A few weeks ago, I was asked to share some of my thoughts with iMedia Connection on common mistakes marketers make with Social Media and when it’s time for a Social Media Makeover.
Here is a re-post of that article and a few tell-tale signs your brand is missing a social media marketing opportunity.
The full article from iMedia Connection can be found here.
Article Highlights:
Brands often mistakenly plan social campaigns for the same window of time as they would an online advertising campaign
An intern should not be tasked with managing all of your social media efforts
Brands shouldn’t strip content off of blogs and communities just so they can promote it on their own websites
Common misconceptions and pitfalls
In the year of the social media revolution, we’ve seen many brands, organizations, and individuals jump in and make a concerted effort to expand their presences online and establish their social media footprints. Some of these brands have done a great job and really understand the importance of social media in getting people aware and engaged — while others are latching on to the newest trend and, perhaps, going through the motions to keep up with the Joneses.
Among the more than 3 million businesses creating Facebook pages and groups — not to mention millions of special-interest and community-driven blogs, up to 70 percent of which blog about brands — many have failed to connect the dots in terms of how to use these platforms effectively. Many brands fail to leverage social spaces to drive awareness and engagement among their customers and fans. They simply aren’t having conversations about their brands in the places their audiences share most.
For anyone who has ever wanted more information on Social Media and its impact on how we consume and share content, here are some favorite videos from Socialnomics that just might amaze you.
Social Media Revolution
Social Media ROI
Kudos to Socialnomics for gathering such comprehensive information!
Online marketing tools have given marketers and decision makers an amazing amount of mostly accurate data to mine. However, as the saying goes, you can have too much of a good thing. As we see it, there are three key issues:
The mind-boggling amount of data generated by online data gathering tools, be they website server logs, keyword searches, ad impressions, clicks, etc.
The relative lack of analytical tools to make sense of all that data and transform it into actionable knowledge (data in and of itself is prety useless, as you may have noticed).
A seemingly total dearth of tools and experts that can take the still-confusing knowledge generated form the data and make it easily digestible by mere mortals, like your typical marketer (yes, that includes us).
There is obviously not much that we can do about the first issue. And the second issue is slowly but surely being resolved through the emergence of more accurate, more user-friendly and more affordable analytical tools. The third issue is something we have been bedeviled by with little hope for resolution…until now. In the past few weeks, we have come across a very impressive array of tools and companies that are tackling this nagging problem. Not all of them are directly answering marketers’ prayers but the concepts and the thought processes are great harbingers of what we can expect in the marketing field. Read the rest of this entry »
You’re a company, or a brand, an artist, or a marketer who wants to promote your cause and you want a presence on Facebook. You’ve seen it done before, but you just don’t know what your options are.
Should you create a Facebook Group?
Or is a Fan Page your best bet?
In the past, Fan Pages and Groups both had a similar problem: they tended to get initial fan interest, but couldn’t keep fans coming back for more. There was a lack of social functionality and value for both the fan and the cause. In essence, the Fan Page and Group used to act like the Facebook version of the brochureware web site back in the day. That now seems to have changed.
While the new redesign of Facebook has infuriated many of its users, it has also created more benefits for marketers and those who want to engage with their audiences and fans.
Facebook has thoroughly revamped Fan Pages in the past few weeks to offer much more viral potential with their built-in news stream integration and dissemination features: any action is seen by each users’ friends and actions are more easily shared.
While the Facebook Groups page still looks and feels the same, the Fan pages have been improved to look and feel more like user profiles. These new features have driven a lot of users to them while making Facebook Groups a much less influential and used communication tool than before.
Some things to keep in mind if you’re considering a Fan Page:
When updating your wall, your updates will be included in all your fans news streams
Fan page editors can update their fans about new content, promotions, upcoming events, and more.
Fan page editors can send messages to either their entire fan list or segment their update to targeted fans
Messages from fan page editors appear in their inbox “Updates” tab
Fan page editors can click on a tab called “insights” which gives information on fan page views
We suggest before starting a Group or Fan Page, you should thoroughly read through Facebook’s FAQs:
With Facebook’s recent redesign of user home pages and updates to the Fan Page template (and very few updates to Groups), we at KML couldn’t help but wonder if the Fan Page is future home for any and all who want a Facebook presence to interact with their fans and audience.
And if so… how long will we enjoy that feature for free?
Radian6for thorough coverage of all social media activity, sentiment (coming soon) and influencer identification, as well as workflow tools.
Andiamo Systems for the same type of coverage as Radian6 but with the addition of human involvement in tracking and configuration vs. Radian6’s self-supported and fully automated system.
Collective Intellect for the same type of coverage as Radian6 and Andiamo Systems but with additional bells and whistles and deeper analytical support, for a much higher price tag…
Meteor/Fyreball to track word of mouth dissemination and virality.
Divinity Metrics for video analytics across multiple platforms including demographics, and influencer identification.
Every day, there are new tools and ways to measure the impact of your campaigns, just remember the most important measurement tool needs to be balanced against the overall goal.
Not a week goes by without my seeing yet another article or blog post bemoaning the fact that social media marketing cannot be measured or touting a new, “revolutionary” way of measuring word of mouth (WOM).
I really enjoy this lively debate but my own experience at KML and beyond has made me a believer: social media marketing can be measured and most campaigns can be evaluated on an ROI basis.
There are several issues that I believe create the brouhaha around metrics and social media marketing.
Most companies do not take the time to define what their social media goals are in measurable terms to determine what their success metrics are. And many times, agencies are just as guilty. As one often says, you cannot manage what you do not measureand you cannot measure what you do not define.
Every social campaign, even for the same brand or product or property, will have different metrics attached to it. Because the objectives of campaigns and the environment and circumstances in which they are implemented will differ, so should their metrics. A campaign may need to focus on conversions to measure its ROI, another may be all about buzz and awareness with yet another’s success measured on time spent engaging with a specific tool or piece of content. And too often, we see marketers using the same old, and usually irrelevant, online metrics of pageviews, unique visitors, etc.
Here’s an ugly little myth: “even if you can figure out what to measure with WOM/social media marketing, the measurement methodologies are so unreliable as to make the results meaningless.”Nonsense. Word of Mouth, social media, non-traditional online marketing analytics are just as accurate as traditional offline and online analytics, but because the marketing methods themselves are new, their measurement has not been codified into accepted standards. And there are sometimes several ways or methodologies to track one specific metric. This, however, does not make these measuring tools inaccurate but it does make them more likely to be influenced by subjective interpretations.
Social media marketing measurement tools are developed and released on almost a daily basis and existing methodologies are being constantly refined which will give our industry trustworthy tools much faster in its lifecycle than any other advertising or marketing field before.
Stay tuned for part 2 which will list some of the free and paid measurement tools that we are huge fans of at KARMA Media Labs.
A few weeks ago, I was asked to share some of my thoughts with iMedia Connection on common mistakes marketers make with Social Media and when it’s time for a Social Media Makeover.
You’re a company, or a brand, an artist, or a marketer who wants to promote your cause and you want a presence on Facebook. You’ve seen it done before, but you just don’t know what your options are.
Not a week goes by without my seeing yet another article or blog post bemoaning the fact that social media marketing cannot be measured or touting a new, “revolutionary” way of measuring word of mouth (WOM).