Social Media

Double Down on Facebook Marketing

by Eric Brown · January 31, 2012

I have been thinking about the value of Facebook fans lately, and how they stack up against other types of online and digital marketing payoffs. The problem with getting to an answer to the value of a fan, and what many small business owners face when trying to sort out what square to place their marketing dollars on, is the array of mismatched direction.

Small businesses aren’t very good at increasing their Facebook fan base. So even though they may be following all of the “rules of the Facebook road,” they aren’t seeing much if any return on their effort.

15 comments

Approaching Social Media Monitoring With Purpose

by Jason Falls · January 19, 2012

Social media monitoring is perhaps one of the most widely known and used social technologies among businesses large and small. Whether using free tools like Google Alerts and SocialMention.com or paid solutions like uberVu, Radian6, Sysomos or others, it seems listening as the most important function of a business’s efforts in social media has been successfully ground into our collective conscience. At least to those of us determined to implement good social media marketing strategies.

But social media monitoring is often thought of and implemented as a reactionary practice. Find the keyword mentions, then respond. Done. Smart companies know, however, that using social media monitoring as a proactive, business driver, can make the difference between being successful with your social media efforts and not.

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8 Email Strategies for Your Business

by Jason Falls · January 5, 2012

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Jason Keath who is CEO of Social Fresh, a social media education company.

My foray into blogging has been a long one. 14 years now, best I can count. Unfortunately, it took me too many of those years to start understanding the importance of email to any publisher and business. To start to “build a list” as they say.

I have worked with social media as my primary career for going on five years now. And still to this day, when I talk to someone that needs marketing advice, I am more likely to talk to them about email strategy than Twitter strategy.

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7 Ways Marketing HAS Changed (And It’s Not Just The Tools)

by Ilana Rabinowitz · December 22, 2011

I keep hearing about how the rules of marketing haven’t changed —- we’re just using new tools. I think that’s hogwash. Marketing has changed in profound ways.

First of all, it’s no small matter that the tools have changed. When we started using the phone instead of the letter, or mobile phone instead of the land line, our lives changed in significant ways. New communication tools have meant lost industries and jobs as well as new opportunities. The same is and will be true in marketing so we should not deny the major changes that face us.

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Where Does Social Media Fit With Brand Culture?

by Heather Rast · December 2, 2011

Creating and maintaining the right culture is essential for sustainable business. Probably more so today, given our access to tools and technology, and ever-increasing adoption. Zappos, Askinose Chocolate, Tom’s Shoes, and Land’s End are just a few of the brands recognized for centering entire company operations – from product to policy – around a set of carefully chosen values. Those values are the structural basis of every decision, action, or passive outcome that comes after.

These brand values – brought to life as deeds and messages – begets culture. When values flex and bow, culture is weakened. And the brand becomes fuzzy, internally and externally. Toss on some social media and you’ve got a heck of an operational and communications failure.

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The Good And Bad Of Social Media In A Democracy

by Jason Falls · November 28, 2011

The International Visitor Leadership Program, an off-shoot of something run by the U.S. State Department, brought a group of journalists and bloggers from China to the U.S. recently. I met with them in Louisville on Friday to discuss new media journalism in the U.S. The hour-and-a-half long meeting gave them an opportunity to ask me questions about how bloggers and journalists in the U.S. deal with a variety of issues, including ethics in journalism, credibility in new and online media outlets, how Americans can be critical of their government but do so within the confines of our laws and the like.

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What Zappos Insights Can Teach Us About Social Media Values

by Nichole Kelly · November 17, 2011

Do you still have people in your company who are scared of letting employees tweet? Is social media still viewed as a “risky” venture? Are you terrified of what an employee might say on a social media channel? There is no shame in admitting that social media can open a huge door to embarrassment and even risk for a company, if it is placed in the wrong hands. Getting comfortable with letting our guard down is a process that doesn’t happen overnight and that journey can take longer than many of us would like.

5 comments

Are Your Fans Talking About This?

by Eric Brown · October 21, 2011

Is bigger really better? Social media marketing is a low barrier-to-entry business and every small to medium business that hires that 20-something for social media, “because they must understand this stuff,” suffers. They rarely know how to generate scalable numbers. Said different, they typically do not know how to generate more leads for your business that wind up positively effecting the bottom line.

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