Sometimes I read the “rules” being written about social media marketing and think, “God bless this person for trying, but he must have never had a real job in his life.” And then these opinions get repeated and re-tweeted until these mindless jingles become part of the social media mantra. It’s time to bust the myth-makers, folks.

Take a good look at your corporate culture and consider if you really are an active participant in the social media channel and all the others which today’s cross-channel consumers thrive in. PR Research Social media marketing customer relationships public relations social media Vosu

'A white paper from Vocus identified 10 key blogging, content and social media metrics. Content marketing Social media marketing blogging metrics content metrics social media metrics We summarized them and looked at five metrics in-depth. We also added several tips to improve them.

There is a fundamental reality of the social web that is slowly killing your marketing strategy, whether you know it or not: The Physics of Social Media. Day by day, every single company in the world is realizing that it must join this social media battle for consumer mindshare. Now, don’t freak out. Is that true? flood. Tweet.

As marketers, content creators, and experts gathered in Las Vegas this week at the New Media Expo , it was an opportunity for all to take the pulse of the industry. Marketing best practices dan gorgone nmx social media best practicesBy Dan Gorgone, {grow} Community Member. 1) To get something, give something. Something good. For free.

ROI (Return on Investment) seems to be THE social media marketing topic right now -- How do we make money on this darn stuff? Social Media ROI measures - Influence and Mention" "Social Media ROI: The Currency is Content.". No profit = no company, no jobs, and no social media marketing. social media, perhaps?

Social media, inbound marketing, mobile marketing, and globalization all are becoming more prevalent in the B2B marketing mix. How B2B Marketers Are Scoring Big with Social Media. Marketing in Social Media: What Works for European Marketers. How B2B Marketers Are Scoring Big with Social Media. How Social Is B2B? LinkedIn?

He recently commented that he could relate to the research on the explosive growth of social media in small businesses because he was witnessing it first hand. Our social media growth has paralleled the rapid financial growth of our company. One of the overused phrases in social media marketing is “joining the conversation.&#

'Every other week I like to remind you that you’re being a social media wuss. And, by wuss, I mean you’re being too much of a social media “nice guy.” And if you’re speaking to yourself alone in your social media room, you’re doing something wrong. Become a social media composer?

Before social media people went mainly to search engines to research and to find products and services. Today in times of social media the products and services find them through discussions, content sharing and recommendations from friends and followers. Start a social media presence. Complete your profile there.

During a recent debate on {grow} about social media measurement he chimed in with such a smart counter-point that I wanted to provide it as a feature for the entire {grow} community … Guest post by {grow} community member Matt Ridings. Social media measurement. This is a seemingly simple issue, with a complex point.

Social media definitely pays off, but you’ve got to focus on the approach not the tools. Social Media has hit the mainstream these days but the big concern on every product marketer’s mind has been how to justify the ROI?  If you’re concerned about social media cost justification, you’re not along.  Improved Customer Support.

Until I actively engaged in social media, you could not anticipate the type of return I would see. The real results from my social media involvement have nothing to do with numbers. I’m awed by this democratizing power of social media. Social media is social. Filed under: In Practice , Social Media.

Having a content strategy is vital to the success of any social media strategy. This really part of your overall social media and digital strategy, but it does make sense to consider location when creating your content strategy. Content Marketing News & Notes Social Media Social Networks StrategyWhat are they talking about?

This is probably a relevant topic for anyone who is struggling with the enormous time suck that is social media. Does everybody need a social media strategy? careers facebook Video blogs careers in social media facebook for business Facebook marketing facebook strategy jon loomer Is it time for you to specialize?

Guest writer Jamie Lee Wallace contributes this post on our series of social media marketing measurement. To see how being a good bartender is a lot like being a good social media marketer, you have to understand the difference between Impact and ROI. This is the final part of a series examining social media marketing measurement.

That’s really the amazing opportunity with social media. branding Communty-building customer acquisition Social Media best practices home depot and social media social media and customer acquisition social media and customer service social media and roi social media and salesI love Home Depot.

If we talk about Social Media ROI in this post, we talk about the return on investment of [.]. Marketing ROI Social business Social CRM Social media marketing Web analytics Jim Lenskold Jim Sterne marketing ROI Olivier Blanchard return on marketing investment ROMI social media measurement social media metrics social media ROI

Join the growtoonists each Friday for a humorous take on marketing, social media, and current business events. growtoons} kacy maxwell social media cartoon social media humorKacy   Maxwell  is a guy who loves his work, family and a good challenge. See more of his cartoons at   EverythingIsMedia.com.

'Customer-centric social media requires a personal approach. Cross-channel Social media marketing Touchpoint marketing brand personality customer-centricity Edelman trust barometer people-centricity It’s about people connecting with people. However, many businesses still look at the tools and channels first.

Click here if you can’t see this interview about  social media influence. don’t often put myself in front of the camera, so it helped a lot when Mike Stelzner of Social Media Examiner made me do it! He did a great job with this interview, which originally appeared this week on his excellent site. Tweet.

This sort of general point-of-view is actually dangerous for anyone who actually wants to be successful using social media as a marketing platform. Social media is people and not a pit full of vipers. As a result, social media is oppressively noisy. The Internet is a disrupting medium — social media doubly so.

I’ve worked in social media since 2005, and I knew I needed a tightly controlled message and presence online.   After several months, I consulted with friends, family and people in the social media community, and I decided I needed to go “underground.” I locked down, and in several cases deleted, my social media presence.

From the old-media viewpoint, this just doesn’t seem right. In response, Lail gives the new-media comeback: “I don’t view comments as ‘letters to the editor.’ In the new-media world, editing is not what it used to be. Earlier this month, after writing his final column for Inc. look back on those Inc.

The biggest mistake that I see on a daily basis when it comes to some of the best social media engagement strategies is that folks tend to be afraid to spend any of the good will — the equity — that’s built up, over time. You can’t save social media equity, you can only build it and spend it.

Participants identified a number of specific opportunities, however what was most apparent throughout the discussion is that social media is moving quickly. Social Media #B2Bchat B2B Focus Foursquare Google LinkedIn Livestream pinterest Slideshare social media storify triberr Tumblr twitter Youtube

This post is coming into existence purely based on my own personal feelings and positions regarding social media. This is not a treatise on the nature of the social media space. It’s not a predictor of the future of social media. It’s not a rant for or against social media. What it is is actually quite simple.

I loved Amber Naslund’s recent post about the always-on, world of digital media. As she correctly said, The New World of Work Includes Social Media. Actually, three things: You are not a workaholic/addictive personality using social media as an excuse to avoid your family. But here’s the problem. Prepare martinis.

'In conjunction with the launch of its new Social Inbox tool, Hubspot released an infographic on how companies have lost their way in terms of using social media for marketing and promotion, and also suggest what it might mean to get back on course.

So, when someone steals your image, your graphic, or your photo, will they associate it with you even if it is disassociated with your sites, blogs, or social media ?  The Geographic could do amazing things with Pinterest if they weren’t so threatened by it, but old media dies hard. So, what’re you going to do about it?

No, it won’t cure snakebite or remove warts …although some social media enthusiasts may have left that impression.  B2B Web Strategy Social Media… as a smart marketer, you can [.].

Content marketing Social media marketing Beth Harte content marketing case MarketingSherpa Serengeti Communications social media marketing strategy tool social media strategy app VocusContent is a social object. By that I mean it is defined by what people want and how they interact, not the other way around.

Community marketing Social media marketing Facebook online communities sharing social media social media networks social networksCompanies should understand that social networks may come and go, but people won't stop being social online.

Prognosticators at the beginning of this century predicted that the communications revolution and increasing use of digital media would slowly diminish participation in face-to-face events such as trade shows and conferences. The difficult world economy was to have hastened this decline. In fact, the opposite seems to be true.

So here are the trends he identified with a few of my thoughts on the impact this might have on social media marketing. futurist marketing strategy digital generation don tapscott future of social media impact of digital generationI saw Don Tapscott speak at SXSW and was inspired to read his excellent book  Grown Up Digital.  Through

by Justin Brackett Related Stories The Business Case for Buying Facebook Likes A cautionary tale: Putting your business in the hands of Facebook Your 2013 Social Media Strategy: Grow a Pair. Augmented Reality Content Marketing facebook futurist Google techologies 2013 projections instagram social media futureFacebook Financial Fatigue.

Instead of preaching fear and pontificating about social media as the Second Coming of B2B Marketing, let’s look at this another way. Social media is growing fast, but it’s no longer new. really like Eric Qualman’s inventive Social Media Revolution videos — I even show them in my classes some times.

Social media marketing has gone well beyond the hype stage and is now mainstream business practice. Still, questions remain: how do I use social media most effectively across the enterprise? Which social media monitoring tools should I use? What social media developments and trends should I be watching? What to do?

Be sure you don’t become so tethered to your Facebook page that you lose sight of the bigger picture of social media–your message, rather than your medium. Internet Marketing Public Relations Social Media Marketing bodhidharma Facebook friendster Initial public offering linkedin MySpace utterz vbulletin

Lisa is the marketing manager of her husband’s medical practice (and a graduate of my social media marketing class) and she’s developed one of the most interesting and successful social media marketing programs I have seen – under some tough circumstances. Unless you possess the business savvy of Lisa Reath. Blogging.

by Jesse Noyes | Tweet this There’s a lot of speculation about whether social media’s explosive growth threatens email marketing. Does Social Media Deliver More Traffic Than Email? Email marketing b2b marketing Eloqua email Email Marketing marketing automation Social Media social media marketing social referrals

by Joe Chernov | Tweet this You may have noticed that over the past month or so, several influential social media professionals changed their profile pictures to funky avatars of themselves.  If you want to grab your free copy of the Social Media ProBook, you can download the Web version here or the print version here. Right now.

The media landscape has evolved tremendously over the last quarter century. Consumers have evolved even faster with the advent of high-speed Internet-enabled mobile devices and social media. It was easy for media agencies to find your target, and almost as simple to measure the response. Army Chief of Staff. Sound daunting?

In social media we tend to swing very left in our approach where it sounds nice to say “Everyone has a voice and should be heard” but then reality comes crashing down, and we come to the realization that most voices, if we give ourselves enough time and patience to filter them, are shrill, ego-centric and quite useless. So do you.

McKinsey recently learned a difficult lesson about what happens when the world takes your thought leadership marketing seriously—and when you lack the ability to respond in the moment through social media. Despite its prowess in thought leadership—McKinsey is simply the best—the firm is falling dangerously behind in social media.

Last week I downloaded and read the new research report, “Social Media Use in the Industrial Sector” published by IHS GlobalSpec. Social Media Marketing Social Networking Google+ Industrial Marketing Lead generation LinkedIn videos YouTubeSome of the findings are consistent with their reports [.]. This is only a content summary.

'The current catch-all these days for what I do is social media; unfortunately, when what you do is described as social media, people tend to think Facebook , Twitter , Pinterest , and maybe Google+. Blogger outreach is earned media not paid, right? Blogger outreach and engagement is much more than social media.

If your audience lives on Twitter, growing your follower-base will produce broader distribution of brand and communications, richer conversations, and incremental earned media. Twitter users are more likely to engage with the service through a mobile device than are users of other social media platforms. Is Twitter right. Female: 59%.

Social media marketing conversationalists creators Forrester joiners lurkers social graph social media spectatorsAccording to Forrester’s Social Technographics Ladder only about 24% of people using social are “Creators”. These are the people who blog, publish content such as video or audio they’ve created.

After my article this week on the tragic riots in India , purportedly fueled my social media and hate sites, my friend Prasant Naidu offered to write a post with a view from inside the country. The Government of India has blamed social media for spreading hate speech and inciting the riots. By {grow} Community Member Prasant Naidu.

Are you thinking about getting started in social media personally? I talk about building social media into your daily routine in the same way you find the time for email and lunch. And the road to success in social media comes from small amounts of time applied each and every day. Social MediaStep 2: Commit . Have fun!

Forrester has observed that advertising/PR agencies are battling each other for dominance in the digital media space. Kirk argued that if you keep paid, owned and earned (POE) media in their current silos, you will fail. To learn more about Paid Owned and Earned Media – check out this Webinar with Forrester’s Sean Corcoran.

As we continue to define and quantify the value of social media marketing, small business owners are slowly joining the party. In truth, the number of small business owners who understand, use, and capitalize on social media marketing is minuscule. It’s important to remember that social media marketing is still new. Marketing.

have been consulting some bouncing social media babies recently and they’re doing it right. Do your best to not allow your burgeoning social media empire to go on autopilot. 'You know how much I am obsessed with “ long-tail blogger outreach ,” right? am a man possessed! That People don’t like being collected.

Many B2Bs still think of social media as merely an image/awareness-building vehicle.  But an increasing number are starting to aim at least part of their social-media effort straight at lead generation, as we noted in this earlier post …and you can, too. B2B Web Strategy Lead generation Social Media

Right off the bat let me say that this post is not about email marketing versus social media. However, I’ve had conversations with manufacturers and industrial companies where I am asked if email marketing is still relevant and effective since all the talk these days is about social media.

It’s no secret that social media is an important channel of digital marketing. For B2B marketers, there are endless opportunities for leveraging social media platforms and strategies. Twitter in particular proved to be the strongest performing platform for generating leads through social media. Social Media Bouncer.”

As buzzwords go, “crowdsourcing” may not be as big as ”social-media” or “mobile apps” but new research show it is one of the most rapidly-expanding trends in our field. B2B and social media crowdsourcing david bratvoldGuest post by David Bratvold. ” “How fast is it changing?”

When I gave a presentation on Social Media and Revenue at Eloqua Experience recently, I was blown away by the great reaction to it. wanted to dig in a bit into where social media is in most of today’s businesses. In a lot of ways, social media today is like “digital” a decade ago. Revenue Performance Management Social media

Since the upswing of social media we even got a lot more of them and ‘experts’ started giving new meanings to existing acronyms. Blog Connected marketing Social media marketing customer-centric ROI social media Unique Selling Point Unique Selling Proposition unique social proposition USPIt’s really confusing and [.].

Why does every social media strategy seemingly start with a company cajoling people to come “like” their Facebook page? I’ve been honored to be selected to help judge a global company’s internal social media competition. And it would get kind of boring if my friend never came to my house. Tweet.

An obvious win for companies looking to jump into Social Media is in the Customer Support area. As more and more customers voice their opinions online, the choice is not if you should be responding using Social Media, but when are you going to start responding! Tags: social media Customer Support

As introduced to us by Business Insider , Buddy Media’s Social Enterprise Software is a suite of products is “designed to help brands build and maintain relationships with consumers to accelerate their business.” Start sharing content and use social media as another channel to amplify it. Well, it’s complicated.

That’s a good thing for the rest of us because social media marketing, like PR, has always been challenged by the lack of reliable success metrics. Measure What Matters  isn’t about social media as much as it is about the importance of relationships and the need to understand how they equate to success. Volume 2.

It is not easy to tell a story of challenges and failures, but it has made me who I am today and led to what I consider the three components of social media success: Mindful Content + Passionate Engagement + Heartfelt Collaboration. 'By Dr. Amit Nagpal, {grow} Community Member. I have decided to accept his challenge and tell my story today.

Of the Americans surveyed who currently use a social media platform, only 18 percent currently have a profile on Instagram. Of ALL those social media users surveyed, 48% declared they are using Instagram more often.  This is a MUST HAVE and affordable resource for any agency, marketing department or social media professional.

The other day I was asked “Is social media the company newsletter?” Yes, I do think social media can take the place of most of the functions of the company newsletter.  Is social media the new “company newsletter”? B2B Internet Marketing B2B Marketing B2B Social Media Facebook Media Twitter

The other day I was asked “Is social media the company newsletter?” Yes, I do think social media can take the place of most of the functions of the company newsletter.  Is social media the new “company newsletter”? B2B Internet Marketing B2B Marketing B2B Social Media Facebook Media Twitter

feel the same way about Rex Hammock’s blog post last week declaring my book, the New-Media Survival Guide , to be “awesome and a must read.” It underscores my reason for featuring him in the book: if you want to understand new media, his blog posts and tweets are required reading. Introducing the New-Media Survival Guide.

by Jason Miller If you are tasked with building a social media dashboard to track your efforts, look no further than this post. That means cutting out the everyday metrics that litter and cloud up the social media manager’s real success story. B2B Marketing Social MediaReferring Traffic from Social. Responds to your event.

Well here you will see the search growth rates of the 9 major social networks that I think are most important to businesses and our social media marketing efforts. All this data is thanks to some amazing research by Ignite Social Media  which I found thanks to  Justin Flitter  (@ JustinFlitter ). Social MediaMaybe. Dead Serious.

Social Media Facebook Online Communities Social network TwitterI take a perverse pleasure in reading my Twitter DMs, 99% of which are of the automated variety, looking for the heartfelt sentiment that goes out to me and thousands of other close personal friends every day from people I’ve started following. Technology is wonderful isn’t it?

Monitor social media discussions of your company or product in real time? Promote events through social media? Discover how to accomplish all of the tasks above and more using some of the coolest free and modestly priced social media and web tools released in the past year or so. Cool Social Media Tools. Flowtown. Klout.

Social Media best practices Video blogs guerrilla marketing nathan dubeCan’t see the video above? Click here. If you have attended one of my classes or speeches, you might have heard me tell the story about Nathan Dube and his “Destroy Your Printer Contest.” I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did!

By outlining changes in the global zeitgeist, Ann will explore what’s driving them and detail how they’re beginning to play out both in society and in social media. summary of tweets: Conferences & Events 2012 trends Ann Mack JWT social media Social Media Week

This time, it’s the Social Media Strategies Summit (#SMSsummit) in New York City where hundreds of social-minded digital marketers are looking to learn top tips and tricks for how to be more effective with social media marketing. And many wonder why their social media aren’t generating ROI. Social Media Listen first.

To see results using social media, you don’t need a social media strategy. To prove it, let’s take an example, taken from a Rutgers University Mini-MBA on Social Media Marketing. Rutgers is one of the first universities in the country to offer an MBA in Social Media Marketing. You need a business strategy.

Why am I using a picture of a large mouth bass on a blog post about social media and business? business relationships customer acquisition competitive advantage marketing strategy social media business relationshipsSeems a little fishy doesn’t it? Well Well I didn’t use this for the halibut.  Nerves were beyond frayed. 

Tweet Do you think social media is better for researching prospects than for attaining face-to-face meetings where deals are won and contracts are signed? In this high-tech world, social media has revealed itself to be a lead generation goldmine. Skotidas – B2B social media lead generation agency used by IntraLinks. Industry.

In a previous post we looked at the top 25 industries using social media , as presented in the NetProspex Fall 2010 Social Business Report.  In that report, there is also a section on social media usage by job function. Percentages range anywhere from 25-40% for social media usage. Wendy Boyce. The proof is in the numbers. 

In one of our recent posts, we identified email and social media as two of the three things that B2Bs need to get right for successful online marketing (the third being search engine optimization, or SEO).  B2B Web Strategy Social Media email

photo credit: me Yesterday I covered the five worst B2B social media screw-ups , so now let’s look at the BEST. recent report showed just 14% of the largest industrial companies have a social media strategy, let alone a good one. Proving to be a real B2B social media innovator as they launch products only on digital channels.

Amid all of the hype, conferences, and rapid adoption of social media marketing by organizations from sole proprietors to the Fortune 100, there remains an undercurrent of skepticism. This surfaces in posts like Social Media Skepticism , 5 reasons why social media skeptics maybe right and Business social networking: where’s the ROI?

B2B social media; is it a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes? The social media Emperor is getting dressed, but is still in his underpants. B2B social media has reached the tipping point and in doing so it’s following the classic technology evolution curve. Social media is being used then, but how? There was a lot of talk. 

Recent research from MarketingProfs shows that 84% of B2B companies use social media marketing in some form, and the figure is likely higher for B2C firms. In fact, another recent study from HubSpot reveals that 63% of B2B companies aren’t generating leads from social media at all. Image credit: The Far Side. Reach out. Interact.

Seems this brutal maxim applies to social media too; big brands crush smaller upstarts in a blizzard of social gimmicks and PR. Even social media’s egalitarian roots can’t vaccinate it against the big brand onslaught.  I examined their social media activities searching for the key drivers of their success.  Absolutely.

With the amount of helpful content about social media marketing growing faster than Facebook’s user base or Lindsay Lohan’s court appearances, it’s tough to keep up. Social Media Marketing Tips, Tactics and Guides. What is Social Media Optimization and Why Should I Care? Social media is cheap or free.

This week I attended Useful Social Media ‘s Corporate Social Media Summit in New York city where hundreds of practitioners gathered to hear case studies from some of the best in the business. The big takeaways for me: Add real value and have fun with your social media efforts. Tie social media to business objectives.

That’s far from typical–very few companies have more traffic to any of their social media venues than to their old-fashioned website. Here are 26 social media secrets Skittles knows: 1 out of every 5 minutes people spend online are spent on social networks in 2012; up from 1 out of every 20 minutes in 2007. of all U.S.

Social media is arguably overhyped as a marketing trend: it gets well under 10% of marketing budgets (different surveys have figures from 3% to 8%) and results are questionable (it was rated the least effective content marketing tactic in a recent MarketingProfs study ). But social is clearly growing fast and has great potential.

When it comes to writing a social media policy , who should decide what goes into it? Social media?! escalating support issues reported through social media, based on specific subject matter and severity). But social media use in the enterprise can and must be guided and coordinated to help avoid social media disasters.

For this week we look at how admissions offices and potential students utilize social media for giving/getting information. Higher ed Infographics infographic infographic of the week social mediaLook at this great infographic via @stewartfoss at higheredexperts.com. By: Stewart Foss.

After my last post on the Media Budget Ratio I got a question out on the Marketing 2.0 community by Scott Zosel about how much should you allocate for Social Media in your budget? The cost of the technology used for social media is rather low. So unlike traditional media – Print, TV and Radio - which can cost big money.

Many email marketers I speak to are wary of creating a social media presence on Twitter and Facebook since it’s a big step into the unknown. Here I hope to show, if you haven’t taken the plunge already, how social media marketing on two of the main social channels shares much in common with email [.].

Takeaway Are you engaged in social media enough to recognize spam when you see it? As Jay Baer ( @jaybaer ) says, “if you don’t love social media, you probably suck at social media.” ” Social media today requires a commitment of time and energy not only to social media activity, but to understanding it.

really believe it’s bad advice to recommend that companies fire their social media consultants, experts and agencies only to bring everything internal. While “everyone” is on Facebook , social media is no longer a land of tinkerers, it’s a land of consumers. Photo credit: edrabbit. ” Happens every time.

How can you make sure your company’s social media policy doesn’t run afoul of employment law? What under-utilized site has been called a “social media powerhouse,” and which highly popular social bookmarking site is frequently overlooked by marketers? How can you measure (or can you measure) social media ROI ?

From WhiteFireSEO, here's an infographic that tries to quantify the sheer volume of content from social media like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. View Original Article

Jeff works as a wealth adviser for a large national company but has been hamstrung in his attempts to use social media. Still, I think they are missing a bigger opportunity by not exploring how social media can be used on a very personal and human level. I met my new friend Jeff Reed through a LinkedIn group. “No.&#.

It’s easy for technology start-ups and web service companies to understand the importance of communicating with customers through channels such as social media and mobile technology. How Social Media and Mobile Technology Impact the Customer Experience Infographic: Infographic by: Avaya. They have it ingrained in their DNA.