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The "best practices" articles are primers on fundamental marketing elements, written to inform and engage Conversational Marketing readers. In this list, Conversational Marketing readers will find articles that instruct readers on the fundamentals of marketing from a wide range of marketing aspects. It provides an overview of essential concepts and tips for applying this knowledge to achieve marketing success.
Last week I was involved in what one tweeter characterized as an “ROI smackdown.”
I was speaking on a panel for Social Media Week New York when one of my fellow panelists said “This ROI stuff is just a bunch of crap. I’m so tired of it. You can’t measure what you’re doing and people should not even try.”
I began to twitch.
“I agree,” said the second panelist. “Too much focus is placed on measurement.”
My head began to throb.
“As a social media marketer, I can’t measure what I do,” said the moderator. “I just do it.”
At that point, the dam broke.
Sure you’ve setup your company profiles and pages on social media. However, do you know what channels are best used for which type of interaction? This infographic by Grovo shares some great insight into specific uses for many of the popular social media platforms. Did you know? “Content Marketing Becoming Vital” Kelly OCG, a workforce consulting and outsourcing organization shares that they do no B2B brand advertising. Instead they spend about 60% of their marketing budget on creating, distributing, and promoting their own unique content. According to the Custom Content Council approximately $41billion dollars are spent on creating custom content. Via BtoB Magazine.
Most people view Twitter as a way to converse with others and publish useful information that others are hopefully interested in reading.
Have you ever thought of it as a highly useful competitive research tool?
Here are a few ways to use Pinterest to boost your search ranking.
This post on Mashable by David Berkowitz discusses tips to avoid making mistakes when taking your marketing campaign to Twitter. Berokwitz writes about “hashtag marketing” campaigns becoming high jacked thrusting them towards irrelevance. His first tip is to figure out why you might be using a hashtag in the first place. He says, “Brands tend to use hashtags, predominantly on Twitter and sometimes other services like Instagram, either to create a centralized discussion around their campaign or event, or to jump into conversations that are already happening. Assess what you want to get out of the hashtag before diving in.” The post goes on to speak about other tips for hashtag marketing including determining what kind of hashtag makes sense for your goals, thinking of the worst-case highjacking situation, and more. Berkowitz points out the future of marketing campaigns will certainly incorporate hashtags, so learning from other brands hashtag campaigns is important for campaign success.
Let’s keep the conversation moving forward! What hashtag campaigns have you seen succeed on Twitter or Instagram?
A good marketing event always gets you excited to return to the office and apply what you've learned. The trouble, though, is few of us remember everything we heard. Many more of us do not make it to the event at all, and we're out of luck.
That is, of course, unless you're talking about the MarketingSherpa Email Summit. We're back from Las Vegas, and we've gone through our stacks of notes to give you the top five insights to improve your email marketing. You get tips on deliverability, optimizing designs, boosting lists and more.
Building up your brand’s social media presence takes time, effort and sometimes a little bit of luck. All of that hard work, however, can be undone by these five common social media mistakes. To avoid a public relations disaster and keep your followers and fans happy, make sure you aren’t committing any of these social media sins.
![Bounce Rate Demystified [Infographic] | Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog](http://www.conversationalmarketing.com/users/conversationalmarketing/ehadley-494-full.jpg)
This marketing infographic from KISSMetrics aims to demystify bounce rates, offering insight into what they are, how the averages vary by industry, factors that impact bounce rates, and tips for improving them.
Looking to double your number of retweets? Here are some best practices to higher retweets and adding followers to your Twitter account.
With so many channels available to listen and explore right from Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to YouTube to Tumblr to … getting data about your competition has never been simpler. However, converting the data to real Competitive Intelligence remains a challenge.
This article posted by Andrew Hanelly on Socialmediatoday discusses four techniques to use when trying to build a strong social media following. First on his list is to “Become a Social Journalist,” stating “Rather than view Twitter or Facebook as potential resource guzzlers that threaten to siphon time away from your reporting, use these tools to animate the editorial thought process for your audience—build communities, increase your readership, gauge reaction to controversial topics, interact with fans and critics alike, and make your content stronger!” Also included on his list is “Start a Conversation,” “Big Fish. Small Fish” and “Be Real.” He says under his “Big Fish” header that it may not always be best to target the largest followed users on Twitter, rather engage in conversation with people who will respond or re-tweet your post to spark interest. Let’s keep the conversation moving! What are your social media strategies in building a strong social media following?
by Robert Gembarski on February 6, 2012 Starbucks has a big brand presence online. Not because they have millions of dollars for Marketing and Advertising, which they do have, but because they are one of the most engaging companies online. If you are fan of Starbucks coffee, and a bit Internet savvy, then chances are you have come across one of if not all of Starbuck’s Social Media Pages. Starbucks has made it a point to take its successful offline branding strategies and implement them online. Its online image and messages have stayed consistent with their brand values, which are honesty, sincerity, and connecting with its consumers on a level unlike any other brand. The offline Starbucks Culture has taken to the airwaves of the Internet and Social Media. Lets take a look at how they became one of the most engaging brands online.
A guest post by Sarika Periwal of karmaCRM.
Talking is the best tool of a salesperson. The only way that you have face to face of convincing a person to buy a specific product or service is by convincing them that they need it. This includes highlighting the benefits that the product brings to their life to make it simpler.
It also means that to be a successful salesperson you need to have impeccable communication skills. However, this is not an inherent skill but one that has to be developed through practice. Here are a few things that you should keep in mind when you next deliver your sales pitch to your prospective client.
Have you been trying to figure out how to integrate Social Media into the email communications you send out for your Restaurant? Fear not! It's actually far easier than you think.
Making websites is pretty easy. You buy a domain. Pick a template on WordPress or any CMS platform of your choice. Throw some content and images. Get it live and SEO’d.
Making it social-friendly is another story.
As the world becomes more social every day, you have to make your site more open and mobile. The salesman approach to social platforms and eCommerce websites is passe already. Users nowadays look closely if it has a dash of social to it, which means you need to use a personal approach to turn a user into a customer. We all know that almost every company is already on Facebook and Twitter, but if you’re a start-up, how do you make users flock to your landing page and increase sign-ups? The success of a social platform doesn’t lie on the number of sign-ups but how many people are using it. Pinterest, Instagram, and Codecademy have done it right. Can you?
Here are 5 tips on how to make your websites more social-friendly:
Landing page creation, optimization and analytics best practices.
In this post on Contentmarketinginstitute, Barry Feldman offers his essential playbook to winning the content marketing Superbowl. Feldman writes, “We’ll call it the Super Content Marketing Bowl, where scoring points means expanding your audience and establishing authority in the things you do best. Before we play ball, we’ll meet at the 50-yard line and introduce some new rules for taking home the content marketing trophy.”
The top three points stated include, “You need a great site to compete,” “Go for the goal” and “Score points.” He says of scoring points, “Promote your blog relentlessly by using the social media tools available to you, creating links where you can, and joining relevant conversations on other blogs. Write guest posts for other blogs, and syndicate your content by finding relevant outlets for publication. Forge relationships with strategic allies,” and more.
Let’s keep the conversation moving forward! With the big game around the corner, do you find this playbook the key to content marketing success? What are your favorite points?
Articles about B2B social media marketing adoption often paint a rosy picture of the current landscape, but when you dig in deeper, there are many challenges in effectiveness and understanding the results. In a recent survey of 5,000 B2B marketers from all industries, Penton Marketing Services found some pretty revealing statistics. Click the link for the full report (registration form required). 1. 81% of B2B Marketers find online marketing moderately to extremely challenging. 2. 77% of B2B Marketers said their websites are not that effective at generating leads.
An interesting infographic exploring the email subscription practices of leading fashion retailers. While many are following standard email marketing best practices, there is still plenty of room for improvement, particularly with personalization (only 26% ask for subscriber interests) and opt-in (only 5% use double opt-in).
Lady Gaga is the definition of an influencer offline and online; her music, fashion sense, and passion for social causes have spread around the world in only a few short years. Love her, like her or hate her, you know who she is and you’ve probably heard more than one of her songs. When searching for a way to improve your online PR strategy or increase your social reach, who better to learn from than one of the most influential celebrities in the world and on the web? Social Media is Going Gaga
![Mercedes-Benz Collaborates With Calvin Klein On New Fashion Film [Video]](http://www.conversationalmarketing.com/users/conversationalmarketing/Jenn-442-full.jpg)
The branded, direct-to-consumer short features Dutch model Lara Stone, an SL Roadster and a tornado.
It's that time of year, again. Time to sharpen our pencils and get ready plead our case for 2012 conference events & meetings spend. No doubt, your CFO is locked and loaded. How about you? Are you ready?
Email subject lines are a form of headline. They attract attention and get your email content a chance to be read, so write them well.
Virtual event planning tips: how to plan your virtual event like you'd plan your wedding.
Dave Chaffey, over at his Smart Insights site, has posted a neat summary this morning of 5 reasons why you don’t—and 10 reasons why you do—need a digital marketing strategy (DMS).
In my experience, there’s one common reason why some companies still need a DMS: if your marketing approach is still stuck in the pre-digital era or you’ve merely dabbled in digital platforms without notable success, a DMS can help you improve in a controlled and measurable way. It can help you assess the relative costs of traditional versus digital techniques and channel your focus onto those approaches which best serve your business goals.
Here’s how I see it. If your marketing focus is from 70-100% traditional (i.e. pre-digital era) then you may benefit right now from developing a dedicated Digital Marketing Strategy:
I'm not a sports addict, but I seem to catch a decent share of the sports shows. I am amazed at the depth of knowledge the analysts and commentators demonstrate. When the discussion comes to pre-game predictions, the conversation funnels down to a few key elements of the game plans of both teams. This very short list of items -- players, injuries, strategy and statistics -- are weighed to determine an outcome. Like most prognostications, the results are not 100 percent in line with predictions. However, the breakdown and analysis do more than help you set your personal odds for betting with a bookie. They give us viewers some interesting insights on which to focus as we watch the game.
This pre-game analysis approach is very similar to what a sales leader should be doing as he or she gets ready for an important meeting. By taking the time and doing the analysis and discussion as a team, you can improve the outcome.
This post is about Congratulations, Convergence and Content. First off, congrats to Aaron Kahlow on his great news, I’m sure UBM TechWeb will be pleased with OMS, it’s an impressive event with a great following. Speaking of OMS, despite the wimpiest Minnesota Winter in years, February is a fine time to go somewhere warm and luckily, OMS and SES Search & Social Accelerator in San Diego are coming up fast Feb 6-9, 2012. Online Marketing Summit has grown quickly and the annual event in San Diego boasts an impressive roster of topics, training opportunities and speakers. The conference kicks off with an Online Marketing Bootcamp, then 3 days of OMS sessions on every topic under the Online Marketing sun.
Written by Jeff Bullas - View Comments Categories: Blog, Blogging, Content, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Why do you turn on the television? Why do you open a magazine? Why do you read the newspaper, whether it is online or folded and crumpled on your coffee table? We want to be entertained, amused and educated and the reason you open the laptop, turn on the tablet or browse on the mobile, is that we are seeking information and it is called content. Google earns $30 billion a year indexing and helping you find information and content. In an information age, creating content should become the focus of your marketing, whether it is for the consumer or for business.
Kellogg Co. is revamping its marketing strategy for its Special K cereal brand with an updated application that lets users manage their weight loss goals via mobile and desktop.
No doubt, 2011 was the tipping point for the marketing department. Marketing automation, content marketing and analytics entered boardroom conversations. Even at the smallest of companies (for which I consult), marketing directors and channel managers find themselves in the spotlight for the very first time.
So how should the CMO, marketing director and CEO respond?
I think that's the real question McKinsey & Co. attempted to answer in their July 2011 report, "We're all marketers now." (FYI: this report was the #3 most read in 2011, falling in just behind articles on strategy and brainstorming. And in typical McKinsey fashion, their research involved more than 20,000 customers... talk about comprehensive research!)
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