Why do I keep hearing about social media ?

April 2009

Social media stories are everywhere

Why ?

It’s where the people are !

While the economy is in a vicious circle

Consumers are getting angrier

And they’re afraid to spend money

But social media empowers consumers

And no matter how big your advertising spending, small groups of consumers are

hijacking the conversation

In today's social-media-centric world it's imperative that you're transparent, honest

and authentic

Microsoft’s hard social media lesson

Lauren can’t purchase an Apple laptop for under $1000 and winds up purchasing an HP laptop.

However..social media users chime in and we learn:

Lauren is actually a member of the screen actors guild.

The whole event was staged.

Negative review on the HP Pavilion laptop Lauren purchased “poor Vista experience”.

But marketers still try and interrupt us

They need to change brains

Stop thinking about selling and start thinking about engagement

and conversation

Marketers should be

Because the way consumers shop is changing forever

Fundamental shift from wants to needs

Even private label sales are increasingbecause “value” has changed

So traditional branding is dying

And they being replaced with the realities of the current marketing

environment Consumer trust in business, products, and brands has been badly damaged

and it’s almost impossible to hide corporations behind brands.

Unless you are honest, transparent and authentic consumers will take hijack the brand conversation through using social media.

Most brands have failed to move from product to conversation.

Organizations are ill prepared to use social media because they don’t understand how to use it to meet business objectives .

Old marketing cannot be applied to new media.

Redefine the value equation to your advantage and don’t use price alone.

Marketers are being held accountable for bottom line results and can’t waste money on “branding” without ROI.

What is the average age of social media users?

Twitter growth is coming fromolder demographics

45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30

percent more likely.

As are Facebooks demographics

2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report: 276% Growth in 35-54 Year Old Users*

* From June 2008 thru January 2009

So should you increase social media spending ?

Myths of Social MediaMyth #1: We need a social media program now

Reality:

You need first to clearly communicate your objectives and strategy.

Don’t get so drunk on the idea of social media that you ignore the other problems of your marketing strategy.

Myths of Social MediaMyth #2: Our agency can implement a social media

program for us

Reality:

You need to be transparent and that means that you need to establish trust via the conversation.

Myths of Social MediaMyth #3: If we get a lot of followers on a social media site

then our program is a huge success

Reality:

If you can’t track back to a positive ROI against business objectives then the program is a failure.

Remember, quality trumps quantity every time.

Myths of Social MediaMyth #4: It’s easy and inexpensive to implement a social

media marketing program

Reality:

Social media marketing programs can be expensive.

Setting the objectives and how they are going to be measured can be a time consuming process

Myths of Social MediaMyth #5: There is no way to measure ROI of social media

Reality:

Social media has shown huge ROI through increased search engine optimization which can result in a quantifiable number of new business leads.

Social Media Resources

Social Media Resources

Brand Overviews

HowSociable? - A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand on the web across 22 metricsAddict-o-matic - A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to quickly see the areas where a brand is lacking in presencesocialmention - A social media search engine offering searches across individual platforms (eg blogs, microblogs) or all, together with a 'social rank' score. Whether or not the score is transparent enough to be meaningful is open to debate.

Blog Search Tools

TECHNORATI Search - Technorati's new search interface. Use it to find top blogs based upon inbound links only.TECHNORATI Advanced - Technorati’s advanced search page allows you to search for blogs (rather than posts) based on tags.Google Blog Search - Google's index of blog posts. The advanced search tab allows you to search based on additional criteria. Very good for searching between specific dates.IceRocket - Blog search tool that also graph-ifies!BlogPulse - Search for blog posts by keyword. Developed by Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

Buzz Tracking

Serph - Track buzz in real timeGoogle Trends - shows amount of searches and google news storiesTrendpedia - Create charts showing the volume of discussion around multiple topics. Generates cool graphs.BlogPulse Trends - Compare the mentions of specific keywords and phrases in blog posts (LEFT vs. RIGHT)Omgili Charts - Omgili Buzz Graphs let you measure and compare the Buzz of any term. Mostly from review sites/forums.eKstreme - blog data is obtained from Technorati and the social bookmarks come from del.icio.us

Social Media Resources

Message Board Search Tools

BoardTracker - tracks words in forumsBoardReader - Search multiple message boards and forums.Omgili - Omgili is a specialized search engine that focuses on "many to many" user generated content platforms, such as, forums, discussion groups, mailing lists, answer boards and others. Omgili finds consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions.Google Groups - Searches usenet groups.Yahoo! Groups - Searches all Yahoo! Groups.

Twitter Search Tools

Twitter Search - Search keywords on Twitter which "self-refreshes". See what's happening — 'right now'.Twitstat - Twitter Tweitgeist - Tag cloud for last 500 TweetsTweetScan - search for words on TwitterTwit(url)y - see what people are talking about on TwitterHashtags - Realtime Tracking of Twitter HashtagsTweetBeep - Track mentions of your brand on Twitter in real time.Twitrratr - Rates mentions of your search term on Twitter as positive/neutral/negativeTweetMeme - View the most popular Twitter threads occurring now.TwitScoop – Through an automated algorithm, twitscoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentioned more often than usual and creates a tag cloud.Twilert - Twitter application that lets you receive regular email updates of tweets containing your brand, product, services

Web Site Traffic

Compete - Competitor site traffic reports. Estimates only of monthly visitor data. Best used on large high-traffic Web sites.Quantcast - Use this on large high-traffic Websites. It allows you to compare multiple web sites in one handy chart. Estimates only of monthly visitor data.Alexa - Comparative site traffic reports. Includes estimated reach, rank and page views.BlogFlux Page Rank - Tells you Google Page Rank for a web page. Use this to compare different websites.

Search Data

Google Trends - Search trends and see search volume by country and region.Google Insights - Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.Wordtracker Keywords - Displays average daily search volume of a given keyword or phrase.Yahoo! Keyword Tool - Displays search volumes for specific keywords and phrases for previous month’s search data.FACEBOOK LEXICON - Displays volume of wall postings for specific term(s). Similar to Google Trends. Not great with obscure terms.Google Keyword Tool – Generate keyword ideas for related keywords and search volumes.

Social Media Resources

Who is Richard Meyer?Results-driven senior marketing executive offering a strong balance between business savvy and creative capabilities.

Possess a proven track record of 20+ years of experience contributing to the advanced performance, growth and profitability of leading marketing organizations and product brands.

Core competencies include:

Strategic brand planningBrand strategyNew product planning and launchInternet marketingWeb AnalyticseCommerce

Brand positioningCompetitive analysisSearch Engine marketingVendor and agency managementTeam leadershipSocial media strategy, implementation and measurement.

Brands I’ve worked for:

Finally…..

I’m a passionate Internet marketing person who loves every aspect of marketing.

Please contact me for new job opportunities

richardameyer@me.com

http://www.richsblog.com