15 New Social Articles on Business 2 Community |
- Blog Like Phineas
- Google, Google+, Your World and Search Integration
- Are You Locking Out Blog Subscribers?
- Is The New Customer Service Tool Twitter?
- Best Twitter Tips, Tools and Tactics of 2011
- Optimize Your Twitter Account In 4 Easy Steps
- Facebook To Hit 1 Billion Users Right Before IPO
- Google Unveils “Search, Plus Your World”
- Social Advertising and the Rollout of Facebook Ads in News Feeds
- Tweet Yourself Successful
- Comment Systems Face Off! LiveFyre Vs DisqUs
- 101 Success Stories: Yes. 101 Examples of ROI: No. Here’s Why.
- 10 Incredibly Simple Ways To Maximize Your LinkedIn Profile For Inbound Marketing
- Why There Will Never be a Margie Clayman Facebook Fan Page
- Your 2012 Marketing Plan: Tell Me What to Do
| Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:50 PM PST  Phineas Flynn One of my favorite shows is Disney’s Phineas and Ferb. It’s witty and action packed, diabolically droll and oddly inspirational. All the smart kids I know watch it. It’s also perfect fodder for a hobbyist blogger like me. When I’m not writing poetry, I try to explore marketing or leadership topics using pop culture analogies. For example, I’ve written about how Gilligan Island character traits may be fatal to your marketing transformation, why marketers should strive to be more like Willy Wonka, and what NCIS can teach us about high performance teams. In this case, I believe the affably animated attributes of Phineas Flynn are also the building blocks for brilliant blogging. How to Blog Like Phineas 1. Stand for something. For Phineas, it’s a pledge to make each day extraordinary – with the chops to deliver. Phineas never phones it in. His anthem is captured in the title track performed by Bowling for Soup. What’s the anthem for your blog?
2. Help Passionately – Phineas is perpetually putting his creative energy and brilliance in pursuit of good. You can find him protecting an endangered lake creature from the paparazzi, re-uniting a band for his parents, or thwarting Doofenshmirtz’s evil plans to dominate the Tri-State area. In a recent post by Stanford Smith – the notion of mentoring readers is the parallel act of service practiced by excellent bloggers. A simple formula to create ideas that matter: Instill wisdom and confidence, make them approachable, and deliver them with a spirit of service. Who do you serve? 3. Wrap Genius in Humility – Phineas is by all account a prodigy. Along with his step-brother Ferb, they constantly build the most technically advanced gadgets that take them on fantastic adventures. But he’s not a braggart, and his intentions are pure of heart. If you’ve ever spent any time with the {grow} community shepherded by Mark Schaefer, you quickly understand the difference between broadcasters and tribe leaders. Mark ignites conversation through his expertise and point of view, but that’s merely a touchstone for a very human conversation focused on widening the envelope of ideas. How does your genius come through? 4. Play in the Yard – Almost every project started by Phineas begins in the back yard. It’s the kids equivalent of the kitchen for parties. All the kids come to see him there, everyone is welcome, the projects are exciting, and no matter where the adventure takes them, it’s great to return home. Bloggers in turn make their blogs a comfortable and familiar place to gather. Sure, there’s the occasional kerfuffle. Great bloggers make their backyard yours – and are places you’ll return to, even without prompting. What’s it like in your yard? I don’t profess to have reached the Phineas standard for blogging. Not yet anyway. But I’m no Doofenshmirtz either. How about you?   |
| Google, Google+, Your World and Search Integration Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:43 PM PST It's finally happened! What I have been talking about for the past 3 years has finally happened in a big way! The Quiet Evolution of Semantic Search:We first saw hints of Google's next evolution with the idea behind Semantic Search where your history was a factor in your search results and this has been integrating more and more over the past 3 years, I have talked about it often in my SEO posts and it is a very important factor when talking about SEO that we understand that your search results and what appears on your page 1 of Google, Bing etc.. is personalised and therefore you cannot 'game' the search engines for better ranking ever again! So please STOP paying for "Guaranteed Page 1 SEO services" as of course they can guarantee you Page 1 on your computer!! But they CANNOT guarantee you page 1 on my computer as my search history is completely different than yours. The Integration of the Social Graph:Over the past 12 months we have seen the byte by byte integration of the Social Graph into our search results so that those with lots of social activity relating back to their website will naturally rank higher than those without. Google Plus Your World Search Integration:Now we have the full integration of Google+, the Social Graph and Semantic Search announced by Google in this headlining post: Search Plus Your World calling the new bundle of semantic, social graph and Google+ by the laid back and unsensational title of 'Your World". Obviously give this gentle and non-confrontational title to smooth the edges of users fears, I am pretty sure that Google have taken note of the privacy fears of Joe Public with Facebook's retreat and subsquent promise to abide by the terms set out in their court agreement, and loads of other instances over the past few years. Matt Cutts had more to say about 'Your World" in this post: Sharing a Search Story where he shows this image and then explains what we are seeing: "In the top row of pictures, you'll see a bunch of people playing werewolf, including a picture of me as the werewolf in the top-left image. Doing a generic search like [werewolf] or [photos] and getting back a picture of you or your friends is a pure, magic moment. Let me tell you how it happened. I have Brian "Fitz" Fitzpatrick in a circle on Google+, because he's in charge of Google's Data Liberation Front and he's an all-round awesome guy to boot. Fitz published an album of 25 Werewolf photos shortly after the conference. Okay, but I'm only in one of the 25 pictures; how did Google return the picture of me first? It turns out that Brian had tagged me in that single photo. Once you know the trick, it might not seem like magic anymore. In fact, this is the "things just work" experience that everyone in the tech industry strives for. But when I searched for [werewolf] and got back a recent picture of me playing werewolf, it did seem like magic right then. I suspect as more people take Search plus Your World out for a test drive, they'll quickly experience similar magical "Aha!" moments like I did. I was reading some of the comments on tech blogs, and I wanted to clarify something: Search plus Your World does surface public content from the open web, not just content from Google+. For example, look back up to the top-right image from my screenshot above. That's actually a werewolf photo that Gina Trapani took and it's hosted on Flickr, not Google." via Matt Cutts blog Just one more note on this, if you read between the lines and look at what else is going on, one of my Fav things to do My Advice – get yourself a G+ profile AND a G+ page for your business and then work them both 10 minutes per day   |
| Are You Locking Out Blog Subscribers? Posted: 12 Jan 2012 02:00 PM PST
It was quite an interior battle. However, today the stalemate broke. I decided I am just plain tired of missing blog posts, or coming in so late that I am comment number 7 million. By that time, there are too many comments to read every single one and yet you kind of have to so you don't become "that person" who repeats what has already been said 7 times. It bums me out. Therefore, I proclaimed today "National Subscribe to Blogs Day" and I became the first (so far as I know) to celebrate. In the process of going through the online world and finding blog posts I wanted to subscribe to, I encountered a lot of roadblocks in my way. I wanted to share those with you so that you can make sure people find it really easy to subscribe to your blog posts. I mean, I was out there with the PURPOSE of subscribing. Many people will only opt to describe after they've read a post of yours they like. With that said, here are some important things to look out for. 1. Hard to find or hard to identify subscribe buttons I know the temptation on your blog sites is to get really creative with design, but there are some things that should probably remain really boring and plain. Your subscribe button falls into that category. I should not have to guess where the button is. I should not have to look for it either, because…I probably won't. Have it out there. Be loud, be proud. 2. Technology that doesn't work On a lot of blogs that I tried to subscribe to, the RSS button took me to an XML code page that was worthless for my cause. This happened in Chrome but not in Safari. However, in Safari, the only way to subscribe via email was to use a program already on your computer (for me, Mac Mail). I was using my Gmail account. I lost patience and did not subscribe to those sites. It was taking too much time to figure out. Test your subscription options yourself and make sure they are working the way you want them to. 3. An email icon that takes me to your contact page On a few websites, the icons are a little confusing/misleading. On some sites, the email icon is a subscribe button. On others, it stands for "Email me." On some sites the RSS button is just for readers while on others it also offers the email option. Don't make your potential subscribers guess what they should click on. Gently guide them to the promised land of subscriber happiness. 4. Buried buttons Related to point number one, but a surprising number of sites had subscribe options that were buried way down under the page. To me, this is a higher priority than the people who have "liked" you on Facebook. The people who engage with you on your blog and who are willing to read your ramblings whenever you write them are pure gold. Move those buttons up, up, up. 5. Invite people to subscribe, but don't be pushy One thing I don't do enough is making the ask. When I was working on my engagement series last year, I made a point of mentioning now and then that you could subscribe to keep up with the series. Guess what? My number of subscribers increased by about 100%. When I stopped making those reminders, my number of subscribers stopped growing as fast. Not much of a mystery, right? With that being said, I'm not a huge fan of the 20-sentence-long invite to subscribe that some folks have at the bottom of every post. I suppose it makes sense, but it drives me nuts. Be gentle with me. I'm fragile. Have you checked out your blog site as if you were a visitor and not, well, you? Have you clicked your subscribe buttons to make sure they are working? Are your subscribe options super easy to find? What other important things are there to look out for when it comes to building your subscriber list? Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/documentarist/473086629/ via Creative Commons   |
| Is The New Customer Service Tool Twitter? Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:20 PM PST Twitter the new customer service Tool Good customer service is not just about quality of product/sale or after sale but also about listening to the needs of your market share, their I have always argued that Twitter is about engagement and chitchat is important but as a business this chitchat should combine a customer service element. Thus for example a twitter user who was standing on the train platform waiting for her train to take her to her interview tweeted out just that, "waiting for… train to take me to my interview site" the train company picked up on this tweet and tweeted her a message "no delays expected with your train, we will get you to your destination on time" and " good luck with your interview you will be fine" this is chit chat with a Customer service element. Engaging with your customers is good customer service, whether it is offering your expertise, solving their problems or addressing their concerns, it is all engagement and in line with good twitter usage more importantly it is good customer service that adds value to your business. Twitter is real time, most consumers love the idea of tweeting a concern, or rant or idea or complaint or call for help, to their bank, or their supplier or retailer or professional service provider, it is better than speaking to or spending huge amounts of valuable time on listening to automated recordings, getting lost in finding the right department or being passed to the call centre operator who doesn't know how to deal with their concerns. Twitter users are not unreasonable people and understand that 140 characters does not always allow for 'problem solving' but it does allow for recognition of their problems and a means of their concern and details being forwarded to the right person who can later contact them and address their concern, complaint etc. Making Twitter your customer focus/service tool is very permissible and indeed I would argue welcome. It is better than utilizing twitter to just broadcast or promote or sell your brand.While utilizing it for /as a customer service tool You will be engaging with your existing customers thus building a COMMUNITY of real ADVOCATES who will MARKET you and REFER/RECOMMEND your company increasing your MARKET SHARE thus aiding your company GROWTH and BRAND! A common mistake(s) of many businesses in their use of twitter is to just broadcast, to just brazenly promote or sell or going to the opposite extreme of company community manager building a community on personal chitchat, consisting of personal views, opinions, actions etc etc, so whilst he /she builds a community it is not necessarily of any value to your business other than, the followers noting the community manager works in such & such industry for such & such an employer but says nothing of your offering or customer service as it does as of the individual who runs the twitter account. Customer service is a concept all business owners/managers can understand and value but it is also one that in return the consumer appreciates the benefit of. Indeed the consumer although considering 'cost' will often set aside this consideration for the benefit of an excellent Customer service point, whether this is for the individual means, quality assurance of product/service, aftersales, guarantees, accessibility to engage/problem solve/address concerns/ideas. The customer service point for the consumer will often rest on the 'here & now' element for them and twitter is a real time tool. The here & now principle should not be interpreted to mean 'immediate problem solving' and nor are the users of twitter so ignorant or expecting to assume it is the problem solver, but the here & now principle should be more interpreted to mean someone is listening, has accepted, is dealing with my concern right now and will pass it to the right person/dept! As a real time tool it is the perfect tool to aid customer service, delivering satisfaction, recognition, listening, accessibility, support and in consequence build you a community of supporters, advocates, referrers who will by word of mouth and the speed of virality aid your growth in return. Mark Shaw is an Author, speaker and a champion of small businesses harnessing Twitter to crush the big boys. Mark has been using Twitter for over 3.5 years, has approx 15,500 followers, & has been on t.v, radio, published in the media and given talks all throughout the UK in his capacity as a Twitter expert. You can follow Mark on Twitter…http://twitter.com/markshaw   |
| Best Twitter Tips, Tools and Tactics of 2011 Posted: 12 Jan 2012 11:30 AM PST In just a few short years, Twitter has transformed from an odd little sort of public IM service where people posted what they just ate for lunch or what their cat was doing at the moment into one of the big four social networks and a significant channel for news, PR & marketing, politics and more. It has enabled revolutions in real life as well as in digital marketing. Twitter's 200 million users collectively tap out a billion tweets per week. Nearly 3/4 of active Twitter users are bloggers. More than 80% of U.S. governors, senators and congressional representatives use it, as do 87 of the Billboard Top 100 musicians. Twitter users are twice as likely to purchase from companies they follow than are Facebook users. So how can marketers and PR professionals use Twitter more effectively? What's the best way to build a quality, relevant Twitter following? Of the hundreds of third party Twitter tools out there, which are really worth utilizing? How can Twitter to used to support SEO efforts? Discover the answers to those questions and many more here in 45 of the best guides to Twitter tips, tools and tactics of the past year. Twitter Tips, Tactics and Techniques40 Examples Of Creatively Designed Twitter Backgrounds by Tripwire Magazine
25 Suggestions For How To Use Twitter by Dave Fleet
10 Twitter Features You Might Be Missing by GigaOM
How We Increased Our Twitter Followers By 250% – Whiteboard Friday by SEOmoz
Top 7 Ways to Save Time on Twitter by OPEN Forum
20 Guidelines for Twitter Success by Global Copywriting
The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Marketing by Copyblogger Curating the curator here, as Gabrielle Conde links to and summarizes 100 educational posts about Twitter, covering the gamut from setting up a Twitter account to using hashtags to marketing and prospecting strategies, from authors like Marian Schembari, Michael Brenner and the ebullient Diana Adams. 12 Most Stimulating Twitter Chats by The 12 Most
The Right Way to Build Brand(s) via Twitter by iMedia Connection
55 Tips to Get Retweeted on Twitter by ZoomFactor
The Hidden Guide to Using Twitter Effectively by KISSmetrics
Twitter: Marketers Still Struggling To Understand Social Channel by MediaPost Online Media Daily
Twitter's New Look and FeelTwitter gets new, Facebook-like feeds & features by DevBeat
Twitter Just Announced Brand Pages and a Redesign – What are all the details and why does it look like Facebook? by iMedia Connection
Twitter Tuesday: Twitter's New Changes – What You Could Expect by Hubze Blog David Foster summarizes Twitter's design changes and new capabilities, including four-tab navigation and the ability to embed tweets on any website. Twitter and SEOThe Tweet Effect: How Twitter Affects Rankings by The Daily SEO Blog
7 Key Ways to Optimize Twitter for Search by HubSpot Blog
Finding Twitter Followers and Interesting Twitterers to FollowHow To: Get More Qualified Followers on Twitter by Social Media Today
How to Find Twitter People that Don't Suck by Soshable
How to Get More Followers on Twitter by Graywolf's SEO Blog
Twitter for B2B Marketing5 Ways Twitter Can Be Leveraged for B2B Search Engine Marketing by Search Engine Watch
9 Twitter Tips for B2B Marketing Success by Modern B2B Blogs
Twitter for PR and Media Pros9 easy steps to add Twitter to your PR mix by ragan.com
4 Ways to Build Your Influence on Twitter by Laura Kinoshita
Twitter Launches Twitter for Newsrooms by BizCloud A review of the Twitter for Newsrooms guide, designed to "help reporters get the most out of the micro-blogging service. The guide contains valuable resources that will educate journalists and media organizations on how to best leverage various Twitter tools for finding sources, publishing their stories, and also for promoting their content." Something PR professionals may want to take a look at as well. Twitter ToolsHeadhunters Using Twitter – The New Productivity Check by Minervity
These Two Twitter Clients Are The Best Conversation Agents for Digital Marketers by iMedia Connection
15 Useful Twitter Tools for B2B Social Media by Social Media B2B
The Top Ten Twitter Statistics and Analytics Tools by Dead Dinosaur
Two Great Twitter Visualization Tools: Twiangulate & MentionMap by Affiliate Marketing Blog
5 Great Twitter Track Tools to Organize Followers by Search Engine Journal
10 Twitter Tools to Increase Your Productivity by SloDive
Twitter Noise Reduction: The Twit Cleaner by Social Marketing Forum
6 Ways To Monitor Your Brand On Twitter by OPEN Forum
Organize Your Twitter Following with Formulists by Business2Community Kristi Hines explains the features of Formulists, "a service that will allow you to create customized Twitter lists and automatically update those lists with new followers that fit your specifications"—ideal for organizing large numbers of Twitter followers without manually picking through all of your followers. How Twitter Web Analytics Will Help Your Business by PCWorld
The 11 Twitter Tools and Apps I Use Every Day in 2011 by Business2Community
14 Twitter Tools for Enterprise Business by Sprout Insights
10 Tools to Significantly Increase Your Twitter Efficiency by arkarthick.com Guest poster Leo Widrich details his top ten tools for Twitterers to "check out to step up your Twitter game and significantly increase your efficiency," including Twinbow, Buffer, Tweriod and PeerIndex. Twitter Facts and StatsTwitter Growth Skyrockets, Settles Privacy Case With FTC by MediaPost Online Media Daily Laurie Sullivan reports on some interesting Twitter statistics, such as that Twitter users now collectively post about one billion tweets per week, and mobile use has increased 182% in the past year. Twitter Stats that will 100% get you tweeting by Carvill Creative
Big Brands Tested On Twitter Effectiveness by MediaPost Online Media Daily Mark Walsh reports on an experiment by a digital agency "not to see whether corporate Twitter hands could answer tough questions, but to find out if they would engage in a conversation at all." Among the findings: of the Fortune 50 companies in the study, 16 apparently don't have corporate Twitter account. of the remaining 34, 23 responded to the test tweets, with GM, UPS and Best Buy responding most quickly. Twitter: The Single-Greatest Relationship and Branding Tool by Bruce Clay
Twitter's Changing Complexion by iMedia Connection Daniel Flamberg shares some fascinating intelligence on Twitter users, such as that:
Twitter By The Numbers: Are You Listening to 100 Million Voices? by B2B Marketing Insider
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| Optimize Your Twitter Account In 4 Easy Steps Posted: 12 Jan 2012 10:55 AM PST Today your consumers are the most detrimental members of your marketing department. They don't spend hours analyzing and constructing best practices, they simply share and publish their raw emotion and opinion of your product to billions of people. If you are utilizing Facebook to join the conversation, you are among the 70 percent of small business owners. Currently, only 40 percent of businesses are utilizing Twitter- but this social media platform's popularity is only predicted to increase. In fact, Twitter has been deemed the conversational search engine of our time. Shouldn't you be the most interesting person in a conversation that consumers are already having about you? Here are four easy steps to optimize your Twitter profile for your most influential presence. 1. Consistent, Smart Twitter Handle and Account NameYour Twitter handle, or a more familiar term, your username, is your "hello my name is" tag for followers to engage with your brand. It is attached to all of your tweets, and should reflect your business's website and all other social media platforms you have (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.). For our client, AQUIESSE, we maintain consistency by using their business title, AQUIESSE, for both their username, as well as their account name. This not only secures validity and clarity for followers, but now reflects their vanity URL, www.twitter.com/AQUIESSE for proper search engine optimization. Tip: To see if your desired name is available across all social media platforms, check out the social media tool, NameChk. The tool will search 159 social media networks to see where your name has been used or not. If you discover your company trademark name is being used, simply contact Twitter about their Trademark Policy Violation to learn more about the action you can take. 2. Interesting, Engaging Bio To optimize your bio, you need to include relevant, mission-statement type sentences. Your bio, is the perfect 160 character summary of your mission as a company. This is where you tell people who you are and why they should follow you at all. You get 20 additional characters to fully optimize this critical aspect of your presence on Twitter, so use the space wisely. For our company bio, we clearly state the benefit of following us, while utilizing keywords like, "social media presence" for people who may be searching for social media best practices. Additionally, we include our website URL for followers to seek further information.
Your profile picture is the icon attached to all tweets. Keep your icon consistent with your business logo, a recognizable product, or face of your brand. The same is true for your background. For our client, Jes MaHarry Jewelry, we use her company logo as the profile picture, and create a visual portrayal of her company mission utilizing 3 strategic aspects of her brand: a photo of her, her well-known, nature-inspired sketches and of course, a few of her signature pieces. By doing this, consumers are not solely being fed a cold, hard, faceless product- they are getting to experience and feel what the company is all about. How-to: Customize your Twitter background, by clicking on your settings, then the "design" tab and hit "change background image" and upload the image of your choice. Jes MaHarry's customized background was designed by the excela creative team.4. Use Engaging, Search-Engine Friendly Keywords Nobody enjoys speaking to someone who only talks about themselves- the same goes for your followers. The quickest way to get unfollowed or ignored is to hash out one-liners about your business. People don't like to be sold, but they do enjoy feeling exclusive, heard and appreciated. You must be relevant and relatable to your consumers- so engage your followers by speaking their language. Use tools like Google Insights to learn how people are searching and talking about your products. Twitter conversations are short, sweet, and if done strategically, to the point. But with 200 million tweets going out every single day, our goal is to get you heard by the right audience, at the right time, and with the right information. What will be the first change you make to your Twitter page? Visit /excelamktg for further customized Twitter ideas, designs and insider tips for optimizing your Social Media. Be sure to check out more of our Social Media on a Budget video series where our panel of experts will take a closer look into the social media hot topic of the week.   |
| Facebook To Hit 1 Billion Users Right Before IPO Posted: 12 Jan 2012 09:05 AM PST Mark Zuckerberg might not shed a tear for his lost market share in the UK. The Facebook CEO has plenty of other people to help take him up to a billion users … by August of this year. According to memeburn, this is a real possibility (based on data from iCrossing). The key to reaching this milestone will be emerging market penetration. India and Brazil are among the countries where Facebook has enjoyed strong growth – from 22 mn users to 36 mn over the past nine months in the former and from 13 mn to 30 mn in the latter. These are high growth rates on small bases of users, which means that continued rapid growth is possible, as Facebook is nowhere near saturation yet. So far, only 3 percent of the Indian population uses Facebook, with penetration at 16 percent for Brazil. Meanwhile, 49 percent of Americans use Facebook, along with 47 percent of the UK population. Now, here's what's really interesting: if iCrossing is right, Facebook will celebrate its billionth user right before its anticipated IPO this year. Think about taking a fact like that out on the roadshow! Getting ready for your own IPO roadshow? Click here to download a free report from IR magazine >> Source: memeburn Photo: deneyterrio via Flickr   |
| Google Unveils “Search, Plus Your World” Posted: 12 Jan 2012 09:04 AM PST Yesterday, Google released a new feature called "Search, plus Your World," which integrates personalized features into Google's standard search engine results pages (SERPs). These bespoke changes to the SERPs are ported from your Google+ page and the information that your Google+ connections have shared with you. These changes will make it easier for users to find and access private data their friends have shared with them, which normally only appears in the chronological sequence of social layouts, and as a result, dated entries become buried and are often undiscoverable. For the privacy-conscious, fear not: the new format's SERPs are only visible to individual users, and you have to be signed in and using the English version of Google in order to see the personalized results. No one else will be able to see your personal results, and you can toggle the personal results off if you find the experience invasive.
As you can see, the new layout shows the traditional count of Web results, but adds "x personal results," a clickable link that you can follow to isolate your personalized search results from the rest of the pack. Results that have been shared by people in your Circles will have that little blue stamp next to them that looks like a head and shoulders. Those that are standard Web results will show nothing new. Google has been at the forefront of social search for the past few years, and Google Fellow Amit Singhal introduced the newest iteration of the enterprise. The Search, plus Your World features highlighted by Singhal include:
Google has tirelessly reinforced the idea that "Google+ is Google" and the social service is a thread that has been woven into the fabric of virtually all of Google's most popular and widespread services. Granted, "Your World" is limited to the extent that only Google+ social data is integrated into your search engine results. Some early critics have responded that the integration is shallow because of that limitation, but Google told Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan that it would be willing to work with other networks that would provide it with "deep access to their data." Considering the relationship that already exists between Bing and Facebook – Bing SERPs show information on what your Facebook friends "like" when you search based on the data provided via this relationship – a collaborative effort between the two giants is a possibility, but we're not betting the farm on it. The change is being rolled out slowly over the next few days, so don't panic if you haven't spotted it yet. If you just can't wait to get a glimpse of the new features, Google released this charming promotional video that sums them up nicely.
This article originally appeared at We Do Web Content and is re-posted with permission.   |
| Social Advertising and the Rollout of Facebook Ads in News Feeds Posted: 12 Jan 2012 08:35 AM PST Alas, the days of a barebones Facebook are history, as digital marketing campaigns have now become cemented into the dynamic framework that is the world's largest social network. As the un-proclaimed leader of the social media industry, it was only a matter of time before Facebook took advantage of its potential as a social advertising hotbed by increasing its ad offerings. Starting in January, Facebook will slowly begin rolling out ads within user News Feeds – in addition to the ads already present within the sidebars of the interface. From an advertising standpoint, this is a huge development, as direct advertising access has now been granted to one of the more popular features Facebook offers. At first glance, it may seem as if Pandora's Box has been opened. However, Facebook spokesperson Annie Ta explained in more detail, saying, "…we want to make it clear that marketers can only pay for stories to be featured in your News Feed if you have explicitly liked the Page". Even so, with this significant increase in social advertising exposure and prevalence, the effectiveness of Facebook ads could still be negatively impacted if not implemented properly. Every day Facebook users are often caught off guard by sudden changes made to the interface or functionality of the social site. While change is inevitable and necessary for growth and innovation, many of the major changes made by Facebook over the years have been met with a significant amount of pushback. Though, in some instances, Facebook has returned order in its kingdom by reverting back to the original interface or feature, it has often forced users to accept changes by simply ignoring communal cries for help by users. Will Facebook take steps to create an implementation process of these new features that will be beneficial to both users and advertisers alike? It seems as though the answer to that question is finally yes. With the gradual introduction of the "Timeline" concept and new ad rollout occurring almost simultaneously, it seems Facebook is giving a whole-hearted attempt at diluting the significance of these major changes by implementing them at a slower pace. In theory, this should be a significant step in reaching a happy medium between maintaining a high level of user satisfaction and expanding the impressive social advertising opportunities it offers. In a metaphorical sense, Facebook is taking on the role of the tortoise in the historic footrace with the hare, slowly taking steps toward a larger and more profitable share within the rapidly expanding segment of social advertising. Regardless, it may be safe to say Facebook has learned from its mistakes and is beginning to see the benefits of a "slow and steady wins the race" type attitude.   |
| Posted: 12 Jan 2012 08:05 AM PST With businesses falling over themselves to set up Facebook marketing campaigns, you might be forgiven for wondering when Twitter was going to jump on the bandwagon. Well, it's started. Promoted tweets are exactly what it says on the tin – tweets that promote your business. Why pay for promoted tweets when your own organic tweets can do the same thing? we hear you ask. Well, although promoted tweets are clearly labelled as such (including all the things you can do with organic tweets like retweet, reply, and favourite) they do enjoy some advantages that can help you reach a wider audience or more of your existing followers – sparking the type of engagement that can really help your business go stratospheric. Mainly, your promoted tweets can be seen in a variety of places. They pop up at the top of relevant search results. If the targeted user is a follower, then promoted tweets appear on their own timeline. Tweets with hashtags that are also being promoted by an advertiser mean that those clicking on the tweet will see a promoted tweet in the details pane. They also see one when they click on a shared promoted trend. But don't forget that whilst the differences between promoted and organic tweets are important, the similarities are too. Promoted tweets start out as regular tweets, so they fit into the Twitter landscape easily, differentiating them from traditional advertising. At the moment they are only available on Twitter.com, but their popularity means that syndication with Hootsuite and TweetDeck is fast approaching. Fancy being an early adopter? Check out Twitter Help to find out how to get on board. It could be the break your business has been waiting for!   |
| Comment Systems Face Off! LiveFyre Vs DisqUs Posted: 12 Jan 2012 07:15 AM PST I never cared for WordPress' native comment system. Some people are able to customize it, tweak it, make it look good, but even then it fails on one important point. In order for people to comment using WordPress comment system they have to have a WordPress account. Sure, bloggers have these, but non-bloggers don't. And they don't want to create one, either. So it comes down that old chestnut. Who is your audience? Bloggers or people? Some might say bloggers are people too. I'm not too sure. What comment system is best then? DisqUs?I've used DisqUs from the get-go here on DIYB. I love it. I think it has a lot of strong points which are missing from the native WordPress comment system.
And finally, the look and feel of DisqUs integrates nicely into your existing blog theme. You end up having a really nice looking comment system with basically zero effort. My kinda system. LiveFyre?I love the guys from LiveFyre. Their system has a very cool feature that enables live conversations. Which means that you get a little note letting you know someone else has commented on the page. This happens without needing to manually refresh the page. Nice. They also enable visitors to authenticate using Twitter, Facebook, etc. LiveFyre is able to send comments to Twitter and Facebook, but the formatting is little different from DisqUs. DisqUs shows your comment + @mention for the person in the comment. LiveFyre has a generic "I left a comment on so and so's post". I'm using LiveFyre at the moment not because I like it better but because the barely perceptible difference between DisqUs and LiveFyre doesn't warrant me switching back to DisqUs. Plus I hope LiveFyre guys will add new cool features that will floor me. LiveFyre also claims that they have the only system that is searchable and indexable by google. I thought all systems were, but I guess I was wrong about that. Facebook Comment SystemI really love the idea of Facebook Comment System plugin. When people on your blog leave a comment it's "fed" to their Facebook wall. Or if you publish your post to Facebook, people on Facebook leaving a comment will be visible to your blog audience. The AC/DC nature of the Facebook Comment plugin is really, really cool. Having said that, it's missing multiple authentication options. Tho, since it's Facebook one could argue those aren't even necessary. It can't tweet the comments, and it looks very Facebook branded. Both points are a minus in my mind. Comment System XWhat would the perfect comment system look like? I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I figured I'd share few thoughts on this, in hopes that you will share your thoughts on the topic as well. The perfect Comment System would have the following:
Why have a comment system that can span multiple blogs? Imagine you do a video interview with someone and both of you embed the video on your respective blogs. Visitors will be commenting on the same content, why not cross-feed comments to both blog posts? Or if you decide to do a same topic with bunch of people and 10 of you publish a post with the same title covering the same topic from different perspectives. It would be nice to be able to connect all 10 blog posts and enable conversations across many posts. I think the next best comment system will have to be collaborative beyond the blog on which it's installed. I know some of my suggestions are hard to implement but other should be fairly easy. I would love to hear from you.
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| 101 Success Stories: Yes. 101 Examples of ROI: No. Here’s Why. Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:35 AM PST How do I write this piece without making Peter Kim hate me? I guess I'm just going to have to give it a shot and hope for the best. It's important to remember that this post isn't about him. It's about a piece of content. None of this is personal. I even think like the guy. (We've never met in the real world, so I don't know for sure.) I have a lot of respect for him and for what I think he does. (We've never worked together so I don't know for sure either.) But I have to be honest, the 101 Examples of Social Media ROI list he published this week is crap seriously flawed. Here's why: Most of these 101 "examples" don't show ROI at all, "social" or otherwise. Either the title is wrong or the list is wrong for that title. One or the other. Before I get into specific examples and illustrations of where I think the list fails, let me give you four basic problems I have with it as it stands today: 1. Many of the examples on it could potentially show positive ROI but – as presented – only reference selective gains from social activity and not actual, factual, empirical ROI. If that made no sense, that's okay. Let me explain: For something to be ROI, you need two ingredients: The cost of the activity and the gain from that activity. (That cost is the investment. The gain is either revenue or cost savings.) It's math. Really really really simple math. ROI is an equation and it generally looks like this: ($ Gain – $ Cost) ÷ $ Cost = ROI or ($ Revenue – $ Investment) ÷ $ Investment = ROI (You can also multiply the result by 100 to get yourself out of the decimals, but that's a personal choice. You can do that in your head.) Anything that isn't the result of the ROI equation is not ROI. Note that a gain is just a gain,like cost is just a cost. Neither gain nor cost is ROI on its own. Ever. Not in any known universe. Put another way, bread and ham may individually be part of the ham sandwich equation but ham alone is not a ham sandwich. Ham is just ham. The problem we face today: This list pretty much mistakes ham for a ham sandwich. Good thing it was free or we would all be asking for a refund (or a word with the chef). Take this example: 61. Paramount Pictures. #Super8Secret Promoted Trend created a tremendous spike in conversations: Tweets of the hashtag reached nearly nine million impressions in less than 24 hours and mentions of the movie skyrocketed to more than 150 per minute. Receipts for the sneak preview exceeded $1 million, and Paramount said weekend box office surpassed expectations by 52%. (Twitter, 2011) Cool story, bro. What was the cost of the campaign? Yes, this is an example of a successful use of social media (through a "promoted trend" media buy). Awesome. But where's the bit that compares the $gain and the $cost? That would be an ROI example. This isn't. What's sad is that there is probably an ROI piece hiding in the background but instead of focusing on that, the example dishes out a healthy helping of random gain data: Impressions. Mentions. Tweets. Retweets. Sales too, which is nice but no cost data… so thanks for playing but no. Without the cost piece, you don't have an ROI example. Your example needs to include this information or it doesn't belong on that list: ($ Gain – $ Cost) ÷ $ Cost = ROI Tip: If you can't measure ROI or adequately prove it in this instance, that's okay. Just don't add it to a list of ROI examples. (Speaking of proving cause & effect, let's not forget that Super8 was a well anticipated $50M summer fare from director J.J.Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg. Not exactly a grass-roots indie phenom that would have flopped without a promoted trend on Twitter. Let's not go crazy over the role that social media really played in opening weekend ticket sales. A little perspective goes a long way.) More examples of this disappointing absence of actual ROI metrics later. In fact… almost the entire list suffers from this single basic flaw. But hey, at least this type of example makes the effort of including at least a portion of the data that goes into an ROI discussion. Not all examples on the list do. 2. Many of the examples on the list don't even reference financial gain at all, let alone ROI. I list more later in the post but these will get things started: "68% of respondents said they were "much" or "somewhat" more likely to purchase post-project." (Subaru. 80.) "32,000 video views, 25% regular return visits to the site, and average of almost seven minutes spent on the site per visit." (UPS. 96.) "Community drove a +20 NPS increase." (Sage Software. 69.) "58% higher engagement rate than people coming in from other channels." (TurboTax. 91.) These are very cool little successes, great things to celebrate and be happy about, but as valuable as they may be they are not ROI. Not one part of any of those numbers even fit in the ROI discussion. At least other examples on the list make an effort to list one element of ROI: Money saved or money earned. These don't. Sorry but that's a little perplexing. Here's an example of my own to illustrate how far these examples are from ROI: I love carrot cake and when people compliment me on my impeccable taste in carrot cake, that isn't ROI either, no matter how much of those interactions happen online. I could call it ROI and score the number 102 spot on the list, thus: 102. Olivier Blanchard. Increased engagement with carrot cake enthusiast community by 37%. (The BrandBuilder Blog, 2012) Except… no. It doesn't work that way. Just because something is a success doesn't mean it qualifies as ROI. Did my example mention that I even sold carrot cakes? Did I factor in the cost of making them or selling them online? Did I save money in any way by talking about carrot cakes with my twitter friends? Nope, I didn't think so either. Again, your example needs to include this information or it doesn't belong on a list of ROI examples: ($ Gain – $ Cost) ÷ $ Cost = ROI 3. Some of the examples could have been bunched into one but legitimate examples were somehow omitted. Case in point: Cerner's three examples (15, 16 and 17) are really one program / one example, but IKEA somehow didn't make the list. (For more details on that particular program, click here.) Maybe scratching Giffgaff (32.) and replacing it with IKEA would have made sense? But okay, I'll back off from this particular point. Lists tend to be incomplete. Someone always gets left out and sometimes you have to stretch yourself a little thin to get to the magic number. It's no big deal. 4. Because of the source (Peter is well respected in this industry as far as I can tell), a lot of people will naturally accept this list as fact. It will become a template to be shared and passed around and referenced for the next couple of years. When marketing execs and digital agencies look for examples of ROI in social business, they will pull this thing from the Googlenets and use it as a resource for all sorts of things: Training of new social business recruits, client pitches, presentations at conferences, etc. They will do so without questioning the validity of the information they are not only ingesting but also sharing because they trust that Peter vetted the list before publishing it. That's the unspoken contract of being a respected leader in the social business world. Except… what if this one time, the information wasn't properly vetted? What if much of it wasn't even properly presented (using the right metrics, for instance)? Or what if the title is so wrong for the actual list that you end up confusing "value" with ROI for another 3 years as a result? Then what? No thanks. We can do better. If you have 10 minutes to really get into it, read on. If not, you get the idea. (By the way, the list isn't all bad.) Feel free to skip ahead to the end all the same. * * * Let's look at a few of these examples a little more closely. We'll get to more obvious cases of "no, this isn't ROI at all" a bit later. I want to start with some of the more subtle "maybe this could be ROI" examples first because a) they're tricky and b) they illustrate pretty well some of the common traps people fall into when trying to establish ROI too quickly: 1. Aflac. Community drove online payments increase of 3% led to $95,000 in savings. (Lithium Technologies, 2011) Q: What's the problem with this one, Olivier? It looks legit to me. What's your deal? A: Yes it does look legit. And it might be. But do we know anything about other activity from Aflac that might have contributed to that 3% increase in online payments? Could a concurrent email or advertising campaign have triggered a significant portion of that shift? Could the addition of a flyer in the mail to existing customers prompting them to make online payments have been the real cause of the shift? We can't attribute the success of "the community" until we have ruled those out. If we know for a fact that this was 100% the result of community engagement, great. Roll on. If not, we need to find out before we high-five the community management team. Lesson #1: Assumptions are dangerous and attribution is tricky. If you are going to present an ROI example, make sure it is rock solid. Don't assume that social business was the biggest (or sole) cause of your success. A better way of presenting this one would have been to maybe connect the 3% lift in online payments to the $95,000 in processing costs (context here would be nice so we know how the two might be connected). Tying these metrics to a specific campaign or activity on social channels wouldn't be a bad thing too. Connect the dots a little bit: +3% in online payments isn't ROI unless it results in $x savings. None of it is an outcome of social business unless you also show how "the community" helped you get there. Not saying this isn't a potential ROI win, but as presented, we can't know for sure. Not yet. We'll give that a cautious MAYBE. Just watch those assumptions though. * * * 2. Alberta Common Wealth Credit Union. Blog, YouTube, Facebook – 2 million impressions, 2,300 new accounts, and $4 million Canadian in new deposits. (Forrester, 2008) First, scratch the 2 million impressions bit. It's a distracting metric and not super reliable (or even relevant to this discussion). $4 million in new deposits sounds like a great outcome for the program though. Here are the three problems with that: - Assumptions again: How do we know that these 2,300 new accounts and resulting $4 million in new deposits were tied to the social media program (Blog, Youtube, Facebook) and not a combination of social and other factors (traditional marketing, advertising, PR, etc.). Can ACWCU realistically assign the 2,300 new accounts and $4M in net new deposits to the social media program? If the answer is yes, great. They're on the right track. Time to back that up. Show me how that happened. If the answer is no, then we have a problem right off the bat. Remember that thing about assumptions. - What about costs? What was the cost of the program? This example (and many others) don't mention cost at all. They only mention gains. The ROI equation also factors in costs. Here's why this is kind of important in an "ROI examples" discussion: if the program or campaign cost $4,000,001 and the net new deposits amounted to $4,000,000, then your ROI was actually negative. Just sharing the gain from the campaign or program doesn't give us any idea of what the ROI actually was. Lesson #2: Don't confuse ROI with gain. ROI is the ham sandwich, not just the ham. (Google the ROI equation, print it and tape it to your office wall. Before you tag something as ROI, make sure it fits the definition of ROI.) - No benchmarking: What the example doesn't tell us is what the time period for this gain was, and how the credit union normally trends for similar time periods. What if ACWCU usually sees the same amount of new accounts and deposits for the same time period even without social media? Say that ACWCU saw 2,300 new accounts for the exact same period preceding the start of their social media program? Wouldn't that mean that the social media program might have had no impact at all? You have to factor in time frames and set up benchmarks before you can weigh gains before and after the launch of a program. Result: As presented, we have no way of knowing if the program perpetuated a trend or brought in new business above and beyond normal performance trending. Lesson #3: Without adequate benchmarking, your ROI "reporting" is incomplete and doesn't stand up to scrutiny. File that one under MAYBE. (As presented: An incomplete report of gain but not an example of ROI.) Way too many of this kind of anecdotal "example" on this list to make me comfortable with it. Sorry. * * * 8. Blendtec. Viral videos increased company sales +700%. (Barnraisers, 2010) That one actually does stand up to scrutiny. BlendTec's hilarious videos (and live demos at trade shows) a) became such a hit and b) demonstrated the effectiveness of the blenders so well that orders for the blender increased almost overnight. The reporting here is still pretty incomplete though: 700% over what time period? What else could have caused the increase? That's a gain but not an ROI figure: What was the cost of the program vs. that 700% net gain in sales? File that one under YES: ROI but with reservations. (As presented: another report of a successful gain but not an example of ROI.) I really wish the legitimate ROI examples on this list actually focused on ROI instead of using disjointed metrics. * * * 10. Bonobos. Exclusive sale on Twitter generated 1,200% ROI in 24 hours on promoted tweet. (Twitter, 2011) First, proceed with caution if the list is about Social Business and you are just talking about a one-time media buy on a social channel. Social business is a little more elaborate than buying the odd promoted tweet for a one-day promotion. Second, we have absolutely no idea how that 1,200% ROI figure comes from. What is it based on? Could the figure erroneously reference a 1,200% increase in sales rather than ROI? As presented, we don't really know. Red flag. Third (and perhaps most important) we have no idea what the cost of that promoted tweet was in relation to the gain in net sales. Knowing nothing about this one, I want to give it the benefit of the doubt. Filing it under MAYBE. (I can't believe I am being so nice. This would never pass muster during a legitimate business audit.) * * * 13. Burger King. Subservient Chicken video increased chicken sandwich sales 9% per week a month after launch. (Adweek, 2005) Again: At a cost of…? If the 9% increase in chicken sandwich sales amounted to less revenue than the cost of the campaign or program, then the ROI was negative. This example (like most on the list) mentions gain without factoring in cost. This is the list's biggest problem. Footnote: Subservient chicken wasn't just a social media campaign. Subservient chicken was an advertising campaign with interactive digital components. This is very different from a business like Best Buy or Ford engaging with people via social channels to grow mindshare, improve the brand's image and ultimately increase preference in the minds of x% of car buyers. When looking at this type of hybrid model of social and traditional media, you cannot legitimately talk about the ROI of "social". Lesson #4: When a campaign (note my choice of the term campaign and not program) is as much social marketing as it is traditional marketing, you cannot attribute its success to "social media" or even "social business." An advertising campaign, even with social channel components is still an advertising campaign. Effective, sure, but still just advertising. File that one under a cautious and suspicious MAYBE. (As presented though: No ROI was actually demonstrated here. Value: yes. ROI: nope. Again.) Let's move further down the list. * * * Let's leave the gray area of "maybe" for a minute and look at a few examples that don't fall anywhere near ROI (as presented): 15. Cerner. Community resulted in 13% fewer customer support issues logged. (Jive Software, 2011) 16. Cerner. Community resulted in 70% decrease in internal HR issues logged. (Jive Software, 2011) 17. Cerner. Community resulted in shorter approval cycles for writing technical documentation, from 2-6 weeks to hours or days. (Jive Software, 2011) 19. Charles Schwab. Online community drives 56% increase in Gen X customer base versus year ago. (Communispace, 2007) 20. Cisco. Community deflects 120,000 support cases each month. (Lithium Technologies, 2011) 24. Electronic Arts. EA was 2nd UK brand to use promoted tweets and trends to promote FIFA 12 video game. Trend engagement level was 11%, well above Twitter's average 'benchmark' for trends, of 3% to 6%. Promoted tweet engagement averaged 8.3% over two-week campaign vs. Twitter benchmark of 1.5%. (Marketing Magazine, 2011) 25. Elsevier. Wiki drives 80% reduction in interdepartmental e-mail volume. (Socialtext, unkn) 28. FICO. Community: 850k customers served, resulting in 10% improvement in call deflections annually. (Lithium Technologies, 2011) 30. FONA International. Wiki eliminated almost 50,000 e-mails a year from one specific process. (Socialtext, unkn) 32. giffgaff. 100% of questions answered by community members in average time of 93 seconds. (Lithium Technologies, 2011) 34. Hershey's. House party: 10,000 parties, reached 129,000 people, and say their campaign was seen by 7 million people. (Forrester, 2008) 35. Honda. Friending Honda campaign increased Facebook fans from 15k to 422k, generated over 3,500 dealer quote requests. (RPA, 2010) 36. HP. More than 4.6 people have told HP that the forum solved their support issues which HP says makes customer happier and saves the company millions in support costs. (Forrester, 2010) 42. Intuit Quickbooks. Business owners engaged with rated ProAdvisors 555% more often than unrated counterparts. (ratings and reviews). (Bazaarvoice, 2011) No ROI in any of those examples whatsoever. There are more but I will let you find them all on your own. Lesson #5: If it isn't a $cost vs. $gain equation (or whatever currency you need it to be), it isn't ROI. Customer base, leads, referrals, links, clicks, retweets, HR issues logged, email volume, estimates of future sales, deltas in NPS, quote requests, parties reached, impressions, engagement, etc. = not ROI. Note: Too bad HP (36.) didn't lead with the "saves company millions in support costs." That looked like a legitimate ROI example. (Right company, wrong metrics to illustrate the ROI piece.) It matters that 4.6… wait. 4.6 people? Maybe it was 4.6 million? Or 4 out of 6? Anyway, whatever the number is, it matters but it is irrelevant to the ROI discussion. What would have been relevant would be how many millions in savings HP enjoyed as a result: The cost of implementing and managing the program vs. the $x million savings would have been a perfect way to illustrate ROI here. Missed opportunity #36 on the list so far. Speaking of how to properly present ROI "examples," here are a few quick tips on how to turn these examples into legitimate ROI stories: It would have been great for the three Cerner examples to talk about actual cost reductions from the drop in customer service and HR issues, for instance, but they didn't The metrics used had nothing to do with ROI. Financial gains (either via revenue or cost savings) were never mentioned. The cost of implementing and managing the program(s) was also never mentioned. Why? Those are far more relevant metrics than the ones presented. Same with Elsevier: An 80% reduction in email is great but what is the impact on operational costs? That would be a potential ROI story. Honda (35.) would have a great ROI story to tell if it could show the net number of sales from those 3,500 dealer quote requests and then scrubbed from that list every buyer who was going to buy a Honda anyway, regardless of the company's social media activity. Presenting the example with "likes" and "dealer quotes" as the two principal KPIs (key performance indicators) instead of net sales (for example) puts the example squarely outside of a legitimate ROI discussion. Intuit is another example of a company listed here with a legitimate ROI story to tell, but the description references a KPI that has nothing to do with ROI whatsoever. "555% more engagement resulting in net new $… versus a cost of $…" would have scored a bullseye. "555% more engagement" alone doesn't. Is it too much to ask for a list of ROI examples to actually use cost vs. gain numbers? As in… the actual ROI equation? Because that would be simple, clear and nice… and relevant. Instead of… 19. Charles Schwab. Online community drives 56% increase in Gen X customer base versus year ago. … try this: 19. Charles Schwab. Online community cost: $X. 56% YoY increase in Gen X customer base attributable to online community resulted in net new revenue of $Y FY2011. ROI: $Z. Simple. That's how it's done. Perhaps there is an ROI story hiding somewhere in the background of every single example here. In fact, there probably is. But these examples, as presented, don't talk about ROI at all. They reference non-financial gains without establishing any link whatsoever to ROI. So… Sorry, that's a big zero on all of those. Filing these under: NO ROI ANYWHERE (except for the vague afterthought in number 36). My thinking: Far too many of these on this list as well. * * * Okay… I'm starting to feel bad about this so let's look at a legitimate example on the list. #22: Dell. 22. Dell. @DellOutlet on Twitter generated $2 million direct sales, influenced $1 million addt'l (2007 – 2009). (Direct2Dell Blog, 2009) Yes. Tweets linked to offers were tracked and a direct path of tweet-to-purchase was clearly established. Empirically. File that one under YES: ROI. (But it would have been nice to see it as an ROI example and not as just another example of gain.) Cost of program vs. $ in net sales from the program. Simple. Another missed opportunity to demonstrate ROI properly. Moving on… * * * 27. Epson. Reviews drove 98% higher revenue per visitor for Epson. (Bazaarvoice, 2011) First, I have absolutely no idea how one leads to the other. How do we know that "reviews" drove higher revenue per visitor? Show me how you came up with that figure. Second, what does that have to do with ROI? (Gain from reviews – Cost of reviews) ÷ Gain from reviews = … oh wait. What was the cost of those reviews again? #Fail. Value: Yes. Correlation between A and B: Maybe. ROI: Nope. Sorry but I have to file this one under NO. Interesting but not ROI. * * * Dancing back into ROI territory now. (I still feel guilty about pointing out the problems with this list.) See? It isn't all bad. 37. IBM. developerWorks community saves $100 million annually from people who use this resource instead of contacting IBM support. (Forrester, 2010) 38. IBM. Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator businesses, funded for $100 million, generatiung $100 billion in total revenue for a 10-to-1 ROI with a 44.1% gross profit margin. (Barnraisers, 2010) Now we're talking. ROI can come from cost savings, not just net new revenue. Well done, IBM. Filed under YES: ROI. * * * 45. Jewelry TV. Customer reviews boost mobile sales by 30% (ratings and reviews). (Bazaarvoice, 2011) Aside from the obvious problems already encountered with previous examples, this one introduces us to a new one: The 30% boost in mobile sales. Is this 30% net new sales or simply a shift from non-mobile sales to mobile sales? Whether someone buys from a mobile device or their land line, is there really a difference? Does it have anything to do with ROI? 53. Mattel. Despite product recalls, online community helped support Q4 2007 sales increase of 6%. (Forrester, 2008) How do we know that the online community helped support a Q4 2007 sales increase of 6%? isn't it more likely that back in 2007, advertising, product placement and good PR might have been more responsible for that 6% increase than an online community? Also, 6% versus what? Is this YoY or QoQ? Was it normal for Mattel to expect 6% growth in Q4 of 2007 with or without an online community? Too many unanswered questions = too many assumptions. Filing these and others like them under NOT SURE WHAT THAT WAS. MAYBE. Another reason why benchmarking matters. Just throwing numbers around without establishing a context for them doesn't really tell you anything. Data can be manipulated to tell wonderful stories when no one is there to ask hard questions like "prove it." * * * I want to end on a positive note, so here are several examples that either have potential or are clear examples of ROI (in no particular order): 11. Bupa. Community drove £190,000 savings through collaboration, online events. (Jive Software, 2011) 100. Vistaprint. Community tracked $30,000 in social revenue in 2009. (Lithium Technologies, 2011) 23. Domino's Pizza. Foursquare drove 29% pre-tax profit through promotions. (Barnraisers, 2010) 71. SAP. Community drive 5% increase in partner sales. (Jive Software, 2011) 57. National Instruments. Community resulted in 46% of all support questions answered by peers instead of support. (Jive Software, 2011) 84. TomTom. In one month, community handled 20,000 cases resulting in $150k of savings. (Lithium Technologies, 2011) 65. Precyse Technologies. $250,000 savings in crowdsourcing new product design. (InnoCentive, 2010) 92. TVG. Community members spend 36% more than average. (Lithium Technologies, 2011) 67. Rhapsody. 50% decrease in support costs and 53% decrease in weekly support contacts via sCRM solution. (GetSatisfaction, unkn) 60. Orange. Listening: saved a few million euros in support costs and helped avoid several potential PR problems. (Forrester, 2010) 75. Secret. Among women viewing the video, 57% said their impression of the Secret brand improved and purchase intent among women who participated on Facebook went up by 11% (33% for teens). Clinical sales increased 8% despite a 70% decrease in TV support. (Forrester, 2010) 85. Toshiba. Saved $213,000 by adding online component to 5 events, doubling attendance. (Jive Software, 2011) 95. University of London. Internal social network allows students to collaborate remotely, expected to deliver future savings in the region of £300,000 per year in print, courier and administration costs alone. (IBM, 2008) While examples like Secret (75.) and SAS (71.) require you to make leaps of faith (as presented) and don't actually give us ROI data (not just gain but relative cost of the new activity vs. traditional spend), you can see an ROI story forming in the background. It's still vague but you can tell it's there. Let's file those in the "PROBABLY ROI (if we dig a little more)" folder. Examples like Orange (60.), Precyse Technologies (65.) and TomTom (84.), on the other hand, are cut and dry: The cost savings are empirical. You can tie the cost of the activity to the financial gain to the company. We'll file those in the "YES: ROI" folder. Special mention for actually listing both gain and cost: 88. TransUnion. Estimated $2.5 million in savings in less than five months while spending about $50,000 on a social networking platform. (Socialtext, 2009) If only all 101 had done that. * * * (If you skipped ahead, pick up the post here. You're almost done.) Conclusion: If you look at the list from the perspective of "these are 101 examples of where social business has benefited or added value to a company" then it is solid. Kudos to Peter and his team. Great title, lots of value there, please share with the world. Just make sure you scratch out the title or petition Peter to change it. If you look at the list as a collection of "101 examples of social business ROI," then the list is almost entirely wrong. Back to the drawing board. Sorry. It doesn't work. I don't want to just point out the flaws without offering Peter a way to fix it, so here are the only two options: 1. Change the title to something along the lines of "101 examples of successful Social Business campaigns". (Remove the ROI bit from it if you aren't actually going to focus on ROI.) 2. Include actual ROI numbers for each of the 101 examples. (Those can just be the cost and the gain from activity figures. Real simple.) Even if some of those ROI numbers turn out to be less than impressive, the list will still be factual and valuable. Oh, and 3. Include IKEA. It deserves a nod. * * * I almost forgot… Lesson #6: Ask the hard questions. Don't assume that information (or insight) from anyone in any industry that touches marketing in any way is accurate. Not even mine. Put everything through your own stink test. Use your noggin'. Challenge everything that raises a red flag. Learn the definition of business terms too. They matter. Worth keeping in mind next time a list like this pops up (and there will be more like it). Or your could just Google "R.O.I. calculation" for crying outloud. Every kid with a lemonade stand grasps that math. Why can't social media gurus? It boggles the mind. Cheers, Olivier
PS: Everything in this book could also be dead wrong. It could all be pure BS. Scrutinize it as well. I'm not immune to the occasional wrong conclusion either. You never know.   |
| 10 Incredibly Simple Ways To Maximize Your LinkedIn Profile For Inbound Marketing Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:45 AM PST
When you establish your profile in a way that highlights your company's expertise and outlines how you can assist potential customers, you maximize the business opportunities for you and your business. Although you might customize the way in which you present your company in each business interaction, there is only one universal profile on LinkedIn that everyone will be able to see. This is the secret to why LinkedIn's database and people search capabilities are so impressive. The fields in which everyone enters information are standardized; therefore, it is easier to brand yourself by differentiating what you include in your profile because everyone else has to complete the same data fields as you do. So how much information should you include in your LinkedIn profile to make it complete? To develop and strengthen your own LinkedIn brand and increase your chances of being found, you will want to include as much data as possible. Let's dig deeper into the 10 main functions of a LinkedIn profile and explain the importance of each component. Photo – Basically, if you don't have a LinkedIn profile photo, you are invisible. Don't forget that much of Social Media is about people-centric networking, and without a photo, it will be harder to gain credibility with those whom you want to engage. Name – LinkedIn is strict when asking you to input your name, and only your name, where specified. There are plenty of fake profiles out there, so there is no reason not to be upfront and honest about who you are. Also, if you are representing a business and want to use your company name, remember that LinkedIn is a social network for professionals and people, not companies, and there are plenty of opportunities to brand your company within your profile. Headline – Your headline is important real estate that appears next to your name in search results, and it's wording may determine whether a new potential client contacts you after you appear in search results. Your headline should be customized to align with your objective for being on LinkedIn in the first place, which is to market your company. Remember to brand your headline, not make it a collection of keywords, which will make your potential customer think you are merely trying to dupe the LinkedIn search results (more on that pet peeve of mine in a future blog post) Location – A no-brainer? NOT! This is the field that gives potential customers a way to filter out profiles by location, so it is of the utmost importance that your classify yourself as "living" where your market is. Industry – A critical aspect to your profile. If your company crosses industries, or it's not specific, make sure to choose the one which you most want to be associated with. If you're confused, check out the sales and marketing folks from your competitors and see what industry they chose for one reference point. Summary – Much like your headline, which acts as an initial filter, your summary is the basis upon which people will form opinions about you and your brand. It is what helps them decide how they will view you and potentially your company. Make sure to include keywords that will appear in searches as well as what your specialties are, and more importantly, how you can help potential clients. Experience – This is where you have the opportunity to show off your company's niche and your own unique expertise. To effectively brand yourself, include details that support the info you included in your headline and summary. Education – Do not skip this, as it is simply another way to prove you are "real" – and get found. Websites/URLs – Not only do you have the opportunity to list your company website here, you can also list up to three URL's to appear on your profile. Take advantage of this – and make sure to customize the anchor text for potential additional SEO juice. Contact Settings – Make it easy for potential clients to contact you by inputting your contact information. If you do not want to show your phone #, a business email is sufficient. Just don't leave it blank and let this precious space go to waste. It's safe to say that LinkedIn gives you a lot of real estate in which to work, so the more you use, the better you can brand yourself and your company, making it easier to be found in search results. And lastly, one final word of advice: After you create a stellar profile that embodies your brand, make sure you revisit it on a regular basis to ensure it is up to date and continues to reflect your professional objectives. In other words … always keep your LinkedIn brand fresh! How has your LinkedIn profile attracted new business for you? The above is a summary of selected content from my critically acclaimed new LinkedIn for business book "Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing," available at Amazon, Kindle, Nook, or iTunes.   |
| Why There Will Never be a Margie Clayman Facebook Fan Page Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:00 AM PST
I think fan pages for people are really, really stupid. Now understand, I am not saying that fan pages on Facebook are stupid. I am not saying that a fan page for a book, an entity, a school, or sleep is stupid. Well, ok, maybe a fan page for sleep is *kind of* stupid. But there will never be a Margie Clayman fan page on Facebook. I don't care how famous you are or how many followers you have on Twitter. The concept of a fan page for a person kind of makes me get a headache. Why? Well, here are some thoughts. You tell me if you agree or not. Isn't your profile on Facebook kind of a fan page already? Let's talk about a personal page on Facebook as it exists right now (it's likely to change in the next five minutes or so, of course). OK so, you have your bio information. You have pictures of you, your family, your pets, foods you've eaten, clothes you've bought, and maybe some random anteaters you've seen. You have links to your blog site, probably mentions of where people can find you elsewhere in the online world, and you have friends. Oh so many friends. What else could you want in a "fan" page? I'm all for changing Facebook's name to Fanbook, in fact. Think about it for an instant. Aren't we sort of assuming people we friend on Facebook are fans? Who but fans would put up with some much information about, well, us? "I need to be myself. I'm creating a fan page." I've seen this a lot over my tenure in Facebook world, and I have to say I don't really understand this line of thinking. The rationale is that your personal page is for people you're really close to and then your fan page is for the drivel. I meant, the fans. Your acquaintances. I have a few problems with this. First of all, if you create a fan page and close off your personal page, that's just going to raise questions. What are they saying on their personal very public no privacy Facebook page that they aren't willing to say out in the open? Second of all, why is that person part of their personal profile but I'm just limited to fandom? More disconcerting is this thought that if you "lock down" your Facebook profile, you actually have privacy. I worry for people who post extremely personal things on their Facebook pages. That status update about how much you hate your job can be shared. It can be copied and pasted. It can show up in someone's "ticker." If your concern is privacy, the best path is to avoid saying anything that could be embarrassing. A fan page will not help you in this endeavor, nor will a million lock-downs on your Facebook account. Fan pages are by nature 1-way communication channels If you are a "fan" of someone or something on Facebook, the page is really all about them. You are merely a fan, a bystander, an innocent marauder in a world that is not really yours. What fun is that? How is that web 2.0? Especially if you're a fan of a *person* who is doing status updates about how important being human is? Doesn't that make ya scratch your head a little bit? It confuses the heck out of me. I highly prefer the way things work on my personal page. I post things with the understanding that everything is up for conversation or even debate, so long as it remains somewhat civil. And decent. I want to invite people to converse with me in more than 140 characters. I don't want to feel like Moses coming down the mountain, ready to deliver my next status update to my adoring masses. Yeck. Fans versus Friends Even though the word "friend" is used rather loosely these days, isn't it more comforting to think that you have 500 friends versus 500 fans? Maybe that's just me, but having "fans" makes people seem so distant to me. Oh, I'm just a fan. I'm here to adore you. If we're friends, I feel more open to conversing with you, and assume you feel the same way about me and the rest of the poor plebeians you're deigning to friend. The doors are open. And even if we aren't, I can feel like we're on even ground. Am I way off base here? Obviously each to his or her own, but I just don't understand this concept of "fan pages" for individuals. What am I missing? Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/subcow/280962961/ via Creative Commons   |
| Your 2012 Marketing Plan: Tell Me What to Do Posted: 12 Jan 2012 04:00 AM PST The ever-awesome Mitch Joel wrote a dizzying blog post forecasting that 2012 is The Year of More. He points out that 2012 will be a year of technological and information abundance:
Mitch is right of course (just don't tell him that I said so). But here is the grand irony. All of these trends fly directly in the face of what consumers really need right now. We need LESS. Consumers are paralyzed by choice and overwhelmed by information density. Over the holidays I saw a TV ad for something called Deal Chicken. I thought, does the world really need another freaking way to get coupons? We can't handle the number of deals we're already getting! Time-starved consumers just want to be told what to do. How do I save time? How do I save money? How can I have more fun? Just tell me. I don't need to sift through 1 billion results on Google. I have far too much choice. I just want to know. Isn't ironic that companies like Facebook and Google are collecting so much information about us to presumably make our decision-making more streamlined and efficient? Does anybody feel that their information flow is more streamlined today? Mitch is right. 2012 will be the Year of More. But that is in direct opposition to what consumers need. There's a business opportunity in there somewhere, isn't there? How are you helping your customers sort through complexity? How will you tell them what to do? Mark Schaefer is a marketing consultant, author and college educator who blogs at {grow}. You can also follow him on Twitter: @markwschaefer.   |
you will note the use of the words "Google Plus Your World" perhaps a not-so-subtle inference that Google+ is about to become a LOT more important than first thought by many. Read the article I wrote on Google+ just after it first launched in 2011: 
For as long as I have been blogging, I have been terrible at subscribing to peoples' blogs. I had a lot of concerns about it. For example, would I just go to those sites and never find anybody new? Would I get so far behind that I would just do what so many have done and delete the whole mess?
ideas, their concerns, their opinions, being accessible to them and talking to them.
Got a boring Twitter background and need some inspiration to help you liven it up? Dustin Betonio here presents 40 "awesome and creatively designed Twitter backgrounds which use various and innovative illustrations to create a visually attractive and appealing look to their profiles" to get your creativity kick-started.
Dave offers "25 ideas for ways you can get value out of Twitter, with a mix of business and personal focus," such as meeting new people, staying on top of the news, influencing the influencers, and re-purposing content.
Aliza Sherman highlights 10 features of Twitter that not all users may be aware of–including a few that may be news even to power users–such a list of helpful Twitter keyboard shortcuts.
Community manager Jen Lopez explains how SEOmoz increased its total Twitter followers by 250% to over 27,000 people. Hint: it helps to have a community manager.
Noting that the top barrier to increased business use of social media is a lack of time and resources, Leyl Master Black shares "seven Twitter tricks from the pros that allow you to spend less time on the mechanics and more time engaging."
Sarah Mitchell presents 20 tips for success on Twitter, divided into four categories: Always Try To (e.g., answer every mention), Never Fail To (e.g., say "thank you"), Things NOT To Do, and "Keep in Mind."
If you've never sat in on a Twitter chat, it's quite an experience. If you have, you understand the metaphorical meaning of "drinking from a fire hose." Think of those people-talking-over-each-other Sunday morning political talk shows and multiply it by a large number. In some cases, a very large number. Among the 12 best Twitter chats chosen here by Daniel Newman are Blogchat, hosted by 
David Sonn recommends a strategy combining a corporate Twitter account with accounts from key executives and other (properly trained) key individuals within a company to maximize credibility, interaction and business impact.
The awesome Pam Moore supplies an extensive list of tips for getting retweeted more frequently and consistently, such as using your real picture, knowing your audience, knowing Twitter lingo, and making people laugh, cry, or learn something.
The delightful Kristi Hines digs deep into Twitter, explaining how to do things like deleting a "Recent Image," create customized RSS feeds from Twitter, use Twitter's Advanced Search, search Twitter results using Google, get the most out of your Twitter bio and more.
Laurie Sullivan summarizes a report from Forrester Research outlining the challenges and opportunities marketers face in using Twitter effectively. One key finding: "Forrester analysts believe it's not only the 1 billion tweets that matter, but rather the 6.2% of online adults creating 80% of the influence from impressions. The research firm calls these users Mass Connectors…Along with Mass Mavens—representing 13.8% of online adults creating 80% of the posts, comments, rating—they are small in number, but strong in power when it comes to influencing others."
Jolie O'Dell summarizes the changes in Twitter's new interface, such as the "new Activity tab, which shows all the non-tweet activity from people you follow. You can see new follows from your friends, friends' retweets and their favorites." Overall, the UI is an improvement—with the exception of losing the ability to see how many lists a person is on. Hopefully, Twitter listens to user feedback and restores that feature.
Katelyn Watson explains how Twitter's recently announced brand pages work, what Twitter is aiming to accomplish with the redesign, and the benefits brand pages will provide to marketers.
In this somewhat long-winded but thoroughly researched post, John Doherty describes a number of experiments he ran to determine the effect of Tweets on a page or blog post ranking. The conclusion? Even a single tweet helps a page or post get indexed more quickly, though it has little effect on rankings. Retweets from relevant and highly influential Twitters, however, can have a significant impact on ranking.
Anum Hussain details seven techniques for optimizing your Twitter presence for search, among them, "Don't completely believe the "nofollow" warning…both Google and Bing (have) confirmed that tweeted links are in fact a signal for a search engine's organic and news rankings," create a special list of Twitter keywords, and use 1-2 core keyword phrases in your bio.
Tracy Gold suggests eight tactics for increasing your Twitter following the right way—gradually building a relevant group of followers by using best practices such as hashtags, retweets and replies, as well as creating and adding followers to lists.
JD Rucker presents a series of steps, starting with defining your goals on Twitter, to help find quality people to follow on Twitter. Each section is divided into guidelines for personal accounts and for business.
Michael Gray lays out an effective seven-step fan for gradually building a relevant Twitter following, starting with "raiding" the accounts of competitive and complementary Twitter accounts and using tools like 
Derek Edmond details five ways B2B marketers can use Twitter as one of their online marketing channels, such as for link building initiatives and brand monitoring.
Maria Pergolino shares nine tips for B2B marketing success on Twitter, such as sharing the workload for the corporate Twitter account among several people, sharing valuable content, and using Twitter tools (see below) to maximize productivity.
The illustrious Anne Deeter Gallaher lays out a nine-step path to Twitter expertise for PR professionals, including using 
When building influence on Twitter, start by following 10-20 people with modest follower counts (which makes it easier for you to stand out) who are connected to a key influencer in your market, then gradually build an influencer map for your industry.
Though his English is a bit spotty, Richard Darell provides helpful reviews of eight tools corporate recruiters can use to evaluate potential hires (and the rest of can use to evaluate anyone) on Twitter, including 
Noting that "88% of small businesses and 74% of midsized organizations now use Twitter as their social media application of choice. However, marketers do have a preference when choosing their conversation agent," Courtney Wiley reviews her two favorite Twitter clients.
Frequent best-of contributor 
Chris Norton sorts through the hundreds of Twitter measurement tools available and reviews his top 10 here, among them 
Geno Prussakov reviews two helpful tools for finding relevant new Twitter followers. 
Noting that unlike other social networking sites, Twitter is an "open-format chat setting that invites communication and connections with anyone who happens by. This is why you might need a little extra something to help keep track of all of your followers," Ann Smarty reviews five helpful tools to help accomplish that task.
Leo Widrich outlines the features of 10 popular Twitter tools (including his own 
Jim Ducharme review 
Heather Allard discusses six tools for monitoring brand conversations on Twitter, including Backtweets, 
Angela West looks at how Twitter analytics (based on their 
Neal Schaffer recommends 
In a slightly different twist, Susan Gunelius presents 14 useful Twitter tools based on the function that would benefit from them (Marketing and Customer Service, Human Resources, and Communications and Networking).
Michelle Carvill amplifies some stats to win over Twitter skeptics, among them: there are 200,000,000 registered Twitter users,with 450,000 new accounts created each day. There are 1.6 billion Twitter search queries every day. The majority of twitter users are between the ages of 30 and 49. And 67% of users are likely to recommend a brand they follow to others.
Guest author Shannon Downey extols the virtues of Twitter for enabling Tweetups and shares some interesting stats showing that brand followers on Twitter are roughly twice as likely as brand fans on Facebook to purchase a brand after following, and 50% more likely to recommend it.
Michael Brenner makes the business case for using Twitter, answers some common questions about the network and shares a selection of stats like: 84% of U.S. state governors, 82% of U.S. congressional representatives and 83% of senators use Twitter. 87% of Billboard's top 100 musicians are there. And more than half of all Twitter users log in daily.
Your 
I've been hearing a lot lately about how people really need to start their own personal fan pages on Facebook to be really effective. I've been pretty good about holding my tongue, but darn it all, I just can't hold it in any longer.
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