Online Marketing Blog

A recent post on PC World, “2011: The Year Facebook Killed Google” reflects a common mis-perception about the emerging role of search and social media for consumer information discovery. In the post, the author Dan Tynan shares that he’s finding and consuming more information on social networks vs. Google during “moments of leisure”. Citing unique visitor traffic and time on site statistics from Nielsen, Dan then makes the argument that Google is falling behind.

Was 2011 the year Facebook killed Google? 

People don’t surf the web anymore, they socialize & share.  Consumer behaviors and expectations towards content discovery, consumption and engagement are always changing online and more-so in the past few years with the emergence of today’s social networks and media sharing sites. People use search engines and social networks to find answers, yes – but I’d argue that they use them differently.

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:

Social Commerce Psychology [INFOGRAPHIC]

This is indeed an infographic of a different color.  Tab Juice has created a very interesting graphic which focuses on 6 mental rules of thumb that affect social commerce buying decisions.  In an online world flooded with infographics this one definitely stands out!

Did You Know?

• 81% of consumers receive advice from friends and family through a social networking platform.
• 50% of people have made purchases based on recommendations received through their social network.
• Over 25,000,000,000 pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month.

#Trending: Reflections of 2011 & Predictions for 2012

“150+ Content Marketing & Social Media Predictions for 2012”  This very extensive list of 2012 predictions includes some of the creme de la creme for online marketers including: even more from Google+, the year for video and mobile, and long-form content poised to make a comeback. Via Content Marketing Institute.

[Note from Lee: I am happy to introduce readers of Online Marketing Blog to our newest contributor, AshleyZ.  A human dynamo for getting things done, Ashley has literally hit the ground running and works for TopRank as a Marketing Manager. She'll be sharing her smarts here and  helping to elevate TopRank's Marketing to more impressive levels of awesome.]

The social web has opened the door to many opportunities for individuals to share their opinions on everything from the weather to politics to the really cute thing their dog just did.  Business social media users however, must take a much more structured approach to sharing information and interacting with their prospects and clients.

Facebook Marketing is on the mind of just about every company with an online presence, small and large, BtoB and BtoC. The fast pace of the social web right along with changes in consumer behaviors and technology can make it a challenge to nail down specific and enduring best practices.

Recently I participated in a webinar on social media ROI that took a holistic view of the value created by social engagement, beyond direct customer acquisition. Many of the questions from that webinar reflect the growing curiosity about specific social media applications and websites. We couldn’t get to all the questions so I’ve compiled them into similar topics starting with Facebook.

Some of the questions are fairly common and others are unique. Hopefully you’ll get value from these answers and feel free to ask your own in the comments.

Facebook has been a great tool for reaching consumers directly for many B2C brands.  But can companies focused in the B2B industry use Facebook to enhance a reputation and grow new business? Absolutely.

Quite a few B2B companies are successfully using Facebook to build important relationships with prospects and customers. If your B2B company is still considering where Facebook might fit within an online marketing mix, here are five tips on building a Facebook fan page that will better support a B2B brand:

1. Create Two Way Conversation – Rather than using Facebook to simply push out news at the audience, spend time understanding the challenges potential customers face. Search online using keywords and monitor other social tools like Twitter to find out current concerns the target audience is facing.  Be a resource to potential customers by providing content and insight that will help them alleviate the problems.

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:

Yesterday in Auckland, NZ I gave an all day workshop to 150 marketing and communications professionals on Social Media Content Marketing & Strategy at Social Media Junction.  I’m used to giving workshops to 20-30 people so it was an interesting and enjoyable experience with such a large group. (Thanks to Bullet PR staff who are amazing).

One of the questions that came up was whether B2B companies are successfully using Facebook Fan pages.  I shared a few of our client Fan pages like Marketo & McKesson Medical Imaging (forgetting to mention our own completely) but wanted to share a few more examples here.

While it’s true that the most popular Facebook Fan Pages are for consumer products and brands like Coca Cola (18.2m Fans), Starbucks (17.5m Fans) and Oreo (14.1m Fans), there are many B2B companies successfully using Facebook to engage with prospects, customers and employees. Here are a few good examples:

We all have email, yet our inboxes are often overloaded. RSS is great, but some are letting RSS take a back seat as they are to busy on social networks.

Where is everyone? They seem to be on Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter and Facebook are two of the fastest growing sites on the internet which makes them two of the biggest networks that your blog should be promoting its content.

The easiest way to do that is to set up your blog with its own Twitter profile and Facebook page.

One of the biggest reasons is for branding. Most people know that protecting the brand is very important. You own the domain, you have the legal rights to the name, so why don’t you have the Twitter profile and Facebook page too? The last thing you want is to try to register your brand only to find out someone has already taken it.

As more and more people join Twitter, Facebook and other social networks, bloggers are increasingly trying to get their content shared and it in-front of more people. And why wouldn’t they? A post is perceived as higher quality when it’s coming from a friends than from anywhere else.

So how can you increase the social reach and shareability of your posts? Here are a few tips:

Create good content.

First and foremost it’s about good content. No one likes the same content they can find everywhere else, or content that is self-indulgent.

Create unique content that informs, educates and/or entertains. Be different, be you, be successful.

Add media.

Text is great, but pictures are what most people will notice first. Add compelling graphics and/or videos to compliment your content. Try to create, or find, media that will act as a magnet and pull people in.

Social sharing buttons have evolved a lot over the past few years. We went from basic text links to images, and now we have interactive buttons. That’s all great except it can be a pain to add them all to your blog and get them to display nicely.

That’s where ShareDaddy comes in. Automattic, WordPress’ parent company, has created a single plugin that integrates all the major sharing buttons. There is no need to install multiple plugins, mess with template code, or worry about the buttons not lining up right in your theme.

ShareDaddy Supports:

• Faecbook
• Twitter
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• Email
• Print

It’s configurable to so you can:

• Show only the buttons you want.
• Drag and drop the order of the buttons.

Facebook Marketing is a topic we’ve covered for several years and with the significant increase in Facebook users there’s even more interest in how to make sense of what people do there. I’ve seen a significant increase in referring traffic from Facebook to web pages over the past 6 months and while a lot of that lift comes from marketing activities, I don’t anticipate the trend in Facebook users leaving to visit websites slowing down any time soon.

Participation on Facebook has traditionally been behind the login or confined to your network. With increasing amounts of content available “to the entire internet”, it’s worth exploring. Here are a few tools that you can use to search and visualize what’s happening on Facebook.