WbFusion White paper on Crisis Management and Social Media

To view the complete white paper click on the image or here.

8 Things to Consider When Writing a Social Media Strategy

1. Set Clear Goals
Many of us name the activity we pursue as “B2B Social Media Engagement” or “Social Media Marketing.”

While this is often accurate, what we want to achieve with social media can turn out to be something more specific than these general descriptions (i.e. branding, recruiting, lead generation creation, exposure for new products, building a reputation, finding new business partners/customers, gathering information).

When done right, social media will influence more than one aspect of a business. Succeeding in one area of social media will help other elements of your business strategy. (Once you have built an active community and engaged within it – you will propel your marketing efforts.)

To achieve what you are aiming for, be clear in what you expect and what you wish to gain from your activities.

You should also be clear about what kind of results you want in terms of timeframe and actual numbers.

Unrealistic expectations will result in frustration, but having specific goals is essential for measuring success. (The answer to your goals and expectations can even be that social media is not the best solution for you and a different marketing investment is better suited for your professional needs.)

Remember to be patient; social media is a long-term relationship.

2. Hone in on Your Target Group
There is virtually no group of people that you cannot find in social media. Therefore, knowing whom you wish to speak with is essential to reach your desired results. It is building these relevant and active relationships that breeds lasting social media and business success.

Once you have determined your target group, the next step is to know where to find them — and how communicate with these people. Choosing the right outlets and content for your target group is crucial to social media success.

3. Know Where You Stand (What does your current online audience look like?)
There is a vast difference in social media between starting at zero and building on an already established audience. (This applies to whatever networks/outlets you decide to pursue.)

It is also important to understand the existing knowledge of your employees. Do they already have experience, content and real life contacts that will influence your strategy and the time you need before seeing results?

Keep in mind that you need people to want to listen to you before you can tell them what you want them to know. Once you have them listening, you need people willing to share your content before it can make a true impact.

If you have already built an interested audience willing to share – connect and give them good content they are likely to share.

If you do not (yet) have a following, start with outlets that make it easy to build a community. Twitter, Pinterest, publishing platforms and news aggregates are good places to access already-existing communities.

Note: Do not make the mistake to measure the entirety of your social media influence by the outcome of your first feeble attempts at social media. The “gurus” with whom who may want to compare yourself have been doing this for years.

It takes time, diligence, measured campaigns/calculations, and a series of trial and error to find what works for you.

4. Utilize Your Budget and Resources
It will always take time to build an influence within social media. However, there are ways to speed the process.

Hiring a strong team of people with familiarity within social media channels and a willingness to learn and experience is one way to combat the enemy that is time in social media.

Investing in ad campaigns and optimization tools is another. While money is not the only answer, it is essential to utilize the means you have available.

Warning: Do not fall victim to the myth that social media is free.

5. Allow Your Time Frame to Be Flexible 
If you expect “Big Time” results tomorrow – buy them. If you want to achieve success by connecting with people, building a reputation, branding your business and establishing trust – understand that this process takes time.

Being clear from the beginning about what you want to achieve – and in what amount of time – helps you to decide on your optimal strategy and the means by which you can achieve set goals.

6. Rely on Your Employees  
For each company, there are different ways to pursue a social media employee strategy. You can outsource all of your activity, hire a complete internal team, or find a blend between the two.

The decision to involve people in different parts of your strategy will involve consideration about content creation, which networks to target, how much activity and branding you can do with given resources (and employees).

The experience, the communicative skills and the personality of your employees will help to establish network influence. Hire specialists when necessary, but don’t miss out on utilizing the talents and communities of your existing employee network.

7. Utilize Various Outlets
Social media is not all about Facebook. Especially in B2B, Facebook might not be the right outlet for your activity (even though you can, theoretically, reach almost anyone, worldwide).

There are countless other networks that are interesting for your business and may be better suited to reach your target group.

If you are starting out with limited resources in time and money, select channels for publishing and spreading your content; figure out how they work and get them started.

There are social media outlets where it is easy to start and utilize a given audience and others where you have to work hard to build a following.

For an easy start, consider including some of the easy to use networks providing you with an already established audience.

For publishing you can reuse your content on news aggregate sites like Business2Community or directly tap into the community on exploreB2B. For spreading an easy start are matching LinkedIn groups and build a following on Twitter.

Once you have the accounts running, keep managing these communities while looking for other outlets that fit into your strategy.

8. Understand the Important Process of Content Creation
The kind of content best suited for you depends on many of the already mentioned aspects of your marketing strategy: What you want to achieve? Whom do you want to reach?

Which networks best achieve these goals? Once these questions have been answered, the content itself can take on many forms: videos, articles, pictures, graphics, and more.

For many people, the question about what content to use is the most difficult to answer. Maybe this is due to the fact that the possibilities are so vast that there is no short answer to this question.

There are some basics you should keep in mind when deciding on what type of content to produce. Think about what your target group wants to know instead of what you would like them to know about your business.

Look around and find out what you like to read or watch – this is often the best hint on what your audience will also want to read and watch.

There are numerous lists on content ideas to help you get inspired and start being creative.  Include your employees into your content creation process and give a voice to your happy customers.

These are often the most under-utilized voices that can help create trust and formulate a reputation for your outstanding business.

Final Remarks:
There are numerous decisions to make before you start. Some decisions will certainly turn out to be “wrong” and you will have to adjust your strategy.

But if you start with a clear idea, you will be able to identify where you went astray, and can get back right on track.

In the end, you just have to get started and find your own way. All of those experts you look up to right now have once been in your position, too. They have made some mistakes, learned, (re-learned) and kept going.

Pinterest: Tips for Branding

Pinterest has become a power when it comes to driving traffic to retail sites. In the wake of this explosion, there’s already been a fair amount of wriitng on Pinterest as a marketing tool but we haven’t seen anything about Pinterest as a branding tool.

Pinterest has some pretty sweet demographics. Everyone knows the ladies love it. It turns out, those ladies tend to make more than $100,000 per year, while 50% of them are in the coveted 25-45 year old cohort. Half of them have kids. So – upper middle class, harried moms.

A simple, attractive, social site like Pinterest is tailor made for these folks and some retailers and others.

Using Pinterest for Branding:

• Make sure Pinterest fits into your brand and social media strategy. No brainer here, but obviously not every social media outlet is appropriate for every brand. Although some entities and organizations that I wouldn’t have expected (looking at you, US Army)have turned up on Pinterest, and are apparently successful there.
• Focus on lifestyle, not products. Brands like Whole Foods have been successful on Pinterest, not by posting links to their own products (although they do this), but by promoting a lifestyle that supports their brand. Their pins are shots of beautiful people in beautiful kitchens making beautiful food (hey! That’s available at Whole Foods!) Links to their own products are in the mix, but don’t dominate.
• Make sure your own photos rock. Look at the other photos in your stream if you’re not a photographer and emulate your favorites. Or hire a professional photographer to shoot your merchandise.
• Build an online catalog – if you’re a fashion designer, for example, create separate pinboards for your collections. Pretend this doesn’t contradict what I wrote before.
• Optimize your Website for pinning by making sure it includes great images. On the other hand if images are not a strong suit for your brand, or simply inappropriate for your market, Pinterest may not be the most effective space for you to market. Stay away.
• Place a “Pin It,” button on your Website, especially if you have great photos of your products. This allows users of your site to easily post images of your amazing wares to their pinboards.

Pinterest still has that “new car smell.”
Right now Pinterest is an exciting new toy. Everyone loves it and almost everyone is using it, but we still don’t know if this is a long-term success or a flash in the pan.

Regardless of its staying power, though, the most important keys to effectively using it for branding are not that different from any other branding tool.

Know your market. Measure your results. Be consistent and persistent. Don’t contradict your core brand values. Finally, Pinterest’s strengths (simplicity, visual flair) lend themselves to having fun with it. So have fun!

Optimise Social Media, Search, Content. Video interview of Lee Odden by Jay Baer - YouTube

Optimise your social media, search engine optimisation (SEO), and content marketing.

Combining these three critical elements into one strategic program is the key to success, says Lee Odden, author of Optimize.

Lee is interviewed about his book and content optimization by Jay Baer of Convince & Convert.

If Social Networks were students in high school — Lost At E Minor

Ever wondered what the poster kids of social media would be like if they all went to high school like us?

This infographic by Flowtown puts each social network down to their student stereotype as well as the clubs they would have joined.

Which makes Twitter the gossip girl, Wikipedia the nerd, LinkedIn the class prezzie … you get the drift.

Explains why we always thought they seemed quite familiar.

See more images here at my favourite creative web site:

If Social Networks were students in high school — Lost At E Minor: For creative people

There are 3 Phases to establishing Social Media

Phase #1: Launch

The launch phase of social media is focused on setting up the major social network accounts with brand assets.

This launch phase should see very little actual results in terms of traffic or income spike as it is focused on preparation and set up.

The objective of this phase should not be measurable results rather just having a social media presence.

Phase #2: Management

The management phase is where you have out of set up and into executing the social media plan that you developed.

This is where you are posting content, increasing traffic, generating likes and followers. During this stage you should be focusing on content, creative and offer development and tracking your ROI.

Again results in this stage may not be amazing, this is your “testing phase”.

Phase #3: Optimization

The optimization phase is the final and probably most important phase of your social media campaign.

In this phase you are focusing on the metrics of your social media efforts to date and working to improve areas for greater return on investment.

Focus on improving your metrics and results to a level that is acceptable for your business.

As you can see social media is not an immediate pay off, instead you need to be working towards a result by building on your campaigns, tracking and improving your results.

Don’t fall for the “instant solution” myth that many people believe about social media. While it does have great user engagement and statistics it’s important to note that like any marketing campaign it takes time to get right.

Slideshare: Social Media Analytics

Twitter Analytics: Michele Hinojosa, Red Door Interactive

View more PowerPoint from Red Door Interactive

Questions to ask about your new Social Media Site

Which Channels Are Right For My Business?
To determine whether or not you’re using the right social media channels to convert leads and drive sales, here are five questions to consider before engaging with a new social media site.

1. What are the Four W’s? – When assessing a new social network, start by reviewing the 4 W’s: who, what, when, and why. Who’s using the site (demographic); what are they doing on it (engagement factors); when are they most active; and finally, why have they chosen the site? What is drawing them to it? This is where you want to analyze whether a site’s buyer personas mesh with those of your brand.Take Pinterest for example, a social network used mostly by women. If you’re trying to market your new men’s hair loss product, Pinterest might not be the best fit. If you are unable to provide a way to meet the needs of a site’s particular demographic, than maybe that site isn’t right for your brand. Nonetheless, don’t feel the need to repurpose your entire brand just to look appealing to a given social network.
2. Who’s Likely to Use the Network in the Long Run? – Given the unpredictable future of many social media sites, it is important to understand which demographic is most likely to be engaging with the site down the line. Are they potential customers, or do they have the ability to persuade potential customers? Because word of mouth has such a large impact on businesses, especially through social media channels, your brand should look into how these potential customers share content across the site.
3. What Types of Content Are People Sharing? – Are the products and services your business provides relevant to the content people are sharing? Make sure that your content is fit for the particular network you’re engaging with. For example; you wouldn’t go posting information about a new book you just read on MySpace, which is largely dominated by bands and music. If it’s obvious that a particular site is industry-specific, make sure that the content you share is relevant to that industry.
4. How Much Time and How Many Resources? – Oftentimes business don’t have the personnel required to stay up-to-date on their social media efforts. It takes a lot of time and effort to stay current with social media, so don’t spread yourself too thin. Instead, select a few social networks that align with your business and utilize them to their fullest potential. Another thing to consider when sharing content across multiple sites is the use of social media management tools such as Hootsuite. This will allow you to monitor and post across all your sites from a single hub.²
5. Is There a Promising ROI in the Future? – Sharing valuable content, engaging with your audience and collecting lead information is not enough. In order to understand the effectiveness of your social media efforts, analyze how much traffic and leads are generated across your social platforms. Measuring these results will allow you to evaluate and make corrections on any aspect of your social presence that isn’t up to par.²

By following these five steps, you can separate the wheat from the chaff, and engage with the social media sites that are best for your business.

Understanding Social Media and the Statistics

The Holy Grail of Social Media is justifying the outlay and effort spent, on a business level.

There are no shortage of statistics that prove the value of Social Media. Here are some of them:

• Social media users revenue grew at 19% vs. non-SM users 6% 
• Client base of SM users grew at 21% vs. non-SM users 
• 61% of LinkedIn users gained a client through SM,
• 35% of Facebook users gained a client,
• 47% of blog owners gained a client,
• 36% overall gained clients, through a social network. 

The sources were a 2011 Hubspot Report, 2010 Socialware Survey, and a 2009 Pershing-Aite Study. Most businesses realize the potential of social media to enhance their bottom line.

Even the largest companies understand that the investment in manpower (social media work is labor intensive) is vital.

In fact, "research conducted by Buddy Media shows that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are always considered while making marketing strategies in bigger companies.

94% of the participating companies said that Facebook was the top priority when it came to social media marketing." Other statistics that this study ferreted out were more telling.

The respondents in this particular study were Chief Marketing Officers, and when asked what their purpose for using social media was, only 38% said for sales.

Another telling stat is that 35% of these CMOs reported they had no strategic plan for social media use. These study results were reported in a recent Geeks4Share article.

Another report, this one a Forrester study, reported by Mashable, concluded that just 49% of CMOs and Marketing VPs had fully integrated social media in to their brand building efforts.

Just about all of them realized the potential and the change that social media has made in how consumers and brands engage, but almost half were baffled about how to use it to make a dollars and sense difference.

There has been a lot of talk about the effectiveness of social media this week as GM pulled their advertising dollars from Facebook on the eve of their IPO.

On Social Media Today, Steve Olenski addressed it in The Real Reason GM Left Facebook.

If you are a GM fan, and have frequented their fan pages, you can attest that they never seemed to engage much--using them generally as broadcast tools.

This is too much like traditional media--one way communication, instead of the more personal dialogue that social media offers. So their strategy needs tweaking.

Overall, the numbers in this article seem to tell us that companies know they should market with social media, but do not know how to do it. In fact, half of the business to consumer marketers surveyed agreed with the statement “Social media has the potential to build my brand, but I’m not sure how to capitalize on it.”

That last statement excites me for the future we can expect from social media. Most social media devotees, like myself, realize that companies often do not understand how to implement social media-- at all!

The larger ones, of course, have figured out some things, but it seems there is a lot of opportunity to help businesses put an effective social media plan in place that drives traffic, engages customers, and encourages brand loyalty.

Crowd-Sourcing - cartoon

We don't sell products; we sell the marketplace. And by 'sell the marketplace' we mean 'play shooters, sometimes for upwards of 20 hours straight.'

Read more: xkcd Cartoons

Facebook Contest Ideas to Benefit Small Businesses

Facebook contests are becoming good marketing strategies for businesses of any size. You’ve probably heard Facebook success stories from big brands with large budgets.

They often have elaborate landing pages, TV commercials, paid blog posts and celebrity endorsements.

What about the small business that doesn’t have thousands to spend? This list is for you.

1.  Tie your contest into current events
Clothing company PLNDR gave a unique twist to the NCAA. Instead of basketball teams facing off against each other, they had brands submit T-shirt designs and let them battle on Facebook.

The designer with the most “likes” moved to the next round. As a result, PLNDR's Facebook page grew 800 percent—look at their chart on this blog post.

TimetoPlayMag.com tied their contest into a holiday with a virtual Easter Egg hunt. They hid five Easter eggs on their website each day, for a total of 15 days.

The first player to find an egg and click on it won a $20 Toys"R"Us gift card. All of the clues and hints to find the eggs were posted on Facebook—smart way to drive people to your site.

2.  Run a photo contest
During the summer, pizza company Fresh Brothers runs contests using their mascot, the Slice (a giant slice of pizza).

They tell fans where and when Slice will be at events, and if they snap a picture with the Slice and post it, they get a gift certificate as a thank you.

Wine website Snooth.com created a Facebook landing page on their Fan page using the Wildfire app. Facebook guidelines say brands should run contests like this through an app.

To promote one of the Australian brand wines, they asked people to submit pictures of people showing their Australian pride.

Fans posted pictures of themselves enjoying the wine and using the Australian recipes from their website.

People voted on the photos, driving new exposure, and as a result, traffic continued even after the contest ended.

3.  Play simple guessing games with your fans
PR firm Sammis & Ochoa runs promotions for two restaurants in Texas. The contests run every Friday at 4 p.m. CDT, which gives them a chance to prep and tell others.

“When we run late, we hear about it,” says CEO Mario Ochoa.

Other game examples:

• A Word Jumble of a local landmark.
• Post a local picture for people to guess where it was taken.
• Guess how many almonds are in the cup.
• Ask a weekly question then randomly choose a fan to reward with a prize.

4.  Ask fans to share their best tips
Hiatus Spa is running a “Be Green and Be Good; Earth Month 2011” Contest. They asked fans to share tips on how to use less resources through this Web page.

The tip with the most unique comments and "likes" wins three Hiatus Spa services. “The great thing is that this has really been fun and people are sharing wonderful, useful information,” said Jordan Harbinger who helped run the contest.

5.  Collect your fan’s favorite quotes
This is simple and can be applied to just about any business. Laura Ann Allahverdi is a Personal Life Coach who asked her fans to submit their favourite quotes.

The person who got the most likes on their quote got a free session with Laura. She loved how people filled her Wall with inspirational posts and fans got their friends involved in the contest, increasing her exposure to new networks.

6.  Name the local celebrity game
Maia Yogurt said one of their most successful contests was a "local celebrity ID" game. They posted a picture of a local "celebrity", they chose a popular and well-known independent grocery store owner so it helped garner some good will with the people they hoped to contact, and asked their Facebook fans to guess the person’s name to win a free MAIA T-shirt.

7.  Reward “likes”
Again, you must be careful how you do this to fall within Facebook guidelines, but there are many ways to reward people for becoming fans.

Snack and Munch ships boxes of snacks to hungry office workers and college students so they’re ready for the munchies.

To enter their contest, they ask people to “like” their page. They choose a weekly winner who gets a free box of 24 snacks. In the process, they get great feedback about their product.

The company has some solid advice about expectations: “You have to be patient because the success doesn’t come overnight, it takes time and persistent. Persistence is the key, you have to keep on moving forward and not stop.”

The 5 Main Types of Facebook Fans and How to Encourage Them

Here are the 5 most common types of Facebook fans that we've all seen while managing communities, and how you can tailor your content to keep them.

1. The Potential Client/Customer
   The potential client or customer is a fan who has heard of your business through something like word of mouth or an advertising campaign, and is intrigued by what you're all about. This type of fan is like a hawk waiting to swoop; the more relevant, interesting, and personal your content, the more likely this fan is to stay on your page and make a purchase - or contact you for business, if you're B2B.
   
   How to Encourage them: Strike a healthy balance with your content that services their needs/wants with a bit of personality. B2C companies can do things like showcase fan reviews, while B2B companies can showcase in-house talent, or show off a "behind the scenes" look at what the office environment is like. Be fun and approachable, and work on exhibiting a voice that mixes thought leadership with friendliness.
   
   
2. The Friend/Employee
   The friend/employee is someone who has liked your page either because they want to support your business, business venture or work with your company. These fans are dangerous because while they raise the quantitative count of your audience, they qualitatively reduce the value of your audience. Employees and supportive friends are less likely to engage with your content, simply because they typically view the "Like" as the end of their transaction.
   
   How to Encourage them: The more important piece of this question isn't how to retain them, but how to engage with them. Borrowing a few tactics from pleasing the Potential Customer/Client can help - B2Cs can highlight certain locations that provide excellent service, and B2Bs can make things personal by recognizing individual employees. Since they already have a personal connection, you can play on it and, if it works out, your other fans will enjoy seeing the faces behind the logo talking about things that are happening.
   
   
3. The Sweepstaker
   Did your page feature an exclusive contest recently? If so, it's a pretty safe bet that some of the newbies to your audience simply liked your page so they could have a chance at winning your giveaway. Often, Sweepstakers have a "one and done" mentality, and once the contest is over, may unlike the page and move on. Other times, these fans might forget they've liked your page until an irrelevant piece of content appears in their newsfeeds, and then they'll purge your page. 
   How to Encourage them: You may be wondering why you'd want to keep such a specific group of people, but the Sweepstakers are more likely to vocalize their excitement for your promotions, and that's free marketing for your page. Don't just post a contest and then forget about it - support it with content they can like. And, as one contest is winding down, hype up others that may be launching soon, or focus on promotions you have outside of Facebook. Provide exclusive deals, like coupon codes, through posts made on random days to increase the chances they'll stick around.
   
4. The Happy Camper
   The Happy Camper is a great fan to have, and most brands see them interact with their Facebook pages regularly. Happy Campers have positive brand sentiments based on great purchases they've made, wonderful customer experiences, and/or childhood memories. If your community is more support-based, they're on your page because they want to come together with other fans to get that feeling of community. They come to your page because your brand or business has already enhanced a part of their lives, and they're passionate about sharing that with you (and other fans) so they get some recognition.
   
   How to Encourage them: Keep their conversations flowing! Thank them, ask them questions, and respond to them when they take it upon themselves to post content to your Timeline without a call to action. Work conversational posts into your content that ask for opinions that these die-hards will be eager to give. Tease upcoming work or new products/promotions with photos, polls, and links to keep their excitement flowing and, if they ever post really unique content to your wall, ask if you can share it from the brand's voice. People love to be recognized and reinforced.
   
   
5. The Fairweather Friend
   The Fairweather Friend is a fan who may like your brand, its services, or a recent product they've purchased, but isn't driven to shout that from the rooftops. They usually like your page to stay current on brand/business news, or to remember your brand/business for a later date, when they'll be seeking what you have to offer. Unlike the Happy Campers and the Potential Client/Customers, though, they're more likely to leave negative feedback if your brand does something they don't like.
   
   How to Encourage them: If they leave concerns or comments on your page, address them head-on. Transparency is key. Understand and embrace what makes them different: they're looking for information, so give it to them. Make relevant appeals, and much like you do for the Potential Client/Customer, show the value of your services to encourage engagement and business transactions outside of Facebook.

Of course, a healthy Facebook page that sees an upward trend of engagement and growth combines all of these content pieces into an overarching strategy. 

But, unless you understand who you're speaking to, you may not know where to begin. Use these profiles as a starting point, and then dive into the analytic tools to get a closer look.

Costs associated with Effective Social Media

There are two ways to execute effective social media marketing:

1. Stand-alone as a distinct separate silo within the company or marketing department
2. Integrated as part of a holistic marketing strategy

The first method – stand-alone Facebook or Twitter marketing – is good for companies with limited resources, who want to drive a small group of customers to take action.

Investing in a small stand alone social program can be $1,500-5,000 a month.

The biggest bang for the buck is from Facebook and Twitter updates which drive traffic to a value-add blog.

Knowing your audience and the different buyers you have, then writing a blog aimed at them once or twice a week is the most effective way to leverage Facebook or Twitter. You can also add a teaser, with a high quality photo on your Facebook site, and Tweet about the blog.

Using Facebook and Twitter to amplify a blog is a long-term strategy that can take 6-12 months to become effective, but once you have the machine working it is very valuable marketing. You build loyal followers and create an advantage not easily taken away.

To jump-start a stand-alone program, Facebook ads drives traffic to your brand page, and Google Ads drives people directly to the blog. These are the quickest way to get some return on your investment, in a short time i.e. a week or two .

For $30-100 a day you can use Facebook, Twitter or Google Ads to amplify your message. Be sure to set dedicated URL’s to analyze traffic using something like Google Analytics, and make sure you try three or four slightly different ads.

This allows you to measure the response rate to the different wording and determine the most effective.

If you are a Fortune 1000 company and have dedicated web and online staff, then Facebook and Social Media marketing should be thoughtfully integrated into your event marketing, product launches and customer service.

For an incremental $100,000 a year you can start to get a much higher ROI from your events and sponsorships. If you allocate $5-10 million to social marketing and have dedicated staff for the social media function you should follow five best practices:

1. Integrate social media with product launch, events, and customer service. (Read more about using social media to drive revenue in a recent blog.)
2. Respond within minutes or hours (not days) to any comments on social media about customer service, product capability, sales locations etc. You need to track your company or product name to do this.
3. Tell a continual story through social media. There should be an ongoing thread, trend and voice to your efforts. This includes showing pictures from your events to give your Facebook fans a sneak-peak at videos and don't forget to use the power of 'crowd sourcing'.
4. Measure and Analyze everything. If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Getting great amplification from events through social media  experiences should be compared with direct response from Google Ads and money spent on SEO.
5. Stay educated – Facebook has it’s EdgeRank, Google has it’s SEO algorithm, Twitter has GroupTweet - multi-grouping and all these things change. This will change your strategy on a regular basis. Read a lot about it and attend seminars or find peer groups to keep up to date on best practices.

Some companies are spending $10million plus on social media. They are getting phenomenal returns in part because many of their competitors have not figured it out yet.

Be the first ones in your industry to really leverage it and figure it out and you will reap the rewards but raise your awareness and measure the risks carefully.

7 Quick Ways to Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Social Media Marketing Workhorse

Here are 7 ways to enhance the copy on your profile to ensure that you get everything you want from LinkedIn:

1. It’s all about the headline

Headlines are everything in newspapers, magazines, and on blogs.
They are just as important on your LinkedIn profile, because the headline is the first thing that shows up anytime someone does a search online. A simple way to ensure your headline doesn’t suck is to follow a simple formula.
Tell people specifically:

• Who you are
• Who you help, and
• How you help them

Tell them in the fewest words possible. Make your headline compelling and you’ll increase your chances of more meaningful profile views.

2. Get personal

Although LinkedIn is the “professional” social networking site, you want to reserve the first part of your “Summary” to add a personal note about yourself.

People don’t want to look at a resume with bullet points of past sales achievements (barf!), they want to know a little bit about your background. They want to know who you are.

To achieve this, add a personal intro about your goals, what you’re passionate about, and what you love to do in life.

This small touch of transparency will help you connect on a personal level with anyone who views your profile.

3. Spell check. And then check again.

You probably have no clue how many deals are happening day in and day out on LinkedIn.

I hear success stories all of the time about people landing their dream job, getting hired for a major consulting deal, finding 7 figure investors, receiving major sponsorships, selling out tickets to live events, and more.

The potential for what you can accomplish on LinkedIn is nearly unlimited.

However, I also hear about people who are completely turned off by a prospect with a bare-bones profile, or worse — spelling mistakes. Make sure to spell check everything and have others review it to give you their feedback.

This small step could make all the difference in your interactions on LinkedIn. You know what they say about those first impressions.

4. Make a call to action

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is not having a call to action on your LinkedIn profile.

If you spend all of this time crafting a great message but don’t lead the viewer anywhere, all your work will have been for nothing.

In your “Summary”, or in your LinkedIn welcome video make sure to tell people what site they should go to for more information, what number to call to get a free consultation, or the best way to email you.

Don’t leave your potential customers and clients hanging. Give them a place to go next (and a reason to go there).

5. Social proof is powerful proof

Social proof helps influence others into making a “buying” decision.
LinkedIn makes this step easy by providing 3 primary sections to add social proof:

• Education. Adding the college or university you attended provides your education credentials, and increases the value of your personal brand.
• Awards. This section is the one place you can brag about yourself a little. Include any past accomplishments or industry awards you can think of that will increase the value of your profile.
• Recommendations. The more recommendations you have on your profile the better. This is the best form of social proof, as it conveys credibility and authority. The best way to receive recommendations is to give them first.

6. Improve your search rankings

If you want to get more leads and sales, then the easiest thing you can do is become easily found on LinkedIn for keywords in your niche.

Think about what people would be searching for on Google to find your business, service, or product (for example, mine would be “sports” or “LinkedIn Tips”). Make sure you add your keywords throughout your LinkedIn profile in five main places.

Learn more about where to include your keywords and increase your LinkedIn SEO here.

7. Stand out from the crowd

With close to 130 million LinkedIn profiles, many of them look the same.

Don’t join the herd of boring “glamour shot” profiles. Instead, do something creative in your copy to market yourself on LinkedIn, stand out, and keep people coming back for more.

Add LinkedIn’s blog application, sync it with your twitter updates, or include other advanced applications to help your profile stand out from the rest.

Take your profile to the next level

As LinkedIn continues to grow in numbers and gain more media attention, it will prove to add more value to your brand and business.

If you want to get the most out of your efforts with LinkedIn, take the time right now to implement these 7 steps and watch your profile take off.

Rypple Social Goals 2.0: Live Demo and Q&A - YouTube

Have questions on how to get started with Rypple Social Goals 2.0? Watch Meghan Gendelman from our Customer Success team as she demonstrates a new way for teams to stay focused on what really matters and make progress on shared goals.

In less than an hour, you'll learn: * What's new in Social Goals 2.0 * Why customers like Spotify use it * How to make it work for you

You can also watch the live Q&A with our VP of Product at the end of the presentation.

Social Media: Lessons from Dr Seus

Dr. Seuss' rhyming wisdom provides social media lessons for all of us. Here are a few:

1. "Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you." Be yourself on social media platforms and reveal your true essence. Don't try to be someone else. To this end, don't pass someone else's content off as yours.

Social media tip: Show who you are with your avatar and profiles. Include information that proves you're human.

2. "So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads." Great advice for social media where space is limited and participants are constantly bombarded with information. Keep your messages short and on target

Social media tip: Integrate your branding into your social media interactions through your language, voice and graphics. Dr. Seuss' tweets would sound like Dr. Seuss without needing identification.

3. "Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple." Given broad based use of social media, it's easy to forget your social media peers may not be native speakers of your language or may have a different understanding of the same event.

Social media tip: Be a social media resource and help others whenever and wherever possible. Support those around you.

4. "For a host, above all, must be kind to his guests." No place is this truer than on social media platforms where you should be polite and free of all scorn. Remember—you don't know someone's background, so err on the polite side.

Social media tip: Be generous in your advice and participation on social media networks and pay-it-forward.

5. "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." Dr. Seuss packed a lot of social media sense into a short phrase. In 2011, social media showed how people around the world could support others half a world away during the Egyptian revolution and the Japanese tsunami.

On social media platforms, everyone has responsibility to make their forums safe. There shouldn't be cyber bullying or other issues where real people are hurt by what's said without thinking.

Social media tip: Social media has social responsibility! Take a stand on social media where appropriate to make them safer for people in need or danger.

6. "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." Dr. Seuss' words ring true on social media where it's important to be transparent. While this involves telling the truth, it doesn't mean divulging confidential information that would harm an individual or a business.

Social media tip: Help your employees by developing a set of social media guidelines so they know what's acceptable to say on social media networks when they represent your firm as well as when they're engaging as individuals. Be aware that privacy on many social media entities can be elusive.

7. "Oh, the things you can find if you don't stay behind!" Learn to be a social media extrovert and engage with others across a wide variety of interests.

Social media tip: Build a social media tribe to engage with. Pay-it-forward on social media platforms like question and answer sites and participate in group discussions such as Twitter chats.

What's your favorite Dr. Seuss quote and how does it relate to social media?

A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation - Slideshare

Banking: Social Media Challenges

Financial institutions (FIs) should integrate social media approaches into their marketing and customer service processes.

Most FIs are fairly clear that engaging customers, building brand awareness, and building brand affinity are why they’re involved with social media.

Engagement may be the objective, but “engagement” isn’t accomplished through persuasion.

Social Media and Influence Measurement

Social Media: Listening and Online Reputation Monitoring 2011 report

Today marks the publication of Econsultancy's 2012 Online Reputation and Buzz Monitoring Buyer's Guide, containing profiles of 15 leading vendors and advice for companies trying to choose a tool and to get the most from the technology. 

The report follows separate research we published in November which shows that an increasing number of companies are paying for reputation monitoring software.

According to the State of Social Report, published in association with LBi and bigmouthmedia, the proportion of companies using paid-for technology for reputation monitoring increased from 16% in 2010 to 25% in 2011, including 17% who also use free tools for social listening.