Social Business Archives

What’s the Difference Between Paid, Owned and Earned Media?

October 22, 2013/by Corey Padveen

We often hear about paid, owned and earned media, but what is the difference between media types and which one is best, if any?

There is a lot of discussion around paid, owned and earned media, but not everyone knows or understands the difference between media types or which one generates the greatest degree of Social Equity for a brand. While every brand will find that one of these media types may be better than others for achieving certain goals, there are qualities to earned media that far outweigh those to paid and owned.

Paid Media

Wherever you are investing resources in order to have your brand featured – from a multimillion dollar Super Bowl ad to a five dollar ad campaigns on Facebook – you are using paid media.

There are a few great things about paid media. For one, the results are very easily measurable. In order for media companies to charge brands for advertising space, they must provide them with clear metrics of performance and reach. While the response depends on your content, you know how broad of an audience you can reach. Second, the results are more or less immediate.

When you are trying to break into a noisy market, waiting for organic traffic to build can take some time. When you pay to place your ad in front of hundreds, thousands or even millions of potential clients, you can rest assured that your presence in a market will be felt much faster than if you wait for that presence to be felt organically.

While paid media was once the end all be all of marketing and advertising, the social evolution of markets has led to a few issues resulting from the use of paid media. For one, it is not entirely credible. When people see a brand paying for ad space, they tend to ignore it compared to, say, a recommendation. Paid media has also become a very loud marketplace, and with that comes increased expense to make an impact.

Owned Media

Do you have a corporate website? Are you publishing content on a blog or branded social channels? These are forms of owned media. Your brand holds all the cards.

Your owned media are not only going to be a source for sharing original, branded content, but these media will be hubs in which your leads and customers will congregate. Owned media are great spaces in which you can engage your audience and, ultimately, work to generate new clients. These are also cost-efficient, since all expenses are under your control. There are a few downsides, however, to owned media.

As I mentioned above, it is going to be a lot harder and take quite a bit longer for your audience to find you when they you are looking to generate organic traffic. There is also the same issue as with paid media in that people tend not to trust the word of a company over a friend, relative, or former customer. And that brings us to earned media.

Earned Media

Considering the increasingly social nature of the web, earned media is going to be the most fruitful for a brand. Forrester Research defines earned media very simply: “When customers become the brand.” Customer loyalty is going to be your greatest source of growth. If you are able to create brand advocates that speak on behalf of your brand, you will see your business increase dramatically.

Today, 91% of people trust the recommendations of their friends and family. This is earned media. Independent blog articles that talk about your brand positively are going to hold much more weight for prospective buyers than a piece of paid advertising that you are using to generate business.

Of course, there are some risks associated with earned media. You do not have any control over the content, and it may not be entirely accurate. There can also be negative earned media, which is never good. (Although this does give your brand an opportunity to showcase how much you care.) And while it might be hard to measure the exact returns earned media provides, you can rest assured that they are there in some way or another.

Now that you understand the difference between media types, is there one you think is most valuable? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

8 Annoying Things Brands Do on Twitter

October 21, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Twitter is a great platform for communicating with your audience, but try to avoid these annoying things brands do on Twitter!

Twitter is a pseudo-broadcast medium – that means that on Twitter, more so than most networks, we can drive traffic to landing pages and soft sell our product. That said, there are still a few annoying things brands do on Twitter, and you should avoid them at all costs.

Stagnant Automation

A lot of individuals and brands automate the messages they send out from their Twitter accounts – it’s not a secret, and if it is done properly, it is not a bad strategy. That said, if you are simply pumping out links and calls-to-action, and nothing of substance, you are going to lose the attention of your followers (and your followers themselves).

Ignore Replies

It is a lot of fun to see that someone has sent you a message. Imagine how great it would feel to have an ongoing conversation! A lot of brands make the mistake of ignoring their followers when a reply is sent. Engage!

Endless Links

Again, Twitter is a pseudo-broadcast medium. That does not mean that you should be sharing nothing but links to your followers. They want something with substance. Show your followers why they should keep following you with great content.

Mystery

What’s worse than always including a link with your posts? Posting nothing but links! For those that do not understand how Twitter works, let’s all get on the same page: nothing says spam like a link with no other content. Tell people what they are clicking through to!

ALL CAPS

Even the heading above is annoying. Seeing a tweet pop up written in all caps might do the job of grabbing my attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Grab attention with brief, enticing messages, not loud, annoying caps.

Retweets Only

There are a lot of people out there who share great content on an ongoing basis, and it might seem like a good idea to retweet that content to show people what you find interesting. But this strategy should be included with your original content. Let the world know what you think. Then throw some great retweets in there as well.

Rapid Fire

Have you ever found yourself sitting on Twitter, watching the tweets go by when all of a sudden your stream is flooded by a dozen tweets from the same account? Few things irk people more than this ‘rapid fire’ style of tweeting. Not only does it annoy your followers, it also hurts your brand. A tweet does not have a very long shelf life. If you expect your content to get any exposure, sending it all out at once is not going to be your best bet.

Spellign Erorrs

If there is one thing that hurts your image, it is spelling and grammar errors in your tweets. Proofread your content. It is only 140 characters. There is really no justifiable excuse as to why your tweets have these errors in them. It simply looks lazy.

Can you think of any other annoying things brands do on Twitter? Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!

The 5 Most Important Social Media Metrics

October 18, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What are the most important social media metrics you need to measure in order to analyze the success of your social media marketing?

There is plenty that we can measure when it comes to our social media marketing efforts. It is crucial to know what the most important social media metrics are when measuring the success of your campaigns.

While there are a lot of important social media metrics, there are five listed below that are not only the most pertinent, but the most widely applicable. Every one of these metrics can be measured on every network, regardless of campaign you are running.

Campaign Reach

You want to know how many eyes landed on your content. If a tweet falls in the social media forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it still have an impact? Monitoring how far your content reaches is going to be important for a few reasons (some of which are discussed below). First, you want to know what types of content resonate with your audience. Second, you should be paying attention to the audience with whom it resonates.

The concept of Responsive Branding is geared towards monitoring your most active demographics and creating campaigns that appeal to them. Keeping an eye on your campaign’s reach – either using free insights on your network, effective tools or Google Analytics – is going to be key to doing that.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Links are among the most popular bits of content we share. We want to know that people are clicking on them and where we are seeing the most clicks.

Use a link shortening service, like Hootsuite or Bitly in order to monitor the click-throughs on your content. The great thing about these shorteners is that every click is recorded, and you can see trends, where clicks are originating from and modify your strategies accordingly. Knowing where and when people are clicking makes it a lot easier to cut out the unnecessary parts of your program. (I refer you, again, to the ‘tweet falling in a forest’ metaphor above.)

Content Engagement

This is more about optimizing your content strategy and less about the popular yet somewhat vague notion of measuring ‘engagement’. After all, we hear about monitoring and measuring your engagement rates all the time, but what does that really mean? What is a ‘good’ engagement rate? Generalizing the concept will mean some brands, that are doing an excellent job at achieving their own goals, are deemed to be failing when it comes to engagement. Monitoring your engagement on social platforms has much more to do with your content strategy than anything else.

Of course, you are going to want to engage with your audience on every one of your channels. People are talking and you should be talking back. But more important than that, you should be listening. Listen to both what they are saying and why. Why are they sharing their input on one piece of content over another? Why does one video have double the views as your others? Look at engagement as a guide in optimizing your content strategy and it will be a much more valuable metric.

Social Conversion

This is where we start to focus on some of more important social media metrics for economic returns. When people are clicking through to the landing page of your links on social channels, are they converting? What networks are driving the most conversion?

By setting up goals (funnels) in Google Analytics or installing Conversion Tracking on a network like Facebook, you will be able to see exactly where people are coming from, where they are going and what they are doing when they get to your website. Ultimately, the idea is to ensure that people convert in some way or another. This can be by downloading a white paper, registering for an event, signing up on the newsletter, or making a purchase. The important thing is that you want to see what actions are being taken in order to eliminate the waste from your social media program and, once again, optimize your strategy in order to only promote the most successful content and links to the channels that drive the highest returns.

Brand Perception

What is being said about your brand on social media? Reputation management is a crucial part of your overall social marketing strategy. People are talking all over the world. They might be talking to your brand or simply talking about your brand, but you want to have your ear to the (social) ground in order to know what they are saying and how your brand is being perceived.

You can use tools like Mention or Radian6, or simply monitor your brand mentions on Twitter. The idea, however, is to know what people are saying in order to avoid a misperception about your brand leading to your downfall.

There are a lot of important social media metrics, but these five need to be top of mind whenever you are putting together a campaign. They are going to tell you what is working and help you optimize your campaigns in order to not only drive brand awareness, but increase sales and perceived reputation of your brand by your fans.

What are some other important social media metrics? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

The Best New Features on Facebook Insights

October 17, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There are some great new features on Facebook Insights that should get marketers excited.

Facebook has done a lot in the past few months in order to ramp up their Insights feature. Remember the ‘People Talking About This’ feature on Facebook? No more! Some of the new features on Facebook Insights provide marketers with some real, actionable data, and we have outlined the highlights of these new features below.

Where are people coming from?

The old Facebook Insights gave you a very basic overview of where some of your most recent activity was coming from. Now, one of the great features on Facebook Insights lets you see exactly when people arrived at your Facebook page, and how they got there.

What is working with your content strategy?

Your content strategy is going to be among the most important features of your bigger social marketing strategy. That said, if you can’t measure how your content strategy is performing, it is going to be very hard to know what is working and what is not.

Among the best new features on Facebook Insights is the evaluation of your content by the system. See what types of content reach the largest audience, what drives engagement and even when your audience is online!

What time period are you measuring?

Let’s not sugarcoat it: the old Facebook Insights were very confusing! There was not much clarity with what you were able to measure, and you simply had to hope that you were looking at the right data when making an executive decision.

A great new feature is the ability to pick a timeframe in which you want to see your data. An easy-to-use slider lets you select the dates you want to monitor, and you can simply look at posts, reach and engagement in that period of time. This specificity is much needed to know how campaigns performed and what needs to be nixed or modified in the future.

There is a lot more to love when it comes to the new features on Facebook Insights, and every marketer is strongly encouraged to take a look at them. While Facebook might not be your primary network for traffic or business, a billion people can’t be wrong. Now, it is nice to know that there are Insights available to businesses to match the power that the network has on its surface.

What is/are your favorite feature/features with the new Facebook Insights? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

4 Ways to Reach a Big Audience Fast

October 16, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What can you do to reach a big audience very quickly through the strategic use of social media?

With so much happening on social channels, it can often seem difficult to grow your fan base and reach a big audience in a short time frame. In order to really capitalize on all that social media has to offer and reach a big audience, there are a few tips you might want to consider.

Below are four easy ways to reach a big audience very quickly through the strategic use of your social channels.

Your Employees are Your Best Brand Advocates

Don’t let the fact that they work at your company fool you into thinking they can’t be an integral part of your audience. Your brand’s employees have a ton to offer when it comes to reaching a broader audience.

For any company, the first fans and followers should be the brand’s employees. By sharing your content to their networks, you immediately find yourself with a larger reach than if you are trying to simply penetrate new markets without an established fan base.

Share Content Aggressively

When trying to figure out a content strategy and schedule, you are going to want to share as much of your original content as possible, and often enough that anyone and everyone gets a chance to see it.

While you might adjust your content strategy once you have determined where your most engaged audience is and when they are at their most engaged, you won’t be able to figure that out until you have shared your content with everyone. This is also going to be a great way to increase your content’s exposure and acquire new, genuine fans.

Promote Your Best Content

To truly succeed with your social marketing strategy, you are going to need to make an investment. Of course, there is the investment of time, but for real, measurable results in a short timeframe, you are going to need to expand that investment into sponsored ads and stories on your different networks.

As you begin to share content, see what is generating higher click-through rates and engagement than other bits of content and invest a little in promoting these stories to wider audiences. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and now even Pinterest make it possible to promote ads for a very low cost. You can even track your ROI on Facebook using Conversion Tracking. Investing in your social media is a must if you want to reach a big audience in a short period of time.

Answer Questions

Before you begin sharing content, it might be beneficial to do some research and determine what your target audience is talking about. Determine what questions are being asked in your industry and devise a content strategy that answers those questions.

People are inclined to engage with content that they deem helpful, and they are even more likely to share it with their friends and fans. Consider this when determining how your plan on reaching a large audience on social media.

What other tactics can you think of to reach a big audience fast on social platforms? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

5 Original Ways to Engage Your Fans and Followers

October 15, 2013/by Corey Padveen

You should always aim to engage your fans on social channels, but it is much more fun to do it in a creative way!

One of the most important goals of your brand on social media should be to engage your fans and followers. While this is a great quality for any brand to have, it is made a lot better when it is done in a creative way! Engagement, remember, is not just about responding to comments left by your fans; engagement is often about starting the conversation.

Below is a quick set of new, fun ways to engage your fans and followers on social media that can make the customer experience much more enjoyable!

Devise a Weekly Segment

Consistency is key on social media. Not only does it remind your fans that you are there and help keep your brand top of mind, but it can also be a great way to increase your engagement rates.

Consider having a weekly segment wherein you encourage fans to tune in to see what each week’s instalment is. For example, on the t2 Facebook page, we regularly end each week with a #DogWeekend picture to usher in the end of the work week!

Ask a Question

Not only do people love answering questions, they also help provide you with some great insights into the tastes and preferences of your audience. Think of the answers your fans give as small responses to a poll you put out.

“Caption This!”

The “Caption This” post is a great one for Facebook engagement. These posts regularly lead to a ton of engagement and can be a lot of fun for both your fans and your brand.

Compare and Share

The ‘Like’ for A and ‘Share’ for B approach can be a good one for two reasons. First, it once again can generate a lot of engagement with the right content. Second, like the questions, it can give you some valuable insights into what your fans and followers like and in which direction your branding and marketing initiatives should go.

Jump Into Conversation

It is always fun for a brand to see comments start to fill up on a social network. The mistake that a lot of brands make, however, is not jumping in there with their fans.

Involve yourself in the conversation and help it along. Nobody likes to have a comment go unnoticed – whether it is by other fans or the brand itself. By engaging with your fans’ comments, you not only help them feel good about leaving the comment, but you encourage them and others to continue engaging with your brand in the future.

These are just a few great ways to engage fans without a “hard sell”. Try some of these out and see what works for your brand!

Tell us what you do to engage your fans and followers in the comments below or on Twitter!

4 Ways to Leverage Big Data

October 14, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Data derived from social platforms can be highly valuable if you know how to leverage big data for the right campaigns.

Big data is one of the most talked about concepts of the era, and for good reason. If your brand knows how to effectively leverage big data to optimize campaigns and generate results, you could be looking at unprecedented growth.

Below are four great ways to leverage big data and some examples of campaigns you can execute taking these data into account.

Implement Responsive Branding

Social platforms offer brands a unique insight that no other marketing channel has ever offered. For the first time, your audience is coming to you and telling you what they want and how they want it delivered. If you are properly monitoring your audience’s tastes and preferences, you can implement Responsive Branding initiatives that leverage big data in order to target a specific group according to what they like and when they are online.

Say, for example, that you sell jewelry. After you mine for data, you find out that your target audience is most active early in the morning. Imagine taking this information, and targeting this audience when you know they are most engaged – wouldn’t that make the most sense?

Optimize Search Campaigns

When it comes to search-driven traffic, the majority of our audience is going to come from organic results. That’s a well-known fact. That said, there is still a strong part of our audience that can be influenced by ads online. Imagine if you had more insights into what that audience was.

For SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns, you can easily leverage big data in order to narrow your scope and drive a higher click-through rate (CTR). On Google, anything above 1% is considered a strong CTR. Imagine knowing exactly what demographics like to click on your ads and targeting only that group. You may not see as many impressions, but rest assured your CTR will soar!

Increase Internal Efficiency

Marketing patriarch John Wanamaker said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” That is no longer the case with big data.

Think outside just your marketing and advertising departments. You know where to allocate budgets and how much it costs departments to run. Now, when you look at data to see an even more in-depth analysis of where your dollars are best spent (i.e. what dollars provide you with the highest return on investment) you can eliminate waste from your budget and ensure that your spending – in marketing and elsewhere – is completely optimized.

Engage in Real-Time Marketing

Similar to Responsive Branding, real-time marketing is the concept of engaging with your audience while they are talking and capitalizing on events as they are happening. Monitoring your data in real time is a difficult task. The payoffs, however, can be great. First-mover advantage has never been more valuable than in the online world. By engaging in real-time marketing, you stand to benefit greatly as a result of your leveraging of big data.

These are just a few of the applications of big data. Find out about more by contacting t2 today.

How do you leverage big data? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How to Track ROI on Facebook in 3 Easy Steps

October 11, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Tracking ROI on Facebook and other networks is always among the top concerns for marketers. This is one great way to track ROI on Facebook.

Despite all of the methods that exist to measure ROI on Facebook – some more complicated than others – there are still marketers and executives that refuse to acknowledge that it can be done! One great way to measure ROI on Facebook is with Facebook’s easy-to-use Conversion Tracking. Below is a step-by-step set of instructions on how to create goals on the network and measure ROI on Facebook.

Step 1: Go To Your Ads Manager (or Power Editor)

This is about as simple as steps get. Get started by going to either your Ads Manager and clicking on “Manage Your Ads” (the green button on the right of the header image) or the Power Editor (depending on how familiar you are with Facebook advertising).

Step 2: Set Up a Conversion Tracking Pixel

The next thing you are going to need to do is create a conversion tracking pixel. This is a small piece of code that you are going to place on your conversion page (this could be a checkout page, a download page, form submission, etc.).

First, go to your Conversion tracking in your designated ads platform.

Then you are going to click on the green “Create Conversion Pixel” button on the right hand side where you will see this box pop up:

Fill it out with the name of your goal (in this case, we are creating a goal called “View Blog”) and what category that goal falls into. Above, we have selected Key Page Views (essentially, the conversion is made when a user views a specific page) but other categories include Checkouts, Registrations, Leads, Adds to Cart and Other Website Conversions.

Now once you click “Create Pixel” you are going to see a small snippet of code pop up. You do not need to know any complex degree of HTML to work with this. In the code, you’ll see a line that allows to add a value to this conversion (the line with the red arrow next to it below). It is here that you can denote how much this conversion is worth.

Say, for example, you are sending people to a contact form for more information, and you have determined based on some fancy accounting work that any lead that fills out the form is worth $5.00. So, you would change this line to read five dollars (the currency is in the line just below it) and save the code.

Step 3: Load the Pixel Onto Your Conversion Page

Now comes the part where you might need the help of your webmaster or code-savvy friend.

Copy the code you have generated and place it in the header of your conversion page (detailed in the instructions before the code, above). Now, when people have clicked on your ads and found themselves at your website, Facebook will register that they have taken action (a conversion) based on when they land on that page with the conversion pixel uploaded.

And there you have it. Three simple steps to help you measure direct ROI from Facebook.

What other ways do you measure ROI on Facebook? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Find out more about measuring your ROI on Facebook with our Consulting Services here.

The Numbers Behind Twitter [INFOGRAPHIC]

October 10, 2013/by Corey Padveen

The numbers in this infographic help explain why Twitter’s IPO is such big news.

Last week, the biggest news to come out of the world of social media was undoubtedly that Twitter announced its IPO. The microblogging platform is looking to raise $1 billion, and the numbers behind Twitter help justify that price tag. One of our loyal blog subscribers shared this infographic with us.

For a long time, a certain stigma has been associated with Twitter by those that did not (and do not want to) understand it. It was seen as a hub for celebrities to tell the world what they were eating, and devoted fans to reach out to them. Anyone familiar with the network knows that this is not the case.

The numbers behind Twitter, showcased in the infographic below, explain why the network is worth every penny that it is looking to get. There are over two billion searches on Twitter every day. On Thursdays, the popular #ThrowBackThursday hashtag has the potential to reach over 30 million users. A proper Twitter strategy can mean major reach for the right brands.

With the new advertising features Twitter has rolled out, business applications are certainly growing.

Take a look at the infographic below and let us know which fact or figure you find most interesting. Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Source: The Numbers Behind Twitter

4 Social Media Quotes and Responses to Them

October 9, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Below are some popular social media quotes and my reactions and responses to them.

Like any popular social phenomenon, social media has spawned a number of great minds to share their words of wisdom with tweet-appropriate brevity. Below are four social media quotes from industry leaders and observers and my reactions, interpretations or responses to them.

“Social media has infected the world with a sickening virus called vanity.” -Kellie Elmore

Yes – it’s true that social has further engrossed the ego of the already self-absorbed Generation Y (among others). But I can’t agree with the fact that vanity is a product of social media.

Vanity has long been in existence. Consider The Portrait of Dorian Gray when considering vanity. Surely, Oscar Wilde was not all that active on Twitter. What social media has done, however, is provided the world with a self-publishing tool. The results are often going to be self-absorption. But is that always such a terrible thing?

People can now showcase talents, reach broad audiences and education is a tweet away. Social media has also shrunk the business world so significantly, that the largest brands in the world can now devote seemingly undivided attention to customers in need.

“Distracted from distraction by distraction.” -T.S. Eliot

Fine, so T.S. Eliot wasn’t talking about StumbleUpon when he wrote this. But can you think of a more fitting reference?

As noted above, the world is a much smaller place thanks in large part to the advent of social media. That does not mean, however, that there is any less activity taking place within it. Take a minute to research an article online, and you find yourself having devoted three hours to becoming the world’s leading expert on sounds foxes make.

Though we can easily waste days sifting through the endless sea of content shared to social channels, I like to think of it as the world’s most comprehensive library. Every article, page, blog or video offers something we have not seen before. (Or, in some cases, something we have seen many, many times before and just need to see again.)

“You are what you share.” -Charles Leadbeater

Few things are truer than this when it comes to social media. A perfect example of this ringing true is the polarity the world witnessed as a result of Facebook status updates reflecting political preferences during the last American election.

Reputation management, Social Care and content strategies are all infinitely more important than ever before when it comes to social media. One misstep could land you in water hot enough to burn away all the hard work you have put into building your brand. Companies and individuals need to remember that they are participating in conversations on a megaphone, and everyone can hear them.