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. 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. 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) Update Nov 5: I’ve created a framework based off the following data, and have a full presentation available. Click here to see the full Social Business Stack for 2011, which now supersedes this blog post. Background: From Three Software Classes to Fifteen (Sixteen) in 4 YearsFrom When I first started as an industry analyst about covering this space there were really only three classes of companies: Social networks like Facebook, community platforms, and existing BBS and Blogging software companies. Fast forward a few years, this space has grown tremendously with an influx of new types of software vendors as well as specialization from a growing market.
Categorization is crucial in managing this rapidly evolving space It’s very difficult to completely segment this space as many of the vendors cross into multiple categories so I’ve separated it into major function groups. Update: Added the social commerce platforms as a category under platforms Listening and Learning (2): 10 Strategies For Building A Successful Social Business. Social Business Software or Enterprise 2.0 Platform? This month's theme for articles is based on what for me is the most dreaded of words: "social. " I don't dread its constant proliferation and its rather odd use in certain scenarios because I am anti-social (I have no criminal record!) , but because I am truly fed up with the “trendy” use of the word and the persistent fallback on its use to describe software products that are somehow new and different. I can share Excel spreadsheets with colleagues via a text-based email client from a Linux command terminal — how is that not social?
Seriously though, two fellow CMSWire contributors have somewhat beaten me to the punch with their excellent articles. Deb Lavoy goes further and says: "Social Business Doesn't Mean What You Think It Does, Neither Does Enterprise 2.0. " However, I disagree with Deb that the command and control model is "maxed out" or that there is no place left in the world for automation, hierarchical process-centric models, etc. What Term Would I Use Instead of Social?