Are you using social media monitoring (SMM) tools and services tactically? Or maybe you're still not sure if you are using the right SMM tool(s) based on your specific business needs?
Social media monitoring offers digital marketers a wealth of opportunities for a more strategic approach. There is certainly plenty of conversation about these tools and services. So with so many definitions and nuances out there, let's start with a 3 step glossary:
Social Media Intelligence: All aspects of social analytics inform your social media intelligence. This intelligence includes not only your own business but the wiser macro and micro environment, such as your competitors.
Social Media Listening: This tool is for listening consumers and delving into customer personas and motivations to inform market research.
Social Media Monitoring: Ongoing use of data-drive listening and analytics to shape your social media marketing strategy.
Successful enterprises across all industries are continuously looking for the…
Examples of engaging Facebook ads, and those that fail to stand out
The ultimate goal of any Facebook ad is to catch someone’s eye with the right combination of stunning visuals and compelling copy.
You want the ad to stand out against the background noise of news, politics and status updates.
And there is a lot of noise right now.
The ad copy could be great but the visual has to be even better.
Because that’s what will be seen first.
Now that almost every news site, company page or blogger uses compelling visuals, standing out has become more difficult.
But I have come up with a few tried and tested tips to help you create a winning Facebook Ad visual.
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How we created a top 10 iTunes podcast
Podcasts aren't maybe the hottest digital marketing technique, but I've personally found them to really effective in building an audience, awareness, driving website traffic and lead generation. In this post I'll show you how I've built my podcasts and go them into the top positions in the iTunes chart, the key place to build a podcast audience.
I started recording a podcast a number of years ago with no budget and no idea about podcasting. After much trial and error, the podcast became one of the world’s most popular digital marketing podcast (according to iTunes). Once I left the company I started my original podcast with, I went on to start the Digital Marketing Podcast, which is now a top 20 iTunes podcast worldwide. I'm not saying it's the Perfect Podcast, but it alliterates nicely, and I…
Professional services marketing: Build a business case for social success
Social media adoption has been rapid within organisations serving consumer markets. The same however can't be said for professional services, where social media generally speaking remains a struggle.
Many professional service firms are at a loss as to how best to harness the power of social to achieve their overall vision and goals, and often harbour a number of concerns stifling any progress:
Perceived risk of reputational harm through social media interaction.
Uncertainty as to which internal department(s) should 'own' social media.
Confusion and lack of expertise around selecting the 'right' social media technology, and integrating this with existing systems such as CRM.
Lack of clarity around proving the business value of social media.
Belief that moving away from 'traditional' modes of business development and marketing to interact online may result in wasted time and effort (and money!).
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Small businesses can save time and get better results with these handy Twitter marketing apps
Social media provides a great platform to amplify your social media marketing strategies. It can help you establish a community, raise brand awareness and encourage engagement with your audience. However, social media management can be quite time-consuming, as it involves managing multiple social media accounts at the same time, and posting content on a regular basis.
If you find it too time-consuming to be constantly posting updates on Facebook or Twitter, there are some amazing tools and apps out there that can help you save time and increase the effectiveness of your efforts. They help you juggle your social media accounts from your desktop and smartphones to make sure you have a very productive social media marketing campaign.
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Social media strategy and planning essentials
First let’s answer the question, “What is a social media strategy?”
A social media strategy defines how your organization will use social media to achieve its communications aims and the supporting platform and tools it will use to achieve this. At a basic level it’s a simple statement of intent, outlining the goals and measurable objectives for using social media, and the target outcomes you want to achieve. It does this in the context of the overall business and comms plan so that social media isn’t in a silo but working in parallel with other channels. It isn’t a detailed plan of action – you’ll also need a plan but without a clear strategy, how do you prioritize the activities for a plan? Think strategy first, plan second.
Even if you’re not actively involved in social…
Virtual Reality is still in its infancy as a marketing technology, but it is about to mature
The demand for virtual reality experiences is growing — and not just among gamers and early adopters. Contrary to initial speculation, widespread use of VR isn’t dependent upon top-of-the-line head-mounted displays. Thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, average consumers can now get in on the VR fun — and marketers should be paying attention.
VR will disrupt every sector, and brands that hope to reach Millennials, in particular, need to make use of this new platform. Young people prize experiences over material products, and virtual reality presents a way to fulfill that demand.
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Where the Physical…
How mobile marketing can be used to support customer service
A lot of attention is given to the way mobile devices have changed the way we communicate at work and how marketers can target consumers. But the big secret of mobile communications in today’s organisation is the impact on customer service.
Most contact centre systems and processes are still designed around the need to handle high volumes of customer calls via the landline. But the new mobile customer behaves very differently. The mobile device, with the new features it brings and ‘always on’ connectivity, affords huge power to the customer. More often than not mobile customers are looking for speed and convenience, whatever channel they choose, whether online self-service or a conversation with an agent.
It’s no coincidence that the companies that have innovated most in this space are those whose mantra has always been about serving…
The updated report elaborates the why, what and how of selecting social media listening and engagement platforms
Social media has been evolving rapidly and presenting a wide range of new challenges and opportunities for businesses to capture the attention of customers.
A series of developments, ranging from major acquisitions and closures, new privacy regulations, increasing adoption of AI; a rise of messaging apps and "dark social", the decline of social sharing and organic reach, to name a few, have been disrupting and shaping the industry. In order to stay competitive and make more informed strategic decisions, continuous learning and new approaches are required to master new social technologies and developments.
In order to enable companies and individuals to understand the market and make effective decisions about the selection and use of social media monitoring tools and services, this November’s Social Media Monitoring (SMM) Tools and Services Report 2018 by …
Social media strategy and planning essentials series
This is part 6 of my Smart Insights 12 part social media series. In the last part we looked at the role of content in social media; in this blog, I discuss how social needs to work as part of your overall marketing plan, not in isolation.
The role of a marketing calendar
Most organisations have a marketing calendar that outlines the key campaigns for the year, typically broken down into monthly cycles. As with the content calendar, I discussed in the previous article, this helps define the big campaigns, the key messages, promotions, CTAs and the channels through which they will be delivered.
Social media needs to align with this calendar. Typically the most successful campaigns are executed across multiple channels simultaneously, promoting the same core message, albeit with a slightly different execution in each channel e.g. paid search campaigns typically use product and offer…
