Category: Social Media

SkillPath – Social Media Conference

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I recently was given the opportunity to attend the SkillPath Social Media Conference here in New Orleans on behalf of Mudbug Media. After the event I wrote the following blog on key takeaways from the day:

SkillPath – Social Media Conference

I recently attended the Social Media Conference hosted by SkillPath, to expand my expertise in the field and learn from others ‘ experiences. Throughout the day, discussions centered on social media strategy creation, platform management, content writing, measuring return on investment, and how to mange your company’s online reputation.

Attendees managed social media implementation for companies in many different industries, including automobile, restaurant, retail, and education. Due to the variety of industries and expertise levels represented, insightful conversations developed, shedding light on the evolving standards and practices in the social media realm. See more below on topics covered during the conference.

What do you want to achieve?

Before starting social media, it is important to determine your goals in order to develop a social media strategy. Your goals may include:
• Driving traffic to your website
• Generating leads
• Promoting your business
• Interacting with customers

Once goals have been established, a strategy can be developed to target your specific audience.

What your social media kit should include

Social media is not a single arena; it is a combination of many different platforms, with varying audiences. A social media kit includes different platforms including blogs, social conversation sites, social profiles, business profiles, search tools, social bookmarking sites, photo sharing sites, and video hosting sites. You may or may not include platforms from each category, as it will be very important to determine which platforms are right for your business. A kit will also include tools to manage the different social media platforms, including automating and mobile blogging tools.

Writing for social media

Content writing for social media is very different from writing content for your website, especially since you may have a text limit, such as a tweet which only allows 140 characters. A few key items to remember when writing for social media are:
• Always have a call to action
• Create attention grabbing headlines
• Use bulleted and numbered lists
• Use links and images whenever possible
Realistic required time commitment

While there are many tools available to help you manage multiple social media platforms, it is important to remember that social media never turns off. People will have the ability to comment, tweet, and post about your company 24/7, so a significant amount of time is required to not only post messages but also monitor responses. This allotment will vary greatly, depending on your company’s goals and the variety of platforms used.

Measuring return on investment

Social media is still a young media outlet, and consistent standards for measuring return on investment have not been established. The metrics for measuring the return on investment will correspond directly with your social media goals. Metrics may include increased site traffic, comments, inbound links, page views, or subscribers.

Managing your online reputation

One of the biggest concerns that companies have when considering social media, is how will they control their brand name. This is a valid concern and is one of the key components of a social media strategy. There is always the risk of negative comments, but the goal is to turn the negatives into a positive for your company. Handle the situation correctly and you many not only save a relationship with a customer, but you may also gain new customers. When managing brand reputation, it is important to consider:
• When should you respond?
• Who are you responding to? (Individual or the public)
• What tone should you use?

There are many different monitoring tools available that can help streamline brand management efforts. There are both free and subscription based tools that you can use. Tool selection will be based on your goals, number of platforms, and number of followers/mentions.

Check out more blogs social media strategy, check out Mudbug’s Blog au Roux!

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Top 10 Favorite Takeaways from SXSWi

This week, my twitter feed was full of quotes from SXSWi. I was not able to attend the conference myself, but agencies from all over the country have been tweeting and blogging about their experience there, so… I thought I would share some of my favorite takeaways that they have shared.

Agencies

  • Moosylvania – an independent full-service agency in St. Louis.
  • 4orce – a digital agency in St. Louis
  • Big Fuel – a social media and branded content company in New York

Top 10 SXSWi Takeaways

  1. Look forward to scary awesome targeting of ads – Moosylvania
  2. It’s becoming even more vital that brands focus on additional value and continued relationships with their customers. It’s all about the experience, and the ways a brand engages on an emotional level. – Moosylvania
  3. Social media ROI discussion haven’t evolved. Ever. Your social ROI comes down to determining which KPIs are important to your brand and what you need to measure to determine success, there isn’t a magic bullet ROI formula that works for all brands. – Moosylvania
  4. Agencies must migrate away from vertical hierarchy to horizontal hierarchy… Resist large teams at all cost. – 4orce
  5. ROI metrics are to validate not to justify social media spend. 4orce
  6. Lots of debate and confusion regarding social media ROI. Bottom line: we should measure results against upfront benchmarks. 4orce
  7. So your brand is sharing content, but is it also capturing content? Makes it less promotional & more authentic – Big Fuel
  8. Think of your brand as a host to a conversation. Morph and change with it. – Moosylvania
  9. Providing value on an ongoing basis creates relationships. Be authentic, be relevant, but don’t be creepy. – Big Fuel
  10. Products are the new marketing. We’re seeing a shift in leading-edge agencies understanding that to succeed they need to be creating digital products that benefit consumers, clients, and the agency, not selling services. Brands are starting realize this too. – Moosylvania

What have been some of your favorite blogs or quotes from SXSWi?

Free Speech and Social Media

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One of the popular topics discussed this week at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas has been how to balance free speech, personal rights, and protected content in the social media world.

The big question is: can you really post whatever you want without any consequences?

We do have freedom of speech, but not the freedom to publicize misinformation. It seems that social media has given people a sense of freedom, where they feel like they can say whatever they want, whenever they want, and to whomever they want. However… when you say that statement aloud, it does not quite seem “okay”.

Freedom of Speech

It seems like the term “Freedom of Speech” is used a lot to defend unprotected speech. However, what is the difference between protected and unprotected speech?

Protected Speech = you are allowed to express yourself without interference of the government; this includes the content of messages in advertising. This DOES NOT INCLUDE misleading or deceptive content, or content that uses profanity or racial slurs.

Unprotected Speech = speech that is subject to restrictions, including:

  • Content infringing on a copyright, trademark, or patent
  • Defamatory content
  • Profanity filled content

Free speech is a big concern for companies entering social media, because they understandably want to protect their brand. Some companies, particularly in regulated industries, have instated social media policies for employees regarding their personal social media profiles, in addition to company profiles. This is not always the right approach for all companies. Choosing to create a policy to restrict employees’ personal profiles will depend on many factors, including the industry your company is in and company culture.

Setting Guidelines for Company Profiles

There are steps you can take to limit and control content posted on your company’s profiles, such as posting guidelines or page rules. The majority of the social media community views it as acceptable to regulate user-generated content (including comments on Facebook), when you have clearly posted a guideline for what type of content is permitted. It is just as important to consistently enforce the guidelines that you put in place as it is to post them on your profile. Consistent enforcement will decrease any backlash from the social media community when you deem it necessary to delete specific user-generated content. Actually, most social media sites require you to moderate you page for both defamatory content and content infringing on another person’s rights.

While the goal of social media is to create a conversation, it does not mean that we can all say whatever we want, all the time, regardless of other’s rights.

What do you think?

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Social Media Content Strategy: 3 Tips To Make Your Tone Less Brand-Centric

Takeaways

This is a great blog on how to perfect your tone when writing content for social media. Social media isn’t about sounding like a brand or company, it is about making a personal connection with your customers. Don’t try to sell your customers constantly through social media. Your customers are not following you on social media to find out every single detail about your product, they can do that on your website. They follow you to connect and build a relationships with the brand. Check out the article for more tips! Social Media Content Strategy: 3 Tips To Make Your Tone Less Brand-Centric 

Growing Offline Business Using Online Tools

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Social media has several purposes:

  1. Creating Conversations
  2. Building Brand Awareness
  3. Build a Community
  4. Educate
  5. Reach New Audiences
  6. Understand Your Current Audience
  7. Create a More Personal Brand
  8. Interact Directly with Customers
  9. Display Credibility
  10. Promote Your Company

The list could go on and on, on why social media is beneficial to your brand. With any marketing attempt, there must be a goal (such as selling more of a products). Online marketing efforts are very successful at creating online “followers” into offline customers, including:

  • social media
  • online ads
  • geographic based platforms

How Online Marketing Drives Offline Success Infographic

The infographic below from KISSmetrics breaks down how influential online marketing is for increasing sales and reaching conversion rate goals. Here are a few of the facts that stood out:

  • 53% of people on Twitter suggest companies and or products in their tweets with 48% delivering on their intention to buy
  • 75% of small businesses have a company page on a social networking site
  • 20% of searches on Google are location specific (are you using the right keywords for your SEO? Check out my blog on choosing the right keywords to increase your Google rankings here)
  • On average, 1155 people purchase a group deal on Groupon DAILY
  • The best banner ad size and location are 300×250 and the top right corner

How Online Marketing Drives Offline Success

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-online-marketing-drives-offline-success/

Should My Brand be on Pinterest?

Atomicdust, an agency in St. Louis, posted a great blog on how to determine if your company should be using Pinterest.  As of now, Pinterest is driving more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn combined (10 million monthly visitors and growing).

I really enjoyed this post because it asks three straight-to-the-point questions about Pinterest and your brand:

  • Are there compelling images associated with your brand?
  • How much time do you have?
  • How well do you know your brand’s core values?

Takeaways:

  1. Use compelling images that link out to great content, this will not only promote your company but it will improve your website’s SEO with more inbound links.
  2. Social media is important to your company and requires time, and Pinterest is no different. Set aside time to not only find images but to also to respond to followers and repin pictures from your followers.
  3. Create a multi-dimensional brand image by creating multiple boards on varying topics.
  4. Pinterest is about expression not content, though it can drive traffic to content.

Use the link below to check out the full blog and learn more:

Should My Brand be on Pinterest? – Web Design and Marketing Blog.

Navigating the New Company Facebook Timeline Pages

The internet has been buzzing this week about company (fan) pages on Facebook switching to the timeline format.

So, you have built your company’s social media strategy based on how people find and share information using the old page format, but do you really need to change how you use Facebook just because the page looks different? Very simple answer….YES!

Whole New Layout

The first (and most obvious) note is that the whole layout of the page has changed. The top of the page is now occupied by your profile picture and a cover picture. Do not under-estimate the power of the cover photo. While you can use your company logo for your profile picture, I recommend using a unique photo that represents the company culture for the cover photo. This will help create more of a personal connection with customers.

The majority of the page is composed of two columns, which represent a passage of time for your company. My favorite feature of the timeline page layout is that you can mark posts as “Company Milestones” and create an interactive real-time timeline of your company’s history: from the day it was founded to today. The timeline of company milestones will also help your customers understand and relate to your company, by understanding where it came from and will be going in the future.

Goodbye Landing Pages

There is one feature that am not a big fan of (and it may take some getting used to), it is that you can no longer set a default landing page. Since the tab pages are gone, (the ones that used to be listed under the profile picture) you are not able to choose what content visitors see first when they go to your page. For example on McDonald’s page, (still in the old format) they could direct all visitors to the “Latest” page first.  Where a new product would be featured, instead of to the default “wall” page. See example below:McDonalds Facebook Page

In comparison, the Wendy’s new timeline page always features the top two messages. Because of this change, it will be more pertinent than ever to monitor what the top posts are, as they are the first thing visitors will see (other than the cover photo). See image below. There is a great feature that can help with this. It is the “pin”feature, which allows you to “pin” a post, or mark it is important, so that it will appear at the top of your timeline.

Wendy's Facebook Page Timeline Format

Pick Your Top Three

While you can not direct visitors to a particular landing page, the tab pages and application pages will still exist. But know that they will be more difficult access. As you can see above in the Wendy’s timeline, links to the tab pages (photos, likes, WendyThreads, Wear the beef) are now shown in between the cover photo and the timeline. But, instead of listing all the different pages, only the 4 pages can be featured at one time. Also, the photo link/feature can not be removed so you can only change out the other three items. It will be more important than ever to understand what your page visitors value most in order to promote the correct pages and apps.

Changing the Conversation

In the past, if a customer wanted to communicate with a company over Facebook they would have to leave a comment on a post (or post a message on the wall if it was allowed). But now, customers can send direct messages to a company.

I really like this feature because I don’t think everyone is always comfortable stating their opinion in a public arena (especially when their name is on it) and they often prefer more personal interactions with companies (aka one of the purposes of social media). I also like this feature because it may decrease possible negative comments from appearing on the public timeline.

What do you think?

This is a big change, which will take some navigating. It will be a learning time for marketers and companies alike. Please leave a comment below letting me know what you think about the new timeline format for company pages and what your favorite ones are so far. I personally really like the New York Times page (below). They use a great personal cover photo and their timeline goes all the way back to the 1850’s!!! New York Times Facebook Timeline Page

Social Media Marketing Trends

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Sharing Content

Social media is constantly evolving and changing, including:

  • How individuals use the different platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc)
  • How companies communicate with customers
  • How to measure success and ROI
  • How much to invest into a social media strategy and implementation (what is the value of social media?)

The Social Media Examiner published a great article on how to prove the value of social media for your company based on new research studies. In the article, they breakdown the five newest social media marketing trends:

The Benefits Derived From Social Media are Increasing

The top benefits of social media from a marketing perspective are increased brand awareness and the ability to engage in dialogue directly with their customers. Also, the amount of small businesses using social media has been constantly increasing the last two years. I definitely expect the amount of companies using social media to continue to increase this year. So, if your company has not started to develop a social media strategy to implement, this would be the year to start.

More Businesses are Investing in Social Media

It is estimated that both small and medium sized business will at least double their budgets for social media in 2012. Based on this estimation, I would predict that there would be an even larger budget increase for large and global size companies, who are already seeing the benefits of social media.

Measuring ROI is One of the Top Challenges Face by Marketers

A concerning trend is that approximately half of marketers are not measuring their social marketing to determine its’ success. Simple ways to measure the success of your social media strategy are tracking

  • Twitter Followers
  • Tweets are Re-Tweeted
  • Facebook Likes Shares
  • Comments on Facebook posts
  • Blog post views and comments
  • YouTube video views
  • Re-pins on Pinterest

More advanced measurements that you could calculate are lead generation and sales directed from social media, but this will require specific goals set implementing strategy.

Marketing Agencies View the Value of Social Media Differently

I am not surprised that research shows that blogs have the best benefit for increasing search results, especially when social sharing buttons are included. The more shares of an article the higher up it will appear in search results. Also, blog posts increase the amount of content on your website (the amount of content that search engines will crawl) so this will greatly benefit your rankings.

An Integrated Social Media Plan Leads to Greater Financial Results

In 2012, I hope to see more companies begin to fully integrate social media into their business process. Many companies are just beginning to use and understand social media, so it often falls into this “side project” category. In order for a social media strategy to be successful in increasing conversations, brand awareness, and financial goals, then social media must be fully integrated into a company’s marketing efforts.

It is going to be very interesting to see how these trends play out in 2012. Check out the full article and all the infographics here: 5 Social Media Marketing Trends: New Research | Social Media Examiner.

Image: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net