“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter social media marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.
This Week: Balancing Humanity with Technology, A Better Way to Evaluate Influence, Too Many Reviews Hinder Decision Making and Real-Time is a Deliberate Process.
Read More“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter social media marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.
Four Rules for Community Managers – SmartBlog shares four rules for community managers to become great community leaders, including reflect your community, champion the community, create a leadership identity and show results.
Key Takeaway: Community managers hold an immense amount of responsibility. They are the bridge between online customers and the brand. Good ones are hard to find, so invest in them and give them a solid framework to build the brand by building community.
Conversation Overload – Shea Bennett of AllTwitter predicts that the influx of tweets related to the US elections will make Twitter very overwhelming. There will be so much information coming in at such a rapid rate, it’s going to turn into a broadcast mechanism in which everyone is shouting, and listening becomes nearly impossible. Bennett does explain that even though this may be the case, it’s going to be a “joy” with multiple perspectives coming in and the ability to track reactions in real-time.
Key Takeaway: Social media is incredibly powerful, but with the good also comes the bad. The ability to maintain connections and follow content from as many connections as you can create also means managing that content in a way that’s beneficial. Use the channels to your advantage. If a platform becomes so cumbersome that you get no value out of it, it’s time to look at your current efforts and optimize them.
The Shift to Niche Communities – The Age documents the perspective of Troy Carter, the person behind Lady Gaga’s impressive social media efforts. Carter discusses his focus on the fans. He also discusses the incredible level of data that’s been generated by Lady Gaga’s private social network, littlemonsters.com. “We think the future of social media are micronetworks and communities built around specific interests," he says.
Key Takeaway: Carter’s observation that we’re moving toward micronetworks is a big one. People are looking to be more expressive now than ever online. Networks and brands that allow people to be unique and to stand out from within their own personal networks through social currency have a big opportunity.
Social Media Is Not a Replacement – The Globe and Mail asks whether or not social media replaces traditional selling, and the answer is no. Social media “has not changed the underlying nature or function of buying and selling, it has merely enhanced or enabled the way sales are executed.”
Key Takeaway: Social media isn’t destined to replace everything marketing has been to date. Instead, it’s more effectively used to enhance and to be enhanced by what a business is already doing. Social media doesn’t completely change the game, but it does change the way the game is played. Look at your business and implement social media in a way that makes you do your job better.
“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter social media marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.
Remember… We’re in a Bubble – The Ad Contrarian shares some stats that should ground all of us on the media habits we exhibit compared to the general population.
Key Takeaway: We live in a bubble. I live in a bubble. We are not always our consumer, so it’s important to reach consumers in ways that are relevant to them, not necessarily us. The majority of the population is not made up of leading edge people. Who says traditional media is dead?
How Red Bull Mastered Content – Digiday follows-up on the groundbreaking Red Bull Stratos skydive from “the edge of space,” highlighting basic principles Red Bull has followed for winning with content.
Key Takeaway: Red Bull understands that the content that it can win with starts with what consumers want and what the brand can provide. Content is often a big challenge for brands, and it’s not easy. But at the end of the day, content requires commitment, fully understood brand architecture, a solid understanding of the consumer and a willingness to take chances.
The Free Ride’s Almost Over… - Jesse Stanchak of SmartBlog asked readers if they incorporate paid advertisements into their social media efforts with 63% saying no and 26% saying yes. He goes on to explain how social media marketing has been viewed in the past as being earned and never paid for.
Key Takeaway: The free ride is over. The social landscape has changed. Marketers were lured in with free Facebook Pages and Twitter profiles that have only decreased in their value. Now, marketers need to pay to leverage platforms to their full potential. Social media will always primarily be earned, but paid will play an increasingly important role.
There was a time when every platform was ‘emerging,’ but today we have some platforms that have fully emerged. Now, they want some of those marketing dollars. There will always be emerging platforms that may be viewed as “free,” but you can be sure that as they evolve, their focus on marketing dollars will too.
Just When You Think You Know… - MediaPost’s Sarah Mohoney shares an interview with VP at MTV Insights Alison Hillhouse on Gen Y. They discuss the transition to Twitter, Generation Innovation, internal optimism and more.
Key Takeaway: The game is constantly changing. Remember when everyone said teens don’t use Twitter? Think again. In any kind of marketing, particularly in the digital space, we should always be checking our assumptions. What was true yesterday could be the opposite today.
Who Owns My Data – David Goldman writes on CNN Money that Facebook is sitting on a “data goldmine” but hasn’t figured out how to monetize it. One idea is to pay users for selling their information, keep users happy, sell a ton of data and come out looking good.
Key Takeaway: Users want their private information safe. Yet, we trust it with free online networks, and whenever those networks betray our trust, we’re upset. We are now at a turning point of figuring out what is okay to do with data and what isn’t. This article highlights one way to push the boundaries a little further than users might otherwise be okay with.
“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter social media marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.
Different Networks for Different Reasons – LinkedIn polled more than 6,000 social media users to better understand their mindsets when accessing social networks. The poll found that people express different mindsets when engaging with different social platforms depending upon what they’re doing: socializing, wasting time or professionally investing time.
Key Takeaway: It shouldn’t come as a surprise that users behave differently on different platforms, but this should be taken as an even greater sign that a brand needs to mold itself to the platform vs. asking the platform to mold itself to the brand. Any brand on any network should add more value to the value already being generated by the existing community.
It’s Not What You Say, It’s When You Say It – HubSpot published a piece stating that when you post content is just as important (maybe more important) than the content you put out there. But HubSpot takes it a step further by not just telling marketers to post at the right time but also how to determine that right time.
Key Takeaway: Social media is 24/7, and that means brands are forced to connect with people outside of business hours. Make sure you’re giving your content a chance to succeed by posting it at the right time, not anytime.
You Have Nothing Without Integration – SmartBlog asked its readers: Which do you think is more difficult: planning a social media strategy or implementing it? 65% answered implementing it, and 35% answered planning it.
Key Takeaway: Planning and implementing are essential because an idea from planning is only as good as its implementation and execution. Mistakes happen when both don’t come together.
Jesse Stanchak says it best in her commentary on the poll results in which she says, “When the left hand doesn’t talk to the right, both suffer.”
Social media marketing touches every part of an organization, and to be successful, people need to communicate with others in a way that they may not be used to. Still, it’s essential, and this poll says to me that it’s one of the hardest things someone can do. Let’s start communicating.
Still Not Convinced? – A study by Appirio found, among other things, that 13% of respondents consider their businesses “anti-social” and have no plans or interest to invest in social media.
Key Takeaway: Either the respondents with no interest are the smartest business leaders out there or missing the boat big time. I find it hard to believe that any business should completely steer away from social media.
Facebook for Commerce – Mitch Joel weighs in on Facebook’s advertising merits and pitfalls, while digging into the potential of the newly relaunched Facebook Gifts. He weighs in on the potential to create an engaging experience that builds a direct relationship between Facebook and its users by merging the digital world with a physical payoff (the gift).
Key Takeaway: Facebook hasn’t cracked the code just yet, but as Mitch points out, it has the tools and the resources to compete, even to the level of Amazon, from an e-commerce perspective. Yes, Facebook’s had its issues, but it also has an infrastructure unlike any other.
“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter social media marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.
Too Much Sharing? – On Friday, August 24 a tragic shooting took place at the Empire State Building, and the web blew up with onlookers tweeting and posting graphic photos via Instagram of the incident. Steve Huff of BetaBeat shares his thoughts on Instagram living in two worlds: the always positive, pleasant world view and the real-time, hard-hitting news world.
Key Takeaway: The pictures shared are shocking, and it’s difficult to say whether or not they should be shared online. On one side, it’s valuable to be able to share on-the-ground real-world events, but it’s also an issue when this content is mixed in with photos of weekends with friends and happy memories. It’s jarring. We’re still growing up as a society that’s constantly-connected, and boundaries will be set over time, not quickly. In fact, it’s the ability to share both types of content that’s made the social web so powerful.
The Value of Social Data – SmartBlog shares the results of a poll that found that 40% of respondents do not expect data derived from social networks to influence business decisions in the next year. Jeremy Victor of SmartBlog shares his perspective that this is a massive oversight.
Key Takeaway: Choosing to ignore social data is a “head in the sand” kind of attitude. Social data unlocks a lot of potential for brands in the form of product innovation, customer sentiment and competitor activity. Social media data doesn’t replace other data sources. It adds to them, making all sources work harder together.
What Is Engagement? – Digiday gets the perspective of five business leaders on how they view engagement.
Key Takeaway: Engagement is an easy term to throw around. It sounds good. It ties back to the lofty views we have of social media. And it allows you to avoid more difficult specifics, but at the end of the day, engagement is a consumer interacting with a brand on some level. It’s a consumer taking action. In some environments that action is a ‘Like.’ In others, it’s a view. How you define engagement should tie back to what your KPIs are. Every marketer should know how they define engagement in each of their marketing efforts just like they define success.
Wait… Social Media IS Productive – Harvard Business Review shares the results of a recent McKinsey study on the impact of social technologies that found that social media can actually increase productivity of workers.
Key Takeaway: Social media is often touted as a great way to connect with customers, but it can’t be overlooked internally for communication and collaboration.
The Data Lifecycle – No one crunches data quite like Chris Penn, and this article provides a great high-level overview of a four-step data cycle.
Key Takeaway: You can’t take numbers at face value. Social media has a variety of metrics across multiple platforms. The real insight is found when you actually analyze the data and turn it into a course of action to optimize your content, your campaign your strategic roadmap or even something outside of your social media plan like product development.
“Things I’ve Learned from Lately” is a regular compilation of articles that have made me a smarter social media marketer. Hopefully, they’ll help you, too.
Engagement as a Metric – John Koetsier writes in VentureBeat that there’s one metric that takes all social KPIs (fan growth, fan interactions, etc.) into account—engagement. Engagement allows you to see that your post or tweet did something in terms of changing behavior by taking an action.
Key Takeaway: Engagement is one interpretation of social KPIs. The issue is that engagement differs across platforms, and some platforms deliver better “engagement” than others that are better equipped to deliver other measures of success. There isn’t ‘one metric to rule them all.’ Metrics should be tied to business objectives, so I take issue with the article in that respect. Although, it brings up some excellent points worth considering as a business evaluates its objectives.
Using YouTube to Deliver Value – Andy Sernovitz of SmartBlog uses NVIDIA as an example of a brand using YouTube to effectively launch new products by making content easy to share, keeping it simple and preparing/planning early on.
Key Takeaway: Video content can be challenging for marketers, but if you keep your audience in mind, you can deliver the right video in a way that matters to them. A video doesn’t have to be viral to be successful. If it delivers information that’s both useful and relevant to the audience, it will do its job.
One of my favorite examples of this is Lowes. As a new homeowner, I’m constantly turning to their YouTube channel for tutorials on how to get a job done. They didn’t set out to create viral videos. They set out to deliver value to their audience by being a trusted resource for home improvement.
Experience Trumps All – Geoff Livingston cuts through the clutter and buzzwords that often fill our work every day to make the point that no matter what you do or what you communicate, the experience with the product will make or break your other efforts.
Key Takeaway: A brand isn’t shaped by what it says it is. It’s shaped by a combination of how it communicates, how customers discuss them and the brand’s actions. Start with getting what you’re selling right. Then decide how you’re going to sell it.
Social Network Users Aren’t Satisfied – CNET discusses about a new report from ForeSee evaluating user satisfaction of top social media platforms, including Google+, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and others. Google+ users are most satisfied overall, while Facebook users are least satisfied. But one of the shocking revelations is that social media companies are consistently among the lowest-rated companies beating only airlines, television services and newspapers.
Key Takeaway: Facebook users are fed up and not happy with what they’re getting. Everything from privacy concerns to ads are making users question what they get from Facebook. Still, it’s the network you love to hate… or hate to love. People keep on coming back. They’ve invested a lot of time and capital into developing their networks. Only time will tell if that investment is worth it, and platforms like Google+ are hoping they decide it isn’t.
Worthless Facebook Fans – Kelly Rynard discusses a statement made at the AllFacebook Conference that suggested brands asking their fans to unlike their Pages. Some brands have grown fan bases only there for the prize or the giveaway, not people truly interested in the brand. Sometimes it’s good to ‘cut the fat.’
Key Takeway:. Have you been going after the number or the people? The number might look good, but if it doesn’t represent the right people, it’s worthless.