People soshalize. They don't care how it's spelled. They just do it.
Return on investment. It’s the compilation of metrics that are used to determine whether an activity or expenditure is worthwhile for a business. Over the last 4 years, social media has been at the center of ROI debates between marketers, company executives, and gurus across the spectrum.
The numbers are rising on businesses using Social Media to their advantage and rightfully so, since 97% of customers will purchase from your business based on a review they find on the product they are looking for, even more so the review is through people they trust, hence why social networks work.
Using Social Media as a form to communicate with customers does leave businesses open for negative sentiment and this has to be the biggest worry or response as to why businesses have yet to figure social media as a part of their Marketing strategies. However, people are not always going to be happy with your services or products and that is always a pitfall to owning a business, therefore people are talking negatively about your business online already. Using social networks to share in customer service and share a friendly persona while furthering your brand online will entice many who are upset with your business to flock there, giving you the greatest gift, the ability to respond quickly.
This will please the 34% of those who complain online more so than the ones that go ignored. As a business part of your job is to respond even to negative feedback. Look at it as a way to improve what may be lacking at your company and a form to build the trust back from the customer, which begins with a response that is customer service oriented.
Preparing for 2012
Preparing for a new year is never easy no matter what line of work you’re in. In social media, it’s damn near impossible. Regardless of how much analysis of the previous year you complete or how strategies you put in place to start the year, things change… rapidly.
Buzz has always been an important element when trying to launch a startup. The rise of social media from 2005-2008 became a great way for people to get their budding businesses attention. Then, something happened. Social media became TOO big in 2009 and the noise levels started drowning out the potential benefits of the buzz that was getting generated.
Social networking began as a confusing mess for many growing companies. Since then, teams of web developers, internet service providers and engineers have simplified the experience through web apps, smart phone applications and user-friendly APIs.
If you’re feeling like “OMG WTF” when scrolling your comment thread, you may be dealing with a troll. Trolls aren’t just readers or customers who are complaining about your product or service; these are creatures, spawned of the Internet, with the sole purpose of being a nuisance or creating a destructive presence on your site. Trolls don’t have legitimate grievances and they don’t want to talk rationally about their concerns.
Power has value. Visualizations, for all of the difficulty that is associated with creating a superb one in the ultra-competitive world of infographic promotions, have a certain power, particularly in social media. Many users love visualizations. They are perfect for our ADHD-driven world of quick bursts of information overriding the old need for large amounts of prose.
As far as the social space is concerned, Google+ just may go on to be the story of 2011. After all, it has been surrounded by more hype than we have seen in a long while. When the platform was unveiled back in June, many pundits in the tech community actually believed it could be a viable competitor to social giant Facebook.
During a meeting today with the world’s largest Acura dealer, we discussed their digital marketing at length. One of the common things that was brought up during the discussion was that we needed to make sure we didn’t “cheapen the brand” using marketing techniques that would be fine for most businesses and particularly of value to most car dealers.
