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Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
Business networking site LinkedIn has acquired the team behind popular content sharing platform SlideShare.
SlideShare – which allows professional users to create and host presentations, videos and PDFs online – was launched in 2006 and now has 29 million unique users a month.
LinkedIn paid $119m (£74m) to acquire SlideShare, saying it aligns “perfectly” with LinkedIn’s mission.
A SlideShare app on LinkedIn was already proving popular with professionals. It is thought LinkedIn will now integrate SlideShare into its core site as it looks to improve its ‘product’.
LinkedIn’s current success – it has amassed 161 million global users – is based on the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook. However, unlike Facebook – where users connect with ‘friends’ (random and real-life) -LinkedIn’s niche has been to focus entirely on professional networking.
As a result, the site has become a mainstay for professionals looking to move up the career ladder, make business connections or find new staff.
In fact, LinkedIn has become something of a playground for recruiters and service providers: it has made one-step transglobal headhunting a reality, whilst Internet marketing content can be sent directly to the inboxes of some of the world’s most prestigious and connected CEOs.
The acquisition, confirmed by LinkedIn on May 3, cost $119m in cash and stocks (a split of around 45%55%).
LinkedIn said it was now looking to integrate SlideShare into its core site – giving professionals simple access to tools allowing them to create and share work online, whilst signficantly boosting the site’s attractiveness to new users.
LinkedIn’s CEO, Jeff Weiner, explained: “Presentations are one of the main ways in which professionals capture and share their experiences and knowledge, which in turn helps shape their professional identity.
“These presentations also enable professionals to discover new connections and gain the insights they need to become more productive and successful in their careers, aligning perfectly with LinkedIn’s mission, and helping us deliver even more value for our members.”
SlideShare CEO Rashmi Sinha, added: “We built SlideShare to help professionals share presentations and connect people through content.
“What we can build with LinkedIn, the largest professional network on the Internet, is the most natural extension of this vision.”
Shortly after announcing the acquisition, LinkedIn revealed its first-quarter revenue for 2012 – showing a 101% rise year on year.
LinkedIn’s revenue for the first quarter was $188.5m (£116.5m), with income from the same period rising from $2.1m to $5m. More than half the total revenue comes from LinkedIn’s “hiring solutions” unit, whilst display advertising revenue rose by around 73%.
LinkedIn floated on the stock market last year, with stocks worth around $45 at the start. They have risen by around 70% since.
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Tags: business, corporate, documents, LinkedIn, network, networking, online workspace, powerpoint, presentations, professional, share, shared, slideshare, video
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Google has launched a new initiative to get more small businesses using 360 degree and high quality images on search pages, G+, Google Maps, and Google Places and local pages. The new Google Business Photos site includes a list of Trusted Photographers in and around a limited number of UK cities, but Google are actively seeking businesses requesting photographers to join the program and help businesses to use images in search and on Google properties more effectively.
The resulting photos after a shoot are stitched together using panoramic technology to create a 360 image which allows zoom, pan, tilt etc and hence permits website visitors to get a great experience of how it will be to visit your business. This is not only suitable for retail outlets, museums, gyms and salons, but also for restaurants, cafes, hotels, B and Bs – infact, nearly every business could benefit from this.
The photos are stitched together – you can do this yourself with apps such as Photosynth – and can then be used on your own website, as well as on Google properties such as Google Places etc. You can also upload your own 360 photos to Google Places etc if you wish, and embed these photos elsewhere with a small HTML snippet.
There would seem to be a likelihood that Google is looking to add an extra dimension to Streetview by allowing users of SV to virtually enter businesses with these photos, which would be an interesting development, and make a useful marketing addition to SV for businesses.
AdWords Express vouchers are being offered to the first who take up this offer, but the vouchers expire on 31st March 2012 so you need to act fast.
Tags: 360, adwords, business, express, Google, images, panorama, panoramic, photos, places, streetview, trusted photographers
Posted in Blog, Google, Small Business Resources
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Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
As we said in Part 1 a while ago, businesses were not at that time permitted on Google + but that was no reason not to start thinking about how you will use it once the business applications open up.
19th September NEWSFLASH – Google+ is now wide open to everyone!!
Google+ is likely to advance quickly once the basics are resolved and Google announced today that they had passed 100 major changes to G+ which had been requested or were on the G+ team wishlist. Having a user base of at least 10 million within only a few weeks, even as a closed beta, the feedback came thick and fast for the development team. In addition, even a quick look at the different applications and services that Google can add on and integrate within G+ puts it considerably ahead of the vast majority of the competition, and that work has been ongoing throughout the summer.
Just a quick look at this page of Google Products, let alone the many Google Labs gives you an idea of how broad the Google church now is and where G+ might be going.
So, the integration of multiple different products inside Google +, or easily accessible from within G+, does indicate that for some G+ could be the portal from which all things happen. However, for others, change is to be avoided at all costs, and if there is a tool which works for you then it is unlikely that you will change it in a hurry.
What this means for businesses is that Google+ may well become yet another place in which you need to seek out your target audience, but not everyone will be using it, so you will still need to target your audience using the applications which they prefer. This could be Facebook, Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn etc.
It is also possible though that just as Tweetdeck has become the most popular Twitter app, third party developers will help to integrate existing tools with G+. Facebook has made this very difficult except with Connect, because the whole arena is closed off and everyone wanting to develop for Facebook must do so inside Facebook. Google is unlikely to make the same mistake, and the API for G+ is now available which means that many of the integration tools which were available previously will likely be superseded by apps developed within the API.
Will G+ take off as a replacement for Facebook for businesses? Right now, as Facebook also announce many changes, the likelihood is that as a business you will need to market to more than just one social network. But G+ now offers functionality for your business, rather than just as a marketing tool, that you would do well to look at. Shortly, we will be blogging about Hangouts and the changes announced this week that could save a fortune in producing content, collaboration, and exciting ways to engage with your customers.
Tags: API, business, g+, Google, google plus, tools
Posted in Blog, Google, Small Business Resources, Social Media
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Friday, August 19th, 2011
Following the UK riots, the major social media companies, including RIM, have been summoned to appear before the government to discuss the option to close down the major social networks in the event of similar ‘uprisings’ occurring again.
When news first broke with the suspicion that BBM (Blackberry Messenger) was being used to quickly inform large numbers of people about plans for disorder, many were discussing the potential to close down the network to prevent further spread of the BBMs. Some of the BBM messages were posted online as evidence of its use.
However, as swift action was not taken to do such, then it began to occur to more people that giving the government the right to take this level of action in a crisis could seriously affect freedom of speech, as well as businesses. The government has loudly condemned the actions of countries such as China and Libya closing down networks in the past, so it would seem marginally hypocritical to do the same in the UK.
It also clearly ignores the positive benefits that social networks have brought in similar circumstances viz Egypt, and also the UK riots when the voluntary clean ups organised via Twitter eg under the #riotwombles and #riotscleanup hashtags, must have saved the UK taxpayer, councils and businesses a fortune.
This approach also misses the fact that a huge amount of information was disseminated through the social networks which helped to provide photos, facts and allay the fears of many who were often poorly informed by the mass media and government. Whilst news crews were being attacked, and hence not venturing into the hardest hit areas until after the event, people who were present eg by virtue of living or working in the location were providing factual accounts, pictures and videos of the actuality of the situation.
If networks such as social media were to be closed down, en masse or in certain locations, whether for the duration of a crisis, or more likely for far longer than the actual disturbance, this could cause expensive havoc for businesses, who have begun to rely on social media marketing as an integral arrow to their online marketing bows. In addition, Blackberry is quite often the phone and network of choice for enterprises and businesses, and making it impossible to use for any length of time could only harm those businesses who use Research in Motion hardware and products. This usage is often company wide and losing that communications capacity could cause millions and millions of pounds worth of daily losses UK wide.
Should the government be allowed to take such a decision and could it do more harm than good? Many companies are seeing a hefty percentage of their revenue now coming from online sources and the Internet is one of the biggest sources of UK revenue now (according to Google’s Connected Kingdom report), generating over £100billion per year, and making the Internet a larger sector than transport, construction and utilities. Can we really afford to shut down any section of it, for any reason?
Businesses should begin to speak out about the government having the power to do so because it seems more a knee jerk reaction to the problem, when the government should focus on the causes of the problem. There also needs to be a wholesale acceptance that more good than harm may have been done by keeping the networks open and accessible for the duration of the riots, and business leaders should be speaking out as a matter of urgency before the meeting next Thursday.
The impact on business at a time of recession, or even at any point in the future, could prove disastrous.
Tags: BBM, blackberry messenger, business, closure, facebook, government, impact, network, recession, Research in Motion, riots, social networks, twitter, UK
Posted in Blog, Social Media
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Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
The video chat feature that Facebook have announced in partnership with Skype is being rolled out today for millions of users. This is obviously a rolling program as we cannot yet see it yet, nor can we see the group chat facility that has been promised (more on that later).
However, having been using Google+ Hangouts avidly for the last week, we can already see a flaw in the Facebook offering. Hangouts allow, today, up to 10 people to enter a group video chat. One on one video chat in a Hangout is a simple matter by only inviting that one person!
From a business point of view, the Hangout option of up to 10 people is extremely attractive. Live webinars with 9 invitees, live focus groups with attendees from across the planet, online project collaboration between diverse teams and/or experts/consultants, share a Youtube video to highlight a point or to see what your competitors are putting online in video media, feedback from your customers, tech support through video. IN reality, the uses are endless and Facebook does not offer more than a limited spectrum of uses because of the 1 to 1 only choice.
Yes, we understand that for businesses using Facebook already, the closed space that is currently G+ means that many of your customers are not in there. Yet. But the field trial is not going to remain closed for long. And when your customers start moving to Google +, which undoubtedly they will because it is Google, then you need to be ready to make the most of it.
Google has played the canny marketing game it often does – using scarcity and hence DESIRE as a driver for adoption. However, there is a very practical reason why G+ is closed – much of it is definitely not wrinkle free yet, and whilst much is intuitive, there are features which will flummox your average home user. And those home users = customers for the businesses which generate Google’s billions. So it must work for those people before the doors are fully open.
Focusing on the positives of Facebook’s video chat, it has long been believed that video would be the ‘killer app’ on the Net and not just video content from Hollywood etc. The telephone took off when it stopped being used to transmit content in broadcast mode (songs on a Sunday as I recall was the earliest use!). When users were allowed to make their own content by talking to each other, the telephone became a ‘must have’; so the advent of sufficient bandwidth allowing video chat to be possible, (with broadband becoming more affordable and accessible) has meant that the opening of channels to allow that video content to be created have become possible.
Allowing everyone to be able to talk to anyone who they have friended on Facebook opens a huge raft of possibilities. For businesses, the most obvious use is customer services. Here is a direct line to the company you want to talk to, and you can see the person at the other end. This gives a boost in confidence to the consumer, and businesses should be rapid adopters of the opportunities this presents. Although this does mean that any company will need to have customer support staff who are comfortable using this technology and have the time to attend to video chat requests.
Now, on to this improved chat. The actual announcement is a nothingness – it’s just group text chat. This has been in existence for such a very long time outside of FB that the announcement falls flat really. Its use for businesses may allow another level of open, two way communication – which businesses really need to come to terms with in this new era of so-me – but it is no ways a ground breaker as Skype conference calls with the added chat facility have been around for sooo long, as well as a zillion other text chat options. This is no ground breaker and in itself simply re-inforces the feeling of fear that this entire press conference communicated.
Overall Summary – the quality of the video chat seems to be better at this time than Google+ Hangouts, but G+ is a trial and Google have not thrown the resources at it yet whilst in test mode. Multi-person video chats are the killer app, not one to one. The group text chat means nothing.
BUT, businesses need to start thinking how they are going to manage the human resources to back up their presence on social media. There are going to be two major social networks now, and whilst G+ looks like it might be the choice of the more techy audience (for now at least), the reality is that in a few short months, any business will need to be on both, whoever your target audience is.
This means that whilst metrics are important, business behaviour will need to be far more pro-active and imaginative about how to engage. Customers already complain regularly about business failure to engage with them using the tools that the customers are using eg Twitter, FB, etc and being in broadcast rather than dialogue mode has the potential to be a reputation killer. We all know what happened to Ratner and understanding how to communicate in and with the public using social media is going to become a core business skill.
Social media is no longer an ignorable sales, marketing and promotion mechanism. The big players are evolving their partnerships ready for one enormous battle for users – Skype + Microsoft + Facebook vs Google + their constant buy-outs of partner technologies, services and apps to give them an ever-extending portfolio. You cannot as a business pick a side, so you will need to learn to work with and on both of them.
Tags: business, facebook, g+, Google, marketing, Microsoft, opinion, Promotion, sales, skype, Social Media, video chat, zuckerberg
Posted in Blog, Google
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Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
In case you have been under a rock, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and Tony Bates, CEO of Skype have just made a live announcement about new chat and video chat features within Facebook.
The first announcement was about the Open Computer Project, which has been underpinned by a need for better infrastructure to deliver service to Facebook users – servers and data centres. As this is not the core interest of the readers here, we’ll gloss over it!
The next announcement was the one everyone has been expecting following Google+ opening its field trial doors last week – video chat within Facebook. G+ has Hangouts and some of us are addicted, and very excited about the potential for our business clients, as well as on a wider social level for consumers. What was Facebook going to announce to compete with this?
I have to admit to being disappointed. My initial feeling is that this announcement has been rushed out because of the Google+ launch.
It (or someone) has missed the fact that G+ is a field trial and certainly does not seem to have taken any account of the fact that hundreds of thousands of users are clamouring for, and not getting, G+ invites. Google is not relenting in a hurry and just letting people in in droves; the product development forums make it crystal clear that Google is trying extremely hard in this, its third attempt, to get social right this time. New users are being let into the trial in trickles, not floods. Ergo, IMHO, there is no immediate threat to Facebook’s userbase right now, and this early announcement may prove an undoing over time.
G+ has launched with a slick mobile app for Android, and also a mobile browser interface which is intuitive and easy to use. Facebook has launched video chat and chat enhancements without any mobile solution. I think implying that this has not been done yet because FB wants to get the desktop/browser version working first was the first real indication of the hurry to get this announcement out. particularly when later on in the presentation, Zuckerberg clearly states that the three biggest trends that drive FB activity are 1) apps 2) mobile and 3) groups.
If that is the case, and FB needs user activity to grow its business, then surely you would focus on providing a mobile app from the word go for this new partnership with Skype? After all, Skype have had a mobile app for years and 50% of Skype’s own traffic each month – a staggering 300million minutes – is video chat. Adding over half a billion potential users of this video chat facility would imply to me that a mobile app would be essential in light of the massive growth of mobile internet access. (And might help pay for those new data centres Facebook are building!)
Seeing how the clunky chat has been improved (um, not much at first glance!) makes G+ Hangouts look even more impressive. And Zuckerberg’s comments when asked what he thought about Google + Hangouts by Ben Parr of Mashable gave an even greater impression that this has been rushed out. Focus on the fact that 1 on 1 video chat is going to be the biggest use. Hmm, no, I don’t believe so. The killer app is group video chat, and the facility to do precisely that has been included in Google+ from the outset, whereas FB are planning to work on it over the coming months.
Part 2 of our impressions about this and its effect on businesses using Facebook to follow shortly.
Tags: business, chat, facebook, Google, skype, video
Posted in Blog, Google, SEM Industry, Social Media
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Monday, July 4th, 2011
For far too many years, too many people have believed that Search Engine Optimisation was the be all and end all of Internet Marketing. Millions of pounds have been spent (wasted?) on endeavouring to get to the top of the search engines; often without fully understanding, “WHY?”
However, Google has taken steps recently that should make many realise that even Google has spied the fact that no longer is search going to be the predominant method for finding your business.
RECOMMENDATION is.
WORD OF MOUSE.
And the sooner businesses see what Google has, understand what Google is doing, and adjust where they spend their marketing pounds, the better for the bottom line.
Even in-house it has been a struggle to get SEO and PPC people to understand the importance of social media, and the changes that was bringing to SEO. That importance and those changes began a few years ago, are becoming prevalent now, and stretche far into the future. Just like language changed the stone age world, so we are seeing similar changes now, online.
For many, this is disruptive and has been hard to grasp, mainly because the mantra of “SEO is great” has been around for so long that many in the SEO world could not cope with “SEO is DEAD”. People have become locked into the algorithms so deeply they have missed what is going on in the “outside world”
The introduction of more bandwidth into the online world has meant we have gone from simply broadcasting to COMMUNICATING. And no-one communicates more than a pro-active consumer. Many businesses have attempted to ignore this fact: by locking down access to social sites for their employees; by making comments unavailable on press releases, stories, blog posts etc; by not adding Chat buttons to the site to talk to passing trade; by pooh-poohing sites such as Facebook for as long as they dared until the noise could no longer be ignored. After all, in ye olde world, businesses had control over the messages that were carefully crafted to be released. That world has long gone.
All of this communication has come, not because Google existed (there were search engines and SEO practioners for more than 10 years before Google arrived on the scene), but because the way we all use the Internet is changing. And Google have realised this, and are taking steps to extend their dominance beyond a dying industry – search – to a growing one – communication.
(Image Source: Mashable.com)
Google are making a huge number of changes, and these have already begun. Google+ is one, but Google is endeavouring, and will undoubtedly succeed, to make the whole of Google’s multiplex of products work together seamlessly, or (better than they have) alone, should that be the choice of the consumer.
Google Calendar has already changed and Gmail has new profiles that are on Preview at the moment, but are shortly to be rolled out. (Click on Settings, Themes, Preview and Preview (Dense) for a ….preview!).
There are changes coming to Youtube as Google begins to hire people as citizen journalists in US cities to possibly threaten the big bad media. And search-based ads have been under threat by Facebook’s huge amount of personal data offering advertisers granular targeting, so Google is working on that too – not just through Google+, but also with the +1 button for personalised search within their own engine.
Google appears to be about to bid for Hulu as well, which will take Google into the world of Hollywood. And increase users’ time online. Which is where the purpose of Google’s trip into the world of fibre networks to the home becomes a serious threat to telcos. Particularly if Google pursues open access models which could turn the world of companies such as BT on its head, forcing them to find alternative revenue streams which Google has not already mopped up.
Recommendation engines are another big thing that has been coming at us, slowly but surely, and Google isn’t slow on getting involved in this either. One example is Hotpot is a beta recommendation engine for places you and your friends recommend, and Google+ Mobile has launched with Places in-built, which will give them a running start on gathering info, particularly as Maps is an integral part of the Google+ toolbar.
The +1 button on its own should have made SEO people conscious that the days of knowing what will show in a searcher’s SERPS are limited, of not already gone. The addition of the huge amount of slicing and dicing possible with news, discussions, realtime, shopping etc on the left hand side of the SERPS was also an indication that to optimise a web page for that level of granularity was now getting difficult, if not impossible. No longer is it an option to sit down and create profiles for users based on whether they were likely to be conducting research, or shopping.
Those days of that simplicity of search are long gone. And hence so is SEO as most agencies and SEO experts think of it. Whilst there has long been debates about where the blurry lines of SEO activity begin and end – does it include PPC, or posting to fora, or article marketing, for instance – now that debate is defunct. SEO is dead. You cannot optimise for the search engines any more and justify it. You must optimise for the consumers. After all, they are the ones who buy your products, who seek the information you offer, and who are increasingly unlikely to use a search engine to do so.
Tags: +1, algorithms, article marketing, business, communication, discussions, fora, FTTH, Google, online marketing, places, realtime, recommendation, recommendation engine, SEO, seo is dead, serps, shopping, Social Media, word of mouse
Posted in Blog, Google, SEO
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Saturday, July 2nd, 2011
The big announcement this week has of course been Google+ and the limited field trial. Not so limited that people still aren’t managing to sneak in through various back doors! The general consensus from those within the field trial is positive, although obviously the entire reason for the trial is to find bugs and gather feedback so there are plenty of critiques, complaints and suggestions doing the rounds. And Google are responding in double quick time and making changes faster than users can find things to be critical of!
However, overwhelmingly it seems that the vast majority of the (lucky) early adopters want to see Google succeed; if only, to stop the behemoth that is Facebook, which 6 years in, does seem to be suffering a middle-age crisis for many.
There does seem to be a need for an integrator i.e. a one stop shop for everyone’s multiple so-me activities to be easily found, and perhaps Google + is attempting to be this. Add-ons, plug ins and apps will obviously need to be developed, and probably outside Google, just as Tweetdeck was developed for Twitter. It seems that few twitter addicts are likely to give up Twitter for G+, any more than many of us will stop using email, the phone or a letter when these are clearly the right tool for the job.
It would seem that Facebook are going to make an exciting announcement on July 6th, and the money at present is on a video chat with Skype built into FB profiles. There are other possibilities, but this is about the only announcement that will right now derail the buzz about Google’s Hangouts, which seem to be catching on at a rate of knots.
Facebook has made a few other changes this week too, such as adding the possibility of Klout for brands on Facebook. The vast majority of the non-so-me world have probably never have heard of Klout unless their Twitterstream mentions it, so this measure of influence has just taken a big step from the business world to the land of consumers. Klout’s announcement about Facebook integration means that brands can customise the user experience to any brand page according to their Klout score. One has to admit this is a clever move for Klout, extending their reach to consumers, whilst giving brands even more reason to take note of Klout.
This is a nice win-win for the social media world and pushes Klout, which many have been derogoratory about recently, back towards the forefront of activity in the so-me world. Not just for businesses, who should be at least monitoring their Klout score for an idea of how effective their social media activities are, but also for consumers who may well begin to see brands differently once Klout is introduced into the social networking experience.
Whilst many have to date seen Facebook as a purely social experience, the fact that most TV ads now have “Follow us on Facebook” shows that businesses, whilst relatively slow on the uptake, have finally realised that FB is a route to wallets, sales and “brand love”. What businesses need to do far more quickly than they did with Facebook is get into Google+ as soon as possible. Because Google + is not about social networking per se, and this is only one of the many changes coming from Google over the coming hours, days, week and months.
If your company has been relying on SEO, then you need to know that even Google is no longer relying on that. Read the next post!
Tags: business, facebook, Google, hangouts, klout, SEO, skype, Social Networking, social networks, TweetDeck, twitter, video chat, video conferencing
Posted in Blog, Google, SEM Industry, Social Media
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Wednesday, May 4th, 2011
We’ve looked at why you need a co-ordinated marketing strategy, we’ve got you using Twitter (if you weren’t already), and now we are going to look at the next step, which is getting on and doing it.
Step 2 – JFDI!
Once you understand the basics, you need to understand how you can harness Twitter for your success.
1) Find loyal followers – these are the people who will evangelise your messages, promote you, buy from you, talk to you, and support you. Without loyal followers, Twitter is simply a time sink that becomes useful for research but little else.
2) Think out of the box to customise Twitter to your own ends
3) Don’t get stuck with one strategy. Be flexible, agile and ready to change. Be reactive as well as proactive.
4) Work with other people to cross promote and retweet.
Let’s take each point in turn.
1) Find loyal followers.
When Twitter first became popular, there were many tweets along the lines of “How to find 1 Million new followers in a month” as many people perceived fame and fortune in numbers. However, we all know it is quality not quantity which matters.
There is also a limit to the number of people who you can follow EFFECTIVELY. If you wish to build relationships with those you need to, you must communicate with them where possible on a 1 to 1 basis, rather than 1 to many.
The purpose of Twitter, for many people who are likely to be those who buy from you, talk about you in a positive light etc, is to communicate. Therefore, it is simply not sufficient to follow everyone you possibly can. You need to a) be choosy b) notice people – an auto welcome tweet when they follow you may seem easy but it’s not good form – be personal and personable and c) nurture your followers by getting to know them.
2) Think Out of the Box
Everyone can click “Follow” (as was discovered by the poor chap who unknowingly tweeted Osama Bin Laden’s death). You need to make your followers glad they are following you, because you are different. And be aware of the pains of 15 mins of fame – you should aim for long term strategies, not just quick wins. (Although we will be posting about getting this balance right next week).
Large corporates need to get personal, small companies need to think bigger, bloggers need to share other blogs as much as promote their own, sales and marketing teams need to get under the skin of their customers to see what makes them tick.
Standard rules may or may not apply on Twitter and in online marketing, but the truth is that you need to stand out from the crowd.
Very standard out of the box thinking would include: Offer prizes to the person who RTs you most in a month, but only offer it on your website, so that serial RTers don’t just win by reading Twitter but by knowing your site. Run Treasure Hunts, photo competitions, Twitter focus groups. Offer extraordinary or out of the ordinary special offers. Create really useful lists for your followers based on their feedback. Add that little extra to their day that helps them to use Twitter more effectively. Find the product(s) they are looking for – even if not yours. Answer questions, offer advice, be helpful.
(For more advice, speak to an online agency who specialise in social media marketing and watch for our Guerrilla Twitter Tips – coming soon).
3) It’s not set in stone.
You may start on Twitter using it as a broadcast mechanism, e.g. promoting your fresh content to your followers, and you may find that this justifies the time spent setting it up. But is it enough? And is it working? (Are you checking your stats to make sure that enough people are coming from Twitter to your site? And are those people higher value than visitors from other sources? Who converts?)
With social media, you can trial multiple strategies in a fairly short time scale, without spending a fortune. If you have a team tweeting, try expanding (or reducing) the team to see if it makes a difference. If you see a trend developing that you can add in to with your product, a white paper, commentary, a blog post, etc, then give it a go. If you have an idea, run it by your followers first. If it works, roll it out!
4) Cross-promote, co-operate
It’s a tough world. Working together with others makes life, and business, a little easier. Find others who tweet similar information to you, agree to RT (retweet) their tweets and you will RT theirs. Create and share Twitter lists.
Think complementary not competitive. Find others who are tweeting about your region and ask them to tweet about you, follow you and RT you. Get on board with others in the same industry and help each other out getting each other’s information to your group of followers. Follow the media who represent your area, industry, community of interest and feed them stories from your world, not just about you.
Use the mention feature as often as possible to promote your most staunch allies. This is simply the addition of a . in front of the @twittername of that business or individual. It will then reach everyone who follows that person and not just your own followers. It is a rarely used, but very useful feature of Twitter for marketers.
So “I love .@clickthroughsem and the latest series of blog posts about Twitter http://bit.ly/kEEFp4 ” could be your next tweet.
Thank you!
Part 4 tomorrow will cover some of the uses of Twitter that far too many business uses seem unaware of.
Tags: business, guerrilla, hootsuite, lists, Marketing strategy, seesmic, success, tools, TweetDeck, twitter, twitter tips
Posted in Blog, Social Media
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Saturday, April 2nd, 2011
It has to be time to ask – is this innovation or are they all following the cloud crowd?
An interesting social media cartoon has surfaced today….implying that each of the CEOs of the top social media players are watching, and imitating, their competitors far too closely.
Is it accurate? Well, without access to each CEO, it can only be guesswork, but are we not all beginning to feel that there is a deal of toe-stepping and encroaching on each other’s territories going on?
In fact, aren’t many of the social media worlds beginning to look remarkably similar? Even SXSW failed to throw up a clear winner in innovation this year.
As a business looking to use social media for your internet marketing campaigns, it may be worth considering whether during the next year these companies are going to become ever closer, whether one will find a unique selling point, or whether 2 years of similarities may force a new player out of the box?
And if they are all much of a muchness, where do you put your budget if there is barely a cigarette paper to fit between them over the coming months?
Your thoughts would be welcomed.
Tags: business, facebook, Google, Microsoft, Promotion, social, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Blog, Social Media
