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.
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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.
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Nov
03
2010
Review: Real-time Social Media Monitoring with Social Mention
Keeping up on what’s being said about a company or brand can be difficult with so many different channels. It’s even more challenging when people expect real-time responses via social media to problems and issues. A lack of response when there’s a problem can be more harmful than the problem. Social Mention makes it easy to monitor, not only what’s being said, but also who is saying and what the general sentiment is towards the company or brand.
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Oct
27
2010
Networking on Steroids
Pretty much anyone will agree that networking is important, whether or not you’re in business for yourself. Most of us will put networking events on our calendars and make an effort to attend, at least occasionally. If we agree that networking is important, why then are we so hesitant to connect with these same people online? One of the best ways to have conversations online is to connect with people you’ve already met offline.
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Oct
26
2010
Blogging in a Vacuum
I had a meeting with a client yesterday who was getting very discouraged because he hadn’t yet received any comments on his blog. His discouragement meant that he wasn’t blogging as often as he should because he wasn’t seeing the value in it. Unfortunately, this sporadic blogging can lead to a downward spiral which will lead to a self-fulfilling failure. While blogging at first can feel like you’re talking to yourself, patience and dedication almost always pay off.
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Oct
25
2010
14 Basic Blog Measurements
Once you’ve started blogging, you want to know how you’re doing, especially if you haven’t had much interaction (yet). Starting to blog can be frustrating since there’s not much feedback right away. Like other marketing efforts, blogging will be more successful if you measure results to see what’s working (and what’s not). Here are 14 basic blog measurements to help you get an idea of how your blog is doing… Most of these statistics are available in Google Analytics.
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Oct
22
2010
Building Relationships by Commenting
Commenting on blogs, posts, videos, and others types of content is a great way to build relationships, not only with the content producers, but also others who see the content. However, treating comments as link bait (commenting just to get people to click on your link), can have just the opposite effect. Such comments can actually hurt you in the long run (plus most blogs and websites have do-not-follow rules for links in comments). Build successful relationships via comments with these tactics…
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Oct
19
2010
Klout Adds Facebook to Influence Measurement
Klout recently added Facebook into its influence measurement (which previously was looking mostly at Twitter). Even after recalculating my Klout score from time to time, it didn’t move from my initial score until I added in my Facebook profile. The Facebook integration still doesn’t look at any fan pages (just your profile), but does provide some useful information. After my previous review, my complaint about Klout using only bit.ly’s data for clicks on links is still an issue — if you don’t happen to use bit.ly to shorten your links, Klout has no data about them, and this may negatively affect your influence score. Let’s look at what information the Facebook integration has added….
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Oct
18
2010
13 Twitter Tips for Increasing Engagement
A major frustration for people trying out Twitter for the first time is figuring out how to get anyone to respond. They set up their Twitter account, tweet a few times and wonder why no one responds. While tweets are public unless you protect them, they probably won’t be seen by anyone unless they’re following you, they do a search for something you mention or you’re on a list. Here are some tips for increasing the engagement on your Twitter profile and getting people to listen to you…
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Oct
14
2010
Choosing a Personal Brand vs. a Business Brand
How to brand yourself is a question vital to any business. Branding drives marketing, product development and everything customer-facing. As a small business, branding takes on more personal meaning — should you brand your business as your name (personal brand) or as a business name? It’s a big decision since it really can affect the future growth of your company. But it’s also not a clear cut decision since there are advantages and disadvantages either way.
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