Author Archives: Jake

Social Media Beyond The Numbers

One of my favorite quotes about social media comes from Erik Qualman, the award winning author of Socialnomics. In the book Qualman states “The ROI of Social Media is that your business will still exist in 5 years”. This statement is rooted in the argument between social media marketers of whether or not there is a measurable return on investment for the time and money spent on social media marketing. The reason that it’s hard to get people to agree is that the perception of value is different for each business and even each marketing manager.

For most business owners most decisions are solely based on revenue. When it comes to other forms of online marketing like SEM (search engine marketing) there are clear metrics that make measuring ROI pretty straight forward. In fact one of the most enticing parts of most forms of online marketing is the massive amount of useful data that you can use to directly calculate ROI. With social media on the other hand, there is an added element of value that is a lot harder to measure, but arguably just as important.

Brand Management: How is your brand viewed by potential customers? While this may not translate directly into more sales, it is a crucial element that should not be overlooked by any organization.
Consumer Awareness: Are you able to understand the wants and needs of your potential customers? Many organizations spend a lot of money on market research. With social media this information is at your fingertips for no added cost. By understanding your customer you will be able to predict problems and be able to more quickly adapt to any situation.

With time, social media metrics and measurements will surly improve, however that does not mean you should wait to participate. The fact is, social media is not a fad but a game changing element in marketing as a whole. If you can’t keep up then you will be left behind.

Facebook For iPhone Updates

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This week, Facebook updated its mobile platform including the ability to view your friends on a map from the Places area , updates to the News Feed, an updated notifications interface and the ability to unfriend someone from your phone. The most anticipated change was the added ability to check in at events.

The ability to check into events that you have been invited to via Facebook offers a whole range of new possibilities for marketing your business, such as drawing attention to events that are in progress. It also offers a much more accurate way to gauge success of an event than simply counting RSVP’s since many people click that they are going to attend events and never show up. Facebook events are already widely used so you won’t have to wait long for people to start adopting the feature. In what ways could your business leverage this new feature?

April Fools Day Infographic

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Social media is a great outlet for pranks on April Fools Day and this year is no exception. If you are still thinking about getting in on the action check out this infographic created by the researchers at Lab 42.

Keeping Up To Speed With Facebook

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One of the most proliferating complaints about the Facebook platform for both users and developers has been their constant upgrading and change to the interface. Perhaps it is human nature that makes people prone to dislike change, but Facebook has managed to build a reputation for unwarranted tinkering which requires some form of user action. Worse, many of these changes have occurred without any warning or regard for if users want it or not. As the comic below shows however, most changes have been generally accepted with time.One recent change change to the Facebook platform that directly affects businesses was the switch to Iframe from FBML (Facebook Markup Language) for all Facebook pages. While they haven’t totally eliminated the tabs feature, the overall design of the pages makes their use obsolete.

The problem here is that many users who could create pages on their own have now been left with skills rendered obsolete. While Iframes is ultimately a more powerful and flexible tool for businesses, in many ways it is more difficult. This creates a dilemma for many companies looking to develop their business on Facebook beyond the basics.

Stan Schroeder, European editor at Mashable writes:

if a company asked me if it’s worth it to create something from the Facebook API, I’d say it’s a risky situation since Facebook so easily changes things solely for their own benefit. Tabs are one great example of that. I would never expect them to change such a great feature. One that really gave users and brands the feeling of ownership but, alas they did…

Will this ultimately stunt creativity and lead to a more generic and uniform presence of businesses on Facebook or will businesses and developers constantly be playing catch up to see how they can leverage the platform in a standout way? You be the judge.

A Successful Social Media Approach, Part 2

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In the first part of this article, the process of creating a successful social media approach focused mostly on an introspective look at your business and how you can leverage what you have to connect with the community of people looking who can benefit from what you offer. While it may be easy to define your product or service when discussing it internally, it can be somewhat tricky to create a clear and precise vision that the average consumer will connect with. The reason for this is that when you work on something every day, your perception of that particular subject transforms to the point where you no longer focus on the fundamentals. It is critical to understand the viewpoint of the average consumer when defining your company message so that in connects with everybody, not just industry insiders.

A great place to start to help you understand your own company is to define and understand your competitors. Let’s face it, if you don’t know what your competition is up to, you won’t be able to make intelligent decisions that will help you keep the customers you do have, let alone gain new ones. This concept is known as competitive intelligence. Below I have outlined a few steps to understand your competition and help define your own social media approach for your company.

Before you start analyzing your competition, you need to identify who you are actually competing against. This requires at least some understanding of your own company’s goals, products or services. Take what you know about your own company and start a Google search using keywords that define your own business. From here you should have access to company blogs, websites and social media accounts where you can gain valuable insights about your industry.

Once you have identified your competition and start going through their social media campaigns you should try to identify their strategy. Most company’s social media accounts contain a wealth of information that will help you identify their approach. Whenever possible, be sure to observe customer feedback about your competitors. This will help you understand if their strategy is working, if they are having any issues that you may not have addressed.

Once you have spent some time analyzing your competition, you can begin to formulate how you should differentiate and position yourself within your market segment and understand your own social media strategy from the perspective of your audience.

A Successful Social Media Approach, Part 1

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These days there is no shortage of statistics that show social media outlets are the place to be when it comes to marketing your brand. There is no question that services like Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr are viable platforms to get your message out there, but that being said, there is still a lot of debate on how to successfully transmit that message. A successful social media approach uses humanization to influence how a company is perceived. While this may seem like a simple concept, humanization requires a lot of planning and calculation to get the desired message across. In order to help get you started in the right direction, I have outlined several steps you should take before you ever start a conversation.

Your first step should be to define and hone your message. You should ask yourself: What are we trying to achieve? By asking yourself this question you should be able to develop a set of goals you are trying to reach. This is an important first step because it gives yourself a chance to measure your success later on.

To help you define the goals mentioned above, it is essential to know what people know about your brand. This requires listening and observing of what people are saying about you. This step requires a lot of research, but it is well worth it. It will help you to not only understand your brand image, but also where people are talking about your brand, who is talking about it and why. This brings value beyond marketing your brand in that it will help you improve your product or service.

Once you understand what is being said and you have outlined your goals, you should work to define your target audience. Is your target audience the same group that is already talking about your brand or are you trying to reach a new demographic? By asking yourself these types of questions you will begin to understand where you should be holding conversations about your brand.

At this point you should be ready to start generating content to share with your audience. In order to make sure your message stands out from the crowd you need to define your angle. For example, Apple presents itself as an innovative force where as Volvo prides itself on being one of the safest car manufactures in the world. This point is absolutely critical because if your message does not stand out then you nobody will take notice and your time will have been wasted.

Finally, you need to continually analyze what worked. Whether it be awareness, increased sales, loyalty or some other desired result, you should be able to measure any changes. This will help you to refine your process and message to reach your final goal of increased revenue.

Change to Google SEO Algorithm

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At the end of February, Google announced a major change to its search ranking algorithms which has started to create some BUZZ within the online communites, and rightly so. The change will impact up to 11.8% of their total queries. According to the official Google blog:

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

This is a great change for those websites that are constantly keeping their content fresh but it definitely throws a wrench in the equation of what was just starting to seem like a stable setup. Are you working to keep your site SEO friendly in this ever changing landscape?

Please click here to read the rest of Google’s official announcement.

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