MarketingSherpa Blog

Client-side marketers are optimizing social-media efforts this year, says Karen O’Brien, Partner, Interactive Services, Crimson Consulting. I asked Karen to describe the social-media trends among her big-brand clients.

Optimization is a big trend, she says.

Companies are optimizing social media by:

o setting standards and goals about how many members, RSS subscribers, friends, etc. they’d like to have on social-media channels

o setting standards and goals about conversations they want to target on social networks

o consolidating multiple presences on social networks, such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace (often, big companies have several profiles on various social networks, each profile representing a different product line, brand, or service)

“From a customer standpoint, it’s confusing to see a bunch of different [presences] unless they’re clearly labeled,” Karen says.

About 70% of consumers consider social-media sites to be sources of information that will influence purchasing decisions, according to research data in MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide.

Now is more important than ever to optimize. Make sure your brand is not only meeting its goals, but also consolidating its social-media presence and clearly labeling each one.

Karen O’Brien, Partner, Interactive Services, Crimson Consulting, said something really interesting about trends she’s been seeing with her Fortune 1,000 clients. I share it with you.

We were chatting about social media (a specialty of Karen’s), and she said she is seeing every business unit within companies, as well as every group with a geographical, segment, or product focus within companies, start to consider social media and implement it into their marketing efforts Read more…

MarketingSherpa members got a preview of our 2009 Social Media Marketing and PR Benchmark Guide last week. An executive summary, table of contents, and some great charts and analysis were released to them in PDF form.

The complete guide will be released the week of Feb. 9. Here are a few interesting nuggets for all of you to contemplate right now. Read more…

More marketers are testing the world of Twitter and shaping their strategies. Last week we reported how a unique discount retail site, Woot, is using Twitter to promote products.

Then I came across the mother of all lists of brands on Twitter. The list has more than 200 links to feeds run by fast food companies, manufacturers, hoteliers, eretailers, airlines, publishers and many more. The companies are as large as GM and as small as online startups.

Read more…

When a budget gets cut, experimental marketing dollars are often the first to go. Management cannot afford to dabble in unproven strategies. They want to focus on predictable, reliable tactics.

What a bore, right? You’ve been reading about social networks and viral marketing all year–and now you can’t get the budget to test them. Fear not, help is here.

Read more…

The New York Times ran an article this week describing the challenges of advertising on social media sites, Facebook in particular. The article describes Procter & Gamble’s experience with brand advertising on the world’s largest social network and leads the reader to believe that it’s been less than fruitful.

Read more…

Even though more B2B marketers consider a role for social media in their marketing strategy, I still hear them express confusion about measuring the impact of creating blogs or participating in social networks. Typical questions:

How do you measure engagement? What’s the value of one Twitter follower? What’s the direct ROI of that blog post you wrote?

Read more…

Finally, finally, finally. I’ve been waiting for someone to enlighten me about the ways journalists and PR professionals are using Twitter to interact with each other. Thanks to the launch of a new Twitter resource called MicroPR, I can  really see the value.

MicroPR was developed by Brian Solis, Stowe Boyd, and Christopher Peri. Here is a quick guide provided by Brian’s blog post:

• Journalists, bloggers, and analysts, send a tweet to @micropr (www.twitter.com/micropr) with what you need help with. The PR subscribers will read it and only those who can help will respond. Always start your message with @micropr.

• PR, follow @micropr to monitor the inbound requests from the media and to determine how you can help. This is a listening and response service for you, not a broadcast channel. Do not send a message to @micropr unless you need the assistance of the PR community.

• If you want to refer to micropr on Twitter, please use the hashtag, #micropr.

It didn’t surprise me to find out that Brian was a key player behind this wonderful tool. He is the person who inspired me to write, Essential Guide to PR 2.0: Social Media Dos, Don’ts. Thanks to him for allowing me to interview him for that article.

I should also mention, this tool reminds me of Help A Reporter Out (HARO) created by Peter Shankman. The idea is similar though Peter uses a different medium, namely email, to get requests from journalists to a list of experts and PR professionals.

For more information on HARO, check out the Fame article I wrote in March. Check out MicroPR as well. Both wonderfully useful tools from innovative thinkers. Thanks guys!

Regularly connecting with clients and customers on social networks can be a lot of work. You have multiple accounts to log into, feeds to watch, messages to respond to, etc. Can it be fun? Sure. Can it be tedious? Absolutely.

I stumbled on a free Web-based tool that helps eliminate some of that tedium. Fuser will take all your messages from MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and your email accounts, and put them into one, easy-to-use interface. (Unfortunately, I did not notice LinkedIn as a supported platform)

I just gave the beta service a quick test and it’s definitely fast, easy, and free. Fuser takes your messages–everything from wall posts on Facebook to Tweets on Twitter–and lays them out like emails. You can view and sort all the accounts at once, or select which you’d like to view.

So if you’re struggling to keep up with your business contacts’ online banter, Fuser can help eliminate a few steps. Hopefully it will give you more time to contribute to the conversation.

Teens are using social network sites, video-sharing sites, online games, iPods, and mobile phones. That’s no news flash.

What’s new is a study of 800 interviews with youth and their parents that has shed light on why young people use digital media. Here are the major findings:

Read more…