Online Marketing Blog

We live in a world where shopping, dating, watching new films and networking can all be done online.  In fact, these actions (and many more) have become a part of our everyday life.  Many of us may experience buyers remorse for purchasing something online that wasn’t within budget, a desire to post a bad review after a terrible movie, or have a sense of regret after a bad date.

When it comes to networking for personal and more importantly business use, there are many benefits to be had and pitfalls to be avoided.  If you are able to effectively engage your online community you can experience many advantages including:

• An introduction to someone such as a thought leader you might not otherwise have access to.

When I make new connections on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn I get excited because 9 times out of 10 I have either made a new friend with a similar interest or have found someone that I can either learn from, or help guide.

All too often we forget that the connections we make online are very similar to those we make offline.  If you are introduced to “Tim CEO”  in a business meeting and you can recognize that he doesn’t offer information freely and needs to be drawn out, then you’lllikely optimize your approach in a way that makes him at ease and gets him talking. Similarly, social media users with different personalities and proficiencies will require that little extra optimization to interact.

Grow your professional network both online and offline.

During the summer months it seems that there is always so much to do.  By the time the work day is done, meeting strangers and discussing what you do may be the farthest thing from your mind.  However, local networking events present a plethora of opportunities for individuals and organizations as a whole.

As of May 2012 Facebook had approximately 901 million active users on a monthly basis.  Think of your own Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn connections.  Of those connections how many of them are local?  On my own personal LinkedIn network for example roughly 65% of my contacts are local connections.  Many of which I hadn’t met in person until I started attending more local marketing events.

A lot of businesses, large and small, consumer and B2B focused, are grappling with how the social web will be a tool for their business. Research is actually showing asocial media CEOs are bad for business. I’ve even heard from executives at digital marketing agencies, “I really need to learn this stuff myself” about social media applications and networks. So they start.

The first phase seems to focus on getting to know social applications as a user and the “rules” both explicit and implicit within social communities.  When to use @ and when to use RT for example. Or that you don’t mass follow/friend people you don’t know or make explicit sales pitches to people who you’ve not developed a connection with.

Jay Baer Keynotes Wednesday Lunch Session at 2012 Marketo Summit

There has long been a widely held (and incorrect) belief that social media is a B2C sandbox. ’Stay out B2B marketers, this social thing has nothing to do with you.’ Of course, there have been countless studies that have documented B2B marketers successes in driving results in social.

With the notion that social is only for B2C debunked, in its place now are new myths. Each chalked-full of misinformation and hyperbole regarding B2B’s ability to implement, engage and monitor social. Jay Baer, President of Convince & Convert, lead a high-impact and high-energy presentation at the Marketo Summit aimed to call-out and ‘destroy’ some of the more prevalent myths.

The session was titled ‘Destroying the 7 Myths of B2B Social Media‘, and here are the 7 myths Jay shared.

If you’ve been involved with marketing on the web for 10 years or more, could you have imagined what the web looks like today back in 2002? Considering the changes over the past year between Google, Facebook, Pinterest and Mobile, looking ahead just 12 months can be a challenge.  The state of constant change requires an adaptable approach. One that involves a cyclical process of planning, implementation, scale and refinement.

During that process of continuous optimization, it’s important to take the temperature of trends for your specific target market as well as at a broad level. I’d like to use this post to take your general social media temperature when it comes to the most important social networks for business. This is a gut feeling check for how you perceive the list below of social media/network properties that companies are currently using for business purposes.

Making the time to execute on a social media strategy can rattle even the most experienced marketers.  Unlike traditional marketing, social media marketing can present many different challenges and distractions.  According to a study by eMarketer 73% of marketers say finding the time to create content as their biggest marketing challenge.

I recently ran a poll of @TopRank Twitter followers to get a sense of how they spend their time online.  I asked “If you had only 20 minutes a day to spend on social media what would you focus on?”  Some of the answers we received were:

• @henryroominates – “I would try to connect with powerful Twitter users and Tweet content from my blog.”
• @SebastianX – “I’d read my Twitter Followanyday List.”

Photo Credit: Flickr gjkooijman

Lady Gaga is the definition of an influencer offline and online; her music, fashion sense, and passion for social causes have spread around the world in only a few short years.  Love her, like her or hate her, you know who she is and you’ve probably heard more than one of her songs.

When searching for a way to improve your online PR strategy or increase your social reach, who better to learn from than one of the most influential celebrities in the world and on the web?

Social Media is Going Gaga

• Lady Gaga Facebook Fan Page Followers – 46,608,220
• @LadyGaga Twitter Followers – 18,198,577
• Lady Gaga Google+ Followers – 20,852 (only 4 days after signing up)

Is your social media strategy sending your customers mixed signals?

As a B2B organization with a focus on technology, you may believe that you are facing additional obstacles that your B2C counterparts are not.

Many of you have tried to implement social media in the past without much success.  However, you may still believe that B2C companies have it easier because they have a direct line to their consumers.  The good news is, you do too!  In fact, 58% of IT buyers use social media to make tech buying decisions.

Getting in front of the proper decision makers and influencers when selling SaaS, IT, or any other technology is not as hard as you may think.  It is imperative that you follow a series of social media best practices directed at finding, engaging, and motivating your social network to take action.

21 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2012

Curious to find out what 2012 could have in store for online marketers?  This presentation from DreamGrow shares 21 predictions on what 2012 could look like.

Highlights include:

• Social CRM making inroads
• Social media influencing more sales
• Social commerce on mobile devices

Facebook IPO and Most Popular Social Sites:

Is your reputation management strategy a turn off to your customers and critics?

Should we respond, get angry, fire back, ignore the situation, censor comments, or just see what happens?  Those are some of the many questions that marketers are faced with today.  With more and more consumers and customers turning online to share what they think of a particular brand or company it has become increasingly difficult to capture everything that is being shared.

In April of this year Yelp.com reached 50 million users with over 17 million reviews on their database.  If you are a professional responsible for online reputation management it makes you wonder how many other means are there for your customers and critics to share their opinion about your company.

Creating quality content that not only engages customers but encourages them to share is no easy task.  A recent study by Exact Target found that 55% of Facebook users have “liked” a company and then later decided they no longer wanted to see that company’s post.  Are you doing everything you can to not only keep customers reading with relevant posts, but also providing content that is easily shared?

Tip #1  - Make Sharing a Breeze

I know there may be skeptics out there when it comes to adding social sharing buttons to your website but there are some things I would like you to think about.  Try to consider sharing buttons housed on your website, blog, or email campaigns as low hanging fruit when it comes to sharing content.  A recent study by BrightEdge found that of the 4 million tweets analyzed, websites that had a Twitter share button were 7 times more likely to have increased mentions on the social media platform. If simply adding a few share widgets to your website could create 7 times the amount of sharing, is there any reason not to do it?