Integrating social into your marketing? Don’t overlook your most important asset. Your Website is the Core Your company website is a core asset and should be the center of your marketing efforts. Your website is the mainstay of your online presence; it brands you and serves as the foundation, or center, of a constellation of marketing assets. Not only is your website the host of your content and offers, but it is the gateway through which the world can reach you, and serves, in many cases, as a first introduction to your prospects. Your Prospects are Already Online “Many Americans …
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Social bookmarking is coming back in a big way, thanks to the popularity of Pinterest (pronounced to rhyme with “interest”). Dubbed as a “virtual pinboard,” it lets you organize and share photos of the many products, places, and things you find interesting online. You can also browse other users’ pinboards and re-pin to your own board anything that piques your interest. Pinterest has attracted a lot of buzz, and our own Windmill Networking contributor Debbie Miller‘s recent post on Pinterest for the Hospitality Industry actually has more Pins than Stumbles or Pluses! That being said, there are just as many Pinterest skeptics out …
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LinkedIn Company Pages are actually a combination of a number of different modules that are rarely maximized by businesses. In order to better understand how your sales and marketing team can best maximize this multi-functional part of LinkedIn, it’s important to understand exactly what the Companies functionality offers. A good way to start is to compare the Company Page with the most famous corporate presence in social media: The Facebook Fan Page. You could say that a fan page provides details about a company in the “info” section, but this is not the primary way that people are introduced to a …
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Outsourcing training and strategy is a safe bet when you want to implement social media marketing with your company. Rather than give the reins over to an outside resource, it’s a much better choice to stick with your in house team members and let them be guided by a social marketing expert. Your in house team will need to be trained in not only the basics but the more advanced aspects of social media management. If you’re using multiple marketing platforms (Twitter, Facebook and Google+ for example), they will need to understand the strategy, approach and experience that your organization …
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Channel Goldilocks in determining the right amount of PR “personality” for your social business profile—not too little, not too much. Just right. On CBC Radio’s The Current, a recent guest was Susan Cain, author of the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking; she described introverts’ preferred forms of interactions and contributions to society. A sound bite that stood out from a public relations and social media perspective was about how the 19th century focused on “character,” whereas the last and current centuries promote a culture of “personality.” From a social business perspective, what makes more sense …
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Our moms and our kindergarten teachers told us again and again: “It’s nice to share!” But why? How does sharing make things better? Before long the smartest kids figured out that sharing increased the fun. When you shared, more kids wanted to play with you. They’d stay in the sandbox longer, and they’d share their cool stuff with you. Those kindergarten lessons are no less true in the world of social media. In social media, sharing means reposting the content of others (always with a clear link back to them!) or recommending others to your followers. It’s no secret that …
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Use the Right Content Marketing Metrics and Strategy to Produce Real Results I believe it is a very exciting time for content marketing. Some say that this will be its big year, e.g. see 2012 is the Year of Content Marketing; and Windmill Networking columnist Judy Gombita shared this post about a Content Marketing Institute study that projected an increase in spending and said it “remains a top priority for marketers in 2012”). Social media expands the possibilities. By combining the two, you can take a discrete unit of marketing, track its trajectory, costs, impact, and connect the effort back …
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I frequently get invited to speak on social media for professional associations, and when I do it often seems as if the clocks in the room have been turned back 10 years since before the advent of social media. Although there are always some savvy users of social media in the room when I present, the associations themselves are usually using the same antiquated medium to promote themselves, both internally and externally: a pre-historic website and email newsletter blasts. I always say that social media is about the convergence of information and communication. Isn’t this the mission of every professional …
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Pinterest has emerged as a social platform to watch as more businesses jump on board (no pun intended). It lets users organize things they find on the web by creating pinboards then “pinning” items onto boards of each corresponding category. My first thought upon learning about businesses trying Pinterest was that it’s a perfect platform for travel marketing since there are so many (independent and collaborative) components people consider when planning a vacation. Plus, so much of leisure vacationing is taking in scenery, so there is already a very visual association with travel planning. Here are a few ways the …
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Currently, Facebook is the fastest growing social networking site in the world with over 800 million users and growing. With this population, there is a great opportunity for your local business to flourish. Moreover, you would also be able to find your ideal target customer in Facebook if you know how to find them. The Facebook advertising platform is definitely something that is worth exploring especially if you are trying to target a local market .This is a great opportunity for you to get new customers and it seems that failing to be in Facebook these days is a huge …
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If you’re reading this, that probably means you’re involved in a startup. Which means that you’ve most likely heard about Kanye West’s early-January rantfest on Twitter in which he declared his intentions to kick off a new company, DONDA, which will “pick up where Steve Jobs left off”(!). DONDA will supposedly have 22 divisions including:“architects, graphic designers, directors musicians, producers, AnRs, writers, publicist, social media experts, app guys, managers, car designers, clothing designers, DJs, video game designers, publishers, tech guys, lawyers, bankers, nutritionists, doctors, scientists and teachers.” TWENTY TWO divisions, presumably overseen totally by one guy whose main qualifications are …
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In the last few months of 2011 through the beginning of 2012, the social business landscape has proven to be as dynamically changing as ever. If your business thought you were all caught up because you were beginning to see engagement on your Facebook Page and were equipped with enterprise-grade social media monitoring software, some of these recent events should have you thinking again as to what potential you might be missing out on – or what trends are emerging that you should be paying more attention to: The rapid emergence and need for your business to be on Google …
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While many people have been hoping to get some resolution to the question of who owns the followers of a Twitter account from the ongoing litigation between PhoneDog and its former employee Noah Kravitz, this federal case in the Northern District of California is unlikely to provide clear answers. The district court has recently held that PhoneDog can pursue its action for misappropriation of trade secrets and tortious interference with economic relationships based on new allegations concerning the alleged disruption of PhoneDog’s relationship with its advertisers. Thus, the dispute is moving away from who owns the Twitter account. The original …
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According to Wikipedia, who quote the American Marketing Association, the definition of a brand is a “Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” A good brand, however, does more than merely differentiate itself from the others: It creates an emotional attachment, a bond that says even at a higher price it still has fans that will buy the product. You could say that I’m a fan of Toyota because I bought their car shortly after the wave of recalls that hit them back in 2009 …
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Business was so much easier during the Middle Ages. Establish your fiefdom, keep the serfs happy, collect taxes and fend off the occasional barbarian hoard or the jealous younger sibling. Oftentimes a monarch with a large domain to protect couldn’t afford a standing army or a well-stocked armory. Thus was born just-in-time defense and the invention of the “freelance”— knights expert in the art of war who would sell their battlefield prowess to any lord or baron with enough gold, precious stones or land to render payment. So what does this WayBack Machine story have to do with social media? …
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