This week's top conversational marketing stories:

Three Tips for Getting Your Product on a Major Retailer’s Shelves - on Marketingprofs& &&

This MarketingProfs article with over 101 social shares focuses on ways to get your product on a retailer’s shelf in the superficial sense. Digging deeper into it, you can see that targeting is an underlying concept. “You have a solid brand, a great product, and you'd like to see your stuff on the shelves of major retailers. But how do you achieve this goal? Typical strategies include hiring a sales representative, attending trade shows, and encouraging friends to request it at their favorite stores. Vanessa Ting suggests, at MarketingProfs, three other ways to grab a retailer's attention” These three ways are building a solid business case,&scaling your business slowly, and analyzing how retailers merchandize your category. Having a good product and a solid brand is prerequisite for appearing on a shelf but it’s important to also think about how you market yourself and target your audience. How do you go about doing this? &Are targeting your clients, customers, or retailers properly?

&

Create a Setting and Connect with Emotions - on Chris Brogan &&&&&&&&&&&&&&

This Chris Brogan Post also pertains to the subject of targeting, targeting your content. Garnering well over 380 social likes, Brogan argues two main ingredients in gearing your content to a specific audience is creating a setting and connecting with emotion. “Ask yourself this: in trying to reach others for whatever your goal may be, is it facts or emotions that will win them over? Which do you think plays the bigger role? Related: what’s the benefit of creating an experience for your customer or prospect such that you tell a story with every aspect of your communications? Would you guess it’s not important, or do you think it merits a lot of thought and consideration?” These are all valid questions that we’d like to hear your answers to!

&

Five Reasons Why Landing Pages are a Must - by John Jantsch& on Ducttapemarketing&&&&

“A landing page is just the page people land on because an ad or email directed them to that specific page as opposed to your site’s homepage. Effective landing pages make it very clear what a visitor is going to get from a page and how to get it. That’s it plain and simple. There are many great articles on how to create better landing pages (including this one from Unbounce) but today I want to focus on why you need to create and use landing pages as a core online tool.” This MarketingProfs achieved 353 social likes and focuses on the creation and usage of landing pages as a tool. In terms of content, Jantsch points to three main types to focus on producing, social smart and lead. He also makes an argument for targeting with the tool Premise. Landing pages are yet another way to grab a consumers attention. What are your landing page strategies?

&

Let's keep the conversation moving forward! This week is all about targeting. Are building a solid business case, scaling your business slowly, and analyzing how retailers merchandize your category enough, or is this just the beginning? What questions do you ask yourself in writing your content? Do you gear specifically towards your customers or readers? Should you pay more attention and do this? Are Any of Brogan’s questions particularly helpful? And what about those of you who engage in landing page creation? What do you put in there that will attract customers and search engines alike?

Maybe this is the reason General Motors&went "mental" and pulled its Facebook ad budget. Digital marketing is confusing—really confusing—as this insane graphic shows. Trying to navigate through the various new social media categories, blogs, sharing sites, and social media firms is an absolute mess. This depiction of the digital marketing landscape was shown at a Buddy Media event marking the launch of the social marketing software agency's new suite of measurement tools. You can click to enlarge it, but that won't make it look any simpler.

Source: businessinsider.com → | ∞ Permalink

Text messaging has replaced the phone call as the preferred method of communication. In fact, in 2012, wireless&carriers are likely to handle more text messages than mobile phone call minutes.&

It is important to understand and respect that by marketing via SMS text, brands are communicating with consumers in an intimate manner.

Source: mobilemarketer.com → | ∞ Permalink

Curalate has just come out of private beta with a new offering for brands that allows them to manage their presence more easily on Pinterest through advanced analytics. They are coming with a fresh approach that combines measurement of both the brand’s activities as well as the activity of fans (first and third party actions), giving a more complete view of how a brand is being perceived on a social platform.

Source: simplyzesty.com → | ∞ Permalink

Linda Coles, founder of Blue Banana, is a speaker, trainer and author of Learn Marketing With Social Media in 7 Days.

Did you know two new members join LinkedIn every second? As a result, more people are using it for intelligence, recruitment, and networking. But how does an individual best leverage this vibrant network?

I suggest to people that they gather a few great recommendations to display on their LinkedIn profile. Great recommendations can be the difference between getting a position or project offer over someone else. But as you go about giving or getting recommendations, there are a few things you should consider. Here are some guidelines about what to do and what not to do.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

When it comes to Google+, it seems like you either love it or hate it. Some people have really embraced it and others have totally ignored it or took it for a spin and never came back.

Source: socialmouths.com → | ∞ Permalink

New York Giants fans followed their team through an up-and-down regular season and dramatic playoffs to an eventual NFL championship in January.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

Lead management expert Carlos Hidalgo discusses how marketing and sales simply agreeing to a definition of a lead isn't a panacea for greater ROMI.& In his words, "Limiting the focus to agreeing to the definition of a lead is like sitting down for a 5-course dinner and only eating the appetizer."

Much more must be taken into account when defining lead management processes, particularly in light of the multi-stage waterfall or funnel.& Carlos poses these questions:

• If marketing and sales develop a singular definition for “lead”, to what stage in the funnel should it be applied?
• Will all leads be sent to sales?& If not, what qualification criteria will be used to identify which ones should and which ones shouldn’t?
• What routing processes should be developed to ensure that leads get to the sales person at the right time?
• How many leads are needed in order to help sales meet their revenue goals?

Source: annuitasgroup.com → | ∞ Permalink

Wikimedia CommonsBy now, brands should know that a haphazard social media policy won't work. But some have had to learn the hard way. We came across this slideshow by 22 Squared, which offers case studies on some of the biggest social media catastrophes in recent years. Each case begins with the "Problem," the company's "Response" and finally the "Fallout." For example, TGI Fridays never anticipated the incredible demand for a free Jack Daniel's burger when it tried to build its Facebook following — and the fallout was a bunch of angry fans, all of whom it later abandoned. #fail

Source: businessinsider.com → | ∞ Permalink

The timing for Facebook could not be worse. Blue chip advertiser General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook after the company's marketing team decided that the social network's ads weren't working. The story was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which says GM will continue using Facebook's free pages to promote its products.

Source: theverge.com → | ∞ Permalink

This week's impending Facebook IPO, which could top $12.7 billion, is sparking questions about the value of Facebook and other social networks. The future of social media ad spending may justify the hype surrounding Facebook, which is geared to being the highest valued U.S. Internet company at IPO.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

The share of Web site traffic on tablets grew more than 300% in the past year, according to research released Tuesday. Tablets' share of Web site traffic will exceed smartphone traffic by early 2013, reaching 10% of total Web site traffic in 2014.

Source: mediapost.com → | ∞ Permalink

More damning research has emerged about Google+ user engagement, challenging Google’s spin that the network is growing at a rapid clip.

RJ Metrics looked at the public comments of 40,000 Google+ users and found, among other things, that about 30% of such users who make a public post once never do so again. The report may present a somewhat skewed picture of Google+ engagement since it focuses on public posts. However, based on the data, the service’s user engagement still lags that of competitors like Facebook and Twitter.

Among other findings:

• The average post on Google+ has less than one reply, reshare and +1.
• There’s a 15% chance that a user will not post publicly again even after posting publicly five times.
• The average time between posts is 12 days for active users.
• The average number of public posts per active users declines steadily month after month.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

# 1- Become An Agent of Change – Don’t be Afraid to Try New Things Fear consumes many people both personally and professionally. A fear of failing or disappointment can often lead to a stagnant and uninspired plan for dominance on the web. Instead of allowing fear to make an appearance, instead recognize that mistakes will be made, but they will be a learning experience. What are some changes you can begin implementing today?

Source: toprankblog.com → | ∞ Permalink

Are you seeking more visibility for yourYouTube&videos?

Are you wondering how others do it?

If you want the massive views, exposure and targeted traffic that YouTube offers, you need to&focus on first building an audience—or as YouTube calls them, subscribers.

Source: socialmediaexaminer.com → | ∞ Permalink

While Facebook and Twitter are just about equal in terms of female to male ratio, Pinterest has an overwhelming female audience (80+%).

Source: mltcreative.com → | ∞ Permalink

Are you wondering how Pinterest could help your business?

Pinterest&is one of the hottest&social media sites&at the moment. Pinterest was the fastest stand alone site ever to reach 10 million monthly unique visitors.

Source: socialmediaexaminer.com → | ∞ Permalink

The colossal amount of customer data that's being amassed is too often finding its way into a black hole. Instead, it needs to be properly analyzed to extract the trends and insight that can impact customer engagement and business performance. Savvy companies are hiring talented analysts who can sift through the reams of Big Data available today, uncover the actionable information, and provide strategic advice on how best to use that insight.

Source: 1to1media.com → | ∞ Permalink

This week's top conversational marketing stories:

Newbie Blogger Blunders to Avoid - on Marketingprofs& &&

Content and marketing go hand in hand, “You're a new blogger, bursting with energy and excitement. You're sure your new blog will inspire myriad comments and countless social shares. But even though you've published a few posts, your blog isn't getting any comments or shares at all. What are you doing wrong?” &This post from MarketingProfs garnered over 137 social likes and focuses on mistakes and blunders that new bloggers make. While this post focuses on bloggers, it applies to any and all content creators. Common blunders that generally occur are outlined as copying someone else’s style – even if they are rock star at what they do, you should come up with your own style to set yourself apart, no logo – a logo is said to be a welcome sign, no format – if a logo is a welcome sign then the format is the roadmap, ignoring SEO – many blogs exist for this purpose alone, so take note of keywords and optimize, and finally, the point – stay true to what your blog is about and stay true to your style and content.

&

No one Reads Agency Blogs- Or Why You Need Skin in the Game - on Chris Brogan

“Mom blogs are so successful because there are billions of moms (actual number) who can commiserate when their kid will only eat beige and orange foods. Tech blogs are successful because nerds and aspiring nerds always want more ideas and information and new shiny things to touch and/or covet. The blogs that stay lit up, people like Mitch and Julien and Chris and C.C. and others, are based on working from a core of passion.” In this Chris Brogan post with over 545 social shares, he focuses on the content of blogs and what makes them so successful. While this excerpt focuses mainly on mom bloggers and tech whizzes, the sentiment can be applied to any industry news or blog section of a company’s website. Brogan throws out five suggestions, do all you bloggers and business owners agree with them? Is it time that you adopted a blog strategy for your company and used this post as a content creating tool?

&

The Insanely Simple Secret to Copyblogger’s Success - by John Jantsch& on Ducttapemarketing&&&&

“Clark and now team Copyblogger, a force that includes well known community builders in their own right Sonia Simone and Chris Garrett, built Copyblogger by focusing on producing great content that teaches people how to sell, write, attract links and traffic and increase profits. The site’s tagline is Internet Marketing for Smart People is a nod to Clark’s mastery of Internet Marketing devoid of the snake oil used to sell so much to, well, not so smart people looking to get rich quick.” This comes from a ducttapemarketing post with 414 social shares. It focuses on how Copyblogger is a great case study for anyone trying to build a business online. While there are many reasons for this, the one simple reason that this post focuses on is surprisingly simple, the headlines. Are you getting the most out of your headlines??

Let's keep the conversation moving forward! Blogging and Marketing go hand in hand as much of marketing is content creation, and all of blogging features content. So new bloggers, are you being a copycat? Do you have a logo? Are any of these tips from MarketingProfs helpful? Are brevity, structure, simplicity, positivity, and outward facing material enough to get people to read your blog? Is there&

Source: conversationalmarketing.com → | ∞ Permalink

Feel like no one's listening to you on Facebook? Now you can pay them to pay attention.

On average, just 16 percent of your Facebook friends see your status updates. But Facebook is testing a new feature that would help you ensure more friends see your party photos, relationship status update, witticisms and links -- though it could cost you.

Source: huffingtonpost.com → | ∞ Permalink

Email marketing — as far as online marketing methods are concerned — is relentless, inexpensive, and responsive. It’s highly effective, smooth, and can at least be semi-automated. Amidst all the noise on the Internet and the seemingly unwelcome intrusion of an avalanche of incoming marketing messages aimed at customers, email messages manage to sneak into your inbox and grab a mind share while doing it.

Source: smallbiztechnology.com → | ∞ Permalink

We’ve spoken about how valuable social media is to brands for connecting with consumers before. For all the apps, self promotion and links you include on your Facebook or Twitter page, you also have to deal with the day-to-day tasks such as dealing with queries, suggestions and complaints. Turns out it’s the latter that will have the greatest impact on whether they go ahead with a purchase or not if the results of a new survey is to be believed.

Source: simplyzesty.com → | ∞ Permalink

The ready-to-eat cereal category is extremely competitive and not without its challenges. Commodity pricing pressures have forced many companies to offset costs by raising their own prices. And as if the competition from other branded products wasn’t enough, private-label cereals have become an attractive alternative to price-conscious consumers. Meanwhile, cereal brands have long been criticized for being high in sugar and salt and boasting little nutritional value.

Source: forbes.com → | ∞ Permalink

(CNN) -- Facebook users who haven't yet discovered the joys of FarmVille or plugged in to the sounds of Spotify will be getting an easier way to find apps that run on the site.

Source: cnn.com → | ∞ Permalink

Bing has been reinvented, offering enhanced search results that tap into the power of social media. Microsoft has done this by pulling people out of search results and putting them in their place: A right-hand social column that will eventually include Facebook, Twitter, Google+ Quora and LinkedIn integration, as well as people who may know something about your most recent Bing query. It even offers a way to ask questions on your favorite social network, directly through Bing. It’s something of an about-face for the Number 2 search engine, which up until earlier this year has been slowly but surely integrating Facebook information (like “Likes”) directly into Bing Search results. This update is actually Phase 2 of a major overhaul. Bing quietly rolled out the first part last week. It stripped away the right column of results information (leaving a large white well) and moved a more concise “Related Searches” to a small middle column. Facebook Likes results integration remained, but appeared as a more subtle, gray thumbs-up next to the result, and there was a lot of white space on the right.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

Some years ago, I was chatting with a prospective employer, sharing tales of my experiences and selling him on the many reasons he should hire me, and doing it by using very specific examples. At one point in the conversation he turned quickly around in his chair and started furiously typing. As it turned out, he was Googling me mid-interview to learn if what I was telling him was true (it was true, and I snagged the job).

Source: forbes.com → | ∞ Permalink

In March Google added more detailed information about why messages are being filtered as spam in Gmail. Looking at that information provides some interesting insights into what's going on, how Google is analyzing and categorizing email, and even explodes a few myths about deliverability. The value of this insight goes beyond users with an @gmail.com address. Google has combined its Postini spam filtering service into Gmail so the learnings here are applicable to the four million businesses using Google apps and enterprises using Postini directly. In addition, how Google categorizes spam is not that different to other major ISPs, so many of the learnings will apply elsewhere.

Source: clickz.com → | ∞ Permalink

It has been said that where Google goes these days, people follow. So when Ian Carrington, Google’s director of mobile marketing, told an audience during the Changing Media Summit in London last year, “If you don’t have a mobile strategy, you don’t have a future strategy,” marketers paid attention.&This post offers some data and tips regarding mobile marketing and how it can impact marketing efforts and the customer experience. Some of the headlines include, “Streamlining customer experience with mobile,” “Letting the customer guide the experience,” “Maximize the multichannel map,” “Offering valuable mobile additions” and “Making service a priority.” Each of these sub-headings goes into detail that will be helpful for your mobile marketing efforts and how to get the most from the rising channel that is mobile.&

Source: mobilemarketer.com → | ∞ Permalink

Want your link to get the most traction on Twitter? Post it on a Monday between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. ET.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

Take a look at almost any survey about social media and how businesses use it, there’s one clear constant – not only is business use increasing, but also the need for helping business employees &understand how to use social media is increasing. Rewards for doing this well and risks if mistakes are made, are very real. While there’s a huge focus on the big-picture aspect of understanding how businesses can best develop a social media plan and guidelines, let’s not overlook some basic and practical fundamentals that people will encounter day to day, like writing blog posts and making comments on posts.

Source: en.community.dell.com → | ∞ Permalink

Twitter, which has a history of complying with court requests for users’ data, appears to be drawing a line in the sand.

The company filed a motion in a New York State court on Monday to quash a court order that would force it to hand over data pertaining to a user involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement, according to a&blog post&from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

Blogs are a great source of information when shopping for a product. Yet, contradicting views can make your shopping experience even more confusing.&&

Have you ever walked into a store to buy something you know absolutely nothing about? A salesperson starts asking you what you are looking for. You tell him and he asks you even more questions, none of which you know the answer to. So he starts telling you all these things about what you need and why you need to go with the more expensive option. Understandably, you are hesitant and don't quite know what to do. Luckily, another customer walks in and recommends you get a specific product, since she has tried both versions. You are instantly more confident in your decision.

Source: land.beachheadmarketing.com → | ∞ Permalink

Social media and technology are mere catalysts in a global revolution that’s altering the very nature of power in our civilization. This movement is mixing the top-down “old power” with a sideways-flowing “new power,” according to the 92Y’s deputy executive director, Henry Timms.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

Imagine doing business with Iron Man*, Captain America, Thor, or the Hulk. What business lessons would they share? Inspired by the recent premiere of The Avengers movie, I drew a downloadable infodoodle of powerful business lessons from four classic Marvel superheroes. Here are the business lessons from Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk. Download a bigger, brighter PDF of this infodoodle, if you like. * I know, I know. Tony Stark is a businessperson, but just go with it…

Source: mpdailyfix.com → | ∞ Permalink

Facebook's success as a public company is anything but guaranteed. Let the Facebook road show—and the dissection of its future as a public company—begin. In&The Age of the Platform, I write extensively about how platforms by themselves guarantee nothing. Think about how companies like AOL, MySpace, and Yahoo! have fallen from grace in recent years. And I'm hardly the only one who feels this way.&Eric Jackson on Forbes makes the case that Google and Facebook might suffer similar fates within five years. Is it possible? Sure. Though I suspect it won't happen, primarily because these companies understand Clayton's Christensen's innovator's dilemma: in a nutshell, the very things that make a company successful ultimately cause its demise.

Source: inc.com → | ∞ Permalink

In digital marketing terms the ‘substance’ we’re interested in measuring is usually impressions or clicks.

And the half-life of an advert helps describe how long it takes for the ad to receive half of the engagement it will ever get.

In the pre-digital era, the half life of, say, a TV advert used to be roughly half the duration of the paid ad campaign. Because we were buying share of voice, we could control the half-life and set it to a point where our presence in the marketplace would be at its peak.

Things are different online though, where the impact of a new message is at its highest when the content is new and fresh, and quickly dissipates to (close to) nothing, sometimes in a matter of hours.

Source: allisterfrost.com → | ∞ Permalink

On Leap Day 2012,&Facebook&gathered all its marketing executives in New York City for a coming-out party of sorts fora slew of new ad products. To people outside the industry, the promise of new initiatives might appear a bit on the dull side. But for advertisers,&anything&that Facebook does for advertising is of interest.

Among the products Facebook introduced were Premium on Facebook, Reach Generator, Offers and&Logged Out ads. The company also asked brands to embrace a paradigm shift from advertising to “Stories,” Facebook’s preferred term for brand-related messages. Since that time, a few big brands have experimented with the new tools.

Here are a few examples or, if you prefer, Stories. Is there a standout brand campaign that you enjoy? Let us know in the comments.

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

This week's top conversational marketing stories:

LinkedIn Beats Twitter and Facebook in B2B Conversions&- on Marketingprofs& &&

This post from Marketingprofs, with 583 social shares, explores B2B Conversions among social platforms and found that LinkedIn surpassed both Facebook and Twitter by a great amount. “Among three leading social networking platforms—LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook—LinkedIn is the most effective source of leads for B2B companies, according to data from HubSpot. In a study of 3,128 HubSpot B2B customers in 2011, LinkedIn generated a visitor-to-lead conversion rate of 2.60%, on average. That's four times higher than the average visitor-to-lead rate for Twitter (0.67%) and seven times higher than the average rate for Facebook (0.39%).” What has your conversion data been telling you as far as social media is concerned? Where are you getting the most conversions? Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn? Are there any others?

A New Category Defined: Social Performance Software – by Jeremiah Owyang on Web Strategy &&&&&&&&&&&&&&

This post from Jeremiah Owyang gathered 112 social likes and focuses on performance marketing in social channels. The main idea behind this being that a new category for measurement tools is Social Performance Software. “Companies are struggling to scale to keep up with all the conversations in this space, secondly, the noise is becoming deafening with everyone from consumers to brands all shouting in social that targeting is needed to cut through the noise. Those that deploy volume quickly find they’re part of the noise, and get cast by the wayside. As a result, we’re seeing a new category emerge, called Social Performance Software.” This new type of tool helps to analyze, plan, deliver, and measure media such as ads, content, and conversations. How do you feel about the ten vendors on Owyang’s list? Are there any that need to be on there?

The Incredibly Logical Way to Manage Customer Relationships - by John Jantsch& on Ducttapemarketing&&&&

This post from Jon Jantsch of Ducttapemarketing garnered 357 social likes and is on the topic of customer relationship management. “In a perfect world, every customer relationship would be steeped in a complete understanding of the customer’s current wants, needs and desires. The trick of course is that getting anything that looks like that at all requires three things – incredible planning, thoughtful technology and consistent execution. The entire category of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology inherently offers the promise of this kind of relationship management while often providing little more than a historical account of a series of contacts, emails, phone calls and purchases.” The main argument taken from this piece is, being that in order to get the most out of technology, you must be strategic about stages a lead goes through in becoming a customer. The post also provides an hourglass model with these 7 stages, know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, offer. Will you use this marketing hourglass?

&

Let's keep the conversation moving forward! Measurement is important to marketers. How do you measure you’re conversions and where are they coming from in a social sense? Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn? In the same vain, what are your social measurement tools if any? What software will you be using? &And how do you manage your customer relationships? Do you stay true to the marketing hourglass or do you deviate from time to time?

Source: conversationalmarketing.com → | ∞ Permalink

If you find yourself scratching your head as to why your brilliantly executed and flashy Facebook campaign isn’t getting you the Likes you wanted, it might be worth standing back and asking yourself whether people actually like (small l) you.

Source: simplyzesty.com → | ∞ Permalink

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images See Also Mark Zuckerberg Will Personally Sell ~$1 Billion Worth Of Facebook Shares At IPO REVEALED: How To Build Apps For Facebook How To Control Facebook's Confusing, 'Labyrinthian' Privacy Settings Facebook just filed an amended S-1 revealing that it intends to& make available 337 million shares at an expected IPO price between $28 and $35. Facebook is selling 180 million of the shares, which would let the company raise between $4.9 billion and $6.3 billion. Other shareholders, including Mark Zuckerberg, are selling the remaining 157 million shares.

Source: businessinsider.com → | ∞ Permalink

Is Pinterest just a passing fad? Readers respond to the May Gloves Off question.

Jeff Bodzewski, director of social strategy at Aspen Marketing Services, says the question is a larger one as it indicates a shift from the proverbial “soundbite culture” to one now driven by a preference for a singular image.

The explosion of Pinterest, Instagram and Reddit demonstrates how an increasing number of people — our target of course as marketers — prefer the first piece of new information to be an image, until they take the action to learn more by reading. Even a superficial review of Facebook, Google+ and Twitter posts will show consumer engagement is notably higher around images than text-based updates.

Source: dmnews.com → | ∞ Permalink

Close to 1/5th of total time spent online is spent on Facebook. This is a huge shift from the composition of web activity eight years ago when Facebook first began. Back then, it was a search-focused web. Most content creation and consumption happened on siloed web pages and search functioned as a bridge to this content. Google became synonymous with “search” and built an empire that dominated the web.

Source: bazaarvoice.com → | ∞ Permalink

During its most recent earnings call, Google announced that it now has 350 mm active Gmail users. This shows immense growth from an October report that Google had only 260 million users.

Nearly two years ago in March 2010, Microsoft announced that Hotmail had over 369 million active users. There doesn’t seem to be a more recent report available on how well Hotmail is doing after its update, but it is easy to believe that Gmail has had an impact on Hotmail’s numbers.

Source: thenextweb.com → | ∞ Permalink

“As we all know too well, most interactions and communication is done online using a wide variety of social networks. What may not be taken into consideration is the role ethics plays with online sharing and communication, or that there needs to be a place for ethics in social media.” As online sharing and communication becomes increasingly popular, it is important to step back and set as well as review some online communication ethics, just as we have ethics for face-to-face and telephone conversations. This post discusses why ethical principles need to be applied to social media and what should be included in a social media policy, to ensure positive results for your business. “Social media should be a part of a business and business should not entirely be social media. Communicating online is different from communicating in person or printed messages. Be aware of all the different aspects of social media – who sees your message, who is sharing messages and what are they sharing. Take responsibility for any online behaviors – positive and negative – and understand the logic behind having an online presence.”&

Source: socialmediatoday.com → | ∞ Permalink

This article presents an anonymous case study, showing the steps taken to optimize a welcome email message, as well as the subsequent improvements compared to industry benchmarks.& It's a great reminder of the high open and click-through rates enjoyed by transactional messages like welcome emails--and thus the valuable marketing opportunity.& These messages are open and ready by recipients.& Take advantage of these captive audiences by including relevant promotional content.

Source: clickz.com → | ∞ Permalink

This week's top conversational marketing stories:

How to Curate Content that your Audience Will Love - on Marketingprofs&&&&

This post from Marketingprofs, with 139 social shares, explores curating content. Curating content is important as a way to “engage your customers by sharing quality content produced by others (you give the authors due credit, of course).” The post goes on to explain four ways in which to constructively curate content. &Remain curious to provide readers with a steady stream of interesting content. Make unusual connections, “A good curator is thinking about not just acquisition and selection but also contextualizing.” Find content that excites you, if you’re interested in it then chances are so is someone else. Keep your audience in mind and write to their needs and interests as well. Do you find these to be satisfactory points? Are there any others that need to be in there?

Content Marketing Done Right - on Chris Brogan &&&&&&&&&&&&&&

This Chris Brogan post gathered over 449 social shares. It addresses the delivery of content marketing and focuses on Bertucci’s use of YouTube as an example. When a viewer watches a video on YouTube there are often times rollback ads that can be shut off after 5 seconds. Bertucci’s smartly grabs the audience, and in Chris Brogan’s case, they continue to watch the remainder of the video. &“To me, there’s a lot of value in picking apart what Bertucci’s is doing here. But also interesting, note that YouTube lets me +1 a pre-roll advertisement now (which I did). That’s interesting. I bet that will really get some play, should YouTube actually send people those metrics in reports. Don’t you agree?” &Do you agree? If you found yourself evenly mildly interested or amused in an ad that you’d +1 it?

Motivate Your Prospects to Make Tiny Commitments - by John Jantsch& on Ducttapemarketing&&&&

This post from Jon Jantsch of Ducttapemarketing garnered 253 social likes and is on the topic of developing a process to make a sale. “The process, and yes it is a process, of gaining enough know, like and trust to make a sale is a thoughtful one. It certainly can happen by putting enough good stuff out into the world and having all of that come together in the happy accident that is a customer, but there’s a psychology that can be employed to make it happen in a more predictable manner as well. The key is to engage your prospects in a series of small movements.” Involvement, personalization and trust are all sited as keys to obtaining and keeping a customer. So is gaining customers all about questions and sets of personalized information? Or is there more to it? What points would you add to this argument that Jantsch didn’t?

&

Let's keep the conversation moving forward! Have you curating content already or is it something you need to do? Are these four methods ideal for you to curate, or are there better ways that weren’t mentioned here? How do you create your own content? Is any method similar to the one seen in Bertucci’s, do you try and grab your readers or viewers in the first 5 seconds? Finally, how do you obtain and maintain your customers? What methods and techniques do you employ? We are moving into an increasingly personalized world, is that personalization going to be your trick to keeping up?

Source: conversationalmarketing.com → | ∞ Permalink

Attribution modelling, multi-channel funnels, customer journey mapping... it's all very hot at the moment.

As part of my preparation for a talk I'm giving this Wednesday I had a look at Econsultancy.com's own data for how different digital marketing channels contributed to conversions.

I was interested by what I found so wanted to share it here to see what others are learning.&

Below is data from the last few months from Google Analytics using their Assisted Conversions report within Multi-Channel Funnels.

Source: econsultancy.com → | ∞ Permalink

Everyone agrees:&Gamification&is hot. So hot that the market is expected to&hit $2.8 billion&in revenue by 2016. Naturally, companies are taking a hard look at how to capitalize on this trend.

If you’ve done your homework and found that gamification is&right for your business, the next step is enticing your community to become deeply involved. Here are four tips to get you started

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink

Google has released its latest tool that will be powerful for any computer user looking to share files and collaborate on projects in a simple, efficient manner. From a post on Mashable , &“Google Drive, Google’s 5GB cloud-storage service, is official. Announced on the company blog Tuesday, the service will integrate with Google Docs and will allow you to access files from anywhere and collaborate on documents with colleagues. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, which means you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you’ve shared content with someone else, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and you’ll receive notifications when other people comment the items you’ve shared.” This new tool even allows for “smart tagging,” So if you’ve uploaded a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge to your drive, the next time you perform a search for the bridge, your photo will show up along with other results. This is just the latest in a series of Google improvements; this could prove valuable for marketers or anybody with a need for collaboration on a project or needs the ability to easily share files of any kind.&

Source: mashable.com → | ∞ Permalink