Mature Vs. Immature Social Media Efforts I’ve been drafting vs. posts for quite some time on a variety of subjects. Today, I thought it would be fun to talk about brands who are mature in social vs. those who are immature. Brands mature in their social efforts are customer-centric and don’t feel a need to constantly hype their own products or services. Brands immature to social prattle on about their own product and are self-centered / brand centric. Brands mature in social efforts focus on building opt-in to source content and growing a platform agnostic community. Brands immature in their social efforts focus on a single platform and obsess over meaningless KPIs like followers or friends within that platform. Brands mature in social media focus less on microcontent and more on thought leadership. Brands immature in social media simply create microcontent because it is easy and doesn’t require the effort and self-discipline to carve out a voice and well-referenced brand of media. image credit: Shutterstock
6 Successful Foursquare Marketing Campaigns to Learn From There are now more than 500,000 businesses on Foursquare. We've already shared with you how to start marketing on Foursquare and how to set up a special — now we're giving you a handful of campaigns that can inspire your own marketing initiatives. Read on and take a tip from The History Channel, Starwood Hotels, Pepsi Max, a Florida eye doctor, a New York steakhouse and a German billboard. 1. The History Channel Foursquare page launched in April 2010. Since The History Channel is not a physical location, it has a brand page that can be "followed." Success Metrics: The History Channel Foursquare page has 202,450 followers. Times Square: 3,613 users "have done this"Magic Kingdom Park: 5,469 users "have done this"Madison Square Garden: 3,118 users "have done this"Lincoln Memorial: 2,261 users "have done this" 2. In May, Starwood Hotels teamed up with Foursquare for its SPG — Starwood Preferred Guest — loyalty program. 3. 4. 5. 6. Lesson: A little innovation goes a long way.
5 Common Mistakes of Facebook Reveal Tabs If you’re NOT on the HyperArts Blog, Click here! You may have heard about reveal tabs and you may already be using them on your Facebook Page. To learn how to create a reveal tab, check out the HyperArts blog post on reveal tabs. MISTAKE: Creating a reveal tab and forgetting to set it as the default landing tab for the Facebook Page.The reason that you created a reveal tab in the first place was to get more fans. What could these Pages have done differently to avoid this problem?
An Introductory Guide to Highly Effective LinkedIn Ad Campaigns With over 100 million users, LinkedIn is the most popular social network for business professionals. Aside from using LinkedIn to find jobs or employees, if you target other businesses, maintaining a presence on LinkedIn can also help you generate leads and customers. An Overview of LinkedIn Ads In addition to creating groups, answering questions, and posting updates to your profile, you can also engage with users on the network by participating in LinkedIn Ads. Just like Google AdWords calculates a quality score for PPC ads by analyzing the performance of your campaigns, LinkedIn does the same thing. So, as long as you keep your CTR up and your bid in line with LinkedIn’s recommended big amount, you can run a successful campaign. What an Effective LinkedIn CTR Looks Like Wondering what an acceptable CTR is? When trying to improve the performance of your PPC campaigns across any medium, it almost always comes down to account structure. 1. 2. 3.
6 New & Innovative Social Media Campaigns to Learn From We're always on the lookout for innovative social media campaigns at Mashable. This week we scoured the web and our Twitter feeds to find some of the most interesting campaigns out there. From utilizing online video in an inventive way to creating a unique presence on Facebook, these six social media campaigns are some of the most original pieces of work as of late. 1. Ad agency Amsterdam Worldwide unveiled the first in a series of blogger films, called “Visual Life,” for technology brand Intel back in January 2011. The first video of the series documented the work of fashion blogger and photographer Scott Schumann, The Sartorialist. The video went viral when it was embedded on The Sartorialist blog, but also gained a lot of views from Facebook, The Cool Hunter and mobile devices. This week, the campaign launched its most recent video (embedded above), which documents the role technology plays for two young Chinese wedding photographers, Kitty and Lala. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Your Picks
10 case studies that prove the ROI of social media The question of whether or not social media drives ROI still plagues many marketers and brands. The issue is not always as straightforward as it seems, as there are multiple ways to measure the benefits of social media and it isn't as simple as looking for a direct sales return at one end, with the social media imput at the other. Smart tracking and measuring is needed to fully capture the benefit of a social media campaign and while looking for direct ROI is one way to do it, there are other values to be measure from social media marketing. I've put together a list of case studies that prove the ROI of social media, both through direct monetary return, customer loyalty, repeat traffic and more. Viewing social media holistically to gain a better understanding of how it can work for you is more beneficial to any brand than looking for one single return. Social media outperforms banner ads Social media saved Cisco $100,000 Old Spice put their money where their mouth is ROI from Facebook ads
3 Social Media Marketing Lessons Taught by MySpace Failure Social Networking is not new, or at least it’s not as new as we think. Back in 2005 MySpace was the ruler of social networks and when News Corporation bought it for $580 million it looked like Rupert Murdoch’s empire had added a powerful string to its bow. Fast forward six years later and Justin Timberlake is able to snap it up for just $35 million. The question is ‘what went wrong?’ but really it should be ‘what can we learn from it?’. As social media marketers we should be able to focus past the numbers (spectacular as the disparity between buying and selling prices may be) and look at the underlying causes because that’s where the lessons really lie. In many ways MySpace was the pioneer of large-scale social networking, and back in 2005 its position seemed unassailable. So, what can be learnt? Does it allow you to establish an identity and project your personality? The criteria is important enough because now Google has also put in place the tools necessary to socialise the web.
How to Design and Program a Facebook Landing Page - Noupe Design Blog Jun 21 2011 We all know that Facebook provides a great opportunity for organizations to connect with their target audience and interact with their clients. To do this more effectively, organizations are creating custom Facebook pages to differentiate themselves and represent their brands on Facebook. But how does one go about creating one? How exactly should one be designed and what are these iFrames that are used? If you’ve been looking for answers, take a look at this screencast. How to Design and Program a Facebook Landing Page from NoupeMag on Vimeo. Please feel free to share your comments with us in the comment section below. (il)(rb) Jonathan Goldford is a partner at Wired Impact, a web design company that builds websites for nonprofits.
Does Social Media Advertising Really Work? Although I’m a social media marketer, I have to say, I rarely advise clients towards advertising. Usually there’s a lot of work to be done simply building up their social media presence towards genuine engagement, and that’s a major task in itself. A recent project I ran for one of the UK’s leading product development companies involved training them up to use Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs effectively over a period of months – and I’m pleased to say they’re now getting results (i.e. customers) naturally on the strength of their own content and engagement. Who’s to say though, that they wouldn’t have been better spending a couple of thousand pounds on LinkedIn advertising? Next month I’m going to be confronting these questions – along with 200 other marketers – at Social Media Advertising (London), but I’m already pretty sure where I sit on they key issues. Join me at Social Media Advertising (London) – 20th Sept. 2010