Latest Social Media News

This piece is from Fastcompany it's from The World Vision Activism Network. (October 2012) I selected it because there are some great takeaways whether you have a community or are starting one from scratch.

 

Intro:

 

When you build a brand, one of the most important measures of success is the actual engagement and connection of your loyal customers, followers, supporters, partners, fans and friends--your community.

 

The digital age and 24/7 connectivity, social platforms are forcing companies to find new and compelling ways to keep up with daily communication and connection with the people who matter the most

Here are a few highlights:

Create a long-term relationship

 

**You must understand your audience's interessts

 

**Use the most popular form of communication

 

**You have to be available and ready to interact to keep them actively engaged.

 

. Listen to people

 

**Pay attention to where and how your key people want to communicate, what they want to talk about and what they actualy do.

 

**Build the community they demand - use posters, art, videos and whatever connects with your audience on a digital platform that is eaily accessed & shred through a space where your audience is already spending time

 

Create it & Continually Influence Your Audience

 

**You must be an active participant on a regular basis

]

**By continually sharing, creating, leading and converse with the people you want to influence to establish a long-lasting relationship.

 

**By staying actively engaged, you will become easy to relate to and your audience will learn more about you, creating a closer relationship

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering, "Curation, Social Business & Beyond"

 

Read article here: [http://bit.ly/TEKl4n]

Via janlgordon

This piece was written by Belinda Stinson for Jeff Bullas's blog

 

Jan Gordon: My commentary

 

This is one of the suggestions that was mentioned in tis article but I can't stress this enough, it should be #1

 

After you've discovered who the right influencers are, always look for ways you can sincerely contribute to them that is meaningful, then find ways to leverage the relationship and make it a win/win for both of you. 

 

Intro:

 

 "if you want to grow your business, you need to know who the influencers are in your field, learn from their expertise and build a productive professional relationship with them".

 

Why leverage influencers?:

 

"Influencers are hubs of information, they have many followers who respect their recommendations and opionions and being featured by them sends a powerful amount of targeted traffic your way - It's good old fashioned word of mouth recommendations on steriods"

Here are a few ways to discover influencers that I personally do myself:

**Twitter Lists - Twitter is a great untapped resource for finding influencers and keep track of what they are posting

**Groups and Forums - These are valuable sources of information.

**Podcasts and webinars - This is a great way to find key influencers - whether it's through interviews, presentations, information products of their own or curated information by others

Here are a few ways to build relationships that I've found very effective in finding influencers in my industry:

 

**Connect through the social media platforms they use

 

**Share the posts that are of value to your audience, retweet & quote their content, share, comment and like their Facebook posts

 

**Help promote what they are involved with, including charity causes, seminars, conferences, publiations and promotions

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering, "Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

See full articles here: [bit.ly/Nw9xqY]

Via janlgordon

This video and article and download full report is from Deloitte Consulting. It is timely and relevant!, If you're wondering what social business is all about and how it relates to your business, you'll find lots of insights to help you understand and act on this information for your business today.

 

Here is an excerpt from a response by Sandy Petland from MIT Labs that gives you just a glimpse into what you'll find in this material:.

 

"Social business is built on top of social networks, which most organizations already have in place.

 

For years I've been studying connection science” – studying how relationships and personal interactions shape society and business.

 

**Social business is a manifestation of that thinking, with companies transforming how they organize and operate based on

 

individual roles, social networks and the power of connections.

 

**Social business can have huge potential inside and outside the enterprise, across employees, customers, prospects and business partners.

 

Here is a takeaway that caught my attention:

 

Start at the beginning -

 

**Map the individuals in your potential social networks

 

**know what behaviors you are trying to affect and how you might meaningfully engage these into persistent communities

 

**Use this information to guide the development of tools, roadmaps and roll-out plans – not the other way around.

 

**Focus on results that can be measurable and attributable

 

 

Selected by Jan Gordon coveriing  "Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

See article, video and read more about social business here: [http://bit.ly/MZUSmK]

 

used in this document social data revolution - January 2012 http://blogs.hbr.org/now-new-next/2009/05/the-social-data-revolution.html

Via janlgordon

I chose this infographic and article from Blackbaud because it helps you go from social media to social business. It was written for non-profits but it definitely applies to any business as well.

 

By understanding how to evaluate people by their degree of influence and their ability to help change behavior in others can be invaluable to you and your organization.

 

**It's also important to use this information to understand how you and your organization fit into this mix. They say knowledge is power, once you have a clearer picture, you can shift what you're doing and take your business or cause to the next level for greater results.

 

Intro:

 

"Understanding the Value of Your Social Media Influencers: How to Identify and Empower Those Who Can Engage an Entire Community!

(Download the White Paper Today!)"

 

Here are some highlights:

 

**Learn how to use the information your consitiuents are sharing to attract more people to your mission, campaign.

 

**Learn how to analyze your database and assign social scores to engagers that represents their ability to interact with and influence others across their online networks

 

**Based on the social score you assign to these individuals, you can then segment them into one of four categories, each of which plays a diferent role on social networks, relevant to your business

 

Here are the categories:

 

Key Influencers - They have a powerful impact not only the people they know but also others they don't know. Their posts are widely spread and shared by more people than many other people

art

 

Engagers - These people have well-established social networks and are strong influencers of people they know personally

 

Multichannel Consumers - They enjoy keeping up with social media conent and occasionally participate. Their influence is not a dominent part of their persona

 

Standard Consumers These engagers read and watc updates more than they create new content or make comments. They are more influenced by family and friends.

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

Read article and see infographic here: [http://bit.ly/N4a2Km]

Via janlgordon

This piece and report was done by Brian Solis .  Brian has done an outstanding job of helping us to understand the rocky road of social media/business and this is no exception. Happy anniversary Brian! It's unbelievable it's already a year that you've been Principal Analyst of Altimeter Group, great job.

 

Those of us who are involved with social networks are already aware of Klout, Kred, PeerIndex and many others that are yet to come down the pike. Some people don't pay attention, others wish these services would be more transparent about how they measure our standing in the social community. No matter where you stand on this issue, it's not going away but becoming more important than ever. In this piece, Brian gives us some valuable insights and takeaways (slideshare) that is very important for your business now and in the future.

 

 

Here's what caught my attention:

 

Whether we know it or not, our social activity now contributes to our stature within each network.

 

**New services such as Klout, PeerIndex among many others not only measure who you know, what you say, and what you do, they attempt to score or rank your ability to influence those to whom you’re connected.

 

**As a result, social network users are now starting to rethink how they connect and communicate to improve their stature within each network. 

 

**At the same time, brands are starting to take notice of those services also help organizations identify individuals who are both connected and relevant to help expand reach into new media and markets.

 

Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

Read full article here: [http://www.briansolis.com/]

Via janlgordon

I selected this piece was written by Chris Sietsema for convinceandconvert blog because the post plus the infographic lays out a very clear and concise plan to create your content marketing strategy.

 

**Whether you're creating or curating content, this is something I think is very useful. This is why I rescooped this from my content marketing, social media and beyond  topic.

 

Here are a few highlights from the article:

 

He compares selecting and producing content to what he calls "bricks" and "feathers".

 

Bricks are referred to as research reports

 

**are larger content productions such as research reports, events, white papers        .

    video series, mobile apps, etc

 

**have the potential to make a larger splash when executed and promoted correctly.

 

Feathers are comprised of simple text and photo content published via popular social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, etc.

 

**Less intensive than bricks from a production budget standpoint, feathers are created consistently to maintain an ongoing stream of communication between a brand and its audience.

 

The infographic shows you how to discern what content to use and illustrates the how, what, why and when to use it.

 

Curated by Jan Gordon covering, "Content Marketing, Social Media and Beyond"

 

Read article and see infographic here: [http://bit.ly/A6NhFb]

Via janlgordon, ABroaderView, roberto toppi

This article is by Gregory Ciotti for Social Fresh, along with an infographic with data that contains some very important information.

(credits at the bottom).

 

Understanding your customer from a psyhological point of view will help you to engage with them, serve them better and potentially build a loyal customer base.

 

Here are a few highlights:

 

Understand the 3 Types of Buyers

 

 Help customers break through "Action Paralysis" by setting minimums

 

for example: remind your customers how easy it is to get started (No payments for the first month)

 

 Understand the 3 types of buyers - 

 

By understanding the psychology of these 3 types of buyers, you can package your products, articulate your message in ways that speak to their listening

 

**15% spendthrifts

**24% tightwads

**61% average spenders

 

Use Urgency the smart way

 

**Urgency and scarcity are known to drive up sales, but according to research from Howard Leventhal, people are prone to block out urgent messages if the are't given information on how to follow up.

More data on this.....

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering "Curation, Social Business & Beyond"

 

Read article and see infographic here: [http://bit.ly/SAchFm]

 

Infographic by HelpScout

Data by Gregory Ciotti

Via janlgordon, Mick Say

I selected this piece by Patricia Redsicker for Social Media Examiner for two reasons -

 

**It's a great review of Lee Oden's new book Optimize: How to Engage Your Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing 

 

**The book is timely and relevant it's about optimizing content for customer and user experiences, rather than for search engines which is becoming increasingly important

 

Here's what caught my attention:

 

Chapter 1: Setting the Stage for an Optimized State of Mind

 

**Use words that matter most to your customers in titles, links and body copy in order to inspire your readers to take action

 

Chapter 9: Content Isn't King, It's the Kingdom - Creation vs. Curation

 

**mix curated content with original content. In fact,  curating is a great way to extend your own site, but only in addition to—not instead of—your original content

 

 

So many great tips on types of content to curate, here are just a few:

 

**Content created by influential people who are important to your target audience

 

**Aggregating the best comments from your own or others's blogs

 

**White papers, ebooks and case studies

 

**Tips, how-to's and best practices

 

Chapter 11 Social Networking Development - Don't Be Late to the Networking Party

 

**Listen, participate, create optiized content and understand the triggers that will inspire sales or referrals

 

**It's important to know which specific social networks are relevant to your customers

 

Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

Read full article here: [http://tinyurl.com/cycs5g4]

Via janlgordon

5 Digital Tools to Boost Your Brand in 2012 Infographic...

Via janlgordon

This article with infograph was written by by Tyrell Mara via maxOZ. The author has given us a beautiful visualization of a social business model.

 

What does a social business model look like, where each dept. of an organization is leveraging the social web, and social networks specific to their strategy?

 

The author has some questions for you and me:

 

**What makes sense about this social business model?

 

**What is missing, what should be added?

 

**Is there a specific area where you see value for yourself or your business?

 

**Where on this Social Business model does your organization currently operate? 

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

See full article here: [http://www.tyrellmara.com/social-business-social-media-perspective/

Via janlgordon