I recently read an article titled “6 New Terms to Use When Measuring Social Marketing Efforts” and thought it worthy of sharing.
You see, most of us know these terms and use them on a daily basis – this puts the terms into a social setting and helps you get a better perspective. The follow is the terms;
1.Attractions. It’s not quantity but quality that matters in social media. Being able to attract a qualified, quality following is a real social marketing skill. It isn’t about spending huge amounts of money to grab people’s momentary attention. It’s about a slow and steady build of identifying and reaching the right people and then connecting with them for the long term. Did you just spend $250,000 on a funny series of videos and got 23,000 fans on your Facebook Page? Sucker. Most of those people will ignore you from here on out. They may have clicked “Like” during your campaign, but they really don’t care. Are you attracting the right people ,or are they just empty numbers?
2.Participations. Your investment in developing content should be measurable. But what is the value of a comment, or a “like” on your status update? A retweet of your tweet? There can be an algorithmic calculation of the relative or exact reach of the participant, the number of posts from you, the number of overall fans or followers. But is it those numbers that matter here? Facebook Insights offers a “Post Quality” metric, a metric calculated on a rolling seven-day basis that uses the percentage of your fans that engage when you post content to your Page. But how else can you calculate participations? And more importantly, how are you appreciating the value of those who are participating with you in your social channels?
3.Interactions. Do you know how to leverage an online community? Once you get a community going, it seems to take on a life of its own. But good community moderation and management means that you can artfully leverage the interactions and turn them into actions. There is value in those interactions, not just between your customers or potential customers and you, but also those between the customers and potential customers themselves. How are you identifying and measuring these interactions? Have you calculated how much time and money you are saving in the long run because of the more direct and intimate customer service interactions you can have in social channels?
4.Actions. There is a vast difference between impressions and actions. Impressions are nebulous because you really have no idea if someone actually saw your ad. Actions are measurable. Social marketing can drive actions, although it often takes some time and a few steps in between. Don’t be turned off by the time it may take to get to the action. There is a great deal of value in the steps between.
5.Transformations. In marketing, a conversion occurs when a prospective customer takes the marketer’s intended action (usually when the customer moves from browsing to buying). But in social marketing, there is another kind of conversion that I’m calling the “transformation.” An example of transformation in social marketing: Picture the disgruntled client who vocalizes his or her frustration or displeasure publicly on Twitter or Facebook, a blog, or any other platform that they can access because of the advent of social media tools. Your company has been listening to the chatter in social channels, and a representative from your company addresses their concerns immediately. That person realizes that you are not only listening but that you care and will work to find a solution to their issue. They transform from angry customer to champion of your company’s brand. There is an incredible value in the transformed customer.
6.Transactions. The transaction is the closing interaction, the goal. Keep in mind that you want these transactions to happen more than one time in many cases. And this does not always refer to a monetary transaction i.e. a sale — that’s easy to measure. A transaction could be signing up for something; filling out a survey; referring a friend; sharing information. What are you trying to get people to do? When they do that, a transaction has occurred. How valuable is that to you? And what are you giving your customers in the transaction? A quality product or service? A discount? Additional perks of some kind? How are you communicating to your customers (or friends, fans and followers) that they are more than a sale? How are you showing them that they are a part of a valuable relationship that you are willing to maintain?
So, these are a few terms put into social perspective – I didn’t write or invent these terms though I do like how they have been layed out to help us better understand what some of the things we are trying to accomplish with our social media strategies.
Let me know what you think.
While Google still is the dominating search engine, local search is growing by leaps and bounds. 40% of all searches have a local intent – that is a number all businesse should sit up an notice!
Americans conducted 15.4 billion searches in March, with Google Sites accounting for 65.1% search market share, followed by Yahoo Sites at 16.9%, and Microsoft Sites at 11.7%. The Ask Network captured 3.8% of the search market, followed by AOL with 2.5%.
So where does this leave Local Search? As a searcher’s location becomes a standard bit of metadata to be factored into the PPC bid process, geotargeting is likely to become the norm. On the other end of the geotargeting search equation, we see that landing pages are somewhat neglected. Survey results showed that few marketers were taking advantage of geolocation-specific messaging once the searcher clicked through. For retailers, in particular, this is a huge missed opportunity.
Social sites can also help marketers find consumers that purchase wine, clothing and cars. “People who have expressed intent are accessible here,” he says.
Video also presents another opportunity. More than 174 million U.S. Internet users watched online video in February, according to comScore Video Metrix. Video viewers on Hulu watched content on average 2.4 hours per viewer.
LocalProud is a discount card program to help vitalize local economies. Businesses offer discounts that are honored when consumers show their LocalProud card. They get to determine the offers and are able to change them via a convenient website…
Have you ever wished you could carry around a card that would be honored at any business who offered coupons? Well, we have which is why we’ve created Local Proud – a Coupon program that eliminates the hassles of finding, printing and organizing coupons.
This is the way of future discount programs and we are now bringing it to life. Consumers want great deals. Businesses want to offer great value. Now, Local Proud is bringing the two together buy offering an easy to use discount card called the Local Proud Perks card.
We are pleased to annouce that we have partnered with our first television station as well – an innovative thinker located in Buffalo, NY. WKBW is where you’ll find great deals in western upstate New York. Currently we are offering many deals in the Buffalo and surrounding areas.
The great thing is you can use the card or, if you’re old school (sorry:-) you can also print coupons from the website. Sometimes it take a little while to inform the community as to what a new value proposition is so in the meantime, you can still print coupons via Local Proud. We are adding new offers daily so keep coming back – we’re about to overtake the Buffalo, NY area!
As you all know, we are fans of local search – we’ve written about it, we have even partnered with a local search directory called MyLocalLookup. Well, we now have something new to tell you about. It’s called Local Proud!
LocalProud is a brand new discount card program designed to help vitalize the local economy. Area merchants offer discounts that are honored when consumers show their free LocalProud card. The business get to determine their offers and they’re able to change them anytime via a convenient web interface. No special equipment is required for the business or your customers.
By becoming a part of the LocalProud program, the business will receive Local Proud cards to distribute to their customers as well as a window decal to display in your storefront. The program will be promoted through various local media, including television.
Pre-Launch Phase
During our pre-launch phase, they are offering free enrollment to the first 100 businesses. That means there is absolutely no-risk involved to get started. It’s time that local businesses come together and make a difference in our community. This Program allows that aspect to take hold.
Benefits To Consumers
• No Points to Collect
• No Coupons to Print
• No Waiting for Rewards
• Instant Offers
• Supports Local Businesses
• Keeps Money in Local Economy
Here is where to get started. Log onto Local Proud and hit the Advertise with us tab. It’s free and its a very cool concept! Or you can go to their pre-launch page to get sdtarted. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait another minute – I believe this will be a big hit with both consumers and businesses!
Rev Up announced today another great feature built into MyLocalLookup. We continue to lead the way in local search when it comes to developing new ways for our customers to get the most opportunity within Local Search.
My Local Lookup, a local search engine similar to a Yellow Pages on line has now incorportaed video players into their search results.
About 6 months ago, we announced how we’ve incorporated Twitter results into MyLocalLookup searches and now we’re the first to announce that we have videos within our search results for our paying clients. It works like this…
When a consumer is on one of our stations websites like WKBW.com. (This is one of our stations however someone can go directly to MyLocalLookup and get the same results.) they type in a keyword like Auto in Buffalo, NY and the search results appear. Pretty impressive as the first 6 listing are paid advertisers and their video results appear before any of the free results.
We are also building in video players to all our landing pages that consumers can access through our station partners. This gives the local business so much exposure and we are delighted to introduce the new players.
Keep coming back, we have more features and new partners we’re adding all the time!
Having been in business for 17 years and built 2 companies, our team understands what it takes to build a profitable business. Having said that, there are ups and downs when you are self employed when it comes to those profits. There are some factors out of ones control, the last 2 years national economics are one example.
Besides the hard work, commitment, sacrifice and long long days of first starting your company, it takes planning, strategy and a whole of mistakes and failure to build a profitable business.
That’s right… I said it, mistakes and failure! However, one can always learn from anothers misfortune. In other words, you will make mistakes along the way however you can learn from other people and not make the “same” mistakes others have made. Which brings me to the point – Profits. I have had the idea of writing about this for weeks but never had gotten around to it. Today, one of my fellow Twitter friends by the name of Steve Pohlit.
The following was written by Steve and can be found on his blog: Thanks Steve for writing this!
It is important to understand that in order to build profits, a profit must first be earned. If your business is a start-up or has been losing money, the main focus of all your activity is to make a profit.. not just any profit, but a cash profit. Cash profit is where your cash balance is growing after you cover all your expenses whether they be paid daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually.
If your business is not in a cash profit situation, you will not be able to stay in business indefinitely. There will be a point when you run out of cash and you have to close your door. In the Proof of Concept article I mentioned Twitter as an example of a company whose business model is exciting but whose excitement will eventually die if it does not turn profitable.
One of the best ways to begin making a cash profit and then make even higher cash profits, is to develop a financial performance picture twelve months in advance. This financial picture is how you want you business to look financially a year from now. I always advise clients when doing this work to look at what the business has been able to earn in the past and then increase it significantly.
Individuals use a technique know as vision boards to focus on things they want including lifestyle improvements. The financial model of what you want your business to look like is your business vision board. “If you can see it you can achieve it.”
There is more to it than creating a picture twelve months out but that is a key starting point. For purposes of building profits I do not advocate going beyond a twelve month horizon as there are two many variables. However, when doing strategic planning a more forward outlook is appropriate. For now we are focused on building profits near term.
I was sitting here reading and thinking a lot about Twitter and how mis-used it is. It’s really funny how our personal etiquette really comes out while using social sites… Some people are just plain rude when it comes to socializing online. I can only guess they are the same way in person.
Thinking about this and being inspired by what I read at TwitterTips, I decided to write what I think are good etiquette rules for using Twitter. Some of these aren’t my brainchild and others are. They are in no particular order yet all have the same significants.
1. Always be Polite & Nice - This one is self explanatory. It’s like when you meet someone for the first time, you typically would say hi, nice to meet you, the pleasure is all mine, thank you, have a great day, you know, just like you would do normally. Its also very important to take the time to reply to all tweets that come to your Inbox. Some tweets are auto replies and of course there is no need to reply to that tweet.
2. Don’t Be a Useless ReTweeter – This is one of my pet peeves with Twitter and tweets. So many people retweet things that really have no significants at all. Actually most tweets really have no great meaning so there is no sense in retweeting. Retweet the ones that have great significance, otherwise, let the useless ones die in Twitterland.
4. Do Not Repeat Yourself - We all know repetitive messages are crucial for Branding however, you must be careful not to overstate your message. I have found Social Media to be more of what the title says, social. People are not neccessarily looking to buy your product in a social setting so be smart about what you tweet. Gain loyality first and give free stuff away… eventually if you have what they want, they’ll buy it from you.
5. People Have Names – Use Them! I have always appreciated this… when someone uses and remembers my name in business, I remember them too. The same applies in the social network arena. Either use their real name or screen name, they will appreciate it.
6. Give Credit and Share - If you find something you like, share it and tell your followers where it came from. If someone tweets something interesting that you want to retweet, thank them and mention him or her in your retweet. Again, I know this is hard to do every time, especially if you follow many people, but once in a while is nice.
7. Don’t Be Pushy - When people try to promote their product, they usually take the wrong approach. I have seen tweets with a link to their product and the tweet contains no real information about what the link is. I usually ignore these tweets. Share a little about what your link is about. This is what people either say yes or no to and the headline is the most important part of any tweet.
8. Tweet & Tweet Often – I have been on Twitter for quite some time. The first few months I really didn’t do anything with tweeting. The next few months I dabbled in tweets. I have managed to steadily get better with tweeting. I have found that when I stop posting tweets, the traffic to my sites drop. THe bottom line is you have to tweet everyday, even multiply times a day to get anywhere with Social Media.
A friend of mine recently wrote this on LinkedIn and it has turned out to be one of the most commented post ever. I felt it was good enough to see if we can create some new comments here.
OK, I finally said it publicly, Social Media for business is Crap! .
Maybe because my feeling for the hyped-up benefits of social media was recently confirmed by a top millionaire online guru. If you follow the most successful gurus his name is always at the top of the list. As a matter of fact, he was the first online entrepreneur to make a MILLION $$ in a day. That said, recently he published a PDF where he said “I think social media Su-ks”. When I read that I felt a sigh of relief, “maybe I am not off the tracks after all”. You see when you don’t “follow the pack” you tend to sometimes feel like you are going down the wrong path or at least missing an opportunity. Now, I must admit I use all the major social media outlets including Twitter, Facebook, Squidoo, etc, etc. However, not for direct marketing. And, even though I publish new product releases on Twitter, analytics tells me no convertible traffic comes from that source or Facebook. My primary use of social sites is for building backlinks, but that is for SEO purposes. And, of course the added exposure. i.e. “branding” doesn’t hurt.
However, I never felt like any of the exposure or traffic was ever really serious “convertible traffic”. In other words social media is used for entertainment and communication, ahh, socializing. “Socializing” people are not in the “consumer mode” when they are cruising the social sites. They are looking for friends, maybe a date, etc. Proof of this observation is that these social sites still cannot monetize themselves via paid advertising to nearly the level of search engines like Google or Yahoo. Why? Because you really cannot target potential consumers when they are out at their “buying behavior mode”, i.e. when they are specifically looking to buy a product or service. To try and pull social surfers out of the “social mode” and into a “buying mode” requires many steps before a behavioral shift is realized. Sure, you can start a dialogue and maybe down the road they will recall your business, but the effort to generate business is much more ROI effective using PPC or SEO. The one bright spot for social media as a business tool may be list building, but my own results have been mixed (via measuring quality of opt ins).
And yes, I have read the eMarketer predictions that social ad spend will increase by about 400% by 2013. But, these same groups are also publishing reports like today’s “Does Social Media Work for Small Biz?” where 88% of all small business owners say social media is not helpful to their business. Proof that most of us are not yet seeing the tangible benefits, i..e., sales, leads, etc, from our social media profiles. Personally I am not even seeing much return on creating and maintaining groups within the social media outlets. And, one of the most raved about tools within social media is creating specialized groups.
So, at the moment using social sites for business generation, in my opinion is still highly overrated. As an owner of several e-commerce business I don’t see myself investing advertising dollars in social media any time soon. And, even though there are those that will disagree, I don’t think many of them can show you their own e-commerce business that has experienced any serious ROI using social media. If anyone can show me any REAL results otherwise, please I am all ears. But please Hold the HYPE.
Having worked around the country with small businesses, I am finding more and more small business saying no to a website for their own business. And many consumers seem not to think less of them for doing so, according to Discover Small Business Watch.
The rest of this article comes to us from Mark Dolliver…
Here’s a bit of Internet Age heresy from small-business owners: 46 percent regard it as a “myth” that every company needs a Web site.
That’s one tidbit from a release this month of supplemental data from the ongoing Discover Small Business Watch polling. When small-business owners were asked in an August round of polling whether their company has a Web site, fewer than half (45 percent) said it does.
Among respondents whose business doesn’t have a Web site, the foremost reason (cited by 41 percent) was that “my business doesn’t need one.” Other reasons included “cost” (cited by 19 percent), “not enough time to monitor and manage” (16 percent) and “complexity” (9 percent).
Do consumers penalize small businesses that choose not to have an online presence? Not as much as you might expect. Polling in September among consumers asked, “Are you more likely or less likely to use a small business that has a Web site?” While a plurality (47 percent) said they’d be more likely to do so, half said either that they’d be less likely (17 percent) or that “it would have no impact” (34 percent).
Nor is there a consensus among consumers that it’s odd if a company doesn’t have a Web site. Asked whether they “expect every business, large or small, to eventually have a Web site,” those saying “yes” (46 percent) were outnumbered by the sum of those saying “no” (37 percent) or “not sure” (17 percent).
The same poll also asked consumers whether they would “consider using a service or small business that you heard about on a social or business networking site.” Forty-three percent said they would consider it, but 32 percent said they wouldn’t and 26 percent weren’t sure.
If you have been keeping up with the news recently you will be aware that social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are the talk of the town. Not only are they great for connecting on a personal level but they can be extremely valuable for your multimedia and storytelling projects. By utilising your social network effectively you can direct significant traffic towards your projects. You can, if you know how, make your projects viral and ones which are talked about all over the Internet. But with so many different social media websites around it can be difficult to know how best to approach social media.
There are many resources online which can help you learn the best methods for using social media, and many tools to make your life easier. I have put together a very brief list of four sites which I think will really help you become a social media pro.
1. Twitip
Darren Rowse runs this great site (www.twitip.com) which focuses on teaching you how to make the most of Twitter. There is a lot of really helpful and useful information on this site and it is a must read for anyone looking seriously at using Twitter to drive traffic to their website. No matter what you want to find out about, there is probably an article on Twitip for you.
2. Hootsuite
This is one of my favorite applications. Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com) lets you manage several different social networks, Twitter, Facebook, etc.. all at once. There is also a great iPhone application and a bookmark button which allows you to post links directly one or all of your social networks. You also get fantastic statistics on who clicks on the links you share which can help you decide what suite your audience better.
3. Chris Brogan
Chris Brogan is one of the leading social networking experts. His website, www.chrisbrogan.com, is a wealth of great information that will help you not only build a large social networking presence but will help you grow a community of interested people. Not only does he have the website but Brogan also co-wrote a book, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, which has received many good reviews. I guarantee that you will get some great information from him.
4. TweetDeck
TweetDeck is another great social networking tool which allows you to manage and connect to multiple social networking websites. Unlike Hootsuite which runs in your Internet browser, TweetDeck is a desktop application which runs on Adobe Air. Many of the top social networkers have often commented about using TweetDeck as their main social networking client. If you would like to do all your networking from one easy desktop tool then head to www.tweetdeck.com.
No matter what resource or application you find best for you, the important thing to remember with social media is to stick with it. Eventually the hard work will pay off and you will have a great list of followers who are interested in you and your projects. You will then be able to leverage this audience to make your projects more successful.
Stay tuned for our next article, when we discuss how many small firms don’t have a website today.