vendredi 17 janvier 2014

TwitterToolsReviews

TwitterToolsReviews


LinkedIn Integrates With iPhone Mail: This Week in Social Media

Posted: 16 Jan 2014 11:22 PM PST

social media researchWelcome to our weekly edition of what's hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What's New This Week?

LinkedIn Announces Intro, an iPhone Mail Enhancer: "Intro shows you LinkedIn profiles in your iPhone Mail app. This is a rich, interactive, application-like experience—right in your iPhone Mail app."

Facebook Improves Mobile Ad Performance: "Facebook has simplified the buying process for mobile app ads by giving you the option to bid and optimize for mobile app installs."

facebook cpa mobile ad

Facebook “will gradually roll out the video creative and CPA buying options out to all developers and advertisers who are measuring installs.”

LinkedIn Reinvents iPad App: LinkedIn has rebuilt the app for iPad "from the ground up offering a fresh, new visual design, a personalized experience and new functionality like search, jobs, channels and influencers that shines on the tablet."

linkedin reinvents ipad app

“The first thing you’ll notice is that the feed looks very different.” They “have brought the people to the forefront.”

Facebook Adds Video to Mobile App Ads: "Now you can use video creative in your mobile app ad aimed at driving installs to bring your app to life in Facebook's mobile news feed."

facebook video install ads

Facebook “recommend videos that showcase the best features of your app, including use of lifestyle or product shots along with in-app screenplays.”

Foursquare Rolls Out New Look: "A new look for Foursquare.com that brings the best of Foursquare to your browser."

new look foursquare

“Load the page any time of the day,” and Foursquare will “show you the perfect suggestions for that moment.”

Tumblr Upgrades Customize Panel: Tumblr has "rolled out some major upgrades to the Customize panel" and "made big updates to the source code editor."

upgrades to tumblr customize panel

A few of the upgrades include a real-time theme preview, new color picker and many fonts.

Tumblr Refreshes Dashboard: "The dashboard just got a touchup! It's the same dashboard you know, with a cleaner and more minimal design."

tumblr touch up

Tumblr’s new minimal dashboard design.

Facebook Launches Stories to Share: For Facebook pages of media organizations, Facebook is "beginning to test a new feature called Stories to Share."

facebook stories to share

“Stories to Share makes it even easier for media sites to find the most engaging content they might want to post on Facebook.”

Here's an interesting social media tool worth noting:

ShareGrab: A free tool where you can find out the most popular posts on any Facebook page.

ShareGrab

Use ShareGrab to find out what content is popular on other Facebook pages.

Introducing Social Media Marketing World: 60+ pros help you master social media marketing! Join Chris Brogan (co-author of The Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Michael Hyatt (author of Platform), Jay Baer (author of Youtility), John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author of Tao of Twitter), Michael Stelzner (author of Launch) and experts from more than a dozen brands as they reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2014—Social Media Examiner's mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California.


Check out this overview of the conference or click here for more details.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

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get more twitter followers ethically

Posted: 16 Jan 2014 04:51 PM PST

How to Run a Successful Social Media Sweepstakes

Posted: 16 Jan 2014 09:54 AM PST

social media how toAre you planning to run a social media sweepstakes to make your business stand out this holiday season?

Do you need a guide to ensure that you don't miss the crucial elements of a successful sweepstakes promotion?

Sweepstakes, contests and giveaways are increasingly popular among marketers who are vying for the attention of their social media audiences. Choosing a prize is the easy part.

Whether you run your promotion on Facebook or Pinterest, it's easy to overlook something. Making sure you've got all your planning, technical and legal "i's" dotted and "t's" crossed is critical to your success.

In this article, you'll learn the five steps of running a successful social media sweepstakes.

#1: Assess Sweepstakes Objectives

This is where most companies shortchange themselves. How? By focusing on superficial objectives that may not benefit their business.

For example, does it make sense to run a sweepstakes to increase your already-large fan base or do you want to jumpstart your social engagement process?

Here's a list of potential sweepstakes objectives to choose from:

  • Increase awareness of a new product
  • Increase the number of free trials
  • Collect leads with detailed information
  • Generate customer referrals
  • Increase average daily visitors
  • Increase newsletter subscribers
  • Increase social media followers (Facebook fans, Twitter followers, etc.)
  • Increase social media exposure (more repins, more retweets of your message, etc.)
  • Increase sales
  • Generate brand loyalty by delighting existing customers with a chance to win a big prize
  • Increase social media engagement

Her Campus is a good example of a company that's using sweepstakes to increase their social media engagement.

her campus engagement

Her Campus is an excellent example of using a sweepstakes to increase social media engagement by requiring followers to tweet a picture of their dorm room along with a description of their dorm room style.

Often-Overlooked Objectives

Increase customer micro-insights: For example, tweet to win: "If I win a $500 Visa gift card, I'll spend it on __________ #ABCgiveaway @yourcompany". Not only does this increase social media engagement, it also gives you a much deeper understanding of your target market.

Increase customer survey participation: Brick-and-mortar businesses regularly use sweepstakes to increase customer survey participation, but this practice is rare for online businesses.

Hipmunk is a good example of an online business that is successfully utilizing sweepstakes to increase the level of customer survey participation.

hipmunk survey

Hipmunk, a travel booking company, frequently uses small sweepstakes to increase customer survey participation.

#2: Plan the Logistics

This phase can be a lifesaver. If you get this phase right, you'll be breathing a lot easier during the promotion.

Here are the major steps in the planning phase:

Select a Sweepstakes Tool: This is the most important step in the planning phase because the right tool streamlines and automates your sweepstakes tasks. There are some key features to look for when selecting a vendor for your social media sweepstakes.

  • Automated template generation for sweepstakes' terms and conditions
  • Multiple sweepstakes entry actions: For example, do they allow you to only collect email addresses or do they also help you conduct surveys?
  • Automation of winner-selection process
  • Ability to host sweepstakes on multiple online platforms
  • Automatic synchronization of email subscribers with email marketing tools such as MailChimp, AWeber, Constant Contact, etc.
  • Branding of sweepstakes widget with your colors and themes
  • Pricing strategy: For example, do they charge per action or per feature?
  • Are they compatible with mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android?
  • What support channels do they offer and what are their hours of support? This is very helpful if the sweepstakes tool becomes dysfunctional during your promotion.

Comply with sweepstakes laws: It's imperative to understand the regional and social media platform rules pertaining to sweepstakes. Sarah Hawkins has a series of articles that serve as excellent guides on these topics.

Determine sweepstakes duration: 21-28 days is the ideal duration for a sweepstakes promotion. Two weeks is often too short and more than a month is too long.

Select a prize: It could be your own product or a product that really fulfills your target audience's needs.

Here's a good example of this from Dove. Instead of offering a cliché prize such as an iPad, they focused on providing a home upgrade to attract a targeted male audience.

dove sweepstakes prize

Dove attracts a targeted male audience by using a home upgrade as their sweepstakes prize.

Determine sweepstakes location: Where will you host your sweepstakes? Depending on your objectives, does it make sense to host the promotion on your website, Facebook page or some other popular blog? These are not mutually exclusive choices. You can host your sweepstakes on multiple online destinations, but having it in one place often leads to an easier and more efficient execution of the promotion.

Set promotion budget: How much money do you want to spend to promote your sweepstakes? How does that divide across different marketing channels? For example, do you want to advertise on specific blogs to drive traffic to your sweepstakes or does a Facebook ad campaign make more sense?

Often-Overlooked Planning Steps

Associate sweepstakes with an event: Is the sweepstakes being held to celebrate your business's third anniversary or the joyous spirit of Christmas? Associating your sweepstakes with an event provides context to your audience and makes a deeper emotional connection with them, which increases the chances of your sweepstakes creating a positive buzz in social media.

Here's a great example of Family.com associating their sweepstakes with Christmas.

christmas event

Family.com associates their sweepstakes with Christmas to connect with their audience on a deeper level and ensure positive social media exposure.

Create a short and enticing viral loop: A big prize attracts attention, but it's the viral loop that continues the momentum—which is why it needs to be thought out in considerable detail. A viral loop is the workflow that maximizes the probability of one contestant attracting another contestant from their social network.

Here are the key elements in each stage of a viral loop:

Stage 1: Activate visitors into contestants

  • Clearly state the action that the visitors should take to enter the sweepstakes
  • Display an attractive picture of the prize
  • Inform the visitors that it is quick and easy to enter
  • State all the relevant information to reassure the visitors that the sweepstakes is legitimate (e.g., end date, winner announcement process, terms, etc.)

Stage 2: Remove entry barriers

  • Focus on one call to action
  • Make the Submit button easy to find
  • Reassure the visitors that their information is safe

Stage 3: Entice the contestant to share

  • Associate sweepstakes with an event (e.g., Christmas)
  • Award more entries for sharing the sweepstakes via social networks
  • Award a guaranteed gift such as a discount or an ebook for sharing the sweepstakes on social networks

Stage 4: Attract new visitors through shared messages

  • Write compelling copy for the message shared by the contestants when they press the Facebook Share or Retweet button. For example, instead of "Enter to win a $500 Visa Card" being shared, modify the copy of your shared message to "Wouldn't it be nice to go on a Christmas shopping spree for free? Enter to win!"

Make sure every shared message has a link to the sweepstakes.

#3: Launch the Sweepstakes

You've done all the heavy planning work. Now, it's time to execute. Here are the most important steps for a flawless launch:

Conduct a test run: Once you've set up the sweepstakes, ask a few of your friends and colleagues to enter and perform every primary and secondary call to action. Confirm that you see their entry in the sweepstakes tool's analytics; that the messages being shared are not cut off due to character limits and that the sweepstakes links within the shared messages are working.

Contact influencers: Reach out to social media influencers and ask them if they will promote your sweepstakes. The more you convince them that the prize and the associated event of the sweepstakes appeal to their readers, the higher the chance of them promoting your sweepstakes. There is a great list of tools for this purpose in this article written by Jason Falls.

Request listing on sweepstakes directories (with caution): Submit your contest to a sweepstakes directory. This may make sense for some audiences, but not for others. You really need to think through what kind of audience you're trying to attract, because sweepstakes directories often bring in "professional sweepers" who use fake accounts to submit multiple entries or immediately reverse their entry action; for instance, unlike, unsubscribe, etc.

Determine launch day: Your promotion gets an early boost if you launch your sweepstakes at the right time and the right day of the week. While you'll have to rely on your own data to determine the best time and day for your audience, these research articles from Marketing Profs and Beth Kanter's blog will help you get started.

launch date data

According to a study published by Marketing Profs, Sunday evening is the best time to launch a sweepstakes.

Often-Overlooked Launch Steps

Create a support plan: Despite your excellent planning and execution, things can still go wrong, and usually they'll have to do with technical glitches. If you're using a third-party sweepstakes tool, make sure you have their phone number and email address handy so you can quickly resolve the technical problems.

Contact Facebook influencers: There's a lot of focus on finding Twitter or Pinterest influencers, mainly because of the ease of finding influencers on these platforms. Finding Facebook influencers is more challenging, but it's worth the effort, especially because many of these influencers don't have their own dedicated websites or blogs. Raven Tools has an informative blog post on how to navigate Facebook's search feature to find relevant Facebook pages.

facebook search tool

Facebook’s search feature is a powerful tool to help you determine the right Facebook influencers for your sweepstakes promotion.

#4: Follow-up With Contestants

So you've launched the sweepstakes and the entries are rolling in. In this stage, your focus needs to shift to following up to meet your primary and secondary objectives. Here's a list of the major steps that are needed for a successful follow-up process:

Follow up with autoresponders: Sending a follow-up email adds more credibility to your sweepstakes and dramatically increases the chances of contestants taking the secondary action that you'd like them to take. Schedule automatic follow-ups via the autoresponder features of email marketing tools such as MailChimp and AWeber.

Determine reminder frequency: Your fans and subscribers are really busy and they'll either forget to enter your sweepstakes or miss your announcements. That's why reminders are vital to maximizing the number of contestants. To ensure that you don't annoy your audience, a good rule of thumb is:

  • One reminder email per week
  • One reminder Facebook status per day
  • Two reminder tweets per day
    tweet

    Remind people about your sweepstakes with conservative frequency. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Conduct daily test runs: Technical glitches are often unreported, which translates into fewer contestants. That's why it's important for you to enter your own sweepstakes on a daily basis (with a test account) to verify that all of the sweepstakes procedures are working as planned.

Perform weekly modifications: As the sweepstakes progresses, you're sure to learn a lot and generate ideas on how to make your sweepstakes better. It's important to set aside some time each week to make adjustments based on those lessons. It could be something as simple as changing the tweet message to make it more enticing, or something as effective as reducing the number of actions required to enter the sweepstakes.

Often-Overlooked Follow-Up Steps

Reach out to contestants on Twitter: At the end of each day, look at who entered the sweepstakes on Twitter, check out their Twitter bio and see if they are the right target to engage with. Breaking the ice is much easier since their sweepstakes entry serves as a starting point for conversation. It's simple to do and you'll never know who you'll find, so why not give it a try?

Follow-up for soft-selling: Sweepstakes draw a lot of traffic and attention. Why not encourage them to buy from you? Here's a list of things for you to do on your Thank-you page or your follow-up emails to increase your sales:

  • Show contestants your business video and ask them to start a free trial
  • If the prize is your own product, give them a link to where they can buy that product
  • Give entrants a discount code to entice them to buy from you. Here's a good example from a sweepstakes promotion.
    follow up soft sale

    Use your follow-up emails as a means to soft-sell your product to increase your sales.

#5: Ending the Sweepstakes

You're almost done. A few more steps and you'll have the pleasure of communicating with the winner and watching him or her respond to you with joy and disbelief. But before that point, there are still a few things you need to get right:

Send final reminders: Send out final reminders via email and social media about when the sweepstakes ends. Reiterate what the sweepstakes was for and how easy it is to enter.

Select a winner: If you're using a sweepstakes tool, it should make the winner selection process very simple. Otherwise, export the contestant data into an Excel spreadsheet and upload it to Random.org to help you select a winner.

Remove the tool: Now that the sweepstakes is done, remove the widget from your website and/or your social media pages.

Send winner announcement: Announce the winner to all contestants via email, blog and social networks.

Contact the winner: Send a separate email to the winner asking him or her to respond within a specific time period. Also ask about the person's age and location. This step needs to be done within 7-10 business days of the sweepstakes' end.

Mail the prize: Once you've confirmed all of the details with the winner, mail the prize to the winner's address and let him or her know the estimated date of arrival.

Often-Overlooked Ending Steps

Create an internal assessment report: This is the moment of truth. Did you meet your objectives? What was the return on investment for the amount of money you spent? Would that money have been better spent on direct ads or other PR activities? What worked very well and what would you do differently? Sweepstakes are not a one-hit wonder. They're supposed to be done with some regularity and these kinds of post-sweepstakes assessments ensure that your next sweepstakes generates even better results.

Share your results: Everyone loves to see stats, a final report card or a set of lessons learned during a promotion. Now that you have completed your sweepstakes promotion, you're sitting on valuable data. Why not share that data on your own blog or with a different audience through a guest blog post to gain additional coverage of your business?

share results

The contest widget that had the fuzzy image collected 22% more email subscribers than the widget that had big text and no image.

Unbounce has a good article on post-sweepstakes statistics on 8 factors that lead to the best results.

Add Your Tips

These are important steps to follow when running a successful sweepstakes. However, these steps aren't the only ones. Running sweepstakes is a social activity and there's a lot of room for creativity.

What do you think? Do you have some tips of your own? What successes have you had with running a sweepstakes? Please share some of your own tips in the comments below.

Image from iStockPhoto.

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StumbleUpon Marketing: How to Drive More Traffic to Your Content

Posted: 16 Jan 2014 03:20 AM PST

Do you use StumbleUpon for your business?

Are you wondering how you can use StumbleUpon to drive more traffic to your content?

To learn how your business can benefit from StumbleUpon, I interview Nick Robinson for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

More About This Show

Social Media Marketing Podcast w/ Michael Stelzner

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Nick Robinson, co-author of StumbleUpon for Dummies. He's also the social media channel manager for SAP Americas.

Nick shares how StumbleUpon works and why it's different from other platforms.

You'll learn how to use StumbleUpon to discover shareable content and the type of content that works best.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Listen Now

You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry.

Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:

StumbleUpon Marketing

 What makes StumbleUpon different from other social networks

Nick explains how StumbleUpon is a content discovery engine. It's a search engine and bookmarking site all in one.

It's great if you want to bring exposure to your online content, which can include your website, blog post, video or infographic.

Nick believes that the key differentiator with StumbleUpon is the Stumble button. It takes you directly to a piece of content on another website that you are interested in.

You can tell StumbleUpon what your interests are in several ways. When you set up your profile, you can specify your interests, the interests of people you follow and what pieces of content you have given a thumbs-up to on that particular website.

stumbleupon interest category

When you set up your account, you can specify what you’re interested in.

When you click the Thumbs-Up or Thumbs-Down button, it tells StumbleUpon's algorithm if it should or shouldn't serve that type of content to you in the future.

Each person's StumbleUpon experience is personalized. It allows you to curate content, promote your content and connect with communities with all types of interests.

Listen to the show to find out how you can create content that's relevant to an audience within an Interest category.

StumbleUpon for B2B and B2C

Nick believes that any business in B2B or B2C can use the platform. It all depends on the type of content you produce. The content needs to entertain, be informative and connect with your audience.

To be successful, you need to test and measure, based on the changes you learn.

StumbleUpon launched their new design and a new mobile app, which has increased its mobile stumbles by 25% over a one-year period. However, the majority of StumbleUpon activity is still primarily desktop, at over 60%.

Since these changes were made, around 40% of their activity comes from mobile. In the next couple of years, Nick thinks it will easily overtake desktop.

stumbleupon mobile app

The new mobile app has increased mobile stumbles by 25%.

You'll discover as a marketer what you need to consider with these figures in mind.

According to Alexa, StumbleUpon is one of the top 149 websites in the world and Quantcast estimated that 23.4 million people in the last month in the U.S. alone have used it.

As of June 2013, when the StumbleUpon for Dummies book was published, StumbleUpon had 25 million registered users. They have indexed over 100 million–plus web pages.

Listen to the show to find out how much the average user "stumbles" per month and the time spent on the platform.

Companies who use StumbleUpon well 

Nick says that two companies come to mind, which are both primarily content publishers.

The first is Forbes. They do a great job, which is primarily attributable to their company page. They use it to acquire followers and as a content feed.

forbes stumbleupon

Forbes company page on StumbleUpon.

Unfortunately StumbleUpon has closed off access to these pages to the general public, but you'll find out how you could possibly have access.

You'll hear how Inc. takes a different approach to their StumbleUpon account and the type of content they share.

Listen to the show to discover why StumbleUpon can provide you with an alternative to other platforms if you are in B2B.

How to use StumbleUpon to find great content to share on other networks

Nick explains there are a couple of things that you can do to find great content.

When you use the Stumble button, it allows StumbleUpon to serve you content based on what it knows about your interests and the people you follow. If you don't want to share the content immediately, you can always save it for later.

You'll discover how to create lists and the best way to use them to your advantage.

add stumbleupon page to list button

Clicking the plus sign in the upper left-hand corner allows you to add content to a list.

Another great way to find content is to look at other people's profiles and see what they share.

StumbleUpon has made it easy for you to share content you've stumbled directly to other social networks. You just have to make sure that you connect each account to your StumbleUpon account.

Listen to the show to learn how to manually share content from StumbleUpon.

How to make it easy for people to stumble your content

Nick states that the easiest way to do this is to use StumbleUpon widgets on your blog or website.

If you have a WordPress blog, you can download a plugin to implement it on your site.

However, if you manually download the code for the widget, you have a choice of different sizes and weights.

stumbleupon badge

Once you have chosen your button, StumbleUpon will give you a code to drop into the back end of your website.

Listen to the show to find out why having a StumbleUpon widget on your site is Nick's number-one piece of advice.

StumbleUpon company pages or individual users

Nick explains that the company pages you see are grandfathered in and have closed access to the rest of us.

He advises to engage with content shared by other company pages within your space, as long as they're not competitors. You can also use employees' individual profiles to amplify content.

A company with thousands of employees will most likely have a greater audience than a company page.

Listen to the show to find out why it doesn't hurt to set up a StumbleUpon account for yourself and use it to promote your own content.

How to identify power users

Nick thinks that the best way to find power users is to go to the Follower section of the main menu on the home page. You can look for people who are really active and have a lot of content.

nick robinson stumbleupon profile

Each person’s profile shows you his or her activity.

When you see someone who has over 500 followers, it's a signal that they have a certain amount of influence on the platform.

When an influential user stumbles and likes your content, it lets the StumbleUpon algorithm know that it's quality content. It's very similar to Google +1s. Your content can take off when you get 1-5 stumbles from influential users.

If your aim is to drive traffic to your blog, you first need to focus on your main areas of interest. You'll find out how many influential StumbleUpon users you need to follow and what you need to do to get on their radar.

Listen to the show to find out what you need to do to allow power users to share your content.

StumbleUpon's Paid Discovery

Nick highly recommends that you test Paid Discovery. Although it doesn't work for everyone, if you produce the right type of content and choose the right type of targeting, it definitely works.

It's also great to use if you have a budget to amplify your content, or you want to seek the marketplace and get a boost from paid media.

paid discovery get started

Paid Discovery is worth checking out.

You'll hear how cost-efficient the system is and learn all about the different targeting features available.

On the home page, you'll see certain widgets that contain paid content. Marketers pay to have higher visibility within your home page. Roughly 10% of their stumbles are through the Paid Discovery system. It's an enhanced way to get your content out there.

Nick explains that you only pay for the people who actually go to your website. You don't pay for the shares, likes or comments.

Listen to the show to find out how Paid Discovery can generate low-cost leads for your business.

This Week's Social Media Question

Hilary Boyd, marketing director at Fit4Mom, asks, "Our company used to be called Stroller Strides and in August of this year, we renamed the company Fit4Mom to be more inclusive and an umbrella brand for our three sub-brands. During the renaming process, we added new social media pages but we didn't take away any of our sub-brand pages.

I now have four Facebook pages, which I try to manage. I wonder if it would be more effective to consolidate them into one Facebook page? The issue is our old brand Stroller Strides has much more brand recognition. It has 16,000 likes, compared to our new name Fit4Mom, which has about 2,500 likes. Is it better to have one account that you can be really active on or have four accounts that you can be more specific on?"

fit 4 mom on facebook

Fit4Mom on Facebook.

It's an interesting question. I think it comes down to resources. In the end, the real question you have to ask yourself is, can you, as marketing director, manage all of these different channels? It sounds like these channels are organized by product or service, and the target audience for each one is a little different.

From a marketing perspective, you have to be more focused, rather than broad and less focused. So when someone engages or decides to click the Like button, they will see highly relevant content. Whereas if you are less focused, then people will not be as engaged. In the end, it will hurt your brand.

Any business needs to ask, "Is it better to have a huge follower number on Twitter or Facebook for social proof or does it make more sense to go for the bigger prize, which is to have really engaged audience members who feel like they are part of a community?"

I think deep down, if you admit it, it's always better to have a highly focused effort on whatever you do. It does ultimately mean more resources. Is it more efficient to have one page? Absolutely. Is it more effective to have one? Absolutely not.

Call in and leave your social media–related questions for us and we may include them in a future show.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

Other Show Mentions

SMMW logoSocial Media Marketing World 2014 is our physical mega-conference, which is set to return to San Diego, California on March 26, 27 and 28.

The conference features more than 60 sessions on social media marketing, blogging, podcasting and video marketing.

You definitely want to make sure you get your ticket before the year is up. It's clearly heading toward a sell-out. The more important reason is because the discounts are significant now, but the price will go up dramatically by the end of this year.

The conference is organized into four different tracks—social tactics, social strategy, community management and content marketing. Some of these tracks are so large that they are broken down into multiple sub-tracks.

Here's an example of the experts who will be presenting on Facebook marketing:

  • Mari Smith—How to Convert Fans into Customers
  • Amy Porterfield—How to Use Facebook to Grow Your Email List
  • Jon Loomer—How to Do Advanced Advertising Techniques With Facebook
  • Rick Mulready—A Panel of Big Brands and How They Use Facebook
  • Andrea Vahl—Examining How Big and Successful Facebook Pages Do Community Management

It's going to be an amazing conference. Check it out and make sure you watch the videos and testimonials.

Key takeaways mentioned in this episode:

Ways to subscribe to the Social Media Marketing podcast:

What do you think? What are your thoughts on using StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your content? Please leave your comments below.

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How to Respond to a Social Media Crisis

Posted: 16 Jan 2014 03:00 AM PST

social media how toDoes your brand have a crisis response plan in place?

Do you know what tactics to use to defend your reputation online?

In this article, you'll discover three examples of reputation crisis response and seven steps for defending your own reputation online.

Why Reputation Matters

global survey by Deloitte ranks reputation as executives' top strategic risk. The study found most reputation management programs don't support their business strategy well.

It's important to understand the way online conversations roll out.

Here are some key factors to consider:

  • Anyone's voice in social media can be heard.
  • Companies can have more difficulties than individuals in avoiding bad news.
  • Due to online social and web search, kindred spirits can easily become aware of others who share their criticisms.
  • Bad news travels faster and further than good news.

Keep these factors in mind as we explore three case studies of companies with major reputation management problems and how they handled them.

How Buffer Responded to Crisis

Buffer, the online social media scheduling site, was recently severely hacked.

Buffer became aware of the problem very rapidly and took immediate action to handle the problem. You can see a full account of their actions during the 24 hours immediately following the hack on their blog.

They were quick to inform their customers of the problem and explain what they were doing to fix it before most of their customers were even aware there'd been an attack. Here is just one of the messages they sent via Facebook.

buffer-facebook-crisis-notice

Buffer tells their community on Facebook about their crisis.

Needless to say, if their customers had lost faith in Buffer's security and reliability, then a major erosion of their customer base would have taken place.

buffer-crisis-twitter-support

Fans show their support for how Buffer handled this crisis.

Because their response was timely and appropriate, they now have even more loyal customers.

How Fontaine Santé Responded to Crisis

Fontaine Santé Foods Inc. is a Montreal-based North American food company whose hallmark is quality ingredients and preservative-free, ready-to-eat produce.

In December 2011, they detected the possibility of Listeria monocytogenes in their prepackaged salads. The potentially contaminated salads had already been distributed and purchased by many consumers.

Not only did this present a potential social media crisis, but also the possibility of a major lawsuit. Major repercussions could've potentially destroyed the brand's long-lasting credibility and reputation.

Their crisis plan was simple, timely and effective.

Fontaine Santé utilized traditional media and their social media channels to spread the message about the possible contamination and make sure that all consumers were aware of the situation.

The brand posted the following well-written official response on their corporate website.

listeria-crisis-notice

Fontaine Santé kept their customers informed.

Thanks to their quick action, all potentially contaminated produce was quickly recalled with no reports of illness.

Because Fontaine Santé was open and honest about the possible contamination risk, their loyal customers rallied around to praise and defend the brand.

How J.C. Penney Responded to Crisis

In May 2013, J.C. Penney had what could be described as a tempest in a teapot that received international attention.

The Telegraph declared that J.C. Penney had a problem with its teapot as it was depicted in a huge billboard advertisement on Interstate 405 near Culver City, California. Some people saw the image as a subtle depiction of Hitler.

jc-penney-billboard

The offending billboard.

This is obviously a matter of personal perception and the result of an innocent creative mistake. The issue could've become a crisis unless J.C. Penney took very prompt action.

Because J.C. Penney's response was rapid and appropriate, a crisis was averted.

7 Steps to Defend Your Own Reputation

The case studies above provide you with useful examples to refer to as you develop your own reputation management strategy.

Before you begin to build a plan, you need to be sure that you maintain shared standards within your company. Shared standards give you the strongest basis for an effective crisis response strategy.

Your company's culture should emphasize the policies the company has developed for all aspects of its operations including:

  • Quality standards
  • Customer relations
  • Human relations
  • Safety standards
  • Emergency responses
  • Environmental concerns
  • Privacy standards, etc.

Every member of your team should understand these policies and commit to them to put your company in the best possible state of readiness in the event a crisis develops.

crisis-management-signpost

Crisis management in action. Image source: iStockPhoto.

#1: Act Quickly

Although it's tempting to hold back until you're sure you understand exactly what's happened and who's to blame (as your lawyers might counsel), those impacted by the crisis want answers fast. Better by far that your company provides those answers before anyone else.

#2: Take Charge

The attitude should be that your company will manage the crisis, rather than allowing it to control the company. There are risks associated with both being prompt and being tardy with your responses. Move as fast as possible, rather than waiting for more information to come in before you act.

#3: Handle Reality

It's important to deal with the real facts. Social media makes it easy for whistle-blowers to reveal the truth as they see it. 'Fess up to what's really happening and don't attempt to maintain a charade that could collapse at any time.

#4: Engage the Nay-sayers

When you follow the previous steps, you can deal directly with any critics you have. Old-style PR often suggested laying low until the heat blew over. Because the Internet gives visibility to critics, it's much better to deal with criticism as it arises.

#5: Spread the Word

To avoid any misconceptions or incorrect interpretations by others, your company should use all means at its disposal to communicate what has happened and what you're doing about it. This includes using your website, company blog, social media pages and media releases.

#6: Encourage Dialogue

Any successful company will have defenders among its various stakeholders, including customers. Provide your supporters with an online space where they can express their views on what the company means to them and how they see the company's response.

By encouraging positive sources of information about your company, you ensure that good opinions can far outweigh any negative information that shows in searches.

#7: Deliver on Your Word

At the heart of any crisis, there's a real incident acting as a trigger. It's important that your company ensure there are appropriate responses to that incident, and that outsiders acknowledge your company as handling the situation well.

Over to You

Don't wait until the threat to your reputation becomes visible. Events in a crisis move quickly online and only by preparing can you successfully defend your company's reputation.

Use the examples and strategic tips in this article to help you build a plan that prepares you to withstand a crisis.

What do you think? Has your brand had to defend its reputation online? What strategic tactics did you use? What other advice can you offer? Please share your opinions in the comments below.

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