Archive for the ‘Social Marketing’ Category
Does Your Website Make It Easy To Share?
Facebook has surpassed 800MM users. Google+ achieved 25MM users in one month and continues to grow at an exponential rate. Justin Timberlake is trying to revive MySpace. Pinterest is rapidly gaining traction as the place to share pictures of things you like.
Why, then, do so few websites have the tools to help people share more easily?
In today’s digital social realm, making it difficult for a user to share can put your business at a disadvantage.
If a customer likes a pair of shoes but wants to share the pair with her friends before she buys, she is going to post it on Facebook or Pinterest. If you make it easy for her to do this, she’ll share it directly from your site and then all of her friends will go to your site to learn about that pair of shoes. Voila: instant exposure.
Sites that make sharing easy:
They easily call out where you can share and are optimized to work with Pinterest’s browser tool as well as Facebook.
There is significant benefit to making your site sharing-friendly, whether your customer wants to share information or a potential favorite shirt. Believe it or not, it’s easier than you might think.
There are multiple widgets available to make your content shareable, including:
Your audience might not be looking for your business on Facebook or Twitter, but it’s still smart business to let them share your products and services via their own social media pages.
Do You Know How Much A Like Is Worth?
In this age of social media everything, companies are scrambling to find ways to measure and quantify their social media activity.
Likes, Followers, Shares and ReTweets have given way to a cottage industry of measurement tools, but, in lieu of traditional ROI, do any of these metrics, like Klout Scores and Peer Indexes, provide a key indicator for success?
I’m of the mind that they don’t. While they measure activity, they don’t translate this information into sales or at the very least learning.
Creating engagement through social channels is important. Here are a few ways to move your friends and followers into a more results oriented relationship:
- Incent people to opt-in for email communication. Doing so allows you track how they heard about you, and then you can actively market and test offers.
- Use microsites and unique URL promotions on social channels to measure interest of your fan base.
- Use coupon codes (or actual coupons if a CPG company) that are specific to a social channel to track activity to sales.
By knowing if people are coming to your site or store from social channels you can begin to measure the value of a Facebook Fan and the return on your marketing efforts. This will help you determine if it is worth growing your fan base or followers.
Social media can play an important role in your marketing communications plans, and just like any media, you need to put the tools in place to determine what its worth to your company.
Bravery in Marketing
I do not like the new Tide 2X. No matter how little I use, soap remains in dense fabrics, such as towels, and I can’t get it out. My daughter and I both have noticed that our clothes feel “itchy” with the new Tide. I have used Tide all my life, but I may have to change to something else, since I can no longer get “regular” Tide. Have others noticed this also?
Judy, Salt Lake City, UT
I used this product on a shirt of my husbands that had a new stain on the front. Bottom line stain is still there, I’ve used other products that worked much better than this one did. I would not recommend this product to anyone.
Miata, Waverly, NE
Companies don’t like to hear comments like these, or worse learn such comments are being shared with other people.
But those quotes weren’t pulled from a focus group nor from blogs, they were available on Tide’s home page from actual customers providing feedback regarding Tide’s products.
To take things a step further, Tide provides a slew of product reviews for all of its products so consumers can make an educated decision about the product in which they are interested.
In a time when consumers are asking for transparency (see SC Johnson’s new campaign about their ingredients) and using the social web (ie Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Blogs) to share their thoughts, you have three choices:
- Ignore it and hope it goes away. (It won’t)
- Listen to what people are saying and respond in a defensive manner
- Embrace it and use it to make your products better and your brand more trusted.
Let me know what companies you think are being brave in their marketing.
What is your Facebook page worth?
Companies are constantly asking themselves if they should have a Facebook presence and, if so, what is it worth?
To help answer that question Vitrue has introduced their Social Page Evaluator that takes into account the health and potential value of your Facebook presence. It also provides tips on how to improve your value.
While this is not a tool I would bet my business on, it is fun and can give you bragging rights versus your competition.
How much is your page worth?
Yes Virginia There Is ROI in Social Media
A common theme at IIR’s social media and community 2.0 strategies conference revolved around getting management to buy-in to social media initiatives.
Promoting what, Dawn Lacallade, Solarwinds, calls community health – participation, feedback – might be a nice measure of success for a community manager, but they aren’t going to convince a CEO to invest.
To gain a CEO’s commitment you need to demonstrate business value. You need to think in terms of ROI.
- Improved net promoter score driven by a closer with your customers
- Reduced customer service costs due to the community answering the consumer questions
- Increased sales by better knowing what the consumer wants
The good news is case studies are emerging regarding the positive impact of social media.
- Solarwinds’ R&D budget allocation runs approximately 50% lower than industry average driven by their community involvement in product development
- One of the 35 ideas by Turbo Tax’s Inner Circle members has generated $19MM in revenue over three years
- Scholastic tapped into its community to redesign its flyer resulting in a 3% increase in sales versus its former design
How are you defining the return on your social media investment?
Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies
Learn how companies like AAA, Scottrade, Best Buy and Citibank are using social media as we attend IIR’s Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies conference.
Monday’s sessions include:
- Building social media programs – American Family Insurance
- Overcoming B2B social media challenges – GE Healthcare
- Making your online community an active one – Scottrade
- Realizing you need social media – AAA
- Strengthening your brand with communities – Career Builder
- How not to create corporate communities – Valpak
- To build a community or join one – Yahoo
- Growing your community – Current TV
- Gaining buy-in from your company – Best Buy
- How to build a social media program right the first time – EMC, Tripadvisor, Ebay
Follow our Twitter feed for immediate updates or visit this blog or the conference blog to learn more.
2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner
Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner has put together a nice report on how marketers are using social media. Check it out here.
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Negative Comments Equals Great Opportunity
0 CommentsThursday • March 17, 2011 • by admin
Social media can impact your company in two main ways:
It’s both fulfilling and frustrating at the same time. When you do good things, you want as many people as possible to talk about you to their friends and contacts. It’s when things aren’t going as well that you wish social media didn’t spread the word so quickly.
So what should you do about it?
The simple answer: Respond.
According to The Retail Consumer Report, 68% of consumers who posted a complaint or negative review on a social networking site received a response from the retailer.
So how does this impact your business? According to the study, after the response to the initial complaint:
And if you wonder about the impact of social media on your business, note that almost 33% researched consumer input through either social networks or online reviews before visiting the retailer.
There are free services like Google Alerts and Social Mention that can help you track the conversation about your company on a basic level. However, if you want more depth in your social media tracking, you may want to look at more robust tools like Alterian SM2 (full disclosure I have a paid subscription to this social media monitoring tool), Consumerbase, Radian6 and others.
In today’s day of exponential word of mouth, finding out what people are saying and then rectifying negative situations proves to be a great marketing tool.