Are you listening?
Are you?
Let me rephrase that. Are you listening… socially?
Are you “listening” to what people are saying about your company, your products or services, your market space, and your competitors? Are you using that intel to understand your customers, who they are and what they want? Are you leveraging it to help you make genuine connections with them, and to give them what they need?
Although it’s a common misconception, PR does not stand for “press release.”
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I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek, but as PR professionals know, there is a significant number of people who question the value of hiring an agency (or in-house PR practitioner) because “I can write a press release myself.” I can almost hear the PR people out there nodding their heads in agreement.
PR is, in fact, public relations — a component of which is media relations, but it’s not by any means synonymous. If an activity has anything to do with actively relating with your audience, the public, investors, customers or anyone else: It’s PR. Customer service? Part of it is definitely PR. Social media? PR. Working with analysts? PR. I could go on.
But for the purpose of this article, let’s actually go there and talk about press releases… because even those who know a bit more about marketing and PR — enough to be dangerous, one could say — often believe that all news should be heralded by press release. And these same people will be disappointed when each release is not met with widespread coverage and a splashy above-the-fold article in the WSJ. Continue reading
The first thing we do when we pitch or land a new client is an online audit of their organization.
We examine their social media presence of course. But what always surprises people is when we start talking about how their website fares in the search engines, and how they are not factoring mobile into their marketing.
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You see — social media, content, search and mobile — they all work together. They’re not independent silos to pick and choose from when putting together an online strategy. Here at SocialProse, we talk often about how effective social media marketing essentially serves as the delivery system for relevant, high-quality content. But it’s just as true that websites require both content and social media in order to perform with the search engines; and all three types of marketing need to have a strong mobile strategy in our increasingly mobile-connected world. Continue reading
Any week that inspires the trending Twitter hashtag of #WorstWeekEver has got to be a doozy. From marathon bombings and manhunts, to letters poisoned with ricin, to earthquakes in Iran and Japan, to a massive explosion in Texas, this week’s news has been dominated by fear, tragedy and horror.
But I’ve been impressed for the most part about how social media has been used for good during this time. In a very real way, it has brought our American community, and indeed the world, together. It has been the town square where we have congregated to keep informed, exchange information, and express our anger and despair.
And it has been shown to be a valuable tool during times of crisis. Terror suspects were identified, smoked out and learned about through social media. Social media was used to find missing loved ones. It was used to help local people open their homes to stranded runners and their families. It has been (and is still being) used by police, schools and news organizations to communicate with and give instructions to millions of people in a major urban area. So many of us, in fact, learned about this week’s news — every depressing bit of it — through social media. Continue reading
Here’s a statistic retailers should find staggering: 57 percent of people test products in stores, walk out the door, and purchase the same products on Amazon.com.
Amazon’s the biggest and baddest online retailer, and actively encourages the practice. But also imagine all the people trying on shoes at shoe stores and then buying them from Zappos, for instance.
If you’re in retail, you’re already aware of showrooming: When shoppers examine merchandise in a brick-and-mortar store without purchasing it, then shop online for a better value. In fact, many showroomers purchase online while in the store using their smartphones. The phenomenon, in fact, is said to have been behind Target’s decision to discontinue carrying the Amazon Kindle; and is of massive concern to retailers like Best Buy, which estimates that as many as 40 percent of the people who come through its doors have no intention of buying anything — from them, anyway — while there.
The practice has become so disruptive to retail profits that some have fought back in not-very-smart ways: An Australian company, for instance, made headlines last month for charging looky-loos in their store a $5 fee for “just looking.” But showrooming is here to stay, and everybody’s looking for the best way to combat it. How can you be smart about dealing with showrooming in your own business? Continue reading
I came across an article today: “CEOs say marketers are disconnected from financial reality.”
Not only was it timely, coming as it did on the day I was sitting down to write about ROI, but it’s also true. I’ve talked before about how marketers tend to gravitate toward soft measurements, particularly in the area of social media marketing. This CEO article goes into detail about the level of mistrust the C-suite has for marketing’s worth and has some revealing statistics to back it up — such as the fact that 74 percent of CEOs want marketers to become 100 percent ROI-focused.
Unrealistic? Not completely. The strong message here is that marketers need to do a better job connecting the dots between their organization’s budget and resource investment, and substantive results: Cost-per-lead, cost-per-conversion. They need to apply social media marketing to the sales funnel, along with any other marketing activities. And they need to demonstrate how social marketing contributes to retention and the lifetime value of customers.
So, how to get started calculating ROI? Continue reading
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Yes, yes, we know: We use up a lot of space on this blog writing about content creation and how it’s important for your brand. But as two former journalists, this week we felt our points were especially on cue with the release of a new study. Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism announced its State of the News Media 2013 with a lot to say about content and how it’s delivered.
For readers who aren’t familiar with Pew, it is a nonpartisan think tank. Its media arm analyzes the rapidly changing ways the public consumes information. This report’s findings are important for SocialProse’s clients because a lot of what you are doing is newsworthy. Of the center’s five findings, we thought we’d share the three most relevant points to your marketing. Continue reading
In 1876, as the story allegedly goes, Western Union sent out an internal memo that declared, “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.’”
Now, whether this story is true or not almost doesn’t matter. As short-sighted as the sentiment may have ended up being, and as much as we can laugh at these famous-last-words as they appear on our smartphone browsers 150 years later — we can all recognize that its core is a human reaction as-the same one that also dismissed the importance of the personal computer, email and the Internet.
Investment in social media marketing is still a tough sell to many. But it’s time to get over it: The time for waiting-and-seeing is past. Depending upon whom you’re listening to, we’ve either hit the social media tipping point or will very shortly. If your customers, prospects and competitors are active on social media, not being active yourself is like choosing to not have a telephone or email account.
Being social is now about simple survival. How’s that for business justification? Continue reading
If there’s one area where marketing has given itself a bad rap, it’s where practitioners have failed to prove marketing’s impact on the bottom line. And nowhere is that business disconnect more apparent than in social media marketing.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
We social media marketers like to breathlessly talk about “likes” and “followers” and “shares.” And while we know these somewhat intangible measurements are important to us in terms of reach and priming potential customers, they really mean very little when it comes to proving our efforts’ worth to business executives and owners.
But can true social media return on investment be calculated or determined? Should it be? It depends upon whom you talk to. Continue reading
Infographics are the hottest new trend in marketing: Part dynamic graphic and part informational flowchart, infographics are a great way to visually impart information, especially for subjects that typically don’t lend themselves to visuals.
While not new, infographics have in the last couple of years found a home in social media. Because they contain helpful, easily consumable information in a visually entertaining form, they are perfect for social sharing. Take a look around Pinterest, Facebook or G+, and I guarantee you’ll find great examples of this.
Marketers like infographics because they are relatively easy content to create, and address the ongoing shift to visuals in marketing. In fact, articles that include relevant images have been shown to have 94 percent more total views, on average, than articles without images, most likely because, as studies have shown, visuals are processed more easily by the human brain. They also like infographics because they are easily shared — which helps to create buzz — and they promote social engagement, and as a result, improve website search engine optimization. Infographics are a powerful marketing tool!
So to tell you a little more about infographics, how to use them and how to get started… well, how about an infographic on infographics?! Continue reading
