See How They did it: 104 Social Media Case Studies Is your boss still skeptical about social media? Are you looking for creative ideas for social media executions? Do you have a sense of what you're looking to achieve? This post is for you. Last week we talked about how to develop a case study. To summarize, the structure of a marketing case study generally is: situation or challengetime line or complicationsolution results I've been saving posts about businesses small and large for this conversation. Before we dive in though, I would like to make a strong point -- your business and the context it's in, which includes your competitors, economy, customers, etc., is not the same as any of the ones described here. There are now plenty of social media case studies out there. (1.) You have probably seen the blog posts about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. As a not so aside, the total box office domestic gross March19 to August 19, 2010 was $9.98MM. I would have not picked up this movie otherwise. (2.) (3.) (4.) (5.) The answer is yes. (6.)
Facebook Sponsored Stories Are 46% More Effective Than Standard Facebook Ads Earlier this year, Facebook introduced a new type of advertising that highlights the activity of a user's friends who have interacted with a given brand on the site. For example, if your cousin checked into an Applebee's on Facebook, the restaurant could buy an ad that highlights that fact on the right hand side of the page as you navigate the site. Not unlike Twitter's Promoted Tweets, this new ad format takes social content and turns it into a marketing message, blurring the lines between content and advertising, but doing so in a way that's still transparent to users. One Facebook advertising platform provider has found that Sponsored Story ad units have click-through rate that's 46% higher than standard Facebook ads, according to a post on Inside Facebook. TBG Digital conducted a test over the course of ten days and 2 billion ad impressions, which showed that the Sponsored Story ads performed better in terms of click-through rate and cost per click.
Guess Who's the World's Biggest Landlord? Alarming, troubling and yet so ultimately predictable is the assumption Facebook will eventually charge fees for accounts held by corporates. This is based on simple business paradigms. Leverage is now heavily weighted towards one party (Facebook) which implies the other must pay (companies). Yet those most alarming thing about this is that the corporates don't see it. Build your own property or lease? The landscape paints a picture of eager management rushing into a space with short term thinking. One can say Facebook has no intention of driving revenue from "networks management" for corporate pages; yet it's a very empty statement. Has it happened before? Lessons learned teach us to think both short and long term about 'where you see the community brand site in 2,3 and perhaps in 10 years?' Warren Buffet says it very well "build to own it." Written by Andrew Collins for the Mailman.
29 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have MIssed We're back with a cause-themed weekend roundup in anticipation of the Mashable Social Good Summit this Monday, September 20. Below you'll find a section dedicated to our recent slew of Social Good resources including apps, trends, and several surveys of modern fundraising. We've also got all the classics in our Social Media section with resources on how Digg can survive, details on fashion week, and the future of social media journalism. Tech & Mobile has iPad apps for Twitter power users, and some guides on Internet Explorer 9. Finally, Business reveals details on popular startups, how to pick a great office location, and how to hire a designer. Looking for even more social media resources? Social Good Our social good posts are brought to you this week by the Mashable Social Good Summit, being held Monday, September 20 at the 92Y in New York City. Mashable & 92Y Social Good Summit:Date: Monday, September 20, 2010Time: 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. Social Media Tech & Mobile Business
Social media Screw Ups - A History The 5 Minute Guide To Cheap Startup Advertising The following is a guest post by Rob Walling. Rob Walling has been an entrepreneur for most of his life and is author of the book Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup. He also authors the top 20 startup blog Software By Rob, that's read by tens of thousands of startup entrepreneurs every month and he owns the leading ASP.NET invoicing software on the market in addition to a handful of profitable web properties. Imagine that you've just completed version 1 of your product and you're preparing for launch. The half-life of advertising traffic is zero. Strategy #1: Try to Get Permission Seriously consider offering something in exchange for a visitor's email address. Strategy #2: Use Advertising to Test Use advertising as a testing tool rather than a long-term stream of customers. Option #1: Niche Advertising As a startup, there are hundreds of general advertising options available, and thousands more niche opportunities. Option #2: Google AdWords Option #5: Reddit
Five Companies that Fix their Story to Inspire Service Branding as a strategy means little if the customer experience is not there. If your story doesn’t align with what you do, all of the clever tactics you can come up with to follow your lofty goal will not make the cut. Unless you can fix your story by inspiring a culture of service from the inside. You instill a belief as well as make an example of behaviors to follow throughout the organization. You know that this cannot just be a grassroots effort, it needs to come all the way from the top. Which companies are doing that today? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. These companies are doing it without drama. Read more of Valeria Maltoni’s Customer Conversation Valeria Maltoni is a professional marketer with 20 years of real-world corporate experience across a broad array of mid-to-large sized companies, 10 of which online.
Facebook to Change How You Process Friend Requests On Facebook, you have two options for processing friend requests — confirm or ignore. Today, we're learning that Facebook is replacing the "Ignore" button with a "Not Now" button, that when clicked, will place the friend request in a separate section called "Hidden Requests."Inside Facebook was first to report on the new "Not Now" option, and Facebook has since confirmed that it is indeed replacing the current "Ignore" option for all members and will be rolling it out to everyone in the next few days. The "Not Now" alternation will change how you process friend requests moving forward. "If you choose ‘Not Now’, the other person will never be notified that you have hidden their request and you’ll have the option to take action on it at some time in the future if you want to. You can return to the "Hidden Requests" menu to revisit all requests you previously marked "Not Now," and can then either choose "Confirm" or "Delete Request."
Social Media By Example The Century Council is a leader in the fight against drunk driving and underage drinking and promotes responsible decision making regarding alcoholic beverages. Campaign Idea & Objectives: Ask, Listen, Learn is a creative, multimedia campaign which was designed by a team of educators and psychologists specializing in middle school-aged students. The campaign efforts are divided into 2 main parts: one which concerns the minors and the other which acts as a support for their parents. On the minors’ website, all they need to do is sign a pledge (see below) and register and they are immediately a part of the team. The Pledge As for the parents’ website, it contains information about when and how to discuss alcohol consumption, useful links, answers to important questions minors might ask as well as related materials and statistics. Campaign Buzz: Apart from the millions of views generated on Century Council’s Youtube channel, here are some actual results of the campaign: Opinion & Lessons Learned:
A Step-by-Step Guide to Advertising on Facebook Facebook Ads allow you to promote your business, attract more fans for your business Page, and drive more leads for your sales team. Are you experimenting with Facebook ads to help supplement your organic Facebook marketing efforts? Facebook Ads allow you to advertise a website or content you manage on Facebook (like a Group, Page, or Event). The ad creation and management tools are very similar to the Google AdWords interface. If you're not already testing out Facebook ads in your marketing campaigns, this step-by-step guide will tell you everything you need to know to get started. 1. To get started, visit and click “Create an Ad." First, choose your destination URL. Next, choose your ad type. For Facebook Ads: Choose your destination tab. For Sponsored Stories: Choose your story type. 2. The second step is to choose your targeting options. 3. For the last step, select a payment type and budget for your ad campaign.
The Viral Garden Social Media: The New Battleground for Politics Geoff Livingston co-founded Zoetica to focus on cause-related work, and released an award-winning book on new media Now is Gone in 2007. Control of the House of Representatives hangs in the balance of the 2010 Congressional election. A recent forecast published on The New York Times website anticipates a two-out-of-three chance for a change in power. The election has become a war, with battles being fought locally and nationally, in person, on the news, and online with social media. With new media at hand, elections become a time for innovation, and online engagement can lead to enormous influence. We've seen this with Barack Obama's presidential bid in 2008, and more recently with the British general election. I sat down with both the GOP and the Democratic social media team leads to learn more about their efforts for the upcoming election. The Weigh-In Strategies "This RNC listens to folks," said Todd Herman, chief digital strategist, Republican National Committee. Strategy Analysis Tools
Social Media Case Study: Justin Bent Rail Boots Social media marketing, if performed strategically, can do a lot of things. It can effectively engage an audience around your brand. It can empower a group of fans to spread word of you virally through social networks. It can do this with less money than you would spend on advertising to reach a similar audience. And despite what the social media purists try and tell you, social media marketing can drive sales. Case in point: Justin Boots wanted to break out of a somewhat conservative rut and become hip and trendy to the 18-to-24-year-old audience. In the summer of 2009, however, Justin had a new product to launch. Justin turned to its ad agency, Balcom, in Fort Worth, Texas, and said, “Do it cheaper.” The strategy was to talk to the the target audience where they were: online. Balcom armed the three bands with smart phones and asked them to capture behind the scenes video, interviews and snapshots of their lives as burgeoning country music stars. Yeah … half.
Adsense list of tips and tricks online My friends want to learn more about adsense, success stories, trick used by successful publisher etc, make confuse and bookmark some of them is a list that migh be useful for everyone who wanna know more about adsense, here’s the lists I found on the NET: Official Adsense Blog : Inside Adsense, google adsense official blog. Books : Tutorials : Top Paying AdSense Keywords, playing around with keywordsAdsense relevant ad’s, good tip for getting relevant ad’s from google adsense.10 Best WordPress Plugins for Google Adsense, Powerful ways to integrate Google Adsense into WordPress.COMPLETE LIST: AdSense tracking and analysis tools, bunch of tools.Google AdSense: Facts, FAQs and Tools, smashing magazine research.17 WordPress Plugins For AdSense, We’ve gathered 17 WordPress plugins which help you implement, control and overview AdSense ads on your blog.11 Little Known Killer AdSense Tips You Wish You Knew Earlier, tweaking your adsense code.