Video Getting to Soical Media ROI

Great video by the folks at http://www.socialnomics.com

Key Takeaways:

Social media is about leverage the more active you are in a social environment the more you can leverage others activity to fuel your success.

Social Media Offers Intimacy of Classic Mom and Pop Local Businesses

from Seinfeld season 6 "the Mom and Pop Store"

“Social media is a return to what the neighborhood restaurant or “Mom and Pop” business has always done to succeed: maintain and strengthen relationships with customers.”

from Scaling Social Media so Its Intimate and Builds Brands The Huffington post

This article hits hard the key factor to small business success in social media and the challenge of scaling for larger regional, national and international concerns.

I think the key takeaway here is about being genuine, being transparent, and actually remembering thet deep business relationships are about relationships between people not scripted automated responses ina huge echo chamber of cyberspace. Converting the massive reach of social media into individual conversations and connecting customers with the best possible source of information based on those individual conversations is where social medis really shines!

Four Square Day Tomorrow!! 4 -16-2010 (the first ever social media holiday)

If you haven’t heard about Foursquare yet you need to it it the rapidly growing social media app that really makes local marketing important.

The concept is simple. use your mobile phone and “check-in” a different locations this check-in is visible to your friends and lets you earn special badges for being a regular or even become “the mayor” of a particular location.

For the first timme businesses can really turn customer loyaty into a viral experience because all of a users checkins are publised to twitter and or facebook with a link to venue details. potentially driving huge foot traffic.

Tomorrow 4/16/2010 is officially foursquare day (the first social media holiday) see how it all happened here: http://blog.4sqday.com/about/

or keep up on the latest foursquare day news here: http://blog.4sqday.com/

Marketers Say Email is Delivering Better than Social Networking

The “Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Fact Book” shows that by and large most marketing professionals say that email is outperforming social media two to one. I say of course it is because social networking should be driving people to your email lists. See the results and read more below!

 

Key findings:

 

• Search marketing delivers the best results (33%); search and email still constitute the core of a solid online media plan.
• Nearly everyone uses email, and this medium is repeatedly ranked as one of the most cost-effective (and effective) forms of marketing. Elsewhere in the Factbook, almost 50% of 623 email marketers report that sending emails at midday (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) is the best time of day to do so. The start of the business day (6 a.m. to 10 a.m.) is considered second best at 31.5
• Mobile marketing is barely on the radar; it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years with mobile.

About the data: The MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Factbook, designed to be a comprehensive source of data and research for online marketers, includes chapters on email, search, and social media—with 144 pages of findings, including 110 charts and graphs from 60+ sources.

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OK so lets review the data, of course Email and Search are still huge! but does that mean social media is less important? That’s a big fat NO and here is why.

Social Media has the capacity to drive new contacts in realtime into your email lists. that’s it. end of discussion. social media is for relationship and trust building of course you will see higher direct revenue from email. but if you look list building via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media is far faster than any other format. (of course that’s only if you contribute content that is worth something but that’s a secondary issue.

look at the bottom line if you can drive growth for free—I repeat drive GROWTH for FREE and quickly via social media then it needs to be a key part of your strategy. Email and search are of course critical and have driven the Internet for years. you must do all of the above. Remember the process your goal in marketing is to move people into the seat of loyal customers and fans.

Social media connects you to new people who can be added to your email list and therefore the results will actually show as an email result in most cases. but I can without spending a dime gain roughly 50 to 100 new followers everyday on twitter. Then I can get about 30% of those followers to join my mailing lists via quality squeeze pages. You need to be doing the same! The results will be more sales from your email list. The social networks lead to bigger email lists. So remember to work the mix don’t depend on social media as the silver bullet strategy. Do remember that utilizing Social Networks and Social media for rapid list growth is cheap, easy, and worth pursuing!

 

The Cocktail Party Perspective: a simple analogy to help you be a courteous and effective social media marketer

Social Networks Are Like a Giant Cocktail Party
Social networks can be best described as a 24/7 global cocktail party. You can meet and engage people with no restrictions on time or geography and share insights, opportunities, and information to build deep relationships.

Your customers are posting genuine information about their likes, dislikes, and personal preferences, demographics, location and more. You can cross reference this data and gain customer insight without the expense or headache of focus groups or surveys.

The key is to remember this is not a commercial forum. The job of the social network is not for you to spam your prospects and customers with marketing messages. Your goal is to choose the right network or networks and provide valuable communication that leads to mutual benefit between you and your network.

The network also allows new prospective customers to see background on you based on who you are already connected to and find unbiased commentary on your business. (which exists online weather you are leveraging it or not). You should at minimum use social networks to be aware of your customer’s views of your brand.

If you view your social media use from this perspective you should generate value for both yourself and your friends, fans, customers, contacts, connections, supports and anyone else on your social media radar.

RE: On radio this morn. Twitter mght b contributing 2 a narcissistic society – did they evr consider individualistic v. collectivistic cultures?

response to Twitter  posting by Sarah Lee

Ok here’s my two cents:

Social Media like Twitter, Face Book, MySpace, et all do allow for self indulgent commenting and posting that is of zero value as individual posts. As well they foster often annoying and obnoxious self promotion.

However lets not throw the baby out with the bath water these media are designed for free information exchange and probably more than ever have created the capacity for web based posturing and body language.

Because many tweets, status updates and blog posts are fleeting and emotionally charged they give us insight into our friends, colleagues, role-models, and associates that can otherwise only be achieved via massive hours of time spent together. That’s valuable.

If we recognize the self indulgences of others as great opportunities to see where and how we can add value to those others and take the proverbial high road and use these media to reach out and provide beneficial insight, feedback and valuable input to others then we can actually use a stream of self indulgent Tweets or status postings to find how to be better friends, business associates, and citizens.

Essentially it’s a matter of perspective. If someone is truly only posting useless fluff updates and Tweets stop following them. but before you get so judgemental take a moment and look for a thread of truth in the emotion behind the Tweets, Statuses ( is that word?) then decide can I add value to this persons situation or the impact this Tweet, Status etc will have on others.

Have a bit of social responsibility with your social media use. remember the idea is to be a conversational media if you have someone you interact with that dosen’tunderstand that utilize your responses to make their fluff Tweets conversational then everybody wins.

Which Social Media is Right for My Business?

Marketing via Social Networks and Social Media is a hot topic right now but there is quite the swarm of available networks and media outlets to choose from. So how does the saavy small business owner choose the right social network for maximum ROI?

Rapleaf

Facebook Users
- 2.6 million users identified in Rapleaf study
- 63% female, 36% male
- 17% 45 yrs
- 2.9 major social networking sites used on average
- 62% are on MySpace, 5% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 10% are on Plaxo, 22% are on Hi5

MySpace Users
- 11.3 million users identified in Rapleaf study
- 63% female, 36% male
- 20% 45 yrs
- 2.4 major social networking sites used on average
- 15% are on Facebook, 2% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 6% are on Plaxo, 17% are on Hi5

LinkedIn Users
- 0.8 million users identified in Rapleaf study
- 38% female, 61% male
- 2% 45 yrs
- 3.2 major social networking sites used on average
- 16% are on Facebook, 25% are on MySpace, 12% are on Friendster, 16% are on Plaxo, 8% are on Hi5

Friendster Users
- 2.3 million users identified in Rapleaf study
- 58% female, 41% male
- 12% 45 yrs
- 3.0 major social networking sites used on average
- 10% are on Facebook, 44% are on MySpace, 5% are on LinkedIn, 5% are on Plaxo, 26% are on Hi5

Plaxo Users
- 1.3 million users identified in Rapleaf study
- 62% female, 37% male
- 16% 45 yrs
- 3.6 major social networking sites used on average
- 20% are on Facebook, 53% are on MySpace, 11% are on LinkedIn, 9% are on Friendster, 15% are on Hi5

Hi5 Users
- 4.5 million users identified in Rapleaf study
- 60% female, 39% male
- 21% 45 yrs
- 2.8 major social networking sites used on average
- 13% are on Facebook, 43% are on MySpace, 2% are on LinkedIn, 13% are on Friendster, 2% are on Plaxo

Social Media Addiction: 7 Signs of Addiction | FutureNow’s GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization Blog

Social Media Addiction: 7 Signs of Addiction | FutureNow’s GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization Blog

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Absolute Hilarity! I’ve been a fan of Bryan Eisenberg for years and have tested and used a lot of his tips to help my clients and improve my own projects.  I also can see alot o f  my friends and colleagues falling into the category of social media addicts I mean seriously how many accounts does one person need? MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Digg, Del.ico.us, Technorati, YouTube,

Arghhhhh where does it all end!

Seriously depending on your customer basethese are all important componentsof your marketing and PR plan just remember to stay balanced and don’t become an addict. The next social media fix shouldn’t distract you from the business of doing business.

But if you can please join my mob on mafiacities on facebook