Online Marketing Blog

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:

One of the most common questions small business marketers are seeking to answer is, “How can I really benefit from social media?” Social media has certainly changed and improved how small to mid-size businesses can carve out space and connect in an extremely crowded marketplace. When companies participate on the social web in a meaningful way, it helps create a personal connection between customers and the brand.

One of the greatest benefits specifically for small businesses is that access to potential customers has increased tremendously. Rather than strictly focusing on paid advertising, word-of-mouth referrals, and in-store promotions (or a wacky mascot standing outside) businesses can now directly find customers  that may be interested in their products based on profiles, active discussions, keywords or expressed interests. This is especially key in the early stages of a business life-cycle when cash is at a premium.

The onslaught of new social media sites has fundamentally changed the role of any marketing or communications professional. Every day millions of users are spending significant periods of time on social networks. In 2010, social media use represented 22 percent of the time spent online by users. The impact of social media on business cannot be ignored but how much is too much?

For many organizations, hiring a social media specialist isn’t a viable option due to budget constraints or the responsibility for managing the social media programs falls on the shoulders of the communications department. It’s a role often already filled with deadlines and juggling of priorities between internal and external efforts, media relations, content creation, meetings and more.

One of the essential hires for companies that want to affect real change as a social media savvy organization connecting with people and communities is a Community Manager.  During the social media discovery and initial learning phase, the addition of a dedicated person is often unlikely. So the tasks a Community Manager would handle are often performed by a combination of a truly competent outside agency and by multiple people within the company.

I know the right thing to do is talk about social strategy and broader level considerations before getting into the tactical details and specific tasks, but sometimes showing minute by minute examples of what a Community Manager does might be the only way to attract those that will perform the new role. Think of it as bottom up social media strategy if you have to. The more front line and middle managers that “get it”, the more powerful winning executive support will be.

Monday I shared tips on how to leverage Google to find disparate, useful resources for use with sourcing content on blog posts. Working with my new blogging partner in crime, @DFolkens, this post is an output from  following that advice.

In many companies, social media efforts are managed by those in Public Relations. While social technology reaches across all communication channels in all departments, there’s an inherent fit between PR and “being social.” As Public Relations firms and the PR functions within companies try to make sense of the sheer volume of advice on “social this” and “social that” being published on blogs, newsletters, mainstream media and trade publications, I’ve used Google search to find 5 useful reports giving strategic to practical advice on how Social Media and Public Relations intersect. Enjoy:

First of all, please wish TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog a Happy 7th Birthday!

It was 7 years ago today that I started this blog as an experiment to document industry news and develop my writing skills. With the help of many different people, it’s turned into quite a bit more than that.

THANK YOU for reading, sharing and contributing your insights. They are all very much appreciated and help fuel the continued publishing of this blog after thousands of posts:  2,496 to be exact and I’ve had the privilege of writing 2,075 of them.

The year 2010 provided to be one of focus on Social Media and Content Marketing topics over our past emphasis on SEO and Online PR. All are great topics in the online marketing mix, but as you’ll see below, readers are eating up social media content as fast as they can get it.

Advertising is Dead. SEO is Dead.

The list of provocative linkbait goes on and on but savvy practitioners realize that few things just die out. They change. Like advertising.

Traditional ad dollars are most certainly moving to digital and as companies look for more ways to take advantage of technology to better connect with customers, social media is becoming the new internet.

Advertising as part of the social experience vs. being interruptive combined with the ability to measure brings many opportunities for businesses to grow their reach, brand influence and ability to engage.

Our post about social media advertising yesterday was well placed with Twitter’s move to make buying ads there easier. Below is a roundup of tips and resources for learning more about advertising on Twitter.

As consumer use of and time spent on social media sites increases, the opportunities for effective advertising become more attractive to companies in search of customers to connect with.   We’ve given the advice that to grow a social network, a company should participate and engage with communities of interest.

That’s still great advice, just as it is to consider different advertising options within relevant social channels to create awareness, keep a brand top of mind or to suggest timely and relevant offers.   Advertising tools made available by social platforms are also useful research tools when collecting demographic information used with personas in organic social media marketing.

When you search Google for “social media consultant” there are about 10,600,000 search results. Yeah, really. Go check and come back.

That’s more than two times as many search results for “marketing consultant” or “pr consultant” (about 4m each). Those industries have been around a lot longer, yet the hype has attracted even more content focused on social media.

The ease of publishing online has made it correspondingly easy to lay claim to expertise that is often subject to some curious interpretation.  There are some smooth talking folks out there with great communication skills that haven’t done more than count Tweets, comments and mentions.  See the recent post, “What does social media success really look like?” for more on measuring social media success.

While traveling recently in New Zealand and a short stay in Sydney, Australia I shot a few videos offering social media marketing tips. Check them out below and you can also view many other tips videos and interviews we’ve done with search and social media marketing experts on the  TopRank Online Marketing YouTube Channel.

Tips on Social Media ROI from Sydney Australia near the famous Opera House & Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sorry about the wind, it messed with the audio a bit. I need to get a Zi8 and a microphone!

Common B2B Facebook Myths from Rangitoto Island, off Auckland, New Zealand. (From an old Army bunker near the mouth of a 600 year old volcano actually)

Photo credit: timtak via Flickr

Social Commerce is a very hot topic right now with numerous blog posts, articles and even a few events focused on ecommerce and social media.

Adding ecommerce functionality to social sites is something that I’ve wondered about for quite a while:

“What I’d like to see more of is the availability of basic ecommerce functions as plug ‘n play options with major blog software packages. Blogs are good for business, big and small and I think there’s a lot of opportunity for business and value for consumers with ecommerce blogs.” Dec 28, 2005.

Too bad I wasn’t more of an advocate for social commerce since, but then again, consumers haven’t really responded well to shopping implementations with social media sites until recently, if at all.

Demystifying better social media marketing often starts with doing a better job of connecting with customers. But how can you connect with customers if you don’t know who they are?

Do you know who your customers are? Do you know what they search for and talk about on social networks? What influences them to buy or to recommend things to others?

While I’m pretty sure an entire book or two could be written about the details behind the art and science of developing personas and profiles, here are a few quick tips you can implement right now to get started.