Social Media Marketing Strategies

This second half of the video, we delve more into International marketing and how to pay attention to various cultures and reach. From gender roles to economic status, you have to be sensitive to the language, not just gender specific but culturally sensitive.

Nice post by Bryan Kramer... KEY TAKEAWAY: Simply put, the one-way conversation is dead. Staying silent will only pull you backwards in the eyes of today’s social customer. Toss your fears aside and become socially accessible; it will be the strategy that makes the difference to your customers and your business.

Great post by Rebecca Murtagh

Social media offers unprecedented access to cultivate relationships with customers, one at a time. For those who seek to build sustainable brands, social media should never take the place of the website as the ultimate destination of the brand.

Think about that. It takes at least five continuous follow up efforts after the initial sales contact, before a customer says yes.  FIVE!!

There are some fascinating statistics on this:

44% of sales people give up after one “no”22% give up after two “no’s”14% give up after three “no’s”12% give up after four “no’s”

That tells you that 92% of sales people give up after 4 “no’s”, and only 8% of sales people ask for the order a fifth time.

Looks interesting... 

This is a keeper... Oodles of links. 

 

The awards have just announced the nominees for the 2013 edition. While there is still a strong US presence, emerging market countries such as Brazil, Russia and China are increasingly evident among the nominees.

 

Among the more interesting campaigns from those nominees is one called “You are Blind” from the Hungry Boys agency in Russia, which aims change the treatment of blind children, by giving people insight into what they go through. The primary way of doing this was with a website that challenged people to navigate a character through a virtual city using only sound.

Knowledge Networks Illustrates People Learn About Products using Social Channels:

Social media influences brand perceptions of 38 Million U.S. shoppers

23.1 Million discover new brands or products through social media (up 22% from 2010)

22.5 Million people use Social Media to learn about unfamiliar brands or products (up 9%)

17.8 Million are strongly influenced in their purchase decisions by opinions in social media (up 19%)

15.1 Million refer to social media before making purchase decisions (up 29%)

Social media is no magic formula. Getting the ROI you’re looking for will take work. But if you’re prepared to invest time and money into social media, the potential is there, and the returns can be enormous.

 

Even if other people in your business aren’t convinced about the value of social media yet, you now have the tools to prove that it adds value and has the potential to grow your business.

And the Top B2B Social Network Is…

Hands down, LinkedIn is the best social network for B2B marketing. LinkedIn is the only real B2B social network that was developed purely to develop direct B2B sales relationships for B2B marketers.

 

The other social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube – all should be in the toolbox of any serious B2B marketer. But if you're on limited time and resources and looking to greatly increase your bottom line, you should invest wholly in LinkedIn.

Use the 50/30/20 Rule

Weintraub and Litwinka’s spin on Facebook content calls for 50/30/20 rule.

 

1. 50 percent news: Include a custom blend of third party, non-competitive content from sites such as AllTop.com and Buzzfeed.com industry

 

2. 30 percent personality: Highlight a sparkle of strategic personalization and personality with real time journalism that can only happen on your Facebook Page.

 

3. 20 percent business: After you’ve given away all the friendship bracelets, it is time for business and put on the most tasteful type of branded, self promotional content.

Public relations is more than about selling, of course. It’s also about managing reputation. It’s about getting audiences to maintain a certain point of view. Social media provides the opportunity to talk to customers and the public directly by using technology to dis-intermediate the traditional gatekeepers.

Social Media Training

However important social media policy development is to your marketing efforts, the establishment of these policies is not sufficient on its own. Social media policy development helps employers gauge their risk appetite. But the truth is, most employees will never actually read it. That’s why you need social media training.

Nice post by Sean Carlos, 

User Behavior Will Change Gradually, Get Ahead Of The Curve Now

For most social media users, Google is synonymous with search, and I don’t expect that to change soon. Yet, people are already searching social networks for other people (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn) and topics (e.g., hashtags on Twitter).

So for now, take a load off, kick your feet up and please let us know your thoughts. If you have any questions you’d like to ask Doc or me, please tweet them to us with the #LHM2013 hashtag and we’ll be sure to include them in our next taping. One last thing – you can also follow us on Twitter, and join us on our Facebook page.

Some Trivial Facts About Online Videos:

 

At this time, there are 89 million people around the United States who will be watching close to 1.2 billion online videos

 

The number of online video users will double up to 1.5 billion in 2016

 

YouTube alone gets more than 1 billion unique video viewers in a month

 

More than 4 billion hours of online videos are being watched by YouTube users in a single month

 

52% of the consumers say that they make an online purchase after watching product videos online

 

Almost 92% of viewers share the videos seen online with others

As always Hubspot has some great information... 

 

50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. (Source: Gleanster Research)Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Source: Gleanster Research)

So, whether you’re still struggling to measure social media effectiveness or simply want to declutter your measurement efforts, here’s your minimalist guide to social media metrics.

 

Define Your Goals

The bedrock of minimalist social media metrics is knowing what you are, what you do, and what you want.

 

In other words, you have to start by working out how social media fits into your brand’s overall business goals and objectives. Is social media the introduction, the deal-closer or something else altogether?

Why Measure?

In order to measure the effectiveness of your social campaigns, it’s critical that youknow your objective.

Ask yourself why you are considering including social media in your overall marketing campaign in the first place. How will your efforts impact your revenue and grow your business?

 

You’ll want to put a measurable outcome in place along with a timeframe in which to achieve the goal

This is what we learned. People want to be connected with through true genuine interaction, not have products thrown at them all day. At times we can be hesitant to get creative and go the safe professional route but our reach was further when we took some risk. By giving our employees creative freedom they gave us an awesome product that displays their personality and personifies our business.

 

Our intention for creating these profiles were giving companies one more reason to pick us over the competition but we found that Facebook interaction was a huge plus.

Another brilliant post by Bill Slawski "How does Google know what to show about these things? One hint from the patent, echoed in the video, is that what people ask about in Google can determine what Google will display in the knowledge panel. If people tend to ask about Abraham Lincoln’s height, for instance, the search engine will show it in the knowledge panel"

About seven years ago, Stanford computer science professor Andrew Ng stumbled across this theory, and it changed the course of his career, reigniting a passion for artificial intelligence, or AI. ‘For the first time in my life,’ Ng says, ‘it made me feel like it might be possible to make some progress on a small part of the AI dream within our lifetime’.”

Social media management is a constant and ongoing process due to the nature of the instant, online world in which social networks live. When it comes to developing a content strategy for social media channels, it often works best for passionate, dedicated people to collaborate across departments, rather than handing the task off to the marketing department. By getting input from a variety of sectors within a company, a social media content strategy can really succeed.

Another fantastic TOP SEO nominee for you to know. Keep in mind, it’s a pleasure and always an honor sharing these great women with you. But now without further ado, let me introduce you to this week’s #TSW2013.