25 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community

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• Turn Your Employees Into Social Brand Ambassadors (FREE eBook download!)
• How to Approach Your Social Media Strategy
• Social Media Marketing: A Facebook Comparison
• The Real Value Of A Facebook Like
• Turn SEO Into Your Own Amazing Race
• The Future Of ‘Engagement’ In Social Media
• Social Media Marketing Strategy In 2012: How To Stay On Top
• Google+: Reports of the Social Media Site’s Demise Seem Greatly Exaggerated
• Insight into the Emerging Taxonomy of Social Media
• Can Pinterest Help You In Your SEO Efforts?
• Indian Brands Performance Report On Facebook (SocialBakers July Report)
• Stop Shouting and Start Listening to Your Social Media Fans
• Flipboard Is Changing Everything For Online Content Creation
• Social Media – Its about Time, Numbers and Working Smarter
• 4 Quick Tips for Video SEO
• Is Instagram the Next Big Thing for Businesses?
• Social Enterprise Software: $4.5B By 2016? (Part 1)
• Social Media is a Place, Not Just a Channel or Strategy
• Social Media’s Growing Role in Investor Relations and Corporate Communications
• Tupperware India Launches ‘She Can, You Can’ On Social Media
• Adding HTML Code to Your WordPress Page, Post or Widget
• Breaking the Proverbial Blogging Cherry
• Legal Marketing: Is SEO a Waste of Time for Law Firms?
• Tata Building India Needs To Rethink Its Social Media Strategy
• How to Increase the Effectiveness of Social Media Monitoring: Burberry case study

Turn Your Employees Into Social Brand Ambassadors (FREE eBook download!) Posted: 10 Aug 2012 01:52 PM PDT Employees make natural brand ambassadors because they're already informed on the ins and outs of your company. If you allow them to share in your social media goals and reward them for becoming a part of your voice, you'll be leveraging an untapped potential that's right under your nose. This is a chance to hone in on your employees' individual strengths and use them to your shared advantage, so get people excited by taking a personal interest and giving them the opportunity to participate in something outside of their normal job duties. Do you have any photo enthusiasts in the office? Give these people the responsibility of being the designated photo takers (If someone always has a camera, all of those great behind-the-scenes moments will be captured and shared). If someone on your team has great writing skills, give him or her the task of writing industry-related blog posts on behalf of your company. The key is to have a clear picture of your goals and an understanding of your team so that you can position yourself for success. In addition to gauging your employees' individual strengths, you should survey them in terms of how social media savvy they are. Then, you can group the people with similar levels of knowledge together in order to train them more effectively. It's a fine idea to start the web-gurus off with more advanced specifics, but you should teach the "newbie" group the basics of platform use before moving into what your company's specific social media goals are. Do you like the sound of using your existing resources to the very favorable outcome of reaching your social media goals, but don't know where to start? We've got you covered. Download our free Social Media on a Budget E-Book for a wealth of how-to's that will have your team up & running in no time. Find it here: http://exc.la/ebook

How to Approach Your Social Media Strategy Posted: 10 Aug 2012 01:35 PM PDT More often than not, businesses begin a social media campaign with the wrong expectations. Compared to traditional marketing techniques, this technology and these platforms are relatively new. As opposed to viewing it as a traditional market economy, it is helpful to view social media as a gift economy in order to understand how important the relationships that are crafted on these platforms are. According to a recent article in Harvard Business Review, in a traditional market economy money is given in an exchange for goods or services; however, in social media the focus has shifted to a relationships. People who participate in social media are there to develop their relationships with friends and family first and foremost, not to make transactions. Because of the way that these encounters that are cultivated, certain transactions are made based on trust and a genuine relationship. In order to get to that point however, businesses and brands must ingrain themselves within this social currency. As opposed to pushing products onto an audience, businesses must consider how individuals use their products and what would help make these interactions better. On the most basic level, social media is another channel for businesses to get their message out. There is an undeniably large audience on social networks, and for certain demographics, not being involved in social media can be a deterrent for consumers. Businesses involvement on social networks has become expected, as a way to learn more about the brand and develop a relationship with it. If this technology continues to progress and become more ingrained in our culture, a business that isn't willing to allow this kind of engagement will probably suffer. Beyond simply talking at consumers and giving them information, the next step in social media is to develop individual relationships with users. By doing so, brands and businesses have the ability to create brand ambassadors for their products and services. Users and fans are more likely to act on a recommendation from their friends than they are from an advertisement, which makes these relationships invaluable. The best way to be successful in social media is to develop a community for these individuals to connect with each other. Based on a general appreciation of one quality of a business or brand, users can engage with each other in a way that was lacking and now adds to their social experience. By filling this void, businesses strengthen individual relationships with customers while ingraining their business or brand in the community and its conversations. Although it is more work than a traditional ad placement or TV commercial, nurturing these relationships and earning the trust of users will reward a business beyond what was previously expected.

Social Media Marketing: A Facebook Comparison Posted: 10 Aug 2012 01:05 PM PDT The success of social media marketing, and Facebook marketing in particular, is very difficult to measure. Facebook does try to give you its own measure, by telling you how many fans a company has. But in social media marketing, the company with the most fans on Facebook isn't necessarily the most successful. We had a look at the Facebook pages of two of Ireland's biggest mobile networks, 02 and Meteor to see how their social media marketing activity compares to the response from customers. Both these companies target their products at the younger generations who see Facebook as a central part of their lives. And both companies invest a lot of time in their social media marketing campaigns. The first thing that strikes you in the comparison is that Meteor have a vastly superior number of fans, 91,806 compared to O2's 43,587. This shows that in social media marketing, overall market share isn't always a factor as O2 have a much larger share of the mobile market. Meteor's extra fans have, in part at least, been generated by their higher level of activity. Meteor average 1.3 posts per day, but O2 post only 0.5 times a day. Meteor also has a higher variety in what they post and post mostly photos. O2 on the other hand focus their posts on links. But all these figures, don't mean Meteor have the most successful social media marketing campaign. The success of social media marketing comes from engagement and O2 are way ahead in terms of engagement. While Meteor has a higher level of fan engagement in figures, their engagement accounts for 1% of their fans whereas O2 get engagement from 2% of their fans. The breakdown of this engagement is also interesting from a social media marketing perspective. Despite the lower level of engagement and less fans, O2 actually get more post 'likes' than Meteor, averaging 81 per post, compared to Meteor's 31. Both of these companies are successful in their social media marketing campaigns on Facebook. These figures don't definitively prove one company's marketing is better than the other. But it does give one clear indication. When it comes to engagement, quality of posts may be more important than quantity. And when it comes to social media marketing, engagement is vital. Many businesses are switching on to the opportunities of social media…not only for growing their online presence, but also for growing their business in general. Facebook Pages are now an essential part of an integrated online presence. Now is the time to audit your Facebook Pages using this comprehensive checklist of best practices and the associated success factors. Download your Facebook checklist now. If you would like a similar free report for your facebook page, simply email alex.baker@siliconcloud.com for details…

The Real Value Of A Facebook Like Posted: 10 Aug 2012 12:27 PM PDT [[NOTE: This article originally appeared on the blog for Masterminds – a full service advertising agency with a focus on brand integration and is reprinted with permission.]] Trying to qualify the value of a Facebook Like for a given brand has been shown to be an incredibly elusive and often frustrating exercise. An exercise many brand managers and marketing managers would say ends more often than not, in futility. Sure, having that large number of Facebook Likes is always great for the ego while standing around the water cooler with the brand managers and marketers – but what is the inherent value? What good are all these Likes if it doesn't correlate to increased revenue? Two recent studies have shed some light on what the value of a Facebook Like truly is: "The Facebook Factor" via Forrester and the "Power of a Like 2" the sequel to comScore's "Power of a Like" released last year. Each study examines the use of Facebook across several large, retail brands. Released earlier this year, "The Facebook Factor" takes a hard look at the impact of a Facebook fan on brand interactions for four very large, well-known brands: Best Buy, Coca-Cola, Walmart and Blackberry. Using the Best Buy results as one example, take a look at the startling difference between someone who Likes a given brand on Facebook vs. someone who does not: The dollar amounts above reflect the average amount someone who Likes Best Buy on Facebook will spend over the course of 12 months vs. how much who does NOT Like them over the same timeframe. So think about this… someone who Likes Best Buy on Facebook is going to spend, on average, over $200 more per year PLUS are nearly 100% more likely to recommend Best Buy to a friend or relative. I would say these are very telling statistics wouldn't you? Similar results were also seen across the other three brands in the Forrester research. As for the "Power of a Like 2" it's important to take a quick look back the original, the "Power of a Like" which revealed that Facebook Fans or Likes of a given brand, along with their friends, tend to be that given brand's best customers. The original study also pointed out that compared to the average Internet user, Facebook Fans are also heavy users of a brand's products. Ironically, the "Power of Like 2" also used Best Buy as one of their "test subjects" and their results were very similar to what Forrester uncovered, showing Best Buy Fans spend on average 131% more in Best Buy stores and online than those who are not Fans of Best Buy. Ok, So Now What? The quick-trigger reaction of some reading this will be to go out and try and accumulate as many Facebook Fans or Likes they can with the thought being 'the more the merrier' or more precisely 'the more the merrier we will be for we will sell more products!' But before you run out and instruct your social media managers to go forth and find any and all people to Like your brand on Facebook regardless of who they are –stop and remember what you learned in marketing class re: demographics. From the Forrester findings… "Profile and target your Facebook fans. Use demographics, marketing preferences, and online and retail behaviors to tailor your marketing strategy to them. Your fans are among your highest value customers — they spend more, and they are advocates of your brand. Target your customer retention marketing strategy to appeal to these valuable customers." Sources: Forrester, comScore, Masterminds Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review and a Top 50 Social Media Blogger by Kred, Steve Olenski is a freelance copywriter/blogger currently looking for full-time work. He has worked on some of the biggest brands in the world and has over 20 years experience in advertising and marketing. He lives in Philly and can be reached via email,Twitter, LinkedIn or his website.

Turn SEO Into Your Own Amazing Race Posted: 10 Aug 2012 12:00 PM PDT You probably read the news of our second BrightEdge SEO patent called "Collecting and Scoring Online References," which grants to BrightEdge the exclusive rights to the use of its proprietary "Reverse Index" of the web and novel ways to analyze organic search, social signals, and other data to optimize SEO strategies. Yes, that's a mouthful and I'll use the Amazing Race to explain, in plain English, yet another example of market-leading BrightEdge SEO innovation. One of the World's Most Grueling Races In the show, The Amazing Race, two-person teams race around the world, each team trying to beat out the other teams in an effort to win the big prize—a million dollars. The race is separated into different legs and teams must use strategy, skill, and speed to reach each pit stop before the other teams in order to avoid being eliminated. The team that reaches the pit stop first is awarded for their efforts with a prize such as a trip to an exotic destination. However, while winning a single leg is a great boost to a team's morale, the ultimate goal is to be the first to reach the final destination and win the money. This is not unlike the race your company undertakes when it comes to using SEO to win high ranking on search engines. Know Your Competition If you have ever watched The Amazing Race, you know that the race for a huge prize takes more than skill. A good team analyzes their competition – discovering what their weaknesses and their strengths are. Maybe one team is not physically strong or perhaps there is discontent occurring between the team members. Perhaps their age is a weakness or their lack of organization. Knowing this allows the teams to tailor their strategies to beat competition. A good team also analyzes their own skills so they know what's working for them and what needs improvement. Like the Amazing Race, winning the SEO race requires that you understand your competitors and yourself to the last detail – our patented SEO X-Ray does just that. SEO X-ray presents you with the tools to build your SEO advantage so that you can beat your fellow competitors. You will have the power to track your competitors and use that information to devise a plan that will push you ahead of the pack. Understanding your strengths and having the power to analyze what your competitors are doing gives you a clear advantage in this intense competition. SEO X-Ray Shines A Spotlight On Your Competition Imagine having the ability to see everything that you want to know about your competitors when it comes to SEO marketing. Knowledge is power and with this kind of information you can redefine your company's course on the SEO race. SEO X-ray is designed with the intent of showing you what you have never seen before—the strategies of your competitors. You can discover hidden gems of data and use these gems to take your competitors by surprise, turning the tables to emerge victoriously at the top where it really counts. Specifically, SEO X-Ray allows you to answer questions like: What are your competition's top-ranked pages? What are the target keywords? Do you track these keywords? If not, does it make sense to optimize your pages for these keywords? What are your competitors' backlink strategies? Knowing your competition at this depth helps you make really informed decisions on how you can win the SEO race. SEO X-Ray Helps You Reflect Upon Yourself, Deeply! Not only will you see your competitors in a whole new way, but you will also be able to look at your own company with a pair of fresh eyes. SEO X-ray reveals things about your SEO performance that you were not aware of before, bringing your company's strengths to focus. What keywords are you ranking on that you are not aware of? What pages are ranking for these keywords? Answering these questions uncovers your strengths and helps you capitalize on what is working well for you. Take Action All of the information that SEO X-ray gives you will not be of any worth to you without action . This means that you need to implement a marketing plan with this information, using it to formulate your next steps. Use our powerful workflow engine to help: Receive recommendations regarding optimization of keywords Create tasks to implement recommendations Add due dates Assign owners Make your competitive strategies pay off fast! Our Unique Patent SEO X-ray is basically a technology that gathers keyword information from the world's major search engines, providing you with an organic search footprint of your company and your competitors'. Similar to a search engine, it searches through terabytes of data to find keywords that rank high for your and your competition, and corresponding pages. With SEO X-ray you can redefine your amazing race and win the big prize of high search engine rank.

The Future Of ‘Engagement’ In Social Media Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:10 AM PDT As we discussed in last week's post (and indeed thank you all for your comments and 'engaging with me' here and on Twitter and elsewhere), the hype and excessive emphasis on engagement for social media strategies – to the exclusion of other necessary elements for brands both commercial and personal that need to focus on tangible results such as selling more or finding a job) is often overrated if not decidedly misplaced. Although in an ideal world we would love to be able to interact with customers and followers on a regular basis (at least those who want to interact back with us, since we cannot take for granted in any way that all of them desire to do so), in the real world and given the constraints in time and resources we are limited by, we need to be selective in our interactions and concentrate on those who matter most for the achieving of our goals. Now it is time for me to confess: I have kept an ace up my sleeve throughout this fascinating discussion. For unbeknown to many even within the confines of the Web 2.0, the nature of engagement is about to change forever thanks to the new promising social media applications and technologies that are going to allow us to extend the reach of our engagement with our communities of clients and followers beyond what seemed not only possible but probable until very recently. Just as with any other technological innovation (reading with the invention of Gutenberg's printing press in he XV century being an excellent example), it is not only the amount of engagement that will change but its very nature as well. In other words: once the implementation of new engagement-savvy apps and programs is felt across the board, engagement in the social media will never be the same again. Enter the stage ITweetLive, one of such tools already beginning to make itself heard in the Twittersphere that will serve to illustrate the nature of things to come. Some of the (at least on the surface) distinctive advantages that will allow for smarter, more focused, less time-consuming engagement with relevant parties include: Enhanced 'search' capabilities that will zero in on those people talking about our brand and our specific niche organized by geo and keyword targeting. The ability to create unified responses that would be duplicated and tested statistically among our audiences until the optimal one is found and the rest are discarded. This is referred to as 'A/B testing', following Google's famous tool Google Website Optimizer currently used by online marketeers everywhere. The possibility of 'bulk' actions and of making bulk messages and interactions seemingly personalized to their recipients. A chat widget that automatically generates a tweet when visitors type in the widget area and ensures we can interact (if we choose to) with those who desire to have a conversation with us in real time. Measuring the results and the ROI of our engagement efforts (in the case of Twitter: RTs, mentions, click-through rates and the like) with a tracking statistic, built-in platform to that effect. Seamless integration with two of the better-known online influence measuring apps – Klout and Peer Index – to help with the identification and targeting of the all-important influencers. It is hard to underestimate the impact that tools like ITweetLive will have in the way brands interact in the social media. And yet before we venture to embrace them and integrate them indiscriminatelly into our strategies, we should take heed of the wise words of American philosopher Ken Wilber: every new technology that seems pregnant with wonderful new opportunities at times hides some ugly dangers in its midst (as the case of nuclear power so poignantly proves). Engagement may be democratized and made available to companies and individuals of all walks of life in this way, but can standardized group messages be truly be referred to as 'engagement'? Will spontaneous and direct, non-app-mediated interactions become increasingly a thing of the past, especially given their mounting cost? And are we likely to witness a divide of engagement between the haves and the have-nots who can't afford to implement technological solutions of this kind? Be it as it may, ITweetLive and related tools are ushering in nothing short of a new era for the conversations and indeed relationships between brands and those who follow them. Time and numbers constraints may be about to be superseded through innovative and without question ingenious technologies, though a price to be paid in term of freshness and overall quality of the interaction remains to be seen. Stay put. Author: Oscar Del Santo is a lecturer, consultant, key speaker, blogger and populariser of online reputation and inbound marketing in Spain. He has been extensively featured in the Spanish and Latin American media and is included in the 'Top Social Media Influencers' and 'Best Marketing Tweeters in Spanish' lists @OscarDS. He is the author of 'Reputacion Online para Tod@s' and the co-author of 'Marketing de Atraccion 2.0'.

Social Media Marketing Strategy In 2012: How To Stay On Top Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:05 AM PDT Last month, Burson-Marsteller released their annual Global Social Media Check-Up. The study looks into social media adaptation of the Fortune Global 100 and acts as a guideline for social media marketing strategy. By understanding what the 100 largest global companies are doing on social media we can see what areas all businesses need to focus on in order to compete. This year's study provides a number of interesting results, and some clear trends have come through. So let's look at the key results and what that means for social media marketing strategy. Tweets on top One of the key insights to come out of the study was the level of interaction on twitter compared to other social media. The top global companies were mentioned over 10million times in one month, more than half of this interaction was on Twitter. Twitter has always been the most immediate of social engagement platforms. The simplicity of 140 character tweets makes it the ideal place for companies and customers to discuss topics of the day. A single tweet can set off plenty of interaction. So it's understandable that Twitter would be the place where most people talk. But more than 50% of the interaction, in a market that contains 5 big players, is a huge portion. Twitter is designed in a way that encourages interaction and these results show that a focus on Twitter is a requirement in every social media marketing strategy. Video on the Grow Another interesting insight was the growth in video usage by fortune 100 companies. YouTube is a platform that is often forgotten in social media marketing strategy, but it's becoming more and more important for the bigger companies. The study found that 79% of Fortune 100 companies have branded YouTube account, that's 50% more than last year. Companies have often cited a lack of interest as the reason they don't include YouTube in their social media marketing strategy. The common mistake was to assume YouTube was just for amusing little videos of cats playing piano. But this study shows that corporate YouTube channels average over 2 million views, which demonstrates that there is plenty of interest. And as video content production by big companies grows, it will become more and more relevant. You Need to be on All Platforms One of the basics of social media marketing strategy is that you need as much presence as possible. And this study rams home that idea. It shows that large companies waste no time in adapting to new social media platforms. The study shows that 48% of the companies have Google+ accounts. That's an impressive figure, especially when you consider that business pages were only launched 4 months before the survey. It also shows that 25% had Pinterest accounts in February. A large group considering Pinterest is a relatively niche market. The key lesson for social media marketing strategy is to ensure you stay up to date with emerging trends, because if you're not you could be left behind. Overall, the study clearly indicates a huge social media push by all of the biggest companies in the world. The fact that they are using so many channels to engage with their market, and that those channels are expanding, demonstrates that social media is becoming more and more central to all marketing strategy. Social media has been a great leveler for smaller companies. Because it allows direct interaction with customers, smaller companies have been able to use it to match their rivals at a fairly low cost. These trends demonstrate a big push by the larger companies, so it's important that small companies stay on top of their social media marketing strategy. Or get left behind. Have you taken the time to really get to know social media? There is so much more to it than just creating a profile, adding some photos, and updating your page every so often. Discover the benefits of social media, connect with your customers, engage with prospects, promote your products and services and market your brand. Click here to download our guide on getting to know social media.

Google+: Reports of the Social Media Site’s Demise Seem Greatly Exaggerated Posted: 10 Aug 2012 10:50 AM PDT Over the last month or two, there have been a lot of social media experts paraphrasing Mark Twain when talking about Google+. Of all the social media sites to challenge Facebook's dominance, Google+ is the best funded and was seen as the most likely to succeed. It's a year old now and most commentators have suggested that it has already failed. But recent customer satisfaction figures, released by Foresee, show that Google+ is way ahead of Facebook as well as other social media sites. People Use Facebook even though they don't Like it The problem for Google+, as well as the other social media sites, is that people use Facebook all the time. Even if they don't love it. In fact most people know at least one person who talks about how much they 'hate' Facebook, usually in a status update. What these results do tell us though, is that now Google+ is not only the best funded and most accessible of Social Media sites, it's also providing the most customer satisfaction. And no matter how much people use Facebook; if satisfaction continues to drop they will begin to look elsewhere. Google+ is the Most Accessible of Social Media Sites Of all social media sites, Google+ should be there to catch people who migrate from Facebook. Anyone with a Gmail account, 425 million worldwide according to Google, can turn that into a Google+ account with a few clicks. Add to that the fact that Google is building on the functionality of the +1 button and that Google's Android platform is the most popular mobile OS on the planet. None of the other social media sites have that many ways to access potential new users, even Facebook. Whatever way you measure social media sites, the only metric that really has Google+ behind is in volume of users. Admittedly that's a big one but with so much potential for growth, it's also the one Google+ are best set up to handle. Facebook may be the most popular of the social media sites. But as long as that popularity is in numbers and not satisfaction, Google+ will be waiting in the wings. Its 170 million users have been described as a 'virtual Ghost Town', but as long as those users are the happiest of any social media sites', its demise is a long way off. Social media monitoring is your ear to the world wide web. It enables you to find, evaluate, and listen in on the conversations that are important to you and critical to your business. Download our 10 Tips on monitoring social media white paper now.

Insight into the Emerging Taxonomy of Social Media Posted: 10 Aug 2012 09:45 AM PDT Aided in part by greater access to the Internet and mobile devices, social media usage continues to grow in breadth and sophistication. An interesting by-product of this growth, a social media classification system is emerging based largely on functionality rather than user demographics. Here's my take on how the major sites fit into the new social taxonomy, and what it means for your business. LinkedIn- A social network for networking, Linkedin has become the place for Internet users to form new (and bolster old) business connections. With over 175 million members in over 200 countries, it can truly be said that LinkedIn represents the single largest business networking resource on earth. LinkedIn is all about connections. People utilize past and present connections to grow their business network. These connections are often based on shared experiences, whether business or personal. For example, I may connect with an old high school mate in a different industry that I have never done any business with, or I may connect with a new contact I met at a recent networking event. The key point is that, regardless of the nature of the relationship, all of my connections on LinkedIn have a business context. I haven't connected with my old high school mate on LinkedIn to chat about the good ol' days (I can do that on Facebook); I've connected because I think the relationship may serve a direct or indirect business purpose, either now or sometime in the future. Twitter- Whether used for business or personal, Twitter is all about real-time communication. With Twitter, businesses can share content with followers via the real-time tweet stream. This could be informational, promotional, or entertaining in nature; the unifying factor is immediacy. Twitter is concise (140 character limitation) and non-visual. Because of this, many brands are utilizing Twitter as a real-time, quick and dirty inbound and outbound customer service solution. Businesses can offer immediate responsiveness to their client base by fielding questions, resolving complaints, and garnering feedback. Given the exponential nature of tweeting, Twitter is also great for business promotion. For example, if a company tweets information about a hot new product our service to their Twitter following, interested recipients are likely to re-tweet it to their followers, creating simple, cost-effective, and exponential promotional campaign. Facebook- If Twitter is real-time communication, Facebook is communication writ large. There are almost 1 billion Facebook accounts worldwide, with roughly 550 million daily active users sharing over 8 billion pieces of content each day (this content trove is growing at a fast clip: last year, Facebook had put daily content uploads at 4 billion). Facebook is all about people communicating and sharing- ideas, thoughts, updates, plans, notions, arguments, beliefs, photos, videos, links, written content pieces – in short, pretty much anything and everything. Its massive base, coupled with the sheer amount of content users upload to the site each day, is what makes Facebook so valuable. With all of this data, the social giant is able to offer unparalleled ad targeting to marketers. Facebook is still sorting out how it can most effectively monetize all of this data, especially given that the majority of users access the site via mobile devices. In time it will, though, and when it does, look out. Given this massive user/content base from which to draw upon, Facebook is great place for ad targeting. I don't subscribe to the notion that it is only good for businesses doing B2C. I challenge you to find many B2B marketers/business persons who do not have a Facebook account. This is relevant because in today's Internet, nothing is segmented. For example, if I am a buyer for Nordstrom, and a friend of mine likes a sponsored story about a cool new pair of shoes from a small company trying to find larger distribution, I'll probably check it out. I do buy into the mantra that Facebook fosters brand loyalty. People follow brands on Facebook because they either a) like the product, and/or b) are looking for a special discount, coupon, or promotion. Both are forms of brand loyalty- I seldom look for a coupon from a brand I don't like. Bottom line: (nearly) everyone's on it-our customers, your prospects, your dream clients. You need to be too. Google Plus (aka Google+, G+)- The Internet's anomalous social network newbie, Google+ has had a checkered history to say the least. As its multifarious spellings infer, Google + is a social network in search of an identity. Boasting 150 million active users (as disclosed by Google on June 28th), G+ seems to be emerging as a social business tool for marketing technology industry insiders and early-adaptor businesses looking to take advantage of its increasingly palpable SEO benefits. In a functional sense, it's almost like a Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest hybrid (highly-visual social-sharing news feed). Personally, I love Google+, mainly for the simplicity and convenience its full integration with Google's myriad services offers. That said, I have to admit it has a bit of a creepy "Where Have All the People Gone" feel, which is especially apparent when you look at the social share ratios of any major story on the Internet (ex: Facebook- 1005, Twitter-2342, LinkedIn- 983, G+- 27). It would be too easy to roundly castigate G+, if for no other reason that it represents (at least to date) a rare failure on the part of the (Google) Empire (they can't always be right…can they?). For my part, to do so would be disingenuous: I think Google+ is a great platform boasting a lot of cool functionalities that other social sites (Facebook included) simply do not have. Besides, it's one of the few spaces left in the social media sphere that does not have random paid ads littering the user interface (granted, it does show ads anyone in your circles have "+1-ed, but you're supposed to like that, as they are recommendations from friends and family, etc; apparently Google has not met my friends and family). Pinterest- Collaboration and affinity- two words I would use to describe Pinterest. Based on shared affinity, people from all over the globe collaborate to "pin" pictures and videos on virtual pinboards. In this way, Pinterest is different than any other major social network. Whatever its doing, it's working. The social pinning site has seen meteoric growth- from 700,000 users just last year to 20 million today. The site accomplished this without being full open to the public: until just a few days ago, Pinterest was an invitation-only site. Pinterest is all about visual connections. The rabid enthusiasm of its user base suggests that visual truly is a more emotional medium. The fact that 1 in 4 consumers are spending less time on other social sites in favor of Pinterest underscores this point. Moreover, the majority of consumers are now using mobile devices to access social networks, and mobile favors visual. Brands are finding that a presence on Pinterest translates into sales. Roughly 25% of consumers reported purchasing a product or service after discovering it on Pinterest. And these aren't all women: a recent Compete survey found that that 37% of males bought a product or service after seeing it on Pinterest, as opposed to just 17% of females. Businesses need to take all of this data, and Pinterest, more seriously. I'm a firm believer that Pinterest should be in every marketer's mix; I even wrote a post about how to do it. YouTube- With over 800,000 monthly users uploading over an hour of video per second, YouTube is Google already has a top-performing social media network. As the world moves more visual thanks to the universal adoption of mobile devices, YouTube is more relevant than ever. For brands, YouTube is all about visual promotion and engagement. Businesses are using videos to entertain, inform, and of course, promote. eMarketer predicts online video ad spend will reach 3.1 billion in 2012, a 54% year-on-year growth.  Why the popularity? As Internet users become more accustomed to digesting video content on desktops, notebooks, tablets, smartphones, and now connected TV's (Internet-enabled televisions), marketers will flock to online video advertising to take advantage of its click-ability and measurability. Given the vast sea change in favor of all things visual/video, brands to get visual asap. This doesn't have to be a huge production. Begin by setting up a YouTube channel and sharing any video content you already have (promotional videos, etc). Grab a hand-held, or even your smartphone, and get creative filming video blogs (Vlogs), how-tos, interviews, anything. The hardest part is getting started. Marketing Takeaway Though it is still important for businesses to have a clear understanding of which social networks their target buyer personas tend to spend the most time on, I think the rules are rapidly changing. As social media becomes a more widely used and universally accepted form of communication, lines will continue to blur. Having said that, greater social usage is breeding sophistication, in turn, fostering an emerging proto-taxonomy of social media coalescing around usage patterns more than anything. In any given day, I may use LinkedIn to connect with business prospects, Twitter to share business news and insight, and Google+ to hold a virtual meeting (hangout); during my lunch-break (if there is such a thing anymore) I may log into Facebook from my smartphone and check out what's going on; later, while watching TV, I may spend some time surfing Pinterest; in bed, instead of reading, I may find myself watching YouTube vids. What is the bottom line for businesses? Given the integrated nature of today's social media usage, your brand should be on all of these sites, at least to the extent your resources warrant. For small businesses with limited resources, I suggest at least setting up a presence on all of these sites and engaging as you can, recognizing each site's functional strengths and weaknesses as they relate to your business. If I had to pick one site, it would still be Facebook, given its sheer reach and relative versatility (it's visual, has a news feed, strong ad targeting capabilities, a decent job app, etc). However, I'm a firm believer in the beachhead approach: establish a presence on all of these major sites, and add it each as time and resources allow. After all, as the old Finnish proverb says, "little is better than nothing."

Can Pinterest Help You In Your SEO Efforts? Posted: 10 Aug 2012 09:25 AM PDT Pinterest is a social networking site that is getting a lot of attention from people who are using the Internet. It uses the power of an online clipboard and will allow you to pin and create descriptions of any webpage/link to further enhance the way you describe them. There are a lot of people who are saying that Pinterest will allow you to get better SEO rankings, because it allows you to build links easily. However, there are also some people who are saying that it is not very effective, since it is now considered as one of the sites that are easiest to spam. If you are going to look at Pinterest, you'll see that it is a normal social networking site that will make it easier for everyone to share links. You don't have to spend a lot of time in finding the things that you need, and it will also be very easy for you to share it to people who are within your network. Aside from this, you will also be able to easily build links that are pointing to your site, giving you juice from a related topic that was posted on an authority site. This is the foundation of any SEO campaign, and most SEO experts would agree to it. However, the problem starts when Pinterest have decided to put "no follow" links and after they've been labeled as a site that can easily be spammed. Although Pinterest is doing something about it, the SEO results that you can get from it won't be as effective as they were before. It is still a good place for people who are doing SEO, but it should just be one of your options and not your focus. I believe that you can still get results from it, if you mix it with some other SEO methods. Since it is not that hard for one to pin webpages, I can still recommend it. However, if your niche is a bit more competitive, it would be better if you are going to focus all of your efforts on adding other methods that has more impact. This will give you better value for your time and will ensure that you will really get the best results from all your SEO efforts. Links are still a good foundation of search engine optimization, but you need to make sure that they will be coming from good and authority sites. Quality links will still help you get better rankings, and Pinterest can provide you with that, but not as effective as other methods. I would suggest that you talk to an SEO Service provider to find out more about the things that you can do in order to get better rankings and to minimize the time that you take in order to optimize your website for the web.

Indian Brands Performance Report On Facebook (SocialBakers July Report) Posted: 10 Aug 2012 09:15 AM PDT It's that time of the month when we share Social Bakers exclusive Facebook report that is yet to be published. SocialBakers, the social media analytics company has shared the social media report of the Facebook brand pages in India for the month of July,2012. What does the report say? 1. It's a known fact that more than 50 million Indians are on Facebook and India is one of the leading countries in the Asian continent. There has been a constant upward growth which places it in the number 3 slot in world ranking after US and Brazil. However, the bigger question now is – how many of them are real in the 50 million fans. The entire debate caught some attention when BBC did a research to find the reality behind 'likes' and subsequently Facebook stated that 83 million are illegitimate accounts. I wonder how many are from India? 2. The top 10 brands by number of fans have remained more or less the same for the last few months. Tata Docomo still is miles ahead with a fan following of 8.5 million, compared to the remaining 9 brands that are in the 3-4 million range. However, July saw a new entry to the list – Samsung Mobile India with 2.7 million fans. The entry comes as no surprise to me considering the parent brand Samsung being the official partner at London Olympics 2012. Samsung Mobile India is also leveraging the event on social media and is engaging with fans too. The below screen grab provided by Unmetric shows the growth of fans for the brand in the month of July along with people talking about the brand. The data provided by Unmetric also highlights that the brand had a higher growth rate (44.2%) when compared to the average Mobile and Handhelds Facebook pages. 3. The story remains exactly similar for "Top 10 media brands by number of fans" when compared with last few months. Barring the change in the numbers of individual media pages, the list remains same with the Facebook page, India ranking at the top followed by MTV India page. 4. "The top 10 brands by average engagement rate" has some new entries in the lists and I am overwhelmed to see an educational body like Amity University top the list. The institute which has more than 576K fans impressed me with its content and the engagement it is driving with it. Royal Enfield and Caprese are the two other brands that feature in the list subsequently. Royal Enfield 5. "The top 10 brands by daily page engagement rate" has new faces and Royal Enfield tops the list with BMW India following it quite closely. Royal Enfield, the official community of Enfield lovers has a strong community of 17oK strong community impresses me with its content. According to Unmetric, the brand had 628 posts on its wall of which 596 were contributed by the fans. The brand also scored well in the Sentimental Analysis data with only 20 negative posts out of 502 posts. 6. As we know that Social Bakers had launched a new set of analysis to find out how socially devoted are brands on Facebook. The new set of analysis looked into how open are you with your fans by keeping the Facebook wall open. Other factors that are considered are how well you respond to questions and what is the response time to the queries made by fans. Nokia India tops the list of Top 5 Socially Devoted Brands for the moth of July. Rest of the four brands are the big telecom giants followed by Ecommerce giant, Flipkart. Airtel which was at the top last month is still in the list. Besides, its good to see Flipkart hanging around which is known for its quick response both online as well as offline. What do you make of this report? Do share your thoughts with us.

Stop Shouting and Start Listening to Your Social Media Fans Posted: 10 Aug 2012 08:30 AM PDT I know you. You're spending all of your social media marketing budget on promoting your brand, products, and services; that's fine except you've either forgotten — or never knew — that social media is a two-way street. It is. And, something you also didn't know: social media is two-thirds defense and monitoring — listening — and only one-third promotion and publicity — speaking. Most marketing folks not only don't get PR but they revile it; sadly, this is what social media is, no matter what you call it: public relations, all aspects of it: publicity, of course, but also crisis management! A social media crisis almost always begins as a customer support call and generally escalates slowly and then exponentially, generally because a customer doesn't feel heard, doesn't feel responded to, doesn't feel appreciate, or doesn't feel respected. And the truth generally has nothing to do with any of those things (at first) though both sides can easily become very heated. The truth most often has more to do with "not hearing the knock at the door," "not hearing the phone ring," — not noticing they're there. And that Mr. Nobody, that real nowhere man, need not be a sniping, paranoid, lonely, nebbish, either. That person may very well be Chris-Frigging-Brogan himself! Yesterday morning, Chris Brogan reported his terrible experience with NMTW Community Credit Union. Though now resolved, let me summarize: Chris lost track of an account at NMTW, one of his many bank accounts, which had drained and been empty or negative for only a couple weeks. NMTW automatically closes account after 15 days. Chris was a 20-year veteran of this bank and reached out via the info@ email and then took to Facebook. You lost a 20-year member today. I emailed your info@ email address to forward the reason why to your president. Wishing you better in the future. Long and short of it, he received a form mail: NMTW takes pride in its member service and we strive to add value to everyone's day. We regret that in your situation we were unable to assist you any further at the time of your branch visit. NMTW would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention and in doing so will prevent similar events in the future. At first, Chris sent an email to the company using the only email he could find; then he reached out, gently, using the only other point of contact he had with his favorite community credit union, NMTW, because it mattered to him. Finally, a response! But not a response to his terse Facebook wall post, a copy-and-paste form response (rule one, never copy-and-paste responses, ever). I didn't ask Chris but I bet you he was pretty bemused by everything up to this point, though indignation has probably been building. What got him was the fact that the Facebook response was out of sync with what Chris wrote on Facebook — was completely deaf to his comment — but that he was shut down. That his comment reached a dead end. What Chris expected — demanded — (and what I demand as well) is that Chris' and my ping via email, form, Facebook, or Twitter actually goes somewhere. And, in this case, Chris was completely explicit as to where, "forward the reason why to your president." He expected, rightly, that there was a direct path — a stovepipe — that runs from the social media dashboard that NMTW uses in their Social Media Command Center directly all the way up to El Presidente. Rightfully so. Everyone who consumes social media expects that. We have been trained to. We don't expect that when we call an 800 customer support line, but we do expect satisfaction when there — or can be — witnesses. On a phone, tarring-and-feathering and stocks in the village square aren't even worth it, but on Facebook and Twitter, there's nothing to lose. Every altercation can be a bona fide "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" moment! So, if you're going to dance with devil — with social media, naked and covered with tar and feather in stocks at the very center of the village square, you had better spend at least two-thirds of your time, resources, and respect making sure you're not missing very important conversations — listening — while you're spending way too much of your time pitching, selling, marketing, promoting, hawking — speaking — like some itinerant peddler. You're better than that. Right?

Flipboard Is Changing Everything For Online Content Creation Posted: 10 Aug 2012 08:05 AM PDT I first told you that Pinterest redefined social media from being mostly text to being mostly photos, illustrations, graphics, and infographics. Now, illustrating your content is not just preferable, it's mandatory. Facebook, Google+, and Twitter have become much better at following links and automagically populating your shares with photos, videos, titles, and teasers (instead of just making your Bit.ly links hot); aggregator sites such as The Huffington Post and link-share and social bookmarking sites also spider the link, proffering a selection of images to choose from to be associated with each submission. If your goal is to be shared or read and you're participating in social media in order to further your personal or corporate brand, then blog, tweet, Facebook, Tumbl, and Posterous without illustrating that content with a photo, chart, illustration, pull-quote, logo, portrait, or infographic at your own peril. I have sort of known this for years, especially since I share like crazy. I knew that digg and reddit always looked for an illustrative graphics file every time I would submit a link and I knew that Facebook and Twitter would even give me the option of choosing which photo would best define my thousand words — I knew that. But it wasn't until I heard that Flipboard had really grown up and matured to include Google+ and Instagram — as well as rich-content like in-line podcasts and videos — that I took another look and my hat blew off! And I bloody love it (and I get why you all have loved it forever, but I was very old school and did my reading via Google Reader on the web and Reeder on my iPhone). Flipboard is an app for smart phones and tablets. Until recently, it only offered apps for iOS devices but it's now Android-friendly. It takes all your own personal social media walls and streams and mashes them together with breaking news, sponsored content, topical content (you can choose from a dozen topics, including Fashion, Style, Design, Technology, Entertainment, etc), and my very mature and awesome collection of RSS news feeds via my Google Reader and reformats and displays them to look very much like an eBook or digital version of the New York Times, Wired, National Geographic, or whatnot — rife with illustrations, cover stories, pull quotes, and panoramic photos. It is really mesmerizing. Now my Klout score is going through the roof because reading content from the 12k folks I follow on Twitter and the 4,800 I follow on Facebook and on Google+, and the thousands of feeds I have imported to Google Reeder is a morning breeze! I love it. I am engaging more, I am listening better, I am missing less, and I am generally entertained. I am finally doing what I said that you should do: listen 80% and talk 20% (who has the time, right?) I have been paying attention to my reading habits, too. And I am drawn to pretty things: embedded video content, audio content, infographics, photos of pretty girls, photos in general, scenics — actually, I am almost only drawn to content that has an associated visual element. It's impossible not to be drawn to these rich-content posts because Flipboard always gives them at least a quarter of the page but often gives closer to 1/3 to half the page — even for content that is brief. A good, high-quality, high-resolution image always gets you better visibility as simple tweets or Facebook posts without a visual component always just gets pulled together into a list to the side, crushed together with all the other text-only tweets. Links to other articles with visual content also works because Flipboard populates your Twitter RTs with the destination's graphic elements as well as makes it simple to read that target content inline with the Flipbook app — very seamless and also very easy to share, retweet (so, in many way, the very best solution is to Facebook, tweet, and G+ longer-form content that, itself, is well-illustrated with photos, videos, infographics, or attractive people. One piece of advice for all the jerks who only share content teasers on their magazines or blogs, requiring me to leave Google Reader or whatever reader I am using and head off to your site, you had better put that illustration at the top because if it is below the "more" link, it won't be of much benefit to sites like Flipboard and the other aggregators — though I hate that tactic, I understand that you have an ad revenue model and that you really would love to control the conversation a little bit more and maybe get some new readers and maybe a few comments — I get it, I get it. That said, heed my words and make sure there's at least one photo of Lindsay Lohan before the "click to read more" link — otherwise, you'll not only lose me but quite a few others — who can resist good dirt on Miss Lindsay? Since I am trying to relate to my friends on Flipboard, I try to slow down and read the naked tweets and Facebook posts that are just lonely, lonely, 140-character blobs — but if I were less in love with my friends, I would really just blow all of those off and, instead, just dance around the colorful expanse of the nicer, kinder, prettier world of the illustrated web. Mind you, that's just me — but I tend to do all of my best cultural extrapolation with just the one data point: me. Even so, if you really want to draw the attention (and clicks through, reads, Likes, stars, favorites, retweets and shares) from your readers, use a picture.

Social Media – Its about Time, Numbers and Working Smarter Posted: 10 Aug 2012 08:00 AM PDT As I work more and more with social media sites, I am learning a few things: Time I don't have enough time to connect with people on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare, etc I don't want to spend all my time on social media sites. I can connect better on some sites than others (More about Twitter) Numbers On Facebook, I don't need to feel the need to connect with a billion people. – My company page has almost 800 people. These are the only people who have a chance at seeing my posts. On Linkedin – More people connect with me personally, 2,000 connections than my company page 130 connections. These are the only people who can view my posts, unless they are shared via groups. GooglePlus – I can connect with about 1,000 people at the present time, if even half of those people are on the site. On Twitter – I can connect instantaneously or through various advocates if I have the right connections (More about Twitter) Work Smarter This past month, I have noticed a number of people who have announced their intentions to leave a particular social media platform because it does not fit into their mix anymore. I think this will be a trend across the board. People need to get smart and discover for themselves what is working and what is not working. For me its about finding platforms that work and where people connect with each other. The goal here is brand awareness and readers. I want people who are interested in "change" and who want answers to their questions. I want to also discover new ways to solve my own initiatives. People are smart and content and communication is going to have to improve. Information is the new competition – Are you providing and receiving great information? If you are, you are finding success on social media platforms. – You Blog Site plays a critical role in this transformation. I have decided to spend more time on certain platforms rather than spread that same time out across other platforms. This is where Twitter comes in. Twitter Twitter is where I will continue to spend the majority of my time both personally and professionally. I can reach a targeted audience with more efficiency using search and hashtags. In addition, I can also connect deeper and follow these people closer using tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. For me, it is the platform which I can get the most return on my investment regarding time and numbers. Other Social Media Sites As far as the other platforms, I am not ready to abandon them. Each one has its own qualities. I talked a little bit about Facebook this week. Google+ has SEO value from Google which cannot be ignored and I really want to find ways to make Linkedin work more and more. Find 1 or 2 items that work and focus on those items. Minimize your time and keep listening for new ways to possibly improve. However as stated above, we only have so much time, and in today's world you need to maximize your time the best way that you can. These are my thoughts! – Where are you at with respect to using social media effectively to gain new clients and serve your current clients? Picture via Phash

4 Quick Tips for Video SEO Posted: 10 Aug 2012 07:30 AM PDT Video is one of the most effective ways to send out a particular message across the Internet. A short video has the ability to encapsulate all of the information a business owner wishes to give to potential customers. As more people go online, business owners want to be able to reach as many people as possible. This makes video the ideal medium to achieve this aim. It is no wonder video sharing websites like YouTube, Vimeo and others have become so popular. However, millions of videos have been uploaded to these websites. In order to stand out from the crowd, video SEO is important. The following video SEO tips will help people find online videos more easily. Optimize videos on video sharing websites Millions of videos are uploaded to video sharing websites every week. Millions of people view these videos every week too. In most cases the videos are viewed through video sharing websites like YouTube, Vimeo and a range of other similar websites. When they are being uploaded, certain information is required. Most of these video sharing websites require a title, description, category and tags for a particular video. These elements of a video upload are extremely important for SEO purposes. The title, description and tags should all contain relevant phrases or keywords which closely match the content of a video. They should also include the most popular words and phrases used to find a particular video for a service or product. If this is done properly, a video will be easier to find through a video sharing website search box or through a search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo! Optimizing a video on a business website Website capabilities have advanced in recent years. Blogs and content management systems have a wide range of sharing and SEO facilities. This means it is much easier to add videos and related content. Combining other content like text and images, along with optimised titles and the use of relevant keywords, is another effective way to optimise videos. It also acts a link back to the original video if it has been uploaded onto a video sharing website such as YouTube. Sharing videos Linking to a particular video is another way to improve video SEO. Each link counts as a vote for the video which is being linked to. This in turn, means it has more of a chance of getting to the top of search engine searches for a particular phrase or keyword. However, in recent years artificial linking has been penalised by many of the top search engines. In order to encourage natural linking to a video, it is important to promote video sharing. If a video is entertaining, educational or serves a useful purpose, it has more of a chance of going viral and being shared and added to other websites. Each time it is added to another website, this counts as a link back to the original version of the video and has huge SEO benefits. Becoming more social Sharing a video in the past was sometimes difficult. However, the development and popularity of social media websites has transformed the way people interact and share content on the Internet. Sharing and embedding a video is now an easy process. In most cases it simply involves copying and pasting a short snippet of code. This code includes a link back to the original video source. This once again has a huge SEO benefit for the original video webpage.Video is one of the affordable and effective ways to communicate with an online audience. However, with millions of videos now available online, simply uploading a video is not enough. It has to stand out from the crowd. The most effective way to do this is through video SEO. Making it easier to share and use on other website also increases the likely hood of more people viewing a particular video. Rajeen Shah from Market Appeal is a link building enthusiast, with mastery of blogger outreach, negotiation and cat herding. Raj has over fifteen years IT experience, can administer a Linux server blindfolded and has spent the past six years dedicated to online marketing. Image Credit

Is Instagram the Next Big Thing for Businesses? Posted: 10 Aug 2012 06:00 AM PDT When Instagram was first launched in October 2010, it was seen as yet another photography app for teenage hipsters. Since then, Instagram has acquired more than 30 million users and is on course to reach 100 million users by October 2012. In comparison, it took four years for social networking giant Facebook, which recently bought Instagram for $1 billion, to reach the same number of users. For some, that is an indication of just how big Instagram is becoming. But how can businesses benefit from this fast-growing app? Firstly, what is Instagram? Instagram is a free photo-sharing programme that allows users to take a photo, edit it, and then share it on a range of social networking services, including its own platform. Many big businesses are now using Instagram, including Pepsi, Burberry, Redbull and Starbucks, and the site has become popular worldwide with users from the Philippines, France, the UK, USA, Australia and Canada, to name a few. With the proliferation of hand-held devices, busy people are increasingly opting for visual content to consume on the go. There is no doubt a photo is likely to have a stronger impact than text because of its visual, easier-to-consume nature. This principle was demonstrated by Twitter introducing photos and Facebook creating "Timeline" to make its profile pages more graphic. How can businesses tap into Instagram? Instagram should be seen as an opportunity to reach out to potential clients on a more personal level. It is interactive, allows you to tell your brand's story in images, and encourages customers to feel connected and loyal to your business. For example, how was the business started? What do you do? What are your views or instituting principles? As the saying goes, a photo tells a thousand words so instead of boring prospective customers with lengthy descriptions, why not tell your story through photos? Jewellery company Tiffany & Co often, for instance, posts behind-the-scene photos of the jewellery-making process to give customers an insight into how their favourite adornments are produced. This makes the customer feel more involved and therefore, more likely to buy. Product-offering businesses can use Instagram to present their products and build brand loyalty but that is not to say that Instagram is solely for B2C companies. Some B2B organisations, such as Salesforce, have also been seen to harness the photo app effectively. For example, Salesforce promoted their Dreamforce X event by posting 7 reasons why you can't miss Dreamforce X in pictures, in the hope that they would attract industry attendees. By mentioning A-list guest speakers, such as Sir Richard Branson, they have successfully stirred up interest in the event, which is due to take place in September. What can Instagram be used for? Like Twitter, Instagram uses the hash-tagging function which allows your business to find people who add photographs related to your brand. Blogger 'Social Wayne' observed that people were already posting photos of brands even as Instagram was in its early stages. Hashtags make tracking these people and businesses even easier, and can start trends based around your business. You can also hash-tag words or phrases to increase your chance of being found, for example #SEO. Another benefit of hash-tagging is that it allows you to create an RSS feed of your Instagram photos. Since not all your customers will have an iPhone (note that Instagram has only recently become available to Android smart phones), incorporating the feed into your company's Facebook or Twitter pages is a good way to keep users in the loop. The key is building a loyal brand following that wants to see your Instagram content, whether or not you are trying to sell something. As we saw in the Salesforce example, Instagram can be used effectively for marketing upcoming events. Posting a photo allows your business to tell the world about an event in a more creative way than text alone does, and Instagram gives you another platform to share your brand content on, aside from your existing social networks and your website. Photo contests are yet another creative way to stir up interest about your business. You can ask users to take a picture of your product or send in their favorite original photos related to your service. Alternatively, you could run a "caption contest" and upload a photo of your own. For example, General Electric ran a competition to find its next photographer, in which followers were asked to submit photos hash-tagged #GEInspiredMe. 4000 photos were posted and then put on Facebook where fans voted for the winner. This not only allowed GE to attract fans involved with several social platforms, but also managed to get people excited about turbine engines (which, admittedly, is no easy task!). Although Instagram may still be a novelty in the marketing world, it is fast gaining popularity among UK consumers. Experian Hitwise recently found that it is the 10th most visited social network in the UK so savvy businesses recognising the value of being where their clients and customers are, should stand up and take note. With the ever-growing usage of mobile social sharing apps, Instagram may well soon become one of the must-have tools in the business marketing arsenal. The key to Instagram users' hearts and minds will then lie in finding ways to deploy it with the precision of an archer and the creativity of an artist!

Social Enterprise Software: $4.5B By 2016? (Part 1) Posted: 10 Aug 2012 05:10 AM PDT According to a recent report from IDC, social enterprise software will grow from $800 million in 2011 to $4.5 billion by 2016. Despite Facebook's greedy IPO last May, and disappointing Q2 results from both Facebook and Zynga, social enterprise software is doing fine.  Six of the sixteen M&A transactions in the sector during the past 2.5 years occurred since Facebook's IPO.  These six transactions totaled over $2.5 billion, with $1.2 billion coming from Miscrosoft's Yammer acquisition last month.  What is even more interesting is that enterprise software mega-vendors (Oracle, Microsoft, and Salesforce) plus Google drove these acquisitions. Social enterprise software is only now entering its rambunctious adolescent years.  The McKinsey Global Institute recently published a report placing the 'annual value that could be unlocked by social technologies' at up to $1.3 trillion.  See chart on the right for the distribution of those benefits.  While one can argue whether this figure is realistic, few will argue on the overall potential. In addition, McKinsey highlighted that 'realizing such gains will require significant transformations in management practices and organizational behavior'.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, people are the weakest link. The emerging Social Enterprise Software stack The chart on the left represents my depiction on the social enterprise software stack – it looks messy because it is.  The colors represent how mature (i.e., commoditized) each sub-sector is.  In general, I expect to see more innovation from the less mature sectors over the next few years.  At the same time, the more mature sub-sectors will consolidate much faster. So here are my observations: Enterprise software vendors signaling importance of the market:  While their approaches may vary, by now all enterprise software mega-vendors (Adobe, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and SAP) have either built and / or acquired social capabilities.  This is a strong indication that, despite the hype, the social media transformation will only accelerate in the coming years. The platform wars are only beginning: In addition to the acquisition spree, pure-plays are also expanding across sub-sectors with the intent of becoming true platform / suite players (e.g., Engagement vendors entering the Monitoring / Analytics and Integration sub-sectors, Campaign vendors entering Engagement, Community / Collaboration vendors building Gamification capabilities, etc.).  My depiction maps companies to a specific sub-sector based on their core competitive differentiation. Most companies today will claim they play across multiple sub-sectors, but few do well. User experience becomes a key competitive advantage: As I have argued before, user experience will separate the winners from the losers.  The consumer web has fundamentally changed enterprise users' expectations.  As a result, companies stuck in the old paradigm will be left behind. Emerging sub-sectors driving innovation: When Jeremiah Owyang from the Altimeter Group published his perspective on the stack in 2010, there were no Profiling or Gamification companies present.  Today, companies in these sub-sectors are driving much of the innovation. In closing, I want to ensure my views on market maturity are taken in context.  According to IDC, this sector will grow by 42% each year over the next 4 years.  I do not believe there is any other enterprise software sector coming even close to this figure. What do you think?  Do you believe IDC’s predictions?  Do my observations reflect the state of social enterprise software today? I will provide more details for each sub-sector in the next installment.  In the meantime, your input and feedback is, as always, welcome.

Social Media is a Place, Not Just a Channel or Strategy Posted: 10 Aug 2012 04:40 AM PDT This past week, Alisa Phanchalad wrote an article on Business2Community reminding marketers that Social Media is a channel, not a strategy. The author emphasized that social media must be integrated with multiple marketing channels as part of a broader strategy. The author went on to say that the more channels you add, the more likely your strategy is to succeed and not fall over, similar to a table and its legs. Alisa has brought up many good points, but we would like to add to her story in order to paint a better picture of where we believe that the future of social media is headed. Adding more channels just for the sake of doing so will not necessarily increase the success of your marketing. The quality of the channel must be taken into consideration, especially when trying to engage and reach as many members of your target market as possible. Brands need to understand their target market's media consumption behaviours. Are they 18-25 year-olds who spend hours socialising and shopping via their smartphones and no longer watch television? If so, then an above-the-line television campaign will do nothing to further your marketing efforts. A brand can spend thousands of dollars across multiple channels but may only see results from half of them if they are not carefully chosen. However, it is important to integrate your marketing communications for a synergistic effect. MePlease believes that social media is soon to be more than just a channel but a place. Unlike traditional media such as TV, Radio, and other ATL, consumers are spending many hours of their lives "living" online on social media platforms and performing a lot of their activities on them as well. Consumers are continually sharing as they shop, research, listen to music, watch movies, and socialize. AMEX has leveraged the fact that many of their customers live on social media by introducing AMEX Sync (Amex Go Social and Link>Like>Love), thereby rewarding customers for their online social behaviour and providing value for merchants. We also really like Shopycat as an example of a social place. It analyzes your Facebook friends’ likes and dislikes and recommends gifts for you to purchase through Wal-Mart’s app on Facebook.

Social Media’s Growing Role in Investor Relations and Corporate Communications Posted: 10 Aug 2012 04:40 AM PDT Though Gibson Guitar entered into an "agreement" with the federal government earlier this week, the company was immediately clear it was not going quietly into the new arrangement. Within hours of inking a deal with federal authorities, Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz had a few words to share with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service – and anyone else in the wired world that was interested in listening. Juszkiewicz didn't mince words when he spoke of Gibson being "subject to two hostile raids on its factories by agents carrying weapons and attired in SWAT gear." Nor did he share his thoughts in a 45-second story on the evening news or a subdued interview on Sunday morning (or even Sunday night). Instead, he released his statement via Twitter, and supported it with every word of the government's agreement so that "anyone can independently draw their own conclusions." In case Twitter followers and interested readers couldn't intuit for themselves the taste of bile that Juszkiewicz was choking back in his statement, Gibson also included a few Q&As to further illustrate their position and give reporters additional "color" for their coverage: Q.3. Wasn't the Government's conduct here, with its armed raid on your headquarters and manufacturing facilities, so outrageous and overreaching as to deserve further Congressional investigation, just calling a spade a spade? A.3. I don't retreat from any of my prior commentary, but I am gratified that this resolution puts the matter behind us. We are a forward-looking company hoping to move our business ahead in an environmentally forward-thinking way. As far as I can tell, approximately 150 news sites and bloggers picked up this particular question … pretty impressive results. Gibson certainly isn't the first company to turn to social media to advance a position or address an issue (Domino's Pizza, anyone?). Social media can provide companies and individuals an oddly one-sided platform from which to bullhorn a message or position. Sure, social media is theoretically premised on engagement and ongoing dialogue, and building a following on social media (and maximizing its ROI) requires sustained commitment. But anyone can establish a YouTube account and post a video message – avoiding the hassles of the TV interview and the subjective whims of an outside editor. There really is no requirement to maintain ongoing dialogue with viewers if the goal is simply to distribute a message. Perhaps it's not a particularly social move, but it certainly can be effective. Recall the days following the death of Michael Jackson, when the 24-hour news cycle was busily crucifying the quack doctor who seemingly anesthetized the King of Pop to death. In a brilliant move, Dr. Conrad Murray's defense team released a video on YouTube of a composed, well dressed, intelligent physician making thoughtful remarks about a tragic event involving a patient. The national media immediately ran segments of the video, leading millions of viewers (and probably a few potential jury members) to check out the video for themselves. I've discussed before the interesting move of Walmart CFO Charles M. Holley when he posted a message to the financial news aggregator site Seeking Alpha explaining how the Fortune 1 company planned to maintain its position in the global marketplace. I'm always interested to see how Dell Computers propagates investor presentations, interview videos and relevant news articles with its IR community on the DellShares social site. And dozens of companies have moved into the safe, secure and compliant social community StockTwits, sending (and queuing) real-time and trackable financial messages, including live tweets of analyst calls. (These are the creative geniuses who created the $(TICKER) tag). I'm highlighting successes here, but I'm sure there are some corporate communications/social media failures out there as well. Leave a comment and post a link – we're interested to know more! * In the spirit of transparency, Lovell Communications is honored to include Walmart as a client.

Tupperware India Launches ‘She Can, You Can’ On Social Media Posted: 10 Aug 2012 04:30 AM PDT Direct selling company of premium food storage products, Tupperware India, has recently launched an ad campaign titled 'She Can, You Can', featuring real-life heroes Chhavi Rajawat, sarpanch at village Soda in Rajasthan and Saloni Malhotra, Founder and CEO of first KPO in rural India – Desicrew Solutions. 'She Can, You Can' is aligned with Tupperware's vision to 'Enlighten, Educate and Empower' women across the globe, and is based on a crowd sourcing strategy of gathering stories. You could feature on the next Tupperware campaign if your story is an extraordinary one, just as the role models, Chhavi and Saloni. You can read inspiring stories or share your own at the specially dedicated site by Tupperware for 'She Can, You Can'. In addition, the campaign has employed Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to spread the word on social media. About 'She Can, You Can' Facebook app An app has been designed on the brands Facebook page, which is a carbon copy of the website. There are similar tabs as in the site – Home, Stories, Media, Share your story. This gives an option for Facebook users to share their story within Facebook itself. The home section is a comprehensive introduction to the concept and what it plans to do for you. You can begin by reading about Chhavi's story of bringing hope to a village or Saloni's story of creating opportunities in another. At the bottom, you can see a short excerpt of inspiring stories by other women and if it interests you enough, you can click on 'read more'. The complete story is displayed in a new page within the app along with an option to check out more stories. 'Share your story' is the place to submit your story. Your name and email is displayed by the app. All you have to do is enter your story title and your story into the boxes provided. There is an option to upload your picture from the computer or your Facebook profile. For those who may not have a story yet but want to create one, there is the 'Fulfill your dreams with Tupperware' button. A click on the button takes you to the contact page of the official Tupperware site. She Can, You Can on Twitter The campaign isn't being pushed aggressively on Twitter. Moreover, Twitter is lagging behind in connecting or conversing with its community. Content does not vary much from that on Facebook and this could be quite boring for a fan present on both the networks. Twitter is an excellent medium to make connections and build a community but sadly none of it is being done currently. The Twitter page follows nobody! She Can, You Can on YouTube Tupperware has created a brand channel for 'She Can, You Can', which already has 31 subscribers and 45,338 total views on the videos uploaded by the brand. The TVCs featuring Chhavi and Saloni and the making of the TVCs form the 10 videos at present. Perhaps, going further, the brand channel would be employed to feature videos of users too. Here is the TVC for Chhavi Rajawat: How cool is the campaign? From the face of it, the 'She Can, You Can' initiative has been well thought of for a long term vision and brand positioning. The idea of celebrating everyday womens' stories of empowerment is going to be the key to its growth. A few points worth mentioning in this campaign are: 1. Facebook is a wonderful place to market to women: Besides a great idea, the medium chosen is also great. Although female users in India constitute a far lesser percentage compared to other countries, these users spend most of their online time on social networking giant – Facebook. Hence, running the 'She Can, You Can' initiative through a dedicated app on the brands Facebook page is a great move. 2. Weaving in a well-integrated and actionable app: What really caught my attention was that the entire Facebook campaign reproduces the 'She Can, You Can' website in terms of look, feel and functionality. It does not drive you away from the Facebook page at any point in time. Besides sharing stories, the app also has a provision for inspired women to join the Tupperware force. This is excellent call for action from a brand that relies on its direct seller network. 3. The incentive is the USP: The desire to join the Tupperware vision increases manyfold when a woman is given a platform to feature her story! However, Tupperware fails to tell its own story on the Facebook page. It could make use of the Facebook Timeline feature to share its rich history of products, like the one on its official website under 'History' – a beautiful visual story of its products from 1942! Ending thoughts It is interesting to see a direct seller like Tupperware, that did not believe in advertising through mainstream media earlier, now jump onto TVCs and some social media action. Sometime back, the brand had tied-up with Bollywood for a strategic placement of their product in movies like Bodyguard and We are Family. Moreover, it also points to a new trend in brand endorsements that are roping in people whose real life story matches up with the brand's vision. Crowd sourcing stories of your fans and showcasing them on blogs or Facebook isn't a novel thing. Execution may differ but the intention is the same – get your community to own the brand. Maggi noodles had invited fans to share their Maggi moments in a contest, where they could win the chance to feature in the next TVC or on the pack. On similar lines, Tata Nano invites stories from Nano users every month on Facebook, to feature them on a blog called 'Nano Diaries'. Tupperware's foray into social media for 'She Can, You Can' is a welcome move, in fact it is just an extension of what the brand was always into – empowering women. Only now it has moved onto larger grounds and into social spaces where it can reach more women. Do you think Tupperware's evolution into advertising and social media nullifies the 'direct seller' term or is it just another means to grow its direct seller network?

Adding HTML Code to Your WordPress Page, Post or Widget Posted: 10 Aug 2012 04:05 AM PDT Many WordPress users find it easy to get started because the Visual editor is similar enough to Word that they feel comfortable getting started. But what about those times when you are provided with HTML code to add to your site? If you copy and paste it into the post or page using the Visual editor, it comes out as text, not code. So you lose the functionality of the code, and it ends up looking like this: <a href="http://bit.ly/OWHS4O"> <img src="http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/The-Character-Based-Leader-197x3004.png"> </a> Here's how to add functioning HTML code to your WordPress page or post. The result will look like this: If you want to add it to the sidebar instead, you have to add a text widget to the sidebar and paste the code in there instead. Here's how to do that.

Breaking the Proverbial Blogging Cherry Posted: 10 Aug 2012 03:20 AM PDT You know that feeling when you write an essay, and you just want to submit it and get it out of the way? That's what I am feeling right now. I feel like trying to write this blog, I don't know how to write anything. I can't organize my thoughts to create a cohesive sentence, which got me to thinking: what is the cause of all of this? Thinking hard about it, I am beginning to think that not only did University NOT prepare me for anything, it may have hindered my ability to write a usable blog post. Not only is blogging something that comes from both the heart and the brain, but it is something so tied up in emotion and opinion. If I were to go back and give my early University-self a piece of advice from what I have learned, it would be to hold onto three things that University seems goes through pains to beat out of you: personality, intuition and collaborative desires. Loss of Personality The first to go is personality. Nothing of what you write is expected to have any kind of personality, personal flare, or unique pizazz. Every voice of every essay should strive to sound the same: neutral, "professional", and blah, blah, blah. But so far, with three months out in the professional world, I have yet to see a place where this form of writing fits. When people come to a blog over a news source, they WANT to read personality, emotion, and enticing material, on top of it being informative. Personality writes blogs, and the ones that are informative, academic, and captivating are usually SOL because the person writing has a personality fit for a traditional scholar. Those emotional personalities shape what we do and how we interact, and that is what helps us build and maintain strong social media experiences, so it's important to infuse your personality. Loss of Intuition The next thing that's lost is intuition. Heaven forbid you go with your gut, or lay a claim based on an intuition you've had. As a lowly university student, your opinion does not have the ability to deduce something fantastical. If the technique you're using hasn't come from your textbook, or the style you are writing in isn't a part of the grammar guide (that that particular professor has elected to use) you are going against the grain and your writing is not perceived as valuable. Social media is all about intuition. Intuition lets you know where to strike and how to strike up a conversation, and experience helps you maintain those things. I have read blogs that describe why nobody likes automation. People want to talk to humans so go with your gut stresses the fact that in the professional world, those who trust their intuitions (and are okay with getting them wrong sometimes) are the ones who go far. So trust that intuition. Loss of Collaborative Desires The final thing to go is collaborative desires. Regardless of how many group projects there are that try to encourage that ideas are meant to be shared, the simple fact that people are still competing for the best grade (and the fact the best grade is the most rewarded) means that people are still out there to get their own. By the end of those 3 to 7 years, those who are "winning" at University are usually those who play things close to the vest and divulge only a modicum of information to their peers. In my short term experience in the start-up world, that mentality doesn't fly very far. Your goal should not be to be better than everyone else, because inevitably someone who has strengths in areas other than the one at hand will get left behind. Always strive to make those around you the best they can be, especially if you are the strongest at that particular moment. Because when that time rolls around when your particular weakness is the task at hand, you know you'll have a network of support helping you get through it. Those are the teams that succeed–the ones that lean on each other, like cards in a card house, in order to make something truly spectacular. I guess the moral of my advice is to try and forget everything you were taught in University, and take away only what you've learned. I know I have learned that I hated speaking without personality, and that something was missing. I knew that at times my intuition was correct even though I couldn't find peer reviewed sources to back me up (or had the budget to run experimental trials). And I knew that helping my friends succeed was a much more fulfilling endeavor than a hollow best-mark-in-the-class. And now I turn it over to you, the reader: If you had one piece of advice for myself or for someone who was about to enter the world of social media, blogging, or even just communication studies, what would it be? Jugnoo editor's note: Matt is a real person and more colourful than the little grey face on his bio would suggest. This is a Gravatar bug that we hope to have fixed soon!

Legal Marketing: Is SEO a Waste of Time for Law Firms? Posted: 09 Aug 2012 07:55 PM PDT There's a debate currently raging in a number of LinkedIn legal marketing groups about the value of search engine optimisation for law firms. While some group members believe a website not optimised for the search engines means fewer prospective clients, others insist that SEO is over-rated, especially in the conservative realm of law practices which traditionally rely on word-of-mouth recommendations as the tried-and-true route to winning new clients. Those who are quick to dismiss SEO should note that in 2011 alone the UK marketplace for SEO grew by 18% to a value of £514 million, according to Econsultancy's SEO Agencies Buyer's Guide 2012. This upward trend in UK adoption of search engine optimisation practices indicates a rising need for optimised web content that has the potential to increase the visibility of a corporate website. One of the recurrent arguments expressed in LinkedIn discussions is that law firms should disregard SEO and focus on producing high quality content, instead. This is certainly a valid point for old-school keyword-driven SEO. While ranking high for the right keywords is critical to your website getting found by new users, the only way to keep visitors on the page is by engaging them through compelling content. What is more, while many still draw a line between content marketing and SEO, there are indications that the distinction between the two domains will become irrelevant in the near future. Content is becoming a critical part of SEO You may think of search engine optimisation as a technical domain involving lengthy spreadsheets and testing keywords in Google Adwords. But with its most recent algorithm updates, Panda and Penguin, Google is moving closer towards a semantic search experience, serving up search results consisting of high quality socially shared content. In fact, a recent report by Searchmetrics found that social media sharing and backlinks from reputable websites are the two most important factors affecting how a website ranks. Interestingly, the same study concluded that keywords are not as significant as they used to be as a ranking factor. Another prominent development, which Econsultancy identified in their SEO report, is the convergence of SEO, content marketing, and PR, pointing to a future where content marketing and SEO might become indistinguishable and inseparable as digital marketing techniques. What does this mean for law firms who want to attract new clients? Law firm partners, associates and marketing directors might rightfully argue that apart from commoditised legal services, search is not an opportunity creator. And indeed, prospective clients are more likely to start their journey for special complex and bespoke services by consulting their friends rather than searching online. But whatever type of service they are seeking, your prospective clients are likely to look up your website, your Facebook page and your Twitter profile, especially in a world where eight in 10 people search online before making a commitment to purchase a product or a service. Faced with the challenges posed by the changes in the legal market such as ABS, law firms cannot rely on word-of-mouth only to gain competitive advantage – they need to build and optimise their online real estate. As the boundaries between quality social content and SEO continue to blur and the two domains become more intertwined, law firms will need to build their online inbound marketing strategy around both. Great content is nothing without good SEO, which makes the firm's content more visible. And vice versa, any SEO effort is pointless if there isn't quality, engaging content which showcases your expertise, your trustworthiness and your commitment to providing outstanding legal services.

Tata Building India Needs To Rethink Its Social Media Strategy Posted: 09 Aug 2012 07:35 PM PDT Tata Building India School Essay Competition is a Tata group initiative that started off in 2006 with the sole belief that igniting young minds positively would lead to a Happy India. Beginning in 2006 with 1 lakh students from 240 English medium schools in 6 cities, the Tata Building India School Essay Competition is now into its 6th edition which is set to reach out to 2 million students from 5000 schools in 150 cities and 8 languages, thus making it the largest school essay competition in India. Tata Building India on Facebook On December 2010, the essay competition was also launched on Facebook, with the idea being to reach out to the youth. As the competition is open to students from Std VI to Std XII, I think it is a good decision to engage on Facebook as it is the most popular social network among this age group. And with Facebook's latest change to its minimum permissible age to join the network being brought down from 18 to 13, this also helps the initiative. Presently, the page has a base of more than 82k fans with the most popular age group being in the 13-17 years (insights provided by Facebook). The cover photo is cheerful, appealing and totally connects to the Building India for a Happy India concept. I was particularly interested in the content being built to connect with young students. Not only should it be aligned with the objective but also throw in challenges to the young fans within the scope of the objective. It is interesting to see the various types of content being posted but somehow it all boils down to increasing fan growth rather than talk about the idea behind the essay competition i.e. building a better nation. The first thing I noticed is the plethora of contests being run regularly on the wall. According to Facebook guidelines, all promotions like contests should be run on a separate tab or app on Facebook, and not on the wall. However, the contest winners are being notified on a 'contest winners' tab, which is rightly abiding by the guidelines. Also, the thought of keeping the readers in mind and why they should be a part of your community, is missing here. Most of the content has scanned pictures and questions around general knowledge and 'did you know' facts. Although, it might come across as interesting at first, it starts getting monotonous very soon. The page has started one more exercise in fan-building. Fans have to invite their friends and family to the page and for those who manage to get maximum number of 'likes' for the page will get a chance to visit the Tata Nano factory at Sanand (Gujrat) with one parent. I am not against building a community as it provides a good scope for engagement but giving away such a good incentive for something not based on skill but your social circle might not be a good idea after all. Ending thoughts The initiative uses the Tata Companies Twitter account, but the strategy is on the similar lines of Facebook – organizing contests or posting content. Nothing wrong in organizing contests but with contests, you can get numbers but not a community that can sustain for long-term. It would have been great if the community was built with the objective of exchanging conversations for building a better network. It is also surprising that despite the page being about a School Essay Competition, nothing is being talked about it. Other than posting snaps, no major update has been found on the page. Wouldn't it be great if the page talks about the different kinds of issues taken up in this essays. Chalking out a focus strategy like this would help the initiative otherwise it would pretty much turn into a community of likes with no meaningful dialogue. Additionally, a mix of content is also required keeping the objective in mind, otherwise it becomes monotonous as mentioned before. Do you think that Tata Building India should engage only on the basis of contests or they should rethink their social media strategy?

How to Increase the Effectiveness of Social Media Monitoring: Burberry case study Posted: 09 Aug 2012 07:15 PM PDT What the social media marketing success of Burberry can teach smaller brands Burberry Prorsum Ad In order to use social media monitoring most effectively, there are several important tactics to keep in mind. First, your business must identify where online conversations are taking place. Then you must carefully select the correct keywords, have an action plan, create metrics to track the success of your objectives and be aware of what metrics are valuable. Burberry has used social media to build improved customer relationships and provide loyalty incentives to followers. To make informed investment and communication strategy choices that drive consumer spending, smaller brands can benefit from Burberry's success by using social media monitoring to join the buzz created by larger brands. Identify where online conversations are taking place Monitoring hot conversations around Burberry's products and brands, as well as related products, has led them to being the most followed luxury brand on Facebook (over 13 million followers), as well as the most engaged, with the highest number of "likes" per post (Stylophane). The brand also enjoys over one million followers on twitter and nearly 500,000 on Instagram as a result of staying active and posting frequently. Following their recent explosion onto the social media scene, the company even saw a 21 percent rise in profits during the last quarter of 2011, and profits have continues to rise since then. As a competing brand, you shouldn't post on their wall, but, you can identify the conversations that generate traction and gain inspiration from those ideas. Burberry has been an early adopter of every social media platform they can get their hands on – Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest – and their "try-everything-and-see-what-works" approach has put them at the forefront of marketing innovation and facilitated an excellent and interactive brand image. Business-to-consumer relationships are now easier to maintain than ever before, and there are always worthwhile discussions to join. If a blogger has done a post about the five best trendy, affordable shoes for the season, that's a conversation that a shoe vendor probably wants to be a part of. They would also likely want to be a part of any conversation with the mention of "shoes," "boots," "flats," "platforms," and so on. When people mention relevant items on social networks, social media monitoring tools are able to track and see them, making it fast and easy to join a conversation about your brand. Smaller brands can even ride the conversation coat tails of huge discussion-starters such as Burberry. Graph by Alerti Carefully select the right keywords Tracking relevant, unbranded terminology is another ideal way to engage with and understand influencers, and social media monitoring services prevent that kind of tracking from becoming a time-consuming, research-intensive process. Tracking social media discussions involving the proper keywords will allow your brand to be more effective with the content produced, as well as how said content is marketed, and to whom it is targeted. For example, during the recent Olympics, the hash tag #NBCFail has become a popular way for twitter users to voice their complaints about the coverage of the games. Ignoring these complaints would be a missed improvement opportunity for NBC, and if they don't monitor those types of conversations using the correct keywords, they will miss out on the discussion. Have an action plan – enlist customers that love the brand for help By tracking where and how your brand is being discussed, your business can locate and enlist the help of passionate fans that would be interested in promoting your brand. Many customers are willing to promote your brand on their blog or site if you post about it and link back to them, to drive traffic to their site, or provide reasonable compensation. Additionally, you can create new customers and impassioned fans by contacting competitors' fans that enjoy the kind of product or service you provide. Going back to the shoe vendor example, social media monitoring makes it easy to find relevant content – such as an article or blog post that mentions some popular shoe brands, or popular styles for the season – in order to contact the writer or site about being included in the future. When monitoring, create metrics that track the success of your desired objectives Monitoring social media is the perfect way to determine if your plan of action is working. To improve your product quality and customer satisfaction, monitor the issues discussed in negative posts. To develop new advertising and marketing strategies, monitor what is praised in positive posts. By tracking the success of your marketing initiatives in social media, you'll be able to steer the conversations where you want them, make necessary changes, and be more prepared moving forward. Graph by Alerti Know which metrics are the most valuable Social media monitoring programs will provide your company with a wealth of information so that you always know what is being discussed where, and by whom. However, this information is simply not enough to most effectively promote your brand through social media. In order to use the information compiled by social media monitoring services most effectively, it's important to differentiate between which metrics are the most valuable and which metrics are not. For example, social connections – the number of fans or followers a business has – is not nearly as valuable as engagement rates or the amount of site traffic a business receives that comes from social media. Burberry provides an excellent example of social media marketing and monitoring done right by identifying relevant online conversations, selecting the proper keywords, developing an action plan, creating metrics to track success and by being conscientious of which metrics are most valuable. Consumers are more digitally empowered than they have ever been, and the reach of accessible audiences for brands is huge. By employing social media monitoring and using it effectively, your brand can be sure to see a positive return on social media effort. Disclosure: Alerti is a client of Murray Newlands’

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