Search Engine Marketing Articles For Entrepreneurs & Small Business Owners

Facebook Fans …. From Like to Really Like

Listen Up – You were told in school to keep your mouth shut, pay attention, listen, and learn. The same thing applies if you want to be the teacher’s pet and the most popular kid in school…listen to the community. You may have heard by now that folks spend more time on Facebook than any other website. By a whole lot! To be more precise, it’s 53.5 billion minutes a month on the world’s largest social networking site. When Zuck announced at F8 – the Facebook developer’s conference – that the site now had more than 800 million citizens, he said he wanted them to be even more involved with the Site. In fact, he wanted Facebook to become the destination where people tell the story of their life. We, and you, might think that’s over sharing, but the growing community is changing the way companies relate with customers. Companies are establishing their Facebook pages in record numbers and feeling their way along as they build, expand, leverage those relationships. No one is exactly certain how much all those eyeballs and likes are worth. It’s still too early to say how much a Facebook friend and his/her recommendation can generate, but that’s not inhibiting the rush to be there. Companies like Coke, Starbucks, Nutella, Papa John’s, Pringles, Skittles, Zynga, Zappos, Electronic Arts feel it’s worth the effort.

Fan Value
While Zynga racked up more than $290 million last year from their visitors/users, others have determined how much their fans are worth to the company:
* Starbucks – $1.20 per fan
* Coke – $0.96 per fan
* Pringles – $0.02 per fan
* Adidas – $2.40 per fan
* Red Bull – $1.14 per fan

That’s because a positive online brand experience creates loyal customers. They in turn tell friends and family about the brand and the sphere of influence grows.

Read More

Facebook … Where Friends, Enemies Gather

When the Internet was in its infancy, an editor once commented to us that if a person didn’t have an email address, he had no reason to talk with him. Today, if you don’t have a Facebook page, it’s almost as though you don’t exist. That’s true of individuals; and increasingly, it’s true of companies. That’s because Facebook is the location to go for news, information, ideas, and friends. In six years, Facebook has gone from zero members to more than 800M (latest “official” count).

Global Momentum – People can’t produce infographics fast enough to keep up with Facebook’s growth. This recent chart was dramatically outdated by Zuck at f8, the organization’s developer conference, when he reported Facebook now has more than 800M “citizens” around the globe and is published in more than 100 languages. Source – pingdom.com

Put in a global perspective that would make Facebook the third largest country in the world, behind China and India. Because of its size and influence, Facebook has become a major source and resource for businesses. Its rapid growth and global reach is impressive, to say the least. Facebook outsizes all of the other online social media … by a lot. Mark Zuckenberg, CEO, sees Facebook becoming the “open” resource for individuals, organizations, friends, foes. Regarding the openness and sharing, he recently said, “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people – and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” It seems like the more the company offers to its users, the more they use it.

Read More

Krispy Kreme Credits Social Media for its Sales Increase

Krispy Kreme Chief Marketing Officer Dwayne Chambers, in a Q & A article that appeared in SmartBlogs.com, says that through social media, Krispy Kreme fans do a lot of the marketing for its products. He says, “From an ROI standpoint, we’re able to use these vehicles that exist now to determine if it fits within our purpose” which is “to touch and enhance lives through the joy that is Krispy Kreme.”

Krispy Kreme has consolidated many of the local and regional marketing and advertising efforts that grew up through the years and focused more on using social media to keep the brand conversation going among the 75-year-old chain’s legions of fans. Restaurant-marketing veteran Dwayne Chambers has led the transition since taking over as chief marketing officer last year. I spoke with Chambers recently about what social brings to the brand.

What does it mean that Krispy Kreme’s social strategy lets fans “own” the brand?

When you look at social media and the resources available to the individual, they do have some level of ownership. The effect they can have on the brand is much greater than what they could have had five, 10 and, in our case, 75 years ago. People refer to the local shop as “My Krispy Kreme.” It’s like a college football team; you have an emotional connection to your team and when things don’t go right, you think you have the right to tell the coach what he’s doing wrong.

Marketers have always felt like we own the brand, people would even say that internally in some places. We feel like we need to control every aspect of the brand, and today you can’t.

Read More

Social Media Isn’t About Winning … It’s More Important Than That

Business has been built on the foundation of selling stuff. Hopefully, lots of stuff – products, ideas, services – to lots of folks. The latest tool new-marketing experts are promoting to management is social media. You know, putting your products, your ideas in front of the masses to buy. Most social media efforts today – Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube video program – are implemented, tested and measured to push what your stuff to retail (brick and mortar or ecommerce) to keep the cash register ringing. If the bottomline is black, the people who recommended and ran the program say, “See, it works!” If the bottomline bleeds red, another social media team is brought in.

Social media, the internet, smartphones, ecommerce, mobile to in-store signage and friends digital coupons put you in front of the customer. If it’s a bad product, bad process or the business-as-usual model hasn’t changed to align with today’s new environment; social media people and tools won’t produce the results you want and need…a sustainable business. Digital marketing and social media programs that are implemented on top of the same old business model to move the products/ideas are too obvious, too easy to see through. They’re about as transparent as Morgan Spurlock’s recent documentary, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. The business of yesterday was tough. The business of tomorrow is even tougher; and only a few will be willing to be sit there and be told what they want and must buy through psychological manipulation and repetition.

The business of today isn’t the same as it always was. It’s different. It’s better. It’s tougher. And it isn’t going back.

Read More

Facebook … The Next Best Thing to Buy, Like

Like Me – If you’re an individual with a Facebook page, you like people to like you. If you’re a company or brand, you want people to really like you. But getting folks to hit the Like button is the beginning of a relationship you need to carefully nurture. People devote more time to social media than to online games, email, search … combined! The most popular location is Facebook, which is designed to help people connect in a disconnected world. American internet users spend more time on Facebook than any other location. According to Nielsen, the largest site – over 800M people around the globe – has U.S. Internet users spending more than 53.5 billion minutes a month. Globally, you can double that volume of online activity. More than half of the users (65 percent) are adults. And half of the Facebook population returns to the site every day.

The Real Virtual World – People around the globe have found social media sites are excellent ways to develop relationships, share information/ideas, associate with people who share your interests and you well…Like. For more than 800 million people, Facebook has been their destination of choice and companies/brands follow people. Source – Citi Investment

At this year’s F8 (Facebook developers conference), Mark Zuckenberg introduced a whole new set of “features” that are designed to attract even more users and keep them on Facebook longer. Zuck’s goal is to become the destination that defines a person’s online life. To do that he’s attracting media products – music, movies, information, games – to attract even more people (as a country Facebook’s population is behind only China and India).
The site’s goal is simply to be the source people go first for news, entertainment.

Read More

Social Media Marketing is Like Dating … Real Serious Dating

You think I’m gorgeous, you want to kiss me… You want to hug me… You want to love me… You want to hug me… You want to smooch me… You want to…” – Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock), Miss Congeniality (2000), Castle Rock Entertainment

Why has social media – blogs, social sites, chat rooms, discussion forums, YouTube, microblogs – grown so rapidly, become so popular? Pretty simple really…people want to establish their identity, feel connected. Sometimes it’s hard to believe, but even companies, products, services need identity…need connection…need definition…need love. Just like the rest of us, without it they wither, they die. So, since you’ve “all” jumped on the social media scene, company management wants to be there with you…to learn from you, help you. O.K., so they would also like to sell you something…if it’s something you really want, really need of course. Company managers – they’re people too – understand there are a lot of benefits to social media activities.

Priorities this Year
Why You’re There – Companies see a lot of good business reasons for entering the social media arena. But they all center on the customer, not on wholesale outreach, marketing pushes. Source – Internet Retailer

That’s why everyone wants to “own” the company’s social media program – marketing, advertising, HR, PR. They want to be the ones who get credit for reaching out, making a bunch of friends who tell other friends who all buy something. What’s missing? The customer!

Read More

Social Media Pro … Maybe It’s Time to Get a Productive Job!

“How many people work here? About half.” That sounds kinda’ familiar when you’re talking about people who consider themselves social media professionals. The age-old statement came to mind when we read a recent blog by Mitch Joell, President of Twist Image and author of “Six Pixels of Separation.” His post was about employees who spend too much time online and how they are basically stealing. A piece in the “Globe and Mail” pertained to a government employee who was caught – and dismissed – for spending half of his time on the Web surfing and downloading “all” kinds of stuff. Mitch’s point was that employees who are caught spending too much time online doing things that have nothing to do with their work are really time thieves. And it’s not just the people who are “caught.” The rest are also stealing time but … they’re busy. They’re busy updating their Facebook page…polishing their LinkedIn image…Twitting about their coffee, their lunch, their date last evening…watching the cute kitty trick on YouTube. You know, busy taking care of important stuff.

Brave New World
When social media outlets began to gain traction, it was like the great white hope for PR/communications people. This was a frontier that companies/organizations knew very little about. What they did know was that a lot of people were there and thousands more were joining every day. People meant an audience, targets. These individuals were out there sharing everything…including ideas/information on products, services, companies, the person in the next office, their issues, their triumphs, getting hired and getting fired.

Read More

Make Your Blog a Destination, Not a Bump in the Road

Social media, the internet, mobile phones, and e-commerce have permanently changed the way we all see our place in the world of buying and selling. As we have seen around the globe, the democratization of media and social power is at the root of social media. It has put bad governments, bad companies, and bad products under the microscope. It has helped good companies, good products tell their story. Social media has made it harder and harder to tell people what they want and must buy through repetition and psychological manipulation.

Each social medium has its strengths and weaknesses; and if there was one right, one best solution for every company, every executive life would be so simple. There isn’t! But as a business executive your blog is a tool that can benefit the company and you because it is you expressing/translating your organization’s thoughts, ideas, goals to people around the globe. True, it can get your brand more exposure and it humanizes the company/product; but more importantly, it can provide value to your customer and partner. It enables them to share information, ideas with you regarding the company, products, and plans. Done properly, you get more than you give. O.K., so you’ve decided it’s time to move your company, your thoughts into the blogosphere; but like any good professional, you want to know the guidelines, the rules of engagement. There aren’t any!

Have ideas, thoughts, information you want to share? You can use social media to share information not just about your products and your company, but about the industry and trends. It will allow people to understand what the company and the product or service you stand for. You do stand for something…right? Once you begin, there’s no turning back.

Read More

Going “Places” With Your Business – For FREE!

One of the latest emerging trends for businesses in today’s market is the ability to let customers “check-in” at your business.  In essence, you’re giving customers the chance to announce to their social networks that they’ve stopped in.  There are a number of these new geolocation services giving you a chance to try some truly unique and completely FREE marketing if you do it right.  Now what company wouldn’t like that?

How do I take advantage of this?
A number of companies are offering this “geo-tagging” but only two really stand out.  Foursquare and Gowalla are the industry leaders.  Until recently, Facebook was also a big player in this arena.  They decided to shut down their location-based check-in service due to lack of interest among Facebook users.  Both of these companies allow you to register your business for free and they offer mobile apps for your customers to use when checking in.  You simply need to claim your business and then let your customers know they can start checking in using whatever service you chose (hopefully both!).

Giving it a Boost
Each company offers various incentives for using them.  Gowalla allows users to award companies with various virtual awards that grab the attention of other Gowalla users.  Get enough awards and your business gets featured on their respective city pages.  Another feature of Gowalla is the ability to promote events to different users.  Gowalla also allows you to customize a welcome message for those who check in, plus the ability to add some kind of promotion for stopping by.

Foursquare provides a similar user experience with a few changes with how they handle promotions.  It allows you to create custom promotions for those who stop in and check-in.  You can create coupons, group discounts, first time discounts among many other things.

Read More

4 Facebook Marketing Tactics That Really Work

Most people are aware of the usual methods for marketing a business on Facebook like with Groups, Fan Pages, Events, Tagging, Contests, Promotions and things of that nature, but does it really stop there? Surely with 5M+ users, there are more ways to market your company and increase your traffic and user-base using Faceobook. Well, there are actually 4 very unique and clever methods which include Insights, Comments, Business Listings and Facepile. Let’s take a look at these 4 marketing tactics and see how they can bring you exceptional results.
 

Facebook Insights
Just like you can view Facebook Insights (user and interaction statistics) for your Pages, you can also get Facebook Insights for your website(s). Of course you’ll have to set it up first, but the process is pretty simple and literally takes less than 2 minutes.

From the Insights page, just click on the green “Insights for your Website” button to get started.

It will bring up a pop up window where you’ll have to enter your domain name and then copy a meta tag to add to the header of your website.

Your website will then be added to the Insights page and you’ll be able to see useful information regarding the performance of your website on Facebook. There are three different graphs which represent site engagement, distribution on Facebook, and referral traffic.

Site Engagement
Here can see the top actions for your website. For instance, if you have a like button on your website, you’ll be able to see how many people have clicked that each day. You can also see how many people have shared a link from your site on Facebook (within a status message or wall post).

Distribution on Facebook
This shows you the number of times that users have viewed stories on Facebook that link to your site. These are broken down by like and shares.

Read More

New Social Media Options Aren’t New, They’re Sequels

“You see, Jason was my son, and today is his birthday…” – Pamela Voorhees, Friday the 13th, Paramount Pictures (1980)

Our son is irritated with his grandfather. Wanted to wish him a happy birthday but…he doesn’t have a Facebook account…isn’t on Twitter…never looked at YouTube. For gawd’s sake, he doesn’t even have an email address! Yes, there are people in this whole, magnificent wide world who are…deprived! So his choice was to resort to the old fashioned stuff…a phone call or letter. Yeah, those early forms of social media are our last resorts too. We were delighted with the next advance – email. This was a whole new solution for communicating with another person. It was “personal” but allowed both of us to use at our mutual convenience. But like any movie that somehow strikes a cord with millions of people, it needed a sequel. Web 2.0 gave it to us.

The Beginning – You may not have been there at the very beginning of Web 2.0 time but at least you have a good idea of how the Web-enabled universe started. Someone had a good idea so a few others had a “good” idea and it continued spreading. There are times it’s just not safe anymore to go into the lake. Source – Fred Cavazza.net

Sure, face-to-face or a phone call is still the best, most effective communications tool out there; but that hasn’t stopped people and companies from embracing/swearing by the next great social media advance.
Once marketing and communications people see a social media remake and they master it, they know…this is the one!

Social Sequels
For some, it’s still FaceBook. For others, it’s Twitter. For others, it’s MySpace, YouTube, Flickr or any one of the hundreds of new social media sequels.

Read More

Improve Your Search Engine Marketing By Researching The Competition

I wasn’t a search engine marketer 10 years ago, but from veterans in the industry, I learned that it was much easier to rank back then. There was less competition and the search engines were fairly simple.

All you had to do was insert keywords in the meta tags and the content to do well on the search engines. Then, Google arrived to the scene and revolutionized the industry with PageRank and a strong link based algorithm. Search engine marketing (SEM) became a little harder but search experts were able to figure out the shift and adapt.

Today there is a lot more competition as many new companies and individuals have created commercial sites. Also, the search engine algorithms have gotten more complex. It is harder to succeed as a search marketer these days. Still, SEM is a relatively new industry, so there are opportunities you can take advantage of.

Right now I believe using competitive research is one of the best strategies out there. I’ve used it to great effect to increase the traffic and income of my sites.

With the rise of social media, SEM has become less technical and moved closer to branding and public relations. If you can stand out from your competitors, you will gain many quality links and reap huge benefits on the search engine rankings.

That’s where competitive research comes into play. It’s hard to stand out in your industry if you don’t understand your competition. Here’s a four step process that I go through to make sure my sites provide at least one or more unique features to differentiate them from the competition.

Step 1: Identify and research the top sites.

Most of the traffic in an industry is going to a few top sites. This is just the 80/20 rule in action. Because of this, I don’t think it’s necessary to research the lower or middle tier sites.

Read More

Digital Bytes – The Challenge of Balancing Real, Virtual Worlds

“The show has been prerecorded to give the cast a chance to get away.” – The Announcer, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, NBC (1967)

Maybe that “scientific” scare that cellphones (and associated technology) would affect our brains is true. Our daughter gets up in the morning and immediately checks Facebook. The son rolls out and checks messages on his smartphone. We don’t touch our phone until after our workout at the club and are in the office or home. Yes, we text the kids at school. They text each other, even when they’re sitting across from each other. Their mother uses old-fashioned messaging … she tells us what to do! Recent reports have explored how growing up in the wired, connected world is apparently spiking kids’ attention by short-circuiting their brains. To show our son the difference between yesterday and today, we went online to YouTube together and watched a number of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In skits. You know, nothing more than a couple of minute bits strung together. Our son mockingly repeated the German soldier, “Very interesting, not very funny, but very interesting.” He couldn’t/wouldn’t spend a lot of time looking at ancient history stuff because there is just too much going on in the online world.

Lost Connections – He feels (and I have to agree) that if you’re disconnected for a few hours you’ll miss something … the world will pass you by. Social media like Facebook is the fave of our daughter and millions of her peers.

Pick Your Favorite – While the iGeners may set the pace for most online services, the rest of us aren’t lagging behind. Around the world, people of all ages constantly exchange, share information, ideas and content with their communities and folks who count clicks, visits. Source – AddtoAny, Mashable

Read More

Google’s Parameter Handling Tool: Great Tool to Reduce Duplicate Content Issue

Dynamic web sites have many advantages. Dynamic web sites can send and receive and store data between the web page and the database. This data can be useful information about your products, members or your contents. Beside many advantages, dynamic web sites have some issues and dynamically generated pages’ URLs is one of the major issues which Search Engine Optimizers face while optimizing a dynamic web site. The disadvantage of these URLs containing many parameters, is that they confuse search engine bots and effect site indexing.

Many dynamic web sites now use URL rewriting to hide ugly looking long URLs to rewrite them to short search engine friendly URLs. But there are thousands of web sites still running without URL rewriting. In some cases the parameters used in URLs cause problems for search engine bots. Session IDs, other sorting parameters and dynamically generated calendar with no data and time restrictions may generate huge amount of duplicate pages. SE bots encounter an extremely high number of URLs from the web sites which causes search engine bots to crawl a large number of different URLs pointing to same page. This not only effects the proper indexing of web site by major search engines but the excessive consumption of bandwidth by search engine bots.

This problem can be handled in different ways and one of the available solutions is the URL rewriting but fortunately Google has also offered a solution to this important problem. You may handle this dynamic URL issue by using Parameter Handling Tool. It is very easy to use tool available under Google Web Master Tools.

In order to use Google’s Parameter Handling Tool, you will have to login to your Google Web Master Tools account. From your GWT dashboard, click the site you want and under Site Configuration click setting. Now click Parameter Handling Tab from top menu. For each parameter there are three options available:

Read More

Social Media … Stay in Touch, Be Touched

“Face it, Kent. You threw up “on” Dean Wormer.” – Boon, National Lampoon’s Animal House (Universal Pictures – 1978)

In college, we had one of the best frat houses on campus.  Gawd we’re glad the social net wasn’t around back then. If it were, we’d probably have more to live down than Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg when he said anyone who shared their personal information with him was “a dumb f***. Or, that he and his minions work to make people believe that that people shouldn’t expect online privacy, which sorta’ means privacy is overrated.

When we hear statements like these, we agree with Scott Adams, “There’s nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.” Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending where you’ve placed your career, money –social site usage isn’t universal. Worldwide But … A Synovate survey in 17 countries found that more than half had never heard of social networking.  Of those belonging, the Netherlands (49%) had the most, followed by the UAE (46%), Canada (44%), US (40%).

According to a study by eMarketer of the folks who participate in social networking, 71% have profiles on two or more sites, 26% of them have four or more profiles.

Of the social netters who have two or three profiles:
- 25.6% are 18 to 24 years old
- 23.3% are 25 to 34 years old
- 14.7% are 35 to 44 years old
- 15.6% are 45 to 54 years old
- 18.4% are 55 to 64 years old

There must be something to Zuckerberg’s assertions because people everywhere are signing up for all these “free” connection sites.

Read More

Social Media Marketing … The Challenge of Herding Cats

Sure, social media –1:1 marketing and communications–sounds glamorous.

It’s like the romance, the freedom, the adventure of the old West.  It’s just you and him (or her).

Long hours in the online saddle, what could be better?

Ask the folks who have been doing it for years – customer/tech support – it’s a lot like the EDS herding cats commercial –http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdwrYiNJc_E.

According to Digital Brand Expressions, less than 41 percent of companies have a cohesive, strategic social media plan.  Fewer yet have policies/protocols for handling/managing the activity.

So anyone who can swing onto the keyboard/touchpad saddle declares that he/she is a social media expert.

They’re not really a herd of cats.  They’re a collection of individual cats.

And as any cat lover knows (we’re not one of them), cats are independent thinkers/players. 

They can do what you want or they can turn on you in the flick of an eyelash; and gawd, are those claws sharp!

Social media is where people got together to:

  • share advice/assistance with people of like interests
  • talk to each other about their experiences in using products/services
  • chat, carry on, whatever
  • discuss common interests
  • photography/scrapbooking
  • playing games
  • raising kids, family issues
  • boss/employee problems/solutions

As PC/CE/communications products/services got more complex and converged, they became indispensible.

It has also become more difficult to separate fact from fiction, hype from reality, blind love/lust from true satisfaction.

For producers, providers, the challenge is to:

Read More

L Is For Linked In

Everyone seems to be using Linked in at the moment. If you’re going to be on any social networking site, Linked in seems to be it. But, how do you use it to its maximum potential and get business from it? 

1.   Write your profile
Make sure you’ve set up your profile on Linked in. You need a bit about your business and what you do; a bit about you and who you are; your qualifications, background and education and finally a bit about your interests and hobbies. Social networking is about getting to know the person behind the business, so don’t be afraid to let your personality come across. A picture of you wouldn’t go amiss here too. 

2.   Get connected
Invite all your current contacts to join you on Linked in. You’ll be given the option to invite your contacts from your email package when you first start on Linked in, but if you’re already on there, just go to Add Connections at the top. You can also email people directly here and ask them to connect with you. 

3.   Connect to other people
Once you’ve started adding connections, Linked in will suggest other people that it thinks you might want to connect with too. You can see this on the right hand side of your home page under People you may know. Search through these regularly and keep connecting with new people. 

4.   Start communicating
Now you’re connected to people, start communicating with them and building that relationship. Contact people directly to find out more about them. It’s only when you communicate with them that you’ll find out whether there is anything you want to take further. 

5.   Tell people what you’re up to
Post an update (you can see this on your home page) on a regular basis – by regular once or more a day is best.

Read More

Should All CEO’s Blog

The simple answer is, it depends.One factor to consider is the purpose of the blog.Is it to communicate with:

  • Staff
  • Partners
  • Prospects
  • Clients
  • Shareholders

If you are a public company CEO, you need to be very diligent as to what you write. You cannot comment on things that may move the stock.

Is it to build your personal brand?
Most public company CEO’s stick to some area of expertise like Jim Estill. With respect to Jim’s blog, he focuses on leadership and has quite a following. He is highly respected because he delivers value to his readership. This value word is key in social media. It can be challenging for him to blog about happenings at Nu Horizons all the time, because there may not be items of interest for his audience. Jim has chosen the personal brand route and that works for him.

Other considerations for blogging are time and desire
Many CEO’s don’t want or need one more thing on their to do list. They need to see the value of blogging in order to deliver value. So, trying to convince all CEO’s to blog is an uphill battle even after outlining all the clear benefits of:

  • Brand building of the corporation
  • Personal Brand building of the CEO
  • Effective employee communication
  • Positive effect on organic search for the corporate web site
  • Free Public Relations
  • Low Cost
  • Direct communications with stakeholders
  • Differentiate from your competition

Those CEO’s that are ready to blog, will. Some may use ghost writers which is OK as long as the content reflects their views.

Read More

Will It Blend? – Traditional And Social Media

As a veteran PR counselor specializing in the creative marketing services space, I avidly track the evolution of media channels, especially the growing challenge that “social media” poses to “traditional media” for marketplace dominance. When working to develop leadership positions for emerging companies an understanding of which media will most profoundly impact one’s reputation and positively influence prospective clients, is key. So a radical shift in the media landscape poses new challenges to practitioners as they develop media relations campaigns designed to elevate clients’ to industry spokes-company status.

The Big PR Question
The big PR question of the day is how to design and target programs in such a challenging communications environment? Should one focus on social media first, or exclusively, stick with traditional media and its recognized “credibility” factor, or strive to balance the two?  In almost all cases, I would recommend a blend. According to new research by Ad-ology Research, small business owners say the benefits of social networking are lead generation, keeping up with the industry, and monitoring the online conversation about their business. “Social media optimization,” – how to maximize the impact of social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube –in that rank order) is obviously a key communications/marketing concern.

Ad-ology’s study continues, reporting that SBOs get the social media message and hope to engage customers in new ways in 2010. 28% say they plan to spend more on online video in 2010, up 75% over last year; 25% say they will increase their social networking spend; 21% plan to commit more resources to mobile advertising.

Read More

Social Networking Lines Are Blurred

I often hear my clients tell me “I only use Facebook for family stuff and LinkedIn for business”. For sure that was the original intention of those social platforms. However, did you ever wonder how you make decisions on what is a personal contact and what is a business contact? Maybe that depends on your definition of friendship.

In the world of social networking it seems the lines are blurring somewhat. For example, I have a personal Facebook site where (for the most part) I try to keep it for personal friends and family content. But, what eventually happens is that business or networking contacts end up being part of my network. Some of the same folks I in my network on LinkedIn are in fact also my “friends” on Facebook.

One of my Facebook friends sells cars and every so often he posts a deal on a car. I know when I am in the market for a car, he will be top of mind because he is now part of my online world.  Is it because he is a friend, or a automotive sales person? I guess in the end it really doesn’t matter. The point here is to think about your social networking world in a more macro sense. Relationships rule the planet and the more folks you know (that you want to know) the better.

The only caveat is to know that each relationship online needs to be nurtured from time to time. Yes, the lines are blurred, but that may be a good thing…

Read More