Rhonda Hurwitz of She Means Business just wrote a great blog post about social media hype. Rhonda offers social media & marketing for businesses, and says: Enough with the snakeoil already! She's been echoing our sentiments exactly. Rhonda says that, while there is a place for social media in marketing, it's not the be all end all of online marketing. Nor should social media replace other online marketing channels.
We've said the same thing here on Im0z, and we totally agree with Rhonda. It's nice to know there are seasoned marketers out there who really know what they're talking about.
If you want to follow Rhonda on Twitter, she's at http://twitter.com/helpmerhonda11 . A great Twitter feed filled with useful info.
Showing posts with label social media marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media marketing. Show all posts
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Social Media (Re)marketing
I don't know about you, but I'm so tired of the "social media marketing" hype I can hardly stomach it. So many self-proclaimed social media "experts" are talking about how great social media is for marketing without a shred of concrete evidence to back it. Enough already!
Nevertheless, our firm has also concluded that, amid the hype, there is an ounce of real meat here. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook do have some use in online marketing, albeit it peripheral and tenuous. So, rather than talk about social media "marketing", here I'd like to talk about social media REmarketing.
*What Do You Mean, Social Media Remarketing?
A little background. Our firm has concluded that, in general, social media works better as a client relations and customer service tool than as a marketing tool. If you just pump your Twitter/FB feeds with advertising and self" promoting, you won't get very far. If you publish useful, interesting info, you're doing better, but still are a ways off from strategic marketing. But the biggest positive impact of social media for us has been as a client relations/customer service tool.
We define marketing in two main ways
1. Putting products/services in front of the people who will buy
2. Related to no 1, generating leads of potential buyers
Now, given these definitions, how well do social media sites accomplish these? Well, in our experience, not so well. Aside from the occasional, unpredictable, random customer you get from social media "marketing", social media doesn't top the charts when compared with some other online methods to generate consumers It certainly doesn't perform as well as PPC or organic SEO. Not even close.
*Social Media and Client Relations
However, social media works very well for operational functions such as client relations, business updates and customer service. This, we think, is were you should focus your efforts in using social media. That said, if we can somehow tie these ancillary functions into marketing, then we may be able to ascertain what is social media's most suitable role in marketing.
*Social Media (Re)marketing
That's where the concept of "remarketing" comes in. One instance of social media remarketing is locating your current customers on Twitter or Facebook. We've done this and found that this works better. Current customers already know and trust your brand. (If they didn't they wouldn't be customers.) Therefore, they are much more likely to respond to you on Twitter or Facebook than a random or disinterested follower.
This presents you with another medium to communicate your brand, product or service. And as your immediate customers engage with your brand, others in the second degree of separation will see that engagement. This remarketing to current clients via social media can open up avenues for additional marketing.
Of course, all this remarketing has to be done strategically, and with proper netiquette and style, to be effective. It requires thinking about social media in new, creative ways. Social media marketing succes - in our opinion - is not really about a one-way advertising dump, but rather a conversation with current clients for the purposes of building those relationships.
Nevertheless, our firm has also concluded that, amid the hype, there is an ounce of real meat here. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook do have some use in online marketing, albeit it peripheral and tenuous. So, rather than talk about social media "marketing", here I'd like to talk about social media REmarketing.
*What Do You Mean, Social Media Remarketing?
A little background. Our firm has concluded that, in general, social media works better as a client relations and customer service tool than as a marketing tool. If you just pump your Twitter/FB feeds with advertising and self" promoting, you won't get very far. If you publish useful, interesting info, you're doing better, but still are a ways off from strategic marketing. But the biggest positive impact of social media for us has been as a client relations/customer service tool.
We define marketing in two main ways
1. Putting products/services in front of the people who will buy
2. Related to no 1, generating leads of potential buyers
Now, given these definitions, how well do social media sites accomplish these? Well, in our experience, not so well. Aside from the occasional, unpredictable, random customer you get from social media "marketing", social media doesn't top the charts when compared with some other online methods to generate consumers It certainly doesn't perform as well as PPC or organic SEO. Not even close.
*Social Media and Client Relations
However, social media works very well for operational functions such as client relations, business updates and customer service. This, we think, is were you should focus your efforts in using social media. That said, if we can somehow tie these ancillary functions into marketing, then we may be able to ascertain what is social media's most suitable role in marketing.
*Social Media (Re)marketing
That's where the concept of "remarketing" comes in. One instance of social media remarketing is locating your current customers on Twitter or Facebook. We've done this and found that this works better. Current customers already know and trust your brand. (If they didn't they wouldn't be customers.) Therefore, they are much more likely to respond to you on Twitter or Facebook than a random or disinterested follower.
This presents you with another medium to communicate your brand, product or service. And as your immediate customers engage with your brand, others in the second degree of separation will see that engagement. This remarketing to current clients via social media can open up avenues for additional marketing.
Of course, all this remarketing has to be done strategically, and with proper netiquette and style, to be effective. It requires thinking about social media in new, creative ways. Social media marketing succes - in our opinion - is not really about a one-way advertising dump, but rather a conversation with current clients for the purposes of building those relationships.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Social Media Marketing: A Case Study from Twitter
I wanted to tell you about an interesting Twitter phenomenon that just occurred.
We’ve been thinking and researching social media marketing via Twitter. Twitter and Search … hmmm. How can I condense years of search engine optimization erudition down into a couple sentences??
Ok. Suffice it to say, that I did a little experiment on my personal Twitter account yesterday with Twitter hashtags.
…and this morning, take a look at the flood of followers who signed up to receive my Twitter updates:
Unread Twitter John Gordon is now following you on Twitter! 8:33 AM 8KB
Twitter michelleheigl is now following you on Twitter! 8:47 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Mike Adams is now following you on Twitter! 8:31 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Money Ideas is now following you on Twitter! 8:19 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Modeling22 is now following you on Twitter! 8:16 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Eric Nordstrom is now following you on Twitter! 8:16 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Michael Wheaton is now following you on Twitter! 8:14 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Ben Küllau is now following you on Twitter! 8:07 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter JulianRT is now following you on Twitter! 8:05 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter JulianRG is now following you on Twitter! 8:04 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Sue Soucy is now following you on Twitter! 8:03 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Jason J Culbertson is now following you on Twitter! 8:00 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Bryan Patterson is now following you on Twitter! 7:59 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter TaVona Boggs is now following you on Twitter! 7:58 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Fontaine...Paul is now following you on Twitter! 7:58 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Greg L. Richardson is now following you on Twitter! 7:58 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Denise Cornwell is now following you on Twitter! 7:57 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Tareq Gohery is now following you on Twitter!
Twitter Ivan Maroya is now following you on Twitter! 7:56 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter chazonline55 is now following you on Twitter! 7:55 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Ben Mapp is now following you on Twitter! 7:55 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Mike is now following you on Twitter! 7:54 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Claudio Sennhauser is now following you on Twitter! 7:54 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Tammi J Koza is now following you on Twitter! 7:53 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Ahmad Arif is now following you on Twitter! 7:52 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Reverle Harris is now following you on Twitter! 7:51 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Allen Gregory is now following you on Twitter! 7:50 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter TwittLord is now following you on Twitter! 7:50 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Adam Zilberbaum is now following you on Twitter! 7:49 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter A Dollar Deal is now following you on Twitter! 7:49 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter ElizabethHannan is now following you on Twitter! 7:48 AM 8KB
Unread Twitter Master 2.0 is now following you on Twitter! 7:48 AM 8KB
Read Twitter David Allen is now following you on Twitter! 7:16 AM 8KB
Read Twitter Alexis Jameson is now following you on Twitter! 3:37 AM 8KB
Read Twitter Ade Lack is now following you on Twitter! 2:50 AM 8KB
Read Twitter beanandbodySF is now following you on Twitter!
Twitter Marisa is now following you on Twitter! Tue, 5/19/09 8KB
Unread Twitter TM Marketing is now following you on Twitter!
Twitter daiyaan is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter Thomas Moreton is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter Charles H Denney is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09
Unread Twitter Walter Rose is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter Danger Brown is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter Robbie Gallagher is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8
Unread Twitter Hamada Hafez is now following you on Twitter! Mon, 5/18/09 8KB
Unread Twitter loumartin is now following you on Twitter!
All these were in my inbox this AM. Keep in mind, I just did the experiment late last night (about 11PM)
Now, I don’t know exactly what this means, but it seems significant on the face of it. Any online experiment that motivates such movement in such a short time-frame deserves attention.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Social Media: Optimization or Marketing?
We're still "getting clear" on the nature and potential of social media's use in promoting website visibility. And it's getting deep.
In thinking about social media, I am starting to realize that it can be broken down into two main branches, just like SEO. For the sake of discussion, let's use the terms "organic SMO" (or "natural" social media optimization) and Paid SMO (which would be akin to Search Engine Marketing; we could just call this branch "social media marketing" or "SMM" for short).
Social Media Optimization (SMO)
I'm still just thinking this stuff through - so please bear with me for a bit.
In natural SEO, one main goal is to "optimize" a site's rankings for certain keywords. Another way to put it: natural (organic) SEO tries to increase the probability that a given website will rank well (and thereby be found) in the search engines for certain key terms.
On social medial sites, you also have keywords by which internal content is ranked. Only, they are usually called "tags". But if you think about it, a tag is nothing more than a keyword. It tells the internal search database, of whatever social media site you're on, that the content labeled with that "tag" should be delivered in a search for that tag.
Now of course, tags do other things. But this is one of their main purposes: to group content under certain categories so that people (and search engines) can display or retrieve that content when a user searches for it. In this respect, tags function like the metadata of a web page, for all intents and purposes.
Natural social media optimzation (SMO) is like natural SEO: where the goal is to get YOUR content that is on THEIR site to rank as well as possible in search results. When we think about SEO, often times we get narrowly focused on just "the biggies" - Google, Yahoo, MSN. But just as a good SEO doesn't neglect the long-tail keywords, he also shouldn't neglect search engine optimization on social media sites.
Paid Social Media Optimization (social media marketing)
Explaining the term by way of analogy, in the world of Internet marketing, the term Search Engine Marketing - or SEM for short - is usually used to refer to "paid online advertising," though it encompasses more than that. In the same vein, we are using the term SMM to refer to the sundry ways in which social media sites like Facebook or StumbleUpon offer paid advertising platforms to drive visitors to a website. This is really not much different than the ad serving programs of the search engines. You select keywords you want to bid for, you pay a price, your ads get seen.
So What Is Social Media Marketing?
Ah So. After much contemplation, we're finally starting shed some light on the nature of social media marketing. So the way of contemplation really does lead to the truth sometimes?
Definition: SMM, then, consists of natural and paid methods to make your Content searchable and findable within social media sites.
Perhaps the two types of SMM can complement each other, just as in SEM. For example, it is typical to run a paid advertising campaign while performing organic optimization on a web site. Both SEO and SEM work together, as, for example, when paid ads are used for rankings for more competitive terms, and the organic SEO for ranking in the less competitive ones as the site begins its new life.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Social Media Marketing: Search and Desire
In the last blog post, I talked about what social media marketing is and what, if anything, it could accomplish. The conversation was broad and more conceptual than anything else. I apologize to our more practical readers, who often just want a step-by-step how-to guide. Unfortunately, the nature of social media marketing precludes such a straightforward set of "how-tos."
I try not to get too abstract in these matters, but I'm afraid that I cannot in this discussion. It's just my own quirky process; please bear with me; it's just the philosopher in me.
§ Search and Desire
I had a thought yesterday. Search reflects desire. In other words, when I search for something, that implies that there is a desire longing for fulfillment. It doesn't matter what I'm searching for. Back of every search is a desire. If I Google "best travel deals to nyc," I have a desire to travel, to save money, or what have you. If I Google "piano teachers in central NJ," then it is obvious that I have a desire to learn music, or to give my kids culture, or what have you. If I search for "the galapagos beetle" in Wikipedia, then I have a desire for academic or authoritative information on beetles. Perhaps my desire is to ace that term paper. But the point is that wherever there is search, there precedes desire.
Get my drift? Search represents desire.
Let's look at two of the most popular social media sites - Twitter and Facebook - in the context of this question of desire.
§ Twitter and Desire
I don't know exactly where I'm going with this, so just bear with me please Now that Twitter has a search trends feature, the question I want to answer is: What do Twitter trends tell me about Twitterer desire?
I'm still operating on the theory that search conveys desire. What is the trending desire of the main of Twitterers. That is the psychological question. How to get my products and services on the receiving end of those desires - that is the marketing question.
If, for example, a top Twitter trend is "cinco de mayo," how can I get my business on the other end of that search, that desire? (The question of the tie-in to "cinco de mayo" is a public relations question .... it's all related, you see.)
In asking the question, I've just turned the psychology of social media into the marketing of social media.
§ Facebook and Desire
With Facebook, it's harder to distill desire from search, because there is no data, to my knowledge, of Facebook search trends, at least not one that is publicly accessible. But what we do know is that Facebook has become the most popular people search engine around.
Thus we know that people - friends, old school pals, family - people are the desire behind the Facebook search. So perhaps your business' Facebook page should have a listing of all employees. If not all employees, perhaps all sales people, so that when someone looks for your marketing director or your sales manager or your IT guy, they find your business as well. But you get the idea: to be or not to be on the receiving end of search and desire: that is the social media marketing question.
Monday, March 23, 2009
The Real Value of Social Media Marketing
We've been utilizing social media sites with success for clients for a while now. While Internet marketers extol the virtue of social Media for traffic generation, link building and viral marketing, we think that the use of social Media for these purposes is limited. From our experience, the best use of social media is for branding and, by extension, prospecting new clients.
Social Media & Traffic
In terms of traffic, SM only benefits relatively few. Sites such as Digg and Technorati really only deliver significant traffic if your posts make it to the front page. With hundres of thousands of users posting all the time. don't bank on this.
The best traffic generation SM site, we've found, is Stumbleupon. Unfortunately, the traffic you can siphon off from this site is hit or miss; there doesn't appear to be any predictable pattern to it.
Social Media for Link Building
While it is true that SM sites provide back links, the value of these links is questionable, and far from uniform across the various SM sites or under all conditions. For example, Facebook pages sometimes supply do-follow backlinks. However, the generic profile pages usually do not.
Additionally, the importance search engies place on SM links is uncertain at best. Some SM the SEs totally ignore Others they report, but don't give much trust or link juice. And many are simply no-followed.
Social Media, Brand Awareness & Prospecting
The bottom line is: Internet marketing exists primarily to generate business. And generating business requires clients, partners and customers. It also requires some level of brand awareness. Why will people buy your products and services if they don't know who you are or have any trust in your products and services? To obtain clients, you need a quality brand and a prospect list to go on. To service and keep clients, you need partners to help out.
SM sites, we think, serve these needs the best.
As they are major traffic hubs, they are great places to create awareness for your brands inexpensively and for a widespread audience. In this regard, they are somewhat like free advertising, if used properly.
As your SM profiles start to gain interest (which requires a definite mindset and approach) these followers make perfect candidates for e-Newsletters, blog contributors and/or link partners.
Remember, social media is not about selling or self-promotion; those will get you nowhere on most social media networks. Social media success is more about networking and creating trust; about creating a brand and letting your contributions on these sites be more of a natural expression of that brand.
Sent from my T-Mobile Dash - Gnosis Arts - www.gnosisarts.com
Social Media & Traffic
In terms of traffic, SM only benefits relatively few. Sites such as Digg and Technorati really only deliver significant traffic if your posts make it to the front page. With hundres of thousands of users posting all the time. don't bank on this.
The best traffic generation SM site, we've found, is Stumbleupon. Unfortunately, the traffic you can siphon off from this site is hit or miss; there doesn't appear to be any predictable pattern to it.
Social Media for Link Building
While it is true that SM sites provide back links, the value of these links is questionable, and far from uniform across the various SM sites or under all conditions. For example, Facebook pages sometimes supply do-follow backlinks. However, the generic profile pages usually do not.
Additionally, the importance search engies place on SM links is uncertain at best. Some SM the SEs totally ignore Others they report, but don't give much trust or link juice. And many are simply no-followed.
Social Media, Brand Awareness & Prospecting
The bottom line is: Internet marketing exists primarily to generate business. And generating business requires clients, partners and customers. It also requires some level of brand awareness. Why will people buy your products and services if they don't know who you are or have any trust in your products and services? To obtain clients, you need a quality brand and a prospect list to go on. To service and keep clients, you need partners to help out.
SM sites, we think, serve these needs the best.
As they are major traffic hubs, they are great places to create awareness for your brands inexpensively and for a widespread audience. In this regard, they are somewhat like free advertising, if used properly.
As your SM profiles start to gain interest (which requires a definite mindset and approach) these followers make perfect candidates for e-Newsletters, blog contributors and/or link partners.
Remember, social media is not about selling or self-promotion; those will get you nowhere on most social media networks. Social media success is more about networking and creating trust; about creating a brand and letting your contributions on these sites be more of a natural expression of that brand.
Sent from my T-Mobile Dash - Gnosis Arts - www.gnosisarts.com
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