Social Media Monitoring Made Simple. If you’ve been monitoring social media for mentions of … social media monitoring, you’ll likely have noticed more people discussing how to listen better on behalf of your brand. There are tools. There are services. And there are case studies on how your organization can sift through social media static and glean out useful nuggets. The overload of information can be a little overwhelming and after a while all the advice on sifting through the static starts to sound, ironically, like more noise. We know we should be listening but often times it’s difficult to figure out what exactly we should be listening to and how we should be listening to it. So, in practical terms, how can we monitor social media without causing our ears to ring? Bring in the Noise and Inevitably Bring in the Funk Image: smoovey Every day, 100 million pieces of content are shared on Facebook, 90 million Tweets are served, and nearly 50,000 new blogs are created.
And most of it doesn’t matter (to you, anyway). Ya heard? This Machine Eats Tweets: The System Behind @Comcast and Others. This morning my home wifi was having trouble and I posted a message to Twitter saying, "My wife has decided to start the day with a call to Comcast customer service, I should have offered to poke her in the eye with a spoon. Would have been more fun for her. " Within minutes a man named Bill (@ComcastBill, really) publicly replied to ask if he could help. I didn't think much of it, I assumed he was camped on a search.twitter results page for the word "Comcast" or maybe had subscribed to an RSS feed for the search. It turns out though, that far more than that was happening behind the scenes. An extensive machinery of tracking, delegation and analysis stood between Bill and my little Tweet.
Maybe it has to be that way, maybe it's a good thing - but there's something deeply disturbing about it too. Companies all around the world know that "social media" is important and they are investing time and money into figuring out how to deal with it. It's kind of a modern day horror story, isn't it? How Social Media Drives New Business: Six Case Studies. Businesses both big and small are flocking to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Foursquare.
The fact is that a presence on these platforms not only allows companies to engage in conversations with consumers, but also serves as an outlet to drive sales through deals and coupons. And while major brands like Starbucks, Virgin, and Levi’s have been participating in the social web for some time now, the rate of adoption among small businesses is increasing too. According to a recent University of Maryland study, social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the last year. But as these businesses look to Facebook and Twitter to connect with customers, many are finding that some strategies work and some do not produce results.
The Creme Brulee Man: Food from street carts have become a foodie favorite for San Franciscans. The other use of Twitter for Kimball is to tell people what flavor of creme brulee he is serving in a given day. Dr. Twitter, Twitter, Little Stars. Natalie Malaszenko has always loved pets. A 31-year-old resident of San Diego, Calif., she has a dog named Sarge and a cat named Leo. Years ago, when she lived in Texas, she took care of cows and horses and even a stray emu.
In recent months, however, since beginning a full-time job at the pet retailer Petco, she has taken on the additional responsibility of tending to a breed of notoriously unruly carnivores, capable of scaring off even the most patient caregiver—namely, online commenters. So far, Malaszenko says she loves them, too. Earlier this year, Petco executives appointed Malaszenko to a new—and trendy—job: director of social media and commerce. Malaszenko's initial assignment was to envision and articulate Petco's social media strategy for the future. The ultimate goal of her social media team, says Malaszenko, is to help the bottom line. Opportunities in corporate social media are popping up faster than cat videos on YouTube (GOOG). Top 5 Mobile Commerce Trends for 2010. Considering that most people would rather lose their wallet than misplace their cell phone, it's fitting that the mobile world is quickly becoming a new hub for business. For many of us, our cell phone never leaves our side.
It holds a place at the dinner table, is easily accessible in your bag's front pocket, and often, somehow it even manages to end up sharing your pillow at night. Busy schedules mean people are often on the move and when marketers and companies can't reach consumers at their computers, on TV, before the previews at the movies, with billboards, or magazine and newspaper ads, they must feel assured that they can still reach them on their cell phones.
Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, is simply the ability to conduct business transactions through a mobile device. With smartphone sales rising 49% in the first quarter of 2010, never before has it been so easy to shop, anywhere, anytime from the palm of your hand. 1. 2. "Do you have the tickets? " 3. 4. 5. QR Codes: How To Create Your Own. 5 New Ways Small Business Can Offer Location-Based Deals. This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. Location-based services, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, are proving quite popular with consumers open to sharing their locations with the world. They're also built to be inherently business-friendly, as most allow retailers to incentivize checkins and social sharing behaviors in the hopes of attracting swarms of patrons to their businesses.
As the space continues to evolve, new platforms, technologies and services are emerging with the specific intention of helping small businesses reward their loyal patrons with deals for their in-store behaviors. Small businesses looking for fresh and relevant ways to serve up location-based deals and stay ahead of the curve have numerous options. 1. Most checkin apps are designed so that small businesses can set up specials or rewards for checkin activity. 2. 3. 4. 5. Why the Best Online Marketing May Be Headed Offline.
Hamilton Chan is CEO of Paperlinks and Paperspring. Through its iPhone app and QR web platform, the just-launched Paperlinks platform makes context-sensitive marketing plug-and-play for small, medium and large businesses. The hyperlink is the fundamental building block of the Internet, and effectively ties reference points to useful content. Without the hyperlink, the web would be nothing more than silos of content lacking semantic connections. Traditionally, hyperlinks live in browser windows on desktop monitors. By printing a Quick Response (QR) bar code on any item — a lamp, the program booklet of an event, or a retail store window -– a consumer can quickly link from the real-world experience to rich web content via his smartphone. The ability to place a QR code on anything offers opportunities for businesses and consumers.
You have been looking for the perfect lamp for your living room for a long time. Context-Sensitive Marketing From the consumer’s standpoint, CSM is a convenience. 5 Ways to Promote Your Social Media Efforts OFFline. This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. The real world is often overlooked when small businesses try to raise awareness of their online efforts.
But with a few clear exceptions, people still do most of their living offline. Physical space can be as good of a place as any to advertise your website, social media accounts and blogs. There are a bevy of creative ways to get your online properties in people's offline views, and we've got the photographic evidence to prove it. These seven strategies will help you kick-start your brainstorm for the perfect offline efforts for your online strategy. If you've already dabbled in promoting your social media efforts offline, let us know which ways were successful in the comments below. 1.
Jeweler Samuel Gordon ran this full-page magazine ad in a local publication. 2. 3. 4. 5.