Online Marketing Blog

5 Types of Social Media Strategies
Social media is not a magic bullet. It’s an enabler. Social media won’t make an antisocial brand suddenly social. But it can facilitate and amplify the role that brands play with their audiences.

Whether in social media or any other domain, we need to focus less on how “awesome” we are and more on working toward making our customer’s more “awesome”.  Via Marketoonist.

There’s No Avoiding Google+
In order to compete with social networking giant Facebook, Google+ has begun requiring that people that use their services are also set up with a public Google+ page that anyone can view.  Via The Wall Street Journal.

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.

Picture this: your company has exciting news to share with customers, shareholders, suppliers and your target market. You’re launching a new product this week and it will be debuted at a popular industry event, sure to be attended by media, influencers and people who will want to buy YOUR product, just as soon as they learn about it.

You craft the perfect press release and send it to 1,000 of your contacts. Twenty of these people think this is such great news, they each send it to 500 of their friends, relatives and business contacts. Five of those people pass the news on to 250 of their contacts. Of course, these people are all fascinated, as you’ve been able to include pictures, a video, and they all received the message within hours!

Note from Lee: Please welcome this guest post from Sara Duane-Gladden, of TopRank Online Marketing’s copywriting team. 

Facebook is changing again. That never happens, right? For regular users like me, it seems as if there is something new happening at the social network every day. Facebook Timeline is probably one of the most significant, though, and it’s coming to a brand page near you soon. Very soon.

Timeline is the newest change from Facebook, a social media network renowned for making “enhancements” to its much-beloved product that result in mixed criticism and compliments from users. Timeline is no different, as it has been both praised and panned in the blogosphere. There doesn’t appear to be a consensus on Timeline, which is typical of Facebook changes. Love It or hate it, users and brands alike will adjust to Timeline in order to continue participating in the Facebook community – just like they have in the past.

Social Media Marketing: The long term and short term value with Avinash Kaushik

This interview from #SESNY features Google evangelist Avinash Kaushik on monitoring social media value.  Kaushik stresses that social media should be about quantifying your efforts.  Companies must determine what they did that ended in specific results, and the economic value that was created due to these efforts. You can see another interview with Avinash Kaushik here on the power of storytelling and web analytics.

Tips & Tactics for Improving Your Business

“Why Relationship Marketing is Important for Businesses” This video interview with author and social media guru Mari Smith(@marismith) sheds some light on the notion of “people-to-people” marketing.  In this video you’re learn why businesses must have listening skills and what businesses are doing well in relationship marketing. Via Social Media Examiner.

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: