Social media has profoundly altered the way companies market and communicate.  Millions of people have made online sharing part of their everyday lives, creating new communication channels and challenges for companies.  Social Media School is a resource to help you to stay current with the latest social media tips, techniques and technology.

Today's Top Tips

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Google Analytics Training

In response to overwhelming demand, LunaMetrics, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, will return to Washington, DC on December 8 and 9 with a new revised curriculum for their acclaimed workshop, “Getting Ahead with Google Analytics” I attended a version of this program last year and it was terrific. Sessions, specifically designed for beginners, intermediates and advanced [...] read more >>
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Build a dynamic local community news resource on Twitter in one hour

Here’s a perfect way to engage your community by providing them with local breaking news resources using Twitter and Twitter Lists. And it only takes ONE HOUR to build… see the slideshow (best seen in full screen)!

If you build a local breaking news Twitter site from this slideshow tutorial, let us know @pkitano and we’ll LIST it!


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7 Considerations for Tracking Social Media Success

mima-summit-network

With more and more marketers jumping onto the social media bandwagon, a lot of questions come up. Is it possible to track metrics and ROI? What are other companies doing? Why isn’t it working? Being prepared to answer  questions like these can make a difference in how a company interacts with social media and if they can succeed.

How can we track social media?
Unfortunately, there is no one “most effective” social media tracking system. Marketers across the web are still working to figure out how to measure social media, how to attach ROI, and how to sell the benefits of participationon the social web  to those that don’t “get it”.

Social media marketing isn’t like an email campaign where you can track the number of emails sent out, the number that were opened, the number of clicks, visits, leads and conversions all in one process. Much of what happens in the social media world happens behind a login and the old ways of tracking web visitor analytics just doesn’t work in that scenario.

Just like any kind of marketing, each company has their own set of objectives and reasons for reaching them via social media channels. That means different methods and ... read more >>

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Social Media Policies

When the need for Social Media Policies started about three years ago, it was the outside law firm or in house lawyer who usually got the call to draft the document.  But over the last few months, I've been seeing an increasing number of requests for policy templates from HR, IT, and even the Marketing departments.  

While (speaking from the in house legal pulpit) it's a good idea to run your policies through legal, the good news is that simple policies can be drafted to cover some of the bigger risks.  Here are the issues that the policy should consider:

1.      THISCOMPANY BELIEVES THAT SOCIAL NETWORKING IS AN IMPORTANT FORM OF COMMUNICATING.

a.      The policy should begin with a discussion of thecompany’s orientation towards social networking.  Describe the company’s communication goalsand benefits that may be derived from social networking.  Include, if relevant, internal departmentsthat benefit from social media and any initiatives that may be in place toimprove communications. (Twittering or texting, for example, may be aninexpensive and reliable way to communicate widely in case of a companywidecrisis.) Then itemize a non-exclusive list of risks that are posed byuncontrolled ...

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Viral Marketing Success in Three Easy Steps

viral marketing communications

Getting customers to talk about your product or service isn’t as hard as you might think. A viral marketing campaign that provides them with a way to connect with others you serve, a compelling story they can share, and a subconscious nudge is all they need.

I’ve found three strategies that make viral marketing especially contagious.

Provide A Way For Your Customers to Interact. Getting customers to spend more time online talking to  other customers is one way to help them spread the word. For example, add a chat room to your website.

People talk about what they do. And if they are using your site to connect with others sharing the same experiences, they can’t help but tell others about their experience. Pretty soon, you see folks using your chat room that are interested in your product or service, but want someone’s opinion whose used it before. If your product or service is good (and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be) then those prospects are fertile conversion for your business.

Make Your Product Easy to Work into Conversations. This is about your brand. For example Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan has become cliche. I remember using it all the time as a motivator ... read more >>

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What is RSS and How Can it Help Your Marketing?


RSS iconYou’ve most likely heard of RSS feeds, but you might still be wondering exactly what they are. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” RSS itself is just the format for delivering regularly updated web content. Blog feeds allow readers to keep up with the newest info posted on different sites, and people “subscribe” to the feeds of their choice.

Enter the “Feedreader”

For example, there are 25+ blogs out there that I enjoy reading on a regular basis. I want to keep up with them because they help keep me up date with all of the latest information in my niche. However, I don’t want to have to go out to the web and pull up each blog individually every day just to see whether they have been updated. The solution to this is to use a “feedreader” to see all of my favorite blogs’ latest content all in one place. Feedreaders allow you to access new content in two main ways: through the actual reader itself or via email updates. One of the most popular feedreaders and the one that I use is Google Reader.

The Business Use

Why is this important for marketing? Two reasons: 1—It’s a great way to stay current and educated on the things going on in your niche or market through ... read more >>

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5 Simple Things to Help Your Content Go Viral

Keyboard Cat


Have you ever had this scenario unfold? You’ve just created some amazing content, everyone that you’ve shown it to absolutely loves it and can’t wait to release it into the wild that is the web. You throw it on your micro-site, company website or blog and wait for the inevitable take off. After all the content is great and that’s all that matters right?

Wrong. Great content won’t mean much if you don’t cover the basics for activation and sharing.

Despite what you have been told, content is only king when it has been fertilized and nurtured. A farmer wouldn’t just throw seeds into the ground and just hope that they grow. Why would you do the same with your content?

1. Target a specific audience for activation. Not all content is the same. The content that will work on Digg will not necessarily thrive on Delicious. Why? Different audiences. Just like any medium you need to play to your base. Seeding effectively will be key here.

2. Build in sharing capabilities. Now make sure that those sharing capabilities adhere to both your audience AND work effectively. Cutting and pasting a url isn’t going to cut it anymore. People have built in sharing networks and audiences that ... read more >>

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The art of writing great headlines

rssheadlines How much attention do you pay to the headline of a blog post or other content you write?

I always think that the headline of a blog post, newspaper article, news release or other piece of written material is the most essential thing to pay attention to when you write that content.

A compelling headline or title is usually how you’ll get the attention of people when they’re doing things like I do most days – scroll through a list of headlines of content in my RSS reader.

I don’t see photos or other visual attractions, just words upon which I’ll make a rapid almost subconscious decision on whether to give the content the headline leads to any attention, or skip and continue scanning.

As an example of making headline creation an art if not a science, look to the Huffington Post and what they do to write compelling headlines as reported by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard university:

From direct mail to web design, A/B testing is considered a gold standard of user research: Show one version to half your audience and another version to the other half; compare results, and adjust accordingly. Some very cool examples include Google’s obsessive testing of subtle design tweaks ...

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7 Tips for Measuring the Success of Your Blog

 
Photo by the TruthAbout

The success of your blog, or any social media effort, depends on your willingness to solicit feedback and take corrective action when necessary. If you want to have a successful blog that supports your organization’s goals and adds value, improvement should be continuous. You need to pick the right hard data points, or metrics, that will help you harvest insights and improve your blog.

Analyzing your blog content
First, you need to set overall goals for your blog and understand your audience. Next, you need to know the right metrics to use, and employ the proper tools to collect the data. Most important, you need a strategy—either for yourself or for a team—to gather insights from your metrics. Remember, it isn’t about the numbers alone.

Avoid Analytophilia
Alexandra Samuel coined that phrase in a post on social media analytics and metrics about the greatest peril of social media: analytophilia.  It's about obsessing on raw numbers and constantly checking the number of Twitter followers or retweets or Facebook insight clicks.  She recommends that you don't go into your analytics or stats program without composing a specific question first.  ...

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5 sins – social networking for business


interrupting_kanyeAs a humble member of various social networks including Twitter it never fails to amaze me how lame some businesses are in their approach.

I don’t know what is happening inside the brains of the people behind this behaviour on behalf of companies. But it is like they’ve forgotten what it is like to be a real person.

Here are five sins that I’ve seen businesses commit in social networks:

1) No foreplay

Social networking is precisely that ’social’, that means it works just like real life.  How many times in real life do you just walk up to someone and say: “Hi I’m X, do you want to buy my product?” without saying “hi”, making some eye contact & introducing yourself?

In real life, apart from outbound telemarketers, we typically shoot the breeze for a while before launching into the hard sell.

2) Not being real & not letting staff be real

One of the reasons that @comcastcares and @zappos have worked on Twitter is that there were real people behind those accounts & they backed it up with consistently having real people there. Some companies forget that the social nature of these networks means that they need to be more transparent and open up to the outside ... read more >>

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Generating Leads with Slides


Generating Leads with Slides

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

This week, one of my favorite content sharing sites introduced a new way to generate leads.

I’ve long been a fan of the social media sharing site Slideshare. Slideshare allows you to upload presentations, much like YouTube videos, and then have them converted to flash movies that can be viewed on line and embedded into web and blog pages.

The site has grown significantly over the last few years and is also a great place to get some really good and really bad examples of PowerPoint use. Presentation owners can enable all manner of viewing, sharing, and downloading or choose to keep the files for private viewing only.

Slideshare has added a new feature, called LeadShare, that looks very worthy of some testing. Now when you upload your slides you can set-up a LeadShare campaign that allows you to embed a form in your presentations and capture leads of viewers. These LeadShare campaigns can be embedded on other sites too. You have a lot of control over the form and even when in your presentation your prospective lead sees the form.

The “white paper ... read more >>

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4 Must-Use Productivity Tools for Social Media

4prodcutivtools 4 Must Use Productivity Tools for Social MediaIt’s a given–we all want to do more in less time with social media.  The good news is that there are lots of tools to help automate your social networking activities.

Although I don’t encourage automating your whole experience (that would be missing the point), there are some useful productivity-boosters worth checking out.

1) Ping.fm: Want to update your Twitter status as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites all at the same time from one place? Ping is great for this.  Tools like Ping are one of the top “secret weapons” of the most successful social media marketers.  (Finally, a way to be in multiple places at one time! :D ) Ping.fm dashboard

So, if you have something to say to your Twitter followers but that you would also like to share with your Facebook fans and friends and your connections on LinkedIn, you can—without going to each site and logging in separately.  Ping has the ability to update over 40 different social networks.  This is a major time saver!

Plus, you can even create groups, so that if you only want to update LinkedIn and Twitter but not Facebook, for example, you can do that.  It’s definitely worth exploring.  (It’s also worth ... read more >>

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Ideal length of breaking news tweets is 120 characters

About one hour ago, the Nobel Foundation announced that Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2009. As I blogged yesterday, the Nobel Foundation announced this via Twitter, as a complement to other channels.

nobelprize2009

I think it's great that the foundation wants to experiment with social media. But regarding the tweet, I have one tiny comment and that is, if you know you have something to announce, that many people will retweet on Twitter, you should ideally make room for that in your original post. Otherwise you are forcing people to change your message, in ways you might not want. For example by deleting the link to the original post.

The tweet above is 136 characters long. For someone to retweet this with the @nobelprize_org included, the new tweet will be at least 155 characters, including "RT" and spaces. This is of course too long, the maximum is 140 characters. In other words, the ideal length of a breaking news tweet is about 120 characters.

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Link to original post at Media Culpa: Link to original post read more >>
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