Free Ebook: Beyond the Facebook Business Page - How to Generate Traffic & Leads with Facebook

You’ve set up your Facebook Page, you post and interact regularly – now what? Now you need to capitalize on these efforts. In HubSpot’s new ebook, Andrea Vahl, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, reveals insights on how Facebook can turn into a driver of real business results.






This 28-page ebook will teach you how to:

• Drive traffic to your website from Facebook
• Pick what content to post on Facebook
• Advertise effectively on Facebook
• Capture leads from Facebook
• Run Facebook contests & sweepstakes

Grab the ebook and find out how to turn Facebook into a source of traffic and leads for your business.

Click here to download your copy [Via Hubspot]

INFOGRAPHIC: Social media world records for 2011

By Harrison Weber at TheNextWeb: 
RecordSetter, the self-proclaimed new home for world records, believes that everyone can be the best at something — even social media. And in 2011, social networking is clearly more important to some people than anything in real life, making these accomplishments that much sweeter.
2011′s Top records involve everything from Facebook and Twitter to Justin Bieber and Stride Gum. RecordSetter reports that the world record holder for the most pending Facebook friend requests is Carel Haiti, at over 3,000, while Justin Bieber holds the record for the most Tweets sent by a celebrity during a live interview. Other awesome, non-internet related records include the fastest time to eat a lightbulb and the heaviest vehicle pulled with a beard while on rollerskates.
Clearly we, as a society, have too much time on our hands. But in the end, isn’t it for the best? How else would we know about the most swords swallowed in 30 seconds? Check out RecordSetter’s top 15 list for 2011 for more.

How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

Posted by: Adrian at DesignModo:
The popularity of the social media and networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. is increasing by leaps and bounds every day. As the popularity grows, the importance of these social media websites has also witnessed a steep rise. However, the efficacy or in other words, the effectiveness of these social media sites is always a subject of great debate amongst the pundits. Since, all these websites are components of a virtual world there is still some qualms when it comes to gauging their success in real terms.

Fortunately, there are some subjective as well as objective parameters to measure the efficiency of these social media networking sites. Let us discuss them one by one.

Following the Performance Metrics
Social networking involves interaction between two individuals or a set of individuals in a virtual world. Hence, you will have to take a different approach altogether when you are evaluating a series of interaction between some individuals. The quantity and the quality of the interactions carried out in a social networking site can be two able parameters when determining their usefulness.

Now, the question that quite obviously comes into the frame is how to track the Performance Metrics?



Evaluating the number of Users
This one of the basic and most straightforward way to find out how much effective a particular site is. It not worth mentioning that calculating total number of users of a particular site is a Himalayan task. With internet being a daily commodity of a vast majority of households all over the world and the total number of users expected to be several millions, the task is analogous to finding a needle from a haystack. Some of the ways to carry out this uphill task are listed below.

One of the ways of finding out the total number of visitors of a particular social media site is counting the total number of pageviews and the number of number exclusive visitors of that particular site. Once you have got the data, you need to collate them together. The resulting figure will give you the total number of visitors of that particular site.

Another very popular way of counting the number of visitors of a site is summing up the total number of fans and subscribers of that site. Each and every site has an option from where you can collect the total number of visitors or friends those who have registered in that site. All these can be collected and collated later on, in order to obtain the total number of users of that site. In this way, you can have the total number of users in each of the sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc.

Apart from the typical social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc. there are some which are exclusively used for the purpose of sharing & bookmarking. StumbleUpon and Digg are two most renowned of them. In finding out the total number of users for these types of sites, you need to have a somewhat different approach. In these cases, you need to record the number of Diggs you have received or need to jot down the total number of times your site has been bookmarked and the frequency at which the contents of your site have been shared with others.

These are the classical ways to gather data for a particular site. Once you have all the data in your possession from each of these websites by following the respective methods, you can compare the data and come to a conclusion about which is the most popular site by simply having a look at the number of visitors.

Evaluation of the Quality of Interaction
Now, let us deal with quality of interactions. All the methods discussed so far concerned the quantity of the conversations. When it comes to evaluating the quality of the same, the approach will have to completely different altogether. Let me provide a very simple example. Suppose your Facebook page has been visited by 100 friends. If you simply go by then number of visitors, it is whopping 100! However, it is quite likely that all of those 100 will not like your page. It may so happen that the conversation you have had with any of your friends over Facebook has failed to generate any interest to lure any new user to register as your friend. Likewise, if you are in a habit of tweeting, not everyone who goes through your tweets will like them.

In this circumstance, you will be having a quite a job in your hand if you are opting to evaluate the effectiveness of a site from the qualitative point of view.

Here, you need to take into account the number of exclusive visitors of a particular site. This will provide you a notion about the number of people who are being inspired to follow the tweets or visit the Facebook on a regular basis.

Another parameter that needs to be taken into account is the time spent by a particular visitor on a specific website and the number of pages he has viewed on each visit. The longer is the time spend online and the more the number of pages he has visited the deeper the relationship is considered between two Facebook friends.

Bounce rates or in other words how frequently the visitors have quit a particular Facebook or any Twitter account is to be considered in order to measure the opposite trend. That is, the higher the bounce rate of a specific Facebook or twitter account, the less popular is that Facebook or Twitter account. They must be containing something which does not go down well amongst the visitors.

The quality of these sites can be evaluated on the basis of the number and frequency of comments posted. The more is the number of comments and higher is their frequency, the more is the popularity of that particular account.

However, when you are evaluating the quality of a Digg or a StumbleUpon account this method will not apply, the main reason being the lack of bondage amongst the users of social bookmark and share accounts. It is seen that, people who visit these bookmarking or sharing accounts do not have any specific reason behind their visits. They are not focused on any particular subject they are looking for. This leads to casual visits for very short span of time and a very high bounce rate. The number of visitors in these websites is naturally very high. However, that does not denote the true picture so far the quality of the account is concerned. It is actually the number of visitors who subsequently convert into regular customers which determines the quality of that account.

Subjective Evaluation of SMP (Social Media Performance)
The term ‘Subjective Evaluation of Social Media Performance’ literally means evaluating and comparing the effectiveness of a particular social media site with that of another. Now the million dollar question is how to do that?

As already mentioned the very existence of these social sites is pretty subjective and confined to a virtual world. Hence, quite understandably there is no golden thumb rule to gauge their effectiveness from a subjective point of view. How can you judge how good or bad is a series of conversations those have been carried out in a particular website? The very conversation that may strike your psyche can be summarily dismissed by someone else who may consider it to be an absolute naïve. You can measure the volume or the length of a particular string of conversation, but certainly not the quality.

Still, let us try to take a look into how to judge the quality of the conversation. If you have a habit of following the strings of conversations carried out by the members of the social networking sites, you see that they follow certain trends. There are some conversations which simply involves worthless issues like page 3 topics, gossips involving the celebrities. There are other types of conversations in which people will vent their anger on the management of their work places and express frustration about their friends and even bosses, deal with the personal activities of other people. These are nothing but sheer wastage of time and carry no worth.

The sets of conversation those involve discussion about share market, business opportunities and other constructive subjects carrying an able meaning to others are the ones to be considered.

If you are a regular follower of these sites, you will find numerous instances, when someone has announced that he has bought a new car or an electronic gadget. Naturally, there will be a string of comments pouring in from every quarter. Though these comments do not actually carry that weight yet, they may be helpful in the evaluation of that particular product or gadget. Hence, whether you consider these comments as valuable or not will depend upon the way they have been put forward.

Whatever is the type or subject of the conversation, the key factor that is to be taken into account while evaluation of the quality is how much interest it is able to generate amongst the visitors and the number of visitors they are able to attract.

Another thing that is to be taken into consideration is the fact that different metrics are to be used to evaluate different social networking sites. Let us now go through the parameters needed for evaluation of different social sites.

Metrics for Evaluating SMM Performance

Metrics for Social Networking Sites

Following are some of the parameters by which social networking sites can be evaluated:
The total number of friends or visitors gained through the site.
The total number of comments left by others on the status update.
The total number of discussions initiated by you and the replies you have received.
The total number of photo snaps or video clips attached by your friends.
The total number of people who have logged into your website from other social networking sites.


Metrics for Micro Blogging Sites

When you evaluate micro blogging sites like Twitter, the following parameters should be taken into account:
The total number of followers you have managed to gain.
The total number of response you receive to your daily blogs or tweets.
The total number of replies you receive to your queries.
The total number of retweets, your tweets manage to receive.
The total number of tweets that crop up around the hashtags created by you.


Metrics for Evaluating Social Bookmarking Sites

In case of social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, you can do the judgment on the following metrics:
The total number of bookmarks referred in your site/blog.
The total number of remarks or comments you have received on these bookmarks.
The total number of people who have joined your friends list from the bookmarking site.
The total amount of time spent by the visitors in your bookmarking site.


Evaluating parameters for Flickr & YouTube

Following are the parameters for the evaluation of subjective effectiveness of Flickr & YouTube:
The total number of times a particular photo or a video clip has been viewed.
The total number of comments posted on a particular photo or a video clip.
The total number of times a particular photo or a video clip has been added to the favorite tab by the viewer or in other words, the total number of viewers who have attached it to the favorite tab.
The number of positive as well negative sentiments (thumbs up or thumbs down) posted for a particular photograph or a video clip.
The rating left by the users for a particular video clip of a photograph.
Number of links of the number of total embeds of a photograph or a video clip.
Popularity of a particular photo or video on other social sites.
The total number of users who have joined your website from other sites.
The total amount of time each visitor has spent on your website.
The total number of pages of your website visited by the visitors.

How To Get 41% More Likes On Your Facebook Posts

Posted by Brian Carter at AllFacebook:
Even if you’re using the best marketing practices on Facebook, you can still take engagement and virality to the next level.

Best Practices

 Let’s assume you’ve adopted some of the best practices of getting good results posting to your Facebook fans:

• Understand your audience and what they care about;
• Post content that doesn’t just say “me, me, me;”
• Use calls to action (“click like if…”, asking questions, or simply saying “tell us in the comments section…”) to get more engagement; and
• Look at the visibility, likes and comments of individual posts to see what’s working and what’s not.

More Advanced Facebook Posting Strategies

Now how can you take it to the next level? How can you get even more likes and comments without a whole lot more effort?
And how do you post good content frequently if you don’t have the time or resources to create a lot of your own fascinating content?
I’ve been testing out a service called InfiniGraph that solves these problems. It does two key things:

• Hypercuration™: It analyzes Facebook pages you choose, compares them to the audiences of other big pages, and finds the most liked, commented on and retweeted posts by those pages.
• Content Optimization and Reposting: It analyzes your Facebook page and Twitter account to find the busiest interaction times and days of the week, then reposts your most engaging and viral content at those times.

Hypercuration (yes, they trademarked that) is really cool. Let’s say you’re growing a Facebook fan page for a company that sells plus size women’s fashion. You can add other such brands like Lane Bryant, Roaman’s, and Eloqui, then Infinigraph will find the most viral and engaging posts for you.
Below is a look at the most recent, engaging and viral content from The New York Times.

And below is a look at how hypercurated content is mixed when you use multiple brand searches:

Mapping Brand Affinities Against The Social Graph

Behind all the posts, InfiniGraph has mapped out how much affinity brands have for one another, based on how the same users have interacted with those brands’ content. I don’t think there’s every been a database with correlations like that in the history of business.
For example, you find that the same people tend to engage with and share content from Wal-Mart, People, The Food Network, and Old Navy. You can use that information for other marketing or advertising campaigns, or share their content on your page.

Content optimization and reposting works on the assumption that not all your fans are seeing all your posts. Plus, these posts are proven and so are the times and days they’ll be reposted.
If you haven’t already manually determined the best times of day and days of the week for posting to your Facebook audience (using either Facebook page insights or PageLever), you’re missing out. That’s when you should post your best material. Or you can let InfiniGraph queue up your most engaging and viral content to automatically be posted at those times every week.

How Military.com Got 41% More Likes On Posts

Military.com has been using InfiniGraph, and when I ran the Facebook page’s publicly available data in Excel, I found:

• Reposted content gets 41 percent extra likes and 43 percent extra comments. These are missed opportunities without the reposting.
• Content posted by Infinigraph gets 2.7 percent more likes and 15.1 percent more comments than content posted via web or SocialOomph. I take it that the latter content is chosen by a human editor- of course, the more engaging and viral content was chosen by Infinigraph’s algorithms and data set.

Readers, what inspires you to engage with pages — do you embrace that when trying to get engagement on your own page?

 

 

Why Google+ Will Become a Social Media Powerhouse [Video]

By Michael Stelzner SocialMediaExaminer:
In this video I interview Jesse Stay, author of Google+ For Dummies and Facebook Application Development For Dummies.
He has a unique experience with both Facebook and Google.
Jesse shares insights behind Google+ and how it compares to Facebook. You’ll discover what Google is doing, how Google+ is different and why Google+ is a social media powerhouse.
Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.

Jesse Stay from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.
Here are some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

• How Google’s focus on Google+ impacts social media
• What Google is getting right and what their biggest challenge is
• How Facebook’s approach is different
• Tips to get your Google+ strategy right
• Discover the opportunity today for businesses on Google+
• Why you need to group your audience into different Circles on Google+
• How mobile impacts Google+

Connect with Jesse on Twitter @Jesse and check out Jesse’s Google+ For Dummies Facebook Page and blog.

5 Trends That Will Shape Small Business In 2012

By John Jantsch at OpenForum:

Did 2011 turn out the way that you expected?  John Jantsch of Duct Tape marketing was pretty accurate with his predictions for 2011: applications over the Internet, mobile marketing, and social media becoming more than just social.  These suggestions certainly came true last year.  While Jantsch focuses more on small business, some of these trends were beginning to emerge in larger businesses as well.  Fortunately for Homepreneurs and small business owners, they are nimble enough to set the trends and not follow the big players in their market niche.

With Jantsch’s track record of accurate predictions in previous years, it is a good suggestion to read his trends for 2012.  As a small or home business owner, set the trend, be competitive, and compete with the big boys any way you can.  It may not be price or selection, but you can certainly do a better job with social media, (especially local social media), community customer service, and creating virtual storefronts on Facebook, eBay, and Etsy.  Big players can’t compete with your ability to adjust pricing or product as quickly.

———-

5 Trends That Will Shape Small Business In 2012

By John Jantsch

It’s time for my annual prediction of small-business trends.
No matter what business trends are reported in the media, small businesses will always adopt them more slowly and in ways that don’t follow the hype.
Small-business owners don’t care what’s cool. They care about what’s practical and what seems obvious—and that’s not always what gets buzz. (I’ve been pretty much spot on with most of my predictions for small-business trends in 2011 and trends for 2010.)
Here are my predictions for 2012. Some of these might not seem as obvious as those in previous years. But, welcome to the odd world of small business.
Social networks evolve into markets
As social networks become more important in the lives of their users and the level of social behavior continues to evolve, they will become much more than outposts. These sites will move toward wholly functioning, self-contained marketplaces.
A growing number of people simply see the Internet as Facebook (and Facebook is OK with that). Other marketplaces such as Amazon, Etsy, Buy.com and eBay are moving toward socializing your product search and becoming decision engines.
This behavior signals the need for small-business marketers to view some outposts as destinations. Consider building a store on Facebook, Shoply, Amazon, Buy.com, Etsy and eBay.
Ramp up your participation in these markets and educate yourself about them. Stop looking at them simply as transaction enablers. These sites are growing into major cities and you need to claim and increase your holdings there before they become overcrowded.
Content becomes conversion
Most small-business owners have come to see content as strategy, rather than merely words to be produced. Blog posts, white papers and in-person and online seminars  create awareness, build trust, educate and illustrate core stories.
That much is now a given in marketing now, but content adoption, expectation and use will evolve next year. I believe you will see a lot of content, social media-driven and otherwise, that is designed to convert rather than to simply inform.
Expect free content to get better and paid content to be part of the logical path. Expect video sales letters and automated online seminars. You’ll see members-only content, ROI calculators and content-enhanced products becoming the norm.
Mobile powers local
Last year, I predicted that mobile would finally land for small business. We’ve talked about mobile as a marketing channel for years, but it seemed it wasn’t happening.
Finally, mobile has become an important medium. This is in part because of smart-phone adoption and in greater part because of the shift to mobile behavior. Every age demographic is using mobile devices to locate local businesses and those people intend to purchase.
Mobile websites, mobile offers, mobile payments and geo-location will become essential elements of the small-business local-marketing toolkit. Even Near Field data exchange, which had a science fiction ring just a few years ago, will be part of that picture.
Oh, and small-business owners will get over their fear of using SMS in smart ways.
Customer service goes community
The cable provider Comcast launched Comcast Cares, a social media push to repair a poor customer-service perception. It set the bar for how brands need to engage with their customers in the always-on, always-public world of social media.
As the toolset evolves with players like ZenDesk and Get Satisfaction, businesses of any size can provide incredibly high-tech support without losing high-touch service.
Small business will embrace the community in a peer service-provider model and start providing service in public-facing, brand-building ways. They will embrace tools that turn customer service into a shared community model, where customers help answer questions and evangelize the products and services.
Search moves to apps
My use of search-engine technology is slowly being replaced by the use of apps that provide me with answers relevant to my personal needs. My guess is that while you may not have taken note, you’re using search engines less and answer engines more.
This trend highlights the marketers’ need to go beyond SEO and PPC and move deeper into social networks, mobile marketing and app-based local marketplaces.
Apps inside social networks provide answers. Apps inside social-bookmark sites serve up interesting reading. Apps in content-curation tools like Storify provide relevant context for content. Apps on mobile devices, such as Yelp’s, help you find bars and restaurants. Apps using QR readers give you deeper information on companies and products. Apps are delivering sports scores, movie times, videos and images.
John Jantsch is a marketing consultant and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine. He founded the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

Article Source:
http://www.openforum.com/articles/5-trends-that-will-shape-small-business-in-2012?extlink=em-openf-SBdaily

Five Tips for Squeezing Social Media Into Your Workday

By James A. Martin at SocialMediaToday:
I’ll just say it outright: Maintaining a presence on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and other social networks is practically like having children. In either situation, you’ve got dependents that need to be fed regularly. (At least with social media, there’s no need to put money away for college.)
When you’re already working virtually around the clock, how do you squeeze social media into your day? Here are five tips to get you started.
1. Do it first thing in the morning. After I wake up, I make my morning espresso, sit down at the table with my iPad, check my email, and read the latest stories of interest in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and other sources. Email, as well as news articles are all potential fodder for tweets and status updates. And most online publications make sharing their content on social networks extremely easy. Early morning is also ideal because you haven’t gotten ensnared yet in that day's to-do items.
2. Take a mid-morning social media break. At some point during your morning, you’ll probably need a break. Or maybe you’ve finished one project and are ready to begin another. A pause in between chunks of work is another opportunity for getting social. Take a quick look at the news headlines, see which hashtags are trending on Twitter, check Google Trends to see what people are searching for. Do you have something to say on anything you’ve viewed? If so, type up a quick tweet (with a shortened link and a relevant hashtag) and get back to work.
3. Keep an eye out for photo ops. When you step out for lunch, do you see something unusual, interesting, funny, or just downright wacky? (I live in San Francisco, where I regularly encounter all of the above.) Great; snap a photo on your smartphone and post it to one or more social media networks. (For instance, an iPhone running Apple’s iOS 5 makes sharing photos on Twitter extremely easy.)
4. Set a reminder on your calendar. If social media isn’t a habit yet, you may need to be reminded to post updates—a job for which digital calendars were made. Create a reminder for a time when you’ll probably have a moment to post. Make sure the reminder pops up on whichever device—smartphone, computer, tablet, or all of the above—that you’ll be using at that time.
5. Write blog posts on the weekend. Writing a blog post often takes a lot more time than a status update. Rather than get discouraged because you can’t find that time during the week, feed your blog during the weekend. With most blog platforms, you can schedule your articles to be posted at a later date and time, to ensure you reach the maximum audience.
Above all, avoid jumping back and forth all day between social media updates, email, meetings, and work projects. The cumulative effect is to leave you feeling scattered and, by day’s end, spent. A better strategy is to take a ‘social media moment’ in between major activities throughout the day.

Why Startups Should Take Advantage of Social Networking Brand Pages

By Amanda DiSilvestro at AllTopStartups:
Social networking sites are extremely important for startup companies because they are a free way to gain a lot of publicity. People are comfortable using social networking sites, so they are more apt to search for a company and get to know a company through these mediums. Fortunately over in the land where social media networks are created, most networks allow companies to create specific brand pages on the social networking sites. As December 9 of this year, all the major social networking sites will allow brand pages. Twitter was the last of the four to open up brand pages (following Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+)
Brand pages generally work differently than traditional individual accounts because they are catered to the needs of a business. If your company still has an individual account and not a company account on any one of the four major social networking sites, it’s time to take social media a bit more seriously. Today 73% of U.S. companies use social media for marketing purposes, and that number is only expected to rise as brand pages become more popular.
If you’re starting a small business and still on the fence about utilizing brand pages, consider a few of the benefits:
Benefits to Utilizing Social Media Brand Pages
Mobile Capabilities – The New Year is expected to be the year of the mobile takeover. People will be searching and surfing on their phones more than ever, and this includes social media. While it can be difficult to optimize a website for the small screen, many social networking sites already have an application that easily converts content for the mobile screen. This will help insure that you have information on the web that consumers can find easily on their cell phones.
Brand Page Perks – There are perks that go along with creating brand pages. Twitter recently announced that their brand pages will allow for larger headings so that companies can include their logos next to their company name. Facebook brand pages have features that allow people to “like” an entire page; thus increasing your exposure. Google+ is connected to gmail accounts, and Google places, making it easy for your company to stay connected as a company (as opposed to as an individual).
Price – Brand pages are completely free to create. While some marketing services charge a larger fee for companies versus individuals, social networks do not care. They are happy to have your company participating, so there is no reason not to take the opportunity.
Comfort Level – People are comfortable using social networking sites because they have their own individual accounts. While people often get frustrated trying to navigate their way through a company website to find the answer to a simple question, they are more apt to remain on a social networking site. They will be able to get the information they need; thus boding well for your business. After all, frustrated people rarely buy.
The most important thing to remember is that you have to manage all of your brand pages. While it is certainly worth your while to have a presence on all of the social networking sites, it can be difficult to keep them maintained. For this reason, many companies hire someone or ask their marketing department to keep an eye on the accounts and answer any customer questions. In the end you will find that brand pages are great for creating and maintaining customer relationships.

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from merchant services to liability insurance for Resource Nation, an online resource providing tips for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Customers Know What They Want From Brands On Social Media, But Marketers Disagree [STUDY]

By Shea Bennett at AllTwitter:
A pair of studies from the Chief Marketing Officer Council and social technology firm Lithium has revealed that what customers want from their interactions with brands on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and what the brands themselves think their customers want, or are prepared to give, is often very different.
The CMO Council surveyed more than 1,300 customers from around the world and discovered that some 67 percent followed or Liked brands to receive discounts and special offers. In the multiple-choice study, 65 percent said that they connected with brands so they access games or competitions, and 60 percent so they could connect with other customers.
But when the same survey was pitched to 120 chief marketing officers (CMOs), the results were polar opposites.
Incredibly, just 33 percent of the CMOs believed that their social media fans were looking for any kind of incentive or reward, and only 27 percent felt that their customers were expecting exclusive savings or experiences.
Only one in ten of the brands surveyed said that social media was a top three priority, with 67 percent stating a lack of time and resources as the reason behind their less-than-stellar effort. But when you consider that 72 percent of the customers surveyed use social media to connect with brands, and 80 percent are more likely to try a product based on a friend’s recommendation on a social media platform, there’s really no excuse. At best, it’s nonchalance; at worst, a commercial strategy of disastrous proportions.
Lithium have supported their findings with this infographic, which takes a look at the digital divide between brands and customers within social media.

How Social Media Changed The Ad Game [INFOGRAPHIC]

By Shea Bennett at MediaBistro: 
As social media rapidly integrates itself into all aspects of our everyday lives, it’s  revolutionized the way that we interact and engage with the world around us, which has presented new opportunities – and challenges – for the advertising industry.
With Twitter pegged to generate $1.2 billion in revenue by 2016, and Facebook rumored to have doubled its revenue in the first half of 2011 (and could already be more profitable than Amazon), there’s a lot of money on the table for brand marketers of all sizes. How have they adapted to the change?
This infographic from MDG Advertising takes a closer look at the social shift in digital marketing.
 

Social Marketing Optimization (SMO)

By Mike Lewis at SocialMediaToday
If you are serious about your social marketing program, you are likely focused on executing across a number of social platforms.  My opinion: ideas are a dime a dozen and execution is key to success - that is of course, if your ideas are right to begin with.  A good friend of mine often uses the phrase "GOYADI" (short for: Get Off Your Ass And Do It) to reinforce that message. The good news is most people engaged in social marketing take that approach to their work.  The problem is that they sometimes forget to stop and check in on the progress to date.  This is the reason why I often recommend that clients stop and check in on their progress a couple of times per year.
The social web changes at an unbelievable rate and the programs and plan we put in place just a few months have the potential to quickly grow outdated.  To add to that, we are often biased by our choices, and sometimes are too close to our programs to know if we are doing the best we can.  This is why the team at Awareness created How to Objectively Audit Your Social Marketing Efforts white paper.  We hope you will use our suggested objective methodology to assess your progress and identify new ways to optimize your social marketing efforts.
An objective audit of your social marketing program will help you answer these key questions:
-        How well are we doing with social marketing?
-        How do we compare to our competition?
-        What can our social marketing teams do better?
Some Process Highlights:
Start with some objective analysis of your Social Reach along with an analysis of the likelihood that your products or brands are or will be discussed in the social realm in the future.  You will learn that Social Reach is the estimated number of potential and existing customers you can reach via your presence on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  Your reach is an important first baseline – you are as big as the number of people you can reach and touch (for a deeper conversation on how to grow your Social Reach, check out The Social Funnel: Driving Business Value with Social Marketing eBook).
Proceed by analyzing the volume and types of digital conversations surrounding your category and products.  You will likely find that new entrants are vying for your customers' and prospects' attention.  Understand who they are, where they are investing and what they are talking about.  This will help you assess if you have sufficient resources and focus to participate and dominate these conversations.
Remember – keywords are the new digital currency.  Create a list of top strategic keywords you want to own and see how well you rank for them with the top search engines.  You have to be good at connecting with your prospects and customers – wherever they are, however they search for your solutions.  Our proposed step three – the SEO Healthcheck, helps you better understand your rankings and keyword authority. You will learn that to succeed with search engines, you need to use landing pages – our research shows that best-in-class companies across all sectors are using landing pages to get to the users who have a clear idea of what they need.
Equipped with this data, you can build your own Social Marketing Effectiveness Dashboard.  This dashboard becomes your benchmark against your peers and against your own progress.  Updating it at least twice a year will help you stay focused, nimble and relevant.  It will also help you identify untapped opportunities for traction and growth. To bring this objective assessment to life, we connected with our friends at Percussion Software, who kindly agreed to be our featured company example.  Percussion Software provides Web Content Management (WCM) software that helps businesses increase traffic, drive conversion and improve social interaction. The company recently invested in a new marketing team, who will use the provided objective assessment as a baseline to measure their improvements and create a targeted approach to social media and SEO practices. Special thanks to our social marketing agency, Scratch Marketing + Media, who helped with the analysis for this paper.
Additional Resources:
If you would like to review other resources on the same subject, I recommend:
-  SMO vs. Engagement: Why They're Different and How You Can Rock Both by Mashable's Community Manager Meghan Peters. You will learn the difference between social media optimization (SMO) and engagement.
-  6 Components of a Successful Digital Marketing Audit by Mark Smiciklas published on Social Media Explorer earlier this year.
Curious to hear from my peers. How do you keep your social marketing program focused? Do you run health checks of your social and SEO programs and how often?  What methods and tools do you use? Comment below so we can continue the discussion...

How to Find and Add Facebook Apps to Your Facebook Page

Are you wondering how to add all those cool links below the avatar of your Facebook page? Those links appear when you install an application (or app) on your Facebook page.
If you want to spruce up your page, there’s an app for that.
For example, Facebook apps can automatically showcase your YouTube channel, but they can also do much more. so let's talk about what apps are, where you find them and how you install them on your page.

Defining Applications

When you first start your Facebook page, there will be some basic Facebook apps in the left sidebar. These Facebook apps include Photos, Videos, Links, Events and Notes. Any other app you install will be a third-party app, which means that someone other than Facebook made it.

 

So how do you get more apps than just the basic ones provided by Facebook?
First you find them and then you install them. Even though that might sound simple, both of those steps are not very straightforward. Finding apps on Facebook can be particularly challenging because the Facebook search feature is notoriously bad. Then steps used to install the app can vary.
Some apps can be installed from within Facebook, others are easier to install by starting on the app website first.
Sometimes it’s even difficult to tell an Application page from a regular Facebook fan page.
An Application page will still have a Like button, a wall and sometimes its own apps installed.
There are a few key ways to determine that it is actually an application. The page may have a Go to App button right next to the App button. Underneath the name of the app at the top, you will see the App classification. And then on the left sidebar you will see the Add to My Page link as you see in the figure below.

 

An indication of how well the app is established is the monthly active users. In the figure above, you see NetworkedBlogs has one million monthly active users, which can indicate that it is a useful and well-established app.
Facebook applications also include games such as CityVille and Mafia Wars and some of the other apps you may have seen such as Give a Hug or the Birthday Calendar.
Since applications are developed by third parties, not all of them work very well and not all of them are reputable. You may have had an issue on Facebook where you click on some post and all of a sudden you start posting strange things on other people’s walls without your permission, maybe telling them to “check out a new diet” or “see who is viewing your profile.”

 

Finding Facebook Apps

If you know the name of the application you are looking for, finding the app can be easier. You can use the Facebook search bar or go to www.facebook.com/search. Using the search tool is better because you can filter by People, Pages, Groups, Apps and more as shown in the figure below.

 

 You can also find a Facebook app by taking a look at how something is posted within your news feed. Some apps will post into the news feed and you can find out more about the app by looking at the link underneath the post as shown by the HootSuite link in the following figure. If you click on the HootSuite link, you will be taken to the HootSuite app.

 If it’s an app that only resides on a page, you can sometimes find out what the app is by looking at the bottom of the page. Many apps have either a link to their external website or a direct link to the app within Facebook as shown in the next figure. Not all apps have this feature and some are custom apps created for a specific page only.

 

Another tool you can use to find Facebook apps is www.Appbistro.com. They don’t have every app listed but they do list a good cross-section of business apps.

Installing Facebook Apps

Once you have found a Facebook app, installing it can be challenging. Some apps install easier from their external website, and some are very easy to install from within Facebook. Many apps’ external websites will tell you exactly how to install it and make the installation process quite easy.

 

If you are installing the app from the Facebook App page, the steps will often be different if you click on the Add to My Page link on the left sidebar versus clicking on the blue Go to App button at the top of the page as shown in the NetworkedBlogs figure earlier. Usually you will eventually end up in the same place, but that Facebook “feature” makes writing directions on Facebook apps a challenge.
I usually prefer to click the Add to My Page link on the left sidebar. When you do, you will see a pop-up box where you can select the page where you want the app added.

 

Now you will navigate to the page where you added the app and find the app listed on your left sidebar.

 

After you click on the app, there may or may not be added steps to configure the app. Follow the steps as listed and you are all set with your fancy new app to dress up your page!
If you would like to move the app position on your left sidebar, click on the Edit link under your complete list of apps on your left sidebar and then you will be able to drag the app to the position you want. When you have the list organized the way you want, click Done and the new position will be saved.

 

So now you have the big picture on what Facebook apps are and how to find and install them.
What about you? What are your favorite Facebook apps?

by Andrea Vahl at SocialMediaExaminer

Reddit, Tumblr and Firefox vs Stop Online Privacy Act

Reddit, Tumblr and Firefox took a stand against a proposed U.S. law by drawing broad black lines on their websites. The proposed law is being described as “censorship” by Internet companies and “piracy protection” by entertainment companies.

The broad black lines made a symbolic stroke as the Internet advocacy organizations declared Wednesday, American Censorship Day. The day marks a time when large web companies dedicate their efforts to encourage users to publically speak out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (Protect IP Act). The bill gives the U.S. Justice Department more authority to pursue websites that host copyright material such as YouTube and Tumblr. Both sites carry user-generated content that easily could have copyright violations.
Tumblr was pretty aggressive in their overall campaign on American Censorship Day. The platform blacked out all user-generated content the moment you first logged on. Once you clicked on the gray lines a message appeared, informing you: “Congress is holding hearings today and will soon pass a bill empowering corporations to censor the Internet unless you tell them no”. You were then given an option to leave your phone number, so you could be connected to your elected representative.
If you left your phone number, a recording of Tumblr CEO David Karp called you back with key points on the issue and then said, “thank you for doing your part to protect the Internet” and then dialed the phone number for your representative.
Other social networks participated in the protest as well. Mozilla and Reddit censored their logos. Users simply clicked through to instructions for getting in touch with their representatives.
Other Internet companies did more traditional methods of protest against censorship – delivering letters and running a full-page ad in the New York Times.
The protest campaigns were being heard on Capitol Hill. A Reddit user posted “I have a friend who works for a congressperson. Her comments: “Our phones have been ringing about this all day. Just got back to my desk and see the news coverage. Whatever group spurred this phone campaign did a good job. BTW – I appreciate you asking folks to be polite. People do usually tend to yell at us.”

By Kenna McHugh at SocialTimes

5 Steps to Launch Your International Social Media

Even though Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google are American companies, social media doesn’t begin and end at the shores of the USA. If your company operates multi-nationally, creating and perpetuating a social media presence globally will eventually become a consideration – if it’s not already.
The challenge is that your social media efforts need to be localized for each target market, in the same way your websites need to be. It’s tricky, but not as difficult as it may seem. Here are the five steps you need to follow to go international with your social media marketing.

1. Choose the right social networks for the country

In some countries, locally grown social networks hold the majority of users’ attention, so you’ll need to do your research on each foreign market before launching your campaign, to ensure you’re targeting the network(s) with the largest portion of your potential audience. Here’s the low down on a few localized alternatives:

Qzone – the biggest network in China, popular with teens and casual users.
Renren – China’s network for university students.
Kaixin001 – the third major Chinese network, mainly used by office workers.
Orkut – the major player in Brazil, also very popular in India. Owned by Google.
Mixi – the biggest social network in Japan.
VKontakte – a LinkedIn-style networking site for professionals, which dominates all others in Russia.
Friendster – still retains some followers post-Facebook in South East Asia. Based in Malaysia.

2. Find out what people like

People tend to use social media for different purposes in different countries, so it’s useful to have an understanding of what people from different cultures will best respond to before launching.
Asia – sharing and downloading music and videos is the most popular pastime on social networks across much of Asia.
South America – the countries with the highest percentage of Twitter users are in South America. They’re also avid bloggers, and frequently access the Web on mobile devices.
India – social networks based around online gaming and music sharing are popular.
Western Europe – most similar to North America, in that content which is either useful (e.g. potential to win a competition) or entertaining does best.

Develop a strategy

Depending on your budget, you have two options when it comes to your social media content strategy – you can either do it yourself, or hire in-country social media managers.
Doing it yourself has the benefit of being theoretically more affordable: you can get your content translated by a professional service and use free tools like Google Translate to get the gist of comments from followers, etc. However, it has the downside of limiting your responsiveness, and also has a distinct chance of ineffective localization (more on that next).
Hiring in-country copywriters to manage your social media channels is undeniably the best option, if you can afford it – it means your profiles will be effectively localized. You probably will be able to respond more quickly, as well.

Localize your content

There’s more to ‘localization’ than simply translating a tweet or blog post from English into another language. You need to take into account:
Is this content relevant to the target audience? If it’s about a product launch that’s solely in the USA, will your potential buyers in India be interested in this? How can you adjust the content to make it relevant to them?
Does it contain culture-specific references? If an article was written for a French audience, and contains references to minor French celebrities, how can you adjust it so it’s relevant to, say, Brazilians?
Have you taken into account different currencies, measurement systems and local spellings (e.g. the difference between US and UK spelling)?
What about other cultural factors? For example, in China there is a list of keywords which will result in your content being banned by the government – have you checked your content to ensure it’s not potentially offensive and won’t be censored?
Have you taken into account current events? A social media campaign calling for buyers to ‘take advantage of falling prices’ could be construed as insensitive in a post-Earthquake location, for instance.

5. Interact

This is the most important part of any social media plan, and it’s where in-country social media managers can potentially make the biggest difference. Just as in the USA, sending uni-directional, offer-laden messages day after day will curtail your results. But if you can engage followers, you have a better chance of successfully turning your brand into a living, breathing entity.
And that’s a social media success, no matter what country you’re in.

by Christian Arno at ConvinceAndConvert

60% Of Small Businesses Find Twitter Effective For Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

Last week we reported on research that suggested that just 10% of small businesses use Twitter as part of their marketing strategy.
It goes without saying that this is a surprisingly low number, and even more so when you consider that some 60% of small businesses who do use Twitter find it effective for engaging with their customers.
Engagement marketing firm Constant Contact surveyed 1,972 small business owners and employees in October 2011, and discovered that Twitter (60%, as above) is second to only Facebook (86%) amongst preferred methods for small business marketing (LinkedIn rated 55%), while video sharing (71%) is also seen as effective.
Facebook continues to be the social tool de jour for small businesses – a heady 96% say that they use it.
Other key takeaways from this infographic:

• 81% of small businesses now use social media (up from 73% earlier this year)
• 51% say their customers use social media (up from 38%)
• 67% say that social media is easy to use

Build Your Brand With Fabulous Social Media, Great Content And Outstanding SEO [INFOGRAPHIC]

Content is king, they used to say.
Then all that appeared to matter was the quality of your backlinks and SEO.
Now, it seems that the only thing everybody is talking about is Twitter and Facebook. What is a brand to do?
The reality is that each of these methods still has tremendous value, but their weight can be increased several magnitudes when combined to work together. While standalone usage of any of these concepts can shift a few eyeballs, insisting upon first-class content, outstanding SEO and wonderfully-engaging social media allows brands and marketers to see the kinds of results – and sales – they’ve only dared to dream about.
Yep, you’ve guessed it: this whole is very much greater than the sum of the parts.
This infographic from internet marketing firm Vertical Measures looks at the authority building machine for brands.

61 Percent Of The World’s Top Brands Already Have Google+ Pages

It’s been just over a week since Google launched business pages and already a whopping 61 percent of the world’s top brands have created Google+ pages.  However, site, search and social management platform BrightEdge reports that these brands are having mixed success.  They report that big brands like Coke, McDonalds and Verizon are attracting only dozens of fans.

The BrightEdge study analyzed the world’s Top 100 brands and found that a collective total of all of these brands’ fans on Google+ was only around 148,000 while their collective total of Facebook fans was a whopping 300 million.
CEO of BrightEdge Jim Yu says, “Brands have been quick to embrace a presence on Google+, but clearly there is a long way to go in establishing social networks that really have scale and deep user engagement.  Now the real work begins for these brands if they want to extend their social presence on the Web from Facebook to the new Google+.  And it will be interesting to see how these communication and marketing channels will grow in a way that remains meaningful for the world’s top brands.”
BrightEdge also reported that of the 61 percent of brands that created Google+ pages, only 12 percent were displaying links to these pages on their home pages whereas 53 percent of the Top 100 brands display links to their Facebook pages.  This could, of course, be due to the fact that the Google+ phenomenon is still pretty new and these brands may be waiting to see how their pages catch on before doing an overhaul of their site design to add the link.
I also think it’s important to point out that many of these brands have been accumulating Facebook fans for years and they’ve only been on Google+ for a little over a week so I don’t really know if it’s fair to call out Google+ business pages as ineffective just yet.
What do you think?  Are Google+ pages a waste of time for brands or do you think we’ll see them pick up in the coming weeks and months?  Do you or do you plan to follow any brands on Google+?

By Megan O'Neill  at SocialTimes

Twitter Now Offers SMS Notifications For RTs, Favorites And Follows

Love hearing your phone go “ding” every time you get a @mention or @reply? If you do, your world is about to become a whole lot more awesome: Twitter has just released a new notification feature that will allow users to get SMS messages for even more activity on the network.

If you’re already receiving SMS or text messages whenever you get a @mention or @reply on Twitter, you’ll no doubt want to add on the new options that Twitter quietly rolled out this week.
You can now receive a text message whenever anyone retweets you, favorites one of your tweets, or when someone new follows you.
These three new SMS features correspond with the “Activity” tab that Twitter rolled out (in conjunction with the “@username” tab) to replace the @mentions and retweets folders.
Within the “Activity” tab, you’ll no doubt have noticed that you can view not only your @mentions, but your tweets that have been retweeted, favorited, and your new followers. The new SMS option lets you choose all, some, or none of these events to be text messaged to your phone.
To set up your SMS notifications on your phone, simply visit your mobile settings page and follow the instructions, or read Twitter’s help page on the subject.
This new feature will no doubt be fun for those new to Twitter. Being able to explain to your date that those seven text messages you received during dinner were actually 2 retweets and 5 new followers will no doubt impress. Just be sure you’ve got an unlimited text messaging package, or you might not feel so cool when you take a look at next month’s bill.

By Lauren Dugan at AllTwitter

Google Music Launches with Free Listening on Google+

Google Music went live for U.S. users today, leaving the invite-only beta announced this summer. It's free, and it lets you host up to 20,000 of your songs and stream them to your devices. You can also "pin" songs from the player, which will cache them on your device for playing offline.
You can also now purchase music from the Android Market. It's available in high-quality, 320kbps MP3 format, and you get a 90-second preview before you buy in the store. But to drive more sharing and purchases, the service is integrated with Google+. Music that's shared to Google+ can be played back in its entirety by anyone in your circles.

 

Everyone's searching for a lasting business model for the future of music. On the content side, Google has to contend with Apple, Amazon, and the established digital retailers. But the state of the industry also depends on social sharing, which means that Google Music has to make music sharing better than Facebook's integration with Spotify.

Facebook is a social network bigger than most countries, so Spotify's streaming-only music business has a scale advantage. But Google Music offers something no other social music service does: full-length, high-quality playback for all your friends on Google+. Google Music is a compelling offering, giving users a 20,000-song streaming locker for free, and the Android Market music store has lots of discovery features. Would a great music service like this drive you to use Google+ more?

 By Jon Mitchell at ReadWriteWeb

LinkedIn Introduces Infographic-Style Dashboard for Groups Statistics

LinkedIn introduced a new Group Statistics dashboard that breaks down the demographics and growth of groups. “Now every one of the million plus groups on LinkedIn has its own infographics,” LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner posted about the dashboard on Twitter.

The Group Statistics dashboard turns information about each group into an infographic view of summarized data, which is broken down into three areas: Demographics, Growth and Activity.
Anita Lillie, LinkedIn Data Visualization Designer, explained in her blog that they designed every infographic view to focus on the chief areas to help you identify and understand how your group is doing. For instance, users can view the group’s growth, designating how many new members joined the group in the last week by viewing the graph of the group’s week-to-week expansion. The “Activity” tab indicates the number of discussions that took place inside the group. The Group Statistics dashboard also allows you to know the number of members who have received a promotion or changed jobs. Lillie says, “This data stays fresh: It’s updated every day.”
If you find any view of particular interest or an aspect that you’d like to share with a friend or colleague, you can send that view via your favorite social networking channels like LinkedIn or Twitter.
The professional social networking platform’s new feature is worth trying out. You can go to any one of their LinkedIn groups and with a few clicks see the group’s dashboard.

By Kenna McHugh at SocialTimes