Build a foundation and be amazing!

Social media marketing can be daunting. This article, by Marketing Profs, helps businesses focus on what needs to be done to harness the power of social media.

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Vintage tees tell the real story

Great post from Copyblogger tying the idea of authentic vintage tees to creating authentic messages that resonate with your customer audience in a meaningful way. Staying focused on marketing content that is in tune with what your customer wants is crucial to success.

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Social reporting takes a step forward in monitoring effectiveness

With new tools for tracking engagement, marketing execs focused on social media marketing strategy will be better able to be assess effectiveness. Tools for analytics are evolving rapidly…stay tuned.

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Sassy ham

7000 hits on You Tube and counting! Plus shares across Facebook. The Queen of Jordan from 30 Rock uttered just a single word, “HAM!”, and her sassy delivery and self appointment to the “Ham Council” is quickly gaining attention across the country, eliciting smiles from audiences of all ages. It’s fascinating to see the viral video engine in action. Now…how can Tina Fey, the writer, 30 Rock or some other business monetize this new addition to the cultural landscape?

Mobile is the new black

Social media’s future is all about mobile delivery. People will access their favorite channels more and more through smartphones and smarttablets and less and less through desktop and laptop computers. All the technological development and advances point in this direction. The question in my mind is, how many people do you know who are really adept and savvy about using their mobile devices? How long will it be before use of mobile is totally ubiquitous? Will social media access be splintered across delivery mechanisms for some time?

What is content marketing?

There’s a lot of buzz these days about ”content marketing”.  With the ever-growing digital methods of communication, primarily on the internet and through mobile devices, comes the need for businesses to offer engaging and useful information on each of the media channels they’re “living” on. Content marketing is a broad term encompassing all marketing platforms that involve the creation or sharing of content (information) for the purpose of engaging current and potential customers. Content may come in the form of text, video or images and is specifically produced to engage your audience and encourage interaction. Content marketing assumes that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives consumers to act in a way that will drive revenue for the business. Ultimately, content marketing should help retain audiences over time and improve loyalty to the brand.

The rise of the curator

Who is not overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of information available on the web today?   It’s not surprising that the next generation of information sifting is evolving and the term for it is “curating”.  Similar to the role the curator plays at a museum, by selecting art within a theme for presentation to its audience, the social media curator searches for content within a topic area and collates it into a digestible and manageable form for its readership. “By discovering, organizing, and sharing relevant and interesting content from around the Web through their social streams of choice, curators invest in the integrity of their network as well as their relationships,” states Brian Solis in The State of the Blogosphere 2010. The task of the curator is significant in that he or she can become the authority in a field which is currently wide open.  The curator can “package it in a compelling, consumable and also sharable format” continues Solis, and plays a great “role in qualifying, filtering, and refining the content introduced to the streams that connect their interest graphs.”

Be a big fish in a small pond

Social media is still  the new frontier for most businesses, of any size.  What that means is there is still an incredible opportunity to get out there ahead of your competition and do it right. Take a cyber look around at your competition, locally, regionally and even nationally, and see what they’re doing.  In many industries, very few companies are doing social media well, if at all.  This is a huge opportunity for anyone with the interest, focus and resources to get the social media ball rolling.  Be the one to get out there and take the lead!  Figure out where the pitfalls are and where you can be successful.  Figure out what resources you need in terms of budget and staffing to make it successful.  Figure out what channels work best for you, what content drives attention, what polls or promotions can create a Justin Bieber like phenomenon.  You can take the lead and be the biggest fish in your pond!

Social Media – to use or not to use?

Social media — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others – is a booming  marketing resource and an important new part of any business’ marketing mix.  How much or how little to do is the real question.   The first thing to understand is that social media must be used as a tactical element to help businesses meet their strategic objectives.  If it can help you reach your target audience and help motivate them to act as you would like, then use it.  If it will integrate with and complement other parts of your marketing program, then use it. If it can help make you an authority in your field, thereby altering how your audience perceives you, then use it.

Be cognizant that effective use of social media takes time and money, and while it can be extremely powerful in some instances, it can also be a waste of time and effort if not used correctly.  Dedicated resources will be necessary.  Ideally, appoint someone in your company who is “in tune” with your company’s social media audience, to spearhead your efforts.  The more someone understands your business, your audience and how they are using social media, the more effective your efforts will be.