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Help, I’ve had a social media breakdown and I can’t tweet-up…

“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” (Albert Einstein)

When I work with clients on Web visibility, I define exactly what we want their social media Economy of Effort plan to engender. I define Economy of Effort in this way – taking the best content and brainshare you can provide and using it in the most efficient and economical way possible to reach your communities through online channels.

In the hype, over-hype, more hype and master hype that the social media “experts” are urging you to buy into about social media profiles, they forget to pass on the real truth that if you can’t keep up with them all, then not one of these tools serve you well.

If you’re diluting your message across hundreds...

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Social Media Affecting BtoB Buying Behavior

Credit: Intersection Consulting.

Credit: Intersection Consulting.

 

A new study from Connected Marketer and DemandGen Inside the Mind of the New BtoB Buyer reveals some very interesting shifts in the behavior of BtoB buyers. 

Push vs Pull

Traditionally information and material about a product or service originated from the company, was evaluated by analysts and distributed by the sales reps.  Now buyers have access to reviews and comparisons online.  They are finding their informaion is many places. They are talking to their peers.

“The buyer is armed with even more information and leverage. Sales and marketing professionals need to recognize and embrace this in order to succeed in today’s market.”

The New Influences in the Buying Process

BtoB buyers are actively using social media in many steps along the path of the purchase-making decision...

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Recent Posts

 
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Hello – Is that really you I’m talking to?

 

Image Credit:  Chiara Marra

Image Credit: Chiara Marra

Mitch Joel’s post about the Death of Social Media suggests that when we treat social media like a traditional marketing channel we’re killing the medium.  I agree.

“The minute we (as a community) allow and accept traditional mass media tactics to pollute Social Media, is the minute that all is lost.”

He refers to the article about Ghost Blogging in the February issue of Entrepreneur magazine.  They interviewed a few professional blogger/tweeters who service several clients. 

For the last 100 years, ghost writing has been an acceptable PR activity. But we were in an era of one-way, mass communication...

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5 Personal Branding Tips to Help You Gate Jump

Why does personal branding accelerate your growth both personally and professionally? It is because when you create an influential and credible personal brand you are playing the game and giving yourself the opportunity to gate jump.

Here are 5 personal branding tips to help you gain lift:

1.) Identify and introduce yourself to 10 strong personal brands in your niche through Linkedin

When you know the people with juice in your niche and you begin to develop a relationship with them, opportunities will come your way. A great way to start the introduction is to read one of their blog posts and let them know what you thought of their work in the introduction...

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A 4 Square Economy?

foursquareThe Next Economic Paradigm is arriving and the first entries include Foursquare. Few people understand the significance of this new class of social media applications. Foursquare contains many (but not yet all) of the components of the Innovation Economy that we have been discussing for several years at Ingenesist.com, Conversationalcurreny.com, and Relationship-economy.com.

Here is what Foursquare does have:

Geolocation: Sure, social media has been great sport for chatting with your buddies across the world, but nothing really happens until the rubber meets the road. people need to be in the same location in order to “build something” together...

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Twittering Grows in China (but not on Twitter)

Twitter remains blocked in China, but that has not stopped Twitter-like activity.

Similar to other foreign Web 2.0 services that the government keeps out, China’s vibrant web sector has created domestic alternatives.

This graph from CIC Data shows that almost 40% of the online buzz they found around the Toyota recall on the day that Toyota president Akio Toyoda spoke in China about the issue came from Sina’s micro-blog.

Note that this is a measure of volume, not impact. A well considered posting on a particular blog or forum may well have had more impact. But it does show that micro-blogs are growing in importance in China for breaking news events...

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The Basics Of Forum Marketing For Your Small Business

Forum marketingOne of the most suggested means of getting traffic to a site is to get involved in forum discussions (or bulletin boards as they are also called) on your topic of choice.  You can find highly targeted forums that are organized and structured around just about any niche or industry you can think of, such as Internet marketing, web design, and search engine optimization.  You’ll also find that forum users are generally pretty Internet savvy and are open to making online purchases.

Internet Forums

Forums are places where people with similar interests can meet, exchange information and chat online. To become a member of an Internet forum you usually have to sign up on a membership site. This doesn’t involve any money...

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Under the Social Media Influence

The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn’t Prove Influence on Twitter, on Read Write Web, cites a recent survey that found “Twitter follower count is somewhat of a meaningless metric when it comes to determining influence.” I was excited that finally someone realized that these numerical measures were totally unrelated to influence. My excitement was short lived, however, as I read:

“They then went on to measure various statistics about these accounts, including audience size, retweet influence and mention influence. The conclusion? Those with the largest number of followers may be ‘popular’ Twitterers, but that’s not necessarily related to their influence. High follower counts don’t always mean someone is being retweeted or mentioned in any meaningful ways.”

“Retweet influence”? “Mention influence”? I have yet to see any of these things linked directly to real influence...

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5 Recent Celebrity Social Media Wins and Fails

Social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter have attracted a lot of celebrity attention, and the aftermath has been a mixed bag of wins and fails, when it comes to their use of the medium. Here are a few recent incidents. You’ll note that ‘Hole’ singer Courtney Love could be part of a list all on her own.

  1. Win: Demi Moore and Mia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) help stop a suicide by responding to a distress message.
  2. Fail: Ryan Seacrest announces American Idol contestant Lacey Brown’s elimination… before West Coast viewers see the episode, potentially being the reason for the worst per-episode ratings this season.
  3. Win: Director Kevin Smith gets thrown off a Southwest Air flight for which he was already seated. Why? Because he was apparently “too fat”. He tweets about it to his 1.6M Twitter followers and creates a PR nightmare for the airline, causing them to issue an apology
  4. Fail: Courtney Love, whose mouth just won’t quit, has had public spats with several celebs and...
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Is your Twitter Home Page your Biggest SEO Asset?

Do you know the Page Rank of your Twitter Home Page? You may be surprised to find it is a lot higher than you think it is – and you probably achieved it without even thinking about it.

For example, the Page Rank for my blog home page is 5 – and that’s taken a little while to get to, not withstanding the blood, sweat and tears of creating and maintaining content. In the course of some client work recently...

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Social Media Can Work For Small Business Too

We’ve heard about the social media success stories of large companies all across the news. Best Buy’s Twelpforce. Zappo’s amazing customer service. The millions of revenue from Dell’s twitter accounts. And that’s all great. But what about the thousands of small businesses hurting after the economic dip in 2009? Can social media affect their bottom line? YES, when businesses engage in social media with strategy and put real resources into the infrastructure and implementation.

To prove social media can work for small business, The Kreisler Group (TKG) performed a 10-week case study with Alegria Cocina, a local restaurant in Long Beach, California...

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Four Reasons Why Companies aren't on Social Media

 While it's easy for individuals to jump on Social Media every day and write whatever comes to mind it's not the same thing if you're a large company. 

 While there are those few companies that do it very well many of them don't have a presence or if they do it's a lame attempt.

Here is my list of the 4 Reasons Why Companies aren't on Social Media...

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10 Ideas to Help Business Navigate Social Media

Almost a year ago I wrote a post called 5 Reasons Social Media is Like Sailing that was well-received. It’s time to update that post.

Since then I’ve come up with more reasons sailors might just have the right approach to social media for business. Even if you aren’t into sailing you might try these approaches to see if they don’t make your time in social media more positive and more productive.

Here then are 10 Ideas to Help Business Navigate Social Media:

1. Pick your boat carefully: Not every craft is right for every sailor just as in social media not every platform is right for every individual. Pick a platform that suits you. Work with one at a time and see what works.

2. Start slowly: Nobody goes from pond sailing to open-ocean sailing in a day, weeks or even years. Learn your own capabilities, learn from others and be willing to get dunked a few times along the way.

3. Find an old-salt/mentor: Every top sailor was at some point helped along by an experienced hand. So it should be in social media: Find someone who literally knows the ropes and can help you navigate your early days. They’ll also be there to stop you ... read more >>
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Rely heavily on Google Analytics? You won’t like this.

Google Analytics might be one of the best things that Google "Robin Hooded" to website owners large and small. The analytics package provides incredible functionality and does so for not a dime.  That combination of functionality and free have lead to massive market share for Analytics.  One estimate last year put Google Analytics at a whopping 80%, while another fell slightly shorter, but still impressive at 74%.

It’s been a win-win for Google and for the sites that use the tool to measure their efforts, but a post on the Google Analytics blog today should have some eyebrows raising.  The post is short, titled:

More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way

Maybe Google realizes they need to earn back some “do no evil” sentiment from the population at large.  Maybe there’s a clever reason why it’s best that you not know what happens with the traffic on your site...

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How to Generate Leads on SlideShare


It will probably come as no surprise that the pre-dominant activity on SlideShare, according to the company's CEO Rashmi Sinha, who I spoke with recently about the launch of their new branded channels, is B2B lead generation.

B2B sales cycles exceed those of B2C, because the former requires someone be walked through a process, learn best practices and see relevant case studies to arrive at a purchasing decision... read more >>
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