With social becoming more and more important in the marketing mix, we thought this chart from cmo.com and 97th Floor presents a great way to quickly review the pros and cons of the top platforms dotting the landscape. You can download the PDF at cmo.com.
It's a tool that could be useful in developing an actual strategy for social media engagement... something we find is still strangely lacking in many companies efforts. Agree? Disagree? Let us know.
For many companies, succesfully marketing to and engaging with Generations X and Y is essential to future business growth and success. Let's face it, someday all the seniors and Boomers (sadly, me included) will be gone. So it's important to stay on top of trends and research that helps us understand how the Xers and Yers will find us (and,of course, how we can find them).
A new report from Forrester Research provides some insight and statistics. The survey says that although natural search engine results and then referrals are still driving the most traffic, younger folks (not surprisingly) are increasingly using social chanels to find websites.
Here are some stats and a nice chart from an article on the report at the fabulously informative MarketingProfs website. Read the full monty here.
• Some 16% of online adults are referred to websites via social channels.
• Among Gen-Y adults, nearly 30% find websites via social networking sites, while 25% do so via
email from friends and family.
• Gen-Y adults are twice as likely to use blog posts and Twitter as referral sources:
• 14% of Gen-Y adults are referred to sites via blog posts, compared with 7% of all adults.
• 10% of Gen-Y adults are referred to sites via Twitter, compared with 5% of all adults.
I subscribe to an essential tool for marketers. It's called marketingprofs. For a nominal fee you gain access to a phenomenal information resource and other goodies. For instance, today I was able to download a marketingprofs white paper on Twitter which includes 11 case studies of businesses using the platform and the extremely useful list below... $49.95 for the complete study to non-subscribers, FREE to me. Outstanding!
In the the spirit of the holidays I'm sharing. But if you want the rest of the info, I highly recommend you sign up at marketingprofs.com. You won't regret it.
Twitter Account Management
Contact Management & Directories
• FriendOrFollow.com: This is a powerful tool for seeing 1) which of the people you follow are following you back and 2) which people are following you, but you have yet to reciprocate.• Just Tweet It: Another directory service that notifies you of new additions to people in your particular industry.
Tracking & Metrics
• TwitterCounter: This sleek tool lets you chart the number of followers over time, from last week to last month.• Omniture: This enterprise Web analytics package recently added Twitter integration, enabling clients to view brand comments over time, influencers vs. detractors, and a host of other metrics.
Monitoring & Alert Services
• Search.Twitter.com: Though there are several options for monitoring what people are saying about your brand on Twitter, this one might be the easiest. And it’s free. Use this service to set up RSS feeds related to the words you care about. (Please note: It does have limitations, such as how far back in time you can go.)• TwitBacks.com and TwitterGallery.com: Want more than the design options that Twitter provides? Use either of these services to improve the look and feel of your Twitter page. TwitBacks.com allows you to provide additional business contact information, and a photo or logo as well.
So there you have it, so have at it. And don't forget to thank marketingprofs by signing up and getting access to all the great stuff available on their site. And by the way, I'm just a big fan - they're not endorsing my admiration.
Tweet us @atomicideas
Happy holidays!
Seems just about every retailer has a "Black Friday" sale. "Black Friday" sales are definately the "hot" marketing tactic.
I was at a Tweetup last week, listening in on a conversation where a person from an internet company was explaining to another person about the supreme importance of 'SEO' - Search Engine Optimization - for companies. The real listener (not me the eavesdropper) was nodding up and down as the internet guy nodded up and down. They were both extremely agreeing with each other on the importance of SEO.
Well....yeah.
And yes, there still are companies that haven't done proper Search Engine Fundamentals, or the fancier term, 'Optimization'. Wikipedia definition: "Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines".
Translation - SEO helps people find your site.
Getting ranked high on search engines and increasing traffic to your site is a good thing.
Then what?
When the search engine fundamentals are addressed, the other, more challenging half of the equation kicks in, what we at Atomic Ideas call 'CEO' - Customer Experience Optimization. CEO is the experience a visitor has when they visit your site or your store, or calls your company.
CEO addresses how it feels to be on your site, from a visitor's perspective, how it feels to be in your store. How the layout is on your site/in your store, the writing tone on your site/clarity of signage in your store, the ease of navigation on your site/through your store.
How easy is it to engage with you at whatever buying step I'm at - whether gathering information, or ready to buy. Amazon is a terrific example of top-notch Customer Experience Optimization.
SEO focuses on dealing with the search engines. CEO focuses on taking care of conversing with your customers. That's what top-notch marketing agencies help clients excel at.
If you have good SEO, you're in the game. But you need great CEO, or you're dead in the water. Without great CEO customers click to your site - click off your site. Walk into your store - u-turn out of your store.
Customer Experience Optimization applies to both your customer's online and offline buying experience, since we search online, but we live offline.
How's your other CEO? The one every customer meets?
What do bloggers do when they get writer's block? They surf the web, they check out you-tube. Anything to get an idea to spout about. I like the good old days when something important happened or there was a burning issue that needed to be ranted about first -- then it got an article written about it. But many bloggers, myself included, feel compelled to write a blog on a regular basis -- important issue or not. Something to do with rankings in the blogosphere, people counting on it, etc.
Guest Blogger Doug Menzer, offers up some basic advice that is definitely worth considering.
When I sit with clients, prospects and colleagues, I try to spend the time both teaching and learning. In particular, when I coach many of the smart people that I am thankful to work with, on a variety of digital marketing and social media business strategies, I have a tendency to often lose them. This is most likely because of the speed that I explain things.
I have a bad habit of assuming that people know what I am talking about because I get very passionate about sharing my experiences and knowledge. Ask my wife and she will not only agree but laugh that I am stating this fact.
The critical focal point in the first sentence above, however, is learning. I have found that as I am teaching others, I can actually learn more than I am teaching in many cases. For example, (take a social assessment and strategy development for a B2B company) – I’ve consulted with some very intelligent and savvy business people in the B2B arena on social assessment projects – but I’ve learned to become a better listener. Which, ( …BTW) - allows me to be a better learner and ultimately a better teacher.
Outside of an extremely detailed assessment ( among other deliverables) – including “listening” to the social landscape of:
Brand mentions
Competitors
Customers, across several industries
Service
offerings/products
Prior to developing a strategy – the recommendation to begin improving their web sites is sometimes needed first and foremost. As my colleague Shauna Nicholson states, “It’s
like dressing up before you go out to a business event.” However, what if your client really likes their
current site? (Even if it has not been
updated since 2001) Feeling that there is nothing needed for improvement. In fact, they feel that:
How do we explain this most basic step? Putting your clothes on before you go out… a small (but very important) part of the overall strategy, without irritating or losing a client? Here are some slivers of the website technical optimization pie that can hit a cord with a President of a large B2B organization.
Let’s say that Google, Yahoo and Bing are the hosts of a major trade show in your industry. Anybody that you ever dreamed of getting in front of is your audience – and they are at this trade show, which gives you many opportunities to tell them all who you are and what you do. You go outside of your booth passing out some really great items to draw them to your booth (as well as having the opportunity for your hosts to draw traffic to your booth…) But, what happens when they get there?
Let’s look at what you are telling your
hosts first:
Page Title - Does your page title (or tradeshow banner) effectively tell Google (or your trade show host) who they should recommend visiting your booth?
(Is it relevant and descriptive to the industry you
serve?
Meta Description - Does your meta description effectively tell Yahoo what you do?
(Does it match the visible text?)
Meta Keywords – Are your keyword effective and relevant?
(Are they consistent with the
content page by page? (Each page individually optimized?))
They're Heeere! Once your users show up, is your website clear, consistent and easy to navigate? Or is it cold, gloomy and/or hard to understand? I’ve personally spent more time at trade show booths that have occupied my attention (without overwhelming me) and offered great information. The same goes for websites. So, you have a 24-7 (365 days a year) trade show going on and your okay with a dingy booth with incomplete messages and no one hanging around, eh?
Driving traffic to a site can be the easy part – in some cases, outside of the fact that we want to get relevant traffic – we want to look the part. Do we have a nice outfit on, have our hair combed, teeth brushed and flossed with a smile on ready to do some business?
I was talking to a business friend this morning about an international company that's been in business for over thirty years. We were questioning if they offered a certain service, so I googled their company name to go to their web site..
They didn't come up.
I was stunned. Google search has conditioned us to expect instant connection toward whatever we search for.
When it doesn't happen, it feels odd. So I blinked twice, added a few more search terms, and finally found them. They really should have come up in the first search.
Search engine optimization has become a de facto process in our consulting with customers. Before we get into strategizing how a company can sell more stuff, we always check out their SEO. Sometimes a client is surprised by what we find (and don't find).
Imagine a retail store without a sign on its building. Before talking about a 'marketing for sales' strategy, we'd first recommend they get a sign...
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