Erik Qualman's Blog, page 662

Return on Influence: 5 Questions with Mark Schaefer

 

[image error]Whether you realize it or not, every tweet, comment and “Like” is being scrutinized and scored for your social influential power. Companies like Klout and Kred are developing complex algorithms that attempt to standardize social influence and evaluate your social muscle to develop strategic business insights for influencer strategies. However, social scores should be taken with a grain of salt, as these algorithms are yet to capture the full picture.  Thankfully, Mark Schaefer analyzes social scoring in his new book Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing. Mark is a globally-recognized educator, speaker, business consultant, and author. His well-known blog {grow}, has been named one of the AdAge Top 150 marketing blogs in the world. In anticipation of our Return on Influence webinar next week, we sat down with Mark for some Q and A.

 

After writing The Tao of Twitter, what made you focus specifically on influence?

In a way, my new book, Return on Influence, is an extension of the philosophy outlined in The Tao of Twitter. Tao focused on mindset, not just tools, which what people loved about it. And that mindset leads to success. So the natural extension is that power and influence that is created online in entirely new ways

 

Which industries are doing the best job of identifying and utilizing citizen influencers?

At this point, this is very much in the realm of larger companies and brands. There is a lot of experimentation going on in a wide breadth of industries — entertainment, banking, automotive, and publishing to name a few. But new innovations will begin to drive this down to a local level too, especially with mobile apps on the horizon.

 

How can marketers target influencers who are relevant to their offerings, rather than just users with large followings?

This type of work has been carried out for decades but it can be very time-consuming and expensive. We have always recognized that there are certain “super-connectors” who can really drive behaviors! The difference now is that influence has been democratized through the social web and we have an opportunity to begin to quantify influence on a mass scale — that is revolutionary! Each of these emerging applications has a variety of paid and free options to help you experiment in this field but a good place to start is with your current Twitter following. Through a platform like the Awareness Hub, users can see the influence scores of those in your audience. That can be a useful place to start.

 

 

 

The social scoring company Klout plays a prominent role in your book, but you also describe Klout as ‘controversial.’ What do you see as controversial about Klout leads you to believe this?

The very act of having your social media presence sliced, diced and packaged into a public score has a significant “icky” factor that feels a lot like high school. I think a lot of people get caught up in the emotion of the thing and are not seeing the underlying science and marketing trend dispassionately.  This is a very important trend, an entirely new marketing channel, and marketers need to understand that.

 

 

 

What do you see at the future of online influence? How will people continue to cause, affect, or change behavior?

 

The first half of the book examines the fascinating and significant differences between influence in the offline and online worlds. As our social media “footprint” continues to grow, these differences — and opportunities — will be even more profound. If you understand the mechanics of social media influence, this can be a great equalizer. Everyone is empowered to create content, publish ideas and views, and find their own personal Return On Influence.

 

 

 

For more insights from Mark Schaefer, be sure to attend our upcoming joint webinar: Return on Influence. You can also download chapter 1 of Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing.

 

 

 

Do you have any tips on social influence? Share your thoughts and best practices on social influence with our community on Twitter (use #AwarenessTips).

 

 

 

Mike Lewis

 

@bostonmike

 

 

[image error]

Appless – Is It Possible?

By Stephanie Kopf

How much longer will it be possible to remain appless and generally ignorant of what an app is, how it works and what the heck I need it for? If I am fine without, will I continue to be? Is it OK to sometimes just want to bury yourself in a book?

I am surrounded by Apple fans and people who seem to talk only in app. They seem to have a severe case of iphone addiction. Time with friends seems to be spent talking only about iphones and I barely see their faces, as they are constantly looking down at the display of their sleek devices. My limit of contribution to this trend is the oft-repeated joke, “There must be an app for that”, which serves the purpose of disguising my inherent technophobia and making at least an impression that I’m just as hip as everyone else, thus mercifully directing attention away from me.

Statistics on iphone sales just about blow my mind. They hit a worldwide peak in the third quarter of 2011, with over 20 million iphones flying off the shelves. Over 37 million are expected to be sold in the first quarter of 2012.

Apps are fun, right? Or are they supposed to be useful? Or trendy? Will I be able to stand on the sidelines for a while longer or should I take the plunge?

Image: © winhorse/ istockphoto

Stephanie Kopf writes for the blog www.trenditionist.com . She has lived in Siberia, New York City and Germany. Her subject areas include anything related to the human psyche, European news, education, communication in all its forms, as well as the interaction of all of these with each other.

Visit us at http://www.trenditionist.com

[image error]

Four Ideas For Fashion Brands On Pinterest

It seems like the Buzz around Pinterest is never ending, people can’t stop talking about how awesome this visually based social media platform is and how quickly it’s grown! If I see one more blog about Pinterest marketing statics, I’ll probably go postal! Despite all the yapping it seems very few people are cranking out tangible ideas that will allow users and fans to reap the benefits of a really engaging Pinterest campaign. I’ve decided I am going to try and bring some inspiration that goes beyond pins and I’m going to start with fashion brands. Here are four ideas for fashion brands on Pinterest.

Pinterest Runway Show: How amazing would it be if a fashion brand or designer decided to launch a line exclusively on Pinterest? Pinterest is the perfect platform to release pictures of your new line in a timed fashion. With a little bit of advertising, and some exclusivity in the mix, repins would go flying and everyone from your most loyal fans to casual pinners wouldn’t be able to resist this unique look at your brands newest line of products.

Share: Pinterest has this awesome little feature that I don’t see people using much. Pinterest boards can be shared with followers and these followers can contribute their own content to your boards. I’d like to see some prominent fashion brands search out influencers and share boards with them! I would love it if someone like me, were allowed to help craft outfit inspiration on my favorite brand’s boards.

Mood Boards: I know I’m supposed to have a fashion mood board with lots of inspirational outfit ideas on it, but that takes a lot of time. My mood board currently consists of me pinning a couple of Madewell catalogs to my wall and rarely do they ever get opened again. I personally would be more inclined to plan a bit more strategically, if the mood board went digital. Now, I’m not talking about just throwing a couple of images from a specific brand on a board — I want real inspiration. Break down a look for me, offer me tips in the captions section and inspire me with colors or even pieces that don’t belong to your brand. Better yet, allow me to pin an outfit from a celeb or magazine on your board and have an expert create a board that helps me duplicate this look in real life while providing tips and tricks on why it works.

Give Me Swag: Okay, truth be told, I’m pretty sure there are several fashion brands who have tapped into this idea, but I’m mentioning it for purely selfish reasons. I want some fashion brands to find me on Pinterest, check out my boards and send me some swag. Kotex was the first big brand to utilize this idea, but I think all brands should be doing it! It really is the ultimate in surprising and delighting your fans, it creates buzz and gets people talking. So, why not try it?

Pinterest is a great site and brands are starting to do some pretty amazing things with pins. Over the next year, I believe brands are going to begin to approach Pinterest with more and more creativity. I’m excited to see what is coming.

What fashion brands do you think rock Pinterest? Do you have any ideas for them? 

[image error]

10 Ways To Take Your Next Trade Show “Social”

Industry trade shows and conferences play a significant role in B2B businesses these days. Companies make a big investment in marketing efforts and travel arrangements; but few, if any, take full advantage of the power and reach of Social Media at these events.  Its 2012 gang, get with it.  Here are a few great ideas.

Start with video.  Have some live Q&A that you can post to your site in real time.  Display how-to videos, behind the scenes videos or customer testimonial.  You can even have videos looping that aren’t industry related but make the audience laugh, something like this

Display a live Twitter feed using the trade show hash tags (i.e. #CES) [image error]or your company hash tags (#XYZ Company) so those in your booth or passersby can “listen in” on the conversation.  If you have a large audience, encourage real time Q&A via Twitter so everyone on the floor can participate (or even those not in attendance)

Run polls and contests from your Facebook page.  Have your booth reps encourage visitors to log on to your company Facebook page to participate in a live poll, or enter to win something of significant value.  Free tee shirts aren’t going to cut it.  iPads, 4 tickets to a sporting event or concert in town during the show probably will.

Build a simple trade show page on your website to promote your presence ahead of time.  Run a live blog from the event on this page so those in attendance or remote, customers and employees alike, can listen in, comment and ask questions from those on the floor.  Live blogs are great tools to use during keynote speeches

Use Twitter.  Tweet-ups and Twitter chat are powerful tools to use to engage your audience and meet those attendees you didn’t get to meet earlier.  Impromptu Tweet-ups for eats and drinks at a local watering hole serve as great networking events

.

Reach out to the trade show organizers to see if you can synchronize your social media efforts with theirs.  Coordinate the hash tags to be used during the event.  Partner with them to promote the show before, during and after.  Be creative

Take pictures. Post them, tweet them, share them on your trade show web page.  Pictures of the venue, the city or a panoramic picture of the trade show floor are great too. Have a slide show  on display at your booth.  Use pictures of your home office (behind the scenes), your employees (having fun) and your customers.  Add to the picture collages throughout the show.  Be creative and spontaneous.

Reach out and engage with industry bloggers and trade publications before, during and after the show.  Share your videos, pictures or blog feed with them.  And, pay it forward by promoting their blogs, articles and other industry information (stats, charts, graphs)

Invite some of the attendees or speakers to guest blog on your site.  You promote their blog and bring visibility to your website

Monitor what your competition is doing on their social media sites during the trade show.  Competitive intelligence is always helpful.  What are their customers saying on their social networks?

While social media is not a magical marketing solution for business, it is a powerful tool you can leverage to engage your target audience and it should play a role in your overall trade show strategy.

[image error]

3 reasons why LinkedIn is stronger than Facebook

Facebook may have over 910 million users, but it still has stealthy competitors such as LinkedIn. LinkedIn may not be where most individuals share their photos, check their newsfeed or share their daily status updates — but it is where businesses can flourish, B2B kicks butt through lead generation, and  ”likes” can have more weight.

Businesses Flourish

Facebook is a great place for businesses and fans to share content, but the types of content vary from all different spectrums: from Justin Beiber to brand news to business strategies to the Red Sox to pictures of  cat. In short, business content that is relevant to marketing, B2B, finance, etc may get lost in the clutter that is the Facebook news feed. On the other hand, the content on LinkedIn is largely related to marketing and business, and has a higher chance of being seen on the channel. It is purposefully designed for business-minded folk who want to share relevant content. In addition, it is a great platform for brands to distribute similar content and where many followers will look to find information on a brand, what they offer for a product/service, and the content related to it.

B2B and Lead Generation

So it is evident that LinkedIn is great for business content and businesses. But what else? “David Meerman Scott stated that LinkedIn’s conversion rate is now 2.60 per cent, less than what it was back in January, but this is far greater than its nearest rivals Twitter and Facebook, which has 0.67 per cent and 0.39 per cent respectively.” So what, you ask? In short, LinkedIn has competitive percentages when it comes to B2B lead gen due to the ability to target content, optimize for SEO, focus CTAs and utilize both company page and groups.  In addition, those who are visiting LinkedIn are visiting in order to post, read and/or comment on business content. The leads are prime for the picking.

“Likes” Have More Weight

On LinkedIn, people are more careful on what they post on their site, who they “link” to, and what they like, comment on and/or share. It is a site where people are judged for who they are career-wise. In short, if someone “likes” your post or comments on it or shares it — it holds greater value than it would on Facebook and Twitter where Likes and ReTweets are a dime a dozen normally. A recognition on LinkedIn = how many Likes or ReTweets? That’s still up for debate, but in my opinion, LinkedIn has a bit of a lead.

Last piece of Advice

LinkedIn may be a great place to invest in for businesses and those that are business-minded; but it is also easy to goof up if relevant content is not posted appropriately. Invest time to research first, target your content appropriately and grow your page within the channel over time. It is not an overnight success, but the trick is to maintain quality versus quantity.

Additional Reading

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/02/21...

http://writingontheweb.com/2012/02/21...

http://www.simplyzesty.com/social-med...

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/63...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentra...

http://www.donhalbert.com/10-reasons-...

[image error]

Social Analytics Zen: Combining External and Internal Social Metrics for Business Insights

As a marketer, you probably daydream about impressing your CEO with unforgettable statistics from your social media campaigns that clearly articulate the ROI. There is a budding business discipline around social analytics, which aggregates and analyzes online conversations and social activity generated across social channels and enables organizations to act on the derived intelligence to drive business results. But how does one get to the ultimate state of social media bliss?

 

Learning from External Data: Social Analytics Yin

The path to achieving social analytics Zen begins by analyzing external data. Marketers must analyze industry, competitive and consumer conversations to have a solid understanding of the industry landscape. To properly understand your Yin:

Identify key data sources and determine the frequency with which you’ll collect data: Create a benchmark of what’s currently being discussed at an industry and competitive level.
Separate the information by audience type: You may have several different key buyer segments and corresponding influencers. Identify your keyword set by audience type and perform social listening to determine where digital conversations are happening.
Develop goals by audience: Define what action you want each audience segment to take (e.g. gain awareness of your company, influence others, purchase your product/service, engage with you). Your audience goals should be driven by your overall business goals.
Monitor by audience type: At this point, you’ll have a sense of whom you want to monitor. Create lists of top targets, influencers, and new customers to quickly scan for conversations that may require your participation. Create triggers for specific user intent that is tied to business goals.

 

While having a finger on the pulse of your industry enables you to understand key industry trends and drivers, this is only part of the story. You also need to analyze data from your own social campaigns.

 

Learning from Internal Data: Social Analytics Yang

Analyzing internal campaigns allows marketers to continually get smarter, more effective and more productive. As we learned from Travis Unwin, director of media strategies for Awareness partner agency Sitewire, a full service digital marketing and interactive advertising agency you can’t ‘set-it-and-forget-it” when it comes to social media (LINK to Travis’s post). It’s important to learn from your own content. To arrive at your Yang:

Determine your content and platform mix: Test on various platforms to find the right marketing mix for your company. Remember, the goal is to drive new customers to your marketing funnel.
 Measure your successes and failures – Get Granular: Which campaigns performed the best? On which platforms? Which posts or tweets stood out from the highest-performing campaign? Allow these learnings to guide future campaign development.
Develop benchmarks: Ideally, you’ll want to invest in a toolset that helps you gain intelligence over time. You’ll want a social analytics platform that’s a one-stop destination for social intelligence.
Incorporate Social Media into your Marketing Mix: Social media shouldn’t be performing alone in a silo. Make your marketing efforts more effective at driving business results by integrating all available channels (email, website, mobile, ads, and social).

 

Achieving Social Analytics Zen

With the knowledge gained from your social analytics yin and yang, you now have a solid understanding of your landscape. The marriage of the yin and yang (or Zen) is where your external and internal intelligence meets. This happens when you can identify and act on specific sales opportunities. The ultimate measure of Zen occurs in the Social Marketing Funnel, a sales framework we developed to help marketers monitor, identify, classify and respond to prospects and customers in social channels. Research consistently shows that the likelihood of purchase increases when people have a social connection with a brand or product – for example, fans of brands are 51 percent more likely to buy. With 90 percent of all purchases subject to social influence, and 90 percent of consumers trusting recommendations from people they know, marketers need to recognize the social marketing funnel is vital to overall prospecting activity.

 

For the full social analytics framework and steps to achieving Zen, download our new e-book, Actionable Social Analytics: From Social Media Metrics to Business Insights.

 

What do you think, marketers? Have you married your yin and yang to achieve Social Analytics Zen? We’d love to hear how you’re developing actionable analytics on our Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest pages.

 

Mike Lewis,

@bostonmike

[image error]

There’s a Good Chance Potential Employers are Watching You

[image error]As the social media age becomes more and more prevalent, it only makes sense that additional eyes are being cast on one’s online engagements.

According to a recent CareerBuilder survey of some 2,000 hiring managers and HR pros, 37 percent of human resource managers note utilizing social networking sites in order to gain more information on job candidates, while another 11 percent indicate they will start doing likewise. In another interesting stat, 15 percent of those responding indicated their companies banned using social media in order to review candidates.

Research has shown that employers are mostly using Facebook (65 percent) and LinkedIn (63 percent) to review information on candidates; 16 percent use Twitter.

For many companies looking to hire, they point to the fact that using social media to look over a candidate’s background provides them with a better idea of the individual’s personality, qualifications and the professional image they have put forth to date.

In breaking down the numbers some more, hiring managers doing online background checks reported:

Sixty-five percent said they use social media to investigate whether the candidate present themselves professionally;
Fifty-one percent said they use social media to see if the candidate looks to be a good fit for the company;
Forty-five percent said social media is helpful in learning additional information regarding the individual’s qualifications;
Thirty-five percent utilize social media in seeing if the individual proves to be well-rounded;
Lastly, 12 percent are utilizing social media in searching for reasons not to bring the candidate aboard.

As the survey notes, approximately one-third of hiring managers utilizing social networking venues to screen job applicants stated they did not hire an individual due to finding something online that questioned their candidacy. In the majority of cases, the concerns were tied to inappropriate or provocative images or details, or something regarding the applicant using alcohol or drugs.

On the flip side of looking at potential red flags that social media usage by an individual can cause employers, there are also a handful of reasons for people to be on social media.

In looking at the survey results from hiring managers, three in 10 (29 percent) indicated they discovered an item in someone’s social media ventures that led them to hire an individual.

The content discovered showed hiring managers the following:

Fifty-eight percent noted they had a good feel for the applicant’s personality;
Fifty-five percent said the content demonstrated a professional image;
Fifty-four percent stated background information backed up professional qualifications;
Fifty-one percent said the content showed a well-rounded individual with a wide range of interests;
Forty-nine percent stated content demonstrated great communication skills;
Forty-four percent said the candidate’s content showed they were creative;
Thirty-four percent indicated they came across posts from others that proved to be strong references for the candidate.

According to a spokesperson for Career Builder, “Because social media is a dominant form of communication today, you can certainly learn a lot about a person by viewing their public, online personas. However, hiring managers and human resources departments have to make a careful, determined decision as to whether information found online is relevant to the candidates’ qualifications for the job.”

So whether you are an employer or an individual looking for work, there is a good chance that your paths will cross at some point on this ever-growing medium we call social media.

Photo credit: news.investors.com

[image error]

Qwaya: Effective tool to boost your Facebook presence

Situation:

Just before Christmas last year, a large Scandinavian hardware store decided to bring some life to their Facebook page – get a larger following and promote their special holiday offers. This is the type of store where you find everything – from suede tool belts, via power drills to garden ornaments – and they’re active in most cities in Scandinavia and the UK.

When the campaign started in early December, the Facebook fan page had 2,000 fans. To raise this number the store used a Facebook ads manager tool called Qwaya.

Action:

Qwaya allows users use “bulk ad creation.” When adding a number of titles, images, and body texts, the software combines these in all possible ways and puts them in a campaign. Facebook then runs these to see which ones have the best click-through rate.

For more general “we’re-on-Facebook-now-come-and-like-us” ads, the hardware store used this functionality.

To promote specific items, the store put the product in the ad.  But to see the price the visitor had to go through a fan gate (broken-glass solution,) which in this case meant the user had to like the fan page to see the offer.

Another thing that is easily done in Qwaya is testing ads against each other in terms of demographics: age, location, interests etc. In the tool you can look at the result presented in a neat way with graphs showing vital statistics.

The store also wanted to find out was who their audience was. Was it, like they suspected, middle-aged men who was the main target?

Results:

More fans: In four weeks, the fan base had grown from 2,000 to 11,000 and there was a lot of activity on the fan page with people discussing the offers and the store in general. This was considered a success.

General vs. Specific Ads: As it turned out, the ads showing actual products worked best (a little bit depending on what was promoted.) These ads had a much higher click-through rate and led to more likes. These were also the ones, quite obviously, that led to most sales.

Demographics: As opposed to what everybody thought, there were more women than men who clicked through on the ads. This typically male store now has a bigger female following on Facebook, which baffled everyone involved.

The Tool: Since Qwaya is connected to Facebook’s API, and can compare their stats with other parameters, the tracking became very useful. If something wasn’t working or an ad needed a tweak of some kind, it could be done right away which saved a lot of time.

Key Findings in the Ad Campaign

-          Test a lot of ads of different kinds. Then take the ads that work best, make a number of versions of them and then narrow it down again. You’ll finally reach a point where you have, say, five really good-preforming ads.

-          Don’t have preconceptions about your customers. You may find out that you have a customer base where you least expected.

-          Put your efforts into analyzing the results. Starting up a Facebook ad campaign is much about open-minded work. Test everything. When that is done, the results will speak for themselves and have the answer to what works best for you and your business.

[image error]

New Framework for Social Media Analytics [Infographic]

In our latest white paper, Actionable Social Analytics: From Social Media Metrics to Business Insights we unveiled the Social Analytics Framework for Marketing and Sales Effectiveness. Use this framework to determine KPI’s according to marketing objective.

 

 

Share your insights!

We built this framework to help marketers harness social insights for business value. What metrics do you use? Do you use a different framework? Share your insights with us and our community on Twitter by tweeting to #AwarenessTips.

 

Mike Lewis

@bostonmike

[image error]

Caine’s Cardboard Arcade Video: The Power of Social Good

The below video and story is why I love social media. Maybe it’s the father in me, but this video really put a huge smile on my face and I hope it does the same for you. Also, if you have time, Cain’s Arcade is closing in on 100,000 Facebook Likes and you can like it here: Caine’s Arcade Facebook Page

 

[image error]