18 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community |
- IROI: Immediate Return on Investment
- Driving Social Engagement (Part 2) – How You Can Include LinkedIn with your Social Media Marketing
- Driving Social Engagement (Part 1) – Facebook’s "Like" and"Share" Buttons and How They Can Work for your Social Media Marketing
- Social Business: Rethinking Business Processes
- Optimizing Facebook Engagement – Part 2: How Frequently To Post
- The Art of Opening Social Conversations
- 10 Ways to Evaluate Keywords
- Changing Your YouTube Login Account
- How To Ensure Your Best Photo Is Visible In Your Facebook Photos Box
- Managing Social Media Will Become a Full Time Job
- Stuck for Something to Say on Social Media? Then Think News.
- Linkedin Enables Targeted Status Updates
- Colonial Bungalows, A Collaborative, Crowdsourced Project On Facebook
- The ‘Like’ Epidemic
- Optimizing Facebook Engagement – Part 3: The Effect Of Post Length
- Eight Things to Consider When Optimizing a Limited Daily Search Budget
- Why You Should Advertise With Facebook’s Mobile Sponsored Stories
- A Good Executive Blog These Days is Hard to Find
| IROI: Immediate Return on Investment Posted: 30 Jun 2012 03:00 PM PDT
This is the era of Social Media. With over a billion consumers offering opinions, sentiments, and insights online, Social Media has in a few short years eclipsed many traditional forms of expression in terms of volume and importance. As a result, the professional world is abuzz with discussion of this new form of communication and interaction, concentrating on its positive, even revolutionary aspects. However, there is still a lot of discussion by an alarmingly large group of pundits that Social Media lacks clear ROI. In my view since Social Media generates ROI more directly and with higher velocity than other forms of marketing. It's the era of Social Media for a reason! Media planning and buying is an area in which we see this Social Media-led advantage in bold-relief. In the traditional model, advertisers and media buyers make and execute buying decisions and then wait for the results to come in. It's often hit or miss and mid-course correction is impossible. Nuanced feedback is virtually non-existent and when insights are generated they are delivered after-the-fact. Billions of dollars and thousands of people-hours are expended with little result to show. Of course, there are effective media buys but they are rarely driven purely by empirical or predictive data. While hits occur, the ratio of hits to misses is sub-optimal, a bitter pill to swallow in turbulent economic times. Not so when media planning and buying is informed by Social Media. When it is, you benefit from immediate ROI and take the guess-work out of your decision-making. This is true for three core reasons:
When these are combined with a team that is ready to hone and adapt quickly, media planning and buying can be taken to the next level. A few examples are in order here. Leveraging the social nature of TV In the traditional model, a media buyer contracts to purchase spots based on imperfect knowledge of audience attitudes. The spots run and the buyer gets feedback three months later, well outside the window of possible action. With social media, you get feedback instantaneously whether on content, messaging or the theme of your ad; you learn what is resonating with the audience of a given TV program minutes after it airs! With that insight you can make changes on the fly and either avert disaster or further enhance an already-popular campaign. An engaged TV audience with spot on messaging gets more happy consumers, and is a profitable win-win that pays for itself quickly. Optimizing media choices In the traditional model, smaller companies with new and disruptive products and services are often locked-out of media buys because they lack the incumbents' financial muscle. With information and insights derived from Social Media, these companies can find alternate and more effective channels to disseminate their messages in real-time and with high-fidelity to audience attitudes and behavior. Social media democratizes the playing field for small and medium companies for whom attention and exposure is priceless, and again generating an immediate ROI. Perfecting product placement In the traditional model, a media buyer spends valuable dollars to place an advertiser's product in a media outlet. The decision about which outlet is made often with a gut decision based on limited information and the resulting uptake, or lack thereof, cannot be measured with precision. It's a shot in the dark, which not only costs dearly but forecloses on other opportunities. With socially-informed buying, a buyer can test the potential reception of products in real-time and make data-driven decisions accordingly. This process leads to finding the most relevant audience and most relevant outlet, driving immediate ROI and allowing an advertiser to avail the best opportunity available. In today's world of media and marketing in general, ROI is not a luxury it's a must. By informing your decision process and actions with the data from Social Media, you can guarantee the most you're your marketing spend and in do so immediately generate what we call an IROI. |
| Driving Social Engagement (Part 2) – How You Can Include LinkedIn with your Social Media Marketing Posted: 30 Jun 2012 01:30 PM PDT When talking with B2C oraganizations about social media, Facebook and Twitter roll off the tongue fairly easily. Sometimes the conversation steers toward the social darlings based on popularity, or because their customers are living on these social networks. When speaking with B2B companies, LinkedIn may be the shining star of opportunity for your brand, products and services.
In part 2 of Our Driving Social Engagement Series, we’re taking a quick look at LinkedIn and a couple extra things you can do for your business beyond a profile page. Tale of the Tape: LinkedIn
Social Media Plugins For LikedInLinkedIn Company Profile Plugin LinkedIn Share Button LinkedIn Product Recommend Button To find all of LinkedIn’s official social media plugins in one place, visit https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins |
| Posted: 30 Jun 2012 12:00 PM PDT When talking with organizations about social media, it’s clear that there are different levels of comfort and awareness across various industries. Some companies are effectively using social media to their advantage, some are looking to correct an approach that is not working,and others don’t know where to begin or are simply afraid of it. In the past, we offered 5 Steps To An Integrated Marketing Strategy, and with social media being part of the marketing mix, there are some simple things you can do to promote sharing and create awareness. Our Driving Social Engagement series aims to offer simple, bite size guidance regarding social media buttons and links offered by the biggest social networks that can be used on your website. Today, we will focus on Facebook. First, let’s quickly identify the differences between a sharing button/link and a follow button, and then view some Facebook facts. Follow Button: This button should be used to promote your social media profiles to help generate fans or followers for the particular accounts you’re using. The goal is to acquire subscribers to your social profiles for future messaging through those channels. Share Buttons/Links: These buttons and links enable your website visitors to easily share content from your web pages with their network. The goal is to allow users to share specific website content without officially subscribing to your social profile. Tale of the Tape: Facebook
Social Media Plugins For Facebook
Facebook Share Link To create your own Facebook share link, replace the bolded URL with the URL of the content you want to promote. Then link the full URL to the anchor text you want to appear in your content. http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u= http://bit.ly/GXj7i0
To investigate all of Facebook’s official social media plugins and how to implement them on your website, visit: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/ Whether you’re looking to promote your company blog, provide the ability for users to share your website content with their networks with the click of a button, or would like to promote your social media accounts to acquire more fans or followers, there’s a solution for you. Social Media buttons and links are one of the many ways to leverage social for your business, and Facebook offers some easy ways to integrate the largest social network with your website. Identify your audience. Create visibility. Engage. Extend your reach. |
| Social Business: Rethinking Business Processes Posted: 30 Jun 2012 09:20 AM PDT
Some consider the impact of these changes as revolutions. Others consider them as logical evolutions and some call them old wine in new bags. Revolutions come in many forms and shapes and are often followed by a fresh regime that turns out to be not that different from the previous one. On the other hand, saying nothing is new, is naïve and often a sign of either preferring the comfort zone, either not having a global view. So, the truth is probably somewhere in between. In the last year, a dozen of books was published regarding what is known as 'social business'. There are different definitions regarding social business. However, as Michael Brito recently pointed out, the definition really doesn't matter that much. Changing business processes and modelsThe simple truth is that recent technologies, including social, impact business, work, life, economy and society. Technology has always done that and always will. Smart businesses are implementing some of the principles and models of social business right now. For them, it's not about social media. It's about how the underlying drivers of social media and other technologies can be implemented to improve operations, business goals, revenue and customer experiences. It's also about how the societal and human changes in a 'connected world' require organizations to rethink business models and processes to be more relevant, agile and aligned with the reality. In a way, this is my definition of social business. Does this mean social media is not important? Of course it doesn't. What's important is a holistic business view that includes a smart use of social technologies. It's not a choice but a mix of whatever channels, tactics and strategies serve your goals and those of your ecosystem best. We should not glorify technology as such. We still have to learn a lot about the impact of recent innovations, and probably we will discover things we don't like. Furthermore, we are just starting to see what is possible and are at the verge of more major technological innovations. However, in the meantime, your 'competitor' is adapting and applying social business strategies with success. We must realize that the adoption of social media and other technologies, is non-linear. Some people use them in a very intensive way, while others don't use them at all. The same applies for organizations. While some are focusing on social media (channels), asking wrong questions such as "how to build a Facebook page and get fans," a few have seen that it is indeed not about social media. It's about business, processes, management and new ways of working and collaborating. Social as a way to be more relevant and efficientThe smartest organizations reap the fruits of having implemented social business principles and practices. They are ahead of the curve and outperform their colleagues in several domains and functions. Business IS about several functions. The goal of a business is not to be a 'social business', it's to improve efficiency and relevancy as ways towards stakeholder satisfaction and revenue. Social is a means to that end. We have reached a tipping point whereby many business models are under pressure because of better ones that are used by our competitors. And most of all because our customers, including employees, partners and all internal and external stakeholders, increasingly demand change. Small and –sometimes even temporary – teams of passionate and participating people, who are connected, can achieve a lot in short period of time with limited budgets. Speed, agility, consistency and respect are crucial. Imagine what you could achieve if you had such agile teams and processes in your business. The good news? You can have them, no matter the size of your organization. |
| Optimizing Facebook Engagement – Part 2: How Frequently To Post Posted: 30 Jun 2012 07:30 AM PDT How much is too much? There is a common, and intuitive, assumption that brands should not post too frequently, or they will annoy their audience, who in turn will be become less receptive to their messages. However, hard data on this has not been available until now. We used the Track Social platform to analyze the effect of Posting Frequency – how often a brand posts – on the Follower response levels to those posts. It turns out that although posting more often does have consequences, it is possible to post far more frequently on Facebook than many brands believe. We start by looking at the response level per post, as increasing numbers of posts are made per day. The response level at each Posting Frequency is represented as a percentage of the response received when a brand only posts once in a day. Response Per Post drops off markedly as more posts are made.
Response per Post is important because it impacts your engagement levels, Edgerank score, and hence the visibility of future posts. However it is not the whole story. It is the Response Per Day, rather than Per Post, that represents the total amount of interaction a brand is having with its consumers, and is representative of the total amount of touch-points they have to get across their marketing message. So next we look at what happens to the Total Response, or Response Per Day, as the Posting Frequency increases: There is no significant change in Total Response as the Posting Frequency increases. Interestingly, although the response per post decreases, the total amount of response stays more or less steady as posting frequency increases. We need to emphasize that this result does not suggest that any brand can increase posting frequency without an impact on their total response levels, only that some brands are achieving this, so it certainly possible. Also, this study did not look at ancillary effects of posting activity such as people Unliking a page, nor did we consider the sentiment of the response. However it was observed quite consistently amongst the brands in our study that increased posting levels were sustainable without a drop-off in total response. The overall impact of Posting Frequency is hard to judge, and is best analyzed on a case by case basis. Given that Response Per Day and Response Per Post are important we have calculated a Response Score that is a weighted average of the two. The overall Response Score does show a consistent drop-off in response with posting frequency. This is a warning that over-posting does have consequences, however the relatively modest rate of the drop-off gives brands an opportunity to perhaps post more frequently than they thought.
Our overall advice to brands is:
Track Social offers enterprise clients a customized analysis of Facebook Engagement as well as many other aspects of social media performance. For more information, and to apply for a free assessment of your brands posting patterns, go here. Stay tuned for the next article in our series, which will look at additional variables that impact Facebook Engagement. To sign up to receive alerts for our Facebook Engagement series, learn more about our methodology and more, go here. |
| The Art of Opening Social Conversations Posted: 30 Jun 2012 07:00 AM PDT
Successful social media engagement is about more than content. It's also about communication – the ways in which you initiate, nurture and conclude conversations with others about your content. And yet, this second part of the engagement puzzle rarely gets talked about. That's a shame, because it's the art of communication that can make your social media engagement ultimately flourish or flounder. "Let me show you to your table." In social media, you are much more than the wait staff at your brand's content buffet – you are also the maitre d'. It's your job to not only serve up information for audiences to consume, but also to nurture each person that walks through your virtual door and escort them to the next destination in the sales funnel. The way you do that is by opening doors in your conversations, wherever possible. For example, the following – while all effective, clear and appropriate responses to something posted in a social channel – are "door closing" statements …
Each of these responses says, "Yes. I have received your communication transmission, and am responding in kind." What they DON'T say is, "What else would you like to talk about?" It's as if your clients or customers had called you on the phone to tell you how awesome they thought you were, and you said, "Hey thanks!" and then hung up. In social media, your audience can't see that you're actually still standing there waiting for the next engagement volley. "Thanks!" pretty much says, "We're done here," so they move on. In order to get them to stick around, it's up to you to add cues or prompts to your initial answer to keep the conversation moving forward (now, or in the future). For example these are door opening comments …
What IF I HEAR crickets? Yes, in some cases, a door opener cue will not receive a reply in return. Not only are audiences not accustomed to companies ever asking them what's on their minds, many will not have their social channels set up to be notified of additional comments in a conversation thread. But that's no reason not to try. Although the resulting silence may sometimes make you feel like you're standing on stage, naked in front of a stone-faced audience, the reality is much more benign. In social media, people are used to the fact that sometimes conversations … just …peter … out. The last person standing usually looks more like an empathetic soul with an open ear than a social leper, from which everyone is running away. Also, just like the maitre d' doesn't seat every couple that walks through the door to the finest table in the house, you don't need to add a door opener cue to every comment you see in your social thread. It should feel and sound natural, and not all exchanges will provide that opportunity. But it's good to get into the habit of looking for those openings, and a skill that nearly everyone can stand to practice. Start by looking at your own social feeds and auditing your interaction to see how often you've been closing conversational doors. How might you have continued those conversations? What kinds of questions would feel natural for you to ask and what feels forced? Then, start to crack open some doors in your social conversations each day. I can't promise you that an amazing lead will always walk through them. But, I can promise you some will walk away if you never try. How are you opening up YOUR conversations? |
| Posted: 30 Jun 2012 05:25 AM PDT Some of the important factors we use to evaluate keywords include search frequency, buying intent, and competability (the ease or difficulty of achieving first page rankings). Hannah Howard has expanded on that list in a blog post over at LonghornLeads.com. Here are some of the factors she considers valuable.
I recommend Hannah's post to you for elaboration on each of the above suggestions. |
| Changing Your YouTube Login Account Posted: 30 Jun 2012 04:05 AM PDT A friend and client asked me awhile back how she could change the e-mail account associated with her YouTube channel. At that point in time, it still wasn't possible. However, when Google purchased YouTube and began merging the accounts together, they introduced a feature that allowed user to change the e-mail address associated with the account. This solved a host of other problems. For instance, if you created your channel before securing your domain, you couldn't update the channel before so that you were using an e-mail address from your domain. Or if the channel was created by someone who no longer works with your company, you had to keep their old e-mail address alive just to be able to access your channel. With the Google merge, YouTube did away with its own unique sign-in information, asking instead that you signed in using a Google account, or converted an existing e-mail address to a Google account. Now, you also have the ability to unlink your YouTube channel from one account and then associate it with another. This video walks you through the process. If you have any other questions you'd like Aleweb's help with, just post it in the comments below, and we'll get an answer for you shortly! |
| How To Ensure Your Best Photo Is Visible In Your Facebook Photos Box Posted: 30 Jun 2012 03:55 AM PDT
Don't you love it when you take a good photo, someone tags you in it, and then THAT photo is in your Facebook Photos box? I know…me too! Don't you hate it when someone tags a crappy photo of you, and then THAT photo is visible in your Facebook Photos box? I know…me too! In this post, I will show you how to control which photo is visible in your Facebook Photos box. But I know what you're thinking… "Wait a minute, Dino. Why can't I just remove the tag?" Well, you could but that might be perceived as dickish. Here's What HappenedA buddy of mine, Kenn Bell, whom you might know as the amazing videographer/movie-maker of Hero Dogs of 9/11 fame, tagged me in a photo of his dogs. Now, I've met Kenn's dogs, they are a great bunch. Both Kenn and I just got back from BlogPaws in Salt Lake City, Utah; where Kenn screened his movie and delivered an amazing training sessions for aspiring vloggers. The picture had all sorts of BlogPaws swag, so it was definitely relevant. And to be quite honest, I was honored to be tagged with a couple of good looking fellas like Max and Remy. I mean, look at those faces.
So, I didn't want to remove the tag. But I didn't want that picture to be the one that's visible in my Facebook Photos box either. So, what's a guy to do? Last Hit, Not Best FitHere's how Facebook tagging works. The last picture in which you got tagged is displayed in the Facebook Photos box. So I wondered if I were to remove an older tag, from an older (but desired) photo, and then re-tag myself, will it appear in the Photos box? Sure enough. It did. So. All you have to do to make sure your best, most desirable photo appears in the Facebook Photos box, is remove the tag from an older photo which you want people to see, and then re-tag yourself. Done, and done :-) Win-WinI didn't have to be a dick. Max and Remy were happy. And if you go to my Facebook page, you'll actually see the picture of me which I want you to see, and not some random picture in which I just happened to be tagged last. Unfortunately, this will hold water only until someone tags you again. At which point -assuming you didn't like the picture- you'll have to re-tag an older photo all over again. A more permanent solution might be to learn how to pose for pictures Do you think you look better in real life than you do in photos? |
| Managing Social Media Will Become a Full Time Job Posted: 30 Jun 2012 03:50 AM PDT
I am a huge advocate of instilling into people that social media DOES NOT need to be a full time job in the beginning. And I stick by that. You can successfully build a social media presence in only a couple hours a day for the first few months. However, if you're doing everything right and building your audience, that audience will start to require a lot more attention. It's like the opposite of raising a child. The more a child grows, the less attention you need to pay to the child as they become more self-sufficient. But with social media, you pay less attention to it in the beginning and a lot more time as it progresses into something a lot more than you had ever imagined. Social media may not be a full time job in the beginning, but you will need to consider the possibility that it will become a full time job in the future. What will you do then?You have a business to run (assuming the business owner is the one attending to the social media, which is usually the case with small businesses), and you can't be spending ALL of your time on social media and ALL of your time on your business. It's just impossible. If your social media presence is growing larger than you had anticipated and it becomes difficult to keep up, it might be time to hire an on-site social media management team. This can be done in a few ways: 1. Simply go onto craigslist and put an ad out. This can be tricky as you may not know exactly what you're looking for. Sure you've been doing your social media up until now, but what about the future of your social media presence? What other skill sets should you be looking for? What sort of personalities and experience should you look for? 2. Search LinkedIn for an appropriate candidate. This can really narrow down the search as you can find specific profiles of people and see all of their skill sets right there on the screen without having to sift through a bunch of resumes that come through your email. But the same problem as above arises, what skills, education and personality should you be looking for? 3. Consult with a local social media firm to hire & train appropriate people. This is by far the best option. And I'm not just saying that because that's part of the services that I offer. =P When I was hired into my very first social media job way back in the day, our first week was spent intensely being trained by a social media specialist who didn't so much train us about social media, but trained us about the company, the products, the services, the culture and even helped create some awesome ideas for us to implement after she left. It was a wonderful experience and helped us prepare a lot for the future of our careers at the company. However you choose to hire a social media specialist, make sure that you know exactly what their skills are and make sure that you're using THOSE particular skills to the fullest. They don't have to be full time at first, either, they can be part time and move up to full time. Just depends on how large your community is getting and how much effort and time you'd like to spend in creating campaigns, videos, podcast, blog posts, etc in order to grow your presence even more. The Takeaway:When social media becomes too much for you to handle alone, instead of ignoring it and letting your community and online image suffer, take the plunge and hire someone. |
| Stuck for Something to Say on Social Media? Then Think News. Posted: 30 Jun 2012 03:20 AM PDT
We've all been there, sitting in front of our PCs, racking our brains for something to tweet about, a Facebook status update, something – anything – of interest to share with our Google+ circles. Uninspired and having wasted half an hour asking around the office or researching online for ideas, you're left with just a few options:
Imagine if you always had something of value to say…… a constant stream of interesting, entertaining and educational content that your fans and followers would share far and wide across the social space. That's where news content marketing comes inYou may not be familiar with the term 'news content marketing' but you will most certainly have seen it. It is the publication of commercially-neutral industry or topic-related news as opposed to news from within your company. For example, an IT company might publish news about the latest cloud technology or a leisure centre might publish news about the latest fitness craze sweeping the nation. So, why should your brand care?Well, other than the obvious benefits to your followers which include education, entertainment and adding genuine value to their lives, news content marketing is an exceptionally powerful way to help your brand thrive on social media:
Some interesting 'news' stats to leave you with…
To request a sample pack of news articles, click below: |
| Linkedin Enables Targeted Status Updates Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:30 PM PDT As of last week, you can now select a target audience for updates shared on your Linkedin Company Page. You can specify the audience you wish to view your update by company size, industry, job function, seniority, geography and whether they work in your business or not. Targeted Status Updates were previously tested in beta to a few Linkedin customers and are now available to all Company Pages, the video from their YouTube channel shows you how to use the new features. Do let me know if you notice any bugs or changes. Also in the news last week was HootSuite's announcement that company pages are now a part of their social media dashboard system, you can read the full announcement here on their blog. |
| Colonial Bungalows, A Collaborative, Crowdsourced Project On Facebook Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:25 PM PDT Someone rightly said 'Old is gold' and reminds us of it every time we pass by an ancient colonial building. We wish to stand and stare and let time stand still. But how long before it is razed to the ground only to be replaced with an urban multi-storeyed apartment or a hotel and lost forever? Fortunately, here is an individual who believes in preserving the beauty and charm of such century-old buildings (in a digital format), giving birth to 'Colonial Bungalows', a community-driven project on Facebook. The project is about capturing digital memories of these buildings and saving them for future generations. But can he help save these majestic bungalows? Sadly, no! "Saving these buildings from demolition is a very difficult act, time consuming and bereft with legality. It's not something that I can do full justice to. But what I can do is form a community of heritage lovers and document these beautiful residential colonial bungalows."
He is the multifaceted Kiruba Shankar who has always believed in the power of social media and it brings us great delight in sharing this grand initiative by him. On being asked 'Why Colonial Bungalows?', Kiruba expressed about his fascination with heritage buildings. "They have such an amazing aura. Old buildings add true character to our cities. They remind us of the time much before we were born. To see such magnificent, history-filled buildings being demolished really hurts. It's a shame to lose such beautiful landmarks. The most vulnerable are the colonial bungalows because they are usually present in a large plot of land. Just the ideal target for construction companies to build a high-rise building." Facebook being the perfect platform for discovery, conversations, pictures, stories, movements and more, seems to be apt for 'Colonial Bungalows'. However, there are more reasons for choosing Facebook. Kiruba truly believes that social media has a very important role to play in such projects which are spread across South East Asia covering India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Phillipines, Burma and Hong Kong. "Because of the wide geographical spread, it can get very expensive and very time consuming for one person or one team to document all the buildings. That's why it makes perfect sense to use social media as a way to rope in people who are passionate about preserving heritage and history in their respective countries." The use of social media in 'Colonial Buildings' is interesting. People tend to know their local places better and now armed with a camera and some passion, they can preserve heritage too, by contributing their photos and descriptions to the Facebook community page. "All the contributors will get access to post them directly on to the Colonial Bungalows Facebook Page. It's a true collaborative, crowd-sourced project. This is a pure non-profit venture. People who join in do so because they are not only interested but also want to contribute their bit." The first phase of the project will cover bungalows in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Bangladesh. Poised to be completed by September 2013, the findings of the project will be compiled in a coffee table book titled 'Colonial Bungalows'. Right now, it's only through word of mouth and people from Chennai, Calcutta and Bangalore have chipped in. The community has 55 members as of now and one can see that the Facebook wall is plastered with pictures of old, majestic buildings accompanied by descriptions of the building. More details on this project can be found here and these are the many ways one can contribute to this project:
Kiruba and team will soon reach out to people from different countries to spread the word but the most encouraging news now is that the Malaysian Tourism Ministry has shown interest in supporting the project! |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2012 07:40 PM PDT There was time when 'like' meant something. When I said that I like Nike, I meant that I have experienced the brand, felt all the associations and now have a favourable opinion of it. My opinion was backed by solid thought and genuine feeling. But along came Facebook and changed the entire meaning of the word 'like'. Marketers can no longer be sure whether their customers truly like the product or whether the word has entered urban slang where words no longer reflect their true meaning. But it has certainly not dissuaded them from clambering after 'likes'. And when it comes to companies, collecting 'likes' has almost become a hobby. The concept of 'like' needs to be understood first. It was designed as a means to display one's favourable opinion about pages, comments, photographs, movies and the like. So one could search and 'like' something, one could 'like' something in the course of browsing or one could 'like' something that was recommended by a friend. This last concept was especially a powerful one from a marketing perspective since it was a recommendation from a trusted source, an online version of word-of-mouth marketing. But unfortunately, it did not quite work out the way it still does in the offline world. There, it takes a great deal of effort to go about recommending something. And because of that, it carries value. In the online world, recommending has become easier. And so has 'liking' whatever has been recommended. But the 'likes' have little or no value. Think about it. Someone recommends that I 'like' his page. I don't care, but it's just a click of the mouse. So I go ahead and do it anyway. But what does it entail? Nothing really. Just another page I 'like'. Yes, I shall now start getting updates from his page in my feed. But so what? I don't have to read them. 'Like's have becomes just that. A click of the mouse. But there is no real motivation for me to act on my 'likes' for the most part. I may have my pet 'likes' (very few), that I do follow, but most of the others are simply hollow entries that at most add a little coolness factor to my profile. The battle for 'likes' is in many ways nothing more than a popularity contest. The company or personality that has the most 'likes' wins. But what exactly is the prize? There seems to be no way of monetizing these 'likes'. If you say that companies with large numbers of 'likes' will attract advertisements, think again. All in all, 'likes' are nothing but a feel good tool but one that doesn't offer any practical value. Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/5684115572/ |
| Optimizing Facebook Engagement – Part 3: The Effect Of Post Length Posted: 29 Jun 2012 06:15 PM PDT Size matters with regard to Facebook Engagement.People on Facebook are tired, busy, bored, hungry and utterly bombarded with a wall of chatter from friends, acquaintances and brands. They don't have more than a few seconds to glimpse a message, mentally shrug, and move on. Brands need to use every means at their disposal to catch people's attention, and draw them in. One method is using images – a picture is worth a thousand words and our previous article dramatically showed the benefits of Photo posting compared to other types of posts on Facebook. However, what matters equally dramatically is the length of the text message you include with your Post – be it a Photo, Video, Link or plain Status Post. We used the Track Social platform to analyze the effect of Post Length on response level. Smaller messages show a significant increase in response levels. |
| Eight Things to Consider When Optimizing a Limited Daily Search Budget Posted: 29 Jun 2012 06:00 PM PDT One of the toughest situations for a search manager is optimizing a campaign that is limited by a daily budget constraint. A budget constraint not only eliminates expansion opportunities, but can hinder the execution of popular optimization strategies. Today, we'll review eight optimization strategies to help you get the most out of campaigns that have limited daily budgets. As you will see, these strategies carry a common theme – removing portions of your campaign's traffic that perform worse than others. 1. Confirm that your campaign's delivery method is set to standard. The alternative is to set your budget delivery to accelerated, which means the publisher will not throttle your ads and you may end up depleting your entire budget within a few hours. We recommend setting your budget to standard to ensure your ads run throughout the day.
2. Check your ad scheduling settings. It's likely that not all hours of the day are created equal for your business – in other words, some hours of the day may convert better than others. If a campaign is being throttled, you have nothing to lose by reducing your bids or even pausing your campaign during non-converting hours. Most enterprise-class search platforms will provide recommendations as to when you should increase or decrease your hourly bids. Keep in mind that you'll want to use the correct data to optimize your campaigns in that way – Marin recommends using a Date-of-Click conversion rate metric to accurately measure the likelihood of your campaign converting based on when the click is initiated.
3. Location targeting is a great way to get more out of a budget-capped campaign – simply analyze the conversion rate of your campaign by region and remove the low performing cities or states. For example, a skiing gear retailer may find that Florida and Arizona perform poorly.
4. Device targeting is also an option to further refine your audience and increase the performance of a campaign that's limited by budget. Analyzing the conversion rate of the devices your users are using to access your site is often insightful and can be used to remove under-performing devices altogether, or break them out into their own campaign with a smaller portion of the available budget.
5. Adjusting your network settings is often a great strategy when your other options have been exhausted. It's possible that Google's search network traffic is less qualified than the traffic coming from Google's main search engine page. Analyzing your traffic sources can reveal a difference in conversion rate between the two networks. You can disable the partner networks in your campaign settings in order to funnel more of your daily budget to the higher performing network.
6. Adding negative keywords to block irrelevant or unwanted traffic is also an effective way to shift more daily budget towards relevant and converting clicks.
7. Decrease your bids on under-performing keywords. This strategy will allow you to stretch your budget by getting more clicks at a lower cost-per-click. 8. Shift your campaign budgets around. As an example, our skiing retailer has noticed that two of their top campaigns are currently budget capped. Unfortunately their quarterly budget is not extendable and they don't have any more dollars to allocate to paid search. Their Skiing Boots campaign is capped at $5,000 daily and performs at a 5.4 ROAS. Their Skiing Goggles campaign is capped at $7,500 daily and performs at a 4.9 ROAS. A simple yet effective strategy is to funnel budget from the Skiing Goggles to Skiing Boots campaign and monitor the impact of this shift in spend. If the ROAS for the Skiing Boots campaign remains the same with the increase in spend, these new campaign daily budgets could be a long term solution for driving incremental revenue with the same overall account budget constraint. The images used in this post are of the Marin Enterprise UI. |
| Why You Should Advertise With Facebook’s Mobile Sponsored Stories Posted: 29 Jun 2012 05:40 PM PDT
While many businesses have begun taking advantage of Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories for desktop, it appears as though they should be focusing on a different platform when displaying their ads. Earlier in June, Facebook started allowing advertisers to run ads exclusively on mobile devices. According to recent study by several of Facebook Ads API partners reported in TechCrunch, Facebook's mobile Sponsored Stories are getting over 13 times the click-through rates and earn 11.2 times the money per-impression on mobile compared to all of Facebook's desktop ads. This is all great news for Facebook and its investors, who after an unsuccessful IPO were worried that the social network might not be able to capitalize on the user shift from web to mobile. Given the limited physical space for advertising on mobile devices, the early success of its new mobile-targeted ads may signal that Facebook can convert on mobile after all. There are rumors that Facebook is working on a hyper-local mobile ad targeting product that would allow advertisers to target prospects using real-time data showing where they are at any given time. This would be extremely beneficial to local small businesses, however no such targeting product is in place quite yet. So what does this mean for marketers? Thanks to Facebook's large user base and robust on-site activity, marketers can now reach out to specific types of mobile users. Unlike other social media sites, Facebook allows marketers a deep level of ad segmentation options thanks to the data it's gleaned from user photos, wall posts, messages, and more. Here's an example. A recent Pew Research study found that 70% of smartphone owners between ages 18-29 have a college degree or at least some college. Let's say your business is selling to this demographic. Facebook's ad platform allows you to target users by mobile device, educational level and age group. Why not take advantage of their time spent on the social network to try and form deeper connections via Facebook Sponsored Stories? If marketers can provide the right amount of mobile advertising without taking over a user's content feed, it should make for some pretty successful campaigns. With the future of its mobile advertising model still uncertain, it will be interesting to see how much success marketers end up having with Facebook mobile advertising. If Facebook can stay out of trouble with its user base long enough to determine just the right balance of mobile ads to show, they should be able to not only withstand, but thrive in, the user shift from web to mobile. Image Courtesy of The Telegraph |
| A Good Executive Blog These Days is Hard to Find Posted: 29 Jun 2012 04:30 PM PDT "An old-fashioned manager sends a newsletter, a modern manager blogs", I recently heard someone say. Perhaps that goes for middle management, but to be honest I have not seen many successful internal executive blogs yet. Of course I have seen many enthusiastic attempts to start one, but I have also seen that they often died after a few months. I have also seen a couple of very nice blogs: A project blog. A VP's blog. From both examples it was also clear that they liked writing, and were quite willing to spend the time to create a nice story and share their experiences.
This leads me to some possible reasons why your executives are not exactly standing in line to get their own blog:
For those executives, an audio blog may be a good solution. I have known an executive who recorded a message with his Blackberry every week and had it posted to the intranet. They called it "John's weekly podcast" which made them all feel very modern. It was quick, easy and his employees liked it. With my limited experience of succesful internal executive bloggers, I would conclude these are two success factors:
There are more success factors mentioned, as well as reasons for failure. And you can even learn from celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. :-) But even if you are not an executive, you can start blogging and improve your career chances! If you have any successful examples from your own experience or interesting articles, please share! (Title inspired by the song "A good heart these days is hard to find" by Feargal Sharkey) |
We recently offered some snack sized options for 
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does not enable users to add a comment or message to the content they’re endorsing. If you create your own Facebook share link, you can provide your visitors with the option to customize their messaging around the content they’re sharing.
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When a brand posts twice a day, those posts only receive 57% of the likes and 78% of the comments per post. The drop-off continues as more posts are made in the day.
Having a keyword in the 
It turns that that Twitter got it right. There is a distinct roll-off in Engagement level beyond 140 characters. Though roll-off does begin before that point, the now traditional 140 character size limit is probably necessitated by the need to for Urls, Hashs and other references.
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