Social Media for Business Archives

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.

4 Tips for Handling Social Care on Twitter

October 8, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social Care on Twitter is becoming increasingly popular with brands of all sizes.

What exactly is Social Care on Twitter? Today, one-third of online adults prefer to engage with brands through new media – like Twitter or a live chat service – than through conventional forms of customer service – like the phone, or even email. People want their issues addressed right away. The practice of helping customers on these networks is called “Social Care”.

By providing Social Care on Twitter, for example, your brand is offering an added value that many competitors may not yet offer. This is still an emerging trend, and your brand can be among the first to reap the benefits!

Let’s go through 4 helpful tips when it comes to offering Social Care on Twitter.

Have a Plan in Place

The most important thing you are going to need to do is have a plan in place for dealing with customer service issues as they come up. Whether it is a technical issues (maybe you provide a software, or a physical product) or a dissatisfied customer, you need to have procedures in place to address these issues in real time.

Remember, everything you share on Twitter is public (with the exception of Direct Messages) so make sure that you know exactly what you want to share, how you want to share it and the image you would like to portray for your brand, because these conversations will be seen by a potentially large audience.

Address Issues Immediately

When it comes to customer service, surveys show that customers want their issues completely resolved within 60 minutes. They want their issues addressed by a brand within five minutes of bringing them up. Letting complaints, questions or comments sit in the socialsphere and gestate is worse than having the comment up there to begin with.

What kind of image is portrayed of your company when you let your customers’ issues go unaddressed, for the whole world to see what kind of service you offer? Make sure you are handling these issues in real time. After all, that’s why people are reaching out on these media.

Take Twitter Seriously

If you plan on offering Social Care on Twitter, you have to be prepared to take it seriously. The same way you would have a team in place to deal with customer service calls, you need to have a designated individual or team for handling Social Care on Twitter.

People expect the same service, if not better service on Twitter than they do from any conventional form of customer service. Just because it is Twitter, does not mean it is a free pass.

Take Advantage of Tools

The bigger the brand, the heavier the volume of customers reaching out. It can be overwhelming to watch a stream fill up with queries and complaints. You might find it hard to address every one. Take advantage of some of the tools that exist to help with organizing your Social Care on Twitter.

Look into ZenDesk, which works with HootSuite, or Salesforce Desk to help you manage your Social Care. You’ll find it a lot easier to work these into your Social Care strategy than to run the whole thing on Twitter alone. Remember the tip above, you need to take Social Care on Twitter seriously.

Implement these tips into your Social Care strategy and you’ll see that customers love a caring brand! Tell us how you use Social Care on Twitter in the comments below or on Twitter!

Feel free to reach out to t2 to find out how we can help you with your Social Care strategy!

5 Questions to Determine if You Should Outsource Social Media

October 7, 2013/by Corey Padveen

When deciding whether or not to outsource social media, there are a few questions you need to answer first.

There is always a lot of debate over whether or not brands should outsource social media. For some brands, running a program internally is going to be the right call. Others might benefit from having an outside firm run the program for them.

In order to figure out if your brand should outsource social social media, you are going to need to answer five questions.

What will go into your social media program?

The first thing you need to determine is exactly what you are going to include in your social media program. For some, a blog is going to be where it all starts and ends. (Although for best results, some social sharing is encouraged.) For others, a profile on every existing network will be created.

You need to know what you plan on doing and where you plan on doing it.

What will your goals and objectives look like?

Whether you outsource your program or you run it internally, you need to have a clear set of goals and objectives that you work towards achieving. Setting your goals is going to make the decision to outsource much clearer. When you know what you want to accomplish, you know if it would be possible to let someone else handle the program.

How long will it take?

Social media is not a 5-minutes-a-day endeavor. Either you, a team member or an firm needs to be seriously committed to sharing content, engaging with fans and followers, monitoring data and modifying programs in order for your social media program to pay off. Figure out how many hours you will need to devote to your social media program and then…

What is your time worth?

This is an answer that varies from business to business. For some, it is easy to determine. If you are a professional, you probably charge by the hour. If you manage your own social media and you bill $200 per hour, 3 hours a day to manage your program costs you $600. You might hire someone internally at a much lower hourly rate but essentially this question needs to be answered in terms of opportunity cost.

You need to weigh this against the cost of an outside firm running a program for you and working towards the same goals. Maybe you find that your return on the three hours above is $500, while the outside firms generates a daily return of $250. Then, it probably makes sense to run the program internally. Before making this call, however, you need to answer this questions with some good-old-fashioned math.

Can you collaborate?

Some people like to micro manage. It’s not for everyone, but for some people, it is how they like things to run. To each their own. If this is the case, you might want to avoid including anyone, outside firms included, in the management of your social media program. It simply won’t work. There needs to be collaboration.

Answer these questions and figure out what is going to work for you. Maybe you want to outsource your entire program and let a team of professionals handle everything. Maybe you want to keep everything in-house and do it all yourself. Maybe you want to outsource some parts of it and run other aspects, like Social Care, internally. Answer these questions before making the call.

Have you outsourced your social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

To find out more about the consulting services offered by t2, click here.

5 Biggest Social Media Concerns for Executives

October 3, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There are five notable social media concerns that executives deal with when deciding whether or not adopting the concept of social business is the right move.

If you ask any marketer what hurdles they face when it comes to implementing social business strategies, many will tell you that there are social media concerns faced by management that are stopping them from executing efficient programs.

Below are five of the main concerns executives have when it comes to social media. Much of the information has been adapted from the MIT Sloan and Deloitte social business survey from 2013.

There is No Strategy

This is among the biggest concerns that executives are faced with. The burden of a carefully laid out strategy weighs heavily on any executive decision. Marketers need to be aware of this and need to have a clear strategy in place when presenting options to an executive committee.

For the marketer, there can be little success found with social media without a properly laid out, goal-oriented social business strategy. Keep that in mind and having something concrete put together before presenting the idea to an executive.

There is No Time

This is a big one. Efficiency is at the root of a successful business, and knowledge is at the heart of efficiency. For an executive that does not fully understand social business, they see it as more than a campaign or a program, but a learning curve that they will need to familiarize themselves with.

Focus on scheduling in order to appeal to this social media concern. If an executive sees that there in fact is time, they will be much more receptive to the idea of adopting a program.

There is No Proof

For anyone who is familiar with social business and has been following it for long enough, this one hurts. There is a ton of proof. And there are so many numbers that show it. Show up with examples of how a campaign similar to yours or in a similar industry has performed in order to ease this concern.

There is No Security

Whether it is the physical security of the networks that concerns executives or the security of brand integrity on social networks, security is going to be an issue seen often. Help reassure executives by showcasing how branding efforts are kept intact and that social networks can be highly secure when fully understood and configured.

There is No Room

There are a lot of priorities competing for the attention of your brand’s executives. Social media – a new venture – might not meet the criteria in the executive’s eyes. You need to make the case for why social business is a must and that there needs to be room. It needs to be conveyed that social is a top priority in any industry.

How do you deal with these social media concerns? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Fun Facts from the 2014 B2B Content Marketing Report

October 2, 2013/by Corey Padveen

These facts and figures from the 2014 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America Report showcase why content marketing is crucial – particularly when it comes to B2B.

For the fourth straight year, MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute have released this B2B content marketing report and the results are quite impressive.

Once again, the numbers have increased year-over-year and B2B content marketing is becoming both more widely used and more structured. Below are a few of the key findings when it comes to B2B content marketing and some analyses of these findings.

93% of B2B marketers are using content marketing

There’s not much to analyze when it comes to this stat. Long story short, if you are not engaged in content marketing in a B2B company, you should be.

66% of B2B marketers with a ‘Most Effective’ content marketing rating have a content strategy

A content strategy is going to be your best friend when it comes to content marketing. Every brand’s strategy may differ; you are going to need to test content across every channel to see what works best. At the end of the day, however, there needs to be a clear strategy in place in order to measure the effectiveness and success that your content marketing drives.

‘Less Effective’ marketers do not have a designated content marketing point person

86% of ‘Most Effective’ content marketing companies have one individual overseeing nothing by the brand’s content marketing initiatives. By contrast, only 46% of ‘Less Effective’ companies have a point person when it comes to this. This ties in closely with the need to have a strategy in place. If you are going to take your content marketing seriously, then do just that. Have a strategy and department (one or several people) devoted to making the program successful.

Social media is a key area of focus

To all those naysayers who speak out against the use of social media when it comes to B2B brands, the numbers are in and all signs point to the contrary. 87% of B2B content marketing programs use social media as a means of sharing content to broader audiences and driving results from a strategy. In fact, sharing content on social networks is the most widely used tactic when it comes to content marketing.

55% or more of B2B marketers are using five of the main social networks

91% use LinkedIn, 85% use Twitter, 81% use Facebook, 73% use YouTube and 55% use Google+. More importantly, LinkedIn is seen as the most important network with YouTube ranking second in terms of importance (not use).

‘Most Effective’ brands are using content marketing for revenue-generating goals

While Brand Awareness tops the charts (82%) for the most common goal among marketers, Lead Generation comes in second at 74% followed closely by Customer Acquisition at 71%.

Content marketing is not done growing

58% of B2B marketers plan on increasing their involvement and budgets for content marketing in the next twelve months. Compare that to only 1% of marketers who plan on decreasing their budgets.

There is a lot more where that came from in this year’s report, so take a look.

Let us know what you think is most significant finding! Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

What is a Social Business Audit?

October 1, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What is a social business audit and why is it crucial that any company have one?

Every day we hear about campaigns that incorporate social media taking off and driving new business for brands in all industries. Yet, so many companies still see their campaigns and initiatives fall flat when it comes to social media. In addition to knowing which networks are going to be best for your goals, it is important to take a step back and have a look at the program as a whole, completely objectively, to see what is going right, and where you might be going wrong. That’s what a social business audit is all about.

A social business audit evaluates every aspect of your social media strategy from top to bottom in order to get a clear picture of the working elements, the features that need tweaking and, most important, what aspects might be missing.

Below are five questions that should be among those asked when conducting an efficient social business audit.

Am I achieving my goals?

Before answering this question, take another step even further back; did you have a clear set of goals and objectives laid out when you decided to get started on social media? If not, you need to start from scratch. If so, are your efforts on social media working to achieve these goals? Find out how you are performing.

This may seem like a simple step, but a lot of brands tend to forget why they are active on social media to begin with. It is crucial that you keep your goals in mind from start to finish.

Is my business on the right networks?

Look at the activity your brand is generating on the networks where it is active. Are you in the right place? Not every brand needs to have a presence on every network. Some brands may benefit more from a Twitter campaign than one on Facebook, or maybe LinkedIn and YouTube should be included among your channels, among others.

There will be a unique mix that makes up a specific brand’s social business strategy. Take a step back and see if you might benefit from shutting down an account or two and maybe focusing your efforts elsewhere.

Am I sharing the right content?

Is you audience maintaining a conversation with your brand on social networks? Are you generating clicks through to landing pages and content from social? These are just a couple of the indicators you should be paying attention to when it comes to determining if you are sharing the right content to your networks. Again, every audience is going to react differently to different types of content. Find out what works best for you and modify your strategy accordingly.

Can I begin expanding my program?

To answer this question, you need to make sure that the three questions above have already been answered – positively. As your success grows – both in terms of your social media growth and your business growth – your social presence and activity will likely expand as well. Your profiles on social networks are extensions of your brand. They need to keep up appearances. As you begin achieving your goals, you need to start considering how you would like to expand into new markets and venture to achieve new goals.

Am I missing anything?

This is an ongoing question that can only be answered through education. You need to keep up-to-date with the changes and breakthroughs that are being announced every day in the world of social media. Social business is an ever-evolving landscape. You need to ensure that you are caught up on everything that is taking place in order to continue finding success with your social business and marketing efforts. Put aside 30 minutes or an hour each day to catch up on your favorite reference materials to find out what’s new and fresh.

Have you conducted a social business audit? You can always reach out to t2 to conduct a social business audit for you! Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

The Google Algorithm is Dead; Long Live the Google Algorithm

September 30, 2013/by Corey Padveen

‘Hummingbird’ is the newest edition of the Google Algorithm, and there is a lot to know.

In case you have not already heard, Google updated its algorithm last week. Now, this wasn’t some casual change to the Google algorithm. This was a complete overhaul of the program in its entirety. Naturally, there are some questions people are asking.

Didn’t the Google algorithm just change with Panda and Penguin?

All the talk has revolved around Panda and Penguin lately and a lot of SEOs and webmasters have spent their time getting used to that update. We need to differentiate between these updates and the new ‘Hummingbird’ algorithm.

Panda and Penguin are add-ons to the algorithm. Let’s put it in terms of a house. You own a home and buy couches and beds. These pieces of furniture are to the home what Panda and Penguin are to the Google algorithm. ‘Hummingbird’ is a new home.

Do I have to change my SEO strategy?

If you haven’t seen major changes to your traffic and search rankings in the last month, the likelihood is you won’t see any changes in the future; the ‘Hummingbird’ update has been live for about a month. Google just decided to announce it late last week.

What are the major changes?

The idea behind this update is to provide a more conversational aspect to Google’s search capabilities. Now, where you used to look up “Chinese food broadway” you might find better results if you conduct a search that reads, “Where can I find Chinese food near my office on Broadway?”

Presumably, this is Google’s way of competing with the Graph Search update from Facebook, which makes it easier to search conversationally on the social network. It is also designed to be faster and provide users with more accurate results.

So, are updates like Panda and Penguin out of the equation?

No. Going back to the house example, ‘Hummingbird’ is a new house with a lot of the same furniture. That said, Google updates its algorithm about 500 times per year. That’s an average of about one and a half modifications per day. It is very important that you keep up to date with the changes Google announces in order to keep your rankings high.

OK – what do I need to know?

The important thing to keep in mind is that Google has been trying to incorporate its social layer into search for a long time. The idea here is that the more active you are on Google products, more specifically, Google+, the better it will be for your rankings.

This conversational update is designed, presumably, to make conversations on networks like Google more relevant to search results.

Have you noticed any changes to the Google algorithm in the last month? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

5 Steps to Make Your Company a Social Business

September 27, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There are a few key steps your brand needs to take in order to be considered a ‘Social Business’.

In the last segment of this week’s ‘Social Business’ theme, we thought we would focus on the steps a brand needs to take in order to make itself a ‘Social Business’.

Some of these steps may seem redundant or a little too simple, but the reality is that every one builds off of the last, and the transition of a business into the social era needs to follow a clear outline. Making your business social is not simply about registering your company on Facebook or LinkedIn (although that is among the five steps); there is much more to it.

Step 1: Determine Your Social Business Goals

What is it your brand wants to achieve by becoming social? Like any other business endeavour, you need to set goals for the social functions of your business.

Some goals are going to be obvious and fairly superficial; you might want to increase sales, or improve customer service by offering Social Care. The key is to focus on the business applications of going social.

Every one of the objectives you set for yourself when it comes to making your business social should have a focus on creating value (Social Equity) in both the short and long terms for your brand.

Step 2: Bring Your Brand to the Socialsphere

Figure out what networks are going to help you best achieve the goals you have set for yourself and create accounts for your business on these networks.

Not every network will be right for your brand. Pinterest is a great resource, but only for certain industries. Not everyone is going to derive benefits from Pinterest. Figure out where the audiences that you want to target are active, and share you content with them.

Step 3: Engage Your Growing Audience

Your content strategy is going to help you determine what generates engagement for your three key audiences on social media that we discussed earlier this week. Once you have put together a proper content strategy, you are going to want to start engaging with your audience in order to keep them coming back.

People have an inherently short attention span when it comes to the web. With the virtually endless amount of content out there, you need to give them a reason to keep coming back to you. Being an active brand in the conversation is going to be key when it comes to building a ‘Social Business’.

Step 4: Leverage Big Data

Everything you do on social channels – from blogging to tweeting – is going to provide you with extremely valuable data that you should be incorporating into your strategy.

Simply sharing content is only half of the process – and not the more important half. Study your data, learn about your audience, customers and business and use that data, maybe in the form of Responsive Branding, in order to grow and expand your business in existing markets that you have yet to cultivate.

Step 5: Go Beyond Marketing

Your marketing and advertising departments might be the driving force behind your social selling strategy, but they should not be the only departments active on social media.

People do not necessarily want to engage with a faceless brand. Your C-suite and other departments should be engaging on social platforms and growing their audiences as well. In order to become a truly ‘Social Business’, it is going to take a lot more than your brand being on social. Every department needs to embrace the opportunities social offers.

Follow these five steps and it won’t be long before your find that you are a part of a ‘Social Business’.

We hope you enjoyed this week’s special segment on Social Business! Be sure to let us know what you think. Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How Can Data Mining and Responsive Branding Grow Business?

September 26, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Data mining and Responsive Branding can be among the greatest practices when it comes to making your business social.

We have discussed Responsive Branding and how it can add value to your business in the past. Essentially, Responsive Branding is the idea of modifying your branding strategy by leveraging the data you collect on tastes and preferences of your social audience.

So how do you get that data? Data mining.

What is data mining?

Princeton defines ‘data mining’ as, “Data processing using sophisticated data search capabilities and statistical algorithms to discover patterns and correlations in large preexisting databases; a way to discover new meaning in data.” It’s the second part of that definition that matters.

The social world is filled with data. You’ve probably heard the term ‘big data’. It’s the buzz word of that day and for good reason: it can do so much. But what exactly is ‘big data’?

‘Big data’ are large data sets derived from a number of new media – sometimes too large to analyze using conventional methods of analysis. The data that can be sourced from social media is virtually endless. Mining this data from these sources (Aha!) and determining correlations can be extremely beneficial when it comes to Responsive Branding.

Data Mining and Responsive Branding

So how can these two work in tandem?

Once you have mined your data, analyzed it and uncovered commonalities, correlations and other factors that you might find important, you can use those data to modify your marketing and business strategies. Why would you do this? These data tell truths about your audience that they haven’t told you themselves. You can leverage these truths in order to cater to their preferences and increase business.

There exist a number of untapped markets that would be perfect to market your product or service to. The only issue is that your business strategy never considered that market a viable target.

When mining data, you can find new opportunities that will help you achieve the goals and objectives you have set for yourself and your business.

Have you ever mined data and made modifications to your business strategy based on your findings? Tell us how it worked out for you in the comments below or on Twitter!

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