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Evolving Social Media Analytics: Insights from Marshall Sponder
Image: Soulart /Shutterstock
We sat down with him to learn about the latest thinking around social analytics and what marketers need to know to stay on top of their analytics game. [read more]
Infographic: The Year of the Enterprise Tablet
Enterprises have willingly and unwillingly started seeing an increase in tablet usage in business. CIOs are adjusting their strategies and infrastructures to either support enterprise-issued tablets or “Bring your own device” policies. No matter which policy prevails in the enterprise, this major shift is shaping infrastructure decisions as well as digital strategies. This infographic provides a brief overview of what has happened so far and some trends that will be seen in the enterprise tablet industry in the coming years. [read more]
Social Analytics: Deriving Insights for Increased Marketing and Sales Effectiveness
Actionable Social Analytics is an evolving business discipline that studies social media metrics to help marketers use the findings to drive business intelligence. Going beyond measuring buzz, reach, retweets, likes and follower growth, social analytics aggregates and analyzes online conversations (industry, competitive, prospect, consumer, customer) and social activity generated by brands across social channels and empowers organizations to act on the derived intelligence to drive business results. [read more]
Communication: The Link Between Social Media and Sales
Social media has completely revolutionized how products are sold, and yet there are still businesses that only use social media outlets to spam their followers with coupon codes and pointless blog posts about how great their business is. Back in 2010, a WhiteHorse survey found that only 52% of B2C business, and a mere 32% of B2B... [read more]
The State of Social Marketing: Industry Trends in Social Media Measurement
Because there are many ways to quantify the value of social media, marketers continue to struggle with social measurement. Based on the collective response of over 320 marketers reflected in our first annual report on The State of Social Media Marketing: Top Areas For Social Marketing Investment and Biggest Social Marketing Challenges in 2012, we are starting to see clearly see measurement patterns based on industry, which are driven by the way they define social marketing success. In this blogpost we identify key social measurements that are most popular by industry. [read more]
Audio Archive: B2B and the Complex Sale
B2B and the Complex SaleThe nature of complex sales has changed dramatically with the adoption of the Internet as a research tool. People on the sales end are much less in control of the process because customers can now find out much about the supplier without asking them directly. Potential customers can discover facts about the... [read more]
How to Make a Sale Using Social Media
This week's episode comes from a subscriber question. Bill Gluth says: I’d love to see you create an online marketing segment on how social media tags into the sales conversation. I see lots of content, comments and sharing but I’m not hearing a lot about sales and revenue generated as a result of that effort. [read more]
Social Media's SpaceTime Problem for Event Marketing
Image by Anne Helmond via author's blog
Facebook's acquisition of Gowalla is a good indicator that something in the works. At first I suspected that the delay in changes to the brand pages on Facebook was a bit of a 'Let's wait & see what Google does with Google+ brand pages" but it looks like it's going to be something more. The Location space is inherently tied to an event time & place space and Facebook gets that. [read more]
Steps for using Social Media to Build a Loyal Customer Base
Engaging customers through social media appropriately, helps influence their decisions in your favor and encourage buying. There are several opportunities that are presented to a seller and at each stage taking the right action could help in converting and creating a loyal group of customers. [read more]
Buyerology Trend: Humanize the Buyer Experience
"In the future, buyer expectations for experiences that engage them contextually and provide learning opportunities will grow. The open systems of new social technologies fueling the rise in humanizing the buyer experience. Buyers will be looking to integrate their business experience into their personal human experience." [read more]
Twitter is Big for Business
Twitter is big business. This brief article tells you why your company should be making the most of Twitter's power as an open, global forum for discussion, idea-sharing, pitching, questioning, brainstorming and, if you’re subtle about it, selling. [read more]
Facebook’s Subscribe: The Death of Fan Pages, or is it?
Facebook’s introduction of the “subscription” feature for profile pages has blurred certain lines between profile and fan pages for many individuals seeking to leverage social media to build their own personal brand and on-line presence. Could it kill the need for fan pages for certain users seeking to connect with fans, customers, and prospects? [read more]
The Final Stage for Your Inbound Leads – the Sale
" Inbound Marketing has replaced or is replacing traditional marketing everywhere, that is true, but it isn’t replacing sales. That said, it is certainly changing the face of sales; the old cheesy methods no longer work. Your sales strategy simply needs to be aligned with your marketing strategy if it is going to succeed." [read more]
The Difference Between SEO, SEM and Sales - Joke/Humor
"Three guys are sitting in a bar. A beautiful woman walks in and all three decide they are going to ask her out...." [read more]
Be Social In-Store and Online
"After all it is about people – customers or buyers – coming into contact with other people – sellers – to acquire something. The two groups interact, asking questions, expressing interest, learning from one another and exchanging value. The interaction is what leads to a purchase decision -- when done correctly. It also determines whether the transaction warrants future retail interactions. Social interaction leads to building trust and a profitable retail relationship. " [read more]
How To: Use Google Docs as a Stealth Read Receipt
As someone who does not endorse the practice of sending read receipts as they can be interpreted as intrusive I was more than happy to discover that I could utilize a little known feature in Google Docs to accomplish my goal. More importantly, this can be done in a way that the recipient could not avoid and likely would realize either. Here's how you can do it in four steps and under five minutes. [read more]
Conversations Aren't Rocket Science -- Or are they?
Social media is about conversations. Conversations are social. To "do social media right", have a conversation! [read more]
Social media will mean better gifts this holiday season
Everywhere you turn these days you will read or see people debating about the value of social media. They discuss how it’s used, will it last and why do they need it.Forget about all that. Let me share with you how social media is going to play a big part in some people’s lives this holiday season. Social media is going to shame people... [read more]
4 experts on how to turn social media into sales
One of the enduring questions in the social media landscape is: Can we really use social tools to move the needle financially? That topic was met head on Tuesday evening at an event in San Francisco titled How to Turn Word of Mouth and Social Media into Sales. Here are some takeaways from the speakers' remarks at the sold-out gathering:... [read more]
Grow your business with social media
Sometimes talking with clients it comes down to one simple question and that is where they challenge me to tell them “why do I need social media?” I’m never bothered by that question because it’s the same reason a company does any advertising and marketing.Most businesses will agree their primary goal is to make more money and to... [read more]
Jonathan Salem Baskin is an author who writes a regular column on Advertising Age & posts on his award-winning blog. More »
John Bell heads up the 360° Digital Influence team & teaches graduate studies in Digital Influence at Johns Hopkins University. More »
Don Bulmer is Vice President of Communication Strategy at Royal Dutch Shell More »
John Byrne is chairman & editor-in-chief of C-Change Media Inc. & the author or co-author of eight books. More »
Gini Dietrich Gini Dietrich is the founder and chief executive officer of Arment Dietrich, Inc. More »
Vanessa DiMauro is the CEO of Leader Networks & has been creating successful online communities for over 15 years. More »
Maggie Fox is the founder and CEO of Social Media Group & was named one of the Top 100 Marketers in Marketing Magazine. More »
Laurent Francois I lead the marketing&development hub @ Express Roularta Services, a media company. I focus on 2 main brands (L'Express, More »
Rachel Happe is a Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable & a blogger at The Social Organization. More »
JD Lasica is a consultant who is considered one of the leading authorities on social media & user-created media. More »
Brian Solis s author of Engage and is recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders & authors in new media. More »
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“Up until this point we have always understood content through the lens of the distribution channel it sat within. The channel, in fact, gave its name to the content (TV is a form of distribution but we think of it as a form of content) - or, as per your reference to McLuhan, "the medium was the message". The social media revolution is all about the liberation of content from its means ...”
“Alternatively, and this is what I believe, GM is simply not very good at Social. The easiest way out of that situation might well be to blame the tools, rather than the craftman. From what I've been observing, GM has been using Facebook, and especially their brand pages, as little more than a glorified megaphone. ”