Sales and Marketing Strategy: Shout it from the rooftops? Marketing and sales, the key functions of any business to generate the revenues to keep you in operation. But when is the right time to start marketing and sales activity when you are a start-up business? This question needs a bit of thought. When you are ready is the right answer, but what on earth does that actually mean? Are those who shout their intentions from the roof-tops and let the world know that they are coming before they actually do correct? Or is it more appropriate to stay quiet working away diligently in a “black box” only targeting a selected audience to achieve your purpose. Marketing and Sales : Start early to raise awareness? Conscious of the fact that marketing and sales are different functions, for the purpose of this article, I am going to discuss the two under the umbrella of “awareness”. I had an interesting chat with a colleague today about his previous life in a major start-up in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s. There was no marketing. Photo : Suneko
9 Social Media Infographics You Must See Infographics are the latest trend, no doubt about that. Just google “infographics” and see how many results you get if you do not believe me. People love them because infographics are easy to share and help us visualize the important elements that we desire to learn. Who would read a block of text when the same information could be presented to you with a neat picture? There has been an infographic about the perfect drinks, golf, nacho cheese and just about everything else. There’s even an infographic about infographics. Here are some social media infographics that stand out from the rest and should educate you. 1. An interesting infographic by Visible which points out that men are twice as likely to check-in or share their location than women. 2. Great infographic by KISSmetrics which rounds up the main aspects to consider when purchasing a social media monitoring tool. 3. A very informative infographic by Mashable that I discovered in March that I believe hasn’t decayed in time. 4. 5.
How to Get the M.O.S.T. From Your Social Media Marketing Many small businesses and solo entrepreneurs dive into social media marketing strategies without visualizing a bigger plan. What ensues is usually far from what they had hoped. Instead of , they end up wasting time, money and passion. This problem can be easily remedied by taking time to learn from those who are already experiencing success with social media marketing and by implementing a clear, specific, actionable and measurable web marketing plan. In this article, I’ll give you . M: Market Intelligence Before you implement any social media marketing strategy , you need to . Think of it this way: Would you rather hop in a plane with clear instructions on how to get to your destination, or play it by ear? Before anything else, : Who are your target audience and competitors? How are they using social networks? Where can they be found? How are they interacting or communicating with others? What are the best ways to catch your audience’s attention and engage them? O: Objectives Sample objectives:
A Simple Way to Calculate Social Media Return on Investment Social media return on investment (ROI) is simply a measurement of efficiency. It’s a lot of things to a lot of people: “return on inactivity,” “return on innovation” and “return on engagement.” However, in a stricter sense, social media ROI is defined as a measure of the efficiency of a social media marketing campaign. This definition might sound complicated, but in reality, it’s quite simple. What Does ROI Really Mean? Let’s backtrack a bit. We’ve all heard what “ROI” stands for, but what’s less understood is the actual meaning and the importance of ROI. In the financial world, ROI is used to measure the financial efficiency of an investment. ROI = (return – investment) / investment %. Increase social media ROI. This means that if you increase your return while keeping your investment the same, then you increase your ROI. Because the ROI formula uses only two inputs – the return and the investment – the ROI formula is an easy way to measure and compare marketing campaigns. Simple, right?
Twitter Search Gets a Little More Powerful We missed this last week when ReadWriteWeb reported it, but maybe you did, too. So here's something we've just discovered. A small but very handy change at Twitter's search engine, search.twitter.com, means it now peeks inside the expanded versions of web addresses shortened using services like bit.ly and TinyURL. The implications for you? Searching using your site's domain as a keyword (e.g. Handy, no? Link to original post Connect: Authored by: Rob Cottingham Rob is a founder of Social Signal, a social media strategy firm in Vancouver, Canada. See complete profile
Facebook Graph Search für alle Graph Search bald bei allen Nutzern aktiviert Facebook wird seine Suchfunktion Graph Search nun für alle Nutzer, die US-Amerikanisch als Sprache eingestellt haben, aktivieren. Das teilte der Konzern am Montag im Firmenblog mit. Innerhalb der nächsten Wochen solle sich demnach die persönliche Ansicht entsprechend updaten. Das gibt zum einen der Suchspalte am oberen Rand einen dominanteren Platz. Konzernchef Mark Zuckerberg hatte bei der Vorstellung der Neuerung im Januar diesen Jahres angekündigt, diese solle künftig Fragen wie „Welche Fernsehserien und Restaurants gefallen meinen Freunden? Lieblingsgetränk und sexuelle Präferenz korrelieren Als einer der ersten konnte der Blogger @tomscott zu Jahresbeginn die Beta-Version von Graph Search testen. Welche Daten sind allgemein sichtbar? Laut Konzernangaben schafft die Suchmaschine explizit keine neuen Zugänge zu Privatem. Bild: Bestimmte Rechte vorbehalten von Kris Krug Rating: 4.8/5 (5 votes cast)
7 Common Social Media Marketing Problems and Their Solutions This post is part 2 on Social Media Marketing Best Practices from IMS Minneapolis. The first post featured Brad Smith from Best Buy who offered insights into their social media principles, guidelines and learnings. This post includes liveblog notes from the presentation given by Adam Singer of TopRank Online Marketing. Adam opened up noting that according to a research study by Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law, 14% of executives are unsure of social media, yet 70% expect to spend more. That set the stage for some of the common obstacles and barriers to social media adoption which he focused on in: 7 Common Social Media Problems and their Solutions. 1. Many companies chase social media tactics with no idea about the who, what, when and where of the social web. 2. As companies develop their social media programs, responsibilities and resources need to be allocated and that leads to accountability and “ownership”. 3. Companies need to be consistent with their social participation. 4.
Social Media ROI Application | Klurig Analytics Social Media ROI Tools Internet Social Media Marketing Dag Holmboe Boston Massachusetts Download the lite version of the ROI application here.Calculate the value of your twitter campaign and twitter followers here.Social Media ROI explained in video here. Social Media Marketers face pressure from outside clients and internal management to provide data on the return on their Social Media Marketing investments. In the past, the return has been measured in web metrics (page views, users, click-throughs) but this is no longer good enough. Today, there is a need to see the return in dollars and cents, and to calculate the Social Media ROI (see Social Media ROI video). It is clear that Social Media marketers need better tools to estimate, monitor and maximize the return on their Social Media marketing investments. To meet this requirement, we are introducing a Social Media ROI application that not only gives you the value of your Social Media campaign in dollars amounts; furthermore the application helps you maximize the value of your campaign. Using monthly web 1. Like this:
SmartBlog on Social Media We know two things about millennials: They will soon have record-breaking purchasing power, and they spend tons of time with content created by their peers, otherwise known as UGC (user-generated content). What we didn’t know was how much time they spend with UGC and how they feel about it. That is, until now. In January, Ipsos MediaCT, Crowdtap and the Social Media Advertising Consortium partnered to survey 839 millennial (18 to 36 years old) men and women. The study explored millennials’ media consumption habits, how they perceive information from various sources and how these same media sources impact purchasing decisions. Here are 5 key data points that might surprise you: {*style:<b>*}1) They spend mind-blowing amounts of time with media.