social business Archives

Social Media Case Study: Intel

July 11, 2013/by Corey Padveen

How did Intel subtly promote their new processor to Facebook users?

Creating interactive campaigns has long been an excellent way of engaging your audience and driving users to a landing page, your website or a store. It also makes for a great, open and shut social media case study. However, launching a campaign targeted at Facebook users to build brand awareness is a little more difficult, but Intel managed to do it right.

In 2011, Intel was preparing to roll out their all-new i5 processor. Naturally, this was intended to be the next generation in computer hardware, and they wanted people to know about it. Knowing that showing was much better than telling, the marketing team at Intel decided to put together the ‘Intel Museum of Me‘.

If social media has taught us anything, it is that we are all, to a certain degree, self-obsessed. In order to keep their brand at the forefront of your mind, Intel leveraged that fact and gave you your own museum, something that, quite frankly, is hard to look through only once.

Now, not every marketing budget will allow for such a vastly intricate and impressive campaign to be put together. However, there are surely a few things that marketers can learn from the great work done by Intel to promote their brand to the Facebook audience.

Sometimes the Soft Sell Works Best

The Intel i5 logo pops up at the very end of your museum tour. It is hard to understand where Intel fits into all of this, but it all comes together right at the end. And it leaves you with enough chills to keep the brand in mind for a lot longer than the 3-minute video.

The soft sell can often be the most powerful. Relate your brand to your audience on a personal level and they will remember your name.

Connect with Your Audience

This does not mean connect with them on Facebook or Twitter (well, do that too) but rather really connect with your audience. Give your campaign that personal touch and make each member of your audience feel like it was designed exclusively for them. This small gesture will go a long way when it comes to keeping your brand on the forefront of their minds.

Go Beyond the Brand

Much like the first tip above, your campaign should sell the brand by adding value to your audience’s experience. While touting your expertise, the benefits of your product over another or some other value added from your product or service might work well when it comes to one-time sales, brand loyalty is invaluable and benefits your business in the long-run.

Explain how your brand adds value to your customers and showcase that value with your campaign. This will go a very, very long way.

If you have no yet experienced the ‘Intel Museum of Me‘ we really encourage you to have a look.

What other lessons do you think marketers can learn from this social media case study? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

5 Questions Social Media Managers Should Have An Answer For

July 10, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There are certain questions social media managers should always be able to answer – no matter what.

While every project might be different and unique in its own right, there are certain questions that social media managers will constantly be faced with, and should always have an answer for.

Below are five questions that will almost certainly come up for social media managers in everything from a friendly roundtable discussion with other industry peers to make or break decision-making meeting with prospective clients. In each of these situations and everything in between, qualified social media managers should have an answer locked and loaded. Or, at the very least, know in which direction they would like to take the question.

1. How do you measure the success of social media?

This answer is going to differ depending on the type of client you are talking to, but no matter who the client is, or what the goals of the program might be, you should always be able to provide a detailed response outlining what constitutes success based on numbers.

There are still plenty of skeptics out there when it comes to social media. If you expect to change their minds, you need to be able to answer them with something a little more substantial than ‘Likes’ and ‘Followers’.

2. Can’t I do this for free?

There it is – that evil word: free. This is still among the most common misconceptions when it comes to social media; and it is a very easily understandable one.

I can sign up for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and any other social network for free. Why would I pay someone to do it for me? And therein lies the misconception. You need to be able to explain why social media is about so much more than simply having the account. There is an expertise involved and a significant investment of time.

Know how to answer this question and convey your point, and selling social media will be much easier.

3. What tools do you use?

Be careful – this is not as black and white as it looks. There is a lot behind this question and a very careful answer needs to be given.

Tools are great complements to a thoughtful social media strategy, and you need to be able to explain that while tools are incorporated into your program, they are not the only part of the solution.

It is also very important that you are familiar with every possible tool you can find. This question can be a loaded one aimed to test your knowledge of the marketplace. Who is going to trust a social media manager that knows less than the client?

4. What’s wrong with our current social media?

Again, there is a lot more to this question than meets the eye. For starters, if you can answer it, you have done your research and that looks great. Second, you don’t want to insult the current program, but you don’t want to make it seem like you wouldn’t change anything either.

Wow your audience by explaining how you would enhance their current social media efforts to help generate more business and provide them with some details as to how you would do that.

5. I already have an SEO program in place so why would I spend money on social media?

Finally, it is very important that you understand both the differences between social media and SEO, and how they relate to one another.

Keeping up-to-date on both the updates to search engine ranking criteria and social networks will allow you to intelligently answer this question and showcase how the two differ and help one another.

If you can answer these five questions, you stand a great chance of closing more deals. Knowledge is at the root of success when it comes to social media. In an ever-evolving field, it is important that you stay on top of your game in order to wow both your customers, your competitors and your industry.

Can you think of any other questions that social media managers should be able to answer? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

4 Tips to Increase Engagement on Google+

July 9, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What are a few ways you can increase engagement on Google+?

Google+ can be a great resource when it comes to increasing your search engine rankings, finding new clients and driving traffic to your website or blog, but the key to achieving any of this starts with engagement. It is therefore important to know how to increase engagement on Google+.

The tips below are just a few ways to increase engagement on Google+. They are simple and effective, and you can start implementing them right away!

Create Niche Circles

Circles are a great way of divvying up your network. Say you are a tech blogger with a side passion for fishing. You might have hundreds of people in your Google+ network for blogging and another set of network members for fishing. You probably won’t want to share the same content with both of those groups.

By creating niche circles filled with users that fit specific criteria, you can share content targeted to those users and expect considerably higher engagement than if you are simply sharing content to the public.

(Hint: When you share to circles, users receive a popup notification. On the contrary, when you simply share to Public, your network will not receive a popup.)

Give and Take

We all want to see our engagement levels rise, but in order to get other users familiar with our brand and build up our Google+ network, there needs to be a little give and take.

Take time to go through your feed and communities and comment on, +1 or share content you find intriguing or relevant. People appreciate the gesture as much as you do, and rarely does it go unnoticed. So take the time to engage with others and it will not be long before you see the same.

Join Relevant Communities

Google+ Communities are among the greatest features on any social network; this is particularly true when it comes to business and engagement.

By joining Google+ Communities relevant to your industry, you are joining groups of people that have an already expressed interest in what you have to say. Half the engagement battle is fought as soon as you step in the door! By sharing relevant content to the groups, you can expect significantly higher engagement rates than simply sharing to a broad, unspecific audience.

Join Hangouts

Hangouts are a great way to involve yourself and your brand in the conversation organically. Google+ hangouts are designed to share stimulating ideas and conversations, and by actively parrticipating in them you both give more of a personality to your brand and have the opportunity to showcase your expertise with a group of interested peers.

These are just a few of the ways you can go about increasing your engagement on Google+

How do you increase engagement on Google+? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

7 Tips to Get More Followers on Twitter [INFOGRAPHIC]

July 8, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What can you do to get more followers on Twitter?

Twitter is an excellent medium in that it is somewhat more of a broadcast medium than nearly every other social channel. But what tips can you employ in order to get more followers on Twitter?

Building an engaged audience on the social network and sharing relevant, exciting content that drives then to landing pages is a great way to generate more business. Twitter is also an excellent channel in which your brand can establish itself as the authority in a given industry.

The infographic below from Wishpond outlines 7 tips to help you get more Twitter followers. Some of these tips may seem fairly simple, but you might be surprised at how easy it is to forget about one or two when you are building your Twitter audience!

In our opinion, the #1 is perhaps the most important our of all: engage your customer. If you are sharing content with which your audience wants to engage, it is that much easier to convert them into a client.

Take a look at these tips to get more followers on Twitter and let us know which one you think is most important! Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: Social Bookmarking Your Business

July 5, 2013/by Corey Padveen

How does social bookmarking your business on sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon generate Social Equity for your brand?

There is virtually no shortage of benefits when it comes to social bookmarking your business. In addition to building links, increasing your readership and targeting niche audiences, it is a relatively simple process that adds significant value to your business.

There are two areas in which social bookmarking generates Social Equity: SEO and visibility.

Social Bookmarking and SEO

It wasn’t long after social bookmarking sites like Reddit came about that SEO experts began to notice that links shared to them were treated as backlinks by search engines. While there is much that new techniques on social media have to offer with regards to SEO, backlinks are still an excellent means of increasing your SERPs.

The ability to create links to each piece of content on your website is a valuable tool, and these links remain in search engines and on social bookmarking sites indefinitely. Staying power and the ability for users to find your business through search on both engines like Google and bookmarking networks like StumbleUpon mean real value added in terms of findability and reach.

Social Bookmarking and Visibility

In keeping with the theme of findability, one can also look at the value added from social bookmarking sites as increasing your brand’s visibility inexpensively, quickly and to a very targeted market.

Similar results might require significant SEO efforts. The ability to categorize your content, share it to engaged audiences and provide pseudo titles and meta descriptions on these networks is a tremendous asset. Furthermore, results arise much quicker and, once again, generate a certain staying power for your brand online.

By showcasing your content to niche audiences, you gain a certain attribute that most other social networks do not afford: longevity. On networks like Facebook, where a post has a shelf life of roughly a few hours, or Twitter, where a tweet’s shelf life can be as short as a few minutes, the ability to maintain one’s presence for an extended period of time is virtually invaluable.

Over time, with ongoing attention paid to such a practice, a ripple effect will take place and your content will make its way across the internet, all leading back to your landing page, blog or website. It is hard to imagine too many other techniques as simple as social bookmarking that add that kind of value to a brand.

Do you share your content on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg or StumbleUpon? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: SmartPak Equine

July 4, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Equestrian products is not the first category to come to mind when one thinks of social media case study, but SmartPak Equine proved that a proper strategy can work anywhere.

SmartPak Equine – an equestrian products company – uses triggered emails to drive sales, and though it may not be the most conventional use of the platform, they have seen some tremendous success.

Before getting into the campaigns that make up this social media case study, it is important to understand what triggered emails are. Unlike conventional automated “Welcome” or “Thank You” emails, event-triggered emails are sent out when an action or event prompts the email. For example, if I have an account, am loading products into my cart for an order and get distracted by a phone call causing me to abandon the order, an email will be sent to me that allows me to return top my cart and complete the order.

This is not always a preferred method by consumers – some find it a little too aggressive. However, SmartPak Equine noticed that their audience was responding well to these emails. Specifically, they were seeing a high level of engagement and conversion with three types of event-triggered emails: shipping reminders, product review reminders and abandoned cart reminders. (For full details on each of these three campaigns, read a breakdown here.)

These three types of triggered emails prompt further engagement with the brand’s website, encourage additional purchases and maintain brand awareness with customers to increase loyalty.

The results of this potentially risky approach has been a 28% open rate, a 5-6% clickthrough rate, a surprisingly high 11% conversion rate and a revenue per email nearly three times higher than conventional, manual email marketing.

So what can marketers learn from these event-triggered campaigns and the successes SmartPak Equine has garnered?

Understand Your Audience

This is not an email strategy that will work with every type of industry. SmartPak took the time to understand their audience, realize how niche they were and create a strategy that would appeal specifically to them.

It is crucial that you understand what your audience wants and how they interact with your brand before putting together a campaign – particularly one as aggressive as this.

Keep Your Audience Coming Back

Of the three most popular campaigns described above, two focus heavily on maintaining brand awareness with existing customers. Retaining clients and maintaining a relationship with them in order to keep them coming back is important to the long-term success of your brand. In order to ensure that this happens, you cannot rely entirely on the customer; you need to take some initiative.

Talk to your audience and customers (however and wherever possible) in order to keep your brand in mind next time they are looking to buy.

Don’t Pretend You Are Not a Business

The goal of every event-triggered email sent by SmartPak is sales. The results? 175% more revenue and 83% higher conversion rates. Social media is about being social and talking to your audience, that’s true. But a conversation will not keep you in business unless it leads to sales.

Make yourself human, talk to your audience and engage wherever you can, but use these conversations as a means of driving business.

SmartPak implemented all of these strategies and their efforts paid off handsomely.

Which of these tips do you think is most important to generating success with social media or email marketing? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter and have a happy 4th of July!

6 Types of Content to Post on Facebook

July 2, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There is no shortage of content to post on Facebook, but what type of content is going to help build your business?

Recently, Wishpond published an infographic detailing Wal-Mart’s journey to 30 million Likes on Facebook. With 28 million of those coming from their targeted market in the US, they are the biggest Facebook brand in the United States. That’s quite an achievement.

So how did Wal-Mart get there? A lot of elements factored into their success, but when it comes to the types of content to post on Facebook, every brand can learn a thing or two from Wal-Mart.

Below are the six types of content observed by Wishpond that Wal-Mart shared on Facebook to bring their brand to the top.

Product-Specific

Roughly 45% of the content shared on the Wal-Mart Facebook page is product-specific. There is often talk of avoiding promotional content, but if you are not trying to showcase what you have to offer, then you are not really making an effort to drive business, are you?

Wal-Mart found a nice balance in sharing content about their products a little less than half of the time.

Fun and Entertaining

About a tenth of the content shared by Wal-Mart are fun internet memes with little or no correlation to their products or services. Simply sharing content people will enjoy seeing.

Engagement-Oriented

Roughly 13% of the content on Wal-Mart’s Facebook page encourages fan participation. Asking questions, opinions and other engaging types of content are important to keep your fans coming back and get your fan base growing.

This type of content is also a great way to get user feedback and find out what’s going well and where you should make some changes.

Informative and Useful

If you can provide helpful information that your users can actually put into practice, then you are providing a service that makes your page all the more valuable to your audience. For Wal-Mart, this type of content makes up roughly 15% of their posts.

Culturally Significant

Again, a tenth of the content shared by Wal-Mart relates to events and culture in their target market. By sharing content that is socially and culturally relevant to their target audience, they give their target audience all the more reason to become fans on Facebook.

Social Awareness

Lastly, another 10% of the content shared by Wal-Mart sheds light on events, organizations and causes that are culturally and socially significant to both the brand and the audience. People like to know that there is more to a brand than business. Show a lighter, more thoughtful side of your brand. Goodwill is just as important as anything else your company does.

Wal-Mart has found an excellent balance of content on their page. Take a look at it and you will understand why.

What type of content do you think is most important to be sharing on Facebook? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

LinkedIn Facts & Figures 2013 [INFOGRAPHIC]

July 1, 2013/by Corey Padveen

LinkedIn is the business network, but what are the benefits to using the network?

The LinkedIn facts and figureds in the infographic below showcase some impressive data that marketers and businesspeople should be aware of.

We all know that LinkedIn is the professional social network – that is what sets it apart from the rest. But other than being a pool of a few hundred million working folk, what value does LinkedIn have when it comes to helping us grow our business?

Perhaps the most interesting figure when it comes to professional relationships in the data below relates to the growth of face-to-face relationships with the help of LinkedIn. 44% of users build stronger in-person relationships with the help of LinkedIn. That is certainly a feature unique to the network.

When it comes to business, the most important element of the LinkedIn facts has to do with trust. 87% of people on LinkedIn trust the product-related information they find on the network. What’s more, 49% of users trust word-of-mouth brand suggestions they see on LinkedIn. That’s a lot of influence on the network, and it certainly should not be passed up.

Take a look at the infographic and let us know which of the data you think is most important or surprising. Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: Reputation Management on Social Media

June 28, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Reputation management on social media is becoming more and more important, and engaging in the activity properly can add significant Social Equity to your brand.

Reputation management on social media can take many forms. There is not one single network where a brand can monitor and manage its reputation; it is an ongoing process that needs to be heavily intwined with a social media strategy. If, however, it is done properly, then the value of that brand stands to increase significantly.

There are two main areas where Social Equity is generated from reputation management on social media: effective reputation management creates brand loyalty and crises are handled effectively and in some cases staved off.

Though reputation management on social media also benefits brands in a number of other ways, these two aspects add the most value to a brand in both the short and long terms; brand loyalty and crisis management.

Brand Loyalty

Brands survive because of consumer loyalty. Brand evangelists and loyalists are very difficult to cultivate, but when your brand finds them, you have struck oil.

The benefit of brand loyalists is that they will advocate for your company in good times and in bad, but these gems only come about when you are treating your customers properly. And that means before, during and after the purchase has been made.

Properly managing your reputation online through engagement makes it easier to both acquire new brand loyalists and keep them happy over the course of their involvement with your company. Think about it: people might be talking about your company (in either good or bad lights) and if you are not monitoring your online reputation, you will never know about it.

Finding and engaging with your brand loyalists also relates closely to crisis management on social media.

Manage a Crisis

In the world of social media, a second can change the perception of your brand indefinitely. Now imagine if you let that second turn into minutes, then hours, then weeks. Eventually, your brand is known for nothing other than that second, and your reputation is damaged irreparably.

Properly managing your reputation means addressing these issues in real time with an active audience on social media. Before issues spiral out of control, you can get a handle on a situation and potentially resolve a crisis before it is out of your hands.

Crisis management on social media by proper reputation management can do wonders for building Social Equity for your business. The ability to prevent disasters before they happen means maintaining your brand’s sterling reputation, and allows the value of your brand to remain undamaged.

Reputation management is an important area for brands to focus on when it comes to social media. Not only does it help brands better understand their consumers, flaws and catch on to issues, but it also adds a considerable degree of value both in the short- and long-run.

Do you manage your reputation on social networks? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: H&M

June 27, 2013/by Corey Padveen

How did H&M use Google+ to captivate and engage an audience?

There are several critics who claim that Google+ is not a place to engage an audience, and that it is a veritable ghost town in the social media world. Like any form or medium of marketing, it is not necessarily a question of where you are, but how you plan to use your surroundings to your advantage. That is fashion retail giant H&M’s approach to Google+, and they have managed to engage an audience of nearly a million users.

There are a few key features that make H&M an interesting case study for Google+. First, there is the close, personal attention H&M pays to its fans on the network along with the exclusive content they share. Second, H&M monitors their data closely and modifies their Google+ strategy. And third, H&M integrates several key add-ons that help the brand generate business from the network.

Engagement

The devotion H&M has shown to its fans on Google+ should be noted by any marketer looking to build brand loyalty. H&M fans on Google+ are encouraged to share content, which the brand then features on their page.

Conversations are also started by the brand, and visual content is shared on a regular basis in an effort to drive fans to landing pages. Furthermore, much of this content is exclusive to Google+.

It is important to reward your fans. We discussed this recently in an article about Cadbury’s big ‘Thank You’ to their fans. The difference with H&M, however, is that the fashion brand focuses on thanking their Google+ fans with exclusive content. This is an excellent way to engage an audience, and H&M has the numbers to prove it.

Data

The ‘Ripples’ feature on Google+ can be one of your most powerful weapons in developing a strong Google+ campaign – if you know how to use it.

H&M monitors the data in the backend of Google+ in order to understand how, where and when their content is being shared and make the necessary modifications to their strategy in order to ensure that their engagement and share rates remain high. Any marketer will tell you that data and reporting will make or break a campaign. It is important that whenever possible you examine the data you have, and ‘Ripples’ are a powerful feature on Google+.

Integration

Did we mention that Google+ is owned by Google? H&M realizes that and they integrated their AdWords campaigns with their Google+ efforts. The results? Only a 22% CTR (click-through rate) uplift. Not too shabby.

It is important to streamline your processes wherever possible. If the whole machine is functioning together, you stand to produce far better results than if every part is trying to work on its own.

Do you actively use Google+ to engage an audience? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

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