords. You will often find that social media advertising is also less restrictive when it comes to issues such as quality scores and the tight rules that search engines like Google often apply.
If you are struggling with PPC campaigns through traditional outlets like Google, then a little research in what social media sites require is definitely worth considering. StumbleUpon, while not always delivering traffic that converts, can deliver traffic at just five cents per click. Facebook traffic will be a little more expensive, but often far cheaper than Adwords for example.
There are a lot of coupons around at present offering $50 or even $75 trials of Facebook ads. If you haven’t trialled Facebook yet, or any of the other social media sites, check them out; give them a trial run (especially if you can find one of those free coupons); and compere them to your current campaigns. There are many businesses that are now reporting much better conversions and a much higher ROI when compared to traditional PPC.
We are in period where the online world has become extremely competitive. As a small business, you need to find every opportunity available to gain that edge on your competitors. While they are bashing their heads with Adwords campaigns, you could be cleaning up through social media advertising.
Tags: advertising, adwords, PPC, social media advertising
Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments »
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
If you are doing business online then you’ll want to make sure that you are doing certain things to promote your business. At any time during Internet history there were certain websites that were absolutely essential to doing business online. I think there are three websites that most small businesses should join right now in order to position themselves for their absolute necessity in marketing online in the future.
- Facebook – Facebook has grown into one of the largest and most trafficked websites online. Its diversity is so rich that no matter what niche you are in you are sure to find an audience. Blatant in-your-face marketing isn’t the game. But developing relationships is. And if you want to do business in the future, Facebook will be essential marketing.
- Twitter – There are still people who aren’t sure how to use Twitter. And some of them are using it now. In the future, Twitter will become an essential marketing tool. Small business owners who learn how to use Twitter for marketing will see volumes of success.
- LinkedIn – LinkedIn is the quiet giant. It isn’t as hyped as Facebook and Twitter, but it’s just as important. The tools you have to building relationships and finding prospects are a bit more sophisticated, but they’re simple as pie. LinkedIn will be one of those sites you won’t want to miss out on.
This isn’t to say that you’ll want to abandon old mainstays like search engine optimization and pay per click marketing. On the contrary, you’ll just want to make sure you incorporate these three social media sites into your marketing plan as well.
Tags: online marketing, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »
Monday, August 16th, 2010
It’s interesting watching developments in emerging markets like search and social media. For the past decade Google has dominated search and has just grown its market share more and more while its competition has declined. It just hasn’t seemed possible that anyone could catch up. Then, enter Facebook.
Facebook and Google have not exactly been competitors. But, technically, they are.
Google is a search engine. Facebook is a social media platform. Its growth into one of the largest and most trafficked websites online is itself an extraordinary success story. As is Google’s. Even though these two companies appeal to their respective users in very different ways, they can be considered competitors in one very important respect. They compete for traffic.
You could also say they compete for advertisers. After all, advertisers want to spend their money where the greatest hope of success is. Generally, that means where the people are. Traffic.
In Facebook’s case, however, that hasn’t exactly proven to be a huge feather in the cap. Google AdWords is still the No. 1 choice for online advertisers, which makes Facebook’s recent acquisition of Chai Labs an extraordinary event.
Google has had so many acquisitions that not many people even notice them any more. And no acquisition has taken the company from its emphasis on search, which is a good thing. But Facebook has not made a habit of adding new companies to its portfolio. The fact that one of its first acquisitions is a search technology provider means that Facebook is planning to enter into Google’s domain – and it’s just as well since Google has entered into Facebook’s a number of times. The question before Facebook today is whether it can take a purchase like Chai Labs and churn it into a public offering that will help it to rival Google in the one area where Google has excelled better than anyone else? Can Facebook become a search monolith without compromising its ability to provide a social platform?
Tags: facebook, search, Social Media
Posted in Social Media, search engines | No Comments »
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
I found this infographic and thought it was interesting, though I’m not real sure how helpful it is. It’s done primarily for the benefit of large corporations. However, I thought I’d share it with my small business audience. What do you make of it?
From the looks of this graphic I’d conclude that Digg and YouTube are the best social media marketing vehicles. Why? They have the highest number of “Good” ratings at 3 each. Let’s play a little numbers game.
Ascribing Numerical Values To Marketing Values
Since the chart measures each social media site according to 4 values (Customer Communication, Brand Exposure, Traffic and SEO) and since each of those values is rated in one of three ways (Good, OK or Bad) then let’s ascribe a numerical value for each of the three ratings. We’ll give a Good rating a value of 5, an OK rating a value of 3 and a Bad rating a value of 0. Each social media site will have 4 ratings and based on the final numerical outcome we can compare each site using these values and ratings as represented by their aggregate numerical value.
We’ll start with Twitter. Twitter is rated as Good for Customer Communication and Brand Exposure. That’s 10 points. It’s rated OK for traffic and SEO. That’s 3 points each, or 6 points. Total these and Twitter gets a total rating of 16 points.
Now let’s go down the list and add all the points together:
Twitter = 5, 5, 3, 3: 16 points
Facebook = 5, 5, 3, 0: 13 points
Flickr = 3, 3, 0, 5: 11 points
LinkedIn = 3, 5, 0, 3: 11 points
YouTube = 5, 5, 3, 5: 18 points
Digg = 3, 5, 5, 5: 18 points
StumbleUpon = 0, 3, 5, 5: 13 points
Yahoo! Buzz = 0, 0, 3, 3: 6 points
Reddit = 3, 5, 3, 3,: 14 points
Delicious = 0, 0, 3, 5: 8 points
The problem with these numbers is that they are a little bit misleading. Personally, I think Twitter is much more valuable to a small business’s marketing strategy than Digg. That’s not to say that Digg can’t get you some traffic. But many marketers have tried to use Digg for less-than-stellar results.
I think a better way to use this chart is to figure out which of the 4 values you most want to achieve in your social media marketing campaigns. Are you more interested in customer communication or brand exposure, traffic or SEO? If SEO is your goal then Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious are just as valuable as Flickr and YouTube. If you’re looking for traffic then Digg and StumbleUpon might be your best bet, but marketers that I’ve spoken to who have used StumbleUpon for traffic have reported low conversion rates.
For brand exposure, Twitter and Facebook are at the top of the list, along with YouTube, LinkedIn and Digg. For customer communication, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube top the list.
So if you narrow down your goals and choose your social media site according to those goals then you’ll find that your social media marketing is much more effective.
What do you think? Can you see another way to use this list?
Tags: marketing, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 6 Comments »
Monday, August 9th, 2010
A rabble-rousing innovative guru who watches dogs has accused you, the Facebook user, of being worthless. No, not worthless as in a lazy good-for-nothing punk. Rather, he thinks you’re worthless as an advertising investment. His evidence? Superbowl advertisers pay more per watcher than Facebook advertisers pay more per user.
At first glance, Pace Lattin’s logic makes sense. If you go just by the numbers then you might actually be convinced. But I think his attempt to stick a needle in the arm of the interactive marketing industry misses the vein. And blood is spewing all over the carpet.
Here’s the doleful banana: Superbowl viewers and Facebook networkers are not an apples-to-apples comparison. They’re not even apples to oranges.
Interactive Marketing Vs. Advertising On Facebook
First off, television is a one-way medium. Superbowl ads represent the zenith of mass marketing. Facebook is almost the opposite. There’s a reason it is called “interactive marketing”, something you’ll never hear referred to Superbowl ads. So what does that mean, exactly?
Northern Illinois University, which offers a degree in Interactive Marketing, defines it this way:
Interactive Marketing refers to a form of marketing, often facilitated by technology, where we address customers individually, gather and remember their response and address them once more in a way that takes into account that unique response. In this form of marketing, marketing is a conversation, not a one-time transaction. Examples of technologies that facilitate interactive marketing are customer databases, the Internet and search engine marketing.
Facebook, and other social media, are the interactive town halls where these “conversations” take place. It is where marketers go to interact with their customers and potential customers to get a feel for what is expected. If used effectively it can be a powerful market research tool where the data gathered is used to pursue the customer through other channels more apt for marketing. That’s not to say, of course, that marketing can’t take place through Facebook.
Historically, advertisers (as used in the traditional sense) have not done well on Facebook and other social media websites. But that doesn’t mean those being marketed to are “worthless” in terms of advertising dollars. In this case, a perceptive rearrangement is necessary to see the true value of a Facebook user. It isn’t in raw data. On the contrary, the true value of a Facebook user is in their dignity by virtue of being human. It’s in the conversation.
Tags: advertising, Social Media
Posted in Social Media | 3 Comments »
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