As I said yesterday, social media is NOT one size fits all, especially sites like Facebook, which can be very difficult to get engagement from people more interested in chatting with friends or playing games. Having conversations and engaging with customers is one of the most difficult aspects of social media for many companies (who are used to just promoting and advertising). Engagement for B2B companies can be even more tricky, with layers of customers and little direct connection to end-customers. Here are examples of 2 B2B companies that are doing a great job of engaging with their audience (disclosure: both are clients, but are responsible for their own Facebook engagement). [Read more...]
Nov
24
2010
History of Social Media [infographic]
You may think that social media is a relatively new phenomenon. But social media, in some form, has been with us for quite awhile. Here’s an overview of the history of social media, by Skloog. (click on the image to see a larger version on Skloog.)
How many of the different types of social media have you used or been apart of?
Nov
23
2010
Considerations for Using Facebook for Business
Businesses get really excited about Facebook when they see news like:
The amount of content consumption taking place on the popular social network has also grown substantially where nearly 1 in 4 page views in the US took place on Facebook.com for the week ending November 13, 2010. The market share of page views for Facebook.com was 24.27% last week, 3.8x the volume of the 2nd ranked website YouTube.com with 6.39%. – Facebook.com generates nearly 1 in 4 page views in the US | Hitwise
Nov
19
2010
Review: Shoeboxed.com – Get Organized
With Shoeboxed.com
(affiliate link), businesses can organize paper documents like business cards, receipts and bills. Just mail in your documents in a special pre-paid envelope and Shoeboxed will process, digitize the records and send back the originals. Each document is verified by a human and then the information is available online through a secure website where it can be managed, organized and exported. Shoeboxed let me try a free trial of their Classic plan by sending an envelope of business cards and a few receipts. Here are the results…
[Read more...]
Nov
17
2010
How P&G Designed Success with the Old Spice Guy Campaign
Proctor & Gamble (P&G) came to the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan about their recently successful Old Spice guy campaign. These thoughts were gleaned from that presentation.
The success of the Old Spice Guy campaign was no fluke. P&G carefully crafted the campaign to reach a specific market segment with an engaging message. The knew who their competitors were, as well as why people bought those products and their own. They also knew what attributes made their product stand out. Once they identified the segment that they wanted to reach, they chose the attributes of their product that were important to those people and reached out in a way that successfully engaged their target audience.
[Read more...]
Nov
16
2010
10 Traits of Highly Effective Blogs
This post is a stop along Tanya Peterson’s Blog Tour 2010. Tanya is the blogger behind Blogelina, where she writes about blogging your way to success. Be sure to check out all the other stops along the tour and enter to win $100 to use in improving your own blog!
Several of the traits on the following list of characteristics of highly effective blogs are
inter-related. You won’t be able to have one without having at least one of the others – so
consider them all important!
[Read more...]
Nov
15
2010
An Important Driver of Business Success – Follow-through
How many projects are you juggling at once? What percentage do you typically complete? How long is your to-do list? When you decide something is important for your business, do you follow-through and get it done? Everyone has a lot of stuff they want to get done. Successful business people figure out what’s important and make sure they get those tasks or projects done.
[Read more...]
Nov
11
2010
Storytelling for Brand Loyalty
Think about the really successful brands. Apple. Coca-Cola. Harley Davidson. Nike. These brands are more than a set of products or a marketing campaign. They connect with customers on an emotional level because they’ve been weaving a compelling story. People want to be apart of those stories. They want to incorporate the brand story into their own personal story (and vice versa). Irresistible storytelling by these companies has lead to amazing brand loyalty.
[Read more...]
Nov
10
2010
Stop Negative Public Relations Before It Happens
Heard the latest example of a company receiving negative public relations via the web and social media? Alaska Airlines apparently gave a paying customer’s ticket away to someone on standby because that customer had to run to the bathroom to change her baby’s diaper. That customer service error led fully fledged public relations debacle: Alaska Airlines Hates Families After reaching a dead-end with the company, the couple turned to the Internet to air their complaints (which seem reasonable). All this negative PR could have been easily stopped before it happened, without any fancy technology or marketing — provide good customer service.
[Read more...]
Nov
09
2010
How Much Does Each New Customer Cost?
How much does each new customer cost your business? Businesses love to dump money into Google AdWords campaigns, but then they ignore what the results are telling them. A lot of companies are spending more on a acquiring a new customer than that customer is giving them in return. Cost per acquisition is a valuable statistic for understanding whether you’re actually getting something for all the money spent in advertising.
[Read more...]
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