Archive for the ‘media users’ tag
The 4 best times to engage your followers
Your brand has millions of followers — but how engaged are they? In the digital age, simply having a high number of followers is not enough. Marketers must find the optimal time and day to deploy content that truly engages their audiences.
Despite recent emphasis on best deployment times, marketers are still choosing the wrong windows to deploy campaigns in order to engage customers at the highest level. For example, Tuesday is the most engaging day on Facebook, yet the number of campaigns launched that day is declining, ranking fourth during the week
With 7 billion visits a month, and 900 million active members, Facebook ranks as the top social network. The sheer number of social media users means marketers need to optimize the prime times to reach their customers.
Deploy campaigns outside of “work hours”
For marketers, it’s easier to plan campaigns that happen during the work day. But the least utilized time for deployment for Facebook — between 10 p.m. and 12 a.m. EST — ranks highest in engagement opportunity. The most popular time of day to begin campaigns is between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. EST, and yet the time frame is in the bottom 30 percent in terms of engagement.
For Twitter, early morning timeslots are the most engaging — 5 to 6 a.m. and 7 to 8 a.m. EST. However, marketers deploy the majority of Twitter campaigns during regular work hours. If marketers begin campaigns outside of work hours, they face less competition and over-messaging.
While time of day is less important for YouTube, 68 percent of YouTube campaigns start between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. EST. Surprisingly, the 2 to 3 a.m. EST timeslot achieves the highest engagement. Monday ranks as the most engaging day for YouTube, but is one of the least utilized days.
Tailor the content to your customers
Even if the time and day are engaging, the customer must connect with the content for the campaign to be successful. For instance, status updates and posts containing links show a decline in engagement, yet the two comprise 50 percent of all deployed Facebook campaigns.
Video on Facebook is growing rapidly and consistently in engagement, making it the most promising Facebook format. But only 6.5 percent of Facebook campaigns utilize video. Incorporating photos or videos into campaigns encourages users to engage and share content.
If Twitter and Facebook campaigns identify a desired behavior, the engagement level rises. The most successful campaigns provide an incentive for action or make the customer feel empowered.
Integrating email campaigns can double engagement
Multi-channel campaigns, such as launching an email and Twitter campaign at the same time, result in more successful customer engagement. Facebook engagement grows by roughly 50 percent when an email campaign deploys. Using two email campaigns in the same time frame causes a 100 percent increase in engagement.
Twitter engagement increases by 25 percent with one email campaign and more than 40 percent when a second message goes out. Email campaigns can promote customer interaction and drive social engagement. Including a share button in an email campaign expands the campaign and allows customers to share with people outside the email list.
Find what works best for your brand
Marketers must test times, days, and content to find the most successful mix for their customers. An interesting way to develop an intelligent marketing strategy is to observe what competitors are doing on social channels. When developing a social media and email campaign strategy, marketers should put less emphasis on number of followers. Instead, marketers must use digital intelligence to create highly engaged followers and improve a brand’s marketing strategy.
Michael Fisher is president of Yesmail Interactive.
On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.
“Graphic design background” image via Shutterstock.
Oops! Social Media Faux Pas and How to Avoid Them
No way. What were they thinking?! Indeed, nothing can raise our eyebrows higher than some cringe-worthy social blunders, especially when performed on social networks. Now that “social” has become digital, one simple “misstep” can set the Interweb ablaze faster than wildfires.
So let’s show some netiquettes, dear social media users. Here are some social media faux pas and how you can avoid them.
Misstep #1: The Automated Greetings
A big no-no. Though automation tools are convenient, your clients, fans, or followers can easily sense the auto-generated, non-personal bot response and will immediately see it as spammy … or worse, lame.
How to Avoid:
Turn off the auto-pilot. Connect with your audience personally and converse with them real time. Don’t let the bot do the talking.
Misstep #2: The Content Pester Master
Want a surefire way to annoy and lose an audience in a jiffy? Bombard their screen with self-talks or multitude of posts. Blasting your audience with content, regardless of how interesting and relevant they can be, will just make them allergic to you.
How to Avoid: Schedule is key. Spread out your posts in different platforms and release them in a timely manner. You may use social media tools, such as Roost, to organize posts to multiple accounts using just one interface. You may also mix things up to expose your content to proper audience, like offering discounts to Twitter followers or place a poll on Facebook.
Misstep #3: The “Go with the Flow” Plan
Some people impulsively launch campaigns without having a clear idea of what they’re getting into. Not just because it is a buzz doesn’t mean anyone can execute it easily and flawlessly. Too many of us launch or share on a whim without thinking if or how it will benefit the audience and even us.
How to Avoid: Have a plan and perform a little research. Find out what people are saying about you or your brand before launching a campaign. What you think is good may be worse for another. Yes, it takes time, money, and effort, but it pays—literally and figuratively—in the end.
Misstep #4: The One-Trick Pony and the Parrot Syndrome
Promoting yourself on social media is fine. In fact, it speaks how serious and bankable you are. What to avoid is the canned plugging and sales pitch. Don’t embarrass yourself with redundancies. It only means you have nothing else to say. Better to fix that broken record immediately.
How to Avoid:
Build yourself subtly by executing different strategies to establish rapport and engage your community. You can share interesting trivia, news, or other nuggets of information to keep your audience coming back.
Misstep #5: The Uber-Lengthy Updates
What can easily repel audience next to flooding content? Lengthy posts. How did this become a faux pas? Well, you’re not considering your audience’s time. While you want to make your posts packed with information, you often overdo it.
How to Avoid:
Make “less is more” your mantra.
Misstep #6: The Online Brawl
Another faux pas you can see all the time. It is definitely easier to engage in a cat fight online than resorting to a face-to-face bout, but it also certainly makes it viral. Lashing out online easily turns off your audience.
How to Avoid:
Settle the fight personally and privately. Don’t involve your “army” of fans or followers, because they may just bail you.
Misstep #7: The Personal and Business Account Mix Up
Yes, you want to update your audience with the latest trends and whatnot, but please, don’t let private matters “leak” in the public, especially when you’re handling a business account. Even if posting something personal to your business profile is unintentional, it can cause a one-time embarrassment or a recurring nightmare.
How to Avoid:
If you’re venturing in a business, separate your personal with your business account. Better yet, keep private information to yourself. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if what happens that night ends up on Facebook.
Bottom line: Learn from the social media blunders of others to keep yourself off the virtual chopping block. After all, it wouldn’t hurt if we mind our manners online, eh?
Image Source: Courtesy of Fountain Head via Flickr
The post Oops! Social Media Faux Pas and How to Avoid Them appeared first on About Social Media.
Want To Know What Social Media Users Are Thinking? Now You Can!
The first major lesson I learned as a working professional in the marketing business was that there was almost nothing more important in the marketing decision-making process than sound research and data from which decisions could be made. Without it, you’re guessing. And guessing often leads to less-than-optimal outcomes.
Today, I’m happy to tell you that not only is Edison Research expanding its annual survey of social media users in America to a quarterly survey (from annual), and that I have joined Edison’s Tom Webster, Convince and Convert’s Jay Baer and Schaefer Marketing Solution’s Mark Schaefer as editorial board analysts for The Social Habit, but that our first round of survey questions can include the question YOU want to have answered! (Your company is welcome to purchase questions as it would with more traditional polling. But we are also crowdsourcing potential ones too. See below.)
We’re going to survey 3,000 U.S. social media users aged 12 and over more frequently than annually. (Probably quarterly, but something thereabouts.) The samples will be weighed and representative of the total U.S. population. Your company is able to purchase the research at various levels (more below) and specific questions, too. This can help you find those specific areas giving your social media marketing decision-making fits and fix the fits.
So ask yourself, “If I could ask a representative sample of Americans one thing about their use of social media, what would it be?” When you have an answer, use the form below and ask away. We’ll review it as part of our survey preparation process and perhaps it will be included!
If you’d like to purchase questions now to guarantee they’ll be asked in the first round, reach out to us via the contact form on the Social Habit site.
Once the results of each survey are in — and remember this will be done quarterly, so the data will continue to evolve — there are a number of ways you can use it. We will offer:
- An executive summary with over 100 charts and graphs, detailed findings and recommendations
- A live, three-hour online event, with analysis and live questions-and-answers from Baer, Schaefer, Webster and me
- Optional complete copies of the survey’s raw data
- Optional one-hour consulting calls with the analyst of your choice
- Optional custom segmenting of the data, including a 30-minute explanatory call with Webster
Businesses may also opt to purchase questions in future iterations of The Social Habit to gain more specific insights into their brand, industry, competitors or consumers.
You can learn more about the products and services The Social Habit will provide and stay up to date on the information and opportunities we’ll provide by visiting The Social Habit’s new website and signing up for our email list. You can also subscribe to our blog which will feature select data and analysis, plus discussions about social media research in general, for free.
Our efforts here are focused on providing you with credible social media consumer research from a trusted source at an affordable price that delivers actionable insights and features your custom questions. All that combines to make The Social Habit pretty unique. We’d love to have you subscribe to information about our future research or become a Social Habit customer.
And now back to you! Have a question you want to ask the American social media user? Drop it in the form below and we’ll review it before our Q3 survey is deployed!
Converting Social Media Haters Into Social Media Lovers
Have you noticed the online war going on in the digital sphere? We’re talking about the Social Media Haters vs. Social Media Lovers.
Despite most businesses and marketers nowadays have embraced social media and incorporated it into their marketing strategy, there are still a few traditionalists who steer away from the social media bandwagon as much as possible. There are a few naysayers, too, who claim that this modern marketing tactic is a mere waste of time.
Well, if you’re a social media lover, you should understand that this reaction is common, just like in every cultural movement. But how can you convince social media haters that there is more than just liking, sharing, tweeting, poking, digging, and stumbling? Here are some effective arguments you can use to convince traditional media users that social media is worthwhile and valuable, not a threat.
Social media is a marketing platform.
Brand exposure is one benefit that marketers found from using social media. In a research conducted by Pagemodo, 64 percent of business owners say that social media marketing is a “promising tactic,” though they favor a more cautious approach. This is when traditional methods meet modern approach. Basic marketing techniques, such as market segmentation and product placement, can still be applied in a marketing campaign using social media.
Social media is a communications tool.
Businesses are jumping on the social media bandwagon because that’s where people are. It’s a fact that social media can’t reach everyone, but it’s another fact that social media users are growing by the minute. It finds and reaches a huge demographic, ranging from all walks of life. Statistics show that more and more people are now getting involved in social networks; Facebook alone has 500 million active users as of 2011. That’s why, businesses need to engage in conversation online and start including social media in their marketing toolbox.
Social media is convenient and accessible.
Social media changed the way we communicate. It is more convenient and more accessible than ever before. Moreover, it enhances consumer experience as it lets Internet-savvy customers to personally interact with a company or business. There is a real-time discussion and communication occuring, and it results to a nurtured and sustained relationship between the consumers and businesses.
Social media is interactive.
Social media is simply a hub where both businesses and consumers can participate in discussions real time. Unlike traditional marketing platforms that are pretty much passive in terms of communication, social media engages users and encourages to express their ideas and give valuable feedback. Social media also helps businesses to strengthen consumer loyalty and eventually build a steadfast community of customers.
Social media is here to stay.
Social media has evidently dominated the Internet and firmly secured itself into the modern culture. This is one more reason businesses need to consider employing social media into their marketing strategy and adapt to the ever-changing playing field.
This is not to say that social media is the one and only marketing strategy worth executing and investing in. Just like other marketing campaigns and techniques, social media sure has its own rewards. In a nutshell, social media is a valuable weapon in your media arsenal that you ignore at your peril.
So have you have come across a social media hater? Share your experiences in the comments!
Image Source: Courtesy of Curly via Flickr
The post Converting Social Media Haters Into Social Media Lovers appeared first on About Social Media.
Warning: Malware Feigns as Facebook Photo Tag Notification
Social media users should not let their guards down, especially when malicious software continues to spread and attack via social media tools and networks. Recently, security firm Sophos warned Facebook users about a malicious software that disguises as a Facebook photo tag alert.
In a Naked Security blog post, Sophos’ senior technology consultant Graham Cluley stated that the security firmware intercepted a “spammed-out email campaign” that is designed to infect recipient’s computer with malware tied to the infamous Blackhole exploit kit.
What Happens When I Click the Link?
Be extra cautious (and suspicious) of emails claiming to be from Facebook, saying you’ve been tagged. Once you click the link that supposedly directs you to the photo, you’re instead taken to a website that hosts a “malicious iFrame script” that runs the Blackhole exploit kit. Blackhole essentially opens a back door for more malware, putting your PC at a greater risk.
What makes the campaign even cleverer and trickier is that within four seconds, you’re suddenly redirected to a legitimate Facebook page of a “presumably entirely innocent individual” to act as a smokescreen. Because of this clever trick, you won’t be skeptical that something just went terribly wrong, when in fact you’ve just been malware attacked.
How Can I Tell If the Email is Fake?
Observe an example of what a typical email looks like:
Did you notice the phish-y part about it? Look closely at the “From” field of the email. Gotcha! It misspells “Facebook” with an extra “o.” Pretty sneaky, right? But Cluley further hinted:
Even if you didn’t notice that “Faceboook” was spelt incorrectly, you could have seen by hovering your mouse over the link that it wasn’t going to take you directly to the genuine Facebook website.
Cluley also advised users to keep “your wits about you” when online.
If you don’t take the right steps to protect your computer, one day a cybercriminal might find the right social engineering trick to dupe you into making a bad decision or visit a dangerous website.
SophosLabs is adding detection of the malware as Troj/JSRedir-HW and still investigating this attack.
Cyberattacks running rampant through the social networks is nothing new. That’s why it pays to do a spell-check before you click, because you never know when you’ve just been phished.
Image Sources: Computer Bugs Courtesy of Mike Vadala via Flickr and Fake Email via http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com
The post Warning: Malware Feigns as Facebook Photo Tag Notification appeared first on About Social Media.
Should you be Making Time for Social Media?
Yes.
OK, that’s not much of a blog post, but it sums up what follows.
One of the main arguments for businesses not engaging in social media is that they don’t have time to do it.
Really?
You don’t have time to:
- Promote your business?
- Talk to your customers?
- Build relationships with new customers?
- Add value to your existing customer base?
Well, that’s a shame because if you did have time to do all of that, your business would be flying high, even in today’s economic climate.
You may think that you do enough face to face networking to bring in the new customers you need, so why bother with social media too?
Well, fair enough, you can find new customers that way, but what about looking after the ones you’ve already got?
We all know that it costs about 6 times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one, so surely it makes sense to ensure the service you’re providing keeps your existing customers happy.
I’m not just talking about saying a big ‘thank you’ when they buy from you, or sending the occasional newsletter. Social media gives your customers the opportunity to engage directly with you. In an instant you can make them aware of special offers and events through your Facebook Business Page or Twitter.
Social media is all about a two way conversation between you and your customers, adding value to your connection with them through hints, tips, offers and entertaining conversation. It’s all about relationship building.
If you’re still not convinced, here are some facts for you that might get you to change your mind:
- Social media users’ revenue grew at 19%, whereas non-social media users’ only grew at 6%
- The client base of social media users grew at 12%
- 61% of LinkedIn users gained a client through social media
- 35% of Facebook users gained a client
- 47% of blog owners gained a client
- 36% overall gained clients through a social network
(Source: The Business Success Team)
Are you beginning to see the bigger picture now?
6 Social Media Personas [Infographic]
With Facebook looking at nearly a billion users and even Google+ recently announcing they have 150 million monthly active users, social networks are prime grounds for behavioral analysis. A recent infographic attempts to sort social media users into 6 personas, and look at their various demographics and behavior. The results are interesting, and you probably know a few people that fit into each category.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Why GM Turned on Facebook – and Why Social Media Users Are Doomed, Anyway
When GM pulled a $10 million ad campaign from Facebook, the industry shuddered at what that might mean for the rest of the social media ecosystem. It’s expected that venture-backed companies, especially those that are publicly traded, will figure out a sustainable way to earn revenue. But that’s not to say that social media sites are selling out their users without a fight.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Death to Internet Week
Death to Internet Week
(Long Live Mobile Week)
originally published in MediaPost’s Social Media Insider
Happy Internet Week! Did you realize it was that time of year again? It’s one of the holiest weeks on the digital media calendar, nestled between the first and second Social Media Weeks, and well ahead of Advertising Week and Social Week. Also, don’t confuse it for Foursquare Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day, neither of which take place during Internet Week, but they keep the spirit alive year-round.
Enjoy all these weeks while you can. If they are to maintain their relevance going forward, then all of them will disappear and will be rebranded Mobile Week. Good luck telling them apart, but that would at least achieve some degree of honesty in nomenclature.
Consider some recent milestones:
- Facebook announced it has more than 500 million mobile users. There’s no turning back now that Facebook has the majority of its audience accessing the service from mobile devices. In March, 83 million people used only Facebook’s mobile services and not its online site; this jumped 43% from 58 million in December. For Twitter, this is old hat. Back in September, Twitter’s CEO said that 55% of its active users logged on via a mobile device.
- TechCrunch reported that Facebook’s 900 million users give it a 90% reach of all social media users, based on the 1 billion global social media users mentioned in a new social media report from the ITU. Its reporting could use some work. First of all, a quick search revealed that the ITU cited the 1 billion figure last year, when Facebook had a mere 750 million users. Second, the ITU counts China’s leading social service QQ in the total. QQ has more than 700 million users as of last September. Given that Facebook is banned in China, and given that QQ has also continued to grow rapidly, that means the number of combined users for those services alone is at least 1.6 billion and will likely top 2 billion in the coming months. The growth for QQ is, surprise, getting a major boost from mobile. Its Mobile QQ Game Hall application recently surpassed 200 million users, and that’s just one of several mobile services QQ offers.
- Facebook users are spending more time with the property on mobile devices. comScore reported that U.S. Facebook users spent an average of 441 minutes per month accessing it via mobile properties, compared to just 391 minutes via PCs.
None of this should be particularly shocking. It doesn’t matter whether a site’s offering the weather or selling snowshoes; in time, most of that usage will come from mobile devices. For social media, the changes are happening even faster for two key reasons:
1) Mobile devices have always been designed for communication, so the only difference now is that people are using the devices more for data than voice. Younger Americans prefer texting to talking, and that preference line is creeping into older demographics each year.
2) Social media is increasingly about sharing content. The easiest way to create content – especially anything involving sound, images, or video – is through a mobile device. Once that content is created, it’s now fairly effortless to share it. Sharing content is usually the purpose of creating it. The ends and the means are the same. Why create content? To share it. Why share content? Because it was created.
That’s why all these event weeks can save themselves from irrelevance and rename themselves Mobile Week now. Yet even if you accept the premise for Social Media Week, Social Week, and Internet Week, the one that may be a harder sell is Advertising Week. After all, advertising is everywhere, and it’s not just digital. On top of that, mobile advertising is a tiny share of the pie, and marketers are hardly closing the gap between where they’re spending media dollars and where consumers are spending their time.
Advertising Week should be the first to change its name. It’s traditional advertising – TV, radio, print, out of home, in-store – that’s most likely to reach people who have their mobile devices on them. It doesn’t matter what the call to action is; the mobile device gives consumers a way to express their interest by taking action.
We’ll see which week changes its name first. In the meantime, I wish you a happy Mobile Week, and I hope to see you at the next Mobile Week, which should be coming up any week now.
Three Tips For Creating More Content Via Social Media
(NOTE – This post originally appeared in the first issue of my newsletter that’s aimed at helping companies better utilize Social Media to connect with their companies. Each week’s issue includes original content like this that’s aimed at helping your company or organization improve its Social Media Marketing efforts. Please click here if you would like to subscribe to the newsletter. And thanks!)
I’ve been working with a client that has a problem I bet a lot of you can relate to. They have several blogs, and are constantly struggling with finding enough compelling content for each blog and each channel they have. The Social Media Manager has been trying to get help internally from Subject Matter Experts, but that’s been a frequent dead-end. So instead of actually managing the company’s Social Media efforts, she often becomes the defacto content creator.
Let’s tackle this problem by looking at three different areas:
1 – What type of content can you create?
2 – Can you re-purpose any existing content?
3 – How can you better ‘encourage’ your Subject Matter Experts to become more involved?
What Type of Content Can You Create?
Let’s be honest, creating compelling content is an issue that all social media users face, and it can be an especially difficult challenge for companies. I think that most companies aren’t sure how to handle this, so they default back to what they know best: Their products and services. As I wrote about recently on my blog, Social Media doesn’t function well as a direct-selling channel. So think about the type of content you can create that will be valuable for your customers. I am a big fan of content that teaches vs content that promotes.
For example: Let’s say your company makes cameras. Is it better to write blog posts that tell me why your cameras are the best on the market, or is it better to write blog posts that teach me how to take better pictures? That’s probably what I want, I don’t want to buy the best camera, I want to take the best pictures! If you can teach me how to do that, then I am more likely to give you my business!
Now when it comes to the actual type of content, think about mixing up your media. Don’t focus just on posts and whitepapers. What about videos? Photographs? If you can alternate between different forms of media, that makes your content more interesting. Also think about creating content that can be used in more than one place. A short video interview can go on your website, in a blog post, on Facebook, and on your YouTube channel. That’s four destinations from one piece of content!
Here’s another example; Let’s say you’re going to attend an industry conference. There’s several opportunities for creating content:
1 – You can live-blog the event! All you need to do is recap your experience each day on your blog. This gives your blog unique content that your competitors probably won’t be publishing. Plus, it’s content that people in your industry will find value in.
2 – Take pictures. These pictures can be included in your recap posts on your blog, but can also be shared on your website, Facebook, Flickr, etc.
3 – Do short video interviews with speakers and industry experts in attendance. This is a GREAT way to create content that others will be interested in. Chris Yates at Huddle Productions does a fascinating job with this. Chris and his team attend Social Media events and interview speakers and industry experts, then post those interviews on the company’s blog. Earlier this month at SXSW, Chris snagged an interview with Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore. As luck would have it, right before Chris posted the interview, a major rumor was reported that CNN was going to buy Mashable. So suddenly everyone was looking for any recent interview with Cashmore, and that meant more views for Chris’ video interview with him!
What About Re-Purposing Existing Content?
The odds are you have already created a lot of content that you can re-purpose and use in a new way. A classic example of this is whitepapers. Many companies have whitepapers on their website. Why not take some of your most popular ones, and break them up into multiple blog posts? You can break them up, update any information that needs to be changed, and you’ve got a few new blog posts!
Another idea is taking customer questions or issues, and addressing them via new content. For example, if you see that many customers are having the same question/issue/complaint, why not write a new blog post that addresses it? This will also drive more search traffic to your blog because the odds are if some of your customers are writing about an issue, that other customers are encountering the same thing.
Finally, check your blog’s analytics and see what search terms are leading people to your blog. If you see keyword phrases like ‘How do I…’ or ‘What’s the best way to…’, guess what, those are blog posts! Write a blog post that answers that search query, and you’re set!
How Can You Better Encourage Your Subject Matter Experts to Become Involved?
When it comes to trying to get more involvement from Subject Matter Experts, a frequent mistake companies make is trying to ‘push’ only one method on them. If you are trying to convince a SME to write a monthly blog post for you and they aren’t comfortable with their writing skills, the odds are they won’t want to do it. So give them other options. For example, ask them if they would mind if you interviewed them and had them talk about what they do for a few minutes. Then you could take the video, give a bit of background in a blog post, and you’ve got your post! Or maybe a SME doesn’t want to blog, but they might like the idea of dealing with customers directly on Twitter or Facebook and helping them with their product issues!
A great way to get more involvement from your SMEs is to approach them with the mindset of ‘What would YOU like to do?’ versus ‘Here’s what we’d like for you to do.’ Give them several options, and you greatly increase their chances of contributing in some way.
I hope you enjoyed this post and found it useful. If so, please consider subscribing to my newsletter which every week gives you original content like this that’s aimed at helping your company improve its Social Media Marketing efforts.