What are we going to do with all the social media ads?
May 10th
As I meet with many social media start-up hopefuls, I find that nearly every company is pinning its monetization hopes on one thing — advertising. I began to wonder … where is all this advertising going to go? Where will come from? And how are we going to know if it is doing any good? Will it be diluted into oblivion? Luckily, I found somebody with an answer …
Guest post by {grow} community member Irv Shapiro
Social media providers are under intense pressure to generate additional revenue through advertising. The upcoming Facebook IPO is just the tip of the iceberg. The social media giant also announced it will soon display ads on mobile apps, thus contributing to the race to capture additional advertising revenue in the social space.
Twitter’s “enhanced profile pages” — and features on other social networking sites — are also clearly intended to drive ad-based revenues and bolster the bottom lines of social media providers. Everywhere you look it seems, we are going to be dealing with more and more advertising!
Obviously this presents new multichannel opportunities for businesses and marketers. But with all of these new forms of social media advertising targeting consumers, how can businesses ensure their ads are actually generating a return on their advertising expenditures?
The Problem with Social Ad Spend
The connection between social media ad spend and social channel ROI has been murky. Even those fully committed to social advertising have not always demanded the kind of rigorous ROI analyses that are typically applied to other marketing investments. In many cases, businesses have simply lumped social ad returns into the generic category of “improved brand awareness.”
Yet in today’s marketing environment, there is no excuse not to have total visibility about the returns we are receiving for our social ad dollars. Luckily, the technology is keeping pace.
A new generation of analytics
The gap between social channel investments and clear ROI is driving the implementation of a new generation of online and offline analytics, many of which utilize “call tracking” solutions.
Call tracking enables marketers to identify the social ads and campaigns that are producing the best results for the business, tracking the impact of advertising across multiple channels and delivery platforms. By assigning unique local numbers to each social media ad, the organization achieves a new level of granularity, capturing actionable insights that can be used to justify social channel spend and create a more optimized social marketing strategy.
For example, New York City’s Marquis Dental Spa (client) was struggling to determine the actual ROI of specific social channel ads and campaigns. To gain a more accurate picture of the returns they were receiving for the social investments, the company assigned more than 250 unique local numbers to ads delivered through paid search, Facebook, LinkedIn and other channels.
The campaign’s use of unique local numbers enabled the company to connect leads to specific social ads, thus generating solid ROI for every dollar invested in social media and other channels. As a result, the company optimized its advertising strategy and reduced its cost-per-new-patient metric by 50 percent. They plowed this savings back into ad spending on Facebook, their highest performing lead source during the campaign.
The opportunity for highly targeted ads has never been greater, and as more channels emerge, it is likely that the costs will be very competitive compared to other alternatives. But like all good marketing efforts, we will need to use these new analytic tools to optimize social channel investments.
Irv Shapiro is the CEO and CTO of Ifbyphone and is responsible for overall business strategy and corporate leadership.
Are You Obsessed with the Social Small Stuff?
May 9th
By Stanford Smith, Contributing {grow} Columnist
I get asked a lot of questions about blogging and social media. These questions range from the profound; “Does social media really matter?” to the absurd “How many words should I use in every blog post sentence?”
Ninety-nine percent of the time, I enthusiastically answer these questions. I remember when I started blogging and content marketing and how worried I was about making a mistake. Answering questions is my way of saving people unnecessary frustration.
Lately, however, I have noticed a troubling theme in the questions.
More and more people are sweating the small stuff.
Usually thoughtful and cool-headed people are investing hours pondering…
- How many times a month should I post?
- Should I answer every comment?
- How many words are in a successful post?
- How long should a headline be?
- How many keywords should be included in the first paragraph?
These questions are the subject of tweetchats and even have enough gravitas to carry a full 60 minute webinar.
This is absurd.
Take a step back and you can see the hazy influence of the “get rich quick” mentality. Without knowing it, these well-meaning folks are looking for a “silver bullet” that will instantly solve their problems. Others are hoping that the right combination of post frequency, length, and headline type will instantly turn them into content rockstars.
These questions, while interesting, are ultimately meaningless unless you’ve tackled the “big stuff”
The Big Stuff: The Real Questions You Should Be Asking
The Big Stuff are foundational questions that are difficult to answer in a five-minute conversation These questions always focus on values, culture, objectives, and accountability. They make people and organizations uncomfortable and may lead to a few arguments.
But the Big Stuff always underpins success. Answering the big questions protects you and your organization against wasted time, effort, and burnout.
Unlike the “small stuff” the big questions defy easy, quantifiable, silver bullets. Instead, you need to arm yourself with time, focus, and a healthy respect for trial and error.
Here are several of the big social media questions that organizations should start with:
How can our customers benefit from a two-way dialogue with our business?
Not all customers want a relationship! Quarter-inch screw customers just want a cheap and reliable fastener. They don’t care about your Facebook page or if you are active on Twitter. On the other hand, the jogging stroller manufacturer absolutely needs to talk with moms and dads.
What can we share that is relevant, interesting, and valuable?
Start with your content. Look at the brochures, briefs, white papers, and internal documentation that are floating around your organization. Once you’ve gathered everything, ask yourself: “Do you have enough to keep a customer interested for a year?” If you do, then release this content on a regular schedule and make sure you maintain quality. If not, create a plan to start building your library of content.
You can’t answer the “post frequency” question until you know what you have to publish.
Do we have the right process for mining content from our organization?
Creating content is a discipline and skill that must be cultivated and nurtured. Content producers are natural hunter-gatherers that see the world as “another blog post.” Social organizations build clear processes for encouraging grassroots content creation and inspiration.
Are these processes in place in your organization?
Have we set up the right incentives to empower and reward employees for their social contribution?
Simply asking employees to write blog posts is the wrong way to build social competency in your organization. You’ll get sporadic “compliance” at best. It doesn’t matter if you are a Fortune 500 company or a two-person local business, you need to offer an incentive for someone to change their behavior and invest 100%.
Social Media is inherently creative and spontaneous and can’t be packaged in an 8-hour work day. Blog post ideas sprout at 9PM while picking up apple Juice at Walgreens. A Pinterest picture happens at an impromptu company event. Employees forced to “be social” won’t catch and capitalize on these moments.
What does success look like?
I’ll make it easy for you. Successful social media creates and rewards delighted customers. That’s all. You can set-up your analytic tools to churn out the metrics as proof but readers, Likes, and retweets should ultimately lead to more customers.
Everyone who is interested in finding and delighting customers should participate in answering these “big questions”. That means everyone from the front-desk, the delivery person, the marketing team, customer service, and the CEO.
Wait – Aren’t Those “Small Stuff Questions Important?
Listen...
Answering the Big Stuff, those important questions we discussed, will make the other questions irrelevant. Once you thought about your content, the value you can deliver, and your customer’s needs all you need to do is publish. It doesn’t really matter how much or how often. Just publish valuable information your customers can use. They will appreciate and compensate you. Simple.
Make sense?
Talk to me.
Contributing Columnist Stanford Smith obsesses about how to get passionate people’s blogs noticed and promoted at Pushing Social, except when he’s chasing large mouth bass!
Everything you wanted to know about Twitter Chats
May 8th
I’ve been very active on Twitter for about four years now and I would say the aspect that has changed the most in that time is the explosive popularity of Twitter Chats. Twitter Chats have become an important networking and sales tool. In fact, you can even make money off of Twitter chats. So let’s take a deep dive into this important social media trend.
The idea behind a Twitter Chat is very simple. A group of people with a common interest gather together at a designated time to share ideas and discussion. The chat is united by a “hashtag” so that all can follow along. For example, #CMChat gathers people who are in the country music business and #CookingChat brings together cooking enthusiasts. There are chats for every imaginable interest and the list is growing all the time.
There are several powerful benefits of chats:
- Chats are a great place to learn and exchange ideas with like-minded individuals from around the world.
- It is an excellent place to meet interesting new contacts. When you find a chat that you like, it would be a good idea to follow these individuals and perhaps even create a list of the chat members.
- Chats are a great place to gain awareness for your own brand and ideas.
- Participating in chats creates connections and content that can enhance your personal influence.
- A company, brand, or individual can establish a voice of authority by creating and leading a chat.
- Chats have become so popular, some companies are paying advertising fees to sponsor them. Yes, you can make money from a Twitter chat!
So how do you get started?
The first thing to do is find a relevant chat. The best way to keep up with this dynamic list is to google “Twitter chat schedule” and you will find a detailed list of chats by subject, day, and time. It will also list the leaders of the chat and provide a link to the most recent session.
Once you pick your chats, there are a couple ways to participate. First, follow the people who run these chats and get their updates on upcoming chats. When the chat is scheduled to happen, you can search for the designated hashtag in Twitter. The best way to follow along is to use a free service like TweetChat or TwitterFall, platforms specifically designed to enhance your Twitter chat experience.
A word of warning: On the most popular chats, the tweets may be coming at a furious rate! It can be challenging to follow when there are concurrent conversations occurring.
Participation is key for reaping the benefits of Twitter chats. Ask and answer questions, add insight, discuss. These are usually very open and friendly forums, so don’t be worried about posting a “stupid” comment or question.
Many times, there are pre-determined questions and the moderator will pose these in the form of this example: Q1 What is the best way to get value from a Twitter chat? Participants answer accordingly: A1 One idea is to participate actively and help newcomers.
Creating your own chat
Hosting your own chat can be a fun and rewarding way to create community around your ideas and subject matter. Let’s walk through the steps of creating a new Twitter Chat.
Set-up
First, I would want to secure a descriptive hashtag. At www.Twubs.com you can see if your hashtag has already been taken and secure one for your chat.
Once you have a unique name, it would be a good to reserve a Twitter handle for the chat.
To promote the chat, you may want to create a homebase on Facebook, LinkedIn group, or blog where you can make announcements and post completed conversations.
You’ll also need to pick a time and regular date for the chat. Every Monday? The second Tuesday of the month? Find a date that fits your schedule because as the moderator, you are creating a long-lasting commitment to your community. Some chat communities have co-moderators, or even shared responsibility among all the members.
Planning the content
In preparation for your first chat, you’ll want to personally invite a few friends to get the momentum going. Create enough topic questions ahead of time to propel at least 30 minutes of chat. Involve your community in choosing topics and questions. Other chats are just free-flowing with no assigned agenda. It’s just a place to meet and touch base.
Many chats feature special guests who help answer questions and engage with participants. So for example, I have been a guest “speaker” on book chats, marketing chats, and leadership chats to name a few. If you are asked to be a guest on a chat, be sure to have the prepared questions ahead of time so you can get ready with a at least a few tweetable responses. It can be quite challenging to keep up with the pace of conversation with coherent 140-character responses!
Post-chat and promotion
As the moderator, you are creating some very valuable, shareable content so be sure to capture this. There are several free platforms to do this including ChirpStory and Storify. You can post this content on your Facebook or blog and then promote this content to attract new members.
Promoting a link to your homebase in industry publications, social media outlets and related forums is another way to find people who might be interested in the topic.
Another best practice is to email a transcript to your community members after the chat. This will serve as a reminder of the next chat and also keep people in the loop even if they miss the event.
During the chat, everyone participating will be tweeting with the hashtag in the tweet. Just the act of having the chat is a great way to promote the event. I’ll often pop into a chat when I see an interesting hashtag pop up. As long as you stick to a consistent schedule and provide interesting content, your attendance will pick up over time.
Just like everything else, Twitter chats have limitations. The 140 character maximum can limit the depth of a commentary and even good ideas can get lost in a big chat. Still, the serendipitous connections you make in these forums are often more important than the content of the chat.
What have I missed? How do you get value from Twitter Chats? Positives and negatives? Tips you can share?
A proud American company that never understood digital
May 7th
A long, long time ago I had to pick an online platform to store my photos. What better brand name to trust with your photos than Kodak, right? Wrong.
For a century Kodak WAS photography. The tech. The fun. The innovation.
I was saddened, but not surprised that Kodak announced yesterday that its photo-sharing site has been sold to Shutterfly as part of its Chapter 11 fire sale. What an amazing turn of events for this once proud and dominant company. How could a brand that strong lose it so fast?
The company had everything it needed to succeed. The name. The technology. The resources. And yet in a decade the global brand has been decimated.
Kodak never really “got” the digital revolution did it? When they started charging me an annual fee to store my photos, I knew the end was near for them. What a stupid move. The adjacent revenue they could have achieved from selling prints and stuff like photo mugs and calendars would have been enormous. But they needed to have the photos — and the owners of the photos — intact and engaged on their site. Instead of focusing on making it fun and great, they went for the quick bucks and lost.
Over and over, they tried to “re-invent” themselves, to no avail. Last month they exited the digital camera business. Now their patents are up for sale. When it’s all over, I don’t even know if there will be any company left.
Any way, here is the official announcement I received from Kodak:
Although I am sad to announce that our Kodak-branded service will be closing on July 2 as a result of this sale, I am very pleased to announce that we have found a strong partner in Shutterfly. They offer a market leading user experience that mirrors ours in many ways, and many of the services and products that you enjoy today on Kodak Gallery can also be found at Shutterfly.com. Their services include free, unlimited storage and 100 percent customer satisfaction guarantee. Working together, we will securely transfer your account photos to them free of charge. We are absolutely committed to making this transition as smooth and easy as possible.
For well over a decade, Kodak Gallery has operated with a mission to make it easier for people around the world to celebrate their Kodak moments through photo-sharing, photo-product creation, and more recently, innovative new mobile photo experiences. Now, it is our top priority to ensure that your images and confidential information are kept private and secure as they move from our site to Shutterfly. And of course, although Kodak Gallery is transitioning, the Kodak brand you love and trust remains.
Don’t you mean the Kodak brand I USED to trust and love?
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