Microsoft’s Director of Community and Online Support, Nestor Portillo, shared how they leveraged both internal and external social media sites to better manage their vast customer network and create a customer-centric approach to their business.
What where the top strategic priorities for social media marketing in 2011
A study recently released by Marketing Sherpa polling CMOs (Chief Marketing officers) reveals the top strategic priorities for social media marketing in 2011
- Recruiting interdepartmental staff to perform social marketing activities 8%
- Improving the quality and cost efficiency of customer support programs 9%
- Integrating social media monitoring and analytics into a single dashboard 11%
- Integrating social marketing data with CRM and other marketing systems 21%
- Achieving or increasing measureable lead generation from social marketing 43%
- Achieving or increasing measureable ROI from social marketing programs 46%
- Improving search engine ranking positions 50%
- Developing an effective and methodical social marketing strategy 53%
- Converting social media members, followers, etc.into paying customers 63%
- Improving brand awareness or reputation 66%
- Increasing website traffic through social media integration 71%
PR, Communication, and Marketing Trends 2012 – Part 1
It’s that time of year again! It’s time for the PR, communications, and marketing world to look at the challenges and opportunities ahead. It’s time we determine what’s in store for our businesses, our industry, and our way of working.
What is concidered acceptable content on Facebook
I often get the question: What is considered acceptable content and what will get me in trouble on Facebook?
There is no easy or clear cut answer. The Facebook TOS (Terms of Service) concerning acceptable content, as with many Facebook rules are pretty vague and murky and their application, at Facebook’s discretion with little if any recourse.
The TOS states: “You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence,”
The interpretation is subjective and left to a committee based in Ireland, one of the most puritan countries in Europe. As we have seen in the past, the interpretation and application has been at best random, without due process and recourse.
To stay on the safe side, the best advice I can give is: do not post anything you would not want your mother or grand mother to see.
If you are not confused enough as most of us are, this article titled: “Too far for Facebook? How the site decides what to ban” goes into more details.
Drugmaker Merck challenges Facebook after ‘losing’ page
The German drug maker Merck KGaA has begun legal action against Facebook after discovering what its lawyer described as the “the apparent takeover of its Facebook page”.
The webpage is being used by the German firm’s US rival Merck & Co.
Merck KGaA said that the social network “is an important marketing device [and] the page is of great value”, adding that since its competitor was benefiting from the move “time is of the essence.”
This kind of happening has been in the making for a long time and again demonstrate Facebook’s disregards for due process and communication, something fairly typical of social media platforms in general. Somehow, the basic social media rules do not seem to apply to social media companies.
As social media becomes increasingly important to communicate with and engage a company’s constituencies, social media companies will need to be more responsive and accountable, and if they want to attract more advertisers, they will have to implement systems to communicate with their own constituencies, something their customers learned a long time ago.
This event though, illustrates and reinforces the need to understand that an organization should not build their online presence and strategy around the social networks, but around something they have actual control and ownership over, their website and develop their website into an interactive platform. They then should use social media to drive traffic to their website, something Facebook has been steadily trying to curtail.
This legal action from a major companies could benefit us all by making Facebook more accountable
Is Facebook killing corporate websites?
Several recent studies point out to a decrease in traffic to traditional corporate websites and an increase in traffic to Facebook.
Does that mean that web users are turning their back on traditional websites or that they are spending more time on Facebook and are more likely to visit the corporate Facebook page rather than the corporate website?
It is worth noting that if the trend is very noticeable with traditional brand focused static websites, the trend reverses when it comes to transactional websites.
Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay
Everybody wants to be liked. The question for Facebook Inc. is how much advertisers are willing to pay for the opportunity.
Facebook’s estimated market value, now in the neighborhood of $70 billion, is founded on the belief that companies will spend big to advertise on the site. Facebook’s revenues, which come largely from ads, were $1.6 billion in the first half of this year, up $800 million from a year earlier.
But most of its ads were for small advertisers, such as local businesses and small-scale websites, according to comScore Inc. Facebook is under pressure to grow its advertising on a grand scale, and to snag the sort of big brand names who now drive billions of dollars to TV, radio and print campaigns
Social Media, Ethics, Disclosures and FTC
Andy Sernovitz, shares his recommendations on how to stay safe and ethical in social media covering the latest FTC updates, the fundamentals of proper disclosure, and how to make sure your agencies and vendors comply with your standards.
REI: Going Local on social media
REI’s Digital Engagement Manager, Jordan Williams, discussed how they utilize social media sites for each REI store to develop a better local connection with their customers.
A must see for retailers and any company that ventures into social media
The days of low cost marketing on Facebook may be counted
It’s not a coincidence that Facebook first half profits doubled to $1.6B and the trend will likely accelerate. Over the past few years Facebook has been slowly but steadily paving the way for increased profitability
For the past three or so years, most of the changes Facebook has implemented have made it made it increasingly difficult for organization and brands to put their content in front of their “Fans” or as Facebook now calls them “Likes”
It started with the structure of the wall on profiles. We first saw the wall being segregated in two sets of posts with the default view to what Facebook deemed most important to users to the last change in the past month.
The latest little known or noticed change in Facebook “Pages” has big implications. As of September 30, 2011, Facebook stopped allowing pages to communicate to their “Fans” or as Facebook calls them “Likes” via messaging.
The feature that allowed page owners or administrators to send targeted messages into users’ inboxes has been removed, officially to , and i quote : ” connect with your audience in the most effective ways possible” which is through public communication on the wall.
So Facebook says. In reality, it’s been a slow and calculated approach to remove free means of communications between pages and their followers and quoting facebook again, “using targeted Facebook Ads or Sponsored Stories to help grow and highlight your message within the Facebook experience“.
If the past is any indication, we can expect that Facebook will find more ways to curtail free interactions between pages and users as an incentive to use paid Facebook advertising, coming around full circle, back to traditional advertising, only this time with a captive audience…. of advertisers.