21 tips to help you review your approach to getting value from your social media marketing

You hear this question a lot: can social media actually drive sales? It's a key question with all the ongoing interest in social media. My answer, when asked, is that social media primarily grows permission through lead generation if you're approaching it as a "sales acquisition tactic". But it's actually often a more relevant tactic for customer re-engagement. Once you have permission then you can develop the relationship and earn the right to sell. With this in mind, Dave and I thought it would be good to give you a whole bunch of ideas to think about how you use social media to generate leads. First, start with an evaluation of you current online lead generation process and figure out how well it’s working through your website. Also, consider where you're turning people off - and correct…

Are we too fond of shiny new technologies?

I read this great post by Seth Godin, it coincidentally arrived as an alert in my inbox within minutes of my talking to a college about a guy (who knows a guy) wanting to run a campaign using a 'new type of QR code'. Don't get me wrong, I love the marketing opportunities from QR codes and blogged around the topic several months ago and although the concept is seriously interesting for marketers, I still don't see a common QR code reader making it easy enough for the consumer to adopt, which in turn doesn't make it viable technology to leverage for marketing. At least in my opinion, and as things stand today. The idea of another type of QR code only adds complexity - it is also possibly damaging to a brand experience through user…

Examples of testing the best time of day for email broacast

Last week we looked at the ideas on the best day of the week to send an email for different audiences. This week I review a related issue, asking:  "is there a best time of the day to send an email?" Again, the answer is "yes, definitely", but it depends, so you have to test it. It depends on audience, but I hope these 3 examples show it's worth testing.

Update - September 2011

I spotted a nice, simple infographic to support the stats later in this post. It can help you review the factors that may affect consumer attention during the day. These considerations also apply in B2B and the attention available during the office day - for example we find our newsletter works best around 8-9AM as can tweets/shares - also around lunchtime - although that's called the "Abyss"…

A practical tool to determining which days and times work best

Value/Importance: [rating=4] Recommended link: Optimisation Beacon

Our commentary

I loved this simple, yet powerful way of seeing which times are the peak for conversion. This post from Robert Kingston shows you how to extract data from Google Analytics and then display it on a spreadsheet using this format: You can download the spreadsheet template and Robert also provides a pre-built custom report to obtain the data you need: (more…)…

An introduction to mobile marketing strategy

Mobile marketing has an exciting future shown by its rate of growth - you've almost certainly seen the statistics to support the claims for an exciting future for mobile... Did you know that there are 5.3 billion mobile users globally? That’s 77% of the world’s population! Did you know that mobile web is predicted to overtake desktop by 2013/4 as this Smart Insights compilation of mobile marketing statistics shows? Here are some other statistics you may not know, which again show the potential of mobile: The current m-commerce industry is predicted to be worth $3.3 billion this year, and due to rise to $20.5 billion by 2015. These are not numbers that a marketer can afford to ignore. It takes 26 hours for the average person to report a lost wallet. But it takes just 68 minutes for…

Are we entering a 'post-digital world’?

I'm hearing more and more people saying we're heading into a post digital world. Although these ‘buzz-words’ tend to grab the headlines but I don't think digital is over yet. In business, language is most useful when it communicates unambiguously. ‘Digital’ currently still means something distinct from ‘offline’. I certainly prefer ‘digital marketing’ to ‘interactive’ or ‘new media’ which never meant very much, even in the 1990s! By the way, one term I really can’t get my head around is ‘inbound marketing’. Let’s agree never to use it! [Editor's note: I think inbound marketing is here to stay as a term thanks to Hubspot Mike, since it's popular and helps distinguish between the benefits and approaches of digital marketing against online marketing. But I know what you mean, it essentially means the same as digital marketing!] I believe we still need digital marketing as a way of…

1. New pagination tags

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: Source

Our commentary

A recent release from Google, these new tags are aimed at aiding the Google bot when crawling sites such as media sites (or other content rich sites) & large ecommerce websites. The new tags are to be used on the "Next", "Previous" & View All links on pages helping Google understand a paginated series of pages. This feature is particularly relevant to media sites that use the format of an article broken down into several pages (which I personally find annoying, but I know it's done to increase page views and so ad revenue). Much like the canonical tag which is used to highlight duplicate pages on your website these new tags are aimed at helping the Googlebot index your website effectively. The two key points highlighted in the post /…

Showing the power of blogger outreach

I thought this was a nice example of how a relatively small number of bloggers can get a campaign message across to a wider audience. In 2010 Renault launched a new range of zero emission vehicles. Renault’s objective was to get people talking about the range, and especially the star model, the TWIZY. Renault wanted to create links with opinion leaders sensitive to the automotive sector but also to ecology and new technologies. To reach influencers and help spread the word about the new model, Agency BuzzParadise organised a special meeting at an international event, LeWeb. The idea was for Renault to use this platform to set up viral advertising aimed at a target sensitive to technological advances. Invitations were sent to thirteen bloggers from France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Spain writing about High-Tech, Trends, Innovation and Scientific themes.…

and do you need one?

I'll be honest, I read 'social media newsroom' and I'm instantly confused. I've thought about it for a while now, since the term started being bandied about, and I still don't get it. I think this is a classic example of where PR jargon, marketing semantics and established ideas collide in the digital age. I am sure it's important for marketers to think through how their website can act as a hub to encourage engagement with customers, influencers and other stakeholders and it's too important to be thought of as a PR responsibility. A "News" area of the site with dull, drab press releases just doesn't cut it any more. I'd love to know what you think, and if you can share examples of companies getting it right. Here's where I'm at…

What it a social media newsroom?

It's probably better to start by asking what a traditional website…

Using Google's new reports to improve both SEO and conversion

Google has been releasing tools for to help you with your website loading speed for some time now but what is classed as a fast website and does it really impact your rankings? Google clearly take this area of website management seriously, they want users to be delivered relevant content quickly, and therefore it would make sense that they would use it as a factor in ranking your website. It's more obvious to see the impact of slow loading websites on your bounce rate than search but lets look at the tools now available to help you make sure your loading times are not affecting your rankings or site conversion.

Google Page Speed Report(s)

We reported back in August 2011 that reports are now available within Google Analytics which will give you the insights…