Tag: Social Media
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The 5 Mistakes Marketers Continue To Make On Facebook
In this highly touted Information Age, it’s just a tragedy when a business or brand goes amateur with its Facebook Page. Yet many respectable business entitles continue to consider social networking as a hobby, completely ignoring tried and true approaches that can result in open and honest communication with customers and fans alike. In order…
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How Facebook’s ‘Offers’ and ‘Reach Generator’ Can Deliver More for Less
All anyone seems to be talking about these days is how much they dislike Timeline, Facebook’s new user interface for business and brand Pages. Fortunately, the social networking giant also offered a couple of new advertising options that might just ease the tension surrounding the new look and feel. During Facebook’s Marketing Conference in New York…
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The 10 Ds of Creating a Social Media Use Policy
There’s been no shortage of news these days about companies getting in trouble because of what they or a third-party marketers have done when taking to the socially-powered airwaves. A common theme among those who find themselves caught in the crosshairs of the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Trade Commission or even a company’s…
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Measuring Offline Vs. Online Word-of-Mouth Marketing
The now commonly held notion that social media-related marketing is a requirement for business success may not carry as much water as once thought. Despite all the technological advances in recent years, especially in the realm of social media, a recent study suggests that the vast majority of public discussion about products, brands and services…
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More Small Businesses Extol the Benefits of Social Media
The vast majority of small-business owners are discovering that social media doesn’t have to be painful. And as a result, those entrepreneurs who are choosing to take advantage of social channels say they’re reaping huge rewards besides being able to commune with customers, according to a new report. The Fall 2011 Attitudes and Outlook Survey from…
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Why Big Corporations Are Putting the Brakes on Social Media
When it comes to the care and tending of corporate blogs, Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, a new study suggests big business social media may be suffering from neglect. In recent report by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth social media use among America’s largest companies is losing steam. Specifically, less…
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Target Social Shoppers: Marketing Your Way Through The Holidays
To paraphrase political commentator and stand-up comedian Lewis Black, we don’t really like to celebrate the holidays anymore; we just like to announce that they’re coming. Black of course is talking about you, the independent specialty retailer who, along with your larger and big box brethren, count on fourth-quarter sales to end the year on…
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Social Marketing Is Best Served on a Combo Plate
If you’re accountable for the dollars your company spends on social media-related marketing and you’re looking for evidence that socially engineered content and engagement marketing lifts sales, here’s some good news. A just-released study shows that consumers — patrons of five fast-food franchises in this case — are much more likely to pull out their wallets and…
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What Time Is Your Facebook Sweet Spot?
You’ve just added a status update to your Facebook business page, and, so far, you’ve received 57 Likes and about dozen comments on both the blog post it focuses on and the Facebook status update itself. The question is, how long is this online euphoria going to last? Will your update continue to attract comments…
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Are Facebook Posts Penalized by Using Third-Party Tools?
If your goal is to boost engagement on your Facebook Page, you might not want to invite a third-party API (application programming interface) to your online get together. Using third-party tools like Hootsuite, Sendible, Shoutlet and Postling to schedule and post content to your Facebook Page can actually decrease your likes and comments by 80…
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Who Checks Your Company’s Social Media Profile?
Social Media isn’t just for teenagers and techies anymore. Adults have long used social media sties like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. But the number of adult Internet users who now claim they use those and other social networking sites has more than doubled since 2008, according to a new report released late last week. For…
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How To Smooth a Rejected Job Applicant’s Feathers
To follow-up on my recent article about do’s and don’ts of using social media to screen new hires, when your company uses social media channels to both source and screen new talent, you must consider that your applicants can turn right around and use those same channels to your disadvantage. In other words, if you…
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Five Lies About Social Media Marketing
When you think back on it, the advent of social media hit the marketing world like hot sauce on an empty stomach. All of a sudden businesses with an appetite for “what’s next” rushed to set up Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and blogs to connect with as many customers as possible. Waylaid somewhere along the…
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5 Facebook Developments for Businesses
The engineers at Facebook have been busy fine-tuning and adding new features lately, prompting the following primer on what’s new and — more important — what these developments mean for your business. Included among the additions and changes: There’s now a “Send” button for websites. “Deals” on Facebook launched this week, and its “Questions” function…
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Why We’re Still Lost In Geolocation
Business owners who anticipate that geosocial services like Facebook Places, Google Latitude, Foursquare, SCVNGR, and Gowalla will be the next best way to reach new customers may be waiting a while longer yet. Geosocial, or geolocation, services — which allow their users to send short messages online or by text to update friends on their…
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Which Service Will Get You on Your Customers’ Map?
I don’t know how high school dances work these days, but it used to be that the boys slouched against one wall of the gymnasium and the girls huddled around at the other end. It was a selection process and if you were a guy, you had to make a decision, walk over and ask…
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Settlement Reached in Employee Firing Over Facebook Commentary
There’s been a settlement in the case of an ambulance service employee who was fired last year for posting some pretty caustic comments about her supervisor on her Facebook page (read Can Complaining About Your Boss on Facebook Get You Fired?). The regional office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Hartford, Conn., announced…
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Can Complaining About Your Boss on Facebook Get You Fired?
Here’s a question for the water cooler crowd: Can complaining about your supervisor on Facebook get you fired? Can a status update change the status of your employment? I’ve opined in the past about the dangers and drama of authoring and then posting job-related commentary on Facebook or other socially engaging online properties (see Pitfalls…
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A New Twist on Offering Savings Through Social Media
Over the weekend, I made a purchase online from a site called Abe’s Market. I was looking for a hard-to-find product and Google pointed me in Abe’s direction. It’s a great-looking site, focusing exclusively on “Green, Natural, and Eco-Friendly” products. It’s easy to navigate, has an exceptional blog with lots of helpful information — and…
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Game Theory and Gaming Mechanics for Your Website
This is the time of year when business strategists are asked to give their take on the future of the web and online entrepreneurship in general. I’ve been asked no less than a dozen times between October and the end of December to prognosticate in writing about trends and predictions for the upcoming year. And…
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Create a Business-aligned Communication Strategy
When I worked in the corporate world (think global corporation with 30,000 employees and a Board of Directors complete with an audit committee), this was the time of year when everyone in the enterprise received their final financial targets for the following fiscal quarter, as well as numbers for all of the next fiscal year.…
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8 Social Media Outsourcing Do’s and Don’ts
You can find plenty of arguments for and against outsourcing the management of your company’s social media initiatives. From ghosting your company’s blog entries, Facebook status updates and tweets to monitoring and mining platforms for inappropriate content and customer insight, some companies just find it easier to pass these responsibilities to a third-party provider. Whether…
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Social Networking Picks Up Steam on a Global Level
It should come as no surprise that social networking has rocketed in the United States — the country where it all began (thanks, eBay). What is surprising to some, however, is how widespread the use of social networking sites and platforms has become on a global scale. Did you know, for instance, that of Facebook’s…
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Social Media and Your Company’s Acceptable Use Policy
Acceptable use policies have the intent of providing a safe working environment, increasing employee productivity and providing a layer of security to company assets like individual computers and network infrastructure. Thinking back on my first office job, I recall my supervisor going to great lengths to explain to me that the company phone was for…
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Everything You Need to Know About Social Media Marketing, You Already Know
In the rush to gain subject matter credibility in the eyes of anyone who’s paying attention, PR firms, advertising agencies, marketing organizations, application service providers, and consultants and consultancies in nearly every business vertical are all publishing reports, studies, white papers and more about social media-related marketing. But in nearly every case, they’re either repeating…
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How to Use SCVNGR to Grow Your Business
Seth Priebatsch, founder, CEO and “chief ninja” of SCVNGR, Inc., describes SCVNGR as a game about “going places, completing challenges and earning points.” In SCVNGR, players complete challenges to earn points that ultimately enable them to unlock and redeem rewards at businesses like yours. Think discounted coffee, a free month’s worth of SaaS, half-off on…
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Facebook Moves to Eliminate Spam on Business Pages
Back in the fall of 2008, Facebook sued Montreal-based spammer Atlantis Blue Capital, and its owner Adam Guerbuez, for repeatedly spamming Facebook members. In what many view as a landmark CAN-SPAM-related judgment, US federal judge Jeremy Fogel awarded Facebook an astonishing $873 million dollars in punitive damages. Now, just days after a Canadian court upheld…
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New Report Uncovers the Anatomy of a Facebook Post
Many businesses are directing their marketing departments to find ways to attract and retain customers by engaging them on Facebook and other social media networks. Their logic is that by using internet-based services to connect with their demographic, these companies can breathe new life into their brand, product or service. Enter Vitrue (not Virtue), an…
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Social Media Savvy Companies and Their Employees
NetProspex, a Mass.-based company that manages a B2B focused sales and marketing database platform, has released its Fall 2010 Social Business Report, which it touts as “a comprehensive look at the use of social media by business people across the U.S.” (I have some serious issues with the report, but more about that later.) This…
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Claim Your ‘Place’
After months of speculation, Facebook made it official: It’s in the location game. The company released its retort to Foursquare in August, a location-based check-in tool called Facebook Places that enables customers to see a map on their iPhone or other mobile device that includes your business (the Place) and a list of their Facebook…
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Looking for Entrepreneurial Tips in ‘The Social Network’
The Social Network opens in theaters nationwide on Friday amidst a deafening buzz about Facebook’s co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg. If people aren’t questioning the veracity of the film’s storyline, they’re speculating about it. Is it fact, fiction or just a dramatic, narrative account pumped up with a little extra Hollywood juice? Controversy erupted months in advance…
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Social Media Marketing to Baby Boomers
Facebook is not just for kids anymore, nor is LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube or the many other popular social media platforms and services. As today’s Pew Research Centerstudy entitled “Older Adults and Social Media” concludes, “Social networking use among those ages 50 and older nearly doubled over the past year.” In fact, the fastest growing demographic of…
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Get a Second Opinion Using Marginize
In Don’t Believe Everything You See on the Web,WomenEntrepreneur.com columnist Francine Schill writes that “just because a company has an awesome website doesn’t mean it’s legitimate.” Francine is absolutely right. Let’s face it, tossing up a sophisticated looking site these days is as easy as dressing up as your favorite character from Mad Men this Halloween. The…
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Coming Soon: Social Media Conferences
Social media is on the fast track to becoming the core outlet for corporate communications, marketing, public relations and customer service. If your business is not involved in social media via venues including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, the good news is that it’s not too late to start. Even better news is that conferences,…
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What’s Missing From ‘Social Media Day’
Just 22 days ago, on the 8th of June, the minds over at Mashable.com decided we needed Social Media Day, a special day on the Gregorian calendar celebrating social dialogue and the tools and platforms enabling the “revolution” (Mashable’s word, not mine). And they decided that day would be today. While I’m all for raising…
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Boost Advertising with Earned Social Media
Your brand gains exposure in two ways–through advertising and earned media. Advertising is everything you pay for to promote your brand, including advertisements on TV and radio, in newspapers and through social media venues (such as Facebook). Earned media is what results from other business efforts and achievements, such as delivering innovative products, high-quality customer…
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Pitfalls of Using Social Media as an HR Tool
On the surface, one would think job applicants wouldn’t want their prospective new bosses to know how drunk they got at a party the night before the job interview. But just how could a potential employer discover such things? Easily. It’s written all over the applicant’s Facebook wall for everybody to see and comment on.…
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Small-Business Owners Cite the Benefits of Social Media Marketing
If you’re dipping your big toe into the waters of social media marketing–all the while wondering if these somewhat obscure channels will really help promote your business or brand–I’ve got some good news for you. A well-researched report entitled the “2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report,” was published this month, and it should be required…
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Stop Squandering Your Social Media Opportunities
In my view of the social media landscape, a majority of businesses that engage in social media marketing look this gift horse in the mouth and fail to fully exploit its inherent opportunities. They use social media venues like Facebook and Twitter merely as broadcast channels–billboards on the information superhighway. As a result, they attract…
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Funley’s Delicious: Take a Critical Look at Social Media Strategies
This week, the spotlight shines on Funley’s Delicious, an all-natural snack food business based in Westwood, Calif., and its owners, Ashley and Shawn Mendel, whom I met at the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, Calif. What I find most compelling about Funley’s is that its business model is perfectly tailored for social media marketing.…
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How Starbucks Builds Meaningful Customer Engagement via Social Media
Comedian Lewis Black jokes about walking out of a Starbucks and seeing another Starbucks right across the street. Yes, Starbucks has developed an incredible brand presence wherever it has chosen to set up shop–across the country, around the world, on the web, and in just about every social media venue on the internet, including Facebook,…
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Battling Bad Press in the Social Media Arena
I usually write about the positive side of social media marketing–using it to ignite a word-of-mouth wildfire that increases sales and profits. But social media also has a dark side–negative press generated by disgruntled customers or by devious competitors. This can spark a wildfire, too, and this one often makes business owners, managers and CEOs…
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Lessons From the Sandpit: How Tweetminer Got its Twitter Back On
For the past five months, Justin Vincent’s Twitter application went largely unnoticed by the social networking and microblogging site, until last week that is, when Tweetminer was randomly suspended by Twitter. Founded in October of 2009, by last week, with little to no advertising or marketing, Tweetminer had grown to include 3,000 users. Justin, a…
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Protect Yourself: Social Media and Legal Liability
Business blogging and other forms of business-related social media seem to be innocent enough, but the content you post could get you into serious legal trouble. Chicago attorney and media law expert Damon Dunn, of Funkhouser Vegosen Liebman & Dunn Ltd., cautions any company that publishes content on the internet to vet that content, particularly…
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A Community of One’s Own: Why Social CRM may make more sense than Facebook
While the herd mentality drives many entrepreneurs to stake their claims in the Facebook community, it is important to consider whether it makes sense to build your own customer community–independent of Facebook and integrated with your company’s website and customer relationship management system. Yes, Facebook represents a huge potential market and offers several free community-building…
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SMB Adoption of Social Media Has Doubled
When Dr. Alan Glazier, CEO and founder of Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care decided in January of 2009 it was time to grow his business, one of the first things he did was launch a social media marketing campaign. One year later, Glazer’s Rockville, Md., optometry office is a blogging and tweeting pro, and the…
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Upcoming Social Media Conferences
With the economy starting to show signs of improvement, businesses are shifting their focus from how do we survive to how do we grow. When the recession hit, we saw a gradual shift by marketers away from traditional marketing practices and toward online, on-demand venues that eventually fueled a significant deterioration of the traditional marketing…
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Google Buzz for Business
Google Buzz — a social networking tool that allows Gmail users to share updates, photos, videos, links and more instantaneously online and on Android phones and the iPhone–made its debut today. By the end of the weekend, Google says all 175 million or so of its Gmail account holders will have access to the new service.…
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Boosting Business With a Facebook Fan Page
Some of your business’s most valuable assets are its fans–the brand evangelists who sing the praises of your products and services–with or without you knowing about it. On Facebook, you have access to a choir of more than 350 million potential fans. Enlist a tiny percentage of the most vocal members to be your loyal…
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Conflicting Reports on Social Networking for Business
Time to muddy the waters a bit. Three new reports surfaced this week, each offering a different point of view on how business owners and executives value social networking for business. If you’re considering adding social media to your marketing mix, you may find this interesting. If you’re already sold–or feel like you were sold…
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The Twittering Class: How social media can elevate your company’s online cred
Social networking sites and services such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have followed the same path to the business world that blogs did only a couple years ago: They’re all online hangouts that evolved into sophisticated branding, lead generation and sales tools for business. And with the right approach, they are an ideal way to…
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Social Media Engagement and Your Bottom Line
The power of customer engagement is nothing new. What is new is that technologies and methodologies — including the Internet, HTML 5, social networking, and user-generated and distributed content — have expanded the reach of customer engagement and its cousin, word-of-mouth advertising, and the speed at which it spreads. With social media engagement, word of…