Cut to the Core

Using Social Media to Monitor Your Brand

If you are not using social media to find out what is being said about you, your brand and your industry, here are three compelling reasons to start:

1) Many stories break on social media first!! Monitoring allows you to REACT quickly.

2) Some complaints are only made indirectly via social media channels rather than directly to you by e-mail or phone. Monitoring allows you to REVIEW such complaints.

3) Monitoring allows you to RESPOND quickly to any customer service issue.

Can you afford to be the last one to know what everyone else knows about you and your brand?

Several statistics (reported from various industry sources in 2011) present a case for establishing a monitoring system for you and your brand. These statistics, which are tracked in a variety of ways, illustrate the importance of finding and reacting to the information that is stored on social media:

• Consumers reported that, before making their buying decisions, they visited social media sites (63%), search engines (72%) and blogs (58%).
• Over 90% of those consumers reported that “natural” search results vs. paid results are trustworthy.
• B2B decision-makers reported that they researched products and services online (69%), specifically looked at comments on social media sites (60%), and posted questions on forums (57%) and blogs (41%).
• Of companies that spend six or more hours on social media, 52% reported an increase in lead generation .

According to the 2011 Social Media Industry Report by Social Media Examiner, and confirmed by other reports such as the Nielson Social Media Report, the top five Web sites that businesses need to monitor are: 1) Facebook – used by 92%, 2) Twitter – used by 84%, 3) LinkedIn – used by 71%, 4) Blogs – used by 68%, and 5) YouTube – used by 56%.

The strategy your business should use to monitor Internet sites will depend on two things: how wide an outreach your company has and the amount you can allocate from your budget. The types of strategies to stay informed about the content shared on social media, and the fees to use those strategies vary greatly:

• Free search engine searches for specific sites such as Google and Yahoo
• RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds, sent to Google or Yahoo readers
• Google alerts, which allows for the scheduling of real-time or daily/weekly reports
• Software aggregation tools, such as Hootsuite or Tweet Deck, with either free or paid functions
• Social media monitoring software, which although pricey, is robust and can be customized for your business needs

Whatever you do, take SOME sort of action. You definitely want to see the same information your customers and prospects see about you and your brand.

If you need assistance with a strategy, let's talk.  For more information, send an e-mail message to maria@koreaccess, or visit www.koreaccess.com

 

Mr. Page, Thanks for the Rank!

Guest blogger, Rosalinda Sanquiche, is the Executive Director, Ethical Markets Media. Rosalinda’s childhood years hiking through Puerto Rico’s El Yunque National Forest informed her belief that we must engage in sustainable behaviors to preserve the magnificent world we inhabit.   She earned a masters in Environmental and Resource Policy as a George Washington Fellow at George Washington University in D.C. She is a speaker and author on environmental issues and is thrilled to work with Ethical Markets Media to promote socially and environmentally responsible behavior from an economic perspective.  

 

Larry Page is a whiz at algorithms, ones you likely use every day -- yes, really. 

When you do a web search for anything, Google has an algorithmic method of determining what you see first on the search page, and PageRank is key.

Google PageRank is a proprietary mathematical formula that implies value of a website.  It can be correlated to traffic but is more importantly correlated to the quality of connections to other reputable, high-value, quality sites.  A website that gets "less" traffic but offers higher-quality content and lots of active, useful links might have a high PageRank whereas a site that gets lots of traffic but has poor content might get a lower PageRank. 

As per Google, "PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results."  With a website like www.ethicalmarkets.com, if anyone searches the term "ethical markets," we come up first because we have one of the few urls with those key words, because we're currently an active site with lots of pages and because we have a high Google PageRank.

In the forthcoming book, Dare to Care, the author describes Ethical Markets Media as a "typical global Internet company, ranked a 6 on Google with more than 30,000 links." The editor rightly questioned, "what does that mean?" 

To those who manage traffic to a site, IT people, web managers, exec directors like me, this is important and meaningful.  When reading the book, we'll think, "impressive."  For everyone else, they'll probably gloss over it.  It'd be nice to put the numbers on a scale, like a 6 out of 10, but that implies an arithmetic or an exponential relationship.  I doubt it's even a bell curve or other standard deviation.  See Wikipedia for the gritty details.  The math is beyond me.  We say we're a 6, but that's rounding for simplification.  We're probably more like a 6.193743378+/-.025 (only Google really knows). 

I've never seen a 10 (the possible max).  I've never even seen an 8, though I've heard they're out there.  A six is strong for our type of website (one of the 500 million variables - not porn, not sales, not .edu, and so on). 

If I were re-writing the line, I'd say something like this: "a typical global Internet company with a strong PageRank 6 on Google and more than 30,000 links."   The author probably doesn't need to include anything about PageRank since the term has little meaning to most people and tends to be used as a marketing tool, but as a point of pride I think it's worth mentioning.  Thanks, Larry!

Successful Social Media Marketers Measure KPIs

 
Are you minding your KPIs when making online social media marketing decisions?

Contrary to popular opinion, establishing KPIs (key performance indicators) to benchmark your online performance is possible and simple. In three easy steps you can 1) identify, 2) measure and 3) test the most crucial metrics for your online performance.

 

Step 1) Identify. Your first step is to identify the activities that you conduct online. These include, but are not limited to, tweeting, blogging and updating your Facebook entries. You should also identify the corresponding measure (such as click-through rates or number of retweets and shares) for each of these activities. Tie this metric as closely as you can to your end goals of more orders and/or more booked clients (i.e., the lead-to-sale conversion rate), in order to produce output that is as accurate as possible to use in your decision making. 

 

Step 2) Measure. In this step, take the particular metric you have identified and selected, and develop a plan to measure what you want to improve. As evaluation metrics, the KPIs (e.g., the number of visitors who complete a purchase) are used over time to benchmark your success toward a business objective (in this case, an increase in online purchases).

Quantitative measures such as these can relate directly to the goal. For example, a metric can measure lead-to-sales conversion rates, the number of Web site visitors who click on the buy button and finalize their purchases with a payment. At other times, however, the quantitative metrics are by proxy, as is the case when a measurement infers the value of the desired outcome. Engagement metrics (number of pages viewed per visit and time spent per visit) are an example of this type of metric. The inference is that the more engaged each visitor is with your content (visiting more pages, spending more time on the site), the more likely it is that he or she will buy.

 

Step 3) Test.  Once you have established benchmarks and are tracking KPIs that impact business objectives, it is time to test the design elements that are most likely to influence each of the KPIs. Consider each step of the buying process you offer and experiment with changes in each of its element: e.g., the length of online forms, the size and color of buy buttons, the image content, and the font style of the test.  Examine and test also the surrounding marketing support activities such as e-mail campaigns, online advertisement and organic keywords. At times, even small changes can increase your sales numbers dramatically.

 

Key Point – When you identify and track KPIs that measure the success rate of activities that are closely tied to the success of your business objectives, you will make decisions that are well informed. You will also be able to manage and direct your progress in new and unique ways.

*To learn more about KPIs and online business benchmarking, send an e-mail message to Kore Access Marketing Communications Consultant Maria Pinochet. Make sure to indicate whether you just need more information or whether you would like a personal call.

Twitter Events Increase Individual Blog Traffic

On February 8th at 8 am EST I, along with several other marketing bloggers, published individual blog posts with the same title, “The Last Blog Post.” Most of us spread the word via Twitter and, over the next 48 hours, we observed and participated in an amazing event.

Daniel Burstein, Primary Research Director of Editorial Content of MECLABS, had invited me, as well as the other marketers, to participate and had suggested we all promote our posts using the hashtag #LastBlog on Twitter. To search all the activity we generated with our tweets, click here - #LastBlog. (Hashtags, defined as words or phrases prefixed with a #, make it easy for users to group posts together by topic or type.)

With my entry, which asks one question—In which instance have you used your skills to their best advantage in order to have a radical impact on a client’s outcome?—I was one among dozens who published on the day and time Burstein requested. A few hours later, though, I had become part of a blogging and tweeting wave that inspired many more to write and post their own version of “The Last Blog Post” and then tweet about it.

My blog traffic increased by over 1000% in just a matter of hours, and my blog analytics tracked that traffic back to Twitter click-through rates. The results showed that Twitter posts that include links to pages on the Internet make tweeting an efficient way to promote an individual blog entry. In fact, Twitter is considered by many to be a microblogging service since posts (tweets), although limited to no more than140 characters, are text based. Once posted, the “tweet” is displayed on the user’s profile and is publicly visible. Twitter is estimated by eMarketer.com  and www.nielsen-online.com to have grown to the point that it has 18-20 million visitors per day in the U.S. alone (depending on the criteria utilized to account for users). These numbers indicate that “Tweeters” make up 7-10% of adult users on the Internet.  

Maybe my next question should be this: How can you engage this type of niche audience and stage your own Twitter event?

Key Point – When you participate in an event that is promoted via Twitter, you are immediately part of a conversation you can use to share your brand value.

Enhancing Customer Engagement with Social Media Marketing

 

Social media platforms enhance engagement by allowing customers to interact with your brand on their terms. Customers are able choose how they experience your brand by interacting with the various online media platforms your company offers. In addition to providing customer value through their flexibility, social media marketing initiatives are cost effective, quickly published and easily implemented by organizations.

 

Both consumers and providers currently drive social media growth because it offers the shared advantage of reducing costs: Consumers save on travel time and transportation costs and providers save on publishing and distribution costs. Additionally, online social media allow for the exchange of information in ways that would not otherwise be available. Each online platform, in fact, serves specific consumer informational needs: Some provide interactive functionality, others offer immediacy, and many allow customization and personalization by the user.

 

Key Point – Online platforms increase customer participation and engagement with your brand at the same time they reduce costs. Is increasing your online marketing efforts important to the success of your organization?

 

Business Blogging Enhances Brand Value

Business blogging – the online journaling of personal observations and opinions about business ideas and events – continues to be a good method to build an online presence. Business blogging can be used effectively by both large corporations and small businesses as an online marketing tool that affords the blog author the option to manage, to measure and to publish content independent of any expensive service. A business blog can benefit your brand in numerous ways. It can enhance your credibility, create community, engage readers, attract clients and drive traffic to your Web site.

 

Key Point – Appropriately customized blog content increases both brand awareness and traffic to your company Web site.

The Use of Social Media Increases Web site Traffic

 Let your company Web site serve as a “hub” or central depository for your inventory of special reports and thought leadership content. Then, you can leverage, through the use of monitoring tools, both free and by paid subscription, the marketing value of that content with all your other online activities. For example, the customized use of filters and alerts can provide you valuable information about your Web site traffic. With the resulting statistics in hand, and by studying and understanding the power and constraints of the various social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube, you can develop online marketing strategies to maximize each platform’s potential to attract interest in, and to drive traffic to, your Web site. Once on your site, visitors can be directed to any publications you have available. If those publications include white papers, case studies and reports, which are especially effective tools to meet the informational needs of your readers and to communicate your expertise, the result is that you will engage prospects, communicate your brand value, and enhance your standing as a thought leader.

Key Point – Online content communicates your solutions and details your understanding of customer challenges.

A Purpose, Not a Plan, for Your Social Media Initiatives

I was clueless on how to respond to e-mails asking me to “LinkIn” and become a “friend.” I stood on the sidelines as I watched others instant message and tweet on their cell phones. Yet yesterday, I posted a tip on how to backup contact information for a LinkedIn group member and made comments in response to colleagues’ tweets and blog posts.

Why the change? After all, I had successfully resisted having a social media account for years. If, like me, your time runs out before your to-do list does, you place a high value on how you spend every minute and you pay close attention to productivity measures of your activities. Without a definite plan for how my time spent on social media would create a positive impact, I took no action.

At some point I recognized that I would never figure out the value of being connected until I got involved. To move forward, I abandoned my need for a plan and adopted a strategy of purposeful activity. Instead of plotting a path with highly specific steps to arrive at a desired goal, I have adopted a purpose of participating to create valuable exchanges of knowledge.

In my short time online, I have encountered many opportunities and stand to potentially see many more opportunities come from my collaborations as technology evolves. If you have not already, I encourage you to join the online conversations on the topics that matter most to you.

“I dream of men who take the next step instead of worrying about the next thousand steps.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

Are You Blogging Your Way to Higher Profits?

 Blogging can be an effective tool to promote your brand and to communicate information about your services and products.  Are you and your company taking the opportunities that blogging provides to create and to engage customers and prospects?

Does your content strategy optimize for search engines? Is your blog providing you free PR? Learn more by sharing the tips and tools our clients, colleagues and business partners find effective with the “Business Blogging,” issue of Café Knowledge, Kore Access’s collection of “coffee break” discussions. To read, Download Cafe_Knowledge_Business_Blogging .

Anonymity is No Shield in Business Blogging

Routine reviews of your online blogging activities and policies will improve the effective use of blogging by both corporate leaders and employees, as well as reduce any misuse of the practice.

After being shut out of the blogging world in July of 2007, CEO John Mackey returned to blogging on his corporate blog in May of 2008, with a post titled Back to Blogging. Through this blog entry, Mackey makes observations your company may wish to consider in the establishment of its blogging best practices:

 

“My mistake here was one of judgment—not ethics. I didn’t realize posting under a screen name in an online community such as Yahoo! would be so controversial…”  What is your company’s view on the ethics of posting anonymously when the subject directly relates to your business and industry?

 

“The primary lesson I’ve learned is that because of Whole Foods Market’s success, I have become a public figure. My personal and work lives are now closely connected—and impact one another.” How is the line between personal expressions of opinion and professional viewpoints distinguished at your company?

 

 “I don’t believe that I ever crossed the line of fair but vigorous debate in these postings. It is also important to understand that I did not single out Wild Oats as the only competitor I discussed. From time to time I also discussed and debated the virtues of food co-ops, specialty grocers and national and regional grocers.”  What risks exist in maintaining anonymity when making comments that relate to competitors and industry organizations?

To learn more about developing a blog  strategy that will influence opinion leaders and earn you free PR, read the Kore Access marketing resources article, “Blog Your Way to Higher Visibility.” For the full article, Download Business Blogging .