Posts Tagged: smart

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22
Apr 10

SmartBrief stats: How business leaders view social media

Nearly all of us have had to explain — and pitch — social networking to our company leadership. Hence your overwhelmingly positive response to two recent blog posts that lay out five steps to building a companywide social-media plan and a plan for selling social media upstairs . These how-to guides are handy, but they don’t address a critical element to making our collective case: knowing what we are up against. To that end, last month, we surveyed the audience of one of our most popular daily news briefs, SmartBrief on Leadership , to get a sense for the overall business climate for social media.  Our goals were to understand how company leaders view social platforms at this moment in time, what their concerns are about adapting them into their business practices and what relevant information they are hungry to know.  More than 2,700 of 100,000 SmartBrief on Leadership subscribers from a diverse set of industries responded, and the results surprised us. A view from the top: How familiar are business leaders with social media? Back to school: 75% of respondents say they were either knowledgeable or actively trying to learn about social media. Are their companies currently using social media/social tools? Getting there : 51% of respondents say their companies are actively using and exploring social media in a number of business areas.  Another 30% are in pilot test/consideration mode.  Only 27% say they are not using social media now and won’t be in the future. Is social media just a marketing fad? Social media is here to stay :  While many leaders say they see social media as somewhat “over-hyped,” 63% of respondents say they disagree with the notion that it is a marketing fad. Is it a waste of time? Good use of company resources : 55% of business leaders say social media is not a waste of time. What are the implications of ignoring social media? Missing the conversation, both good and bad : 83% of respondents agree that social media gives them a window into what their customers are saying about them, and 80% say that social media has the power to magnify negative news about a company. This is obviously a key point of concern. Falling behind the competition : 40% of respondents say they fear they are falling behind their competitors in using social media. Also, 25% admitted that they did not know what their competitors were doing in the space. Clearly, leaders believe that social media has the potential for a significant impact on their business. In the coming weeks, we’ll be digging down further with executives on an industry-by-industry basis into how companies are using these technologies across their operations. Stay tuned for updates as we learn more. In the meantime, is this the kind of feedback you are getting from your leadership? What role do executives plays in the implementation of your corporate social-media strategies? Does taking your social-media goals to the next level require more than simply CEO buy-in? Image credit, Alistair Cotton , via Shutterstock

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12
Apr 10

SmartBrief on: Integrating e-mail marketing and social media

Here at SmartBrief, we’re huge fans of the power of e-mail. But as social technologies become more powerful and more prevalent, it can be difficult to understand how e-mail fits into your marketing strategy. How can make sure you’re getting the most out of every send? How can you integrate your e-mail and social efforts so that they support each other? Read on for a roundup of relevant stories that made it into our e-mail newsletter, SmartBrief on Social Media . Fuse your e-mail and social-media strategies Embracing social media doesn’t have to imply scrapping your e-mail-marketing campaigns, writes Jeanne S. Jennings. Social-media users actually tend to be avid e-mail users, and people are more amenable to receiving marketing messages via e-mail from companies they’re already connected to socially, a study shows, so there’s plenty of incentive to overlap. “Smart marketers know that social and e-mail work together well,” Jennings notes. “[B]y leveraging that relationship they can make both their social-media and e-mail marketing strategies more effective.” MarketingSherpa/Sherpa Blog (3/1) Turn your Facebook page into a newsletter It’s easier than ever to send out e-mail newsletters, thanks to the NutshellMail Facebook app. The service allows users to add an “Email Newsletter” tab to their fan page, allowing subscribers to receive updates by e-mail. TechCrunch (1/18) Use e-mail alerts to grow your company’s blog Corporate bloggers should make sure that they enable e-mail alerts, since they can generate far more traffic than RSS subscriptions, writes Lily Zhu. A survey of more than 600 businesses found that almost 12 times as many people signed up for e-mail alerts as subscribed to RSS feeds, Zhu notes. Many blog platforms don’t turn on e-mail alerts by default, so simply flipping a switch can be an easy way to boost blog traffic, Zhu writes. HubSpot.com/Internet Marketing blog (1/4) E-mail has value in social-media strategies Before you write off e-mail, try to integrate it into your social-media marketing strategy by using sharing tools, Jolina Pettice writes. “Social sharing options embedded in online content have helped increase distribution and reach for thousands of Web sites,” she notes. Share content that is trustworthy, simple, targeted and adds value for the reader, she suggests. Online Marketing Blog (10/14) Nielsen: Social net boosts e-mail use Social media is making users consume more e-mail, not less, a Nielsen study found. Many active social networkers rely on their e-mail to get out notices about Facebook and Twitter activity, Helen Leggatt writes. It may also be that social-media users are more socially active and so they tend to send and receive more communications, she noted. BizReport (9/29) E-mail marketing must be easy to share Social media has changed the dynamic from messaging to engagement and sharing, Mikal Belicove writes, so it’s vital that your e-mail marketing be shareable, too. Make sure your messages are shareable on social sites Bebo, Delicious and LinkedIn, where users are most likely to post and forward them. E-mails with brand names in the subject line are more likely to be forwarded, he notes. Entrepreneur.com/Daily Dose blog (9/16) Improve your e-mail marketing Regardless of who your audience is, there are some guidelines for e-mail messaging that hold true, SmartBrief’s Sarah Brown writes. Keep the writing short, ask readers for just one action and provide graphics and a sample of what you offer. SmartBrief/SmartBlog on Social Media (8/24) Signing up for SBoSM is a fast, free, easy way to make sure you’re never caught off guard concerning social-media news. Our exclusive summaries will help you digest the latest updates in a flash. Check out today’s issue and see what else you’ve been missing. Image credit, Zeffss1 , via iStock

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5
Apr 10

SmartBrief on: Mobile marketing meets social media

Mobile access to social networks is on the rise, and marketers everywhere are looking for ways to combine these two powerful technologies. Worried you’ve missed out on a key development? Read on for a roundup of relevant stories that made it into our e-mail newsletter, SmartBrief on Social Med ia .  For even more best practices on mobile marketing and other social-media topics,  check out the upcoming Social Media Success Summit , which SmartBrief is helping to organize. The event is fully online, so there are no travel expenses, and registration is still half-off for a limited time . 6 rules for building a successful mobile app Smartphone-powered mobile apps can be a great way to create a free promotional vehicle — but only if you know what you’re doing, writes Paul Reddick. The key to mobile success, he adds, is to plan for cross-platform support. “Marketers and product managers need to address the types of customers they want to reach rather than simply a technology platform,” he writes. “When selecting only one platform, the question is, ‘Which 80% of the market do you want to ignore?’” MocoNews.net (3/26) OpenTable serves up mobile-marketing tips With 2 million mobile users generating $100 million in sales, restaurant-reservation site OpenTable knows a thing or two about mobile marketing. The key to success, says OpenTable’s Scott Jampol, is to focus ad spending in short, sharp bursts to cut through the noise and generate the kind of buzz that can amplify your marketing efforts. TheNextWeb.com (3/24) Custom social networks go mobile, location-based Shoutem and Socialight are two companies that allow users to build their own specialized mobile social networks for friends, for a community or for one-off events. Both services include a kind of location-based tagging feature. The tools could allow companies to steer customers to an extremely targeted — and branded — social environment tailored to the customers’ specific needs, Sarah Perez notes. ReadWriteWeb.com (3/5) Report: Social networks post boom in mobile traffic Facebook and Twitter each had increases in mobile traffic between January 2009 and January 2010, according to a report from comScore. Twitter’s mobile traffic increased 347% during that period, while Facebook had a 112% increase. The figures come from mobile-browser access and don’t include posts made via dedicated smartphone applications. Mashable (3/3) Study: 91% percent of mobile Web users socialize online Americans who access the Web via their phones are more likely to socialize online than their desktop counterparts, according to a Ruder Finn study. The study found 91% of mobile Web users socialize online, while just 79% of desktop users can say the same. The average American spends 2.7 hours a day on the mobile Web, the study found, with 45% of those users commenting on social-networking sites and 43% contacting with friends through the sites. ReadWriteWeb.com (2/18) Facebook readies “Zero” version for mobile devices Facebook is preparing to introduce Facebook Zero, a text-only version of the popular social network that will be aimed at mobile users. More than 100 million users currently access the site from their phones, according to Facebook. The low-bandwidth version of the site “omits data-intensive applications like photos,” the company says. BBC (2/16) Bubbly service to harness mobile chatter Bubble Motion is building on its BubbleTalk messenger with a microblogging system for mobile phones. The service, called Bubbly, lets users record and share short messages that can be accessed by anyone and includes text alerts to point fans to the latest posts. TechCrunch (2/9) Why marketers must go mobile Consumers are already embracing the mobile Web, according to a report from Morgan Stanley, and Adam Cahill argues that it’s time marketers woke up to that fact. “Brands are still in the ‘dipping our toes in the water’ phase when it comes to mobile,” he writes. “Meanwhile, consumers have cannon-balled into the deep end of the pool and aren’t looking back.” ClickZ (1/14) , Adweek (1/13) Signing up for SBoSM is a fast, free, easy way to make sure you’re never caught off guard concerning social-media news. Our exclusive summaries will help you digest the latest updates in a flash. Check out today’s issue and see what else you’ve been missing. Image credit, Zeffss1 , via iStock

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2
Apr 10

What will the semantic Web mean for social media?

The semantic Web is sometimes hailed as the future of information technology — an “Internet of things,” in which all devices big and small are constantly talking to us and to one another, enhancing our lives with a breathtaking stream of data. This future can seem incredibly distant.  Researchers are working on a variety of exciting applications for this technology — such as smart power meters for electricity use, RFID-enabled soda fountains and augmented-reality enhanced car windshields . Very cool ideas — but not mainstream quite yet. Meanwhile, we hear the technologists crow about the wonders of the semantic Web and all we can think is, “OK, cool — so when do I get a pair of SmartPants?” (Note to self: Get my company to trademark the concept of “SmartPants.”) But maybe that semantic world is closer than we think. In the lead story of today’s SmartBrief on Social Media , Richard MacManus explains that a critical component of the semantic Web — linked data — is making serious strides, as companies and governments move to get more data online. What does this have to do with social media? As MacManus explains, “one of the reasons the Semantic Web hasn’t yet been widely adopted, at least commercially, is that it’s often difficult or time consuming to mark up data semantically.” I wonder if the social networks can solve the technical challenges of marking up this data, the same way it eased the cultural barriers that made us not want to share data in the first place. While everyone is talking about the possibilities of mobile and location-aware social networks, I wonder if maybe those are just half-measures. Maybe the real potential of social media isn’t in what we say to our networks — but what our semantic networks could say about us. Privacy concerns aside (and yeah, I realize that’s a very big aside), that’s the kind of knowledge that could change the world. Are you excited by the possibilities of the semantic Web? Think it’s all pie-in-the-sky? Interested, but not sure how it connects to social media? Let me know! Image credit, photobank.kiev.ua , via Shutterstock

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Apr 10

5 steps to building a companywide social-media plan

Like many progressive marketers, you believe that social media has the potential to propel your business to the next level. You discuss its merits with your friends and your co-workers — but you just can’t seem to get things moving. Maybe the executive team isn’t listening, or maybe you just haven’t done what it takes to be heard. Ever since we touched on DuPont’s social-media evangelist’s recommendations for selling social media to executives, I’ve been keeping a list of tips about what has worked within companies — including ours. Start small and test. Regardless of what your job function is, find a piece that you think may benefit from social media. In sales? Prospect in LinkedIn or Twitter. In HR? Build out your presence and post open positions on Facebook. Just make sure to keep close track of the time that you spend — as that will undoubtedly be asked of you. Record victories. You’ve been keeping track of your efforts and now have made progress. Anecdotal wins are great, but hard data is what is going to resonate with the most senior of audiences.  Document any numbers you can: page views, conversions, leads, hires, sales, etc. Communicate . This is a critical juncture. When enough victories (and the accompanying data) have been amassed, it’s time to let key people know. Start with your boss– mentioning the wins and focus on efficiency. Think, “I spent an extra two hours this week networking and sharing information on Twitter, and I have landed three new, strong leads.” While you may be excited and want to go direct to the C-Suite with this information, I caution you to communicate in ways that show you’re in this for the long haul. It’s important to generate as many allies as possible– and your boss is key. Assemble an interdepartmental team . Meet individually with the heads of each function/group/department. In all conversations, try your best to leave out the phrase “social media” if at all possible. The point of these “new strategies” is to help meet existing goals. If you introduce the group you’re assembling to senior leaders as a “social-media team,” they might assume it’s an experiment of sorts. This is about using new channels to achieve company goals, not about trying to get more fans on Facebook. Allow the heads of each department to select his/her own representative on the team. If you align the team with core goals, department heads will be less likely to appoint junior staff members. Produce . Now that you have a interdepartmental team, the collective voice is stronger, and “vetted” projects can take shape. This team should continue to test, record and report victories — now with the attention of the C-Suite. One final piece of advice: Check out the upcoming Social Media Success Summit — which SmartBrief is helping to organize — where you can learn business tactics for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and more. The summit is entirely online, so there’s no travel expense, and for the next week or so, registration is half off . It’s the best $297 your boss will ever authorize.

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