social equity Archives

Social Shopping on #BlackFriday

November 29, 2013/by Corey Padveen

It’s #BlackFriday and the numbers show that social shopping is bigger than ever.

We hope everyone had a wonderful, relaxing Thanksgiving. It makes sense that the day following one of the biggest feasts of the year we are forced to exercise the whole thing off by running through malls and department stores offering the biggest savings of the year. But this year, something is different; social shopping is a major factor in this year’s Black Friday shopping. Below are five truly impressive stats about social shopping this year.

91% of e-commerce retailers saw a boost in the SEO rankings due to social referral traffic.

It is no longer speculation that social plays a major role in SEO, but these numbers are unprecedented. Social sites like Pinterest and Facebook are driving tremendous traffic to online retailers offering up some big deals this holiday season. So the results of being socially active? Your search rankings get a well-deserved boost as buying season gets into full swing.

There has been a 357% year-over-year increase in sales from social traffic.

No, we did not forget to add a period anywhere – that is three-hundred-and-fifty-seven percent. Social activity is driving more and more buyers to online stores to do their holiday shopping this year. That’s good news for the retailers with the foresight to have been aggressive with the their holiday promotions on social media in 2013.

65% of consumers research gifts using social media.

Using social media for research and recommendations is nothing new. But it is hard to imagine why anyone would not take advantage of such a vast majority of online users looking to social media for advice. Imagine being able to talk directly to a prospective customer without ever having to get them in the store. The sales process is changing, and numbers like this prove it.

Buyers originating on Pinterest average almost $200 per sale.

Simply put, that’s a big number. Of course we expect consumers to be spending more around the holidays, but we would expect the numbers to even out when we aggregate the data. On Pinterest, it is all high purchases. Pinterest’s most prominent demographic is women from high-income households. It is no wonder that smart businesses turned to that network to drive higher social-driven sales.

Social drives as much online traffic as in-store.

For retailers that discount the importance of social media because they are brick-and-mortar only, think again. Statistics show that social media is driving as much traffic to physical stores as it drives to online stores. Remember, social is a research tool. So no matter what your business structure is, a large part of your audience is starting on social.

Good luck with your holiday shopping this year!

10 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers

November 27, 2013/by Corey Padveen

In order to get your message out there, you are going to want to find ways to increase your Twitter followers.

While we are constantly told that it is all about quality over quantity, it is hard to deny that it looks good when a user has thousands of followers. It adds a degree of credibility and engrains within us this idea that they must be sharing interesting content if so many people have chosen to follow their account. So what can you do to increase your Twitter followers without having to use any black hat techniques?

Following these ten simple action items is a great way to help you start boosting your Twitter activity and increasing your brand’s Social Equity.

1. Fill out your bio.

Tell people about yourself. You are given a chance to let people know what they are getting when they follow with your bio. Don’t let it go to waste! It also adds credibility to your profile.

2. Be creative with your header.

When Twitter revamped their layout, they added header images. A lot of users leave this area blank, but a creative one can be a big reason why someone decides to follow your profile. Don’t let the space go unused.

3. Link your account with other channels.

You should have your Twitter feed on your blog (with an option to follow), it should be linked to your Pinterest profile, your Google+ profile and there should be a tab with your Twitter feed on Facebook. Basically, no avenue should be left unlinked to Twitter.

4. Embed your tweets.

It is very easy to embed your tweets on a blog post or your website. There is no reason why you should not be taking every opportunity to further promote the great content you are sharing on Twitter.

Read http://t.co/yc7nY3anBl to see how small businesses should use #SocialMedia

— t2marketing (@t2marketing) November 22, 2013

5. Take advantage of conversations.

You shouldn’t be tweeting to no one. Take advantage of the @ option and tweet to people. When people receive your tweets, they will be more likely to both a) engage with you and let their followers see what you are saying, and b) follow you.

6. Follow your followers.

Having a huge ratio of followers to following might work for celebrities or internationally recognized brands, but for individuals and SMBs, you are going to want to follow those who follow you. In addition to seeing great new content populate your feed, you will also expand your reach in the Twittersphere.

7. Use trending hashtags.

You can always see what hashtags are trending when you look to the left of your Twitter screen. If there is something that interests you, or something you can share, do it with the trending hashtag. There are thousands if not millions of people using and following that hashtag while it is trending. Increase your Twitter followers with its strategic use.

8. Keep your content fresh.

It is no secret that a lot of people and brands recycle their tweets. There is no shame in that, particularly when you are trying to increase clicks through to your content. But keep your content fresh. Change the wording and make sure that the links and content you share are going to still-relevant content. (Your followers should not be clicking to a link about buying trends from the 2008 holiday season.)

9. Ask questions.

Starting conversations of your own is just as important as joining in other people’s conversations. Ask your followers questions and get them to engage with you. People love sharing their opinions, for better or worse.

10. Keep it short and simple.

140 characters may seem short enough, but the truth is that if you keep it even shorter and simpler, you can improve your engagement. As sad as this reality might make you, people do not want to spend time reading through long tweets filled with multiple hashtags and links. Keep it to one of each and short enough that people can respond.

Try out some of these tips and see your follower count rise!

What are you doing to increase your Twitter followers? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How to Track ROI on Facebook in 3 Easy Steps

October 11, 2013/by Corey Padveen

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

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

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

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

Step 2: Set Up a Conversion Tracking Pixel

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 3: Load the Pixel Onto Your Conversion Page

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

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

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

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

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

5 Steps to Make Your Company a Social Business

September 27, 2013/by Corey Padveen

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

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

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

Step 1: Determine Your Social Business Goals

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

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

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

Step 2: Bring Your Brand to the Socialsphere

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

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

Step 3: Engage Your Growing Audience

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

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

Step 4: Leverage Big Data

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

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

Step 5: Go Beyond Marketing

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

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

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

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

How Can Data Mining and Responsive Branding Grow Business?

September 26, 2013/by Corey Padveen

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

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

So how do you get that data? Data mining.

What is data mining?

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

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

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

Data Mining and Responsive Branding

So how can these two work in tandem?

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

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

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

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

Social Equity: Social Media Measurability

September 20, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media measurability is one of the driving elements behind the value of social media.

There are few things that social marketers hate more than hearing the phrase, “You can’t measure social media.” Virtually every single aspect of your social media marketing initiatives is measurable, and it is this social media measurability that can add tremendous value to your business.

Consider other forms of marketing. Has there ever been an initiative or campaign as tangibly measurable as social media? It’s very hard to think of one. The Social Equity that this social media measurability offers can be considerable for quite a few reasons.

Justify Your Costs

When it comes to marketing and advertising, there are some initiatives that we simply have to trust blindly. With the exception of focus groups and questionnaires, it is hard to say whether a particular initiative worked.

When it comes to social media, you can easily justify the costs that it incurs. The ability to measure every single element on social and see exactly how your activity translates into Social Equity means that there is no longer a need to blindly trust an initiative. Justify every penny you spend, and showcase why a certain budget is required.

See Tangible Results

In keeping with the theme of the previous point, every single aspect can be measured in order to ensure that every single aspect is performing.

By incorporating the concept of Responsive Branding into the mix, you can make real-time modifications to your social media marketing initiatives in order to ensure that your program produces the highest possible returns.

Watch Your Business Grow

Another great feature that comes with social media measurability is the fact that you can see exactly how your business is growing online. Of course, Google Analytics provides insights into your activity online. But setting up your Google Analytics Social Dashboard and incorporating the performance monitored there with your other measurement criteria will mean watching how and where your audience is growing most rapidly.

The concept of Social Equity relates to using social media to build your business. As your social audience and results increase, so does the long-term value added to your company.

Everything on social is measurable. There is virtually no feature of a social media program that cannot be measured in some form or another.

What is your favorite measurement criteria on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: A-B Testing on Social Media

September 13, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What value can A-B Testing on social media add to your business?

Last week, we discussed the value added to your business from Responsive Branding in our Social Equity segment. This week, we are going to look at a similar concept: A-B testing on social media.

When putting together a campaign, branding initiative, launching a new logo or simply figuring out which content generates the highest engagement, you might have several options to choose from. Social media adds a considerable amount of ease to the decision-making process, and that saves you time and money.

New Techniques

Focus groups are expensive and time consuming. And even after creating a questionnaire, putting a campaign together and making a decision based on the opinions of a selected group of people, you still may not have the data you are looking for.

A-B testing on social media offer a new type of focus group. You have two company slogans and you are not sure will generate a better response form your audience. What can you do to figure it out? Instead of going the conventional focus group route, why not reach out to the people that are actually your fans?

People who have liked your page or followed your brand online are more likely to provide you with honest, useful answers. Furthermore, you will be able to aptly apply the data knowing that your audience made the decision for you!

Social Equity

In our piece about Responsive Branding, we noted that your brand needs to be able to adapt to the market in real time. There is no longer the option of reactive marketing techniques. By evolving with the tastes and preferences of your audience, you stand to keep in touch with them in a much more personal way than the competitor who ignores the audience.

Reaching out to your market provides you with valuable insights. The costs saved (noted above) can grow considerably, and by the time certain changes are implemented, it might be too late to recoup those investments. A-B testing on social media offers fast, reliable ways to circumvent these costs and generate significant returns.

Is your brand testing content and initiatives on social media? How has the strategy worked for you? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: Responsive Branding

September 6, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media offers great opportunities for Responsive Branding™, and that can add a lot of value to your business.

What is Responsive Branding™? The concept of Responsive Branding™ relates to making brand and marketing modifications based on the preferences, comments and reactions of your audience.

If there is one thing that people are not shy about when it comes to social media, it is letting the world know how they feel – about anything. This includes your brand. In his book, Socialnomics, Erik Qualmann notes that, “The beauty of social media is that it will point out your company’s flaws; the key questions is how quickly you address these flaws.”

Responsive branding is the way your company can address these flaws. As you monitor market reactions to your marketing and advertising efforts, you can make modifications in real time in order to appeal to the tastes of the market. Few other platforms offer such a feature, and the benefits can be astronomical.

Real Time Adaptation

Imagine knowing exactly how the market would react to a new marketing initiative before launching it. Sure, there are focus groups, and other conventional marketing and advertising techniques, but these are time-consuming, expensive and may not entirely accurate.

Responsive branding allows your brand to reach out to the market and gain their insights before the official launch of a program. A great, very recent example of this is Yahoo!’s logo redesign.

The search giant has been rebranding since Marissa Mayer took over roughly one year ago. Recently, they decided to present a new logo to the world. But were they going to have a creative team work on it behind closed doors and present what they thought was the best option? Of course not! Why waste money, time and resources doing that when you can let the market tell you which of your options is best for them?

Social Media Polling

As noted above, focus groups are expensive, difficult and not the most accurate. Social media eliminates much of the difficulty associated with focus groups and conventional testing.

Reach out to your audience on social networks. Your fans, followers and subscribers are your market. These are the people that have expressed an interest in your product or service and it is this demographic you should be catering to. Once again, the financial benefits associated with social media polling are significant.

Essentially, the Social Equity derived from Responsive Branding™ is obvious. A slew of new opportunities presents themselves with regards to your overall marketing and branding strategies thanks to your social media efforts.

Does your brand engage in Responsive Branding™? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: Influence Marketing on Social Media

August 30, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Your business can benefit tremendously from influence marketing on social media.

There are few forms of marketing that have as big of an impact as influence marketing on social media. With a very clear understanding of who your industry’s influencers are and a plan on how to leverage their power, you can reach audiences tens if not hundreds of times larger than your own.

In the past, we have looked at case studies like Kotex and Standard Life, where brands leveraged the power of influence marketing to quickly reach their goals and expand their presence online. Here, we aim to explain how this form of online marketing can really add a lot of value to your business in terms of Social Equity.

Influence Marketing Defined

So what exactly is influence marketing?

If you’ve read the case studies we mentioned above, you know that influence marketing has to do with leveraging the influence of others on certain social networks in order to reach a broad audience very quickly.

Generally, influence marketing can be a benefit when it comes to reputation management (e.g. having influencers speak to their audiences on your behalf) or individual campaigns (e.g. having industry influencers promote a campaign to their massive audiences). Furthermore, engaging with influencers and leveraging their power can save you a bundle as well.

The Savings of Influence Marketing

Reaching millions of users can be very expensive. You want to reach a targeted audience with any campaign. What’s more important, however, is reaching an engaged audience. If my campaign has 20 million impressions that’s great, but if not one converts, it’s a failure.

Perhaps the greatest value of influence marketing is the fact that by reaching out to your industry’s influencers, you are essentially reaching out to a very engaged audience by proxy. Influencers did not get to be where they are by building an audience of disinterested followers. People hang on their every word, and if they talk about your brand, you can rest assured that it will translate into buzz and intrigue for your business.

The speed with which all of this takes place – thanks in large part to the inherent nature of social media – makes it a very viable undertaking from an economic standpoint. You can start seeing return within hours of a campaign launching; this is assuming, of course, that it is well thought out and geared towards the right audiences.

By engaging with your influencers and leveraging their power, your business can benefit in a very big way.

Have you ever taken part in a form of influence marketing? Tell us what you did in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: The Benefits of a BizBlog

August 23, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There can be some notable benefits of a BizBlog for your company, and you should certainly be taking advantage of them.

First, what is a BizBlog? If you guessed the most obvious choice and figured it stands for business blog, you are right. And there can be substantial benefits of a BizBlog for your company.

There are three main areas in which a BizBlog can add considerable value to your brand. First, there are substantial SEO benefits to a blog (and a BizBlog in particular). Second, unlike the majority of social networks, a BizBlog allows you to tout your company’s skills much more aggressively and, in essence, sell your readers on why your brand is the best choice for the job. Lastly, a BizBlog offers you the opportunity to not only showcase your company’s success, but your expertise more so than other social networks.

SEO Benefits of a BizBlog

SEO is still an important (and can be a very expensive) practice. Every business is (or, at least, should be) engaging in it in some way. A blog is an excellent way to boost your SEO success, and a BizBlog adds a few additional SEO benefits on top of the already excellent help a blog provides when it comes to improving your search rankings.

With a BizBlog, you can create links to other articles or pages on your site and boost their effectiveness with anchor text. If you are writing about the best social media marketing company in the business, you can link that to your homepage and help your search rankings. (See what we did there!) Sure, one little link isn’t going to skyrocket your website to the top of the rankings, but it certainly helps both in the short and long runs.

Self-Promotion

Self-promotion is one of those taboo issues that almost any social or digital marketer will tell you to stay away from on social media. Put simply, it is in bad taste. People are not sharing content on social networks to be sold a product.

On your BizBlog, however, people are landing on your content with the expressed intent of finding out more about you and what you do. At that point, it is acceptable to talk about why you are the better choice and why you should be chosen over your competitors to do a job. And that brings us to our third point.

Showcase Your Expertise

In telling your readers why you are the best choice for a job, you might want to highlight what makes you stand out.

A BizBlog is a great place to showcase how much you know, where you brand outshines others and, as with the point above, ultimately sell your readers on picking you for a job. People always want to work with the best, and a BizBlog is a great place to show them why you are that choice.

These three features are very powerful, and add a considerable amount of value to your brand. It is not hard to see how a BizBlog generates Social Equity for your business.

Does your company have a corporate blog? Tell us where we can find it in the comments below or on Twitter!

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