Archive for the ‘SMM’ Category

Social Media Simplified

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

If you are anything like me, then you’ve probably been inundated this year by a flood of emails, articles, websites, and seminars, all promoting “social media marketing“.  What’s making matters worse is that while this is going on, many sales-people are going around town now claiming to be social media marketing “experts”.  And the media doesn’t seem to get it either. The result is a ton of mass confusion out there! While it is true that Social Media is dramatically changing the online game, becoming an expert takes more than simply having lots of Twitter followers & Facebook fans. Below, I’ve tried to simplify the noise out there and give you a few easy ways to think about and manage your social media campaigns:

Before you start, you should know what-your-end-goal is? Do you need traffic? Leads? Increased Awareness? Fans? Improved SEO? Do you want to reduce the load on Customer Service? Each one of your answers is going give you a different solution on social media. Once you know your end-goal, you can now implement your strategies online. Simply review the social media categories I’ve listed below & use them to implement your program successfully.

  • Social Networking -  Publish content that engages friends/fans/followers and allows them to interact with your brand.
  • Online PR – Distribute your press releases online for FREE using a variety of publishers to push out relevant, news-worthy marketing messages
  • Social Bookmarking – Bookmark your favorite articles, blogs, pages especially YOURS & share them with your friends/fans/followers.
  • Article Directories – Publish articles about a topic of your expertise for FREE and establish yourself as an authority in your field. Receive traffic and SEO benefits as well.
  • Blogging – Publish content relevant to your area of expertise on both your website’s blog & external blogs that are popular on the web.
  • Podcasting – Publish audio content relevant to your area of expertise and establish yourself as an authority in your field.
  • Viral Video/Channel – Create a video unique and relevant to your area of expertise and/or as a brand channel to showcase videos related to you/your Industry.
  • Dashboards – Syndicate your content in one spot by publishing through a social dashboard. Improve efficiency, save time, and improve reach with one click.

I am sure there are bigger, better, faster incarnations coming sure to shake up the current landscape. But keeping your social media sites lumped into simple categories will help you select the proper vehicles for your campaigns. Eventually, we hope the clutter and the mystery of Social Media will be gone so that people can get to the real task of marketing.



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Google Social Search

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Turns out, you can take your network with you. Check out Google Social Search and you’ll see what I mean. Google Social Search is a new concept at Google (currently in beta) that allows you to easily find online content written by people you know along side your regular search results. So if, for example, a friend of your has blogged about a specific subject when you search you will see their social media content integrated into Google’s normal listings. This is NOT personalized search, which is already happening on Google but an experiment that combines search and social media elements. The obvious reason behind this is that you will trust the opinions of your network more that you trust content from people you don’t know. Makes great sense and something we look forward to seeing develop. We fully expect that social search will not be a trend and will indeed be a sign of things to come.

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Google’s Real-Time Search Goes Live

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

As many of the readers of my blog posts will attest, I’ve been talking about real-time search for a while now. While Bing’s version is still in beta (www.bing.com/twitter), Google’s was launched yesterday. Google’s version of real-time is seamlessly integrated into your regular search results and features the latest news from blogs, newsposts and Twiiter updates. When you enter popular search terms into Google, your search engine results page (SERP) will include a “Latest results for” section that showcases a constantly updating window of real-time results usually about halfway down the page. To website owners, there isn’t any clearer indication that you will now need both a social media marketing strategy and a search engine marketing strategy if you want to compete effectively online. The online world is changing rapidly and Google’s real-time is further proof of it. If you need any help getting your online program in sync with the next wave of the web, please do not hesitate to contact us.

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Social Media On The Rise

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

It should come as no surprise but Social Media Marketing is on a major upswing by both b-2-b and b-2-c marketers. According to an article published in AdWeek, Social Media has gained significant traction this year as a legitimate marketing tool.  The AdWeek study found that 66 percent of the marketers surveyed have used social media in 2009, compared to 20 percent in 2007. Their study also claims that fifty percent have employed viral videos so far this year, up from just 25 percent in 2007.

So why the sudden up-tick? There are many reasons but a significant one is because the cost to play in this space is so low.  It also helps that there is now an overwhelming wide acceptance of Social Media Marketing making the channel quickly one of the best ways to engage your customers and build a community (and new conversations) around your business.

The downside of Social Media Marketing, of course, is that measuring ROI is still proving difficult for most marketers.  And until that changes, it will be challenging for people to know exactly what budget allocation to give. Still, measurements or not, if you aren’t actively engaging in a Social Media Marketing plan you are missing a huge opportunity to “extend your brand” and connect with your customers in a new and unique way.

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