Online Marketing Blog

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.

Facebook pages can be a huge way to connect to audiences. Facebook statistics tell us that the average user (at the time of this writing) is connected to 60 pages, groups and events. This means that aside from all the other Facebook friend activity that goes on, your page is one of 60 trying to grab attention a fan’s attention.

For a more effective social media marketing program, here are ten things that you can do to turn your Facebook page into a dynamic and engaging destination for your Facebook fans.

1. Be unique

There’s nothing worse than a bland Facebook page. Think long and hard about how your page can be different. Remember, your page is one of at least 60 things that an average Facebook user is giving attention to. It’s insanely important that your page is unique and stands out from the rest.

With more businesses realizing the power of digital channels to nurture relationships, rally fans and build customer affinity, opportunity abounds for savvy professionals.

But with execution all over the board how should those who are new get started?

To answer that question, we posted thoughts from a variety of marketing and web professionals on social media strategy before tactics.

It’s an ongoing debate, but the consensus among the marketing and PR crowd is clear:  strategy before tactics is the logical approach for businesses to take when engaging in social media.

Sarah Evans provides a clever analogy:

Over the last few years, the concept of microblogging has gone from zero to hero. Just a few short years ago, the terms “microblogging” and “microcontent” were known only to early adopters.  These days, the only thing “micro” about microblogging and status updates is character count. Consider a few recent statistics:

• There are nearly 40,000 Tweets a minute, according to TweeSpeed
• Last year, Tweets grew 1,400%, while traffic to Twitter.com grew around 1,100%
• More than 60 million Facebook status updates are posted every day

When it comes to microblogging sites, customers and prospects are either there, or those that influence them are. Microblogging can take on a life of its own – with users making connections, developing relationships and publishing content all from within.

Over the last few years, the popularity of social channels – for professionals, teens, grandmas and everyone in between – has skyrocketed. Consider the recent numbers:

• Twitter experienced an annual growth in 2009 of 1,382%
• Facebook now boasts 400 million active users
• Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube

Between blog posts, Facebook status updates, tweets, videos and every other piece of social content published, there’s a whole lot of information floating around out there.

Enter the latest social media player, Google.

Google’s latest activities, acquisitions and features all point to the fact that the search giant no longer has a close eye on web 2.0; it’s already there.

Here are 5 ways Google is now becoming a dominant social media player:

If you run an ecommerce business, chances are your customers – regardless of their age, gender or economic status – are active on social networks and social media sharing sites.

Just consider the statistics from social media monitoring site Pingdom:

• Males and females almost equally use social sites (47% vs. 53%)
• 61% of Facebook users are middle aged or older, with the average age being 37
• 18- to 24-year-olds don’t dominate any particular social networking site; they’re spread out all over

The bottom line: If you aren’t discovering which in social networking channels your customers spend time and include them in your ecommerce marketing mix, you’re probably  missing out on building relationships, community and increasing new customer acquisition through online word of mouth.

Day one of SES continues with the hot topic of turning the social web into real ROI.  Everyone knows the social web is essential to how we live our lives and stay connected, but many marketers aren’t finding returns on their ad spends.

Tim Kendall, Director of Monetization for Facebook moderates this heated session with speakers (R to L in the image):

• Sean Heywood, Managing Partner, MR Barber Shop & Urban Lounge
• Rogelio (Ro) Choy, Chief Revenue Officer, RockYou
• Claudia Virgilio, Vice President Western Region, Performics

Focusing on best practices in how marketers can leverage the social web as a simple way to quickly build and manage effective campaigns, this discussion had valuable takeaways for marketers interested in social media advertising.

After the keynote frenzy this morning, the session that stood out for me was “Facebook Marketing: Best Practices” with Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research as moderator, Evan Mager from AKQA, Holly Liu from Watercooler, Brett Keintz of 750 Industries and Stanford GSB and Kevin Barenblat of Context Optional.

Some of the key takeaways from this session were:

• Be clear with your objectives
• Test spending money on Facebook marketing even if you aren’t sure about the return. Hey, 1,000,000 visits can’t be wrong!
• Understanding the ROI of Facebook requires a new kind of mindset
• Don’t take away the social features of Facebook from users
• Facebook marketing is not about driving traffic to your web site. Keep Facebook users on Facebook