As your team plugs away creating regular tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube videos and LinkedIn discussions and you are held ever more accountable for ROI, you may be wondering if it is all worth it.
Anybody still not convinced of the value of social media marketing should refer to data released at the beginning of the year by eMarketer.
The study revealed that social media campaigns can create immediate improvements in brand advocacy and purchase intent levels, and significantly, that these effects can be long-lasting.
Highlights of the study (which focused on US consumer packaged goods brands) are:
· Exposure to social media campaigns immediately increases brand advocates’ likelihood to recommend a product, from 39% before exposure to 61% directly afterwards.
· 55% of brand advocates were still more likely to recommend a product one year after exposure to the social media campaign.
· Brand advocates’ own purchase intent soared from 38% pre-campaign to 69% afterwards, where it remained for three months. After one year, brand advocates’ own purchase intent remained as high as 61%.
These are impressive results, indicating the profound effect that social media marketing can have on word-of-mouth recommendation and purchase intent. Armed with this knowledge, companies that are already participating in social media will want to ensure their social media strategy is optimised to last, and here’s how:
1. Develop clear overall goals
Unfortunately it is not enough to simply post content, even if that content is excellent and uploaded regularly. Keep your brand’s overall goals in mind and evaluate how each individual social marketing activity is geared towards achieving them. More »
It is often surprising to see how little creative effort companies put into their Facebook marketing, particularly given the level of noise they make about using the platform.
Creative resources can be scarcer at small businesses without big social media budgets, and Facebook does have a somewhat static format to work with. Yet it needn’t be costly to come up with some great landing page manipulation, and here are some tips that should offer some inspiration:
1. Use a large call-to action
The most obvious and relevant call to action is to invite visitors to click on the ‘Like’ button of your Facebook page. BMW has consistently used this tactic on its landing page, always updating the look and feel of the graphics in line with its current messaging. ..see BMW Facebook page
2. Create an interactive, user-oriented page
Depending on who your target audience is, encourage interactivity with suitable competitions, games and interactive video. Disney Pixar has done just this, framing activity on its landing page around its latest Disneyland project, John of the Jungle. Also observe Disney’s use of joined-up activity on YouTube, where visitors can upload photos to a competition…see Disney Pixar Facebook page More »
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are still perceived as the holy trinity of social marketing activity, based largely on their reach and popularity. Many businesses assume that the big three act as the cornerstone of an effective social media strategy, but is this a) a true reflection of how people are using social media today and b) the best option for every type of company?
Facebook marketing may be a no-brainer for global brands like Coca-Cola and Nike, but for a law firm specialising in divorce, nobody is likely to publicise their personal situation by ‘liking’ your company page. It may be more useful to create expert video advice on how to prevent divorce, or steps to finding the correct lawyer if separation is unavoidable. This video could then be posted to your own website, and adapted into a company blog post to be shared on Twitter.
These steps will help anyone from a reiki healer to a bookkeeper establish which platforms to make part of their social media activity:
1. Discover and investigate your target market by searching Google, Facebook, Twitter Search, YouTube, LinkedIn (especially the Groups and Q&A sections) and niche specific forums. More »
Marketers are placing both social marketing and content marketing among their top business priorities this year, as both channels are set to mature in 2012.
Some 70% of marketers cited social as their top priority for 2012, followed closely by content marketing, cited by 59%, according to the State of Social Media Marketing: Top Areas for Social Marketing Investment and Biggest Social Marketing Challenges in 2012 report by Awareness.
Most encouraging is the approach that marketers plan to take in the coming year. Having already established and grown their social presences on the major channels (Facebook and Twitter), they now plan to extend their social media strategy to include previously overlooked sites such as YouTube, foursquare and Tumblr.
Content is playing a major role in the growth of social. Pairing both channels has enabled businesses to boost interactivity on their sites with social sharing buttons, with shared content proving ready-made fuel for social marketing efforts.
Along with this enhanced approach from companies comes a fresh focus on active social media management to improve lead generation and sales from social media.
Said Brian Zanghi, CEO of Awareness: “We expect less-experienced marketers to follow their visionary peers, adopting established practices as they move along the maturity continuum.”
Staffing remains one of the key challenges, according to the report. Most of the 320 businesses surveyed employ between one and three people to monitor their social media marketing campaigns, and nearly half (45%) claim to struggle to find qualified talent to manage most of their new media activity. More »
With the grand unveiling of the redesigned YouTube last December, 2012 is the perfect time to ramp up your viral video strategy.
While the changes were met with uproar from a characteristically vocal hardcore YouTube user base, they actually offer ripe opportunities for brands.
According to Social Media Examiner, there are only three major changes to get to grips with, so here we go:
1. Redesigned home page
If you’ve logged in to YouTube since December, you’ll have noticed its slicker-looking home page. At its heart is a prominently positioned “Subscription Feed”, replacing the previous trending videos – and much better news for brands.
What this means for marketers: As viewers view, rate and comment on your latest viral video, their followers and subscribers will in turn be exposed to your content. No longer will brands have to compete with cute baby and hilarious kitten clips. We expect this move to create a more relevant, if smaller, viral effect.
How to maximise the change: Be consistently active, posting fresh content to YouTube weekly and use calls to action to drive rates, comments and shares of your videos.
2. New channel page
As well as looking different, YouTube channels are now more likely to feature on search results pages for related keywords. More »
It is easy to feel smug as a marketer when your social media plan seems to be working. Who hasn’t felt a warm glow inside as the Facebook fans and Twitter followers finally roll in? Yet it isn’t always easy to convert fans and followers on social media into real-life clients. Each industry poses its unique challenges to conversion, but certain strategies need to be in place for any business to succeed.
A strong and effective blog
Fans and followers need to be offered the chance to get to know a company before they will buy its product or service. Only once the solid foundations of a relationship are in place will they become clients. This means sharing valuable content (see below) in the less salesy environment of a blog, and being sincere in your efforts to help people; the more value you can offer, the more your online connections will appreciate your company and what it has to offer.
Offer high quality content
Without your content, you have nothing. Your company is relating to people through content and what you write will make them decide whether they want to build a working relationship with you. It has to be as perfect as possible, so consider outsourcing your content strategy if resources are scarce. More »
How many hours per day does your company spend on social media?
According to a poll of 3,300 social media marketers in the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 58% of marketers spend six or more hours per week on social media marketing activities.
Whatever your answer, the likelihood is that you need that time to be as efficient and cost-effective as possible. In marketing, as with every other business function, efficiency is everything. In these budget-crushing times, saving time equals saving money. As marketing departments across the country plan for 2012, it pays to break down social media efforts to examine how to create the most efficient, well-oiled machine possible.
However many hours you are pumping into social activity per week, the time can probably be divided into three main categories:
Listening: Every business needs a social media monitoring solution that gathers data from across the web for continual analysis. Whether you are using social channels for brand research, promotion or lead generation, you need to select the appropriate tool and customise it to your specific needs for maximum efficiency. More »
Twitter has finally conceded to marketers’ demands for proper brand pages, rolling out a major revamp late last week. Since you have probably already created pages on Facebook and LinkedIn, should you embrace the new evolution of Twitter marketing? Here are four reasons why you should:
1. Extra creative control
First up, the all-new brand pages have a striking new design element; they can be customised with large header images allowing advertisers to display their logo and tagline far more clearly and prominently. Previously, branded elements of the page design were often obscured by the tweet timeline.
2. Top tweet tool
The next major change is that brands can now keep a chosen tweet at the top of their timeline, which auto-expands to reveal photo or video content from Flickr, YouTube or other sources. It’s a deceivingly simple function which we love; integration of cross-platform content.
3. Tell a richer brand story
The new pages separate out a brand’s replies and mentions, a useful tool for customer-service oriented customers who want to keep responding to users without diluting their messaging. More »
We’ve touched recently on how social marketing for small businesses requires a different skill set than for global brands (FPR blog 30.11.11). Yet certain rules apply across the board. Social Media Today recently interviewed C.C.Chapman, co-author of Content Rules and strategic consultant to powerhouse brands including Coca-Cola, Cisco and Warner Bros. What follows is valuable advice: why not learn from the best rather than repeating the mistakes of less-informed predecessors?
1. Integrate social and content with all aspects of the business, from customer service to sales.
Don’t create a separate social department. PR and customer service are the first three areas that need to be integrated with social – train and empower customer service teams to interact with customers over social channels.
2. Tailor your social media presence to fans’ passion points
Ford has created multiple Facebook Pages for each of its key marque brands, such as Ford Focus, Ford Mustang and Ford Racing, each with their own thriving fan communities. More »
I was lucky enough to be joined by New Media Age editor Justin Pearse in our London PR Taxi recently to get his take on social media adoption, what will be the next big thing and which social brands have impressed him lately.
As your team plugs away creating regular tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube videos and LinkedIn discussions and you are held ever more accountable for ROI, you may be wondering if it is all worth it.
It is often surprising to see how little creative effort companies put into their 
