Tara Coomans’ article in Business2Community about buying Facebook likers offers an important cautionary tale about social media. She warns that marketers should not convince brands that fans are leads and that brands should not believe that fans will equal sales. She reminds us that relationships grown organically are the ones of lasting value.
But when Tara cautions, “Buying fans is a waste of money and probably a threat to your brand,” I am reminded about a social media (and universal) rule – few things are true absolutely.
After all, there is “buying likers,” and then there is “buying likers.”
Brands can (and unfortunately sometimes do) goose their social numbers by paying fees to third parties who in turn pay strangers (individuals with low potential brand affinity) to like pages and posts, comment and follow streams. This is the equivalent of paying shills. It is a practice that is not only unethical but potentially brand damaging. Its only “benefit” is to boost the apparent popularity of a social stream. This may attract a few legitimate likers but will do nothing to generate a true critical social mass.
However, “buying likers” by offering on-brand discounts and sweepstakes is a perfectly legitimate, necessary and even welcomed practice. Promotions are a time honored way to get potential customers (not strangers) to sample a brand’s wares. Good ones offer a sweetened version of the steady stream of “delights” that a brand promises will follow a “like.” Of course, long-term success depends on the brand’s willingness to follow through. In the social world, that means making sure the ongoing social stream is “delightful” and offers value.
P.T. Barnum, who knew a few things about big promises and following through, said, “Without promotion something terrible happens: Nothing!” When done well, social promotions enrich the brand experience. Here are a few simple suggestions:
- Make sure your promotions align with your brand. It would be wrong for a fitness brand to give away “cake of the week” subscriptions, for example, or for a muscle car model to host a Hello Kitty sweepstakes.
- Empower the people on the social front lines to have fun with fans/followers. Create promotions you’d like to engage with yourself, and manage the conversation as thoughtfully as you would any business effort you put forth.
- Mix big sweepstakes and contests with social stream promotions, fun and games. Big promotions get lots of attention, but what will you do to entertain, inform or interact with fans when the bells and whistles aren’t going off? Have a plan for sustaining enthusiasm!
Social promotions are critical for creating excitement about a brand, building genuine relationships and demonstrating honest brand good will.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Aug 1st, 2011. 
It’s all over the news; the end of Facebook is near!
Is Facebook headed the way of the Dodo like MySpace, Friendster, etc? No, at least not anytime soon. It is still very much a social media powerhouse. But Facebook is not invincible and it certainly cannot sustain perpetual growth.
According to an article in Business2Community.com, Facebook has lost 6 million users in the U.S. Growth among users in other countries is on the rise but stateside Facebook may be losing some of its luster.
Another recent article in MediaPost points to a possible saturation point for Facebook in the U.S. Facebook is now needs to rapidly monetize its current user base, the article also points out. So, look for more aggressive marketing efforts from Facebook most likely at the expense of user privacy.
So, could this spell trouble for the Social Media Juggernaut? Sure, in some ways it does. But the real lesson here is one we’ve seen before. Clinging to trends as a marketing solution is not a solid strategy. Taking advantage of trends and using them based on solid market research and planning makes more sense.
Social Media is not and will never be the one solution for all of your marketing woes. Social Media platforms are in constant competition with each other for your business’s ad dollars. They are constantly trying to outdo one another. Just take a look at Google’s latest attempt at Social Media, Google+ in this article from Search Engine Journal.
No one social media offering or new technology product is going to magically solve all of your marketing problems. Social Media isn’t going to make marketing and engagement a “snap”, it takes work. These things are tools that are to be added to your marketing toolkit.
It’s important that you have some control over your message and your marketing efforts. It is good to diversify your efforts making use of all the appropriate resources at your disposal. But ultimately you should be driving them to a property that is uniquely yours, like a web site or mobile page/app. This is where conversion happens.
In another article from BusinesstoCommunity.com they reference the “Commit to Quit” day back in May where numbers of users committed to cancel their Facebook accounts in protest of the ongoing privacy issues Facebook is having. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Don’t get too caught up in hype. Stay smart and market using common sense. What works is knowing your audience, marketing to them where they are, and driving them to a place where you can convert them to a customer.
Do you market with Facebook? What do you think about their decline in the US?
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Aug 1st, 2011.
Even though Google launched Google+ just over a month ago, its social network is receiving a lot of traction. In just a couple of weeks, Google+ gained 10 million users, and more recently, comScore reported that the site had more than 20 million users.
With this growth rate, it seems that users are impressed with the service. Rob Enderle, the principal analyst with the Enderle Group, told us that he was also “very impressed” with Google+. As he explained to us, the lingering question is whether or not Google+ can continue to impact people in this same way. He believes the answer to this question will, ultimately, be based on if users drop other social networks for Google+.
With competition in the social space definitely heating up, who do you think will remain major players?
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Aug 2nd, 2011.
How do I measure social media ROI? Will social media work for my company? How do we generate leads with social media? These are concerns that we often hear from companies that are still in the trial phase of their social media journey. Let’s take a look at a few social media fundamentals that can help ensure your company is taking the correct steps towards implementing a successful social media program.
Organize Your Inbound Marketing
Over the past few years as each new social media platform claimed its status as mainstream, companies have had to play catch-up adopting the new channels. This constant state of keeping up with the innovation treadmill, paired with the increasing need to create more and more content resulted in many companies neglecting to develop a solid social media strategy.
It’s important to continuously remind yourself of the end goal for spreading your company’s brand across the various social media channels. Let’s stick to lead generation as an example since it’s typically the underlying agenda for every marketer. If your goal is lead generation, then you will want to steer the communities you create to some kind of lead capture system (e.g. a registration page). Host your assets at a single hub location. Your Website or blog is a good place. Then, use the different social media channels to drive traffic to that hub. Think of each social channel as a spoke in the wheel of your social lead generation program. A new channel simply adds another spoke to your wheel. Organizing your efforts in this configuration will make it easier to aggregate data and keep track of your results.
Measuring Your Results
There are two directions one can take when examining social media results—soft or hard metrics. Soft metrics refer to things like the number of shared blog posts, changes in sentiment, increases in awareness, etc. Hard metrics focus on the financial ROI of implementing social media programs. It usually comes down to the bottom line, so let’s look at what needs to be done to effectively measure your social media ROI.
First, dust off your B-school textbook and look at the equation for ROI:
((Value Gained by Investment)-(Cost of Investment)) × 100=ROI
(Cost of Investment)
With social media, people often get frustrated with the first variable of this equation, that is, Value Gained by Investment. They struggle with concepts such as the value of a Twitter follower or Facebook “like.” These concepts, however, fall into the soft metrics category and although they are important they are not relevant when looking at the equation from a lead generation perspective.
The value gained in a lead generation program can be estimated simply by studying the qualified leads generated by that program. Most companies know the approximate cost associated with a lead of a specific quality relative to their business. Multiply that cost by the amount of leads generated by your social media program, and you’ll be able to approximate the Value Gained by Investment. For example, social media commonly generates level one leads, that is, individuals who have taken proactive steps that demonstrate interest (e.g. registering for a white paper). If you’re a B-to-B company, these leads would typically cost you $ 25-$ 200, according to SiriusDecisions. If you generate 1,000 leads through your social media program, the value gained by your investment would be $ 25,000-$ 200,0000.
The trick here is tracking the paths of your audience. Spreading links with built-in tracking capabilities unique to your social media programs is crucial for tracing the qualified leads back to those programs. Getting your company’s tracking capabilities in tiptop shape is priority number one if you plan to accurately measure the results of your social media efforts.
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
Don’t be discouraged when you don’t observe immediate results after rolling out a well-thought-out social media program. These things take time, especially while your organization gets comfortable generating the extra content. Expect to see results six to twelve months down the road.
On the other hand, the beauty of social media is that it is a gift that keeps on giving. If you strategically position your company in the social space, your results will continue to improve as your communities grow. In fact, according to a study performed by MarketingSherpa, one in four CMOs that are in the strategic phase of their social media implementation reported achieving an ROI of 100% or more with their programs. Not bad numbers to report to your executive team.
Find out more information about Social Media Marketing.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Aug 4th, 2011.
In spite of the innovations and features that Bing has brought to search, it appears to be struggling on the paid search front. WebProNews spoke recently with Mark Ballard, the Senior Analyst at the Rimm-Kaufman Group who said that the company needed to ramp up its platform for advertisers.
Microsoft and Yahoo partnered in a search alliance 2 years ago in an effort to better compete with Google. However, neither company has shown a tremendous amount of improvement.
Ballard told us that he was pulling for Bing but that it needed to make some changes to better meet advertisers needs.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Aug 4th, 2011.
