The anatomy of a fan
A genuinely useful infographic from Moontoast (they create e-commerce software for Facebook pages). This graphic reminds us on the how to market to those different levels of engaged users - all fans are not the same!
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Advice on processes for managing crisis communications online
We've recently seen two different formats of helpful guidance on social media governance.
First, here are the recommendations from the SMI11 conference where Neil Chapman and Chris Reed share their insight into the ways BP and Eurostar, among other companies, have learned from social media fallout.
The event organisers have published this nice infographic to summarise the process visually. The company is also promoting a course where you can learn these skills first-hand.
Second, Altimeter who provide lot's of practical advice for managing social media marketing in larger organisations have this new deck on the same topic:
Social Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare
View more documents…
Actions speak louder than clicks
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Starcom MediaVest SMBI Study
Starcom MediaVest reveal how social engagement benefits the brand
I thought it would be useful to share this new research in our alert since unusually it shows what outcomes different types of social media interaction lead to:
The SMBI study essentially measures actions that indicate future involvement with the brand, they did this by monitoring user's social media behaviour and then follow up dialogue with those users.
The Social Media Behavioural Index (SMBI) is the result of a Starcom MediaVest Group study of brand engagement. Working with over 6,000 Twitter, Facebook and YouTube users across 29 brands.
Several sectors were researched, including finance; food and drink, health and beauty; retailers; media and entertainment; and technology & telecommunications.
The study offers several key take-aways
The most engaging social media action revolves around commenting and sharing content
The deeper the interaction with social media the…
An introduction to Google's new multichannel funnels feature
Multi-channel Funnel Reports in Google Analytics bring us a whole new depth of understanding to how people come to web sites over the course of several visits.
And there’s a bonus: we can also start working with our SEO keywords and other sources of traffic with a level of control which was previously only available for paid advertising and other campaigns.
In real time. Retrospectively. With no pre-configuration effort (so not like campaigns, then).
The most stunning of these reports, in my opinion, is the Top Conversion Paths report. For the first time ever it shows the history of a series of visits.
What’s more, it groups them by channel so that you can see the most common sequence of routes to the site.…
Do you agree with the importance of these processes?
Here's a cool new infographic. I particularly like it since it's not the same-old, same-old format and it forces you to ask - do we get our design processes right?
Update: I've changed the description from "great" to "cool" based on your feedback in the comments on this post and Twitter. The main criticism was the lack of iteration. I have included two new visuals which better show this iteration. Check out "awesome" process suggestion from conversion rate optimization expert Craig Sullivan which shows how they tackle improvement of website designs at Belron - this is a real-world example to really learn from!
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As well as showing the main activities to plan into a redesign project, it's interesting since it shows circles by importance.
I'm…
Avoiding the accidental reasons why your marketing emails may not get through
The surprising thing about email deliverability is there are some common causes that are often innocent mistakes and can be avoided. The first two posts in this series covered how ISPs filter and how to monitor your deliverability.
In this post I'm covering some of the common issues I've seen happen, although they're not all obvious. I'll also give some tips on how they can be avoided.
Reason 1 Lack of transparency
High spam complaint levels occur when subscriber expectation is not managed correctly. This is either due to a lack of transparency about emails that will be sent or by setting an expectation and not adhering to it.
Typically this happens when an email address is provided for a specific purpose such as to get a quote, make a purchase, obtain a whitepaper, enter a competition or to create a…
An introduction to business use of social media for marketing
Talk to a non devotee about social media and they will still tell you that it's either a tool for geeks or for students that have nothing better to do than share what they had for breakfast. Although many of us eat, sleep and breathe social media marketing, I still talk to many businesses who don't believe and aren't active in social media marketing.
But as usage of tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Twitter continue to escalate, even laggard-like companies are belatedly starting to think about getting a slice of the action. In this post I'll show approaches you can try to convince your colleagues, clients or even friends that social media investment pays.
Here's a taster, when I’m faced with a room full of social media sceptics one of the first things I do is show this video:
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I’m finding the news aggregator Summify interesting and useful
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Summify News Aggregation Service
I’ve been using Summify for the last couple of weeks as a way of keeping up-to-date with the latest conversations on the social networks. I’m letting you know about it since I’ve found it quite handy since:
Just 5 stories - delivered by Email once a day - helps counter information overload :)
Relevant stories are shared by people I'm connected to who I trust
Often turns up an interesting story or piece of advice I’ve missed elsewhere
Looks good but more important learns through what you click on
Summify have a post here explaining how it works. They say:
The Summify algorithms use dozens of signals, but in general news that has been shared, liked and retweeted a lot by your friends is considered more important. However, not all of your friends are equal…
A new in-depth guide from Distilled
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: http://www.distilled.net/linkbait-guide/
Our commentary
We think this is one of one of the most useful free guides and workbooks for marketers published this year.
Particularly relevant to SEO and E-PR it's an in-depth guide from Distilled, complete with a workbook for running brainstorm sessions specifically for Linkbait ideas.
If you haven't encountered the term, linkbaiting is just a short way of describing the creation of amazing pieces of content (blogs, ebooks, info-graphics, videos etc) that are inherently valuable & that other websites, bloggers etc will want to link to. Essentially you are earning the right to get links to your website, something Seth Godin would call Permission marketing. The intern used by Distilled (interesting approach) does a fantastic job in this guide, going through the process right from the beginning in…
Is crowdsourcing a solution to your content problems?
We've posted before about the importance of engaging with users, about earning the permission to market and the importance of social objects for user engagement and amplification. By engagement, I'm referring specifically here to engaging people with content to fuel sharing and search marketing.
The problem
We know that quality content is central for attracting and engaging site users and in turn convincing them to convert into customers. Creating quality content is also expensive and must be maintained. It's easy to let the content well dry up... Similarly, with social media you can run out of integrated ideas to get your users or consumers involved with the brand in any meaningful way. Crowdsourcing is a potential solution to solve both of these challenges.
A crowdsourced solution
Where user-generated content (UGC) is most often associated with ratings, reviews, forums, sharing video and images - crowdsourcing can…
