Routinely Unfriend for Clutter-Free Social UpdatesRoutinely Unfriend for Clutter-Free Social UpdatesInformation overload can happen when you follow or friend too many people on your various social networks, making it necessary to clean house. Here are a few tips for keeping your social networks tidy and your updates clutter-free.
via Routinely Unfriend for Clutter-Free Social Updates.
Lifehacker AU editor Angus Kidman has spent the month of November writing a book as part of previously mentioned NaNoWriMo, during which he’s learned a lot about his writing habits. For example, he noticed he’d been overusing these five common phrases.
via Five Commonly Repeated Words to Hunt Down in Your Writing.
I recently spoke at Caltech at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking,” the 30-minute video is here and the PowerPoint presentation is here on DocStoc).
What I want to answer with this post (long though it may be) is:
via What the Past Can Tell Us About the Future of Social Networking | Both Sides of the Table.
Twitter, with more than 100 million users worldwide, may be a fun, quick way to communicate thoughts and whereabouts to your friends, but its most amazing value for businesses is as a public relations communication tool, one that is especially effective when used at trade shows.
With 140-character announcements, sometimes with attachments included, Twitter is most effective when it is communicating current news. If your business has a booth or a table at a conference, using Twitter in an organized manner can provide your customer base with news about your firm’s participation. This creates an opportunity to engage your customers and ultimately increase leads. Moreover, it can also enhance goodwill with expo organizers, promoting their event alongside yours. Here’s how you can incorporate Twitter as part of an expo presence.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008078
Many marketers still struggle with the loss of control over their brand that comes with the ability of consumers to discuss them—and have those messages widely disseminated—across social media. But most brand-related chatter, both online and offline, is positive. And positive buzz carries more weight with consumers, according to research from Keller Fay Group.
In a study of hundreds of thousands of conversations, the firm found about two-thirds of word-of-mouth brand references were “mostly positive.” Those can be powerful.
Two-thirds of study respondents thought positive word-of-mouth was credible, compared with fewer than half who believed negative buzz. Positive information was also more likely to be passed on to others, more than twice as likely to get people to look for more information, and had nearly four times the chance of pushing consumers to make a purchase.
Overall, word-of-mouth is generally positive, but some industries do get better buzz than others. Children’s products and food brands tended to get the most positive mentions, while net advocacy on behalf of companies in the telecommunications, financial services and healthcare industries was lowest. But even for those brands, the majority of word-of-mouth was still upbeat.
The Keller Fay research supports findings by women-focused marketing and communications firm Harbinger, which reported a greater motivation to share good brand experiences than bad ones among female internet users in North America. Consumers trying to give others advice seem to be more interested in directing friends and family toward brands they like than away from brands they have had a problem with.
Superb presentation about the moment you can say that your campaign is really going viral, with great advices and case studies.
A must watch / see.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008070
Next year, marketers will need to rethink their approach to advertising and marketing and intensify their focus on creating magnetic content that will naturally attract consumers, rather than relying solely on the interruption model of advertising, which consumers are responding to less and less. Think pull vs. push.
Magnetic content can include anything created on behalf of a brand—be it an ad, YouTube video, online game, Facebook page, Twitter promo or mobile app—that consumers genuinely want to engage with and pass along to others. This content entertains, amuses, informs, serves a function or satisfies a consumer need. It’s welcome instead of annoying or interruptive.
Marketers, especially those working in social media, have seen the proven value of branded content, sometimes also referred to as “earned media.” Nearly three-quarters of US companies with a social media strategy used such content in their campaigns, making it the most common type of content used, according to a June 2010 study by King Fish Media, HubSpot and Junta42.
Creating effective, breakthrough advertising has always been a challenge for marketers, as well as for the agencies charged with the task. But the classic interruption-disruption model of advertising is moribund. Marketers should ask themselves five questions about the magnetic content they are seeking to create to determine whether it will be truly attractive to their audience:
Marketers should base their magnetic content ideas on well-researched customer behaviors, attitudes and lifestyles. This entails altering your emphasis in marketing from “selling product” to identifying and solving a consumer need or want that transcends or complements the physical product or service you are selling. Ask yourself this critical question: Besides your product, what can you do for the consumer?
B2B marketers are increasingly using social media to connect with their customers, but oftentimes they are not using those tools effectively. One report found that only 32% of B2B companies engage with their customers on a daily basis via social media. Another discovered that 46% of B2B marketers thought social media was irrelevant. And another found that 60% of B2B firms have no staff dedicated to social media and just 10% of B2B firms use outside agencies or consultants. While the vast majority (86%) of B2B companies use social media for marketing, it’s clear there’s considerable room for improvement.
http://mashable.com/2010/11/11/b2b-social-media-marketing-infographic/
via B2B-Social-Media-Marketing-Infographic.jpg (Image JPEG, 640×1447 pixels).
Just in case anyone care, or if a client asks the question 🙂
And the source is the Economist (classy) …
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/11/popularity_does_not_equal_influence_twitter
via Qui sont les 50 nouveaux plus “influents” sur Twitter ? | Le Journal du Geek.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008050
Blogs are not the hottest social media trend of the moment, but they remain a powerful platform for self-expression—and for brand and product recommendations. eMarketer estimates that 51% of US internet users will read blogs at least monthly this year, and according to October 2010 research from blog portal Technorati many will find them influential.
Nearly half of internet users surveyed worldwide said they trusted blogs as an information source, and slightly more said they were likely to recommend a brand, product or service they heard about on a blog. But are bloggers ready to make recommendations themselves?
Among all bloggers, 55% said they review products or brands rarely or never, up slightly from the 53% who said the same in Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere 2009” report. Among “hobbyist” bloggers—the most common kind—the drop was similar.
In addition, 42% of all bloggers and 40% of hobbyists said they sometimes blogged about brands they loved or hated, down from 46% and 44%, respectively, last year.
Following a brand on social media may keep it closer to the top of blogger’s mind, encouraging more frequent posting on the subject.
But bloggers are dissatisfied with how brands are treating them. Nearly two-thirds of all blogger respondents said they felt bloggers were treated less professionally by brand representatives than were members of the traditional media, and hobbyist bloggers were most likely to hold that view.
Brand representatives must remember that even bloggers who write only for fun expect to be treated with respect. Earlier research from IZEA noted the high value bloggers and other social media personalities place on their endorsements, and if bloggers are credible and have the reach a marketer is looking for they deserve to be treated like the media outlets they are.