All posts tagged social media marketing
The Potential of Pinterest
According to a recent report by Experian, Pinterest has become the third most popular social network in the United States, behind only Facebook and Twitter. The widely circulated Hitwise report, released early this month, reveals huge increases in visitors to Pinterest’s website – most impressively, a 50% gain from January to February that put it over both LinkedIn and Google+.
The rankings, by total visits for March, are as follows:
- Facebook: 7 billion
- Twitter: 182 million
- Pinterest: 104 million
- LinkedIn: 86 million
- Tagged: 72 million
- Google+: 61 million
Perhaps most startling about this data is how clearly it illustrates the stranglehold that Facebook has within the social media realm, to say nothing of Pinterest claiming over 20 million more visits than LinkedIn. Not bad for a digital bulletin board site that’s only 2 years old and was, until recently, frequented primarily by hobbyists and crafters.
It should be noted that in the report, Experian was only measuring visitors, while several other market research services got slightly different results by including pageviews into their data. For example, Alexa.com ranks Pinterest only fourth among social networks, still behind LinkedIn. Complete.com, ranking.com, quantcast.com, and urltrends.com list Pinterest fourth among social sites as well.
And Pinterest isn’t the only network growing. From December 2010 to December 2011 Twitter grew by 45% and LinkedIn by 98%. And everyone’s favorite whipping boy at the moment, Google+, actually grew a very impressive 800% from August 2011 to December 2011.
Regardless of slight differences in the ranking data, it clearly shows that Pinterest should not be ignored by businesses looking for further connection with their customers. There are already several great examples of companies who have embraced its simple, highly-visual pin/repin dynamic, such as Southwest Airlines, Etsy (no surprise there), and Whole Foods.
It offers another outlet for businesses to let their hair down a bit and have fun with their audience, but also provides inroads to unique demographics vis-à-vis other social networks: women accounted for 60% of the visitors and a higher percentage of users in the Midwest, Northwest, and Southeast.
How Private Is Your Data? Pt. II
By now you’ve probably heard the news that, as of March 1st, Google will consolidate its 70+ privacy policies into one, marking a sea change in Google’s attitude toward privacy and tracking. Much of the buzz has been negative, and Google has been putting out fires for the past week, but the switch does not necessarily mean that the search giant is dropping the “Don’t” from their famous motto, “Don’t Be Evil”. First, the Google blog spin:
“Finally, what we’re not changing. We remain committed to data liberation, so if you want to take your information elsewhere you can. We don’t sell your personal information, nor do we share it externally without your permission except in very limited circumstances like a valid court order. We try hard to be transparent about the information we collect, and to give you meaningful choices about how it is used—for example our Ads Preferences Manager enables you to edit the interest categories we advertise against or turn off certain Google ads altogether. And we continue to design privacy controls, like Google+’s circles, into our products from the ground up.”
While this may be reassuring to some, the bolded section (our emphasis) leaves a much open to interpretation. Will they begin selling this to advertisers if they continue to be threatened by Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft? What happens when the next innovative search engine or social network gains traction and gets big? This remains to be seen.
From an advertising standpoint, though, this integration is aimed at providing users more targeted, relevant ads by combining the vast stores of user data from Gmail, search, YouTube, et al. This has obvious benefits for the user, but is also a boon to advertisers:
- Higher Quality Scores start with better relevancy, eventually leading to lower paid search costs. Google’s update could lead to hyper-targeted paid search and display ads.
- As Google learns more about each user, including demographic and behavioral data, the organic SERP could become hyper-personalized to that user. This complicates the SEO process and leads to our third point:
- Success in Google Search will be largely dependent upon the level of interaction you can generate across all Google properties. The future of SEO may become as connected to content marketing strategies as it is to current optimization best practices.
The recent IPO filing by Facebook, combined with these radical changes by Google indicate a new stage in the ongoing struggle for user data and advertising dollars between the two giants. Since the early aughts, Google has had virtually no competition in search and online advertising, but that has now changed, and they no longer have the luxury of eschewing common business practices that are seen in more competitive vertical markets. To maintain dominance, Google now has to make some tough decisions, this only being the latest.
Less Is More with Social Media Strategy…
Courtesy urbn.com
Is it really good business practice to get on the bandwagon just because everyone else is doing it? Like a moth to a flame, you will end up losing more time and resources by blindly following the latest marketing trend. Resist the urge, and instead, devote yourself to articulating your product and brand strategy – what it is and what it is not.
1) Test and measure your needs Here, the old adage applies, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” As of now, what social media channels are you working with? Active channels only. Dead accounts with profiles but no activity don’t count. Say your company has a presence with a consistent blog and Twitter that is managed by your CEO. That’s not a bad start. First, can you measure which of these is either 1) creating online dialogue or 2) creating leads or partnerships (these metrics are more telling than the simple follower or fan count). For the latter, those will take time to quantify – a year or more! With these results, you might even find that you can eliminate one that isn’t producing or redirect to a new audience, find a professional writer, etc. If your audience likes re-tweeting quick and easy micro-blogs, no need to spend hours writing blog posts.
2) Assess your resources and prioritize The caveat to your toolkit is “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” No need to give in to peer pressure and create a blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube channel, Tumblr, etc, etc all at once if you can’t create and manage enough (useful) content for them all. How big is your marketing team? One full-time person? Three part-time contractors? An intern?
First rule – don’t make it harder than it is! You don’t want to over-manage too many outlets and duplicate content that you can streamline. For instance, Facebook is getting better with automatically integrating website blogs into their feed.
3) Creator vs. Contributor Your marketing efforts should reflect a healthy balance between “creator” and “contributor” – meaning you should generate content for your own blog while writing guest post for blogs on partner sites (and linking the two!). Your platform for doing so will also be determined by length – from short tweets, to tumblr photo or FB status updates, to full-length blogs and articles. These tasks will become much more manageable if you outline these posts in a calendar. If your industry is particularly volatile or fast-paced – do this every two weeks or so – but if not, every month or quarter will do. That does not mean scripting out tweets 10 days in advance (but that’s okay too!), but having a theme in mind for a fixed period will give your feed focus and add credibility to your expertise. For those of you with promotions and peak sale seasons, opt for focused banner and ad space with external expert bloggers in your industry. io9.com, a blog for sci-fi geeks(and its sister sites and themes managed under gawker.com) displays ads for related television specials and movie trailers. Foodgawker.com, a crowd-sourced “feast for the eyes” has cleverly placed adds buried amongst their appetizing photos.
The overall message is not to succumb to the pressures of creating pages and pages of content – but rather implementing a well-rounded presence online on diverse platforms.
Integrating a Product Launch with Online Marketing
Credit: goivest.com
iVest® is a case in which RSO’s work as marketers began during the product’s infancy – and it goes to show that any product, at any stage of development, can undergo an analysis and makeover of its online marketing tools.
- Gathering the Right Toolkit
- Branding and Product Positioning
- Maintaining the Campaign
iVest’s process from initial brainstorming to live launch spanned a period of five to six months that included branding, web design and setup, social media setup, video production, PPC setup – with RSO taking the lead in the online elements. Moving forward from a human resource perspective, in addition to the direction provided by the entrepreneurs and marketing campaign managers, companies also need a content creator for PR and blogging. Business owners should take a look at this snapshot and organize their marketing toolkit (and people) accordingly.
The Balancing Act Behind Social Media Marketing
Courtesy Google
Let’s take a moment to contemplate the underlying principle of this latest breed of communications. At its core, social media is just what it claims to be – a dialogue. The poster – whether the business itself or an external party – provides a stimulus (a question, a promotion, a product launch) to which users can respond. But most importantly, not only can they respond, but conversations are open to mass viewing and participation, leaving companies exposed, and to be frank, vulnerable to attack. Will the next post become a PR treasure chest or a Pandora’s box? Assuming that you would prefer the treasure chest of “likes” and endorsements, having an authentic social media marketing program requires entrepreneurs and managers to hold up a mirror to dissect their services, products, and platform and ask themselves, “Are we prepared?”
Thus, there’s good news and bad news to social media marketing. Starting with the bad: public posting invites criticism and complaints on both personal profiles and company profiles. Even worse, customers have been known to create their own “anti” groups and pages (sometimes involving profanity) that cause irrevocable damage to your brand. Companies committed to implementing a genuine, uncensored social media presence should create a contingency plan. Frontline customer service reps will be the most qualified to compile and analyze your company’s negative feedback.
Depending on your available resources, you can decide your level of response:
- Short-term “bandages” (such as a discount or refund)
- Long-term preventative measures (take the issue back to product design and solve the problem). Customer-centric marketers will be the first to confront these issues head-on and engage their community about the problem before customers get the chance to start their own damaging threads.
- Furthermore, the bad news isn’t entirely bad. The consumer electronics industry has benefited from online public forums – communities who share repair instructions and tricks with their fellow consumers, saving company resources in their technical support departments.
Similarly, the good news, actually amazing news, is that social media can be your best advocate. This same engine that allows customers to launch their own smear campaigns also enables them to sing your praises to networks that trust them more than they trust you. The resulting man-hours saved (and profits earned) due to unsolicited social media endorsements should be diverted to building the damn-good products that inspire these virtual “word of mouth” promotions. However, every business needs to formulate a strategy to fit their industry and goals. Facebook might be naturally suited for promoting lifestyle and entertainment, such as restaurants and events while other industries are still testing how to best leverage a Facebook audience.
To start, examine the mechanics of your Facebook or Twitter sharing (which would be prudent for your personal profiles too).
- What is the “useful life” of any status update? How many hours until your post becomes buried and unseen beneath friends’ and followers’ impulsive, stream of consciousness? Because when you play business with social media your competition then becomes your college roommate counting down days to their next vacation. When are you posting? Midweek? Early morning?
- Do you diversify your media with links to blogs, articles, videos, photos and tags of other users? Garnering “likes” and comments will also extend the lifespan of your post and increase visibility. If you’re not collecting much response, you might need to revisit the content and appeal of your posts.
- Be deliberate and conscious about your posts – create an editorial Tweet calendar with your marketing team or determine your high traffic Facebook periods. And in the end, there’s nothing like seeing someone else posting an ego-boosting “pat on the back” on your feed for a job well done (accompanied by 22 likes).
Social media integration into your business model becomes the dual prioritization of maximizing positive feedback and mitigating the risks of public criticism. Getting the most out of your social media campaign means making it both a marketing tool that increases visibility and exposure as well as a research and evaluation tool that influences your overall business strategy.
You Get By With A Little Help From Your Friends
At one point or another we have all turned to our friends for help. Whether it’s a helping hand with moving, a recommendation for a movie or restaurant, or just a sympathetic ear, it’s our friends that we turn to first. This should be no different if you own a business and need to grow. Friends will often help promote your business to others through word of mouth, but may fall short by not spreading the word through social media channels. Businesses often establish a strategic plan for their search engine optimization, but fall short of considering the impact that a complimentary social media optimization campaign can have. In order to maximize the exposure friends can give a business, a solid social media optimization plan needs to be established that spurs friends into action on behalf of your business.
Any small business looking to gain a foothold in the online search world needs to learn to leverage their friends to help grow their business by encouraging them to help spread the world. Twitter posts, Facebook ‘Likes’, and positive reviews on websites such as Yelp and Citysearch all help to boost a company’s all-important search engine ranking. Search engines like Google and Bing are taking social circles and social sentiment into account more often when ranking and displaying search results. This is where the importance of friends come in. When your friends, or fans of your business, express a positive sentiment towards your business either in the form of a shared ‘Tweet’, Facebook ‘Like’, blog repost, or any other number of ways, Google and Bing take note and rank your business higher in their search results for your friends and friends of your friends.
What this means is that having a large social reach across various social media outlets, and reaching key “influencers” (friends or fans that not only have many friends but influence them to take action), is just as important for your business to develop as SEO alone. Along with a comprehensive SEO plan, a business needs the ground work for a complimentary social media plan that makes use of social connections and all available social mediums. Not doing so is simply leaving money on the table.
With the bond between social media and SEO growing everyday, it’s becoming a must for any business wishing to maintain a strong foothold in search engine rankings to establish a social media plan and reach out to their friends and customers to help spread the word. Identifying key influencers, friends, and customers is key, as is motivating them to share information about your business, whether through incentives or simply a quality service. We all get by with a little help from our friends, and that should be no different in business. Establish a plan, reach out to your friends, and watch your rankings rise and your clientele grow.
Mobile Apps Transforming Online Interaction
Is it too soon to claim that ?The Web Is Dead?? Wired magazine trumpeted that headline a few months back, and new data published by Flurry would seem to lend some credence to that. Perhaps it is a bit sensationalistic to say that the web is dead, but for the first reported time, time spent per day on mobile apps has exceeded time spent browsing. Flurry combined their own analytics data on mobile app usage, which is – according to their report – ?…now exceeding 500 million aggregated, anonymous use sessions per day across more than 85,000 applications,? and data from comScore and Alexa on Web browsing to come up with the provocative results.
This comes on the heel of a report four months ago by Mary Meeker and Matt Murphy at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers that in 2011, smartphone and tablet shipments exceed those of desktop and notebook shipments. While this does mark a startling trend towards the increasing role of mobile devices in our respective lives, it surely does not indicate the death of anything. Other than that of phones that only do one thing – call people.
In light of these trends, effective online marketing now has taken on several dimensions, and to succeed in all areas and keep one?s audience engaged requires both skill and a clear strategy. Social media marketing and optimization is now an essential part of reaching new customers and keep them happy and coming back. Because, while people are now increasingly addicted to their smartphones and tablets, those weren?t really built for browsing anyway – they are best used through apps. And furthermore, gaming and social media applications are the driving force behind the aforementioned statistics:
Web design is catching up to being more mobile device friendly, but apps are still clearly the most efficient and user-friendly way for a consumer to shop, game, and interact on their phones and tablets. Effective online marketing must acknowledge and adapt to the more diffuse ways in which the online audience accesses the Web.
