Engagement on social media is one of the cornerstones of an effective social media program; but too many people go about it the wrong way.
So what can you be doing when it comes to social media engagement to ensure that you are doing it the right way? People are constantly talking about engaging on social media – ourselves included – but so few people give effective tips on how to engage with your fan base properly. Sure, every person and brand is going to develop their own unique voice when it comes to social media, but there are certain DOs and certain DO NOTs that everyone should be following when it comes to engaging with their fan base on social networks.
Today, we have decided to feature some of those tips to help your brand engage effectively on social media to ensure that you don’t run the risk of losing your audience or worse, having them comment negatively in a social forum.
1. DABC: Don’t Always Be Closing
In the Mamet-penned monumental monologue in the classic film Glengarry Glen Ross, the character of Blake (played by an Oscar-nominated Alec Baldwin in the film adaptation) gives a haunting speech to a group of terrified realtors wherein he tells them that they should follow the ABCs of selling: Always Be Closing. That might have worked for those realtors, but the reality of social media is that a better piece of advice would be to follow your DABCs.
You can’t always be closing when it comes to engaging on social media. Sure, the goal for most social marketers is to eventually convert leads generated on social networks into customers, but we can’t jump into our engagement attempting to close. We need to build a rapport with our leads and the only way to do that is to engage with them on a human level, not on a salesman-only level. That’s sure to turn them off.
It also brings us to our next point.
2. Talk Like a Human
If there’s one thing that people hate about engaging with certain corporate accounts, it is that it feels like just that: all business. There is no emotion or opinion behind a comment or post. Now, of course one has to take into account the political aspect that comes with running a social media program as a large company. Those in charge of engaging cannot say whatever they want. There is an image to maintain and thus, a certain standard to keep.
That said, if you feel like social media is the right place for your business to have a presence, then develop a strategy for engagement before you get started. People are going to reach out to your brand, and they want to feel like they are talking to someone there, not a computer directing them to simply call a customer service line for more information.
3. Don’t Discriminate
You might think that the only place where you stand to benefit from your engagement is with your industry’s influencers. And while it might be true that engaging with people who have thousands of fans or followers might lead to a quick gain, it is not always going to pay off. There are far more people out there with seventy-five or one hundred followers than those with seventy-five or one hundred thousand.
In a social media case study we did about Old Spice a few weeks ago, we noted that where Old Spice found the most success was in their ability to engage with any type of user in the same way, whether they were famous or simply Twitter fans with a few dozen followers. The payoffs were enormous for Old Spice and any marketer should take this as a lesson that it doesn’t pay to discriminate when it comes to engaging on social media.
4. Fashionably Late is a Social Faux Pas
Social media is an ongoing conversation. People are talking constantly and, when it comes to your brand, they are talking to you. And when it comes to all that social media has to offer and the fact that a recent study showed that the average online attention span is roughly 8 seconds, you can’t expect people to be waiting around for your response for too long.
We live in a fast-paced society and nothing embodies that better than social media. So when someone engages with your brand, do everything you can to respond as quickly as possible. You are half of the social conversation, so you can’t be late to the party.
5. Never Ignore Questions or Negative Comments
We thought we would save the most important for last. This is one rule we advocate above all others. When it comes to your brand’s image both in the eyes of your customers and the general public, the two types of posts you never want to ignore are questions and negative comments.
First, let’s look at questions. When someone goes out of their way to engage with your brand and ask a question, they are generally doing so because they want an answer. They are, for lack of a better analogy, calling for more information. This is a traditional call to action that we see in ads and commercials, and social media takes the first part of that CTA out of the equation. So when someone has a question, answer it! You wouldn’t have a hotline for leads to call in to if you didn’t have anyone manning the phones, would you? This is the same concept.
Next, you should never ever ignore negative comments. In doing so, you are basically burying your head in the sand while the whole world sees your flaws. If anything, negative comments are a great way to do two things. First, they are a chance for you to show the world how much you care about your customers by dealing with an issue on the social stage for all to see. Second, they are a great way to turn people into brand advocates. Social media is one of the best avenues in which to generate new brand advocates and negative comments are one of the ways to go about doing this.
What is your strategy when it comes to social media engagement? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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Marketing is no longer about simply our time; there are hundreds of marketing tools that can help us succeed.
Recently, we loaded an infographic with a detailed breakdown of the social media tools that we can use as marketers to improve and simplify our social media marketing. Well, this is just a small realm of marketing tools that exist to help facilitate the marketing process.
The world of technology has meant quite a bit of change from a marketing perspective. The advent of different tools has resulted in two things: first, on a superficial level, there world of technology may appear somewhat perplexing at an initial glance. After all, these are a set of tools that we have never seen before and, more importantly, there are so many of them that we may not know how to go about using them in a strategic manner. Second, these tools have added an entirely new realm to the world of marketing. And not only from a social media perspective. They have opened up the marketing world to so much more, and it is pretty clear why. The possibilities that these tools offer are virtually endless!
Below is a breakdown of nearly every piece of marketing technology that exists out there today. Take a look through the infographic and look up some of the tools you are unfamiliar with. It’s a great way to build your knowledge.
Do you use any of these tools for your marketing efforts? Which of these do you think is the best? Why? Are there any you haven’t used before that you are going to try? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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Social Equity is given quite a boost with a LinkedIn presence – and not just for B2B companies.
LinkedIn is widely known as the professional social network. So, it would make sense for people to assume that it is largely for B2B companies. While it is true that LinkedIn is one of the most beneficial social networks when it comes to B2B, the Social Equity a brand can garner as a result of having a LinkedIn presence – whether it is B2B or B2C – is quite high.
Today, we aim to explain where the Social Equity of a LinkedIn presence is found, and how you can determine the value added to your business as a result of having both a personal and company page on the social network.
The Benefits of LinkedIn
To understand how we can derive Social Equity from LinkedIn, we first need to understand what the benefits of a LinkedIn presence are to our business.
As we noted above, LinkedIn is often perceived as the professional network. As such, it is an arena in which professionals actively seek out industry influencers, leaders and authority figures. Therefore, it is one of the easiest niches in which to establish yourself as an industry-leader within your market. Social networks on the more general scale, like Facebook and Twitter, are mediums in which we can establish our brand as an authority with the general public, but for any company, be it B2C or B2B, LinkedIn is the best avenue through which we can build our credibility with members of our own industry.
On the other side of the spectrum, LinkedIn is an excellent network for seeking out the advice and tips of other leaders and professionals, and applying those bits of advice to our own strategies. Though LinkedIn Answers was a great feature in which to do this before it was removed, LinkedIn Groups are still a powerful tool, and include higher engagement rates than almost any other feature on social media. Contrary to many social networks, LinkedIn is a place where professionals are seeking out the opinions and inputs of others, and the element of self-promotion (not in its purest form, but close to it) is not only accepted, but in many cases encouraged.
So, how does this all add value to your business?
Social Equity Derived from LinkedIn
Having both a personal account and an active company page on LinkedIn can generate quite a bit of Social Equity for your brand. With a well-orchestrated strategy in place, we can quickly build our authority in a given field and begin driving referrals to both our personal pages and our websites. This holds true for both types of businesses. Even as a B2C entity, we are still looking to build market authority, and LinkedIn is one way of doing that.
Say you are a local and online retail store, for example. Now say you create a profile on LinkedIn and begin sharing short articles you write about running a successful retail location, or a successful e-commerce website. By posting to your updates (your network), your company page and your groups pages about the retail industry, you will quickly see your influence, network and, most important for building business, your LinkedIn referral traffic begin to shoot up.
It is important to understand that in any industry, people want to associate themselves with the best. Whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or a retail-savvy basement blogger, industry leaders and influencers receive the most attention on a network like LinkedIn, and that translates to Social Equity.
The value added of a large professional and referral network is highly coveted. Consider not only the calculated value of your business assets, but the value added of an extended network, an established industry leader at the helm of your company and your industry influence. All of this is capable through the strategic use of LinkedIn.
How are you using LinkedIn to generate Social Equity for your business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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The use of Pinterest and social media by Kotex proved to be one of the most successful and innovative social media campaigns run to date.
With the major announcement yesterday that Pinterest would now provide analytics to its business users, we thought an appropriate social media case study this week would involve the use of the social network. And what better Pinterest-themed social media case study than its use by Kotex last year to celebrate women’s inspiration.
The Campaign
As the world of social media exploded with the introduction of Pinterest last year, the first network of its kind, dominated almost entirely by women, Kotex and their social media marketing team had the brilliant idea to run a social media campaign centered on the women of Pinterest.
The brilliance lay in how they decided to design the program. Effectively, Kotex sought out the 50 most influential women they could find on the social network after reviewing thousands of accounts and their followers, and began searching through their boards to determine what inspired them. After that, they put together customized gift boxes inspired by these women’s boards, and reached out to these influencers on social media to share these gifts with them. They asked for only one thing in return: to repin the gift.
The results were far greater than what Kotex could have hoped for. Not only did nearly 100% of the 50 women comply with the simple request, but they went above and beyond. These women posted pictures of each component of the gift on both Pinterest and Instagram, made comments on Twitter, Facebook and reached out to their extended networks to tell them all about this wonderful gesture by Kotex.
By the end of the campaign – well, the end of Kotex’s analytics of the campaign, without measuring the extended secondary reach that the virality of the campaign created – Kotex had measured over 2,200 interactions and nearly 700,000 impressions. That’s quite the reach from contacting only 50 people directly!
Take a look at this video for a more comprehensive breakdown of the campaign:
The Lessons
There is a lot we can learn as marketers from this campaign. But when we consider the fact that this social media campaign relied heavily on a viral effect, we think the best lessons to pull from the Kotex social media case study relate to the importance of influencers.
Find Your Influencers
Kotex knew their demographic and the audience they could reach, but they knew that referrals are so much more powerful than direct marketing. It was for that reason that the marketing executives at Kotex went looking for their social media influencers on Pinterest.
These were women who had a reach far beyond that of Kotex alone. And they were women with an audience that filled two vital criteria: the audience was made up of the right demographics and the audience was highly engaged with these influencers. When you can turn influential people into brand advocates, you can rest assured that you are going to generate quite a bit of new business. But in order to find these influencers, you need to keep this next lesson very much in the forefront of your thinking.
Influencers Can Be Anybody!
The women to whom Kotex sent gifts were not on any Forbes power list, they were not First Ladies and they were not Manhattan socialites – they were normal. (Well, that is not to say that these other women are not “normal” but you know what we mean.) These were every day women who happened to build a large and highly engaged following on Pinterest by simply being active and posting content their followers loved to share. It took a lot of insight for the marketing executives at Kotex to understand this.
When it comes to social media, industry influencers are no longer part of a closed off group comprised of the economic and social elite – anyone and everyone has the ability to be an influencer. Marketers need to keep this in mind.
Small Gestures Go A Long Way
The gift baskets sent by Kotex did not include fancy electronics, or high-priced jewelry. They were simply made up of small knick-knacks that Kotex knew these women would love because they did their research. Kotex could easily have sent them gift certificates for a lifetime supply of Kotex products, but rest assured, the returns would have been far fewer.
The reason why there was such a high response rate and such a viral effect was because Kotex customized these gifts to the tastes of the recipients. They did not need to include lavish, overpriced items because they knew that what they had included was worth much more. A little research into their industry influencers resulted in the numbers you see above. So remember, a little thought can get you a lot further than the easiest option.
Create Limitless Campaigns
Kotex asked these women to do one thing: repin the gifts. A simple request. But the beauty of social media is that these women decided, on their own accord, to take the Kotex campaign to the next level, and involve virtually every avenue of social media they had access to. Kotex created a campaign that had an inherently viral element to it; by giving these women individually-inspired gifts and making them feel unique, it was only a matter of time before they shared the experience with their communities. Furthermore, Kotex did not give these women an ultimatum. The gifts were not a bribe, they were simply gifts with one small request. Giving these women the freedom to do what they wished with regards to sharing the gifts and experience with their communities led to them immediately taking the opportunity to boast about how special they felt thanks to Kotex.
Don’t Hope to Go Viral – Work Your Way There
Kotex was lucky that the campaign was as innovative and original as it was. At the time, Pinterest was the newest, hottest social network and Kotex was the first brand to take advantage of it in the way that they did. First-mover advantage worked wonders for the Kotex brand, but we cannot all hope that our social media campaigns will go viral the way the Kotex campaign did. So, when putting together your next campaign, reach out to your influencers, but don’t neglect the average customer or social media fan. After all, by targeting influencers, the ultimate audience whom you hope to reach is the average user, so make an effort to reach out to every person you can. Brand loyalty is brand loyalty wherever you find it.
The Kotex example is one of the finest uses of Pinterest and social media to date. As marketing on social media continues to evolve, it is certain that we can expect other campaigns to catch on as virally as this one did, but with regards to the use of influencers, it is hard to think of another example as perfect a social media case study as this one.
How are you reaching out to your influencers? What methods do you use to determine who your industry influencers are? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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Pinterest marketing was taken to the next level on Tuesday when Pinterest officially announced its newest feature (and what is undoubtedly every marketers favorite): integrated analytics.
So what does this mean with regards to Pinterest marketing? Slowly, Pinterest has been taking steps to become more business friendly, presumably in an effort to begin generating revenues internally. (After all, a business with no income can only last so long.) A few months ago, Pinterest announced the launch of business pages. Now, Pinterest marketing is taking the next leap forward with the launch of integrated analytics.
The analytics provided in the backend are fairly standard. They do not go into the complexity of some tools, like Pinfluencer, which allows you to delve deep into the insights of your followers and find your most influential pinners. But that is not for everyone, and what Pinterest does provide, completely free, is more than enough for you to gauge the success of your Pinterest marketing efforts.
Below are a few steps to help you get started with Pinterest marketing analytics, and a few tips to consider when using them.
Setting Up Your Pinterest Analytics
While your analytics may be working in the backend, you may not be able to access them right away. Luckily, it is a fairly simple process.
First thing you need to do is have your website verified by Pinterest. If you understand code, or have an easy-to-manage CMS like WordPress, then this is a very simple process of uploading a file to your backend or a line of code to your header. If you do not, then simply grab the line of code or file, send it off to your webmaster, and have them put it in there. Once that is done, and your site is verified, you will need to update to the “New Look” of Pinterest.
In your dropdown menu, the final tab gives you the option to switch to this new theme. Once you do, you will see a new tab in your menu: Analytics.
Let the Insights Begin!
Now you are all set to begin looking into your Pinterest marketing analytics. There are four tabs in your analytics backend: Site Metrics, Most Recent, Most Repinned and Most Clicked.
The latter three tabs are fairly straightforward; these three tabs break down the most recent activity (in picture form, of course) on your account with regards to shares, repins, clicks, etc. and give you some insights into who participated in said activity. Remember the small column on the left-hand side of your front page on Pinterest that showed you some of your most recent activity? Well, these three tabs are essentially far more detailed versions of that column. They allow you to monitor the progress of your Pinterest marketing on your website and see how that activity is converting on the social network.
The real metrics come into play in that first tab: Site Metrics.
This allows you to delve deep into your site’s Pinterest activity to see where you are successful, and just how successful you are. For the first time, you can measure the number of impressions on the pins from your site, and see how that translates into your reach on the social network. You can now also see the click-through rates on your pins, as opposed to relying on Google Analytics to measure the referral success of your Pinterest marketing.
At the end of it all, your Pinterest marketing analytics should look something like this:
With this new feature, we can be sure to see Pinterest moving into the realm of offering paid advertising shortly. Like promoted tweets or Facebook posts, Pinterest seems to be on the verge of offering a whole new set of business services that will likely make paid Pinterest marketing all the more attractive. Particularly now that these campaigns can be monitored.
What do you think of Pinterest’s new analytics dashboard? How do you plan on integrating it into your Pinterest marketing strategies? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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Twitter marketing has evolved considerably over the course of the last year, and it is important, as marketers, that we understand how to build our brand on Twitter.
Twitter marketing is often one of the cornerstones of a social media marketing strategy. However, if you are not optimizing your Twitter page for your brand, you are missing one of the most beneficial features of the social network.
Below are a few tips to help you maximize your Twitter marketing through brand optimization on your business’s Twitter page.
Design a Cover Photo
If you click on the small widget in the top right-hand corner of your Twitter profile and go to the Profile section of your Settings, you have the ability to add a customized header (Hint: 1252px x 626px in size.) to your Twitter profile.
A cover photo and the header section are great ways to showcase your business basics with a brief description or a Call-to-Action (CTA), your location and some fun, engaging photos that give your brand a personality. One of the more important factors that contribute to Twitter marketing success is the ability for people to relate to your brand and engage with the personality you create for it. The header section and the cover photo therein are a great way to do this on Twitter.
Add a Custom Background
A custom background, once again, is another area where you can be optimizing your Twitter marketing with a CTA. There is no shortage of step-by-step guides detailing how to design a Twitter background, or services like TwitBacks that help you create backgrounds easily, and one should definitely consider taking advantage of these options when designing a branded Twitter page.
When it comes to Twitter marketing, you want to engage with people as quickly as possible. There is a constant conversation taking place on Twitter, and if your Twitter marketing is not grabbing the attention of your audience immediately with features like the background, then you risk losing that attention very quickly.
The next major step when it comes to optimizing your Twitter marketing relates to optimizing your brand page for search engines. As we have noted in past blog posts, social signals are factoring more heavily in search rankings every time the Google algorithm changes. Therefore, it is important that we optimize our brand pages for search engines.
To do so for Twitter, we need to follow a set of simple but important rules:
DO NOT SPAM!
We cannot stress this enough. Spamming links to your followers will not only hurt your Twitter credibility, but it will also hurt your SERPs. This also has a lot to do with your handle. Google’s algorithm disregards handles with a long set of numbers in them (e.g. John123456) as these are typically used by spammers. Make your handle short, simple and professional.
Add Keywords to Your Bio
There should be at least one keyword in your bio on Twitter, as this registers to Google when determining search rankings.
If You Build It, They Will Follow…And Your Rankings Will Improve
As your network grows, it registers with the algorithm and help your search rankings improve when it comes to your Twitter profile.
Consider the Potential of Retweets
Retweets register to Google as pseudo-backlinks, particularly when they include a link to your site or blog. So consider the length of your tweets and leave some room for your followers to comment when retweeting (100 characters is your sweet spot!).
These are just a few tips that can help you optimize your Twitter marketing strategy. Each campaign, each profile, each industry and each step is going to be unique, particularly when you factor in what your goals are when it comes to Twitter marketing. But these pointers should help you quite a bit when it comes to putting together a winning Twitter marketing strategy!
How are you optimizing your Twitter marketing strategy? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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Measuring social media return on investment (ROI) is one of the biggest grey areas when it comes to this emerging market, so what is important to look at when it comes to measuring social media ROI?
Social media return on investment is constantly a point of concern for executives and skeptics when it comes to launching a social media program. The irony, however, is that many of these skeptics claim that there is no means of measuring social media ROI when the fact of the matter is that, unlike many forms of marketing, every aspect of a social media program can be monitored and measured. The complexity of social media ROI factors in when one cannot decide how one wants to measure the success of a campaign (e.g. monetization of a fan base, growth of a fan base, increase in traffic, etc.).
There are several angles from which one can look at social media ROI, and what we describe below are just a few. That said, we think these are some of the best ways to measure the success of a social media program.
Social Media Cost-Benefit Analysis
In the field of Economics, a Cost-Benefit analysis is one of the most common ways of measuring the return of a program. What is important to note is that a C-B analysis looks not only at what might be gained from taking an action, but also what one stands to lose by not taking said action.
Say, for example, you calculate that an unattended social media PR crisis costs your business $10,000 in lost sales, brand tarnishing, etc., and that your brand unknowingly suffers two to three of these crises per year. That’s a calculated loss of $20,000-$30,000 every year as a direct result of not attending to your customers on social media. Now, say that you put together a social media program designed to engage with dissatisfied users and help them solve their issues on the very public sphere that is social media. The result is not only the retention of a customer, but the build up of brand loyalty through social media.
Now, it would not exactly be feasible to suggest that social media engagement in the time of crisis will mean retaining every calculated dollar lost from not engaging on social media, but if you retain half of those lost earnings ($10,000-$15,000) and you are spending $700 per month on a small, customer-oriented social media program, you are looking at a yearly return measured as follows:
While this is a very black-and-white example, measuring a social media program’s ROI can be as simple as a C-B analysis.
Setting Social Media Goals
On the less technical front, you might want to consider measuring your social media success through the use of established goals that you lay out at every stage of the program. These do not necessarily have to be monetary returns. In fact, one way of measuring the success of your social program is by measuring the growth and extension of your network. Effectively, the growth of your social network translates into the growth of your pool of leads.
So when building your social media strategy, create a set of goals that you would like to achieve and measure your returns by the growth of your networks. From there, once your networks have grown to your satisfaction, you can consider this next form of social media ROI.
Return of Campaigns
You may be focused entirely on the monetization of your social media program. That’s fine. Businesses aim to be as profitable as possible, and there’s no better way to measure profit than with monetary gains. So the final and most straightforward way you can go about measuring the ROI of your social program is through the monitoring of returns from your campaigns. Be careful, however. There is something that a lot of people overlook when it comes to measuring the monetary returns from converting a client. This once again factors into a Cost-Benefit analysis.
Say you have managed to convert a lead into a client on social media. Well done! Now let’s say that this client has a lifetime value (LTV) of $120 with three $40 purchases. Then let’s say it cost you $50 to convert this client (between time, resources, expenses, etc.). You’re looking at a healthy lifetime profit of the converted client with a value of $70. Way to go! Now, let’s look at the alternative – this is where people often lose out without even realizing it.
Let’s say you spend that same $50 to convert a lead into a client on social media, but now, a client’s LTV is a one-time purchase of $40. This means that for every client you convert, you are losing $10. So the more conversions you see, the more money you lose.
It is extremely important that we measure not only how much we are making when it comes to social media, but how much we are spending. And this includes time (our most precious resource), expenses, opportunity costs, etc. If we are only measuring the returns and not the costs, we are missing the entire concept of profitability. So keep that in mind when you are measuring the success of your social campaigns.
How do you measure the ROI of your social media programs? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
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Social equity garnered as a result of a Twitter presence stands to add quite a bit of value to your brand.
As with any social network, Twitter adds an entirely new degree of Social Equity to your business. However, where Twitter differs with regards to the Social Equity added to a brand is the ability to use it as a broadcast medium (to a degree) which makes it unique when it comes to social networks.
There are a few statistics of note with regards to the demographics and business capabilities of Twitter. Let us first begin by examining these figures, then incorporate the numbers into our discussion of Social Equity derived from a Twitter presence.
Interesting Facts and Figures
On Twitter, American users have a higher median income than the average American population – the largest demographic with regards to income falls in the $50K-$75K range. Furthermore, more than half of the 500 million Twitter users follow a brand, company or product.
With regards to business, 79% of US-based Twitter users are more likely to recommend a brand or store they follow, and 67% of US-based users are more likely to buy from a brand or store they follow on Twitter. How does this translate? Companies using Twitter average twice as many leads per month than those that do not. This is especially true for B2C companies. Those with more than 100 followers (not a difficult goal to reach with a proper strategy in place) have 146% more leads per month because of their activity on Twitter.
Lastly, 58% of consumers following a brand on Twitter say they have praised a brand or company for a product, service or interaction.
Social Equity Derived from Twitter
As a pseudo-broadcast medium, Twitter allows brands to both engage with users and market themselves on the social network. It is for that reason that we see the numbers above. Twitter allows brands to engage with users talking about their niche, establish themselves as experts or industry leaders and drive conversions directly from the network.
Effectively, what this means is that Twitter is a realm in which brands can target leads and work to drive conversion all in one space. Granted, the main goal of Twitter should not be to market your brand. That is an added benefit of the network. The real goal should be to build your brand’s authority, which in turn will result in increased leads and conversions.
With regards to Social Equity, Twitter acts as an international platform on which to grow your brand’s reputation both on the widespread market and on an individual basis. The figures above suggest that Twitter is a medium in which people seek out industry leading brands and not only do two-thirds of these users have the potential to convert, but nearly four-fifths are going to recommend these brands to their peers.
As we noted in last week’s Social Equity segment on Facebook, true equity can be measured not only in the value added, but also in the losses incurred as a result of not having a presence on Twitter. With such a vast marketplace at your fingertips and the ability to grow your brand’s authority on both the personal and overarching levels, it seems almost counter-intuitive to not have a presence on Twitter.
Do you use Twitter to engage with your audience? How are you measuring the Social Equity derived from a Twitter presence? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
https://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.png00Corey Padveenhttps://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.pngCorey Padveen2013-03-08 09:00:102013-03-08 09:00:10Social Equity: The Benefits of a Twitter Presence
Social media turned the Old Spice brand into a personality with which people were eager to engage.
In the last few years, Old Spice has become a crowned jewel of social media. Their campaigns consistently skyrocket and the brand has developed such a distinct personality that anyone familiar with the brand can recognize one of their campaigns almost immediately. What is most fascinating about their branding, you ask? Well, perhaps it is the fact that, unlike Rome, it was built in a day. (Well, not a day, but you get the idea.)
In today’s social media case study, we aim to explain how Old Spice used social media to quickly (and quite successfully) create a virtual personality that led to the explosion of their brand in new markets and demographics.
The Background
In 2010, Old Spice created the character that has widely become known as “The Old Spice Guy” and the campaign developed an instant following. When a second commercial aired with the same praise and hype, Old Spice decided to go the social media route, and did something brilliant: they never broke character.
Slowly, the proliferation of the Old Spice brand on social media began to pick up steam, and, as if by divine intervention, Old Spice did not seem to slip up in any of their steps along the way, creating a set of guidelines that any marketer should adopt when attempting to create a social media personality for a brand.
The Lessons
Be Original
People are always intrigued by something they have never seen before. Until their campaign, no one had ever seen a brand persona like the one Old Spice had created. Of course, since the dawn of marketing there have been mascots and spokespeople, but never a brand personality so bold that clients and fans were eager to engage with it.
Originality is much easier said than done, of course. It is not every day that you are going to wake up with an idea that no one had ever thought of before. Countless brands have attempted to do what Old Spice has done in the last couple of years, but few have been successful. But thinking outside the box is exactly what made Old Spice so successful, and that is the first step to creating a winning social media campaign.
Be Consistent
The second, and possibly the most important step that Old Spice took was maintaining brand consistency across every channel onto which they expanded. Have a look at the Old Spice Twitter account. You’ll notice that the witty, charming and larger-than-life personality they originally created a few years ago exists there as well. The same holds true for their other social media channels. Brand consistency is one of the most crucial aspects when it comes to developing brand loyalty. After all, how can fans recognize your brand instantaneously if there are major differences between your channels?
So remember, once you have that winning edge, maintain it on every level of your marketing, particularly in social media where you will be engaging with your audience. Which brings us to the next takeaway…
Never Stop Engaging
Commercials are one thing, but ongoing, personalized and genuine engagement with its fan base is what led to the ongoing success of Old Spice’s social media efforts. As with any campaign, Old Spice knew that eventually fans would move on and grow tired of the standard promotional commercials. So what did they do? They (once again) never broke character and engaged with their fans through personalized responses (whether they were tweets, videos or posts) in a timely and comedic fashion.
This kept fans coming back, asking questions or making comments in the hopes that “The Old Spice Guy” would respond to them. What did this mean for the Old Spice brand (as a company)? It meant increased brand loyalty through the strategic use of social media. As we noted above, people fell in love with the personality Old Spice had created on social media, and this kept them coming back to the brand on social media, and anxiously awaiting more content. As far as the business side of things was concerned, it meant a very quick 107% increase in sales.
Avoid Selling on Social Media
Last but certainly not least, Old Spice avoided selling their product on social media. Of course, posting commercials that are meant to advertise the product is different, but as far as engaging with fans goes, Old Spice kept to entertaining and shied away from selling. People like personalities, not salespeople, and Old Spice recognized that. And it was the right thing to do. After all, the personality they created took care of the sales, which is clear in the numbers above.
Old Spice showed that creating a personality on social media that engages with its audience (Old Spice was engaging with fans that ranged anywhere from celebrities to Twitter users with less than 100 followers) can build brand loyalty faster than any other form of marketing. Listening, engaging, consistency and originality were the four cornerstones of the success of Old Spice on social media. This is not to say that any idea is going to skyrocket the way Old Spice’s campaign did, but it never hurts to try something and see what happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z10Hrsx7FBY
Which of these lessons do you think will be most helpful in building your next campaign? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
https://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.png00Corey Padveenhttps://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.pngCorey Padveen2013-03-07 08:45:222013-03-07 08:45:22Social Media Case Study: Old Spice
Mobile marketing is an increasingly popular choice when it comes to Internet marketing, and geo-targeting is a major part of it.
With the proliferation of mobile online searches, the concept of mobile marketing is becoming an increasingly popular option for marketers. One of the main facets of mobile marketing is the ability to geo-target potential clients based on their location.
Here, we aim to explain what exactly geo-targeting is and how you can leverage this powerful feature in your mobile marketing efforts.
Geo-Targeting Defined
In order to understand how we can use geo-targeting in our mobile marketing campaigns, we must first understand what it is. As the name might suggest, geo-targeting has to do with marketing to a client base in a given location. This can be as broad as a country, or as specific as an IP address. How you decide to use the feature depends largely on what you are trying to accomplish.
In the most basic sense, geo-targeting is the automated process of determining the location of a visitor to your website (be it on a desktop or mobile device) and showing different content to that visitor based on certain geographic criteria (e.g. country, region, city, IP address, etc.). This is a powerful tool when it comes to online advertising, as it allows businesses to promote different campaigns to targeted demographics based on where their searches are taking place.
With regards to mobile marketing, there are many more versatile capabilities when it comes to geo-targeting.
Geo-Targeting in Mobile Marketing
The ability to target individuals on their mobile device using geo-targeting services opens up a world of potential clients that businesses may not have even known about. Granted, geo-targeting leads on a desktop is a viable technique, but these users may not be near your area, or may not be willing to venture out and find you. On a mobile device, however, individuals can be targeted in a location as narrowly defined as a one block radius.
Take Foursquare, for example. Using the business application for Foursquare, businesses can claim their location, create a promotion or special, and the app automatically geo-targets users in the vicinity of the store, restaurant or business. There are also new and upcoming mobile marketing PPC abilities that are more geared towards marketing to users using banners. This trend is on the rise with the increased access to the mobile web by smartphone users.
Geo-targeting can be as simple as creating a special on Foursquare and letting the application take care of the rest, or as in-depth as developing a PPC campaign and custom banner ads and mobile landing pages that drive traffic from a mobile clientele. Either way, mobile marketing is made all the more intriguing by the ability to geo-target users.
Have you done any geo-targeting in your mobile marketing campaigns? How how is worked for you? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
https://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.png00Corey Padveenhttps://t2marketinginternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/logo-t2-300x138.pngCorey Padveen2013-03-06 09:26:352013-03-06 09:26:35Mobile Marketing: What is Geo-Targeting?
Effective Social Media Engagement: 5 Tips to Swear By
/by Corey PadveenEngagement on social media is one of the cornerstones of an effective social media program; but too many people go about it the wrong way.
So what can you be doing when it comes to social media engagement to ensure that you are doing it the right way? People are constantly talking about engaging on social media – ourselves included – but so few people give effective tips on how to engage with your fan base properly. Sure, every person and brand is going to develop their own unique voice when it comes to social media, but there are certain DOs and certain DO NOTs that everyone should be following when it comes to engaging with their fan base on social networks.
Today, we have decided to feature some of those tips to help your brand engage effectively on social media to ensure that you don’t run the risk of losing your audience or worse, having them comment negatively in a social forum.
1. DABC: Don’t Always Be Closing
In the Mamet-penned monumental monologue in the classic film Glengarry Glen Ross, the character of Blake (played by an Oscar-nominated Alec Baldwin in the film adaptation) gives a haunting speech to a group of terrified realtors wherein he tells them that they should follow the ABCs of selling: Always Be Closing. That might have worked for those realtors, but the reality of social media is that a better piece of advice would be to follow your DABCs.
You can’t always be closing when it comes to engaging on social media. Sure, the goal for most social marketers is to eventually convert leads generated on social networks into customers, but we can’t jump into our engagement attempting to close. We need to build a rapport with our leads and the only way to do that is to engage with them on a human level, not on a salesman-only level. That’s sure to turn them off.
It also brings us to our next point.
2. Talk Like a Human
If there’s one thing that people hate about engaging with certain corporate accounts, it is that it feels like just that: all business. There is no emotion or opinion behind a comment or post. Now, of course one has to take into account the political aspect that comes with running a social media program as a large company. Those in charge of engaging cannot say whatever they want. There is an image to maintain and thus, a certain standard to keep.
That said, if you feel like social media is the right place for your business to have a presence, then develop a strategy for engagement before you get started. People are going to reach out to your brand, and they want to feel like they are talking to someone there, not a computer directing them to simply call a customer service line for more information.
3. Don’t Discriminate
You might think that the only place where you stand to benefit from your engagement is with your industry’s influencers. And while it might be true that engaging with people who have thousands of fans or followers might lead to a quick gain, it is not always going to pay off. There are far more people out there with seventy-five or one hundred followers than those with seventy-five or one hundred thousand.
In a social media case study we did about Old Spice a few weeks ago, we noted that where Old Spice found the most success was in their ability to engage with any type of user in the same way, whether they were famous or simply Twitter fans with a few dozen followers. The payoffs were enormous for Old Spice and any marketer should take this as a lesson that it doesn’t pay to discriminate when it comes to engaging on social media.
4. Fashionably Late is a Social Faux Pas
Social media is an ongoing conversation. People are talking constantly and, when it comes to your brand, they are talking to you. And when it comes to all that social media has to offer and the fact that a recent study showed that the average online attention span is roughly 8 seconds, you can’t expect people to be waiting around for your response for too long.
We live in a fast-paced society and nothing embodies that better than social media. So when someone engages with your brand, do everything you can to respond as quickly as possible. You are half of the social conversation, so you can’t be late to the party.
5. Never Ignore Questions or Negative Comments
First, let’s look at questions. When someone goes out of their way to engage with your brand and ask a question, they are generally doing so because they want an answer. They are, for lack of a better analogy, calling for more information. This is a traditional call to action that we see in ads and commercials, and social media takes the first part of that CTA out of the equation. So when someone has a question, answer it! You wouldn’t have a hotline for leads to call in to if you didn’t have anyone manning the phones, would you? This is the same concept.
Next, you should never ever ignore negative comments. In doing so, you are basically burying your head in the sand while the whole world sees your flaws. If anything, negative comments are a great way to do two things. First, they are a chance for you to show the world how much you care about your customers by dealing with an issue on the social stage for all to see. Second, they are a great way to turn people into brand advocates. Social media is one of the best avenues in which to generate new brand advocates and negative comments are one of the ways to go about doing this.
What is your strategy when it comes to social media engagement? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Marketing Technology Broken Down [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenMarketing is no longer about simply our time; there are hundreds of marketing tools that can help us succeed.
Recently, we loaded an infographic with a detailed breakdown of the social media tools that we can use as marketers to improve and simplify our social media marketing. Well, this is just a small realm of marketing tools that exist to help facilitate the marketing process.
The world of technology has meant quite a bit of change from a marketing perspective. The advent of different tools has resulted in two things: first, on a superficial level, there world of technology may appear somewhat perplexing at an initial glance. After all, these are a set of tools that we have never seen before and, more importantly, there are so many of them that we may not know how to go about using them in a strategic manner. Second, these tools have added an entirely new realm to the world of marketing. And not only from a social media perspective. They have opened up the marketing world to so much more, and it is pretty clear why. The possibilities that these tools offer are virtually endless!
Below is a breakdown of nearly every piece of marketing technology that exists out there today. Take a look through the infographic and look up some of the tools you are unfamiliar with. It’s a great way to build your knowledge.
Do you use any of these tools for your marketing efforts? Which of these do you think is the best? Why? Are there any you haven’t used before that you are going to try? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Equity: LinkedIn and Your Business
/by Corey PadveenSocial Equity is given quite a boost with a LinkedIn presence – and not just for B2B companies.
LinkedIn is widely known as the professional social network. So, it would make sense for people to assume that it is largely for B2B companies. While it is true that LinkedIn is one of the most beneficial social networks when it comes to B2B, the Social Equity a brand can garner as a result of having a LinkedIn presence – whether it is B2B or B2C – is quite high.
Today, we aim to explain where the Social Equity of a LinkedIn presence is found, and how you can determine the value added to your business as a result of having both a personal and company page on the social network.
The Benefits of LinkedIn
As we noted above, LinkedIn is often perceived as the professional network. As such, it is an arena in which professionals actively seek out industry influencers, leaders and authority figures. Therefore, it is one of the easiest niches in which to establish yourself as an industry-leader within your market. Social networks on the more general scale, like Facebook and Twitter, are mediums in which we can establish our brand as an authority with the general public, but for any company, be it B2C or B2B, LinkedIn is the best avenue through which we can build our credibility with members of our own industry.
On the other side of the spectrum, LinkedIn is an excellent network for seeking out the advice and tips of other leaders and professionals, and applying those bits of advice to our own strategies. Though LinkedIn Answers was a great feature in which to do this before it was removed, LinkedIn Groups are still a powerful tool, and include higher engagement rates than almost any other feature on social media. Contrary to many social networks, LinkedIn is a place where professionals are seeking out the opinions and inputs of others, and the element of self-promotion (not in its purest form, but close to it) is not only accepted, but in many cases encouraged.
So, how does this all add value to your business?
Social Equity Derived from LinkedIn
Having both a personal account and an active company page on LinkedIn can generate quite a bit of Social Equity for your brand. With a well-orchestrated strategy in place, we can quickly build our authority in a given field and begin driving referrals to both our personal pages and our websites. This holds true for both types of businesses. Even as a B2C entity, we are still looking to build market authority, and LinkedIn is one way of doing that.
Say you are a local and online retail store, for example. Now say you create a profile on LinkedIn and begin sharing short articles you write about running a successful retail location, or a successful e-commerce website. By posting to your updates (your network), your company page and your groups pages about the retail industry, you will quickly see your influence, network and, most important for building business, your LinkedIn referral traffic begin to shoot up.
It is important to understand that in any industry, people want to associate themselves with the best. Whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or a retail-savvy basement blogger, industry leaders and influencers receive the most attention on a network like LinkedIn, and that translates to Social Equity.
The value added of a large professional and referral network is highly coveted. Consider not only the calculated value of your business assets, but the value added of an extended network, an established industry leader at the helm of your company and your industry influence. All of this is capable through the strategic use of LinkedIn.
How are you using LinkedIn to generate Social Equity for your business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Media Case Study: Kotex
/by Corey PadveenThe use of Pinterest and social media by Kotex proved to be one of the most successful and innovative social media campaigns run to date.
With the major announcement yesterday that Pinterest would now provide analytics to its business users, we thought an appropriate social media case study this week would involve the use of the social network. And what better Pinterest-themed social media case study than its use by Kotex last year to celebrate women’s inspiration.
The Campaign
The brilliance lay in how they decided to design the program. Effectively, Kotex sought out the 50 most influential women they could find on the social network after reviewing thousands of accounts and their followers, and began searching through their boards to determine what inspired them. After that, they put together customized gift boxes inspired by these women’s boards, and reached out to these influencers on social media to share these gifts with them. They asked for only one thing in return: to repin the gift.
The results were far greater than what Kotex could have hoped for. Not only did nearly 100% of the 50 women comply with the simple request, but they went above and beyond. These women posted pictures of each component of the gift on both Pinterest and Instagram, made comments on Twitter, Facebook and reached out to their extended networks to tell them all about this wonderful gesture by Kotex.
By the end of the campaign – well, the end of Kotex’s analytics of the campaign, without measuring the extended secondary reach that the virality of the campaign created – Kotex had measured over 2,200 interactions and nearly 700,000 impressions. That’s quite the reach from contacting only 50 people directly!
Take a look at this video for a more comprehensive breakdown of the campaign:
The Lessons
There is a lot we can learn as marketers from this campaign. But when we consider the fact that this social media campaign relied heavily on a viral effect, we think the best lessons to pull from the Kotex social media case study relate to the importance of influencers.
Find Your Influencers
Kotex knew their demographic and the audience they could reach, but they knew that referrals are so much more powerful than direct marketing. It was for that reason that the marketing executives at Kotex went looking for their social media influencers on Pinterest.
These were women who had a reach far beyond that of Kotex alone. And they were women with an audience that filled two vital criteria: the audience was made up of the right demographics and the audience was highly engaged with these influencers. When you can turn influential people into brand advocates, you can rest assured that you are going to generate quite a bit of new business. But in order to find these influencers, you need to keep this next lesson very much in the forefront of your thinking.
Influencers Can Be Anybody!
The women to whom Kotex sent gifts were not on any Forbes power list, they were not First Ladies and they were not Manhattan socialites – they were normal. (Well, that is not to say that these other women are not “normal” but you know what we mean.) These were every day women who happened to build a large and highly engaged following on Pinterest by simply being active and posting content their followers loved to share. It took a lot of insight for the marketing executives at Kotex to understand this.
When it comes to social media, industry influencers are no longer part of a closed off group comprised of the economic and social elite – anyone and everyone has the ability to be an influencer. Marketers need to keep this in mind.
Small Gestures Go A Long Way
The gift baskets sent by Kotex did not include fancy electronics, or high-priced jewelry. They were simply made up of small knick-knacks that Kotex knew these women would love because they did their research. Kotex could easily have sent them gift certificates for a lifetime supply of Kotex products, but rest assured, the returns would have been far fewer.
The reason why there was such a high response rate and such a viral effect was because Kotex customized these gifts to the tastes of the recipients. They did not need to include lavish, overpriced items because they knew that what they had included was worth much more. A little research into their industry influencers resulted in the numbers you see above. So remember, a little thought can get you a lot further than the easiest option.
Create Limitless Campaigns
Kotex asked these women to do one thing: repin the gifts. A simple request. But the beauty of social media is that these women decided, on their own accord, to take the Kotex campaign to the next level, and involve virtually every avenue of social media they had access to. Kotex created a campaign that had an inherently viral element to it; by giving these women individually-inspired gifts and making them feel unique, it was only a matter of time before they shared the experience with their communities. Furthermore, Kotex did not give these women an ultimatum. The gifts were not a bribe, they were simply gifts with one small request. Giving these women the freedom to do what they wished with regards to sharing the gifts and experience with their communities led to them immediately taking the opportunity to boast about how special they felt thanks to Kotex.
Don’t Hope to Go Viral – Work Your Way There
Kotex was lucky that the campaign was as innovative and original as it was. At the time, Pinterest was the newest, hottest social network and Kotex was the first brand to take advantage of it in the way that they did. First-mover advantage worked wonders for the Kotex brand, but we cannot all hope that our social media campaigns will go viral the way the Kotex campaign did. So, when putting together your next campaign, reach out to your influencers, but don’t neglect the average customer or social media fan. After all, by targeting influencers, the ultimate audience whom you hope to reach is the average user, so make an effort to reach out to every person you can. Brand loyalty is brand loyalty wherever you find it.
The Kotex example is one of the finest uses of Pinterest and social media to date. As marketing on social media continues to evolve, it is certain that we can expect other campaigns to catch on as virally as this one did, but with regards to the use of influencers, it is hard to think of another example as perfect a social media case study as this one.
How are you reaching out to your influencers? What methods do you use to determine who your industry influencers are? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Pinterest Marketing with Integrated Analytics
/by Corey PadveenPinterest marketing was taken to the next level on Tuesday when Pinterest officially announced its newest feature (and what is undoubtedly every marketers favorite): integrated analytics.
So what does this mean with regards to Pinterest marketing? Slowly, Pinterest has been taking steps to become more business friendly, presumably in an effort to begin generating revenues internally. (After all, a business with no income can only last so long.) A few months ago, Pinterest announced the launch of business pages. Now, Pinterest marketing is taking the next leap forward with the launch of integrated analytics.
The analytics provided in the backend are fairly standard. They do not go into the complexity of some tools, like Pinfluencer, which allows you to delve deep into the insights of your followers and find your most influential pinners. But that is not for everyone, and what Pinterest does provide, completely free, is more than enough for you to gauge the success of your Pinterest marketing efforts.
Below are a few steps to help you get started with Pinterest marketing analytics, and a few tips to consider when using them.
Setting Up Your Pinterest Analytics
While your analytics may be working in the backend, you may not be able to access them right away. Luckily, it is a fairly simple process.
First thing you need to do is have your website verified by Pinterest. If you understand code, or have an easy-to-manage CMS like WordPress, then this is a very simple process of uploading a file to your backend or a line of code to your header. If you do not, then simply grab the line of code or file, send it off to your webmaster, and have them put it in there. Once that is done, and your site is verified, you will need to update to the “New Look” of Pinterest.
In your dropdown menu, the final tab gives you the option to switch to this new theme. Once you do, you will see a new tab in your menu: Analytics.
Let the Insights Begin!
Now you are all set to begin looking into your Pinterest marketing analytics. There are four tabs in your analytics backend: Site Metrics, Most Recent, Most Repinned and Most Clicked.
The latter three tabs are fairly straightforward; these three tabs break down the most recent activity (in picture form, of course) on your account with regards to shares, repins, clicks, etc. and give you some insights into who participated in said activity. Remember the small column on the left-hand side of your front page on Pinterest that showed you some of your most recent activity? Well, these three tabs are essentially far more detailed versions of that column. They allow you to monitor the progress of your Pinterest marketing on your website and see how that activity is converting on the social network.
The real metrics come into play in that first tab: Site Metrics.
This allows you to delve deep into your site’s Pinterest activity to see where you are successful, and just how successful you are. For the first time, you can measure the number of impressions on the pins from your site, and see how that translates into your reach on the social network. You can now also see the click-through rates on your pins, as opposed to relying on Google Analytics to measure the referral success of your Pinterest marketing.
At the end of it all, your Pinterest marketing analytics should look something like this:
With this new feature, we can be sure to see Pinterest moving into the realm of offering paid advertising shortly. Like promoted tweets or Facebook posts, Pinterest seems to be on the verge of offering a whole new set of business services that will likely make paid Pinterest marketing all the more attractive. Particularly now that these campaigns can be monitored.
What do you think of Pinterest’s new analytics dashboard? How do you plan on integrating it into your Pinterest marketing strategies? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Twitter Marketing: Build Your Brand
/by Corey PadveenTwitter marketing has evolved considerably over the course of the last year, and it is important, as marketers, that we understand how to build our brand on Twitter.
Twitter marketing is often one of the cornerstones of a social media marketing strategy. However, if you are not optimizing your Twitter page for your brand, you are missing one of the most beneficial features of the social network.
Below are a few tips to help you maximize your Twitter marketing through brand optimization on your business’s Twitter page.
Design a Cover Photo
If you click on the small widget in the top right-hand corner of your Twitter profile and go to the Profile section of your Settings, you have the ability to add a customized header (Hint: 1252px x 626px in size.) to your Twitter profile.
A cover photo and the header section are great ways to showcase your business basics with a brief description or a Call-to-Action (CTA), your location and some fun, engaging photos that give your brand a personality. One of the more important factors that contribute to Twitter marketing success is the ability for people to relate to your brand and engage with the personality you create for it. The header section and the cover photo therein are a great way to do this on Twitter.
Add a Custom Background
A custom background, once again, is another area where you can be optimizing your Twitter marketing with a CTA. There is no shortage of step-by-step guides detailing how to design a Twitter background, or services like TwitBacks that help you create backgrounds easily, and one should definitely consider taking advantage of these options when designing a branded Twitter page.
When it comes to Twitter marketing, you want to engage with people as quickly as possible. There is a constant conversation taking place on Twitter, and if your Twitter marketing is not grabbing the attention of your audience immediately with features like the background, then you risk losing that attention very quickly.
To get an idea of what we mean, take a look at these 17 captivating Twitter accounts from HubSpot and see what an engaging Twitter marketing strategy looks like.
SEO in Twitter Marketing
The next major step when it comes to optimizing your Twitter marketing relates to optimizing your brand page for search engines. As we have noted in past blog posts, social signals are factoring more heavily in search rankings every time the Google algorithm changes. Therefore, it is important that we optimize our brand pages for search engines.
To do so for Twitter, we need to follow a set of simple but important rules:
DO NOT SPAM!
Add Keywords to Your Bio
If You Build It, They Will Follow…And Your Rankings Will Improve
Consider the Potential of Retweets
These are just a few tips that can help you optimize your Twitter marketing strategy. Each campaign, each profile, each industry and each step is going to be unique, particularly when you factor in what your goals are when it comes to Twitter marketing. But these pointers should help you quite a bit when it comes to putting together a winning Twitter marketing strategy!
How are you optimizing your Twitter marketing strategy? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Media ROI: What to Measure
/by Corey PadveenMeasuring social media return on investment (ROI) is one of the biggest grey areas when it comes to this emerging market, so what is important to look at when it comes to measuring social media ROI?
Social media return on investment is constantly a point of concern for executives and skeptics when it comes to launching a social media program. The irony, however, is that many of these skeptics claim that there is no means of measuring social media ROI when the fact of the matter is that, unlike many forms of marketing, every aspect of a social media program can be monitored and measured. The complexity of social media ROI factors in when one cannot decide how one wants to measure the success of a campaign (e.g. monetization of a fan base, growth of a fan base, increase in traffic, etc.).
There are several angles from which one can look at social media ROI, and what we describe below are just a few. That said, we think these are some of the best ways to measure the success of a social media program.
Social Media Cost-Benefit Analysis
In the field of Economics, a Cost-Benefit analysis is one of the most common ways of measuring the return of a program. What is important to note is that a C-B analysis looks not only at what might be gained from taking an action, but also what one stands to lose by not taking said action.
Say, for example, you calculate that an unattended social media PR crisis costs your business $10,000 in lost sales, brand tarnishing, etc., and that your brand unknowingly suffers two to three of these crises per year. That’s a calculated loss of $20,000-$30,000 every year as a direct result of not attending to your customers on social media. Now, say that you put together a social media program designed to engage with dissatisfied users and help them solve their issues on the very public sphere that is social media. The result is not only the retention of a customer, but the build up of brand loyalty through social media.
Now, it would not exactly be feasible to suggest that social media engagement in the time of crisis will mean retaining every calculated dollar lost from not engaging on social media, but if you retain half of those lost earnings ($10,000-$15,000) and you are spending $700 per month on a small, customer-oriented social media program, you are looking at a yearly return measured as follows:
While this is a very black-and-white example, measuring a social media program’s ROI can be as simple as a C-B analysis.
Setting Social Media Goals
So when building your social media strategy, create a set of goals that you would like to achieve and measure your returns by the growth of your networks. From there, once your networks have grown to your satisfaction, you can consider this next form of social media ROI.
Return of Campaigns
You may be focused entirely on the monetization of your social media program. That’s fine. Businesses aim to be as profitable as possible, and there’s no better way to measure profit than with monetary gains. So the final and most straightforward way you can go about measuring the ROI of your social program is through the monitoring of returns from your campaigns. Be careful, however. There is something that a lot of people overlook when it comes to measuring the monetary returns from converting a client. This once again factors into a Cost-Benefit analysis.
Say you have managed to convert a lead into a client on social media. Well done! Now let’s say that this client has a lifetime value (LTV) of $120 with three $40 purchases. Then let’s say it cost you $50 to convert this client (between time, resources, expenses, etc.). You’re looking at a healthy lifetime profit of the converted client with a value of $70. Way to go! Now, let’s look at the alternative – this is where people often lose out without even realizing it.
Let’s say you spend that same $50 to convert a lead into a client on social media, but now, a client’s LTV is a one-time purchase of $40. This means that for every client you convert, you are losing $10. So the more conversions you see, the more money you lose.
It is extremely important that we measure not only how much we are making when it comes to social media, but how much we are spending. And this includes time (our most precious resource), expenses, opportunity costs, etc. If we are only measuring the returns and not the costs, we are missing the entire concept of profitability. So keep that in mind when you are measuring the success of your social campaigns.
How do you measure the ROI of your social media programs? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Equity: The Benefits of a Twitter Presence
/by Corey PadveenSocial equity garnered as a result of a Twitter presence stands to add quite a bit of value to your brand.
As with any social network, Twitter adds an entirely new degree of Social Equity to your business. However, where Twitter differs with regards to the Social Equity added to a brand is the ability to use it as a broadcast medium (to a degree) which makes it unique when it comes to social networks.
There are a few statistics of note with regards to the demographics and business capabilities of Twitter. Let us first begin by examining these figures, then incorporate the numbers into our discussion of Social Equity derived from a Twitter presence.
Interesting Facts and Figures
On Twitter, American users have a higher median income than the average American population – the largest demographic with regards to income falls in the $50K-$75K range. Furthermore, more than half of the 500 million Twitter users follow a brand, company or product.
With regards to business, 79% of US-based Twitter users are more likely to recommend a brand or store they follow, and 67% of US-based users are more likely to buy from a brand or store they follow on Twitter. How does this translate? Companies using Twitter average twice as many leads per month than those that do not. This is especially true for B2C companies. Those with more than 100 followers (not a difficult goal to reach with a proper strategy in place) have 146% more leads per month because of their activity on Twitter.
Lastly, 58% of consumers following a brand on Twitter say they have praised a brand or company for a product, service or interaction.
Social Equity Derived from Twitter
As a pseudo-broadcast medium, Twitter allows brands to both engage with users and market themselves on the social network. It is for that reason that we see the numbers above. Twitter allows brands to engage with users talking about their niche, establish themselves as experts or industry leaders and drive conversions directly from the network.
Effectively, what this means is that Twitter is a realm in which brands can target leads and work to drive conversion all in one space. Granted, the main goal of Twitter should not be to market your brand. That is an added benefit of the network. The real goal should be to build your brand’s authority, which in turn will result in increased leads and conversions.
As we noted in last week’s Social Equity segment on Facebook, true equity can be measured not only in the value added, but also in the losses incurred as a result of not having a presence on Twitter. With such a vast marketplace at your fingertips and the ability to grow your brand’s authority on both the personal and overarching levels, it seems almost counter-intuitive to not have a presence on Twitter.
Do you use Twitter to engage with your audience? How are you measuring the Social Equity derived from a Twitter presence? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Media Case Study: Old Spice
/by Corey PadveenSocial media turned the Old Spice brand into a personality with which people were eager to engage.
In the last few years, Old Spice has become a crowned jewel of social media. Their campaigns consistently skyrocket and the brand has developed such a distinct personality that anyone familiar with the brand can recognize one of their campaigns almost immediately. What is most fascinating about their branding, you ask? Well, perhaps it is the fact that, unlike Rome, it was built in a day. (Well, not a day, but you get the idea.)
In today’s social media case study, we aim to explain how Old Spice used social media to quickly (and quite successfully) create a virtual personality that led to the explosion of their brand in new markets and demographics.
The Background
In 2010, Old Spice created the character that has widely become known as “The Old Spice Guy” and the campaign developed an instant following. When a second commercial aired with the same praise and hype, Old Spice decided to go the social media route, and did something brilliant: they never broke character.
Slowly, the proliferation of the Old Spice brand on social media began to pick up steam, and, as if by divine intervention, Old Spice did not seem to slip up in any of their steps along the way, creating a set of guidelines that any marketer should adopt when attempting to create a social media personality for a brand.
The Lessons
Be Original
People are always intrigued by something they have never seen before. Until their campaign, no one had ever seen a brand persona like the one Old Spice had created. Of course, since the dawn of marketing there have been mascots and spokespeople, but never a brand personality so bold that clients and fans were eager to engage with it.
Originality is much easier said than done, of course. It is not every day that you are going to wake up with an idea that no one had ever thought of before. Countless brands have attempted to do what Old Spice has done in the last couple of years, but few have been successful. But thinking outside the box is exactly what made Old Spice so successful, and that is the first step to creating a winning social media campaign.
Be Consistent
The second, and possibly the most important step that Old Spice took was maintaining brand consistency across every channel onto which they expanded. Have a look at the Old Spice Twitter account. You’ll notice that the witty, charming and larger-than-life personality they originally created a few years ago exists there as well. The same holds true for their other social media channels. Brand consistency is one of the most crucial aspects when it comes to developing brand loyalty. After all, how can fans recognize your brand instantaneously if there are major differences between your channels?
So remember, once you have that winning edge, maintain it on every level of your marketing, particularly in social media where you will be engaging with your audience. Which brings us to the next takeaway…
Never Stop Engaging
Commercials are one thing, but ongoing, personalized and genuine engagement with its fan base is what led to the ongoing success of Old Spice’s social media efforts. As with any campaign, Old Spice knew that eventually fans would move on and grow tired of the standard promotional commercials. So what did they do? They (once again) never broke character and engaged with their fans through personalized responses (whether they were tweets, videos or posts) in a timely and comedic fashion.
This kept fans coming back, asking questions or making comments in the hopes that “The Old Spice Guy” would respond to them. What did this mean for the Old Spice brand (as a company)? It meant increased brand loyalty through the strategic use of social media. As we noted above, people fell in love with the personality Old Spice had created on social media, and this kept them coming back to the brand on social media, and anxiously awaiting more content. As far as the business side of things was concerned, it meant a very quick 107% increase in sales.
Avoid Selling on Social Media
Last but certainly not least, Old Spice avoided selling their product on social media. Of course, posting commercials that are meant to advertise the product is different, but as far as engaging with fans goes, Old Spice kept to entertaining and shied away from selling. People like personalities, not salespeople, and Old Spice recognized that. And it was the right thing to do. After all, the personality they created took care of the sales, which is clear in the numbers above.
Old Spice showed that creating a personality on social media that engages with its audience (Old Spice was engaging with fans that ranged anywhere from celebrities to Twitter users with less than 100 followers) can build brand loyalty faster than any other form of marketing. Listening, engaging, consistency and originality were the four cornerstones of the success of Old Spice on social media. This is not to say that any idea is going to skyrocket the way Old Spice’s campaign did, but it never hurts to try something and see what happens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z10Hrsx7FBY
Which of these lessons do you think will be most helpful in building your next campaign? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Mobile Marketing: What is Geo-Targeting?
/by Corey PadveenMobile marketing is an increasingly popular choice when it comes to Internet marketing, and geo-targeting is a major part of it.
With the proliferation of mobile online searches, the concept of mobile marketing is becoming an increasingly popular option for marketers. One of the main facets of mobile marketing is the ability to geo-target potential clients based on their location.
Here, we aim to explain what exactly geo-targeting is and how you can leverage this powerful feature in your mobile marketing efforts.
Geo-Targeting Defined
In order to understand how we can use geo-targeting in our mobile marketing campaigns, we must first understand what it is. As the name might suggest, geo-targeting has to do with marketing to a client base in a given location. This can be as broad as a country, or as specific as an IP address. How you decide to use the feature depends largely on what you are trying to accomplish.
In the most basic sense, geo-targeting is the automated process of determining the location of a visitor to your website (be it on a desktop or mobile device) and showing different content to that visitor based on certain geographic criteria (e.g. country, region, city, IP address, etc.). This is a powerful tool when it comes to online advertising, as it allows businesses to promote different campaigns to targeted demographics based on where their searches are taking place.
With regards to mobile marketing, there are many more versatile capabilities when it comes to geo-targeting.
Geo-Targeting in Mobile Marketing
The ability to target individuals on their mobile device using geo-targeting services opens up a world of potential clients that businesses may not have even known about. Granted, geo-targeting leads on a desktop is a viable technique, but these users may not be near your area, or may not be willing to venture out and find you. On a mobile device, however, individuals can be targeted in a location as narrowly defined as a one block radius.
Take Foursquare, for example. Using the business application for Foursquare, businesses can claim their location, create a promotion or special, and the app automatically geo-targets users in the vicinity of the store, restaurant or business. There are also new and upcoming mobile marketing PPC abilities that are more geared towards marketing to users using banners. This trend is on the rise with the increased access to the mobile web by smartphone users.
Geo-targeting can be as simple as creating a special on Foursquare and letting the application take care of the rest, or as in-depth as developing a PPC campaign and custom banner ads and mobile landing pages that drive traffic from a mobile clientele. Either way, mobile marketing is made all the more intriguing by the ability to geo-target users.
Have you done any geo-targeting in your mobile marketing campaigns? How how is worked for you? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!