Social Media ROI: 11 FREE Tools for Measuring Social Media Success

One of the most challenging tasks in selling digital marketing to the C-Suite is defining the return on investment (ROI). It can be particularly challenging when justifying the budget for social media marketing (SMM).

Many SMM efforts lend themselves to brand building, community building, and customer service. Unlike "traditional" SEO, these activities aren't always transactional in nature.

Marketing ROI has traditionally been measured like this:

Return on Investment (%) = (Net profit / Marketing Costs) × 100.

Sometimes, cost per customer acquisition is the measure. As recently as 2010, the dawn of social media marketing, those in the C-Suite attempted to apply the tried and true transactional ROI model to SMM. The CMO Survey, as reported by Forbes, lists the most common metrics used to measure social media investment.

By 2013, only 9 percent of marketers were using traditional ROI metrics, down from 17 percent in the initial survey. The reason: many social media activities can't be effectively measured using a transactional formula. SMM is often best measured in terms of audience reach, engagement and sentiment.

That said, there are highly successful direct response campaigns that run on Facebook and other social networks every day. These approaches deliver an ROI that can easily be measured the old-fashioned way. Pam Dyer lists 10 here. If that isn't enough, Rob Petersen has another six examples.

Business Insider recently published a story on the death of social ROI. They claim that companies are starting to drop the idea that social media ROI can be measured.

I asked Nicole Harrison (@SocialNicole) about this and the importance of ROI in social media. She was adamant that social media done correctly will deliver results and recommended the following list of 11 free tools for measuring both ROI and social media success.

1. HootSuite

HootSuite is a good all around tool to use for management and metrics tracking. You can schedule posts from multiple social media channels as well as create over 30 individual reports. The free metrics are somewhat limited, but for beginners it's all you will need.

2. SocialMention

SocialMention is an aggregate tool similar to Google Alerts, but for social media, only. This will give you insight into not only what is being said, but who is saying it and what the general sentiment is.

You can set an RSS feed, email alerts, or even add a real-time widget to your website. You can also download a CSV/Excel file for further evaluation.

3. Klout

Monitoring influence isn't an exact science, but having a tool that helps you begin to gage someone's online presence can be useful. Klout is a free tool that will allow you to measure influence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and several other channels.

4. Facebook Insights

The Facebook insights dashboard gives you all of the analytics data for your Facebook page. The insights allow you to understand your audience, what they are reacting to, and adjust your content to meet their needs.

5. Twitter Analytics

Twitter now has its own analytics dashboard. With Twitter Analytics you can track timeline activity, including tweets that were favorited, retweeted, and replied to. The tool also tracks number of mentions, new followers and newly followed. For more information, see "Twitter Analytics: A Beginner's Guide".

6. Google Analytics

With Google Analytics Campaign Tracking, you can set up links for campaigns with UTM parameters to track the campaign. Go here to create the link using Google link shortener for campaigns.

This is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to track success of a specific link within a campaign. It's also one of the most overlooked methods of tracking.

7. Custom Social Media Reports

Google Analytics does a nice job tracking the number of visitors to visit a website from different social channels. These custom reports give you additional insights as to how traffic is being driven to your website.

If you aren't blogging or creating new and useful content to draw people to your website, don't expect these numbers to be high. It requires a content strategy to really work people toward your website. These easy to install one-click reports are invaluable.

8. Bitly

This link shortener allows you track everything you share. This is a great way to see what your audience is interacting with and decide if the content you share is valuable.

Bitly also integrates into many third-party software packages, making it a great umbrella tool, as you can track within multiple platforms. For example, you may use Social Sprout, a paid management platform and Buffer both with Bitly then review data in individual platforms or as a whole through Bitly.

9. Buffer

Buffer is a great tool for scheduling content. You simply fill up your Buffer account each day and it will automatically post the content to the channels you select.

For metrics, you're able to look at a dashboard inside Buffer to see what posts are getting the most interaction, or attach it to Bitly to include in your general tracking. You can also attach UTM parameters to track traffic in Google Analytics.

10. TweetReach

TweetReach is a great tool for tracking a campaign or conversation on Twitter. Simply enter your search term or hashtag and allow TweetReach to search for the tweets to tell you reach, exposure, activity, top contributors, and more. You can look at the past 50 mentions for free.

11. Keyhole

Keyhole is similar to TweetReach except that it also tracks Facebook and Instagram as well as Twitter. This is a great way to track a hashtag or keyword for a campaign or event.

The free social tracker gives you a sample of what the tracker can do. If you signup you can get a three-day free trial, which may be adequate for an event or snapshot view of a campaign. To get a long-term view you can sign up for a monthly paid plan.

Summary

Measuring social media ROI isn't always easy. Building a brand and improving your customer service may not show up directly in your analytics, but these "soft" metrics can have a major impact on the bottom line.

Do you have any tools or measurable SMM success stories to share?

By Chuck Price.  Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2308870/Social-Media-ROI-11-FREE-Tools-for-Measuring-Social-Media-Success

4 ONLINE MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2014

Every good Internet marketer knows there is only one valid rule for online marketing, and it’s this: Tomorrow, the rules will change. The digital world is constantly evolving, with new technologies arriving to kick the old ones into the gutter, and consumer behavior shifts as the choices expand.

Your website may be working … but is it working hard enough? Online marketers not only have to keep up with the current landscape, but also look ahead to anticipate what the future might bring.

Here’s what’s likely to happen in 2014 as the Internet continues to change.

1. Content marketing still reigns supreme

Providing consistently valuable content has always been a staple of online marketing, and it’s going to become more important than ever. Two recent changes to Google are driving factors in the rise of content marketing.

First is the new Hummingbird algorithm, which changes the rules for mobile searches and makes all of them more intelligent by using a “conversation-based” engine that finds information based on the way people talk.

Then there’s across-the-board secure search. Previously employed only when a searcher was logged into a Google account, the search engine giant has now implemented SSL for every search — and at the same time pulled the Google Keyword Tool. Now, paid searches through AdWords are the only ones being tracked by keywords.

These changes mean that online marketers will have to rely on organic SEO generated by strong content to boost search engine rankings.

2. Social media gets wrapped up in SEO

Traditional inbound links still carry more weight than social media mentions, but that dynamic is shifting. With search engines seeking to return the most relevant content with the highest quality, social shares are becoming a valuable component for search engine rankings — because the more people choose to share a piece of content, the higher its perceived quality.

For this reason, diversity in social media will also be important. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are still the Big 3 of social networks, but rising stars like Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, and Tumblr look like they’re here to stay — and they’ll add weight to your social signals. Currently, only a third of CEOs have any presence on social media sites, meaning that we have a long way to go before social reaches its saturation point within the business executive community.

In 2014, blending social strategies with SEO will help businesses enrich their content marketing efforts and drive organic search results.

3. Images are essential for success

As online consumers have become desensitized to banners and frame ads, the sheer number of advertisements has increased in a bid to gain attention. The emphasis today is on content that’s easily digestible; and great images help your content stand out.

Attesting to this is the rise of sites like Pinterest and Buzzfeed, the immediate popularity of infographics, and the fact that the most popular articles and blog posts with the most social shares contain clear, well-placed images. The visual nature of the Internet means that incorporating images can only help your marketing efforts.

Properly labeling images with relevant file names and ALT tags will also strengthen your SEO and improve the accessibility of your content.

4. Mobile matters more than ever

The shift toward mobile is undeniable. There are now more active mobile devices than adults in the US, and consumers are using their smartphones and tablets to research products and services, find businesses, shop directly, and more. Forbes reports that by 2017, 87 percent of connected devices sales — a category that includes desktop and laptop PCs — will be smartphones and tablets.

Next year’s Internet marketing battlefield will play out largely on mobile devices, as a growing number of users expects to access products, services, apps, and information on smartphones and tablets. Your business needs to have responsive design in place, and online features that cater to a mobile audience, in order to remain competitive.

By Drew Hendricks.  Article source: http://tech.co/4-online-marketing-trends-2014-2013-11

Related posts:

5 Online Marketing Trends Affecting Small Businesses Beyond 2013

The 16 Most Important Social Media Updates of 2012 by Rachel Sprung

Mapping World Social Media Trends

3 Strategies for Finding Customers With Social Media

Do you need a strategy to reach your ideal prospects with social media?

Are you overwhelmed by all the social media options?

If so, you’re not alone. Social media overwhelm is one of the biggest challenges businesses face.

In this article, I’m going to show you three social media strategies so you can focus your efforts on the channels that best align with your business objective and target audience.

The Simple Solution

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution for it: only focus on where your customers are.

Where are your customers on social media? Image source: iStockPhoto.

Once you find out where your customers are on social media, it becomes easier tocome up with a strategy that will help you find your future customers.

Here are three strategies you should consider:

Strategy #1: Ask Your Customers

Asking is the low-hanging fruit that’s easy for small business owners to overlook. It’s such a simple thing to do and allows you to further cement the personal connection you have with your customers.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business, when your customers visit your location, ask whether they use social media. If you have another type of business, figure out the best time and place to ask your customers whether they use social media.

If they do use social media, ask them what channels they spend their time on. Is it Facebook? Pinterest? Maybe it’s LinkedIn.

Maybe they don’t even use social media. By asking, you’d know.

If your customers are using social media, take it a step further and ask them how they like to be engaged on those channels. This will give you invaluable insight into how you can best add value in a way they’ll find useful.

You can also take the same approach if your business is online.

Most online businesses have an email list. Send your customer contacts an email and ask the same questions. It doesn’t have to be the subject of an entire email, necessarily; just a simple “P.S.” at the end of your weekly newsletter or part of a quarterly survey you send out should work wonders.

Ask you using a P.S. in your email.

Implementing this strategy can separate you and your business from your competitors, because so few businesses make the effort to ask. Asking removes any assumptions you may have about where your customers are hanging out online and shows them how much you care.

This is an easy way to get the important information you need to set up a successful social media strategy for your business.

Strategy #2: Use Google Alerts

I’m sure you’ve heard of Google Alerts, but are you using them?

If not, you’re missing a simple and free way to monitor what’s going on in your industry and find where your customers are online.

Google Alerts are updates you can set up in Google that allow you to keep track of a specific topic anytime it’s mentioned on the web.

For example, you can monitor if you or your business is mentioned across the web or keep track of industry news. When there’s a mention of your topic, you receive an email with a link to that search result.

How does this help you find your customers on social media?

Say you’re a small toy company that specializes in locally made wooden toys. You have an online presence but want to expand it and you think that social media might be an effective strategy. You’re unsure, though, which channels your target audience is using.

You could use Google Alerts to find this out.

You decide to enter “birthday gift ideas for kids” as a search query in Google Alerts. And the results show Pinterest boards and articles on “mommy blogs” that are relevant to your business.

When checking out the Pinterest board, you also find several other boards that are similar to your niche. Bingo! Pinterest may be one social channel you want to focus on.

Here’s how to set up your Google Alerts:

• Go to Google Alerts.
• Enter the term or phrase you want to monitor in the Search Query field.
• Choose the type of results you’d like to get in the Result Type field. (I recommend starting out with “Everything.” You can always change it once you see the type of results you’re getting.)
• Then choose how often you want to receive the results, how many results you want (I recommend “Only the best results”) and the email where you want to receive them.
  

  Here's how to set up Google Alerts.

Google Alerts require a little market research, but can get you the valuable information you need to find the social media strategy that works best for your business.

Strategy #3: Use the Search Function Within Social Channels

Sometimes you may want to take a deeper dive into researching your customerson a specific social media platform. Or you may love using a certain social platform and want to know whether your customers are there too. You can use the platform’s search functionality to quickly find out if your customers use the same one.

Each social channel has a search function that gives you the opportunity to instantly determine whether your customers are using it. And this can be as simple as entering the names of some of your customers in the search box on the social platform.

You can also search on things like your niche topic, relevant industry leaders, brands within your niche and any competitors you might have.

Using the search function is another simple and effective strategy that’s often overlooked, yet it will give you great insight into whether your customers are actively using that platform.

If you have a large customer base, consider pulling together a short list selection of the typical customers you want to reach on social media, and thensearch for them on a social media platform. This would give you information to work with.

Use the Google+ Communities Search:

Google+ Community search.

Or use the LinkedIn Search:

LinkedIn search.

Twitter’s Advanced Search is especially effective because not only can you search by all the attributes mentioned above, you can also search within a specific geographic region.

Twitter Advanced Search includes geographic locations.

Remember to stay up to date with changes on your favorite social platform. For example, there have been developments recently with Facebook Graph Search.

Conducting a little research on your customers using the search functions on the social platforms can help you determine where you should invest your social media marketing.

Finding Your Customers Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated

Use these simple, effective (and free!) ideas to find which social channels your customers are using.

As a business, if you’re not engaging with your customers on their terms, you’re missing a huge opportunity to add value and ultimately grow your business.

Focus your efforts on the few channels that align with your customers andbusiness objectives and let your competitors be overwhelmed by thinking they need to be on every social media platform.

What do you think? Have you used any of these simple strategies to find out which social channels your customers are using? What other strategies have you used to find where your customers are online? Let me know in the comments below.

Author: Rick Mulready.  Article source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-strategies-for-finding-customers-with-social-media/

5 Social Media Tactics to Increase ROI

BY ADAM POPESCUAUG 03, 2013

Social can be one of the most challenging platforms for brands to measure return on investment. Companies that grew up on traditional advertising and metrics often have trouble making sense of the value of the online ecosystem. But with 52% of U.S. consumers using the web as their primary purchase tool, it's an area brands can't afford to ignore.

SEE ALSO: Advice for Clueless Brands on Social Media

Last week the commenting and social curation platform Livefyre hosted an evening chat with a handful of influential analysts, marketers and publishers, sharing thoughts on need-to-know ROI growth tools. It's a formula Forrester Senior Analyst Kim Celestre calls "social depth," a fancy phrase for discovering, exploring and engaging with online consumers, eventually leading those conversations back to brands' websites.

Here's the social depth formula broken down into five, easy tips.

1. Engage

User-generated content, blog posts, videos, tweets and chatter are all over the web. Harnessing the power of brand advocates, addressing customer concerns and fixing problems empowers participation. It's easier to put out a fire than it is to ignore it.

People want to interact and create relationships with brands online. Catering to those fans via product giveaways, social interaction and real replies separate the companies that get it from the ones still in the dark.

"The consumer is boss, so we have to match that," explains Andrew Backs, P&G's manager for global business development. "Look for solutions to unlock the consumer voice."

2. Be Authentic

You can't fake it online, says Sid Shuman, who runs social media for Sony Playstation. "They can smell that a mile away."

The same die-hard brand advocates championing your product will be the first to call out shady behavior or content that doesn't reflect brand culture. When in doubt, ask your community for help when it comes to content. Shuman suggests crowdsourcing content for in-house interview and articles. Because they live and breathe the brand, fans "come up with better questions that we could any day," he says.

3. Keep Content Premium

Hitting "publish" is social suicide if the material isn't quality. Take advantage of Wordpress, Tumblr and social media to craft strong messages. Know the rules and follow them: Every network requires a specific approach and language (tweets are written differently than Facebook posts).

SEE ALSO: 8 Creative Ways to Connect With Customers on Facebook

Stick to a calendar for posting, and focus on making followers feel part of the brand's family. Using platforms solely as selling tools quickly alienates customers. Hire professionals—and fight the urge to turn sites into content farms or automate feeds.

Peter Yared, CBS Interactive's CTO/CIO suggests using your sites to curate and amplify positive content about your company. "Find the interesting content that’s being posted and use it to bring value to your audience."

4. Integrate Real-Time Apps

Incorporate social into every aspect of what you do, says Jordan Kretchmer, Livefyre's founder and chief executive. Kretchmer's company reports 88% of businesses using Twitter feeds, comments, ratings and reviews on homepages increases user engagement. Forty-two percent boosted their average time on site.

It may sound painfully simple, but adding these tools are the equivalent of a restaurant showing off a top health code letter grade. It empowers consumers to interact and share content. Plus, constant updating improves search engine visibility much more than static pages.

5. Experiment

Nothing risked is nothing gained, especially when it comes to social. Fail and see what works. Test tone, style and new monetizing tools, such as native advertising, which serves sponsored content, tweets and Facebook stories. eMarketer reports 73% of U.S publishers now offer some form of native advertising. But be careful: This hot topic still often fails to hook users, as do most click-bait attempts.

Did we miss something? Engage with us and share your tips in the comments below.

How to Use Social Media To Generate More Leads

Using Social Media for Lead Generation

They say you can get famous on social media within a week, but getting famous is only half of the money game. How do you convert those “Likes” — “Followers” into happy and paying customers? What is your strategy about using social media for lead generation?

According to statistics compiled by Wishpond, they create social media marketing application if you didn’t know that, 77 percent of business to consumer (B2C) marketers have acquired customers though Facebook, while business to business (B2B) marketers have found more success on LinkedIn — finding it a surprisingly 277 percent more effective than Facebook or Twitter.

For more on how social media marketing helps generate business leads and ideas to stand out to potential customers, I have arranged this infographic for you. Take a look at this infographic below and we may discuss it later in the comments box.

You may also like reading: The Art of Getting Retweets: How You Can Get More Retweets on Twitter

What is your strategy about using social media for lead generation? How do you plan to promote you product through social media to achieve your sales goals? Please share with us…

By S A Rahman Bukhari.  Article source: http://www.itsuccesscenter.com.

26 Tips to Create a Strong Social Media Content Strategy

By Debbie Hemley

Are you looking for ways to strengthen the impact of the content you create?

It isn’t always easy to generate the buzz you’re looking for.

Knowing what to publish, when and where can greatly increase the visibility and reach of your content.

In this article, you will find 26 topics, an A-Z guide, with key points that will help you create a social media content strategy that resonates with your audience.

#1: Align Content Development With Social Media Metrics and Goals

Understand the goals of your company’s social media content delivery to help you develop a more attainable strategy.

Jason DeMers suggests, “First you need to know what to measure. The end goals dictate the measurement metric.”

He offers metrics for four social media goals:

• If you’re looking to generate traffic, your metric should be: unique visitors from social websites where you’ve run your social media campaigns.
• If you’re looking to create a following, your metric should be: subscribers, followers on your social channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
• If you’re looking to generate interaction, your metric should be: quantity and type of commentary (Facebook comments, Twitter replies/mentions).
• If you’re looking to generate revenue (which is the ultimate purpose), your metric should be: the precise dollar value of every lead a social post generates.

Keep this information in mind when crafting your social media content.

#2: Beef Up Your Content Strategy With a Big-Brand Mindset

Small businesses can learn valuable lessons from the big-brand approach to social media.

Rick Mulready suggests three things big brands do very well that small businesses can emulate:

• Find where their customers talk and “go deep.”
• Create content that people want to talk about.
• Use social media to listen to customers.

Starbucks, with over 34 million fans on Facebook, is a good example.

On Thursday, June 6, they posted a Facebook offer “Enjoy a Grande Iced Coffee, Iced Tea, or Starbucks Refreshers Beverage for $1 on June 7.” The update was shared by 13,931 people and received 1,553 comments. The offer was not tweeted to their 3,852,454 Twitter followers.

By promoting the offer on Facebook, where they have a significantly larger following, Starbucks leveraged the promotion on a platform where they were sure to get higher visibility, giving followers an incentive to follow the brand.

Starbucks knows where and what their customers will talk about!

Use a big-brand approach to engage your social media followers.

#3: Concentrate on Increasing Daily Updates

Ensuring that your posts and updates have a good chance to be seen by your target audience is an integral part of a content strategy.

Leo Widrich offers 3 key tactics:

• Frequency: Post around 5-10 times a day on Twitter and 1-4 times a day on Facebook for optimal outcome.
• Timing: Almost all research studies highlight the main work hours from 8 am to 8 pm as good times to tweet and post to Facebook.
• Multiple sites: Post to multiple social sites, in addition to your own blog or website.
  

  Create a frequent and reliable presence on social networks. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Pay attention to frequency, timing and multiple sites, and you’ll increase the odds of achieving higher levels of social engagement.

#4: Delve Into Data From Social Media Channels

Data from social channels (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and blogs) can be overwhelming unless you have clear goals to guide what you’re looking for and what you’ll do with the information once you find it.

Douglas Karr points out, “The sheer volume of social media data makes it incredibly difficult to analyze.”

He offers five practical ways you can use social data to benefit your business:

• Gauge the real-time market mood.
• Identify relevant issues and content.
• Determine user interests.
• Provide internal operational metrics.
• Execute competitive research.

Explore social data with an actionable plan in mind.

#5: Engage in Real Interactions

Lana Bandoim writes, “Social media engagement is often defined as the real interactions that happen on these networks.” She points out that social media engagement relies on daily interactions among users to survive. While autopostingtools are one way to communicate, more businesses are beginning to understand that engaging with their audiences in real conversations will bring them better results and add more value to their social streams.

Engage with users in real-time conversations. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Be available to your audience in real time, when you can have more meaningful back-and-forth conversations.

#6: Follow Facebook’s Changes

Got the hang of your Facebook Page? Enjoy it while you can, because based on Facebook’s history, the only thing that’s certain is that Facebook will change.

A Google search for the words “Facebook changes” brings up a great number of results with a range of topics such as changes to timeline, cover photo policy, implications for merchants, mobile layout and much more.

Rachel Sprung suggests 5 ways marketers can keep updated on Facebook changes:

• Follow Facebook’s business changes for regular updates.
• Follow the Facebook tag on TechCrunch.
• Set a Google Alert for Facebook updates.
• Follow new posts on AllFacebook.
• Follow social media and tech experts.

No one wants to have their Page change features on them without having ample time to prepare. Keep up to date with Facebook developments to make sure you don’t miss out on the changes coming down the pike.

#7: Get Acquainted With the New Google Analytics Social Reports

Google‘s new standalone reports, Data Hub Activity and Trackbacks, give marketers more in-depth insights into social networks and how users respond to a business’s content.

As Google describes:

The Data Hub Activity report shows you how people are talking about and engaging with your site content on social networks. You can see the most recent URLs people shared, how and where they shared (via a “reshare” on Google+, for example), and what they said.

The Trackbacks report shows the sites that are linking to your content, and in which context. This can help you replicate successful content and build relationships with those users who frequently link to your site.

Discover what and where your visitors are sharing.

Check out the new Google Analytics reports and apply what you’ve learned to your content development strategy.

#8: Help Users Find Your Content With Hashtags

Why should businesses care about hashtags? Steve Cooper sums it up with five reasons:

• Promotions—hashtags make it easy to track a promotion’s activity across many social platforms.
• Unification—you can track a hashtag across all the major networks or filter them individually using new tools such as Tagboard.
• Conversations—giving a customer your website URL doesn’t make it easy to begin a conversation, but hashtags do.
• Targeting—unlike going after a general web surfer on the open web, people who use hashtags are likely to engage in social conversations and therefore are more likely to share a positive experience they’ve had with your brand once you’ve broken through.
• Innovation—because they’re so flexible, simple and ubiquitous, more businesses are able to find creative ways to add power behind the hashtag.
  

  A hashtag search on Tagboard will help you follow all the conversations.
  

  Tagboard filters hashtags on major networks.

Use hashtags to include your content in active public conversations.

#9: Introduce Content With Infographics

Infographics are defined as graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.

Dragan Mestrovic illuminates the benefits of infographics in four persuasive points:

• Infographics are shared on the web, Twitter and Facebook more often than other content online.
• Infographics are easy to understand, consume and share.
• On Twitter, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon, infographics get more shares than other content.
• Marketers love infographics because they offer an easy and powerful viral marketing tool to spread the word about your company’s products and services.
  

  Infographic of infographics

Infographics are a great way to synthesize information simply and visually as seen in the above image from Vsual.ly. When done well, an infographic is a perfect poster-child for quick and effective dissemination of information via social media.

#10: Justify Frequent Updates and Posts

Why is it that some businesses are posting fast and furiously and others are crawling far behind? Chances are that the businesses posting more frequently had to justify to management the importance of maintaining an active presence.

As we discussed in #5, autoposting does not offer a suitable alternative to real-live human beings who can respond to comments and post breaking news updates.

A tool such as How often do you tweet could shed some insight:

Does this look like you?

Is this your competitor? Eye-opening, isn’t it?

Monitor your social media engagement compared with your competitors’. Share the results with management to help justify a request to dedicate more time and resources to the company’s social media efforts.

#11: Keep Klout in Perspective

Klout utilizes Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Wikipedia andInstagram data to create a Klout user profile that is assigned a “Klout score,” a numerical value between 1 and 100.

Many critics suggest Klout scores aren’t representative of the influence a person has and discount the scores, as well as the thinking behind Klout.

Mark Schaefer offers an alternate view: “The ability to create and move content is the absolute key to online influence. So think about this—to the extent that you could actually measure that, wouldn’t you also be creating an indicator of relative influence?”

Klout gets a lot of buzz on social media.

When it comes to Klout scores, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead,ask what you can learn from your competitor’s higher score and how you can do what they’re doing with their content.

#12: Look to the Future of Social Media

The question of social media’s ability to capture leads has been at the forefront of marketers’ minds from the beginning. Twitter is the latest network to offer an approach that will let marketers be more proactive with lead generation cards.

Twitter describes lead generation cards this way: “[The cards] make it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share an email address with your business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form.

“When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the card. The user simply clicks a button to send this information directly (and securely) to you.”

At the time of this writing, Twitter stated, “Currently lead generation cards will only be available to our managed clients; we have plans to launch this card globally and to small- and medium-sized businesses soon.”

Information is shared securely on a Twitter lead generation card without users having to leave Twitter.

Stay updated on the availability of Twitter’s lead generation cards so you’ll be ready to use them.

#13: Make Your Blog Mobile-Friendly

I don’t know about you, but I seem to be visiting more and more websites on my mobile phone these days. If I land on a page that isn’t mobile-friendly and it’s slow and difficult to navigate, I’m out of there.

Jon Young provides 8 tips to make your website mobile-friendly:

• Only give visitors content they need.
• Carefully plan your layout.
• Landing pages should be simple.
• Design for multiple browsers and device compatibility.
• Always include social media icons.
• Automate the experience and use mobile redirects.
• Provide a link to your full site.
• Usability should be top priority.
  

  By using Mobile Meter, we can see what Social Media Examiner looks like on mobile devices.

Don’t give readers any reason to leave your site. Be mobile-ready and -friendly.

#14: Network in All the Right Places

What social networks do your customers favor? Are they on Twitter and Facebook, but haven’t embraced Google+ yet?

Ryan Little writes, “One recent study on social media usage revealed that the average user has two social media accounts. While some users find pleasure in multiple networks, there are people who have found a single community they love and stick with it, even when the temptations of a new social network arise. And there are others who have used various networks and narrowed their usage down until only one platform remained.”

The situation gets a little more complex for businesses. It’s important to keep in mind that your customers may favor one network today and in six months discover that another meets their needs better.

Follow your customers and prospects so you can network in all the right places.

#15: Outsource Content Development as Needed

Can your business keep up to date with all the tasks associated with maintaining social presences (e.g., reading and sharing good content, responding to users’ comments, asking questions to help engage your audience)?

Tim Devaney and Tom Stein write, “Studies show it takes a midsize company about 32 hours a month to capably handle a single social media platform.”

According to Eve Mayer, “The companies that have the most effective social media communications are those that have a combination of internal and external people doing social media.” She advises businesses to take several steps toward a successful social campaign:

• Decide what you want to achieve.
• Don’t spread yourself too thin.
• Keep some social media in-house.
• Send some social media to a consultant, someone who understands social media and can apply that knowledge across many different platforms.

How many hours a month does it realistically take for your business to maintain social presences? Don’t let the shortage of internal resources hamper your online capabilities. Outsource social media to cover your bases.

#16: Present Your Human Side With Photos

Photos and other types of visual content are highly shareable on social networks. Pam Moore suggests that when you post photos of your team, it helps to show your business as a human brand and build relationships with your community.

Humans need breaks!

Social media has made it possible for you to share information about your business in a multitude of ways. Photos can show your serious, productive, silly, creative, successful and charitable sides—but above all, be sure to expose your human side.

#17: Question Readers for More Engagement

Questions are a good example of engaging content and have become a frequent go-to tactic, especially on platforms such as Facebook. Belinda Whittaker suggests three types of good questions to ask:

• Pure fan engagement questions to help tap into the interests and lifestyles of your fans.
• Market and competitive analysis questions to generate conversations andengage with possible leads who are interested in buying that product.
• Product/service feedback questions that can serve as a fast focus group to find what people like most and what areas you can expand into.

Are you asking your readers questions? When they answer, do you reply?

#18: Replicate Your Brand Identity From Platform to Platform

Let’s say you joined Facebook in 2008 and Google+ in 2012. A difference of four years can seem like eternity in the world of social media. Regardless of the year, you’ll want to make sure you have a consistent brand identity today.

Desmond Wong examined how Google, Target, Etsy, Coca-Cola, Disney, Amazon,New Yorker magazine and SEOmoz approach brand consistency across multiple social media platforms. Factors included how they use design and graphics in unison across platforms, and whether they use consistent colors, fonts, icon styles and logos.

If you’re in doubt about whether you demonstrate a consistent brand experience, take a look at all of your pages side by side and see if there are any changes you need to make.

#19: Strengthen In-Person Events With Social Media Promotion

At times you may wonder about the relationship between in-person events and social media, and how they’re able to coexist.

Jay Baer describes 7 ways to use social media to promote in-person events:

• Engage—encourage potential attendees to interact with you early on by crowdsourcing feedback.
• Intrigue—create an event page on event listing sites (e.g., Facebook events,Eventbrite).
• Invigorate potential attendees with videos, blog posts, press releases, Twitter list of attendees, etc.
• Integrate—pick a hashtag for the event to get people talking.
• Inform—ask attendees to vote on session suggestions via text messages, consider QR codes on badges.
• Propagate—stream live video of your event.
• Aggregate—spread the conference presentations as widely as possible; use email links on your website and publish on SlideShare.
  
  

  SMMW13 highly invigorated attendees.

In-person events, combined with online social networking, provide terrific opportunities for businesses to reap the benefits of both worlds.

#20: Talk With Team Members to Keep Up Momentum and Morale

None of us should work in a vacuum. We need to know what’s working and what isn’t. But sometimes the people seeing the analytics aren’t necessarily the ones who are managing the company’s online presences.

Chris Heiler suggests that one critical way to keep your social media team engaged is to provide them with updates on goals. As he says, “You need to keep them updated by sharing your successes with them. Has your website traffic increased significantly since putting together your social media team? Is your blog generating more qualified leads?”

To garner support, show team members the results of their efforts.

#21: Use a Conversational Tone to Engage Readers

Social media has changed the way businesses communicate publicly. In fact, we’re often advised to avoid stiff and stodgy business writing and encouraged to adopt a more conversational tone. And yet sometimes we’re at a loss to know what that means for our business.

Courtney Seiter suggests you explore your culture, community and conversation as you develop your social media voice. As she says, “Take us inside your brand’s experience… listen to the way your community voices their feelings, speak their language, on their terms… and then communicate with personality and authenticity. No strong-arming or hard selling, just talking in a way that’s comfortable, conversational and relatable.”

Listen to your community. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Use a conversational tone to make your content feel more authentic and engaging to readers.

#22: Visit a Number of Search Engines to Find the Perfect Image

With all the attention images receive on social media, it stands to reason that businesses will be on the lookout for interesting visuals.

Joshua Lockhart provides a list of six visual search engines to help you find the image you want. He suggests TinEye, CC Search, Compfight, Flickr Storm, WeSEE andGoogle Image Search.

Visual search engines expand your search capability (e.g., on TinEye you can even search for images by color!).

Take a few minutes and check out the visual search engines. When you find one great image you hadn’t previously come across, it will make a difference.

#23: Widen Your Writing Style With Online Tools

When you’re busy writing online content, it may feel like you don’t have the time to stop and look into new writing tools. But when you do, you’re apt to find a treasure trove of useful tips.

That’s how I felt when I came across Sherice Jacob‘s unique list of apps, websites and software programs for online writers: Wordcounter, Cliche Finder, Creativity Portal,Unstuck, Zen Writer, Byword, Readability, and Sychroedit.

With Wordcounter, you can count words on your iPhone.

Writing tools can help recharge your battery while fulfilling specific needs.

#24: (E)xpand Your Article With Relevant Tips

Online readers often gravitate to tips-related articles. A search on the keyword “tips” produced 30,400,000 global monthly searches. Suggested keyword terms included every imaginable type of “tips;” for example, photography, makeup, Sudoku, travel, weight loss. Regardless of the industry, people are often looking for tips.

Include tips articles in your content marketing plan for your business to interest new readers.

#25: Yield to Your Customer’s Journey

Social channels differ in the roles they play in the customer’s journey towards making a purchase.

Lee Odden writes, “Understanding the customer experience from awareness to consideration to purchase folds well into the core principle of Optimize—to empathize with your customer and understand how they discover, consume and act on information. By doing so, you can create a practical digital marketing plan that optimizes for attraction, engagement and conversion.”

Social channels differ in their roles in the customer’s journey towards purchase.

Check out Google’s Customer Journey tool to see the differences by channels and industries.

#26: Zero In on Your Customer’s Interests and Needs

What do your customers care about? What information will help them in their day-to-day work or make their lives easier and more successful?

If you’re going to go to great lengths to craft and publish content, keep your customer’s interests and needs front of mind.

Your Turn

There’s a lot going on in the world of social media marketing today. We’ve covered some solid ways to help ground your efforts and explored some of the innovative changes that can affect your presence.

What do you think? Have you tried any of these? Do you want to add any to the list? Please leave your questions and comments below

Article source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-tips-to-create-a-strong-social-media-content-strategy/