Social media ROI is one of the most highly debated topics of conversation in the realm of social marketing.
People are constantly talking about social media ROI. There are those who say that social media ROI is among the most transparent of measurements when it comes to benefits reaped from marketing efforts, and then there is the (still very large) school of skeptics that believes that social media ROI is a fantasy of social marketers, and that it is not a return that is properly measurable.
Below is a set of 10 examples of social media ROI from brands around the world. These brands used a variety of channels and different types of campaigns to reap these rewards, but each one experienced measurable, financial gains from their efforts on social media.
How do you measure social media ROI? What campaigns have you launched on social media that generated positive returns? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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The Social Equity of your business is increased with a presence on each social network, but there is a three-fold value added that comes from YouTube.
YouTube is among the most interesting of “social networks” due to the fact that it is not. Well, not in the conventional sense, at least. YouTube is a search engine. Like Google (YouTube’s owner), Yahoo! or Bing, YouTube is a medium in which people can post content and generate traffic. Where YouTube differs, however, is in the ability for an individual or brand to engage with their audience directly on the site. That is where the social aspect of YouTube comes into play and that is one of the three key generators of Social Equity when it comes to Youtube.
Today, we aim to pinpoint where it is that we see value added to a company as a result of having a YouTube presence, and how video marketing combined with the power of YouTube stands to increase your Social Equity more so than almost any other network.
Why is YouTube Important?
To understand where the Social Equity is generated from the video-sharing portal, we need to first understand what makes YouTube crucial when it comes to online marketing. Let’s take out the social aspect for a moment and look at some facts and figures that explain the importance of YouTube.
Raw Data
Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
YouTube is localized in 53 countries and across 61 languages
In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or around 140 views for every person on Earth
There are constantly eyes sifting through the content loaded to YouTube, and by properly optimizing your YouTube videos, you stand a greater chance of reaching the people looking for you on the network. Furthermore, video marketing is a growing trend as it adds an entirely new element to your business.
Giving people a chance to attach a face and voice to your brand takes social engagement a step further with regards to humanizing your brand. People like to engage with personalities, not simply corporate entities. Video marketing is a way to offer this and YouTube is the medium in which to publish it (in addition to your own corporate and personal blogs). Enter the Social Equity of YouTube.
The Three Pillars of Social Equity Derived from YouTube
As noted above, there are three features related to YouTube that generate Social Equity for your brand.
Engagement
When it comes to being social, the ability to engage with your audience on YouTube is a huge asset with regards to Social Equity. As with any social network, people are reaching out to you when they watch your videos. Whether they like it, share it, comment on it or simply watch, they are in some way engaging with your brand on YouTube.
Social Equity is derived in part from the growth of your brand. Video marketing on YouTube is a way to do that. Furthermore, the free analytics made available by YouTube (and Google) in the backend of your account are invaluable. These measure everything from engagement statistics to traffic sources. Thus, by observing and analyzing these insights, you can efficiently and quickly modify your campaigns and strategies in order to maximize the return from your YouTube marketing efforts.
Humanization
There is a humanizing characteristic associated with a corporate video. Even if it is as simple as an introduction, a YouTube presence gives brands a face and voice that people can relate to and appreciate. In our case study about Old Spice a little while back, we noted that through engagement (primarily with videos) Old Spice was able to increase their sales by 107% very quickly. Old Spice has been known to engage with their fan base using personalized videos, making fans of all kinds feel personally connected to the brand.
Old Spice is owned by The Procter & Gamble Company, a company with 2012 revenues of nearly $84 billion. But you wouldn’t know it by the attention Old Spice’s YouTube channel gives to its fans.
Direct Revenue
There are over one million advertisers buying ad space on YouTube and guess what: you’re selling it. By creating videos that people want to see and building a following on YouTube, you increase your chances of having ads placed on your videos and money coming in as a result.
There is constantly the question of direct ROI generated from social media. If this does not answer that question then nothing will.
YouTube is a fascinating network that adds value to your company at every turn. The growing popularity of video marketing and the industry-wide focus on marketing virality are two perfect reasons why every brand should have a presence on YouTube. Your Social Equity stands to benefit tremendously as a result.
Where do you find the value added to your business as a result of Social Equity from YouTube? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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This week’s social media case study focuses on one of the most socially innovative airlines around: KLM.
When it comes to social media case studies, airlines often prove to have some of the most impressive, influential and trendsetting results. Yet, despite all of the data that supports the adoption of innovative social media marketing initiatives for airlines, few seem to be as willing to go the distance as KLM.
KLM’s social media program is brilliant…and they know it. When it comes to converting social media fans into paying customers, KLM is among the most successful brands around. In fact, on the KLM Facebook page, there is a section that breaks down their social media campaigns, explains how they went about executing them and posts the results. Effectively, they are their own social media case study as to why social is important to business. But our focus is a little deeper than that when it comes to our weekly case study. We aim to pull out the lessons marketers can learn from the KLM social media program as a whole.
The Campaigns
Featured on the KLM Facebook page are seven of their most successful social media campaigns. These campaigns include everything from “KLM Surprise” whereby special gifts would be presented to passengers who checked into flights using Foursquare or Twitter, to the “KLM Tile & Inspire” campaign whereby Facebook fans were asked to convert their Facebook profile picture into a Delft Blue tile and complete that tile with an inspiring message to be used as part of a mosaic design on a KLM aircraft that would travel across the globe. Below are two videos breaking down these campaigns.
KLM Surprise
KLM Tile & Inspire
Each campaign was equally inspired and generated similar results. For the two campaigns above, KLM reaped some considerable social benefits. The breakdown of the two featured campaigns by the numbers is below:
KLM Surprise Analytics
Foursquare
17.528 followers
Youtube
154,722 views
Twitter
1.597 followers
Tweet reach
2,6 mln
KLM Tile & Inspire Analytics
Created tiles
120.000
Number of countries where tiles were created
154
Views of the 2 videos
1.3 million
Number of destinations the 777 flew to
23
While the analytics are impressive enough as it is, the fact that KLM went on to further convert many of these fans is all the more notable. But what we wish to focus on is what KLM did that was as innovative and bold as it was simple and calculated.
The Lessons
Be Bold (But the Right Way)
KLM has had far from a conventional approach to their social media program. From presenting new meal options using Facebook videos that introduce the “chefs” (the “KLM A La Carte” campaign) to the controversial “KLM Meet and Seat” campaign that gave passengers the ability to preview their seat mates based on social profiles, KLM has dared to be innovative with each of their social media campaigns. But it is important to keep something in mind: the marketing execs at KLM knew exactly what they were doing, and these risks were as calculated as any.
By understanding the lead to conversion process, the KLM executives were able to put these campaigns together using careful market research, amalgamated and improved data from their own failed exploits (discussed below), and a clear understanding of the sales process for both the customer and the brand. You don’t garner new customers from social media by doing the same thing as everyone else (hence, the “Be Bold” part of the lesson) but you certainly won’t find them if you scare them away (and that covers the “Right Way” aspect). So keep in mind that for a social media campaign to work, you need to impress your audience and have the data to support your seemingly daring decisions.
Never Be Afraid to Try Something New
Social media is still in its infancy, and social media marketing even more so. There is no shortage of innovation out there, and with the ever-changing landscape of social media, you should never be afraid to be first to market. Your first-mover advantage will be huge when people see you doing something that no one has done before. KLM understands that and they have capitalized on it at every turn.
The airline only jumped into social media in 2009, but in these short few years they have managed to try their hand at virtually every campaign available on social media. Whether it is a Facebook campaign, a Foursquare promotion, a YouTube contest or a Twitter “Live Reply” campaign wherein the airline responded to user tweets using up to 140 REAL people to spell out the message, you should never be afraid to try something that has never been done before. When it comes to social media, people want something they have not yet seen.
Try, Fail, Fix, Repeat
No one knows failed experiments better than KLM. Sure, they might have the budgetary luxury of making these mistakes, but over time they have learned exactly what they should not be doing in order to perfect their social campaigns. And on a smaller scale, you should never be afraid of the mistakes you make when it comes to social media. As we noted above, this is an incipient form of marketing; people are bound to make mistakes. But when you do, note your errors, redraft your campaign taking that into account, and start again.
For KLM, one of their big blunders came in 2011 when they offered a promotional gift to the first 50 male and first 50 female “Likers” of a post. Within minutes they had 1,500 “Likes” and no way of knowing which came when. Oops! But what is important is that KLM recognized their mistakes, fixed them and, more importantly, accepted their failures. And that brings us to our final lesson.
Humility is an Underrated Trait
People appreciate humility. It is a humanizing trait, particularly when it comes from a company as large and reputable as KLM. That is why the last important lesson to pull from KLM is that, while you might be a big brand, social media is a place for you to simply be a voice in the conversation. While an image needs to be maintained, you can be a little less corporate and little more fun when it comes to social (respecting professional boundaries, of course). As we never tire of pointing out, social media is about exactly that: being social. Not only does KLM have a post on their blog detailing some of their yearly bloopers, but they also make an important point in their step-by-step guide on running their social media program:
“Not that campaigns always need to be global and spectacular. Many of our establishments have successfully launched their local pages, and we’ve learned that the power often lies in simplicity — like showing the interior of a cockpit, or thanking someone for notifying us about broken lighting on our KLM sign. Our creative editorial board delivers a daily dose of captivating, engaging posts through our various channels.
Social campaigns have won us several awards, but it hasn’t been one success after the next. We’ve certainly had our share of bloopers. But rather than hushing them up, we decided to make them public and take them as a learning experience. And as it turned out, people liked us even more for it.”
Well said.
What lesson do you think is most important in the case study of KLM? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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YouTube marketing is one of the best resources we have as marketers, but how can we measure if our efforts are paying off?
YouTube is a search engine, and like any search engine, a marketer’s goal is to rank highly for specified keywords and drive traffic and business from our YouTube marketing efforts. But, like any social media program, we need to be able to measure our campaigns and the success of our YouTube marketing efforts. Behind the channel there is an entire set of statistics and measurable data that we can use to see exactly where our YouTube marketing efforts are paying off, and where we need to improve them.
Below is a set of tips that you can use when it comes to YouTube marketing to measure exactly how effective your strategies are. You might be surprised to find just how much information you can pull directly from the backend of your YouTube channel.
Look Into Your Analytics
First of all, where can we find all of this stored information about our videos? In the top search bar of a YouTube account, there is a small dropdown menu where you can select your analytics.
It is in this analytics section where you can begin evaluating the success of your YouTube marketing. The YouTube analytics dashboard allows users to both measure basic information, such as viewer demographics and traffic sources, as well as engagement statistics, which allow you to measure how your videos are performing with your audience. These data are very helpful when it comes to modifying your YouTube marketing campaigns, as they indicate where your work needs improvement and where you are finding the most success with your video marketing. Paying attention to these figures will help you optimize your YouTube marketing to ensure that you are not losing anything (from time to audience engagement) with each of your videos.
Your Most Important Data
There is plenty of information to look through in the backend of your YouTube channel. It can become almost overwhelming. What is important? What should you focus on? These are not the easiest questions to answer when you have so much to sift through.
Perhaps the two most important areas of focus in your Reports section are your Traffic Sources and your Audience Retention. (In the menu on the right.) Let’s have a look at those a little more closely.
Your Traffic Sources are going to be one of the most important elements to look at when evaluating your YouTube marketing efforts. These tell you exactly where your viewers are coming from. This will help you structure future campaigns outside of YouTube to drive the most traffic from your most popular sources. Are your email campaigns driving the most viewers to your videos? Maybe it is your social media efforts on other networks, like Facebook or Twitter, that are bringing in the most views. This is where you can find out.
Knowing where your traffic is coming from will allow you to cut out the time you spend marketing on networks that are not driving any traffic to your YouTube channel and focus entirely on areas where you are seeing success. This increases the efficiency of your YouTube marketing and helps maximize your return on investment (time, in this case).
Audience Retention is another crucial focal point of these statistics. Say, for example, you put together a video campaign with a call to action at the end of a video. Then you put together another one with a call to action at the beginning. Which one is driving conversions? You can see this with your Audience Retention tool. Note in the image below that there is a drop off at a certain point in your videos. People have an inherently short attention span when it comes to YouTube, and the longer your video, the less likely it is that people will stay to the very end. We have found that the optimal length of a YouTube video is somewhere in the ballpark of two minutes. After that, audiences tend to move on to something else. So, when it comes to YouTube, a video search engine with billions of options to choose from, the shorter the better. And all of this is available in the Audience Retention report of your YouTube analytics dashboard.
How Are You Engaging?
Engagement is a cornerstone of any successful social media marketing campaign. And contrary to what a conventional understanding of the term ‘engagement’ might suggest, engagement on social media is more about your brand and your audience. It is not solely about how you are engaging with your audience, but also about how your audience is engaging with you. The engagement reports in YouTube focus on your audience’s engagement with your brand on YouTube.
This section is wonderful for tailoring your YouTube marketing to the preferences of your audience. You can find out what videos people like best, where they are commenting most and when your engagement is taking place. Again, this is an area that will help you maximize the efficiency of a campaign and your return on investment.
These are just a few of the great analytics tools available in the backend of YouTube. Of course, like anything, the best way to learn is by doing. So have a look at the analytics dashboard of your YouTube channel and find out where your efforts are paying off. Then tell us how you use the YouTube analytics dashboard in the comments below or on Twitter!
Why worry about mowing the lawn when your house is on fire?
Social media strategies require a great deal of planning in order for their execution to generate success. While the statement above may seem a tad extreme, it holds very true: why worry about the less industry-relevant networks when you should be focusing your efforts more heavily on other ones? Below are a few tips and pointers that should help you understand how to organize your social media strategies in order to focus your social media efforts where they stand to generate the best results.
1. A Presence on the Big 4 Is Important, but Focus Shouldn’t be Uniform
Having your brand or business present across all of the Big 4 (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn) is important, but the focus of your social media strategies should not be uniform across all four of these networks. For certain industries, some of these networks prove to be far more important than others, and your time should be well divided among these four so that those networks apt for your industry receive more attention than those that are not. Below is a great breakdown from the experts at HubSpot detailing where a large number of industries are focusing their efforts, and should give you an idea of how to align your social media strategies when it comes to the Big 4.
2. Think Pinterest Is Just for Visual Industries? Think again.
We recently posted about incorporating Pinterest into your social media strategies, and this article details exactly how you can go about using Pinterest for your business. But if you think that Pinterest is simply about loading pictures for a visually-oriented industry, you might be missing out on an incredible opportunity to capitalize on the social network’s referral power. Our article explains that in great detail, and this pie chart shows a breakdown of the top 10 industry websites to be using Pinterest to drive referral traffic.
There is plenty of literature out there that might suggest Google+ is a waste of time for many businesses looking to optimize their social media strategies. This is simply is not true. A little while back, we posted an article about the new Google+ Communities and how they are revolutionizing the way businesses share content. These Communities offer businesses the ability to target niche audiences made up of people who have all expressed an interest in what you have to offer. Furthermore, the content on these communities is shown to everyone, as it does not follow the same EdgeRank system as Facebook, which limits exposure of some content. That said, Google+ may still not be where you should be focusing all of your time. Have a look at the breakdown below to see which industries are focusing their efforts on Google+, and see if you fall into any of these categories.
No, this has nothing to do with your Facebook Timeline. We are talking about a roadmap. One of the most important elements when it comes to successful social media strategies is not rushing through the process. Now that you know where you should be focusing the majority of your efforts, set an execution agenda and stick to it. It is easy to expedite a process when you think you have done everything you set out to do, but monitoring and tweaking your strategy as you go along is par for the course. You should be setting yourself timeframes in which to work in order to ensure that when you are ready to move on to a new social network, you have optimized every aspect of the last one.
Say you begin with Facebook and Twitter accounts. Set up is simple, and publishing content is easy as well. But over time, you may notice, through the use of analytics and insights tools, that certain posts garner more exposure, and certain types of tweets generate more referral traffic and higher click-throughs. Using this information, you will be able to optimize your social media strategies so that when you move on to the second stage, you won’t find yourself overwhelmed with the unresolved issues of the first.
5. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
You might model your social media strategies after some of the more successful campaigns you see out there, and then you might find that your social media strategies are not exploding at the rate you had hoped for. That’s ok. There are two things to keep in mind when running your social media campaigns. First, like anything, it takes time for your efforts to show results. Second, social media is ever-changing and thus, your social media strategies will constantly evolve, and by the time you see major results, your campaigns might be completely different than when you initially launched them. With proper social media strategies in place, however, you stand to see results at a much faster rate than if you launch your campaign blind, and with these tips properly incorporated into your social media strategies, those results will be much greater than the average.
Do you know of any other helpful tips that can help build up a social media campaign? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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YouTube can be a vital part of your social media strategy, but in order for it to drive success you need to be able leverage all of its capabilities.
YouTube users watch over 3 billion hours of video every month. However, those hours are limited to only roughly 30% of the videos uploaded to the video search engine. That’s right – According to James Zern at YouTube, 30% of videos uploaded to YouTube account for 99% of the video views on the website. So how can you get your video into that coveted 30%? There are a few tips you can apply to your social media strategies when it comes to YouTube to better your chances of having your video found and increase your exposure, traffic and social media success. Have a look below for the top 4 ways you can better your social media strategies when it comes to leveraging the power of YouTube.
1. Brand Yourself
This may seem like a simple and obvious tip, but a branded YouTube channel adds a great degree of credibility to your videos and gives you the opportunity to showcase your content with your brand at the forefront. It allows you to post comments as you would on any other social media network, and provide an abundance of links to promote your properties outside of YouTube.
2. Engage with Your Subscribers and Commenters
YouTube affords you the opportunity to develop a virtual community surrounding your content. But while you may have hundreds or even thousands of subscribers and tens of thousands of video views, this community goes to waste if an engagement plan is not a part of your social media strategies with regards to YouTube. Listen to your fans; check comments, trends and subscribers in order to get the most out of your community. Remember, these are people who have come to you because they like what you have to offer. Don’t turn them away by not engaging.
3. Optimize Your YouTube Video
This is the real bread and butter of getting the most out of YouTube. Optimizing your videos does as much as optimizing your site for SEO. YouTube is a search engine. Not only that, but it is the largest site of its kind, backed by Google, and generates the third most traffic of sites on the web. Furthermore, videos are ranked both on Google and on YouTube itself. So, in order for your video to get found, you need to optimize it the same way you would a blog post or website.
First, optimize your content. Originality is crucial when it comes to YouTube. There is virtually endless content on the video search engine, and for yours to stand out, it needs to contain content people want to see. So be original and relevant when it comes to making your video. Second, be wary of your video’s length. Studies show that the optimal length for a video is between 2 and 4 minutes. After this point, analytics show a drop off. With so much going on – both in our lives and online – a 5 or 6 minute video may seem like an eternity. So keep your videos short and to the point.
Third, professionalism is a major factor. If you are a brand or business making a video, you will want to keep it as professional as possible, both in terms of your content and the quality. High quality cameras are no longer a high-priced commodity, and making a professional looking video no longer comes with an astronomical price tag. Fourth and finally, pay attention to the search criteria of your video in order to ensure that it gets found by Google and YouTube. How can you do this? Well, a title with keywords (similar to an h1) is extremely important. This is the first category recognized by search engines. Next comes your description. A video without a description is the equivalent of a web page with out a meta description. This is an area that should be optimized for your keywords and links. After that, traffic will boost your video in the rankings. The number of views and the ratings will help your rankings and bring your video to the top of the list.
4. Check Your Analytics
Once you have reached five subscribers, you will have access to analytics about your audience that provide deep insights about who is watching your videos, where they are dropping off and what audience you appeal to most. This will allow you to tailor content to your demographics, or target new, unreached demographics by creating new content for those groups.
YouTube can be an extremely helpful tool when it comes to getting the most our of your social media strategies, and these tips should help you maximize your efforts on YouTube to help get your content found. Can you think of any other ways you can optimize your YouTube account? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
https://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/logo122.png00Corey Padveenhttps://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.pngCorey Padveen2012-12-29 14:49:322012-12-29 14:49:32Leverage YouTube for Your Social Media Strategies
What are some ways you can optimize your interaction to maximize your social media marketing efforts?
Social media marketing is about one thing: being social. It is one thing to have a Facebook page, a Twitter or YouTube account or any other social profile, but if you are not engaging, you are not reaping the benefits that social can offer. Perhaps what is most important is to realize that your social media strategies and social interactions should not be confined to the individual social networks alone – you need to incorporate your social media strategies into your web strategy.
Below are a few helpful pointers that you can use to optimize your social interactions and get the most out of your social media marketing strategies.
1. Incorporate Social Media Into Your Site
It may sound intuitive, but you would be surprised to find how few brands incorporate their social media into their websites. If you are looking to optimize interaction with leads and clients, your social media marketing efforts must go beyond social networks themselves. By simply incorporating social media into your website, you are extending the ability to interact with your brand beyond social networks themselves, and opening up a whole new realm of possibilities when it comes to lead engagement.
2. Don’t Forget the Little(r) Guy
Everyone knows about the Big 4: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. But there is a ton of potential when it comes to smaller, or less frequently used social networks like Google+ and Pinterest. With the growth Pinterest has seen in the last year, it won’t be long before it is added to the Big 4 to make it the Big 5, but until that happens, it is still one of the most overlooked social media networks despite the tremendous potential it holds when it comes to growing your brand.
A little while back, we posted an article about the benefits of Google+ to your business. With the added benefit of being integrated with both YouTube and search giant Google, Google+ offers certain benefits to SEO that other social media networks do not. So remember, as your social media marketing grows, don’t forget the little guys.
3. Focus On Your Blog
HubSpot conducted a study some time ago and put together a few impressive marketing statistics that should not go unnoticed. One of their key findings was that companies that blog get 55% more web traffic than companies that don’t. Take a survey of every brand in the world, and we bet that increasing exposure by 55% is something every one of them would agree they want to do. Now, operating a blog with consistent and engaging content being published is not the easiest thing to do. It takes a time and resource commitment, but the numbers show that it is one of the most effective ways to increase your audience and get them engaged with your brand on-site.
4. Reward Your Fans
People like being rewarded for their efforts. By rewarding fans for their engagement, you prompt a much higher interaction rate with your brand than if you simply wait for engagement to increase organically. There are a few ways of doing this, like caption contests, promotions on different social networks, and there are even plugins with different CMS tools that allow you to reward fans for high levels of engagement. One example of this is Achievements for BuddyPress offered on WordPress. This is a simple app modeled after the concept of achievements and rewards available in video games. It is as simple as fans engaging with a brand and receiving badges and awards for high engagement rates. And putting this campaign together is as simple as installing the plugin.
5. Any Press is Good Press – Especially if it is Good Press
Review sites are a great way to get found. Reviews are taken into account heavily by search engines, and the more positive they are the better. This last tip is a bit of a two-fold pointer. Social media is a great way to conduct customer service. It is a public forum, and if done right, people will want to work with your brand is they see you are professional, courteous and helpful when it comes to helping your customers in real time on social media. If you can do this, encourage your audience to post reviews on sites like Yelp!. Again, these are very helpful when it comes to getting found, and the more positive they are they more authority your brand has.
Can you think of any other ways brands can optimize their engagement using social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
https://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/logo122.png00Corey Padveenhttps://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.pngCorey Padveen2012-12-27 10:36:172012-12-27 10:36:175 Tips to Optimize Interaction in Your Social Media Marketing
Which brands stole the show this holiday season with their social media marketing campaigns?
Marketing comes alive during the holidays more so than any other time of the year – with the Super Bowl at a close second – and this season some brands showcased their social media marketing talents better than anyone else. Have a look below to see who we thought took the cake this holiday season with their social media marketing campaigns!
Video Social Media Marketing Was a Real Standout for FedEx
Commercials are and have long been a cornerstone of marketing success. But with the proliferation of television channels over the years and the relative difficulty of ensuring that mass audiences will see your ad (without spending millions) social media marketing has provided a cost-effective alternative: viral marketing. Creating video content that people not only watch, but want to share is a marketer’s perfect Christmas gift. Last year, the runaway was the Old Spice MANta Claus campaign. This year, we thought FedEx did a great job with their short, quirky video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJV05_K0XlY
Viral video marketing is as much a form of social media marketing as anything else, and FedEx hits the mark every time.
Coca-Cola Nails Cross-Platform Social Media Marketing
This season, the marketing minds at Coca-Cola decided that the best way to get their message out was to promote across multiple platforms. And what is the best way to do that? To stretch a campaign across all of their social media platforms, leading all visitors to a campaign spread across a multitude of social media platforms. Every one of the video campaigns created by Coca-Cola was promoted on each of their platforms to ensure that no avenue went uncovered by their holiday marketing campaigns.
This was a phenomenal use of social media. In a recent blog post, we noted the importance of interconnected social media marketing, and Coca-Cola gets it right in this year’s campaign.
Zynga Embraces the Spirit of Giving
The spirit of giving has always been the theme of the holiday season, and Zynga recognized that more than anybody. This year, the gaming giant Zynga decided to use their social media marketing efforts to spread holiday cheer to others, and did so by offering players the chance to donate to charitable causes while engaging with their apps. The result? Over $13 million in donations since the campaign was launched.
What other holiday campaigns can you think of that have been outstanding this holiday season? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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What does your social media marketing strategy need to have in 2013 in order for it to be successful?
Social media marketing has, once again, proven to be a crucial tool for a brand’s growth in 2012. The marketing medium has made tremendous strides over the course of the year, and it is sure to grow even larger in the next. As we approach the new year, we thought it might be helpful to take a look at some of the most important items to address with regards to your social media marketing strategy for 2013 in order to see your success grow, too.
1. Set Your Goals and Your Road Map for Achieving Them
As with any venture, social media marketing requires a strategy in order for it to be successful. The concept of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is one that no longer applies in the conventional sense. (RIM, the makers of BlackBerry are a perfect example of this.) The contemporary version of this theory falls more in line with, “if it’s working, figure out a way to get the most out of it” – and that is exactly where your goals should focus if that’s the case. Below are a few pointers to consider when devising your social media marketing strategy for the new year:
Who is the audience you are looking to target with your social media?
How effective was your social media marketing in 2012?
What aspects work, and where does your social media marketing need improvement?
Are you studying the right data when it comes to analysis of your program?
These pointers follow a general theme, and that brings us to our next point.
2. Before Anything, Evaluate Your Social Media Marketing in 2012
As the pointers above may suggest, evaluating the performance of your social media marketing in 2012 is going to be crucial to the success of your strategy in 2013. Where did you benefit? Where did your stretegy fall short? What were your goals for 2012? Did you achieve them? Why or why not? These questions all need to be answered before devising a strategy for your social media marketing in the coming year. And there are quite a few ways you can go about doing this.
The first aspect you need to look at are your goals in 2012. Using some of the insights tools available both in social media networks (e.g. Facebook insights) and external tools, you can see where you reached your goals and where you need improvement. Then evaluate each social network individually to see what strategies you employed that were either a success or a bust. Build off of these in order to get the most out of your social media marketing in 2013. Trim the fat where it is necessary and devote those resources to areas that saw success in order to maximize the efficiency of your strategy. Social media marketing is not about quantity necessarily, but about quality. Don’t forget, despite what some people might suggest, social media is not free, and if you are draining resources into something that is not benefitting your brand, you are losing considerably more than you might think.
3. Take SEO Into Consideration in Your Evaluation
SEO has long been a cornerstone of web marketing. And social media plays an integral part in your SEO efforts. In a post last month, we noted why social signals are an ever-growing part of the Google algorithm. It stands to reason that social signals will continue to factor into SEO in a significant way in the coming year, so evaluating your SEO strategy and aligning it with your social media strategy will prove to be crucial in finding success.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+ directly impact your search rankings, so look to your keywords to find out how you can capitalize on this reality. Shares and retweets with links work the same way as a backlink, but they make the link-building process infinitely simpler. So use your Google Analytics Webmaster Tools to find your best keywords, and optimize accordingly.
4. Make Sure Your Entire Team Believes in Your Social Media Strategy
What is the biggest hinderance to the success of a social media marketing strategy? Skepticism. For marketing divisions and firms alike, hesitation by management to accept social media as a crucial avenue to a brand’s success has proven time and again to be biggest hurdle when it comes to reaching al of your goals when it comes to social media marketing. So before moving forward, take the steps necessary to ensure that everyone, from the highest level executive to the mailroom clerk believes in the strategy, and you will be able to move forward faster than ever before.
Can you think of other points that will be crucial to the success of your social media marketing strategy in 2013? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
https://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/T2-Social-Homepage-Image-300x300.png00Corey Padveenhttps://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.pngCorey Padveen2012-12-18 14:12:142012-12-18 14:12:14Social Media Marketing in 2013: The Essentials
Social media strategies must consist of a multi-platform integration aspect in order to be successful.
What does this mean exactly? Well, let’s look at an example. Say you have a Facebook page, accounts on Google+ and YouTube and a Twitter handle. Now, it’s a given that there will be some crossover among fans and followers on these different social networks, but realistically you will have a wide audience as a result of the different demographics on multiple social networks. The graphs below detail exactly how different social networks’ demographics are broken down:
As a result of this age and gender distribution, it is appropriate to have social media strategies in place that take into account your different audience, but you must also be sure that your social media strategies reach all of these audiences by integrating these social media strategies into every one of your networks. How can you go about doing this? Let’s take a video, for example. Say you are a real estate agent and you have put together an instructional video on staging your home before it goes on the market. These kinds of videos tend to gain a lot of attraction, and will help you build credibility in your field. What is important is showcasing this expertise on every one of your social networks.
On Facebook, short, noticeable posts garner the most exposure, so posting a short introductory line with the video uploaded directly into the social network might work seeing as how links tend to have the lowest click-through rates on Facebook. But this post should contain a link to your YouTube channel, which in turn will allow you to integrate your Google+ page. Dom Carr of Google recently posted about the newest feature on YouTube that allows users to simply upload a video to both YouTube and Google+ by simply checking a box. As for Twitter, a link to your YouTube channel showcasing the video would be best along with a short description of where the link is going. (Remember, people hesitate to click on links that are not clearly defined.)
By integrating your social networks, an umbrella is created for your social media strategies. While it is important that every one of your social networks has its own, clearly defined strategy in place, there should be an overarching plan in place that encompasses every one of your social networks. Social media marketing is a category unto itself in your marketing strategy, and you should have clearly defined goals and a clear roadmap to success for all your social media, not just the individual channels themselves.
How have you configured your social media strategies to integrate all of your platforms? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
https://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/social-network-age-distribution-580px.jpeg00Corey Padveenhttps://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.pngCorey Padveen2012-12-17 13:53:432012-12-17 13:53:43Social Media Strategies: Integrated Social Media Marketing
YouTube is among the most interesting of “social networks” due to the fact that it is not. Well, not in the conventional sense, at least. YouTube is a search engine. Like Google (YouTube’s owner), Yahoo! or Bing, YouTube is a medium in which people can post content and generate traffic. Where YouTube differs, however, is in the ability for an individual or brand to engage with their audience directly on the site. That is where the social aspect of YouTube comes into play and that is one of the three key generators of Social Equity when it comes to Youtube.
There are over one million advertisers buying ad space on YouTube and guess what: you’re selling it. By creating videos that people want to see and building a following on YouTube, you increase your chances of having ads placed on your videos and money coming in as a result.
KLM’s social media program is brilliant…and they know it. When it comes to converting social media fans into paying customers, KLM is among the most successful brands around. In fact, on the 
“Not that campaigns always need to be global and spectacular. Many of our establishments have successfully launched their local pages, and we’ve learned that the power often lies in simplicity — like showing the interior of a cockpit, or thanking someone for notifying us about broken lighting on our KLM sign. Our creative editorial board delivers a daily dose of captivating, engaging posts through our various channels.
YouTube marketing campaigns, as they indicate where your work needs improvement and where you are finding the most success with your video marketing. Paying attention to these figures will help you optimize your YouTube marketing to ensure that you are not losing anything (from time to audience engagement) with each of your videos.
