10 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community |
- Why Social Media Listening Research Hasn’t Lived Up to the Hype
- One Key to Blogging Success That Gets Little Respect
- Google+ Communities: The Great, the Bad, and Why You Need to Join
- YouTube SEO: Stupid Simple Trick to Get More Views
- How Different Are Social Media Metrics for B2B and B2C Companies?
- 9 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Company’s Brand
- Winning Friends, Influencing People: 71% of SEOs Report More Company Buy-In
- Your 2013 Social Media Strategy: Grow a Pair.
- We Love Discovering Something New and Full of Promise
- The Average American Loses $92 a Year in Wages Due to the Flu
| Why Social Media Listening Research Hasn’t Lived Up to the Hype Posted: 09 Dec 2012 12:00 PM PST It's quite simple really. Vendors have been over-stating the advantages and under-stating the disadvantages. Is demographic data available for social media data. YES! Absolutely! We've got tons of demographic data! Come buy our data! Of course, you don't realize until you get your hands in the data that only a tiny percentage of verbatims actually have demos, and it's only age or gender or region. Forget income, education, household size, religion, race, and all the other demographics you are used to seeing in survey research. But did you ask your vendor what percentage of verbatims had demographic data? Probably not. But you shouldn't have had to. Is there data for my brand? YES! Absolutely! What was your brand again? Some tiny, obscure brand that has a generic name like Target, Gap, or Apple? No problem! Here's your 5 million records of which only 1000 actually reference your brand. Of course, you won't know that until you get your hands in the data and realize it's mostly garbage. Should that have happened? Absolutely not. Is the sentiment scoring accurate? YES! Absolutely! We ran some tests to prove that our data is scored 99.9999% accurately, especially when we delete all the data we aren't sure about so you aren't actually getting to see all your data. Of course, once you get your hands in the data, you will find big, huge chunks of data that are scored completely wrong. Should it be a surprise to you that much of your data was deleted or scored incorrectly? Most definitely not. You know, this is probably no different than getting a new Barbie or a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle for your birthday. When a bright and shiny new toy is placed in front of us, it's hard to see the negatives. It's pretty, it looks fun, and we just want to play with it. It's not until we rip off the wrapper and remove the marketing curtain that we truly see for ourselves what's going on. Barbie's lipstick is on crooked, she's missing a shoe, and unlike the commercial, not a single one of the Turtles can jump 50 feet in the air without the aid of a firecracker. Perhaps this is a call to action. If you find yourself in the trough of disillusionment, ask yourself why. Were you eager to believe something that was too good to be true? Did you use your market research skills to thoroughly probe and analyze and critique the messages you heard when you were in the process of buying listening research? Did you fall for marketing hype over good sense? Did your vendor make false promises? Sigh. False promises.   |
| One Key to Blogging Success That Gets Little Respect Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:00 AM PST Everyone knows that compelling content – storytelling with a point of view – brings readers to a blog. Everyone knows that applying search engine optimization (SEO) expands readership for a blog. But no one talks about patience. I suppose patience isn't very glamorous. Our society gravitates toward instant gratification and speed. Usain Bolt has become a global brand, but do you know who won the marathon at the London Olympics? My personal experience in building a blog demonstrates the power of patience. I started blogging in November 2008. As you can see in the graphic below, it was a tough slog in the early going: For more than a year, my readership consisted of my mom, friends and a few lost stragglers. It was a humbling experience. Thinking about the Albert Einstein line, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result, I decided to try some new things at the start of 2010, not the least being to post on a more consistent basis. The first real breakthrough came in early September 2010 when a friend and colleague, Steve Farnsworth, a.k.a. @Steveology, asked me to participate in an experiment. Steve, Todd Defren and Paul Roberts and I wrote on four different communication topics over a four-week span. Thanks to these colleagues pointing their readers in my direction, I saw a significant jump in traffic that didn't disappear after the 4/4/4/ series ended. Since that time, it's been a slow, albeit satisfying grind to build the traffic to what I consider to be meaningful (not that my mom isn't meaningful). I thought the No. 1 factor behind the growth was the return visitors. Not true. Check out a breakdown of traffic sources in 2010 compared to 2012 (through Oct. 31) Traffic from organic search has almost doubled in less than two years. That's what I mean by patience. It takes patience to stockpile enough content to bring more relevant readers to your blog. Nieman Lab discussed the challenge for media properties with readers increasingly arriving through their side doors, not the home page. They're often searching on a timely news topic. As media properties strive to appease the search engine gods, a certain commoditization of news has occurred. Bloggers don't have to go down this route. The beauty of effective blogging is that much of your content over time will relate to an evergreen topic with relevance to your target audience, which results in people finding your posts months or even years later. Thanks to search, the viewed pages on my blog in 2012 through October have roughly doubled the total number of page views in 2010. It just took a little patience. By the way, the winner of marathon at the London Olympics was Stephen Kiprotich.   |
| Google+ Communities: The Great, the Bad, and Why You Need to Join Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:25 AM PST In case you missed it, Google+ Communities launched about 48 hours ago. It's Google's answer to Facebook Groups. That new car I caught the post Thursday on the Google's Official Blog that Google+ Communities were being rolled out. They showed some public community examples including The Audi Community, Star Wars, and The Photo Community (led by Trey Ratcliff). The Photo Community has over 14,000 members already if you're keeping score at home. Later that evening it became apparent that Google+ users could create their own community. Hmmm, should I do this? What the heck, let's give this a shot, and the Blog Community was born. Come join if you're interested in blogging and making connections. The Great The People – While the core of Facebook is friends and family, the active Google Plus user has more of an interest in industry and hobbies. While Photography, Technology, and Social Media are some of the favorites, there is a wide array of topics that have a passionate following outside of the communities. Categories - So you're not relegated to one long stream of dialogue and content as is the case with Facebook. The Google + Communities have categories which basically create communities within the community. Below is an example of some of the categories from The Photo Community. As you can see there are many categories that are included in photography. This allows the member to hone in on a specific aspect of photography. This is powerful. Whatever your community of choice, you'll find a layer that should no doubt keep your interest. Diverse Communities - Only two days in and there is no shortage of community topics. There is something for everyone from Photography to Nuclear Energy. Here are few to check out that look like they're cooking already. Makers, Hackers, Artists & Engineers Friendly Interface and Search – The Google+ Community interface and search really makes it easy for you to take a look at a community before joining. The overwhelming majority of communities are set at public, so the door is wide open. The Bad Well it's not all peaches and cream! Google has a good reputation of digesting user feedback and making adjustments to create a better experience. It's a little tough to be overly critical after only two days, but here are two flaws of the Communities that have been discussed widely on Google+. Currently if you post on a public community that post will also be shown under your profile. This can create confusion especially if you are posting consistently in several communities. It can make your profile messy fast. Google has to allow users in communities to choose if they want their post shared to just the community or to specific circles in addition. There is no choice right now. If you are creating a community, choose very carefully if you want to it be public or private. There is no turning back. Unfortunately, if the need arises to change from one setting to another you're out of luck. If you wanted to go from public to private you would need to delete the group and start over. That is a problem. Why you need to Join Ground Floor on Large Network – Communities are fresh out of the oven, and a great time for you to create your own community of interest. It's unbelievably simple to start your own community. Be one of the first to start a community in your niche, and build it up. Make new Connections – The active users on Google Plus are generally not the same active users from Facebook. Most pick one or the other to spend the brunt of their social media time. This gives you the opportunity to make new connections in a whole new environment. Many of us have made our strongest online connections in Facebook groups, and I have a few that are still of great value. However, Google+ Communities looks like it has the makings to be a special place, and I highly suggest you give it a shot. If you enjoyed the article and found it of value, please share. Comments are welcomed.   |
| YouTube SEO: Stupid Simple Trick to Get More Views Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:00 AM PST If you're not using YouTube as part of your strategic marketing plan, stop reading this and go create a video right now. Ok, wait. This tip is quick, so read/watch this first to get more views. YouTube is the world's second largest search engine. Like all search engines, there are certain SEO tactics you can use to help you rank higher. Here is one simple trick you should use every time you post a video: For those of you that prefer to read rather than watch, read on wayward sons. First step is to create your video on whatever topic you want. That's the hardest step. Next step is to go to YouTube and search for the topic of the video you just created. If your video is on dog training, search "dog training." The more specific the topic the better. So instead of "dog training," maybe you would search "dog agility training" if that's related to the video you created. Look for a video that has a lot of views in the shortest amount of time. Old videos might have a lot of views, but most of those might be from a long time ago. When you find the video that you feel is closely related to yours and has a good amount of views in the shortest amount of time click through to that video's page. Now you're going to identify the keyword tags that the publisher used when they posted the video. YouTube used to display these openly, but recently started hiding them, so now you need to view the source code of the page. I use Google Chrome, so for me I go to View > Developer > View Source. Poke around your browser and I'm sure you can find the View Source or View Source Code option. Once you find it, press control+f (cmd+f for Mac) and type "keywords" (no quotes). This will show you what keyword tags the person used. You're going to straight up copy & paste those into the keyword tags section when you post your video on YouTube. When you do this, it tells YouTube that your video is closely related to the video you found. Now when people view that video there is a good chance yours will appear in the recommended/related videos section either in the sidebar or after the video ends. If you use this tactic with the right related video, you could find yourself getting thousands of referral views.   |
| How Different Are Social Media Metrics for B2B and B2C Companies? Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:52 AM PST "One size does not fit all" holds good for B2B vs. B2C social media metrics. Because B2C businesses seek to sell one to many and B2B sells one to one, the key metrics are likely to differ. For instance, e-commerce site considers traffic, source and conversions as important metrics, while, a business solutions company, is likely to consider uniquevisitors, opinions and discussions, downloads, contact information and industry data as important metrics. According to an eMarketer study, B2B online marketers focus on lead generation (38%), retention (34%) and awareness. B2B social media marketing is ultimately about leads when compared to B2C social media marketing which lays emphasis on awareness and branding. Different Platforms for Different Needs Since B2B buyers are more complex when compared to B2C buyers, the social media strategy and the effectiveness metrics for B2B entails more focus on positioning and the choice of platform. While B2C buyers can easily be drawn by promos or freebies on Facebook or Twitter, decisions of B2B buyers are more calculated and linked to various factors. Customer service is also likely to continue with a B2B buyer even after sales or service. You won't find the manager of your favorite café on LinkedIn but you are sure to find the manager of the company you are doing business with on LinkedIn. This example illustrates the difference in usage of social media platforms between B2B and B2C companies. The platform of choice for your favorite café is probably Facebook, where they can promote deals and also get fans to spread the word. On the other hand, B2B companies need to be more disciplined and professional with their approach. With over 150,000 business professionals on LinkedIn, it is clearly the platform of choice for a company seeking business exposure and networking. What are the differences marketers see in B2B and B2C Social Media while measuring the ROI? Both B2B and B2C marketers are seeking the adrenaline rush of social media. With consumers spending so much time on social media websites, savvy marketers are beginning to tap into these sites as a free, viral marketing avenue. A study found that 93 per cent of B2B marketers use social media to market their businesses, it still lags behind B2C (95.2 per cent). The study also proved that B2B acquired more new business partnerships (56 per cent B2B, 45 per cent B2C), saw improved search rankings (60 per cent B2B, 50 per cent B2C) and were able to gather increased marketing place insights due to their social media efforts (69 per cent B2B, 60 per cent B2C). For a B2B company, the company's position or major issues in the industry are relevant and engaging content for social media distribution. For instance, a blog post about an upcoming trade show and things to watch out for shared on LinkedIn or other business networking sites is likely to draw visitors to the blog post. Following that, occasional posts promoting products will be popular too, since readers recognize the profile as an industry expert. For B2C, buyers' needs are simpler, allowing companies to promote deals and socials via social media platforms. Less informative but more selling is involved when a B2C company uses social media. They rely on social media marketing for branding and PR while B2B social media marketing is ultimately about the number of leads. Image Courtesy : mcolemail (Flickr.com)   |
| 9 Ways to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Company’s Brand Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:30 AM PST Question: How can business owners use LinkedIn to grow their companies vs. their personal brands?Question by: Ashley What Do You Recommend?“Not enough companies take advantage of the recommendation feature inside of LinkedIn. Plenty of personal brand accounts know about it and ask for endorsements proactively, but the same feature is underutilized for businesses. Send out an email to all of your current clients and ask them to recommend your business to their network. Rarely will you get a rejection; happy clients will gladly do it.” - Logan Lenz | Founder / President, Endagon Tell Me a Story!“Company profile pages on Linkedin are one of the first places that job candidates go when researching your company. Use this space to tell a story of what your company stands for. Let your personality shine and describe key elements of your work culture. What makes your company an exciting place to work? This will go a long way to recruiting top-tier talent.” - Michael Margolis | President, Get Storied Become a Groupie“By either participating in existing LinkedIn Groups related to your business area or starting a group that will draw people interested in the topic, you can add value, enhance your brand and potentially draw new customers though Groups. Just be sure that if you’re participating in an existing group that you follow their guidelines in terms of permissible business promotion.” - Elizabeth Saunders | Founder & CEO, Real Life E® Create Consistency“Your personal brand and where you work need to be aligned. Brands are all about people and the people are what make the brands.” - Ash Kumra | Co-Founder, DreamItAlive.com *Raises Hand*“Answering and asking questions is probably the most effective way to stir up business for your brand. If you are looking for customers who buy widgets, join the widget forum and start asking people about their experiences with widgets. If you want to be direct you can answer their questions with your expert advice. You want your profile listed as an expert in your industry by using questions.” - Lucas Sommer | Founder CEO, Audimated Who Do We Both Know?“Use your LinkedIn network to find prospective clients and partners, and then to prepare for meetings with them. Your personal connections can help generate warm introductions and help you research their backgrounds as well!” - Aaron Schwartz | Founder and CEO, Modify Watches Virtual Rolodex“Business is based on relationships, and LinkedIn is an excellent place to track, sort and maintain relationships. Connect consistently and systematically, then leverage. Just like developing a great online reputation via publishing or marketing, a great LinkedIn reputation is built on consistency and value.” - Brent Beshore | Owner/CEO, AdVentures Business vs. Personal“Create a company page and develop it with interesting, relevant and up-to-date content. However, keep it separate from your personal brand, as you may want to develop them separately and not let one hold back the other.” - Devesh Dwivedi | CEO, Breaking The 9 To 5 Jail The Ongoing Networking Event“LinkedIn is an excellent source to develop relationships that can benefit your business. Target certain individuals that you know can help grow your company to interact with their communities or reach out to them. It's all about networking.” - John Hall | CEO, Digital Talent Agents The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.   |
| Winning Friends, Influencing People: 71% of SEOs Report More Company Buy-In Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:30 AM PST When thinking about the hierarchy of impediments that have historically hindered search visibility in the organization, Google's continually changing algorithm would probably top the list. But if our years of working with Enterprise SEOs at Conductor have taught us anything, it's that the most significant challenge facing SEO professionals is the ability to get things done in the organization. Specifically, since SEO is an organization-dependent discipline, content creators, tech teams, public relations, marketing, and others must all be working together to effect real change. Put another way, people think it's the algorithm they should be chasing when in reality it's the organization. 7 out of 10 Search Marketers Are More Enabled in the Organization to Make ChangesIn a joint study recently completed with Search Engine Watch and presented at our C3 conference, we surveyed 616 Search Engine Watch readers about the state of the SEO industry. Our primary goal was to gauge the extent to which SEO is maturing in the organization. Knowing how significant an impediment to improving natural search visibility organizational support has been, among other questions we asked respondents whether they were more or less enabled to make changes in the organization now compared to 12 months ago. The data revealed that 71% of search marketers report they are 'more enabled' or 'much more enabled' to make changes or influence people to improve natural search visibility than they were 12 months ago. But what's the reason for this fundamental shift in the organization? Part of it has to do with the natural evolution of search as a sales and marketing channel—as search continues to evolve and knowledge of the opportunities in Search permeate throughout the organization, there is less resistance in supporting it. Executive Knowledge, Executive SupportHowever, there's another, perhaps, more important, factor at play that is gradually enabling SEOs to effect change in the organization and making headway in the search results: That change is Executive Buy-In. Conclusion: Challenges Remain but Trends Show Increased Organizational Support for SEOSo what does it all mean? To be sure, there remains substantial and varied challenges that organization-based SEOs face in the drive to maximize natural search visibility. But the trends suggest SEO has been increasingly maturing in the organization and the barriers of skepticism that have historically kept SEO professionals from accomplishing their goals organizationally are gradually falling away. To learn more, read the full study: Why 2013 Will Be the Year of the SEO. A version of this article was featured on Search Engine Watch on October 9, 2012.   |
| Your 2013 Social Media Strategy: Grow a Pair. Posted: 09 Dec 2012 04:00 AM PST First I would like to explain this strange headline to my international readers. "Grow a pair" (not ot be confused with "grow a pear") is American slang for stepping up to be tough and bold. Now, on with the show. There is an infection overwhelming social media strategy development and the virus is fear. I just read a number of reports all showing how CMO's are still confused about what to do about social media. Really? It's been on the table for at least 3-4 years now. Isn't it time to figure things out? I've had the true honor of working with some of America's most beloved brands over the past few years. And I can report that the overwhelming reaction to social media by many successful companies is: "Can we please just make this go away!" Once they learn that they can't make it go away, they do the next best thing.: Shove it off to an advertising agency. The fact of the matter is, "fear of change" is always the biggest obstacle to progress. Many of today's CMO's did not cut their teeth in the digital world, have not immersed themselves in the social web, and simply do not understand it. It's time these business leaders stop whining about social media, shatter the status quo, and grow a pair for the new year.
So there. (Taking deep breath). Please. Look around you. Which companies are creating new value today and achieving breath-taking business results? Which companies are declining quickly, and why? You'll discover that if you don't have a digital strategy, you are most likely on a path to irrelevance. Don't go there. In 2013 it's time to do this thing. How are you going to integrate social media and digital marketing so that you're not just checking a box. It's time to master these platforms to make them work for you. Are you with me? Mark Schaefer is a marketing consultant, author and college educator who blogs at {grow}. You can also follow him on Twitter: @markwschaefer.   |
| We Love Discovering Something New and Full of Promise Posted: 08 Dec 2012 06:00 PM PST Romeo, the little black dog, discovered something new yesterday. We all enjoyed watching his reaction to the discovery. We (our team) also discovered something new and full of promise for small businesses. If you are a dog lover, we hope you will enjoy Romeo's story. If you are an owner or marketer for a small business, we hope you will appreciate the promise and opportunity of our discovery. You found a new social media platform — I found a new treat! — I win! Romeo discovered broccoli salad yesterday – and he loved it! We hear you – "he what?!" We do not believe for a moment that he was drawn to the broccoli. However, we cannot determine whether he was drawn to the cheese, the sweet dressing, or the bacon – although we suspect it was the bacon. The first two bites of broccoli were rather large for his small mouth, and he simple licked off the dressing, the bacon, and the cheese. He left the broccoli behind. The second floret was quickly taken under the sofa where he knew we could not reach him – although nobody wanted to take it away from him. By the third floret, he stood on his hind legs and begged (complete with crying) until we gave it to him. We don't know if he realized that the sweet dressing oozed down into the floret or not, but this time, he ate the broccoli. It was only shortly before Romeo's discovery of the wonders of broccoli salad that we discovered the promise of a new social media network launched by Microsoft. The network is called So.Cl (pronounced social). The site is now in beta version, but you can not only use it, you can share your ideas to improve it. Our team has enjoyed discovering something new and full of promise for our business and for yours. We are enjoying our explorations of So.Cl because it would be very easy to believe it was designed with small business marketing in mind. We don't want to deny you the thrill of discovering So.Cl and exploring ways to use it to share your images and content with your market. So, we will just list some key insights and basic ideas to whet your appetite.
We hope you will enjoy exploring this new social platform as much as we do. We see this as a good opportunity for small business marketing.   |
| The Average American Loses $92 a Year in Wages Due to the Flu Posted: 08 Dec 2012 05:45 PM PST Flu this, flu that. Who knew there was so much data on getting sick? Additionally, the cumulative costs involved with succumbing to such ailments as influenza really look bizarrely terrible when aggregated and presented visually, as CouponCabin has done with their “Ahhh Choo!” infographic. Some of the highlights include the costs of preventative measures (average cost of a flu shot being $35) juxtaposed with the costs of an uninsured American seeing a doctor for more than $100 (with that costly prescription). For businesses, employees who succumb to the flu end up becoming a huge expense not only to themselves, but the business economy as a whole. For example, according to the research, apparently Americans missed 70 million workdays last year due to the flu, with individuals losing roughly $92 a year in wages from the sickness. Here’s a complete look at some of the overarching costs of contracting the flu, and some helpful tips on protecting yourself: Infographic by CouponCabin   |
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