If You're Not Helping Lay The Foundation For A Social Business, You Need To Start Now. The movement of information is key to today's global economy. Companies like General Electric send their design concepts to countries like India, allowing developers there to localize products to suit the domestic market. Firms like Intercontinental Hotel Group create customer communities to gather input from customers to fashion new services. Businesses like handheld device manufacturer Psion (recently acquired by Motorola) build social platforms to connect their partners to their customers in order to formulate new solutions.
And prospective customers tap into social media like Facebook and Twitter to gather information and express ideas, which we see has the power to alter the course of companies as well as countries. In this environment, a successful company's competitive advantage comes in part from its ability to grow an information advantage -- the ability to share, process, and act upon information more rapidly than the competition. Lost opportunities through untapped data. How to Track Your Website's Content on Pinterest. Ann Smarty is a search marketer and full-time web entrepreneur. Ann blogs on search and social media tools. Her newest project, My Blog Guest, is a free platform for guest bloggers and blog owners.
Follow Ann on Twitter @seosmarty. Pinterest is now one of the most efficient traffic sources, in some cases even surpassing networks like Twitter. Naturally, a lot of social media marketers are embracing Pinterest to increase social media reach and to drive traffic to their sites. In order to track what is being pinned from your site, and to engage with those pins further, try funneling that Pinterest content into a handy RSS feed. For starters, see what is being pinned from your own site by using the following URL: As simple as it may seem, the trick is actually pure gold. Always Like and sometimes comment on pins from your site to give them better ranking and increase their reach.Repin some of the most interesting and unique images. You're done! 1. Businesses: Find, Reward Your Influencers With Yamana. Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing? References (10) 1. Lenskold Group, “2009 Lenskold Group/MarketSphere Marketing ROI and Measurements Study” (Manasquan, New Jersey: Lenskold Group, 2009). 2.
D.L. Hoffman and T.P. Novak, “Social Media Strategy,” in “Handbook on Marketing Strategy,” ed. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Show All References. How Social Fits the Sales Funnel. Business partner, Kent Gregoire shared a blog post with me that was written by Greg Alexander over at Sales Benchmark Index. By now, many companies understand the concept of creating content that is compelling to move opportunities from awareness, interest and desire into action that turns into a tangible result. The blog post focused on helping a client to evaluate over 100 pieces of content to try to determine what content was moving people through the sales funnel.
Interestingly enough, the content that was having the greatest ROI was in the middle of the sales funnel. At the same time, the company had very little content actually attributed to that portion of the funnel. This story got me thinking about how important it is to determine if you are taking the right sales approach, based on the changes we now see in buyer behavior. This is why compelling presence and content is critical for today's sales professional. Step 7: Let’s assume that you’ve secured a meeting. Unmetric, Watches Your Competitors' Social Media Presence. How do big brands stand up to competitors? Well, the old adage applies: keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. Unmetric Inc., the Internet’s first social media benchmarking company tailored for Fortune 500 companies, debuts its Unmetric Score, a compilation of over 24 qualitative and quantitative metrics measuring online brand performance vis-à-vis competitors. Unmetric is also announcing it has raised $3.2 million in Series A financing led by Nexus Venture Partners.
Unmetric will use the funds to continue developing its benchmarking platform, enabling companies to better survey and analyze the content strategy of a brand and the key terms that are triggering customer engagement. Unmetric will also be using the round to further expand its team in the U.S. “Brands around the world today are witnessing an explosion in opportunities to reach customers through social media,” said Jishnu Bhattacharjee from Nexus Venture Partners. Get Social: 11 Management Systems That Can Help - The BrainYard. Social media management systems can help your organization manage and measure increasingly sophisticated social strategies. 1 of 12 Remember the early days of the Web, when publishing and managing content was a Wild West of HTML? Organizations soon went from asking, "What do we do with this thing?
" to "What don't we do with this thing? " To maintain some semblance of control, management systems were developed and deployed. The same thing is happening now with social media. Enter social media management systems (SMMSs), which enable organizations to do things like publish on multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest; schedule and stage posts; apply rights management schemes; aggregate feedback; measure effectiveness across channels; and report results in ways that are meaningful to specific departments and organizations.
There are many SMMS companies to choose from. Monitoring. Publishing. Engagement. Organizational management. Measurement. The Future Career of the Corporate Social Strategist. Over the past few years, I’ve tracked the emergence, rise, and growth of this new role within corporations. I see some interesting career opportunities for this powerful role within a corporation. First of all, about this role, while we’ve published a detailed research report on their demographics, psychographics, challenges and aspirations, this role is a major influencer within the corporation, and has a small but growing budget, typically stemming under the CMO or head of corporate communications functions.
Without a doubt, this role is in high demand: few are qualified, those that are are easily found by recruiters and I’ve heard of some positions with a total comp beyond 200k+ in regulated financial services. I’ve also been tracking how some folks are switching jobs to respond to the demand, although I’ve cautioned a few to put in a few years before doing this, as it could set a bad record on one’s resume. Three Future Career Opportunities for the Corporate Social Strategist:
B2B Marketers Optimistic About Social Media for Lead Generation. It’s no surprise that business-to-business marketers and agencies are looking for leads online. A February 2012 survey of B2B marketing and agency professionals by BtoB Magazine found that 59% view lead generation as their greatest online marketing challenge. To meet that goal, marketers are exploring new channels in 2012, particularly social media—and for many, the approach is working.
Currently, most respondents rely primarily on email—57% said it was the online channel that contributed the most qualified leads to their businesses. But a significant number said that some other online channel was their biggest driver of leads, though this group was split among several channels, including paid search (20%) and social media (13%). Respondents from agencies were more likely than marketers to report that social or search was their most successful marketing channel, possibly because agencies are often more able to specialize in such tactics. Previous Article. Turn Your LinkedIn Company Page Into A Sales Magnet. As LinkedIn continues to grow in popularity as a proven social media marketing platform for B2B companies, the LinkedIn company page offering continues to evolve as well with new features for marketers to fully leverage this tool.
For example, in the last six months, the LinkedIn follow button was introduced as well as the ability for company pages to post status updates to then appear in their followers’ feeds. But one of the most underutilized features that companies continue to ignore or overlook, which isn’t new by any means, is the ability to build individual Products & Services Pages and also implement the Product and Service Spotlight feature. Here’s some step-by-step instructions to implement both individual Product & Services Pages and the Product and Service Spotlight, which is the first step to begin converting page visitors into leads and new customers.
How To Add Products & Services Pages 1. 2. 3. How To Add the Product and Service Spotlight 2. 3. Social Media’s Influence on Sales. The influence of social media on the conversion of sales is outstanding compared to traditional marketing. Being involved and creating a community using social media has never been as important as it currently is today. It is a proven science that a one-on-one interaction with customers creates a rapport between the consumer and the business.
Building trust and loyalty converts into more sales PERIOD! Most businesses have forgotten about the way our ancestors operated their businesses, and this is the biggest mistake that can be made today. Having a mom & pop shop mentality will give customers a comfortable and personable feeling towards your company, and using social media is the perfect way to accomplish this goal.
Word of mouth marketing is one of the most effective strategies that any business can pursue using social media. People do not visit websites to find information about the best movie that is currently out, or what the best seafood restaurant is anymore. Facebook Twitter. How to Harness the Power of LinkedIn [Infographic] A presentation on the topic of how to cook a chocolate tart is going to “bomb”at a cheese maker’s convention. It will be the wrong audience for an interesting topic, but the cheesemakers didn’t pay $1,200 for a conference ticket to hear information about “Tarts”! A paying participant at a car dealer expo will want to hear about horsepower and handbrakes and will either leave the hall or fall asleep if the speakers start talking about knitting and slipper making. The art of successful communicating and engagement involves selecting the right audience and providing them with information and content that resonates with their needs and wants. Not all Social Networks are Equal.
When it comes down to sheer popularity Facebook is the social network that wins. Facebook is also about “Identity” whether that is a personal profile or a “business brand” persona. Google plus is “Core” and is woven into the science of search as Google embeds it into every one of its web properties from Picasa to YouTube. 6 Ways To Use Pinterest To Promote Your Business. The best way to think of Pinterest, if you’re not familiar with it, is as your personal or business bulletin board – it’s where you pin pictures of things you like: your style, your interests, your aspirations…anything you can represent with images from the internet.
Pinterest also happens to be the hottest social media network, with growth in the past 6 months of over 4,000%. And people aren’t just taking a peek at the site and leaving; the average visit is more than an hour – Facebook is about 16 minutes, LinkedIn about the same. How Pinterest Works Pinterest users share photos they find online by “pinning” them, the equivalent of “liking” on Facebook. To pin, users download a toolbar that grabs the image and identifies the source site. Once your pins are on your board, users who follow you, like Facebook friends, can see what you’ve pinned. If they like one of your pins, they can re-pin it to their own board. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Pinterest Drives Enormous Blog and Business Success. This is Kate.
She’s a hairstylist, jewelry maker, and all-around crafter based in North Carolina. Kate started her blog (thesmallthingsblog.com) exactly one year ago. And like most of us, it was a labor of love without a whole lot of “community.” In fact, for the first eight months, she had a grand total of seven readers. But between August of 2011 and today Kate has had over 10 million page views! Pinterest is the hottest social media platform around right now.
And there is an important social element too as you can comment, like, share, email content, and search based off of your customized interests. If you snoop around Pinterest, for a little while, chances are you’ll run into a high-quality image of a beautifully coiffed hairstyle from Kate. “I pinned a photo of a completed style, which directed Pinterest users back to my blog to watch the tutorial video. “Almost daily I get a comment or email saying ‘I found you on Pinterest!’ How about you? Is Facebook Advertising Too Cheap? Business 2 Community - Building Deeper Business Relationships Through Engaging Communities. 4 Strategic Requirements For Corporate Tweeting. Michelle Obama’s first day on Twitter was the tweet heard 'round the world, with more than 60,000 followers signing up to follow her the morning she launched. Initial tweets from @MichelleObama noted that her staff would be doing the heavy lifting initially, but that every tweet from the First Lady herself would be signed “mo.”
It was a nice touch of transparency, creating excitement without over-promising. Mrs. Obama’s fellow Twitter-newbie, Rupert Murdoch, however, is off to a rockier start, or so say numerous critics; Murdoch began his Twitter account to thunderously merciless reviews. Among the complaints, he doesn’t include links in his tweets. That value proposition is what really stands out, especially since the issues at stake go well beyond online etiquette and specific best practices. More fundamentally, companies of all sizes are now confronting how Twitter strategies align or don’t align with their larger business strategies. That was three years ago. Social Media, Liability and Insurance. December 13, 2011 by Robert P. Hartwig, Ph.D., CPCU and Claire Wilkinson Hundreds of millions of people interact on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace and LinkedIn every day. Like any other new technology, social media brings enormous opportunities and benefits. The ability to communicate and interact instantaneously on a global scale 24/7 enables businesses to reach their customers directly and individuals to voice opinions on any topic they see fit.
Yet as the opportunity to tweet, message, share and “like” grows, so do the risks. Meanwhile, amid a rising number of high profile data breaches, government is stepping up its scrutiny of cyber security. Despite the fact that cyber risks and cyber security are widely acknowledged to be a serious threat, a majority of companies today still do not purchase cyber liability insurance. Please click on the file name below to view the white paper in PDF format. Download Social Media, Liability and Insurance (PDF) Social Business - Social Intranets & Extranets - IGLOO Software. Jive Social Business - Collaboration & Social Software Solutions. The Stack: The Fifteen (now Sixteen) Classes of the Social Business Software Suite (Q4, 2010) 10 Strategies For Building A Successful Social Business.
Social Business Software or Enterprise 2.0 Platform?