Public Relations & Social Media Insight

Twitter’s latest ad product provides a call to action right inside a tweet — showing the company is finally creating marketing tools closer to the “bottom of the funnel.” Even as Twitter has grown into a media and marketing giant, not everyone is persuaded that the social media site is useful for selling things. As one marketer recently lamented to me, the platform’s effectiveness is hard to measure — and justify to clients — because “no one’s going to buy a car off Twitter.” [Update: Twitter says "au contraire" and sent this research] The perception, then, is that Twitter is useful for what the ad types call “top of the funnel” marketing — building brand awareness and so on — but that it has yet to deliver paying customers in the way that GoogleAdwords can. Today, though, it appears Twitter has responded with a new ad product that will make it easier for brands to assess what they get for their marketing bucks. The product, called a “Lead Generation Card,” lets marketers post expanded tweets that invite users to sign up for stuff right inside Twitter. The company showed what this might look in a blog post describing the product...

Nutella scrambles to fix bad PR and reputation hit.. As you’re aware, since 2007, Sara Rosso—arguably your most passionate superfan—has hosted World Nutella Day. She love(d) your product so much that she wanted the world to dedicate a single day—February 5—to embracing it. What she did was nothing less than astounding. On the World Nutella Day website, Rosso has gathered more than 700 recipes, tweeted and shared on Facebook the favorite sayings, stories and links of Nutella fans and, most important, encouraged everyone to try Nutella just once. But on May 25, all her hard work will have been in vain. That’s because you inexplicably shut down her tremendous efforts, sending a cease-and-desist letter to her mailbox—the sort of action a brand might take against a brand hijacker, hacker or activist....

Say you have a business that relies on a local customer base, you want to rank high in search engines for local users, right? SEO is going to be integral to making that happen and, by implementing the following steps, you will be well on your way to being more visible to your local customers.

 

Local SEO isn’t about gaming the system; it’s more about convincing a robot (a search engine) that your site is the most relevant for users in a certain location who may want your products or services. Local SEO is a series of signposts that allow the robots to understand where you are in the world and what you're providing. It allows them to better rank your site according to the search terms the user enters.

 

In designing your site, you will still want to follow general SEO practices, for example, conducting keyword research into the most relevant search terms. On a technical level, your site will still need to meet best practices for crawls. But, to target a local audience, you will need to go even further....

My last column about the role and duties of public relations agencies generated more response, mostly positive but quite a few negative, than any other posting during the past five years. As consumers become more familiar with digital technology, businesses are evolving their marketing strategies to meet expectations. Websites and applications are now considered an essential part of a brand’s presence.

Valuable measurement perspectives and advice. The influential economist Albert O. Hirschman argues that customers can have a disciplining effect on companies and markets through their exit and voice behaviors. Instead of simply “quitting” a product, Hirschman urged customers to voice their complaints so companies could improve and learn. Hirschman would be a happy camper these days because social media puts a megaphone on the voice of the customer.

 

Results from The CMO Survey® show that companies, in turn, are also starting to see the value of emphasizing voice-based metrics. The CMO Survey® investigated which metrics companies are using to measure the impact of social media investments. In August 2010 and then again in February 2013, top marketers were asked to share which metrics they use to evaluate social media.

 

Looking across the results, we can see which metrics companies most often use. The survey did not, however, ask respondents to rank or rate each metric in terms of importance....

This infographic explores the psychology of color and suggests why brands like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut prefer red whereas Lowe’s opts for blue.

Great content sells. It converts. It helps with SEO. And sometimes, it works like magic: it goes viral, creates traffic inflow, and helps you achieve your goals.

 

But what exactly is great content? How do you produce something so great it’ll go viral and help you achieve your goals? The Internet is inundated with a lot of similar-looking content. This very article might sound similar to something you’ve seen before. Unique content is hard to produce, and it’s getting harder by the day as more websites grasp the importance of content marketing...

HubSpot’s 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report is the most comprehensive review of the inbound marketing industry.

 

The complexity of marketing your business on Google is rising as search success becomes increasingly intertwined with your social media presence and how you interact with your customers. Your website content and external links are no longer enough to gain Google’s trust. Publishing fresh content on your site means nothing if no one is reading it — and it means even less if no one is sharing it to their social networks.

 

As a business, your primary marketing goal is always to generate leads. Leads are certainly generated from dominating search results — but what if I told you that a solid content marketing strategy could get you leads, even if it didn’t result in #1 rankings right away?

How many times in the past six months have you read or heard someone reference the phrase “paid, owned, and earned”? I’d venture to say that the answer is more than you can count on your hands (and maybe even your feet as well!). In this post, I’ll explore the evolution of social media marketing that eventually led us to the paid, owned, earned trifecta, and I’ll dive into a few brands that have found success employing it. As brands first began experimenting with social media, they were focused on the acquisition of fans, followers, and advocates. Number of “likes”, hashtag use/trends, and fan increase, these metrics of social success were easy to track and quantify. Soon after, as social media platforms designed solutions for brands, companies began formulating social and digital teams who understood and realized the value and speed of online word of mouth. Through industry and analyst research, they learned that consumers are more likely to engage and transact business with brands that integrate social media, and so they began cultivating content that inspired engagement. From this new interaction, they began seeing actual, authentic expressions – opinions, stories, photos, Tweets – earned out of engagement with their consumers. Wanting more and more of this valuable direct contact, brands began finding ways to generate this compelling content and drive people to sites that contained other authentic content. In doing this, converged media was born.....