Social Media, Naturally – A guide to social media for health food companies
Organic Social Media
View more presentations from Jaspar Weir.
Viacom says Goodbye to Hulu
Hulu has made some pretty good moves in its few years of existence, good enough to make it to the second most watched video site on the web, only to YouTube. But, yesterdays news may be a sign of growing pains. It was announced that Viacom has decided to pull Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from its line up of streaming and easy to watch episodes. Despite Hulu’s public begging on its blog, it wasn’t enough to stop Viacom from walking out on their deal.
Social Media is not Marketing
When I’m pitching a client on social media services they inevitably ask three questions:
1) How much do I have to spend?
2) Where will you spend it?
3) What is my ROI going to look like?
It’s this third question that I struggle with. No matter what anyone tells you Social Media ROI cannot and will not ever be projected as accurately as other forms of online marketing like SEM, SEO and banner advertising. Social Media is about brand building, buzz generation and customer engagement, and while all of these things can be quantified and measured, none of them lead to a precise ROI.
ROI insecurity is the biggest hurdle we address when acquiring new clients. The expectation is that Social Media Marketing should work like the other forms of marketing that clients have invested in in the past. Many of our customers expect to be able to track dollars to clicks to conversions in real time using their Google Analytics. Other customers, with less digital experience, expect similar metrics using the conversion measurements of the brick and mortar marketing world. When it comes to social media these people scoff at the idea that ROI can’t be precisely measured.
A Decade of Social Media
At the dawn of the new millennium there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no LinkedIn. Blogs, text messages and email enabled phones had only just been introduced. I played snake on my Nokia and used the internet to buy the occasional gift from Amazon and read headlines of NYTimes.com. Today I have a more powerful computer in the palm of my hand (iPhone) that I sat under my desk in the year 2000 (Mac G3). Imagine what the next 10 years will bring!
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Smarter Social Media Influence Index
Last week we published the list of the 100 Smartest People in Social Media. We received a huge response. Many people commented that they were honored to be on the list, while others questioned our methods for compiling it. In reality the list was a based on the subjective judgments of the Smarter Social Media team. But the demands for a quantifiable system has gotten us thinking.
Redesign
As you can probably tell by now we are in the process of redesigning the Smarter Social Media site. It has taken us a while to get around to redesigning the site because we have spent most of 2009 working on client projects. But over the holidays we found a few hours to sit down and bring our look into the new decade. We would love to hear your thoughts on the new look and feel.
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Bryce Maddock Interview: Small Business Social Media
Smarter Social Media founder Bryce Maddock was interviewed by Rick Lugash of Next for Small Business last week. In the interview Bryce talks openly about the challenges that social media presents for business owners. For business owners, “It’s important before you dive head first into social media to take a step back and ask is this the most effective use of my time?” Rick and Bryce explore the nuts and bolts of social media for small business over an hour long conversation. They discuss measuring ROI, transparency and confidentiality, and the best free tools available for running a seamless campaign. The two minute intro is available here and the entire hour long interview is a available on the Next for Small Business membership website. It is definitely worth checking out.
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Facebook Dislike Button?
I’ve always been fond of the ‘Like Button’ on Facebook and I admit that when people like the quotes and links I post, I am always flattered. A few weeks ago, Mark Zuckerburg, released an open letter with mention of changing security settings. Suddenly, within the thousands of comments in response to this letter, there was the mention of putting a ‘Dislike Button’ on Facebook.
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