Category: Social Media

How To Drive Traffic Between Social Media Platforms

A social media strategy involves the collaboration of multiple platforms, using the best features of each platform is necessary to create a successful strategy.

While Twitter should often be used as an “announcements” platform, Facebook can be used to build conversations through sharing more detailed and insight based content.

Example:

You find an interesting article on an industry trend that your would like to share. How you share the content will vary by platform:

  • A tweet would include the article title, a link, and a hashtag.
  • A Facebook post would include the article title/link and 1-2 sentences on what the article is about/why you think the industry trend is important.Pinterest
  • A pin on Pinterest would include the image in the article and a blurb about the article/trend.

Mashable posted a great article on how one platform can be used to drive traffic to another; how to drive traffic from Pinterest to YouTube. Pinterest has become one of the top 5 sites for referring traffic, now tied with Twitter. As we begin to understand the power of Pinterest, and how to use it best (in relation to the other big social media powers) we will learn how to best feature content on each platform.

Check out the Mashable article here:

Need More YouTube Views? Try Pinterest.

Creating Brand Opportunity Out Of Negativity

One of the basic rules of business is “Make the customer happy.” Companies know that a negative comment from one customer can quickly turn into ten.

The basic rules of business have not changed, but the power of the customers voice has grown exponentially. One negative comment can instantly turn into hundreds of shares and tweets, which can fuel blog posts and the need for large-scale damage control. While there is no way to guarantee that every single customer will be happy, there are many tools that can help you manage your brand’s reputation online. Whether it’s a comment about your company, or personal brand, there is a chance to turn a negative comment into a positive opportunity.Maintaining Customer Satisfaction

Monitoring Your Brand

How are you supposed to turn a negative into a positive if your never see or hear it. It is important to catch negative comments at the source before they spread out of control.

Several tools are available to track  mentions of your brand. A free and very simple tool is Google Alerts. You can set up for alerts to be sent to you each time a new search result appears regarding your brand. Each day Google will email you mentions of your brand on news sites, blogs, video platforms, discussion books, and online books. If you really want to stay on ahead of the game, you can even set up alerts for mentions of your competitors.

Monitoring mentions on social media platforms requires more effort. Check comments and posts on your company Facebook page. Do a Facebook search every few weeks for your company name to check for any new groups with a negative connotation and groups’ whose membership has increased greatly. The same can be done with Twitter searches. Twitter search should be done on more frequently, a quick daily search for any brand mentions and a more intensive search once a week.

Responding to Negative Comments

You cannot respond to all comments, and users’ response expectations vary by platform. Facebook users are more likely to expect a response than Twitter users, because the comments and posts stay visible on a company page for a longer period. Twitter is a real-time feed, so users do not expect a response to every comment. A response from a company to a customers tweet is often seen as more “special” than Facebook responses, though both are very important.

If a negative comment is found during monitoring, it should be responded to in no more than 24 hours, less is always better. Responses should be honest, strong, empathic (but not too much and not emotional), friendly, and involve an actionable item, such as “Thank you for your feedback, please email us your phone number and our team will make sure to personally call you to resolve any concerns”. Above all, do not delete negative comments or mentions; this can turn a quick fix into a full-blown tornado of negativity.

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Social Media Week 2012 – A Global Platform | Blog au Roux | Mudbug Media, Inc.

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Check out the blog I wrote for Mudbug Media on the Social Media Week 2012!

Here is a snippit from the blog:

Last week was Social Media Week 2012, a weeklong global initiative that focuses on the impact of social media on culture, politics, economics, and social change. This was truly a global celebration, as unique events were held in nine countries: Germany, China, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Singapore, and Brazil.

Social Media Week 2012 leveraged the benefits of the popular social media platforms to create a truly global discussion. The majority of the events were broadcast live through Livestream, and promoted hashtags (such as #SMWNY) that viewers were able to use to tweet questions to the presenters, which were answered live. A particularly innovative feature was a real time infographic that displayed trending topics, hashtags, and handles by city.

Knowing that social media is now a crucial part of brand strategy, members of our media, analytics, and strategy team made it a priority to learn as much as possible from the talented social media week presenters. The following are a few of the great events that our team watched.

Click here to read the rest of my Mudbug Media blog Via mudbugmedia.com

Social Media and Your Career

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Social media is probably the best tool that you can use these days when job hunting. Actually, when I was applying for my first job in the marketing and advertising industry, after college graduation, some companies requested that Professional Networking OnlineI include social media in my application. It was requested that I did not send them a traditional resume; rather they preferred my cover letter in the body of my email and a link to my public LinkedIn profile. This makes sense since I was applying for a position in an ever-changing industry. This type of application would showcase the applicants who were using the newest and best tools.

Usually, when you think of an online professional network the first platform that comes to mind is LinkedIn. While LinkedIn is undeniably an excellent resource, blogs and Twitter can be great tools as well.

There are quick changes that you can make to all your social media profiles that help portray your professional image.

  • Remove (not just un-tag) any unflattering or inappropriate pictures.
  • Delete any posts, tweets, shares, etc., which contain inappropriate or offensive language.
  • Remove any affiliation with a person or group in which you may be questioned about by future employers.

In addition to making the above changes to your personal profiles, I recommend doing a few searches on Google to see what comes up (what a future employer would see if they “Googled” you).

The most valuable thing to remember when building your personal online brand, specifically across multiple platforms, is to maintain consistency. You cannot be interested in every industry, instead try to highlight your strengths when creating a professional social media presence.

LinkedIn

If you going to join a LinkedIn group, blog, or tweet make sure that all posts are connected and relevant to your industry. If you join 50 groups on LinkedIn, each with a different topic, you may come off as indecisive or unfocused to a potential employer. Joining groups based around a similar topic will portray drive and focus.

Keeping the information in both the experience and specialties sections up-to-date is particularly important, because potential employers can view your public profile at any point. In addition, I recommend rewriting your summary section to include keywords that correspond with your industry and expertise.

Blogs

Blogging is a powerful tool to increase your professional online image. It can increase the likelihood of quality content (specifically related to you) appearing first in search results. However, this is only positive if you pick the correct topic. If you are applying for a job in the print media industry, blogging about your love for homemade juice is not going to help your professional image. Rather, blog about the industry you are in, or are interested in entering. However, do not pick too specific of a topic, because it will be difficult to come up with new posts. Blogging about your industry will highlight your expertise to the world, and even prepare you for future interview questions.

When blogging about your industry, always include your own insights about the topic and trends, as well as offer suggestions to your readers. In your profile, display your creative and deductive skills, along with your knowledge of the industry.

Twitter

Twitter is becoming one of the big job “search engines” for both job seekers and companies looking for skilled employees. Companies are tweeting job listings more regularly, and professionals are searching for ways to stand out in the sea of tweets. The best way to make your tweets stand out on Twitter is by using Hashtags.

Hashtags specific to your industry

  • #Media
  • #Furniture
  • #Healthcare
  • #Restaurants
  • #Retail

Hashtags specific to your social media profiles

  • #LinkedIn
  • #Monster
  • #Blog

Hashtags about your qualifications

  • #MBA
  • #PhD
  • #Certifications

General Job Search Hashtags

  • #Resume
  • #CV
  • #Career

Above all, make sure that your Tweets are relevant, appropriate, and informative. The goal of your tweets is to highlight your skills and create a conversation with future employers.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How the 10 Most-Followed Brands are Leveraging Pinterest

Photo SearchPinterest is definitely catching the interest of big and influential companies, mostly fashion and media based companies. Including, one of may favorite websites, Mashable!

Magazine companies have seen the advantages of the new image based social media, including Real Simple and Better Homes & Gardens. Both of these magazines benefit from Pinterest because decorating tips are best translated through images. Kate Spade New York is leading the way for fashion brands on Pinterest, with almost 17,000 followers. Instead of waiting to see the newest ad in a magazine, customers can go on Pinterest and peruse all the newest looks.

One company that interests me greatly, it is not a media or fashion company, it is Whole Foods. While it may seem odd that a speciality grocery store has almost 15,000 followers on an image based social media platform, but it makes sense. They have figured out exactly how to portray their brand and company values through images with pictures of gardening, recipes, and food specials.
Via mashable.com

Via Scoop.it – Being Your Brand

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How to Harness the Power of Hashtags

Twitter is a unique platform, in which you are only able to have a conversation with the world using 140 characters. So how do you make your tweets stand out from the rest, and be found by engaged followers? One word…#HASHTAGS.

Hashtags are one of the most powerful tools you can use to increase the visibility of your tweets. Twitter is a real time feed that changes every second, so it is crucial to create tweets that stand out not only in the feed but in searches, as well. Hashtags can help to increase the number of followers, and in turn increase traffic to your website.

So here are some basic rules for using hashtags:

  • Do not use more than three hashtags in one post, more than that and you start to fall into the category of a hashtag spammer.
  • If you have two words you want to use for hashtags, you should combine them to create one hashtag (example: #Summer #vacation becomes #SummerVacation)
  • Only use hashtags that are relevant to your post, do not add the top trending hash tag to your tweet just to gain followers. (Example: You are tweeting about puppies, but the top trending hashtag is #worldseries, do not add World Series to your tweet.)

Creating a Campaign Around a Hashtag
So, using hashtags seem pretty simply, right? Well…yes and no. While they can be a tremendously powerful tool to increase followers and website traffic, preparation for creating a campaign around a hashtag is a requireHow to Use Hashtags on Twitterment, in order to advert disaster. The main reason a brand would use a hashtag is to try to start a conversation with the online community and build brand awareness. Powerful but generic hashtags tend to be more successful for brands because there is less chance that it could turn into negative publicity or a hashtag hijacking. It is not recommended that the company name is included in the hashtag.

Coming up with the best hashtag for your company can sometimes be a challenge. I know I just said that a hashtag should be powerful, yet generic, but it is also essential that it is not too generic. You do not want a hashtag to be so generic that it could be hijacked and used by another company, or for the meaning to be able to be change entirely. As with all social media campaigns, it is vital to have a crisis management plan in place. It should include details on how you plan to respond if your hashtag campaign is hijacked, or if it spins off in a negative way.

When beginning a campaign around a hashtag it is important to be ready for constant monitoring of how the hashtag travels and evolves in the “Twitter World”. Setting up a buzz feed to show all mentions of your hashtag could do the monitoring.

Hashtags can be very powerful tool and should definitely be used. But, please don’t just throw them into every tweet. Hashtags should be relevant to your brand, post topic, and your campaign.

Image: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Social Media Week 2012 – Miami

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Marketing Personal Branding

Today, social media week Miami hit it out of the park with some amazing speakers. I was able to catch two great discussions that were broadcasted live on LiveStream.

Oops! Social Media Mistakes and Learnings

The first discussion was “Oops! Social Media Mistakes and Learnings” which focused a lot on social media policies in relation to employee management. The discussion focused around a key point that I can not stress more; the importance of having a company social media policy in place BEFORE you begin using social media. While it is always nice to think that there will not aggressive, rude, or “sensitive” posts or tweets about your company, you need to be prepared for the “what if” situations.

For example, what if an employee tweets a negative and inappropriate comment about the company to their public Twitter profile? Having a standard or policy in place on what employees are allowed and are not allowed to say online, (in regards to the company) will make incidents such as that much easier to handle.

Not only should your policy include internal standards of maintaining your brand image in social media, but it should also include standards on how to respond to “sensitive” posts about your company by non-employees.

The key to monitoring your brand online is being honest, transparent, and quick to respond. Above all, do not ignore or delete negative comments. You do not have to address all negative comments in a public forum, comments are often addressed offline through Twitter direct messages or Facebook messages.

A great FREE tool that you can use to monitor your brand online is SocialMention.  In real time, SocialMention aggregates all the user generated content that mentions your brand into one information stream. It pulls content from Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.

Other key takeaways from the “Oops! Social Media Mistakes and Learnings” event were:

  • Try to keep all posts/tweets as organic as possible
  • Create a conversation calendar
  • Every engagement with a follower can be an opportunity
  • When creating a social media policy for employees, balance maintaining company values and not scaring employees off from using social media
  • Recommend to employees that they avoid talking about the company, but encourage talking about the industry

Personal Branding Through Social Media

The other event that I watched, was “Personal Branding Through Social Media”. During the event a tremendous panel discussed how to harness the power of social media to build your personal brand.

The panel included the following social media experts: Gabrielle Bozza from Made You Famous, Gerard Bush the Chief Creative Director of the BRPR Group, David Sugarman from Sugar Time Sports Management, Susset Cabrera the president of Peacock Public Relations, and Anne Owen the publisher of Miami magazine.

The panel discussion focused around creating a new persona; a digital reflection of who you are as a person and as a brand. When creating your personal brand you have to be prepared to defend yourself, your posts, and your tweets.

Some of my favorite takeaways from the “Personal Branding Through Social Media” discussion were:

  • Put your personality out there, otherwise people will get bored
  • You must be prepared to defend yourself
  • Be consistent but don’t be overly careful
  • Social Media – touch the world in 15 minutes

Also, if you want to watch either of these discussions you can find the videos for both the “Oops! Social Media Mistakes and Learnings” and the “Personal Branding Through Social Media” events on LiveStream. You can also watch all of the events live here: Social Media Week On LiveStream. If you do watch any of the events live, I highly recommended following the corresponding hashtag on Twitter as well. There are some great Twitter conversations, thought, insights that happen throughout the events. For example, today while watch these events I followed #smwmiami , it made the broadcast even more exciting and got great insights from the other viewers who were tweeting. To see all the Social Media Week 2012 events check out their website here.

Image: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Pinterest, the Newest Game Changer

Pinterest is truly the newest game changer. Since they launched (10 months ago) more than 13 MILLION users have registered. So why is Pinterest a game changer? Here, are a few reasons why they are not a forced to be messed with:

In the U.S., the majority of users are female, but in the U.K., they’re male. Like I discussed in a previous post, International Social Media Trends, platform use can vary greatly by  country. While you may be using the same platform to reach customers all around the world, your audience may be very different in France than it is in China or the U.S.

Though Pinterest has not rolled out official brand pages, there are over 100 brands that are leveraging the new platform to reach customers. A feature that makes Pinterest a great marketing tool for companies is that it allows the ability to control who can pin to your boards.   For example, as a company you may not want followers to be able to pin to each and every one of your boards, so Pinterest gives you the option to can create some boards in which pinning is restricted to the admin, others that allow multiple users to pin, and community boards in which anyone can pin.

So why should your company join Pinterest? Because Pinterest is driving more web traffic to other sites (such as your company’s website) than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube COMBINED! Just because Pinterest is the new “fad” doesn’t mean you should disregard its power. If you haven’t tried it out yet, I recommend it (though be prepared, it can be quite addicting).

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Social Media Marketing By the Numbers

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You can not argue with the cold hard numbers on the power of social media marketing (well you could, but it would be a losing battle). This infographic from Mashable shows the power of social media marketing in regards to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and location based services (such as FourSquare) strictly through numbers.

So what can a strong social media campaign do for your brand? Well for Old Spice, one month after they launched their “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” social media campaign they saw HUGE jumps in their followers/fans:

  • 60% increase in Facebook Fans (approx. 650,000 new fans)
  • 2700% increase in Twitter followers
  • Doubled YouTube subscribers

I would definitely classify the Old Spice campaign as more than successful!

In addition, this infographic breaks down the success of the Katy Perry Purr, EA Games Bulletstorm, Free the Children, Nie Widen Bohren, and Under Armour social media campaigns. How can you deny the power of social media when there are over 4 billion “things” shared on Facebook each day and almost 400 million Foursquare check ins during 2010 alone.
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