Started a blog some months ago and are yet to receive a comment? That is a bad situation indeed and I can tell from experience that it is very frustrating.
Join Scoop.it for Free
Share ideas that matter on the social web and experience
the benefits of curating the world's best content.
I don't have a Facebook, a Twitter or a LinkedIn account
Already have an account: Login
A collection of top tips to boost your social media effectiveness
Curated by
Dave Pinnington
|
Scooped by Dave Pinnington onto Social media influence tips |
Scoop.it!
No comment yet.
Sign up to comment
Delete the scoop?
Are you sure you want to delete this scoop?
Yes
 Your new post is loading...
Scoop.it!
Great article by Jeffbullas
I had the privilege of speaking at the BE-Wizard Web Conference in Italy last week. It was a tribute to Enrico and his team at Titanka, to witness and participate in an international class conference, that in only 4 years have taken an initially small event, with only 30 people attending in 2009 to having an audience of over 600 people in 2012. After attending the conference over the 2 days at the sea side holiday resort city of Rimini, I decided to grab the opportunity to take a vacation break and explore the sights, history and gastronomic delights of Italy. The trip has also been an educational and invigorating exercise in blogging while travelling and keeping up the discipline of maintaining and monitoring my social networks while on the move by train and motel. Most of the trains in Italy have power, so the challenge of ensuring having enough electrical juice to keep the batteries of the iPhone, the laptop and the iPad powered up has been largely successful. (I would recommend though taking a power board to charge multiple devices at one time) The 3 Essential Mobile Devices for the Travelling Blogger On landing in Rome, some time was taken to ensure I had a local SIM which provides cost effective broadband mobile access that allows mobile blogging, communication and the ability to maintain the social networks. 1. The Laptop The laptop is of course the main mobile blogging station and has the tools for putting the blog posts together. This includes my “can’t do without” software tool for screen shots and image management “Snagit”, that is vital for including those images that are essential on an increasingly visual web. 2. The iPhone The iPhone has been good for posting Instagram photos to Twitter and Facebook, checking my Facebook timeline and viewing Hootsuite for Tweets and direct messages. It is also my Internet tethering device that provides my Keeping in touch via email is a breeze as the Italian mobile broadband is quite fast and very accessible even in out of the way alleyways and the five awesome and picturesque headlands that are in the “Italian Riviera” called the Cinque Terre. Some tunnels even provided internet access! 3. The iPad This the is the consummate tourist guide and tool you can’t do with out once you have used it. It provides you with the Google GPS map function that ensures you can find your way in places like Florence. It is also great to find restaurants and cafes with the “TripAdivisor” app. It also is the perfect research device for finding about the local area and highlights. The local information center is now not required. Travelling while working is becoming easier and more convenient and the mobile connected devices are freeing us from being bound to a desk or even your own country. The Latest Mobile Web Facts and Figures The growth of the social networks over the last few years has been matched by the mobile internet with smart phones sales approaching nearly 500 million units in 2011. The synergy that these 2 fast tracking trends provide is changing how we work and play. So what are some statistics worth noting? The smartphone sales were up over 63% in 2011 from 2010 (488.5 million)5.9 billion people now use mobile phones globallyOver 300,000 apps have been developed in the past 3 years and downloaded more than 10.9 Billion times77% use mobile phones for searchSocial networking accounted for 50% of all page views on mobile phones in 2011Facebook mobile users quadrupled in 2 years from 50 million to 200 millionThere are 200 million mobile video playbacks from YouTube every dayThere are 1.2 billion internet connected smartphones The upside for mobile commerce and smart phone growth is enormous as all mobile phones will eventually become internet connected. On current numbers that means that 4.7 billion smart phones are yet to be sold and connected! Is your business ready for the mobile web? Delete the scoop?
Are you sure you want to delete this scoop?
Yes
Scoop.it!
A great article by Dave Slovin to improve your content. (click on the headline for full article)
Is your content the cream of the crop, or crap? I’ve seen a lot of online discussion recently about the quality of the content that we’re including in our websites, blogs, and other communications. Is it educational? Does it speak to the right audience? Does it speak English? When a friend asked me last week to comment on his new website copy, I pulled out a list of criteria that I’ve been using for a few years and got to work. After ripping apart his website (sorry), I realized that this list was a good tool for anyone to use when evaluating pretty much any content. Since I’m in marketing, it needed a cute name. So here it is – the Content Quality Quotient, or CQQ for short. Here’s how it works. Review an example of your content (blog, white paper, article, presentation, etc.). Then read the following ten statements, responding to each with True or False. The content addresses a broader topic or issue than my specific services cover.A reader (or participant) will understand the point of the content within the first 5 seconds, and derive some value within 30 seconds.A typical client will understand this, meaning it’s not too technical.If someone read this and didn’t become my client, that person would still derive some business or personal value.A reader would be perceived as helpful when forwarding this to a friend or peer.None of these sales words appear – sign up, act now, offer ends, price, features and benefits, credit cards accepted.Other than maybe a small logo or boiler plate (bio at the end), my firm’s name does not appear in the main content.There is at least one client quote for each firm associate quote.My competitors’ services would also apply equally well to this topic.A reader will likely have comments or questions worth sharing with others, other than, “Where do I buy?” CQQ Scoring Guide If you answered False to any one of these statements, time to start looking for a new job. Just kidding... Every business situation is different, so use these guidelines as a starting point. Add or change and store the combined list as your firm’s own CQQ. Before you publish content in the future, make it someone’s responsibility to check it against the CQQ as a standard part of the content creation process. Act Now - Huge Features and Benefits When you develop and use your own CQQ, the quality of your content will improve. You will find that prospective clients are more interested in your blogs and newsletters. Editors will return your phone calls about publishing articles. You’ll be invited to speak at conferences and host panel discussions. Oh, and people will want to use your firm you because you add value. Imagine that – sell more by selling less. If you can’t measure it, don’t do it. Delete the scoop?
Are you sure you want to delete this scoop?
Yes
Scoop.it!
A great article on global social media usage. Some wonderful charts and a good breakdown for countries. A must read for any global communicator or marketer. Delete the scoop?
Are you sure you want to delete this scoop?
Yes
Scoop.it!
Great article by on Healthcare Blogging 101 by Angela Dunn @blogbrevity How to: healthcare physician hospital blog, engage online medical consumers, patients. Click on the headline to read more. Delete the scoop?
Are you sure you want to delete this scoop?
Yes
|
Scoop.it!
A social media whisper campaign is traditionally a method of persuasion in which damaging rumors are spread about the target. For example, you may have heard about a little conflict last year between Google and Facebook, in which a major PR firm was hired to spread negative information about Google. But did you know that there are positive, ethical ways to orchestrate a social media whisper campaign? Here are three methods of getting people talking about a company’s product/services in a good way: Tease a new product or services offering by asking your employees to use their own social media networks. For example, a car dealership could ask members of its sales staff to tweet, “Big things coming from ABC Auto next week. You won’t want to miss this!”Send samples of your product to customers and request that they post about them. Just make sure the recipients are transparent about getting the product for free. For example, a cosmetics company could send 100 of their new lipsticks out to 100 customers, and request that they post on Facebook about their experience: “ABC Cosmetics sent me a free lipstick last week! I’ve never had a color stay on for so long.”Ask your customers to share pictures of your product or a snapshot of themselves at your company’s location. Social media is all about interaction and engagement, so seeking feedback about every aspect of your organization is vital. A dentist’s office could encourage patients to post pictures on the company Facebook page of their “post-cleaning grin.” Again, full transparency is crucial – there is no shame in requesting endorsement or engagement. Just be up front about it. When planning a social media whisper campaign for your company, consider asking users to tease to your new releases and share their experience using your products or services. Be honest about your promotional intentions and be sure to thank users for their participation. And like anything in social media, have fun! Delete the scoop?
Are you sure you want to delete this scoop?
Yes
Scoop.it!
Is digital a viable channel to my customers? With global population of 6.8 billion how much of this audience is viable to get to? According stats 52% of people live in urban locations, there is a 30% internet penetration and 22% of the world is social networking. Now for a stat that should really make you pay attention, globally there are 5.86 billion mobile subscribers globally. A whopping 86% of the global population has a mobile phone. Some impressive figures, but marketing is all about targeting specific demographics in the populations. In North America internet penetration has reached 77%, 50% of the population use social networks and there are more mobile phones than people (please note by mobile we do not mean “smart phone”). We need to drill deeper and deeper into our data to target specific customer profiles. For healthcare brands trying to target elderly patients, if you’re customers aren’t accessing the internet for information there is a high probability that a close family member will being doing it for them. What can we conclude from this data?
1. Your customer have access to digital channels 2. Mobile marketing could provide a powerful tool for your communications 3. High mobile usage means that your websites should be optimised for mobile access 4. Social media means that your customers are becoming increasingly connected
Used well digital, communication is powerful tool for your brand in all markets. The internet has provided your customers with instant access to a wealth of free information. They expect to find information on your products and services, and more importantly, whether you like it or not they will talk about you (positively or negatively). Digital can be a powerful channel for any marketer in any industry sector. In isolation, it can be effective but in combination with other channels, it can be used to amplify the rest of your marketing mix. Click on the headline for more interesting stats on digital penetration and the full regional breakdown data.
Delete the scoop?
Are you sure you want to delete this scoop?
Yes
Scoop.it!
Digital and social media are a channel to communicate with your customer. Like most channels, they work best when integrated seamlessly to give the customer a continuous engaging experience. From a marketing point of view, moving a customer up the “ladder of adoption” to increase usage of your product is what it is all about. Offline activities can be amplified online and online activities can drive calls to actions, we just need to understand how we can leverage our activities and embrace integration. If you want to dramatically increase your social media influence you have to think about all your actions and how you can use them to drive social media discussion and engagement.
Below is a great article written by Rob Pearson (click on headline for the full original). It looks at some of the steps you need to take to make integration of channels possible.
Marketers have a tough job! No juggler's job has ever been as tough. With 13 or so online marketing channels (and just as many offline), the job of cross-channel marketing is difficult. But creating a successful cross-channel marketing organization is possible. Building a strategy and organization to implement cross-channel marketing usually requires changes in the following: Marketing strategy and tacticsOrganizational structureTeam skillsIndividual channel manager skillsTechnology and tools That list may seem overwhelming, but don't stop reading. You can minimize those barriers and build a cross-channel marketing force with greater focus, impact, and alignment. Building a cross-channel marketing organization requires three processes: Creating a cross-channel marketing strategy. Create an overarching marketing strategy that aligns with your company's strategic objectives.Integrating cross-channel activity. Create a single point of integration for all your online channels.Measuring a common cross-channel metric. Use of a common metric allows comparison among all channels and campaigns. 1. Create a cross-channel marketing strategy Many marketing departments transformed their online marketing processes the same way: With each new online marketing technology, they added a new marketing manager, tactic, skill set, and channel-specific metrics. That has created marketing departments with strategies, tactics, and metrics that aren't aligned. Each channel is doing what it thinks it does best, but that may not be what's best for the company strategy. To build a marketing strategy that aligns all channels and supports the company's strategic objectives, you must first identify your company's strategic themes. Whether you know them explicitly or not, most companies have two (and not more than three) strategic themes, which are complementary. The following are a few common strategic themes for all organizations: Build the brand.Be cost effective.Strive for customer intimacy.Be a leading edge innovator.Expand the franchise.Focus on the niche. Each strategic theme requires a unique portfolio of channels and campaigns. Marketing is a competitive battle; and as in any battle, you make the greatest impact by aligning and focusing your forces. Just as Hitler and Napoleon found out, despite their initial success, when you don't align your forces and you spread them too thinly, you lose big. For example, if your company's strategy theme is selling leading-edge technology to teens concerned with style and social status, you need to focus on a teen style-message via Twitter, Facebook, and a "cool" website. If you are a B2B with a long sales cycle and decision process, you should create deep information assets available via webinars, LinkedIn groups, whitepapers, and forums on a deep website. Each member of your cross-channel portfolio should reinforce the other members by contributing its own counterbalancing set of risks and rewards. Allocating channel resources according to your company's strategic themes makes it easier to decide how to set budgets. Viewing your marketing mix as a portfolio of channel and campaign resources makes it easier to allocate resources while keeping the same organizational structure, people, and skill sets. But you'll still need a way to integrate all your cross-channel activity and bring together all your online marketing. 2. Integrate cross-channel activity Having a single point of integration brings all your marketing results together in one location. The right technology for integrating cross-channel tactics will allow you to keep your current teams and skills while tracking all your online marketing results, even if they are from disparate systems. The easiest and most effective way to do that is to bring all online marketing conversions back to the website. Make the results from email, marketing automation, social campaigns, and webinars culminate in a website conversion. For example, each social event, webinar, and email campaign should be tied to a campaign code and landing page. To track those conversions, customize Google Analytics or use a Web content management system. Some of those systems can even track people or their businesses via specific channels and campaigns. Even when you use a Web content management system to integrate all your results, you still face the problem of comparing results from different channels and campaigns. Some experts have estimated that it would take 47 metrics to monitor the 13 or so online marketing channels. How can you compare your channels using so many metrics? You can't. You need a newer, easier-to-use metric. 3. Measure a common cross-channel metric (engagement value) What you need is a metric that measures how engaged visitors are, no matter which channel they use. You need something that measures engagement the same way engagement in human relationships would be measured. As human relations build, they usually go through four steps: AttractionCommunicationTrustCommitment The current Web analytics measure attraction. You can attract any visitor to your website, and get her to look at pages and download assets. But she still might not be engaged. Engagement begins at the next step, when communication takes place. By definition, "communication" requires a two-way transfer of information. Downloading whitepapers doesn't count. You and your visitor must exchange information. At the lowest level, that exchange includes her website address and your newsletter. A higher level of communication—such as requesting a quote from a B2B business—might also require a higher level of trust. A quote, for example, requires both sides to share budgets, timeframes, and specifications. For a nonprofit, that higher level of communication might be receiving a donation or gaining members. Once communication and trust build to a high-enough level, commitment will form. Commitment is the intent to create a purchase or build a long-term relationship. For a website, commitment could be shown via a request for a live demo, a request for a salesperson to call, or a sales order. For a nonprofit website, commitment might be an offer to volunteer for a task or attend a meeting. Measure each of those transaction points on your website not with a single point, as most conversions are given, but rather with a value placed on each transaction that depends on the level of engagement. For example: The numeric value of those points isn't important. What is important is the ratio between the values. By tracking the accumulation of those Engagement Value Points for each marketing channel, each campaign, or each asset, you can easily identify the marketing that adds value. When you know the value attributed to each channel, you know which one produces the greatest return to the business. When you know the value attributed to each campaign, you know which campaigns, no matter the type, produced the greatest results. Some Web content management software will even allow you to track the value attributed to specific people or all the people within the same company. That gives you insight into how engaged they are and when they might purchase. At that point, you know the portfolio of marketing channels and campaigns needed for your company strategy. With engagement analytics, you have a common measure that lets you compare the effectiveness of different channels and campaigns. Now it's up to your creativity to put the power of that marketing machine to work. Delete the scoop?
Are you sure you want to delete this scoop?
Yes
Scoop.it!
Most pharma marketers are fully aware of social media; they just struggle understanding its application to their brands. Often corporate governance and lack of senior level belief in social media hinder any uptake by brands to really engage with their customers and use social to complement their other marketing activities. With new social media tools appearing all the time there is a challenge not only decide what each platform can do, but trying apply it to pharma marketing (the picture an amusing view of most common platforms). A year ago was a world without google+, which according to recent announcements your participation will be increasing your search engine rankings. With the rapid evolution of social media, reviewing the social landscape regularly should be an important process to see how it could be used to optimise your brand plans. Use of social media for “the sake of it”, overall tends to be a poor investment (you might actually get lucky and engage customers), instead social should form part of your long-term brands strategic thinking. Gaining customer insights, engaging customers and empowering advocates are the key outcomes for most brand plans, and social media can provide a cost effective solution.
Understanding your customers online behaviours can provide you with direction on where your brand should be. I often hear “do doctors really use social media?” Sometimes pharma marketers forget that doctors are also members of the public, which participate in social platforms like any other person in society. Given their socio economic status, in fact they are more likely to have smart phone and ipads.
Below are 20 social media stats that show how active social media is within society (for full article on these stats click on the headline).
1. One in every nine people on Earth is on Facebook ( This number is calculated by dividing the planets 6.94 billion people by Facebook’s 750 million users)
The power of social media is not going to go away, but it will increase in importance (for customers and by association marketers). Deciding how, when and where to use social should be a critical part of your brand plan. Delete the scoop?
Are you sure you want to delete this scoop?
Yes
|
Started a blog some months ago and are yet to receive a comment? That is a bad situation indeed and I can tell from experience that it is very frustrating. Getting comments on your articles is a sure sign that you are going in the right direction, since it indicates that you have made an impression on your readers. While it is always great to see positive feedback on your work, even criticism is far better than not getting a single remark.
So let’s get to the point – what to do in order to encourage comments? Aside from quality content, which is a must here and in every aspect of blogging, there are some guidelines to follow if you want to get more feedback on your work. Below I will try to explain some effective techniques for doing just that, so be sure to stick with me!
Let People Know you Want CommentsInstead of being shy and just waiting for comments to start rolling, why not ask for them? Although it is exactly as simple as it sounds, many bloggers never care to apply that approach. Adding a few lines at the end of your article, asking your readers to share their thoughts, is just enough to get you a boost in the number of comments. It works for me, it should work for you as well. Combining that technique with the one below can do miracles.
Engage by Posing a QuestionAnother similar way for getting more comments is to pose a question in your closing paragraph. That is a method, which has proved its effectiveness over time. After starting to utilize it, I definitely saw a lot more interaction. So be sure to leave one or two thought-provoking questions, of course making sure that they are well related to the topic.
Read more on how to end your blog posts: “The End: 4 Solid Strategies for Concluding Your Next Blog Post”
Always Reply to CommentsThe feeling of writing a 200 word long comment and not getting a reply is definitely not a pleasant one. Even though getting interaction is among the main goals in blogging, these days a lot of bloggers don’t have the habit of adding a follow-up. Leaving unanswered questions is unprofessional and a sure sign that you don’t really care about your readers. Remember that by responding, you are building relationships as well. Those can prove a turning stone for the success of your blog, therefore I advice you to take five minutes of your time (it is not that time-consuming, is it?) and write a reply. Check out Tristan Higbee’s point of view on why you should reply to comments!
Give Something in ReturnYou might get kinda confused here – you are giving value, what else there is to reward commentators with? A straight-forward answer – backlinks. Everyone is trying to get their hands on those nowadays. By turning your blog into a dofollow one, search engines will count links in the comments section as backlinks, resulting in higher rankings in search results for commentators’ websites.
In order to go dofollow, you need to scan through the blog’s template and remove rel=’nofollow’ code snippets. Check out a tutorial for doing it in Blogspot – “ How to Make Blogger Blog Do-Follow”. Fortunately for WordPress users, a simple plug-in is all that’s needed – Dofollow Plug-in. Turning your blog dofollow is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways for drawing in more commentators. You also get the chance of submitting your blog to dofollow only directories. The one I’m using isFollowlist and it is a good traffic source.
Consider installing the CommentLuv plug-in, which gives commentators another link, pointing to their latest article. This blog is both dofollow and has CommentLuv enabled, so you get maximum benefit from commenting here. Be sure to do so!
Make Commenting EasyAlways make sure that leaving comments on your blog can be done by a five-year old. That is the area of your blog where simplicity counts the most. No matter how compelling your content and how good your widgets are, don’t expect seeing any comments if finding the comment box, filling in the required information and posting it takes like half an hour. Blogspot blogs have a lot of problems in that aspect, but luckily there’s a solution. IntenseDebate is a great comment system and installing it is real ease.
Give Commentators Higher ExposureUsing widgets can help you improve a lot of aspects on your blog and things aren’t much different when it comes to getting more comments. Top commentators widget for example is a great tool that can be a good motivator for visitors to leave a comment. I will also be implementing it on this blog soon. Adding a widget, showing the latest comments is yet another good idea, getting implemented by more and more blogs.
Applying those techniques is almost sure to get you more comments. They are not time-consuming so I advice you to start working on them right away. If you have more effective techniques, feel free to share them below!