Online Marketing Blog

I think I just might!

It is no longer a question of IF companies should execute a social media strategy.  The question for most companies is HOW to best execute a meaningful and engaging approach that generates results.  With so many social media marketing options available, marketers must also decide best practices and what tactics to avoid.

We all make mistakes as marketers and it’s important that we not only learn from those mistakes but share  with others so that they can avoid them.  I hope that the 20 Social Media Marketing Do’s and Don’ts that I’ve provided within this article not only entertain you but make you think about your current social media strategy. Which tactics are you happy to say you’ve implemented and which mistakes will you admit to?

As an Internet marketer I am always on the hunt for new content marketing tools that can increase my efficiencies and improve engagement with my audience.  I cannot begin to express how valuable content curation can be if done right.  It will allow you tap into and respond to what people are searching for, what they like to read and share, what influences their buying decisions and so on.  In my search for a new means of marketing I came across a tool called Scoop.It.  Below I have detailed my review of this tool including some of it’s cool features.

Despite starting conservatively with my personal Google+ use, I’ve had quite a few people ask me what I thought of G+ and when we’d write a post about it here on TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.  With all the hype and past track record with Google’s social media tests, I decided to wait.  I’ve been a bit more active on Google+ as of late and strangely enough, nearly 6,000 people have decided this was worth a Circle inclusion. You can find me here: Lee Odden G+.

Rather than focus on yet another “Top Tips for G+ Power Users” post, I thought I’d write about what Google Plus doesn’t do. Or rather, what is it that I’d like a social application like Google+ to do. Maybe you’ll relate to some of these “wishes” and an interesting discussion will follow. I’m pretty reasonable on some of these, but certainly more “pie in the sky” on others. It’s Google after all, and the bar is/and should be high.

At a reported $3 million per 30 second spot, Super Bowl advertising is big business. For a multimillion dollar investment, brands should be maximizing every opportunity to reach potential customers. Which advertisers took advantage of a customer base actively engaged in the big game to extend the conversation? Not too many.

In the much-hyped ads airing during the Super Bowl, big brands primarily went with small printed web addresses at the end of the commercials as a next step for viewers. They lacked direct calls to action and didn’t leverage the fact that many viewers are online while watching television. A well executed ad with a specific call to action to send a tweet with a particular branded tag would be a logical fit.

LinkedIn officially launched on May 5, 2003 with a total of 4,500 members in the first month. Known mostly as a business social network, LinkedIn has been adopted globally with nearly 2 billion people searches in 2010 and over 90 million users in January 2011. To top it off, a forthcoming IPO will raise even more money for expansion.

Yet amongst many business professionals, LinkedIn seems to fight perception that it is strictly a site to visit when you need a job.

With new features added regularly and all of the Fortune 500 represented, LinkedIn is a valuable source of data and connections that shouldn’t be overlooked. If you’re not a regular LinkedIn user, I encourage you to look beyond the basics and see the opportunities for businesses to showcase their products, advertise in and out of network, and content sharing/syndication.

Alright, you’ve just come up with a brilliant and revolutionary idea that will forever change the face of your industry. So what do you do now?

If you’re like a lot of people, you run to Facebook and share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone that will listen. Is that a bad strategy? Not necessarily, as Facebook and Twitter can be great places to reach large audiences. In fact, Facebook continued to grow even stronger in its use as a sharing site in 2010.

However, you can’t safely assume that Facebook is the only or best method of content distribution. Social media is a hot market right now and use of these channels are not a bad thing. Though a strategy of a few tweets and a fan page update will not get you to your goals. Ultimately there is no singular model that is always the ideal for any company but a few points to consider include:

A typical situation for many marketers when it comes to social networks is this: Setup LinkedIn profile, check. Corporate LinkedIn page, check.  Facebook profile, check. Facebook Fan Page, check. Twitter account, check. Corporate blog, check. Check check check!

But where’s the buzz? Where are the fans, friends, followers, comments, links, traffic, search engine rankings? Where’s the customer engagement? And the most pressing question of all: What is all this social web participation doing for our company and our customers?

Showing up to the game doesn’t mean there will be an audience. This is as true with the social web as it is offline.  The problem that marketers have with attracting interested customers and growing their social networks often stems from approaching social participation tactically and without a plan.  Testing and experimentation is great, but if what you’re doing is something that has a cost and is to be accounted for, then you’d better have a plan and objectives.  How can you score without a goal?

If you haven’t already integrated Facebook into your online marketing mix by creating a fan page, consider the most recent staggering Facebook statistics:

• More than 350 million users are active on Facebook
• 50% of active users log in on any given day
• The average user spends 55 minutes a day on Facebook
• More than 1.6 million active Facebook fan pages have been created

With numbers like these — plus the fact that Google is now using social content to help determine the ranking of web pages — it’s difficult to justify not creating a Facebook presence for your brand.

Take the guesswork of Facebook marketing, and follow these 5 tips for making the most of your fan page.

For marketers in any industry—from manufacturing to real estate to banking, and everything in between—making the business case for social media isn’t a quick and easy process.

But in healthcare marketing, it’s an understatement to say that gaining buy-in for social media isn’t easy.

Consider for a moment just what healthcare marketers are up against:

• A multitude of privacy regulations
• Nursing and support staff shortages
• Increasing demand for services thanks to the quickly aging Baby Boomer generation

It’s not difficult to understand why some healthcare decision makers may be slow to adopt social media. But instead of throwing in the towel, consider these 5 tips for making the case for social media in healthcare marketing:

With more and more marketers jumping onto the social media bandwagon, a lot of questions come up. Is it possible to track metrics and ROI? What are other companies doing? Why isn’t it working? Being prepared to answer  questions like these can make a difference in how a company interacts with social media and if they can succeed.

How can we track social media?
Unfortunately, there is no one “most effective” social media tracking system. Marketers across the web are still working to figure out how to measure social media, how to attach ROI, and how to sell the benefits of participation on the social web  to those that don’t “get it”.

[Note from Lee: User Generated Content for SEO is something we haven't written about in a while, but now more than ever, marketers need to find efficient ways to generate content assets for search engines as well as the ability to meet customer needs to interact and share. Michelle takes an updated look that I think companies would do well to consider.]

You’ve heard it before: Content is king. But there won’t be much of a kingdom unless that content is optimized. But who is going to create it? Useful, relevant content doesn’t come cheap, especially when your goals are to publish on a consistent basis. As an internet marketer, if you haven’t tapped into the power of user generated content, you may be giving up a goldmine of SEO assets to your competition.

Any marketer who’s successfully made the move to social media will tell you the rules of traditional marketing have to be reexamined. That’s particularly true with Twitter, where brands have just 140 characters to inform, evoke emotion and inspire action. One of the most basic and critical rules for brands on Twitter? Be authentic and transparent in all you do.

Check out these 5 Twitter tips for staying authentic and transparent:

1. Reveal who’s behind the Tweets. It doesn’t necessarily matter who it is—the CEO, the social media manager or a marketing intern. It just matters that the person is in fact a person. Putting a face and name behind your Tweets through a photo and brief bio can help followers relate to and connect with your brand.