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Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:39:41 +0000

As companies that realize the value of online marketing understand the need to publish engaging content, one of the most common considerations is a company blog. Blog software is fundamentally one of the easiest content management software systems to install and use. Of course the software isn’t magic. The content and ability to reach and engage with customers is a big part of what makes a business blog successful. For those companies that are thinking of starting a blog or reinvesting resources into a company blogging effort that has gone stale, some of the most important questions to ask are: Have you identified specific goals for the blog? How will you measure success? In sports you can’t score if there isn’t a goal and it’s no different with business blogging. There are a variety of reasons why publishing ongoing communications that allow readers to interact adds value to a business. Add to that the distribution via RSS that extends the reach of your message and it’s easy to see why so many companies start blogging. The failure for many business blogs is centered around not making a connection between business goals, blog specific objectives and most importantly, how meeting customer needs leads to the first two. Here are three key questions to consider as you design your plan for business blogging success: Why start a business blog? What end goals or outcomes can you reasonably expect? There are many good reasons to start a blog. But are those reasons good enough to start and stay blogging for the long haul? Our survey on blogging and SEO showed 90% citing blogging as important, significantly important or a primary SEO tactic. 94% of bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging within 12 months. Initiate and foster customer engagement Improve coverage by media and bloggers Improve search engine visibility Increase mentions on other blogs, social networking, news, bookmarking and media sites Build thought leadership Provide an informative communication channel Recognize employees, clients, marketing partners and especially brand evangelists How will you know your blogging efforts are successful according to those goals? How are you measuring blogging success? We ran a poll last year with our readers that ranked their most important measures of blogging success. Here is the distribution: Engagement: comments, links 36% Improved brand recognition 31% Build thought leadership 31% Search engine rankings 31% Better communicate with customers 30% Traffic to the blog 27% Coverage by media and other blogs 18% Traffic to the corporate web site 16% Sales leads 16% Industry Recognition 13% Sell products 2% Improved customer satisfaction 11% Page views 9% Time on Site 6% Ad revenue on the blog 5% What tools are you using to measure blog performance? Goals for business and the blog are great but it’s essential to have the right tools in place for analytics. One of the biggest mistakes is to rely on things like Google Alerts. Web analytics (Google Analytics, Woopra, Clicky, etc) Feedburner Social media monitoring tools Link analysis tools Comment tracking tools Clipping services Forum conversation tracking tools It’s fundamental, this notion of setting goals, understanding outcomes and the tools needed to measure. But you know the saying, “Common sense is the least common thing on Earth.” Companies can achieve great return on investment with the right plan and leadership in a blogging effort. The key is to do the baseline work to build a foundation upon which it can grow and succeed. Stay the course and leverage both listening and engagement tools to guide content. Develop networks and distribution channels to grow readership and reach. Take the time to really understand the impact of data provided by reporting tools and create reports for executives that highlight business goals. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced with setting, measuring and reaching business goals through corporate blogging? Have you started a business blog only to shut it down? Have your company blogging efforts been successful beyond expectations? © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

Discover The Ways In Which Google Adwords Will Greatly Increase Visitors To Your Website

BlogPostman — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:05:37 +0000

Getting the Best Results by Using Google AdWords as Part of Your Marketing Campaign Among the paid advertising options available, perhaps the most outstanding service is Google AdWords, which has earned its reputation as a market player that can give you broader scope, super-charged performance, and immediate results. While Internet options like banner ads and ads on social networking sites exist, Google AdWords is much more effective. The major advantage AdWords has over other advertising options are the massive reach and specific ways Google generates traffic to your site that will make a huge difference. I am going to tell you in this article about the advantages provided by Google AdWords when you use it for your promotional campaign. If you are on a budget, AdWords has a built-in tool that will monitor and restrict your account based upon how much you want to spend on each ad campaign. You can even set the amount of money you want to spend up to a specific daily maximum. After your daily budget has been used up, your advertisement will stop showing up, and you will not be charged any additional money. Of course the most obvious benefit that comes from using AdWords is the immediate increase in traffic that you will see, and the quality that comes with using targeted traffic. From the moment your account is launched and your ad goes live, you will begin to see new visitors arrive at your site from AdWords. In addition to setting a daily budget, you also have the flexibility to determine how much you want each click to be worth. Let’s say that you set your daily budget to $50.00. Once the quantity of clicks that you’ve set reaches this cost, your impressions stop appearing and will begin again during the next 24-hour cycle. The bid that you make for your keywords will determine the rank of your ad in the lists, and if your bid is too low compared to what other advertisers are paying, Google will notify you. This is how you have the chance to increase your bid amount and beat your competition for that particular keyword any time you want. As an illustration, pretend you are selling high-end accessories. People who are not looking for these kind of accessories will not click on your advertisement, which will save you money. You also have the option of pausing or stopping your ad campaign whenever you want. You don’t have to make a big deal out of ending your ad campaign by setting up specific dates. All you have to do is log in to your Google AdWords profile and manually delete the campaign. Promoting products isn’t the only way to make money through advertisement online, but it is definitely the quickest way you’re going to start earning an income. Besides the fact that AdWords works fast, it is extremely focused and that give it a greater chance of sales conversions. To put is simply, if you need a good way to get the right traffic to your site in a hurry AdWords is the service you need. Just be sure you do some research into Adwords so that you fully understand how it works before you get started, then you’ll be far less likely to see losses. – About the Author: Roddy Jones reviews systems and software to help you succeed in your online business. Visit my website to find out how you can use Google Adwords to provide you with a marketing edge. Here’s the link: http://www.zenmarketingsoftware.com/internet-marketing/google-adwords-providing-you-with-the-marketing-edge Article Source

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Discover The Ways In Which Google Adwords Will Greatly Increase Visitors To Your Website

5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search From PRWeb – SESNY

BlogPostman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:58:48 +0000

TopRank Online Marketing has been working with PRWeb providing SEO consulting services for nearly one year. PRWeb was founded in 1997 to help small businesses and communications professionals leverage the web to share their news directly with the public. As part of this process PRWeb lead the way for the “direct-to-consumer” press release, enabling companies to communicate their news directly to customers, prospects, analysts and the media. During the past decade, PRWeb has reshaped the traditional press release and changed how companies large and small distribute news. Innovations of PRWeb over the years include: Search engine optimization (SEO) for press releases to increase the visibility of news in search engines like Google and Yahoo! Social bookmarking tools like trackbacks and bookmark links to take advantage of the explosion in social networking Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to increase the distribution potential of news and built the industry’s largest RSS network Allowing customers to include podcasts along with their news to increase the impact of their news release The “Feature Video” allowing customers to leverage the video content from popular sites like YouTube to bring their news to life Meg Walker, Director of Online Marketing for PRWeb lead a session discussing how to optimize press releases to gain the strongest visibility in both search engines and media. 1. Meet audience demand Prior to drafting a release, you need to understand what your audience is demanding. Meeting audience demand is integral to accomplishing your press release visibility objectives. There are many times you don’t realize there may be a hook in to reach your target, and understanding audience demand allows you to tap into it. The steps to meet audience demand include: Knowing your audience – what is it potential prospects and media are interested in? In what tone should they be spoken to? Do they appreciate a certain angle over another? Understanding is key and should drive the strategy behind the release. Be relevant – more than just understanding your audience, give them content that is both relevant and timely. By doing this, you’ll create the highest propensity your news gets picked up, shared and passed on. Satisfy customer demand – to know what the demand is, first research popular trends in search engines and stay on the pulse of your industry. By creating content that is related to hot topics you can create far more visibility for your releases. Staying up to date, informed and on the pulse of your customers is vital to connect with them through press releases. 2. Stay focused By keeping your keywords and topics focused, your release can rank better in search engines and resonate more with media. As you are writing releases, remember you are writing about one topic per release . By segmenting the message or trying to say too much at once, you dilute your key points and take a risk prospects and media will walk away without taking next steps or remembering the point. Keep it simple, focused and impactful. 3. Use images for search Images can increase the click through rate on releases in both regular and news search by 15 – 25%. It’s a simple step, but can’t be stressed enough. Additionally, using images creates more traction in media – journalists and bloggers both love images as it helps them tell their story. At PRWeb, we have seen releases that used 3 images generate more than 50 articles. We also find that many people are discovering images via image search, which then draws them back not only to the release, but to the customer web sites. Because PRWeb hosts press releases forever, your images can continue to receive both organic and image search traffic indefinitely. 4. Use videos to engage visitors By using video in news releases, we have seen up to a 500% increase in time on pages. As the web shifts to a rich media experience, bloggers, media and end users are becoming more accustomed to video. In the future, it may be common that video is included with releases. But since today it is not as frequently used, it’s a chance to make your news stand out. 5. Optimize your release Anchor text links – use 3 One to homepage – direct visitors directly to your company website. One to product page – send media and consumers directly to the product they are reading about. One to blog post – this presents an opportunity to speak to readers in a less formal fashion. With social web users and digital influencers continually expecting social content, a press release presents a great opportunity to spark interest in your social content. Alt-tag – an alt tag helps your images get discovered in search engines – all release images should be tagged appropriately. URL Keyword – top keywords can be used as part of the URL string, so be sure and include those during the release selection process. PRWeb allows you to customize this. Description Tag – add a keyword rich and compelling description tag (on PRWeb, that will become the meta tag). Title of release – the title of the release will become the title tag of the page, which is a vital element of your on-page optimization. If you have a target phrase, ensure your phrase leads the title of release. You can learn more about PRWeb at their website or follow them on Twitter .

SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search

BlogPostman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:58:48 +0000

TopRank Online Marketing has been working with PRWeb providing SEO consulting services starting in 2008. PRWeb was founded in 1997 to help small businesses and communications professionals leverage the web to share their news directly with the public. As part of this process PRWeb lead the way for the “direct-to-consumer” press release, enabling companies to communicate their news directly to customers, prospects, analysts and the media. During the past decade, PRWeb has reshaped the traditional press release and changed how companies large and small distribute news. Innovations of PRWeb over the years include: Search engine optimization (SEO) for press releases to increase the visibility of news in search engines like Google and Yahoo! Social bookmarking tools like trackbacks and bookmark links to take advantage of the explosion in social networking Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to increase the distribution potential of news and built the industry’s largest RSS network Allowing customers to include podcasts along with their news to increase the impact of their news release The “Feature Video” allowing customers to leverage the video content from popular sites like YouTube to bring their news to life Meg Walker, Director of Online Marketing for PRWeb lead a session discussing how to optimize press releases to gain the strongest visibility in both search engines and media. 1. Meet audience demand Prior to drafting a release, you need to understand what your audience is demanding. Meeting audience demand is integral to accomplishing your press release visibility objectives. There are many times you don’t realize there may be a hook in to reach your target, and understanding audience demand allows you to tap into it. The steps to meet audience demand include: Knowing your audience – what is it potential prospects and media are interested in? In what tone should they be spoken to? Do they appreciate a certain angle over another? Understanding is key and should drive the strategy behind the release. Be relevant – more than just understanding your audience, give them content that is both relevant and timely. By doing this, you’ll create the highest propensity your news gets picked up, shared and passed on. Satisfy customer demand – to know what the demand is, first research popular trends in search engines and stay on the pulse of your industry. By creating content that is related to hot topics you can create far more visibility for your releases. Staying up to date, informed and on the pulse of your customers is vital to connect with them through press releases. 2. Stay focused By keeping your keywords and topics focused, your release can rank better in search engines and resonate more with media. As you are writing releases, remember you are writing about one topic per release . By segmenting the message or trying to say too much at once, you dilute your key points and take a risk prospects and media will walk away without taking next steps or remembering the point. Keep it simple, focused and impactful. 3. Use images for search Images can increase the click through rate on releases in both regular and news search by 15 – 25%. It’s a simple step, but can’t be stressed enough. Additionally, using images creates more traction in media – journalists and bloggers both love images as it helps them tell their story. At PRWeb, we have seen releases that used 3 images generate more than 50 articles. We also find that many people are discovering images via image search, which then draws them back not only to the release, but to the customer web sites. Because PRWeb hosts press releases forever, your images can continue to receive both organic and image search traffic indefinitely. 4. Use videos to engage visitors By using video in news releases, we have seen up to a 500% increase in time on pages. As the web shifts to a rich media experience, bloggers, media and end users are becoming more accustomed to video. In the future, it may be common that video is included with releases. But since today it is not as frequently used, it’s a chance to make your news stand out. 5. Optimize your release Anchor text links – use 3 One to homepage – direct visitors directly to your company website. One to product page – send media and consumers directly to the product they are reading about. One to blog post – this presents an opportunity to speak to readers in a less formal fashion. With social web users and digital influencers continually expecting social content, a press release presents a great opportunity to spark interest in your social content. Alt-tag – an alt tag helps your images get discovered in search engines – all release images should be tagged appropriately. URL Keyword – top keywords can be used as part of the URL string, so be sure and include those during the release selection process. PRWeb allows you to customize this. Description Tag – add a keyword rich and compelling description tag (on PRWeb, that will become the meta tag). Title of release – the title of the release will become the title tag of the page, which is a vital element of your on-page optimization. If you have a target phrase, ensure your phrase leads the title of release. You can learn more about PRWeb at their website or follow them on Twitter . © Online Marketing Blog , 2010. | SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search | 9 comments | http://toprankweb2.mn2.visi.com

5 Ways to Electrify Your Social Network

BlogPostman — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:59:26 +0000

A typical situation for many marketers when it comes to social networks is this: Setup LinkedIn profile, check. Corporate LinkedIn page, check. Facebook profile, check. Facebook Fan Page, check. Twitter account, check. Corporate blog, check. Check check check! But where’s the buzz? Where are the fans, friends, followers, comments, links, traffic, search engine rankings? Where’s the customer engagement? And the most pressing question of all: What is all this social web participation doing for our company and our customers? Showing up to the game doesn’t mean there will be an audience. This is as true with the social web as it is offline. The problem that marketers have with attracting interested customers and growing their social networks often stems from approaching social participation tactically and without a plan. Testing and experimentation is great, but if what you’re doing is something that has a cost and is to be accounted for, then you’d better have a plan and objectives. How can you score without a goal? Here are 5 tips to help business marketers energize and electrify social network development: 1. Decide to start You must start by deciding what business objectives you intend on meeting as a result of social network involvement. Once you’ve clearly identified objectives, then you can create a strategy that outlines which tactics make the most sense to reach and engage your audience. Common objectives for companies to develop online social networks include: Create connections with those interested in the type of solutions you offer so you can better meet customer needs Build out a channel of distribution for promoting content Connect with existing customers, create a place for them to connect with each other Initiate discussions around product for new ideas, enhancements, focus group Extend reach to influentials in your market for publicity Tap into active user base for content Facilitate conversations about your products & services to aid in new customer acquisition and/or upgrades Create a communication channel that reaches employees for internal PR Build up the personal networks of executives for thought leadership with journalists, analysts and key bloggers 2. Know your customer If marketers spend their time on the social networks dujour without really knowing where their customers are spending time, then of course there will be a disconnect between experience and expectations. Picking friends, at least initially, on social networks should be very intentional, not random. Understanding customer preferences towards information discovery, consumption and sharing along with which web sites they prefer is essential if a marketer wants to connect in a meaningful way. 3. Be real, be useful There are a lot of buzzwords like “transparency” and “openness” that describe the need for marketers to be “genuine”. Oops that’s another. To be real is being honesty in your intentions. I’ve seem highly respected marketers make absolutely idiotic statements about transparency, taking it to the extreme. Ignorance is bliss I suppose, but there’s not much money in it. The core principles of understanding the needs of your customers and then finding a way to meet those needs in such a way that is helpful and that at the same time leads to product sales, need not be elusive. Approaching a social network blatantly announcing that you’re a marketer and that you will be marketing so buy some product dammit, isn’t being transparent. It’s being stupid. Identifying yourself as a representative of a brand, product or service and communicating your intentions both in words and helpful actions is what I mean by “be real, be useful”. Those good deeds create trust and relationships. They create word of mouth and a certain gravity of popularity for your brand with your own identity as the proxy. Fans, friends and followers “happen” because the word gets out that your brand promise is meaningful and being followed through on. Developing relationships can be hard work. People already know this through the relationships they have in daily life. Yet it’s very common for corporate marketers to initiate online social networking efforts only to become disillusioned at the lack of immediate sales results. It’s important that social web participation for a company become a part of what the company is, long term. Not an “add on” marketing tactic. 4. Recognize and reward When developing an active social network, participants will demonstrate certain behaviors that are more desirable than others. For example, standing up for the brand when a troll appears or mashing up content in a creative way. They say people will work for a living but die for recognition. This is a key concept for electrifying your social networking efforts. First, understand what behaviors you want to reward. Participate and identify those behaviors that will influence the kinds of outcomes you’re looking for. Recognition can be active and passive. Active recognition is to reach out and recognize specific behaviors publicly and/or privately. Passive recognition is built into the social CRM system you’re using or the platform within which customers participate. An example would be points based systems that provide rewards or more access based on accumulating points for completing certain behaviors such as comments, ratings, contributed content, etc. The key to “Recognize and Reward” is for the recognition to be deserved, genuine, relevant and consistent. 5. Monitor, measure, feedback loop All the good intentions in the world won’t result in relationship and business growth from social networks unless there’s management of content and curation of interactions with the outcomes from participation. It can be as simple as noticing “5 of this” or “10 of that” tips blog posts yield 200% greater engagement scores (comments, retweets, inlinks, etc) than posts that focus on a single, general topic. Web analytics along with social media monitoring and a CRM component can facilitate the feedback loop to know whether customers are responding in the ways that you’d hoped. Simply focusing on fans/followers, comments or sales can leave out some of the essential pieces of why some efforts fail and others succeed. Social media monitoring tools are essential for upfront research, ongoing monitoring and after-action results measurement. In the end, the steps to take for growing a social network for business must be rooted in an understanding of the customers and their needs combined with whatever it is you decide you’ll provide to meet those needs. Being useful by itself doesn’t turn an active network into achieved business goals. Provide opportunities for interested members of your social network to opt-in to a more commercial relationship when they’re ready. That could be as simple as moving from a Facebook Fan to a Webinar participant or Email Newsletter subscriber. In some cases it might mean becoming a buyer of products/services. If your business has successfully developed it’s social network presence, what have been some of the roadblocks you’ve overcome? What insights can you share on best connecting with networks and growing your business as a result?

5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix

BlogPostman — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:30:00 +0000

From Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness. LinkedIn , however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots of popular sites like YouTube and Facebook are founded on the entertainment side of things. But since its creation, LinkedIn has been geared toward the professional business crowd. If you haven’t already incorporated LinkedIn into your online marketing mix, consider the latest statistics: LinkedIn has more than 60 million members A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members Get started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy today with these five tips: 1. Build a Network, Then Start a Group Getting started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy involves two important steps, the second of which is dependent on the first: Create a personal account and build a network of contacts. Reach out to customers with whom your business has a solid relationship – those who truly know your company and its products or services. Ask them to write recommendations for your company, which will appear in your profile. And don’t forget to ensure all employees are part of the network as well. Once your personal account is setup, create a group for the brand. By creating a group for your brand, you’ll be able to maximize reach beyond your network. Within the brand group, you can start discussions, share news, post jobs and create subgroups. 2. Make the Most of Your Profile For the LinkedIn community, your profile will be this first item they see, so treat it as you would any landing page. To make the most of your profile: Hyperlink using keywords. Include relevant URLs in your profile, and use links with anchor text. For example, instead of “My Blog,” use a keyword to describe it such as “SEO and Online Marketing Blog.” (see image below) Use keywords in descriptions. That includes the summary, specialties, experience and all other description categories. Include an image in your profile. LinkedIn, after all, is a social networking channel. So add as many personal touches as possible to maximize engagement and put a face to the brand. Caption: Include blog or website links in your profile using anchor text. Include links in your LinkedIn profile using anchor text. 3. Leverage Third-Party Applications Today, there are a host of third-party applications available to help you make the most of your LinkedIn activity. For example: Box.net : Add links to files like resumes and marketing kits Slideshare : Share business presentations and demos with your network Company Buzz : Monitor messages sent out on Twitter about your brand or other subjects TripIt : See where members of your network will be travelling to and when you’ll be in the same city For an upcoming trip to Dallas, my contacts that will also be there are identified. 4. Update and Engage Frequently Think of LinkedIn marketing efforts as you would blog, Twitter or Facebook marketing efforts: The more activity and interaction, the better the results. To consistently engage with your network: Sync blog posts to your profile with tools like Blog Link or WordPress LinkedIn Application Frequently update your profile with the LinkedIn status feature, much like Facebook status updates Leverage the LinkedIn Question and Answer function – participate in others’ questions and ask your own 5. Promote Your Profile In order to expand your network, LinkedIn marketing efforts – like anything else – must be promoted in other channels. Include a link to your profile on your website and blog, in individual blog posts, in email signatures and even on business cards. Be sure to optimize your profile for important and relevant keywords. Allow enough of your profile to be public so search engines can rank that content accordingly. These tips, of course, are just the tips of the iceberg when it comes to LinkedIn marketing tactics. What specific tactics have you found successful for marketing on LinkedIn?

5 Twitter Management Tools You Can’t Live Without

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:28:45 +0000

Without a doubt, one of the most popular shiny new objects of many social media marketing programs is Twitter. There are Twitter books, Twitter conferences, Twitter blogs and numerous articles devoted to Twitter marketing . Unfortunately, there’s not enough time left over after reading all the promises of marketing nirvana from using Twitter to actually implement recommendations. Fortunately, social media masterminds at companies like Seesmic, TweetDeck and HootSuite — to name a few — have developed tools to make our Tweeting lives easier. Or at least more efficient. We use such tools here at @toprank to grow own Twitter presence as well as for clients on a daily basis and have learned quite a bit about Twitter best practices and which tools work best. Here are five Twitter account management tools to help you keep your Twitter activity in check – whether you tweet for one account or many. 1. HootSuite.com HootSuite is a great – and free – tool for managing multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Ping.fm accounts. The Twitter and social media management tool allows you to personalize columns, so you can view multiple feeds from the same social networking account or multiple feeds from different social networking accounts. For example, with my personalized Twitter tab (shown above), I can view my Twitter home feed, Twitter mentions, sent Tweets and a saved search for “online marketing” – all from one screen. Plus, HootSuite allows you to create a message and choose which social accounts you want the message to be automatically posted to. 2. CoTweet Like HootSuite, CoTweet is a free and easy tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts – up to five – with a single login. It also allows brand and keyword monitoring through Twitter search. This Twitter management tool’s true distinguishing feature is its workflow management capabilities (shown above). When an @ reply comes in to an account, you can assign it to a person on your CoTweet task to respond to. They’ll be notified via email and on their own CoTweet page. Plus, the tool allows you to take notes on Twitter users for your co-users to see. 3. EasyTweets EasyTweets is a low-cost Twitter management tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts – the more you pay, the more continuous searches, feeds and accounts you can track. With this tool, you can automatically post RSS feed content and track RSS traffic in Google Analytics. That way, you can easily track traffic from Twitter and understand what users do when they get to your site. Another useful feature, the Twitter management tool lets you set up continuous searches for brand mentions (shown above), and auto follow some or all users who mention your brand. Plus, you can be set up to send SMS or email alerts when people mention your brand. So wherever you are, you won’t miss your chance to respond to a prospect. 4. TweetDeck This free desktop browser helps you keep track of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace activities from multiple accounts. Like the other tools mentioned here, you can update your accounts, follow topics with saved searches, and manage conversations with @ replies and direct messages from within TweetDeck. But the social media management tool offers some more advanced features as well. TweetDeck allows you to record, share or watch video clips, and view YouTube videos, from within the tool (shown above). Plus, you can share and view photos, as TweetDeck now supports Flickr, Twitgo and mobypicture. 5. PeopleBrowsr This Twitter and social media management tool, currently in Beta version, offers a very simple, visual browser-based dashboard view of social activity. PeopleBrowsr uses an interface similar to email, with the Twitter or other social feed appearing as a list in the center of the screen, and additional options in the left nav (see above). PeopleBrowsr allows you to create and manage groups by adding public or private tags to any users from any of your different social sites. Then you can view everyone in a group in a widget of their own. Whatever time you dedicate each day for Twitter – whether its hours or minutes a day – there’s a tool available to help you better manage activities. Try out some of our suggestions, and let us know what you think. Of course there are more Twitter management tools than what we’ve mentioned here including: Seesmic , Tweetvisor , Splitweet and others. What’s your favorite Twitter management tool?

15 Social Media Answers From OMS10

BlogPostman — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:28:36 +0000

Online Marketing Summit 2010 in San Diego is host to a smorgasboard of internet marketing topics and this afternoon I am priveledged to participate on a panel about Social Media. Panelists include: Chris Baggott, CEO, Compendium Blogware Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing Michael Senger, CEO & Founder, StoneMass Caitlin McCabe, Founder, WhiteLabel Marketing Ben Hanna, VP Marketing, Business.com That’s a lot of people for a panel, so moderator Jason Baer decided that in the spirit of Twitter, we’d keep bios, questions and answers succinct and at 140 characters or less. For those that can’t be here I thought I’d share the prep questions and my short answers with you. If you’re at OMS and you live blog this Social Media Leaders Forum, please leave a link in the comments. What’s your advice for individuals just getting started using Twitter? Have some idea of what you want out of Twitter. Connect with people of similar interests and goals and engage with them. What’s your advice for individuals just get started using Twitter? Have some idea of what you want out of Twitter. Connect with people of similar interests and goals and engage with them. What’s the #1 myth preventing companies from embracing social media? To start when you’re ready. You’ll never be ready. But you need to do it anyway because it’s the only way towards progress. What’s the best way to integrate social media with other marketing efforts like email, direct mail, etc? Strategically. Learn what customers want and leverage social technologies across channels to make it easier for them to get it. What are the main differences between B2B and B2C social media programs? More romancing in B2B & emphasis on qualitative interactions. Mass appeal of B2C provides large audience engagement opportunities. Is social media best used for customer acquisition, or for customer retention? Both. Social media is essentially word of mouth and once you start facilitating that and customer conversations, you create a cycle of acquisition & retention. How do social media and SEO work together? Yin & Yang. Social network channels of distribution promote content & attract links. Optimized social content grows networks via search discovery. What’s the biggest mistake most companies are making in social media? Outsourcing customer engagement. Companies know their own business and customers best and lose opportunity by not participating themselves. What’s the most overrated social media site or tactic today? Google. LOL. Actually, the one your customers are not using. When is it okay for companies to not engage with their customers in social media? That’s like saying when should you not answer the phone at your business? For severe dissenters invite offline discussion. Does it make sense to make a Facebook fan page at the core of your social media initiative? If the audience to reach is all about Facebook, then why not? Only caveat is that you don’t “own” 3rd party web sites. How can agencies work best with their clients in social media? Be a guide, partner, educator, trainer and source of ongoing support and innovation. Help them help themselves. What’s the one social media skill set that you wish more potential employees had? Honesty about skills. Social media user & expert are very different. Passion, curiosity and ability to really listen, learn and create value using social technology. How important (really) are geo-location services like Foursquare and Gowalla? If you were a brand, how interested would you be to know all the most active people visiting your stores? Many Advertising & social networking tie-in opportunities. With so many companies now using social media, what’s the best way for a brand to stand out? Find remarkable people to curate & tell your brand’s story. Listen to, engage with & empower customers. How can you measure the effectiveness of social media efforts? Start with goals, outline a strategy and how to best reach audiences. Then pick the right tools and metrics aligned with those goals. There you go. I think this exercise proves that shorter is not always better. There’s so much more that’s meaningful to say about each of these questions. I may come back and add to this post after the session or we might just use them as inspiration for a series of blog posts. Until then, be sure to read this roundup of 25 social media marketing tips . What are some of your most pressing questions about social media? About integrating social media with other channels?

5 B2B Social Media Winners

BlogPostman — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:23:51 +0000

Take a moment to think about, and count, the number of B2C social media success stories that pop into your head. I’ll venture to guess that you could immediately name five to 10, if not many more. From Ford to Dell to Zappos to Best Buy , B2C social media winners – those organizations that caught on early and created a cult following of brand cheerleaders via the social web – are hard to miss. But how about the B2B social media winners? I’m guessing these weren’t as easy to name. And yet, there are just as many B2B organizations successfully conquering social media. While their stories might not be as well-known, we think these 5 B2B social media winners are doing a pretty doggone good job. Tell us if you agree. 1. American Express OPEN American Express OPEN is the company’s division dedicated to helping small business owners succeed. It has based its marketing strategy around the social web, realizing that social media has become a priority for small business owners. Since 2007, AMEX OPEN has relied on its OPEN Forum to provide business advice and insight. The social site includes a blog with frequently updated content, and a large collection of videos that users can rate and share via other social networking channels. In the site’s “Idea Hub,” forum members can network with one another and with industry experts, as well as customize topics to their specific interests. The social site has been extremely successful, increasing unique visitors 525% over the past year – from 160,000 in December 2008 to nearly 1 million in December 2009. 2. HSBC To target business entrepreneurs and provide them with an active forum to share and gain knowledge, HSBC has created The HSBC Business Network for both customers and non-customers. It’s evident that the HSBC Business Network truly thrives on its members. The site includes a network of blogs, and invites members to create their own blog to share their personal experiences with other entrepreneurs. Currently, the network is made up of 148 blogs from members. The site’s homepage is populated with content from users: the most popular recent blog post, forum post and user profile. 3. Microsoft Advertising Microsoft Advertising has been using social media as a vehicle to listen to, educate, support and market to their customers and potential customers since 2006. However, the past year has seen a distinct effort from Microsoft to reach customers through social web participation. An adCenter Community site as well as blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook presence, videos, photos and social media coverage of industry events along with proactive listening and community manager participation have been instrumental for growing the adCenter community and providing customers with an opportunity to be involved with how Microsoft does business with them. Here’s a white paper (pdf) by Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising that documents their foray into social media as a B2B company. Great insights. 4. Archer The social media strategy for Archer Technologies, provider of risk and compliance solutions, and a 2009 Forrester Groundswell Award winner for B2B social media, revolves around two components. First, the Archer Community is an online social network that gives customers a forum to interact, share best practices and provide feedback to help drive Archer product development. The second component is the Archer Exchange (pictured above), an online marketplace that enables clients to download applications developed by other clients or by Archer. The two social sites have been successful at driving website traffic and attracting new members: The Archer Community receives 20 new members, 4,000 unique visits and 400+ downloads every week, while the Archer Exchange boasts 17,000 unique visits, 90,000 page views and 1,200 downloads. But the real benefit has been enhanced product development as a result of user feedback and sharing. Archer tells Forrester that its Archer Community directly helped form its Business Continuity Management, Mobile GRC and Data Feed Manager applications. 5. Cree LED Manufacturer Cree is embracing social media to build awareness and promote the benefits of LED technology, rather than directly sell products. At the center of its latest campaign, “ LED Revolution ,” is an interactive social website. On the site, visitors can submit their bad lighting photos (think bad 1980s office fluorescent lighting) to win LED recessed downlights. The site’s blog is posted to almost daily, and humorous videos encourage visitors to, “Break Your Fluorescent Shackles!” Cree also leverages Facebook and Twitter in a push/pull approach for the website. Hear from Ginny Skalski, Cree social media specialist — who happens to have a background in journalism and community management rather than marketing – in this video on the Social Media B2B blog. Of course, these five B2B social media winners are only part of a much longer list of companies that are successfully interacting with customers, building brand awareness and driving traffic to their websites through the social web. What are your favorite B2B social media success stories?