I started a Twitter feed when I was working at OpenSesame as its marketing automation manager and used it to keep track of elearning and online training articles. At first, it was fun getting other users in the elearning industry to follow me back and I even won a really fancy box of donuts for my workplace for participating in a social media promotion for promoting a company's webinar.
That aside, I've taken a more hardline approach to managing this feed. I've gone beyond the simple follow and unfollow.
The rules of Twitter feed @SerenaHsiMktg:
If you are a Social Media follower seller - you get muted, not followed
If you are tweeting in a non-English language - followed and muted
Porn stars - muted, not followed
All followers followed have retweets turned off
Lately I've noticed that a lot of users with more than 5k followers are stacking their follower numbers by following and unfollowing other users, hoping that other users are not as vigilant as they are in unfollowing. This gives the Twitter community the impression that the one with the most followers has the most reach; which, in part is very true.
Follow me, I follow you back
Follow me, I follow you, unfollow me, I unfollow and mute you
Follow me again and I unfollow and block you (because you are already muted, I can see that you are trying to stack your follower count)
There are paid add-ons that do some of these steps, but not for repeat visit follows requests. For now I'll just manage this feed monthly or whenever I get around to it. Costs me about 10 minutes--which does add up over the course of a year. Maybe I should consider using an app add-on with automated settings to manage follows and unfollows.
And all those Twitter in-app messages? I don't read any of them.
Is there a goal for this feed? Probably not. Though, I've expanded article links to include all business and technology topics that are interesting. It just is a feed of what I happen to be reading at the time.
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
5 Things to Look for in Your Bitly Stats
Mid-year I created a Twitter account (@SerenaHsiOS, ~700 followers) to push out elearning links since it didn't seem like the right venue to push them out my food-themed Twitter account (@nwfood). There are two stats from the Bitly dashboard that I find most curious. The first is the country domain referrer and the second is how users find my tweet--and only 15% them find it through Twitter.
Like most people, I just use Bitly as a link shortener. I know it has link stats and that once you create a bitlink, it can never be deleted (maybe archived these days). And with a mobile device and social sharing permissions, I can use Bitly to push out links to either Twitter account through Bitly with no extra logins required. I can even format the layout of the tweet.
This to me is very strange, considering that I only broadcast business and elearning story links through non-food Twitter account. Let's tackle country referrer first. Here is the last 30-ish days from my Bitly dashboard:
What in the world?? Why is engagement so high from Germany if my primary follower audience is US-based? I have no answer for this just yet.
The next dashboard shows me how a user got to my feed:
Even more puzzling is the grouping for the first bucket. What makes me concerned about the validity of this data is that when I look at the list for my top tweets, according to the Bitly dashboard, no tweet has received more than 5 likes. And, on top of that.. how do you suppose impressions are calculated? I would have expected the top two stats to be reversed. How are my tweets being picked up if not through Twitter itself?
Between Bitly and Twitter, my social analytics dashboards make no sense -- because my followers/following is so small (fewer than 1k each).
Like most people, I just use Bitly as a link shortener. I know it has link stats and that once you create a bitlink, it can never be deleted (maybe archived these days). And with a mobile device and social sharing permissions, I can use Bitly to push out links to either Twitter account through Bitly with no extra logins required. I can even format the layout of the tweet.
This to me is very strange, considering that I only broadcast business and elearning story links through non-food Twitter account. Let's tackle country referrer first. Here is the last 30-ish days from my Bitly dashboard:
 |
| 2015-12 Last 30 Days - Bitlinks on @SerenaHsiOS - Country Domain |
The next dashboard shows me how a user got to my feed:
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| 2015-12 Last 30 Days - Bitlinks on @SerenaHsiOS - Refer Type |
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| 2015-12 Twitter Dashboard @SerenaHsiOS |
Vizify's Twitter Video
This neat tool allows Vizify users to create a short video clip of what makes up your Twitter feed. I used my @nwfood calendar feed to create this one:
The biggest downside to this is not being able to share the video directly to other social media platforms, like say Google+, Facebook, or practically everywhere else outside Vizify's ecosystem.
The biggest downside to this is not being able to share the video directly to other social media platforms, like say Google+, Facebook, or practically everywhere else outside Vizify's ecosystem.
Geospatial Tweet Mapping
I have this love-hate relationship going on with Twitter. For starters, I hate the disproportionate amount of time it takes to manage the site for the value it creates. Marketers struggle with how much more time it takes to analyze campaign data (leads generated, mentions, retweets, followers gained, referrals, etc.) that uses Twitter as a communication channel to decide whether or not to employ the same techniques again for future campaigns. I love how the concept spurred lots of 3rd party app creators to make life easier using Twitter.
The idea that 140-character feeds could be so time consuming to manage and aggregate into meaningful data points is a challenge for most online marketers. The more apps that are created, the lazier marketers get in dealing with data. Like a multiverse gaming console, I just want a one-stop-aggregator for multiple platforms.. which means the ultimate, master API that thinks for itself, automatically adjusts to accept new connections and ports many data formats into one cloud repository. The latter incarnations actually exist. For now, we have to rely on and contend with the more sluggish, manual human interface.
Because the public sector is always shorthanded, much of the data aggregation comes from outside sources using non-standard perimeters. Even how coordinates are stored have three or four different formats. Ever look at a physical topo map for hiking? The degree and UTM systems are both listed. Google Maps uses the decimal system. Anyhow. Geospatial analysis (GIS) typically refers to sets of longitude/latitude location markers designated to individual data points and was originally developed to help solve problems in environmental and life sciences, ecology, geology, and epidemiology. It has expanded to include a lot more industries like defense, intelligence, utilities, natural resources, social sciences, public safety, etc. Marketers use geospatial data to target customer segments that are based in certain zip codes, cities, or metropolitan areas, though largely for direct marketing efforts.
Here are a few geospatial web tools for Twitter trend watching:
The idea that 140-character feeds could be so time consuming to manage and aggregate into meaningful data points is a challenge for most online marketers. The more apps that are created, the lazier marketers get in dealing with data. Like a multiverse gaming console, I just want a one-stop-aggregator for multiple platforms.. which means the ultimate, master API that thinks for itself, automatically adjusts to accept new connections and ports many data formats into one cloud repository. The latter incarnations actually exist. For now, we have to rely on and contend with the more sluggish, manual human interface.
Because the public sector is always shorthanded, much of the data aggregation comes from outside sources using non-standard perimeters. Even how coordinates are stored have three or four different formats. Ever look at a physical topo map for hiking? The degree and UTM systems are both listed. Google Maps uses the decimal system. Anyhow. Geospatial analysis (GIS) typically refers to sets of longitude/latitude location markers designated to individual data points and was originally developed to help solve problems in environmental and life sciences, ecology, geology, and epidemiology. It has expanded to include a lot more industries like defense, intelligence, utilities, natural resources, social sciences, public safety, etc. Marketers use geospatial data to target customer segments that are based in certain zip codes, cities, or metropolitan areas, though largely for direct marketing efforts.
Here are a few geospatial web tools for Twitter trend watching:
- Twitter API for geolocation
- Landsat Data for the World by ESRI, a tweet mapping template
- OpenStreetMap, a free editable map of the world
- GPS Brand of Choice, using SurveyMapper
- Global McDonalds Big Mac Prices 2007, using MapTube
- City-based tweet counter, using Tweet-o-Meter
- Active Floods in the USA, using ArcGIS
What makes Goldstar Events different
Email marketing is not dead, really. Just ask the people who run Goldstar Events. Back in 2002, their email list only had 10,000 registered users on it. Today, it does about $40 million a year in ticket sales and has 1.2 million subscribers. The founding principle behind this privately held company is similar to Priceline.com, except it's for the entertainment sector and doesn't rely on a reverse auction system. The notion of "not every show sells out, so instead of letting seats go empty, venues list them with us to sell to our members" is what drives customers to buy up tickets at half price. Sometimes tickets are even free, but it's on a first come first served basis.
Goldstar's forte is having deals in major metropolitan areas. When I lived in Los Angeles, I thought it was a real treat to sit at the very front of a jazz or classical music concert. It just tickled me pink to see all the septo- and octogenarians wondering how I got there. They're still a little skinny on venues in the Portland metro area.
How a customer opts in for email through Goldstar was really well thought out. You can add and remove venues by zip code, and Goldstar will serve up content to your specifications. Even if you don't live in a metro area, you can still buy tickets for other people. All they need to do is show the ticket registration (which, by the way is delivered by email to you and to your guest) at the venue's ticket counter with a photo ID and they're all set. Newsletter spam too much for you? Simply log into the site and turn it off for a while. Your venue interests will still be there if you want to see what's going on in your metro area.
Here is a shameless plug for my referral link, if you wanted to subscribe. Every referral earns me a service fee credit. Even at half off a ticket, Goldstar charges a small, but fair fee per ticket purchased. This is how they make money to run the site. It's still a lot better than paying full price.
Sure, they have joined the social media platform bandwagon, but they have never lost sight of their core strengths in this market and whatever additional buzz is created by Facebook and Twitter, it can only help to create more mindshare about their services.
Goldstar's forte is having deals in major metropolitan areas. When I lived in Los Angeles, I thought it was a real treat to sit at the very front of a jazz or classical music concert. It just tickled me pink to see all the septo- and octogenarians wondering how I got there. They're still a little skinny on venues in the Portland metro area.
How a customer opts in for email through Goldstar was really well thought out. You can add and remove venues by zip code, and Goldstar will serve up content to your specifications. Even if you don't live in a metro area, you can still buy tickets for other people. All they need to do is show the ticket registration (which, by the way is delivered by email to you and to your guest) at the venue's ticket counter with a photo ID and they're all set. Newsletter spam too much for you? Simply log into the site and turn it off for a while. Your venue interests will still be there if you want to see what's going on in your metro area.
Here is a shameless plug for my referral link, if you wanted to subscribe. Every referral earns me a service fee credit. Even at half off a ticket, Goldstar charges a small, but fair fee per ticket purchased. This is how they make money to run the site. It's still a lot better than paying full price.
Sure, they have joined the social media platform bandwagon, but they have never lost sight of their core strengths in this market and whatever additional buzz is created by Facebook and Twitter, it can only help to create more mindshare about their services.
QR Code Campaigns
QR codes have been around for several years with their start in Japan. These days, the codes have become an inexpensive way for marketers to easily track the progress and ROI of their mixed media campaigns using print (direct mail, magazines, BRCs, business cards, coupons), tv, POS (e.g., in-store displays, billboards), mobile, email, or web marketing. As long as you have a mobile device that is capable of downloading an QR code reader app and has a built-in camera, you and your customers are good to go.
Here's a simple QR generator. Learn more about its developers here.
Some notable marketing campaigns using QR codes:
Dole Salad Mobile Club
Here's a simple QR generator. Learn more about its developers here.
Some notable marketing campaigns using QR codes:
Dole Salad Mobile Club
- Campaign specs: 40k direct mail postcards with a QR code and short code for texting, Price Chopper database of users with an affinity for pre-made salads, separate codes used for Facebook and online banner ads
- A/B Testing: different coupon redemption requirements for current versus time-lapsed participants
- Goal: Increase mobile subscriptions among
- Consumer reward for signing up: discount coupon, holiday recipes, sweepstakes entry to win a $500 Price Chopper gift card
- Next steps: national campaign via Valassis and News America mail programs
- Campaign specs: three billboards (downtown NY, Sunset Blvd in LA), 40-second commercial that users can share with Facebook/Twitter networks
- Goal: Introduce CK's 2010 Fall Jeans
- Consumer reward for signing up: a shareable mobile/web commercial
- Campaign specs: POS posters in public areas with themed and colored Lego codes directing users to MyToys.de's website
- Goal: Increase web traffic and online store revenue for LEGO product line
- Results: 49% increase in inbound web traffic; Twice as many LEGO boxes sold when compared to non-QR-coded marketing campaigns
- Watch their campaign wrap-up video
- Promo of interactive Android wallpapers (free download via QR codes)
A random thought about Twitter's Twitter
I had a rather amusing thought just now. Why doesn't Twitter have more followers on its Twitter account? It has just over 4.4 million followers and about 1,000-and-then-some tweets for a service that touts more than 75 million users. That's pretty shoddy marketing if you ask me.
If I were Twitter, I would have integrated how to add a follower (using http://twitter.com/twitter as a live example) to the how to get started steps for new Twitter accounts. Or better yet, pull a MySpace and have everyone follow Twitter at the inception of their account. No?
If I were Twitter, I would have integrated how to add a follower (using http://twitter.com/twitter as a live example) to the how to get started steps for new Twitter accounts. Or better yet, pull a MySpace and have everyone follow Twitter at the inception of their account. No?
NonProfit Marketing
Having attended my first marketing committee meeting with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, I have come to realize that the outreach efforts employed by nonprofits is largely the same as a B2C business, with major exceptions: tiny budget, utilizes mostly volunteer time, and very little of the actual marketing (collateral creaton, web content, print production, etc.) is done by its volunteers. Committee meetings are held at the SW Washington chapter office, 2nd Wednesdays 5pm. Every year the marketing coordinator for the nonprofit changes since it is a stipend-paid position that is sponsored by the AmeriCorps VISTA program.
Our barnstorming meeting about December outreach methods came up with the following avenues for getting the word out:
Our barnstorming meeting about December outreach methods came up with the following avenues for getting the word out:
- Advertisement in the EH4H e-newsletter
- Email to newsletter distribution group about upcoming events
- Posts to the shared chapter FB page
- Handing out flyer and brochures to the neighborhood
- Personal invitation calls to the Home Dedication Ceremony made by committee members to executives that participated in the CEO and Elected Officials build day
- Contacting local news outlets for Public Service Announcements
The "in" crowd
Probably the most annoying phrase heard this year is "joining the conversation," as in, businesses actually responding to customer comments, needs, and complaints via social media networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter status updates, or by email/web campaigns.
That is so 1990.
Isn't listening to your customers one of the servicing fundamentals of doing for-profit business in the first place?
That is so 1990.
Isn't listening to your customers one of the servicing fundamentals of doing for-profit business in the first place?
Secret Sauce
The flavor of the year is web intelligence.
While web analytics companies had fallen out of favor with their burdensome plethora of datasets and a marketer's inability to spare the time to digest it all, the latest trend is to provide integrated dashboards that marries most of the online and offline transactions together so that marketers can make meaningful purchase decisions with respect to advertising and campaign spends. This is a snake eating its tail. But, what purveyors of web analytics do not tell you is that there isn't a single solution available that is an actual standalone single solution.
By standalone, I mean to say that there isn't a single dashboard entity that has all the necessary tools under its own dashboard. It may show up in the UI as a single utility, but it is the merger of several tools from different providers each of whom you have to purchase to use.
The secret sauce that has everyone whispering about at conferences and marketing webinars this year is how to combine online data transactions with offline data transactions so that marketers can better understand online marketing, retention efforts, create more targeted advertising, and ultimately generate higher conversions.
Customers interact with your company and its brands everywhere:
While web analytics companies had fallen out of favor with their burdensome plethora of datasets and a marketer's inability to spare the time to digest it all, the latest trend is to provide integrated dashboards that marries most of the online and offline transactions together so that marketers can make meaningful purchase decisions with respect to advertising and campaign spends. This is a snake eating its tail. But, what purveyors of web analytics do not tell you is that there isn't a single solution available that is an actual standalone single solution.
By standalone, I mean to say that there isn't a single dashboard entity that has all the necessary tools under its own dashboard. It may show up in the UI as a single utility, but it is the merger of several tools from different providers each of whom you have to purchase to use.
The secret sauce that has everyone whispering about at conferences and marketing webinars this year is how to combine online data transactions with offline data transactions so that marketers can better understand online marketing, retention efforts, create more targeted advertising, and ultimately generate higher conversions.
Customers interact with your company and its brands everywhere:
- Twitter, Facebook
- Via mobile phone, Skype, or call centers
- In-store kiosks (Starbucks, bank branches, photo duplication, etc.)
- Brick and mortar stores
- Print publications (magazines, newspapers, flyers, postcards, POS)
- On the web
Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM for Marketers)
At the first marketing consulting firm I worked for the agency's lead consultant believed that the database was the lifeblood of the company. This still rings true today. The cleaner data that has gone into it over its lifetime, the better able you will be to evaluate a customer's lifetime value (CLTV) and identify potential customers that meet the same specifications. Likewise if your data migrated from one CRM system to another but only retained the past year of customer data, there will most certainly be knowledge gaps about those customers.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) databases have long been used by salesforce-driven companies to store datasets such as customer/vendor/partner contact info, purchase history, product interest, product registration, and occassionally market research data on individual customers. It has only been last five years that all this data has been coming together for small-to-medium sized businesses with emerging web platforms that enable sales professionals and marketers to better target their optimal 20% (The Pareto Principle suggests 20% of customers produce 80% of revenues).
Relationship marketing is primarily focused on customer retention and satisfaction rather than the achievement of sales quotas using sales-related promotional methods.
A themed viral marketing campaign, for example, would target existing customers and also:
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) databases have long been used by salesforce-driven companies to store datasets such as customer/vendor/partner contact info, purchase history, product interest, product registration, and occassionally market research data on individual customers. It has only been last five years that all this data has been coming together for small-to-medium sized businesses with emerging web platforms that enable sales professionals and marketers to better target their optimal 20% (The Pareto Principle suggests 20% of customers produce 80% of revenues).
Relationship marketing is primarily focused on customer retention and satisfaction rather than the achievement of sales quotas using sales-related promotional methods.
A themed viral marketing campaign, for example, would target existing customers and also:
- be supported by a microsite, YouTube, Facebook, and/or Twitter
- encourage customers to "Like" the page, ad, or video or Tweet it to their friends
- aimed at a specific demographic segment appropriate for the offering
- could include a loyalty program to help customers save time and/or money on future purchases, e.g., season pass holders for the local symphony could be automatically subscribed to receive alerts
Social Media for B2B
Disclosure: I am not a social media expert nor social media strategist. And, using social media for business promotion is debatable. But, like Twitter, it looks like the idea is here to stay until it evolves into something else. Frankly, I hate the rebranding of rebranding because it doesn't add new thoughts to the mix, rather it boils the thoughts into short 140-character statements that add little meaning beyond the initial insert. It's up to you to decide if these are indeed strategies and if they'll coexist with your marketing mix. Sooner or later, your business unit or department will be tasked with the question of whether or not to add social media to how you do business with customers.
On the B2B side, we used to call this word-of-mouth, relationship, grassroots, or brand ambassador marketing. Sounds pretty boring and low budget. These all have the same expected outcome. Get the customer to proactively self-identify, raise their hand, or ask for help directly from the business. "Social" has an incredibly positive connotation to it. Communication by words, visual imagery, video, sounds, or touch is all very human. Social media is the sharing of marketing and advertising content by a means of one-to-many relationships while at the same time disguises itself as a one-to-one relationship with a customer that the business wants to learn more about or nurture over time for future sales.
The synopsis is that social media implementation deals with a) knowing your customers and how they want to communicate with you about your products/services, b) the apps/hacks/and plug-ins that are used by the social media community, and c) building the right strategy for your business or business model.
Actions to consider:
On the B2B side, we used to call this word-of-mouth, relationship, grassroots, or brand ambassador marketing. Sounds pretty boring and low budget. These all have the same expected outcome. Get the customer to proactively self-identify, raise their hand, or ask for help directly from the business. "Social" has an incredibly positive connotation to it. Communication by words, visual imagery, video, sounds, or touch is all very human. Social media is the sharing of marketing and advertising content by a means of one-to-many relationships while at the same time disguises itself as a one-to-one relationship with a customer that the business wants to learn more about or nurture over time for future sales.
The synopsis is that social media implementation deals with a) knowing your customers and how they want to communicate with you about your products/services, b) the apps/hacks/and plug-ins that are used by the social media community, and c) building the right strategy for your business or business model.
Actions to consider:
- Know who your customer is: go where your customers go, read what they read, see the experience through their eyes
- Identify the path of least resistance for a customer to get a question resolved: postal mail, fax, telephone, web form, email, survey, social media status update
- Legal implications and privacy concerns over what is "said" by the business and what is "heard" by the customer
- Understand that the web is global and that inbound customer complaints might not even pertain to your trade region
- Establish ground rules for participants using the same social media outlets
- Build consensus across the organization of what should be achieved by adding social media to the existing marketing mix.
- Be able to quantify the benefits beyond mere number of followers, page views, or retweets
- Define your social media strategy plan
How customers actively engage with each other:
- By participating on a social network community (see Wikipedia for a comprehensive list)
- Video sharing
- Reading/writing/commenting with blogs
- Photo sharing
- Real-time (or fake time) status updates of what people are doing now
Here are some social media tools to help you manage your time:
- CoTweet - integrated with bit.ly, allows multiple users to post to one or more linked Twitter accounts, allows real-time or delayed Twitter updates, watch multiple conversations based on keywords
- Tweetdeck - allows simultaneous status updates on Twitter/Facebook/and LinkedIn
- Swix - easily create a unified scoreboard of all your key social media metrics (blog traffic, subscribers, FB fans, Twitter followers, YouTube subscribers, etc.)
- SlideShare - upload presentations and share online, tracks views http://www.slideshare.net/
- Icerocket - keyword search across blogs, web, Twitter, MySpace, News, images, etc.
In the end, businesses just want to create more meaningful conversations with their customers.
It begs the question, what does a conversation look like between say, Microsoft and a new Windows7 customer?
related articles:
related articles:
Web Tools for Marketers
Every year, new web tools come onto the market. These are supposed to help make our lives as marketers easier with better time management, multi-layered views of web properties, or a better consolidated and aggregate dashboard. Many of them are free or have a "lite" version of the webware available. Here are a few good ones that come to mind:
YouSendIt - Ever get thwarted by IT's security or file size settings in Microsoft Outlook? YouSendIt provides temporary file transfers between users. It's not just a work-around for Outlook. Most email providers limit the send/receive file size to 10 mb. Their lite version is not too shabby for the occassional user. You can send files up to 100 mb with a 1 gb/month bandwidth restriction. Your recipients have up to 7 days to download the file before the system automatically deletes it. YouSendIt provides a handy link for users to download.
Icerocket - Using an RSS reader to track updates for twitter feeds or blogs is fine if you want to keep track of what people are saying about you. But what about all the other sites that are saying something about your company, its products, or brands? Icerocket is an aggregate search engine that looks for your keywords across a variety of online media: Blogs, the WWW, Twitter, MySpace, News, Images, etc., and does this all at once.
Mailinator - This is a service that lets you create a temporary email account. It's good for signing up for consumer newsletters that don't secure their account creation pages. Why is this relevant for marketers? If you're testing web contact forms, you might not want to have your work email address captured into your company's CRM; but you still want verification (e.g., like the autoresponder) that your web forms actually work.
ShareThis - Definitely not a new tool on the scene, but this is an easy sharing link for all types of web content. Check out their blog and why it makes sense for online marketers to use this tool. Did I mention? It's really easy to use, for users, content providers, and web publishers.
LovelyCharts.com - An online diagramming application. Ever wonder how flow diagrams (e.g., wireframes, flow charts, organizational charts, network diagrams, process flows) are created for PPT presentations? This tool can help map our your data bits into something graphical and more meaningful than drawing out the boxes by hand in PPT.
YouSendIt - Ever get thwarted by IT's security or file size settings in Microsoft Outlook? YouSendIt provides temporary file transfers between users. It's not just a work-around for Outlook. Most email providers limit the send/receive file size to 10 mb. Their lite version is not too shabby for the occassional user. You can send files up to 100 mb with a 1 gb/month bandwidth restriction. Your recipients have up to 7 days to download the file before the system automatically deletes it. YouSendIt provides a handy link for users to download.
Icerocket - Using an RSS reader to track updates for twitter feeds or blogs is fine if you want to keep track of what people are saying about you. But what about all the other sites that are saying something about your company, its products, or brands? Icerocket is an aggregate search engine that looks for your keywords across a variety of online media: Blogs, the WWW, Twitter, MySpace, News, Images, etc., and does this all at once.
Mailinator - This is a service that lets you create a temporary email account. It's good for signing up for consumer newsletters that don't secure their account creation pages. Why is this relevant for marketers? If you're testing web contact forms, you might not want to have your work email address captured into your company's CRM; but you still want verification (e.g., like the autoresponder) that your web forms actually work.
ShareThis - Definitely not a new tool on the scene, but this is an easy sharing link for all types of web content. Check out their blog and why it makes sense for online marketers to use this tool. Did I mention? It's really easy to use, for users, content providers, and web publishers.
LovelyCharts.com - An online diagramming application. Ever wonder how flow diagrams (e.g., wireframes, flow charts, organizational charts, network diagrams, process flows) are created for PPT presentations? This tool can help map our your data bits into something graphical and more meaningful than drawing out the boxes by hand in PPT.
Overview: social media metrics
All this hubbub about social media marketing has prompted me to scour the web for what organizations are doing about implementing this as part of their customer life cycle management strategy. If this scenario hasn't happened in your workplace yet, it might some day and it's best to at least have a body of knowledge when your boss or client asks for your insight about this very topic.
For a top-level overview, poplabs has put together a pretty succinct presentation about social media metrics. The premise behind the slides is: how do you measure the impact of your social media marketing campaign?
According to poplabs, social media is supported on the techdev side by entities like YouTube, Technorati, FeedBurner, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Facebook, VIRB, MySpace, twitter, Pownce, digg, del.icio.us, etc. There is a growing trend in the number of companies willing to adopt conversation marketing as a means to include customers in a product or service life cycle. Ultimately, this creates solid customer relationships because the customer believes they are not only being heard, but something is being done about it. Social media is an interrelational strategy that collaborates with and connects to web and internet marketing strategy.
Web strategy encompasses where customers get their news and information about a company's products and services. It should first be a solid, well developed website with all the necessary details a customer needs to perform a transaction, or as marketers call it, to respond to a call-to-action (e.g., customer fills out a contact form, requests more information or a demo, or purchases directly from the website).
Internet marketing strategy covers how the customers are pushed or pulled to website properties, whether it's by affiliate networks, banner ad exchanges, pay per click (PPC), search ads (SEO, SEM), or through online public relations efforts.
Social media enables customers to have an open feedback channel with a company, its core product groups, or with specific brands. It is supposed to use one-to-one relationships and personal-or-business social networks to succeed.
Influence and Engagement are two metrics that poplabs identifies as being the most important for social media. These concepts have always been around since the dawn of marketing where a person's influence traditionally drives referrals and cross-sell opportunities; and engagement is how far a referral is willing to become a lifetime customer of a particular product or service.
Tracking and measuring social media is also nothing new. This involves classic competitive intelligence where you look at key employees and CXOs, relevant industry sites, domains and urls, product/service names, product/service urls, tracking competitor activity for like products/services, insider activity, newsgroups, blog comments, etc.
For a top-level overview, poplabs has put together a pretty succinct presentation about social media metrics. The premise behind the slides is: how do you measure the impact of your social media marketing campaign?
According to poplabs, social media is supported on the techdev side by entities like YouTube, Technorati, FeedBurner, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Facebook, VIRB, MySpace, twitter, Pownce, digg, del.icio.us, etc. There is a growing trend in the number of companies willing to adopt conversation marketing as a means to include customers in a product or service life cycle. Ultimately, this creates solid customer relationships because the customer believes they are not only being heard, but something is being done about it. Social media is an interrelational strategy that collaborates with and connects to web and internet marketing strategy.
Web strategy encompasses where customers get their news and information about a company's products and services. It should first be a solid, well developed website with all the necessary details a customer needs to perform a transaction, or as marketers call it, to respond to a call-to-action (e.g., customer fills out a contact form, requests more information or a demo, or purchases directly from the website).
Internet marketing strategy covers how the customers are pushed or pulled to website properties, whether it's by affiliate networks, banner ad exchanges, pay per click (PPC), search ads (SEO, SEM), or through online public relations efforts.
Social media enables customers to have an open feedback channel with a company, its core product groups, or with specific brands. It is supposed to use one-to-one relationships and personal-or-business social networks to succeed.
Influence and Engagement are two metrics that poplabs identifies as being the most important for social media. These concepts have always been around since the dawn of marketing where a person's influence traditionally drives referrals and cross-sell opportunities; and engagement is how far a referral is willing to become a lifetime customer of a particular product or service.
Tracking and measuring social media is also nothing new. This involves classic competitive intelligence where you look at key employees and CXOs, relevant industry sites, domains and urls, product/service names, product/service urls, tracking competitor activity for like products/services, insider activity, newsgroups, blog comments, etc.
Web Tools for Marketers
I had originally thought about writing about nifty web tools that would be useful to small business owners, but in my research I had discovered that there were a lot of tools that people could use to make their day more efficient and a lot more that is a waste of time. I looked at these tools from two perspectives, one from my own, a marketing perspective -- how effectively the vendor generated buzz about the product and the second, from a clients' perspective in how they might perceive use of the tools and integrate it into their daily business practices.
1. LinkedIn - for business networking, pick one and stick with it. Having multiple profiles across different business networking sites just means that you have to update them all whenever a change occurs. It's better than Plaxo in maintaining current information on networked contacts. Plus, your personalize LinkedIn url is search engine indexed, so that's like free bio advertising without having to do anything other than create a basic profile. Users can easily import/export, add or remove contacts. It has a clean, easy-to-use interface that turns click-throughs into converts very quickly. It's good for creating rapport and building a reputation online through recommendations.
2. LuLu.com - a self-publishing site for hardcover or paperback books, calendars, etc. Haven't used this site yet, but they essentially remove all the barriers to entry for the publishing industry. Anyone can self-publish now, with their service offering.
3. Walk Score - originally developed for the real estate industry, this tool helps users find local-to-an-address businesses, schools, parks, libraries, etc. It's not just for people in town or the recently relocated, any traveling businessperson can find a local restaurant wherever their company sends them. The site programmatically ranks sites based on how far it is for a person to walk, point to point. All the locations feed directly from the Google Maps API, and adding a location fairly easy too. (Update: 2018-04-02, WalkScore acquired by Redfin)
4. Any blogging site like Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress - use for personal or business or both, promote products, introduce new services, keep an open window with your customers. Blogger.com allows you to manage multiple blogs under one master account. This is the "new" corporate newsletter. Many blogging sites have their own built-in RSS feeds, so your viewers can subscribe and be updated whenever you publish a new post.
5. Podcasting - MP3s for on-the-go listeners. Podcast Alley has both a genre directory and how-to resources for setting up podcasts. This is one media area where format standards have not been an issue. Podcasts can often be downloaded to one's iPod, Zune, desktop, or other MP3 player. Businesses are catching on and publishing seminars, tech conferences, and interviews using this web enhancement for distribution and delivery.
Professionals don't have a lot of excess time on their hands. This next short list are tools that didn't make the cut because they add more micromanagement steps, they're hard to use, are not the right advertising medium, or they simply don't make sense in blended media business marketing strategy.
Twitter - A dispatch service for micronets, if you really wanted people to know what you were up to 24/7. It's not just for people. The service can be hooked up to plants (water me), tamagochis (pet me), and vending machines (feed me).
Facebook - This site is slow to change to capture the benefit of having business tools available; also their site policies regarding privacy and user-generated content aren't all that great. It's very limited, and speedwise rather slow. There are plenty of competitors of similar flavor, e.g., Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, etc.
MySpace - purely for personal use unless you work in the entertainment industry; the on-site tools just aren't up to spec for professionals. Sure it's free, but in this case, having a blog or your own web domain would be better than a MySpace account.
SecondLife - a virtual "3D" world environment that allows users to create their own virtual content (clothing, furniture, cars) of various themes, buy virtual real estate (with real US dollars), offers a currency in Linden (game) money. B2C ads from real-world businesses are flat, two-dimensional billboards that are gaudy and distasteful to look at. Slow pixelated movement may give some users vertigo when traveling throughout the SecondLife world.
1. LinkedIn - for business networking, pick one and stick with it. Having multiple profiles across different business networking sites just means that you have to update them all whenever a change occurs. It's better than Plaxo in maintaining current information on networked contacts. Plus, your personalize LinkedIn url is search engine indexed, so that's like free bio advertising without having to do anything other than create a basic profile. Users can easily import/export, add or remove contacts. It has a clean, easy-to-use interface that turns click-throughs into converts very quickly. It's good for creating rapport and building a reputation online through recommendations.
2. LuLu.com - a self-publishing site for hardcover or paperback books, calendars, etc. Haven't used this site yet, but they essentially remove all the barriers to entry for the publishing industry. Anyone can self-publish now, with their service offering.
3. Walk Score - originally developed for the real estate industry, this tool helps users find local-to-an-address businesses, schools, parks, libraries, etc. It's not just for people in town or the recently relocated, any traveling businessperson can find a local restaurant wherever their company sends them. The site programmatically ranks sites based on how far it is for a person to walk, point to point. All the locations feed directly from the Google Maps API, and adding a location fairly easy too. (Update: 2018-04-02, WalkScore acquired by Redfin)
4. Any blogging site like Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress - use for personal or business or both, promote products, introduce new services, keep an open window with your customers. Blogger.com allows you to manage multiple blogs under one master account. This is the "new" corporate newsletter. Many blogging sites have their own built-in RSS feeds, so your viewers can subscribe and be updated whenever you publish a new post.
5. Podcasting - MP3s for on-the-go listeners. Podcast Alley has both a genre directory and how-to resources for setting up podcasts. This is one media area where format standards have not been an issue. Podcasts can often be downloaded to one's iPod, Zune, desktop, or other MP3 player. Businesses are catching on and publishing seminars, tech conferences, and interviews using this web enhancement for distribution and delivery.
Professionals don't have a lot of excess time on their hands. This next short list are tools that didn't make the cut because they add more micromanagement steps, they're hard to use, are not the right advertising medium, or they simply don't make sense in blended media business marketing strategy.
Twitter - A dispatch service for micronets, if you really wanted people to know what you were up to 24/7. It's not just for people. The service can be hooked up to plants (water me), tamagochis (pet me), and vending machines (feed me).
Facebook - This site is slow to change to capture the benefit of having business tools available; also their site policies regarding privacy and user-generated content aren't all that great. It's very limited, and speedwise rather slow. There are plenty of competitors of similar flavor, e.g., Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, etc.
MySpace - purely for personal use unless you work in the entertainment industry; the on-site tools just aren't up to spec for professionals. Sure it's free, but in this case, having a blog or your own web domain would be better than a MySpace account.
SecondLife - a virtual "3D" world environment that allows users to create their own virtual content (clothing, furniture, cars) of various themes, buy virtual real estate (with real US dollars), offers a currency in Linden (game) money. B2C ads from real-world businesses are flat, two-dimensional billboards that are gaudy and distasteful to look at. Slow pixelated movement may give some users vertigo when traveling throughout the SecondLife world.
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