5 Ideas to reinvigorate your social media interactions
Every social media marketer reaches a plateau in terms of the way they interact with their audience. It’s a state where you’ve been active for quite a while and have garnered a respectable number of fans and followers who you're interacting with in a set way. Being on a plateau isn’t bad - it’s comfortable, steady, and it’s a good state to be at if you’re planning your next move.
However, there are also some dangers of spending too much time on a plateau. Being too comfortable is a one way street to complacency, so while you’re free to bask in your respectable accomplishments, don’t stay on it for too long. Always be on the lookout for new social media heights that you can reach.
Not sure where to start? Below are some practical ideas you…
New research shows social media use maturing in large companies
International brands who have a presence in many countries have a bigger challenge in managing social media marketing than companies who focus on a single market.
The Third Annual Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-up reviewed 100 companies in the Fortune Global 100 for their use of popular social networking platforms including: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, for the first time, Google Plus and Pinterest.
Companies were located as follows:
U.S. = 29 companies
Europe = 45 companies,
Asia-Pacific = 23 companies
Latin America = 3 companies
Here's what I took from the infographic:
Section 1. c 10 million social mentions a month. That's around 100,000 mentions per brand per month.
Section 2. Branded YouTube content is increasing with 79% having a branded YouTube channel with an average of 2 million views.
Section 3. A relatively good level of engagement (79%), response (70%) and updating…
Bulmers: Facebook fans are worth £3.82 more than non-fans
"What is the value of a Like?" is understandably still a common question. There's some interesting coverage regarding Facebook Fan value at the moment, the 'ROI of social media' is always a hot topic, after all.
Research conducted by TNS and We Are Social, working with Bulmer's Cider, found that brand preference was higher in Facebook fans than the control group - and that fans were more likely to pay more and recommend Bulmers to others. Sounds fairly obvious so far, yet Bulmer's wanted to know the actual ROI, something tangible, which is what makes it interesting. This is an outline of the methodology which aimed to look at the value generated by fans of the brand.
The research, unveiled at…
Basic tactics for building trust in your brand: Part 2
Part 1 of this article outlined the role of familiarity, transparency and accountability in building trust in and through your email program.
It also mentioned another set of appropriate "trust" tactics: demonstrating quality and consistency.
Well, yeah....you mean keep subscribers happy with worthwhile content or top deals on a regular basis? You might have heard that advice before.
Actually I don't mean (just) that.
Quality here refers to more than just "valuable content and/or offers". It also covers the quality of the whole email experience, which doesn't just depend on the actual nature of that content or offer, but also on its presentation and context. Here are four examples...
1. Email design functionality
We can argue long into the night about what makes an aesthetically pleasing email. But equally important is ensuring your email retains its functionality and clarity of communication at all times. Specifically:
How does…
Why social media dashboards aren't a substitute for deeper customer understanding using digital ethnography
Considering how fast social media came upon us, social media marketing has reached an interesting point in its evolution: complacency. Not in the media itself, nor in how users are behaving online, or in how quickly new spaces are popping up and evolving – but in how marketers are becoming comfortable in how they are using (and not using) social media.
This complacency is driven by marketers’ need to create short cuts in analysis and implementation without necessarily understanding the ground-level view of what it is they are analysing and implementing.
Speed trumps understanding
On the face of it the very premise of trying to speed up assessments and actions in social media seems absurd: we are trying to cut corners from the fastest, quickest medium we have.
It might be…
Lady Gaga’s Littlemonsters.com crowns her social media empire
Lady Gaga is renowned for her prolific following in Twitter (near 27m) and Facebook (52m Likes), Google+ (near 3m) - as well as Tumblr and recently her first pic on Instagram. Let’s not forget there’s also a plethora of fan sites and endless coverage in mainstream and niche media. If that weren’t enough “Mother Monster” (that’s what her fans call her) has opened her own social network fresh from private beta testing - you can see it here: Littlemonsters.com. We think it can help all marketers think differently about social media marketing...
What is it all about?
I’m not going to review the site in-depth (you can see stuff like that here), but suffice to say that it’s now the official community hub for the Gaga brand. Anyone with a…
Tools and tips to bridge and enhance online/offline live events
This post by Lisa Harris, Nicole Beale and Graeme Earl reports on the findings of our Social Media in Live Events (SMiLE) action research project.
The project is looking at real and virtual communities interacting around a ‘live’ conference.
Our focus is to show the learning points from this experience that can be applied improve the effectiveness of future events
Research methodology
Before, during and after the event we monitored a range of social media tools to track how the tools were used by real and virtual delegates. We expected the tools to be used for information recording and sharing, network building and profile raising.
During the event we carried out interviews with conference participants about their experiences and interactions via Twitter, Storify, Flickr, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Facebook, QR codes and Corkboard.…
Ideas for boosting your email subscribers
Wouldn't it be great if every visitor to your website purchased from you? That's clearly a dream world.
There are many reasons website visitors don't buy; not yet ready to purchase, researching product choices, planning to buy in the future, unsure whether to trust you, currently comparing products, comparing suppliers, need to confer with other family members before buying, getting an idea of budget for a future purchase and so on.
The next best thing to getting a purchase is getting an email address with opt-in permission, a lead.
Being given the privilege to keep the conversation going through email is your chance to tilt the odds in your favour of them coming back to you and purchasing in the future. However, getting an email address is easier said than done.
I recently completed a benchmark study 'Leaping over the subscribe hurdle'. This study researched the top 100 UK…
Use Social Crawlytics to compare social sharing with competitors
Following on from our post last week showing tools for comparing competitors' use of online marketing, Dan Barker recommended I take a look at Social Crawlytics, a tool for benchmarking social media that I hadn't seen. I've completed a quick review, so this alert gives some background on the tool and you can decide whether it's relevant for you.
Our review of Social Crawlytics
Value: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Social Crawlytics
This is a free, simple tool that is aimed at showing you how popular your content based on how much it is shared across the main social networks as Likes, Tweets and +1s. It’s produced by Brighton-based SEO Yousaf of Elevate Local (@yesekand) and I think is a great effort given it doesn't have the backing many services have.
Although it’s free, it’s based on credits and I found myself…
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09 Jul 2012
H&M show how to engage an audience with Google+
Google has just produced a great new case study on how H&M are using Google+.
H&M are a useful example to look at to learn approaches to marketing in Google+ since it has been successful in building a relatively large audience of nearly 1 million followers.
Miriam Tappert, Global Social Media Manager at H&M, explains the objectives for setting up the brand’s Google+ page were simple;
“To be where our customers are, have a dialogue and share the latest fashion.”
This case illustrates a couple of core digital marketing principles:
1. Ensure you track your target audience's media consumption patterns and establish a strong presence in those media
2. Tailor your content to each medium, while maintaining integration with the wider communication strategy. Following the media neutral planning rule 'play to each medium’s strengths' optimises message relevance and effectiveness.
H&M uses Google+ to engage its audience
H&M has integrated…
