Social Media has come up as a major marketing requirement for most businesses. However, are existing agencies really equipped and prepared to meet this emerging new distribution channel? A recent survey was conducted by TNS Media Intelligence about whether agencies are ready to deal with social media marketing.
Clients from New York and around the country are emphasizing more and more about the need for their agency to provide expertise regarding Social Media Marketing. However, according to a survey it has been revealed that agencies are not properly equipped in helping their clients in the social media space.
A polling survey was conducted by TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony in order to gauge the rate of success of various marketers in the social media space. In this survey, more than 60 marketers across 3 countries (U.K., France and North America) were polled. The polling survey of TNS asked these marketing professionals about the ability of their agencies in helping their clients in social media space. The result published by TNS says that “"Agencies don't get it”.
One of the main complaints of the New York based clients about their agencies (including public relations, creative, media, design and others) is that social media (such as blogs) are treated by the agencies as typical traditional media. These agencies have miniscule hands-on experience and practical skills on social media networking, video sharing, etc.
One of the marketing specialists of FedEx, Bryan Simkins, has told TNS that traditional Advertisement agencies can merely contribute to social media marketing. This is due to the fact that these Ad agencies are driven by their respective compensation models, which are appropriate for closed media. However, these compensation models are ineffective in case of open media and consequently the traditional Ad agencies can only nominally help their clients with social media marketing.
Social Media has brought about a paradigm shift in the concept of marketing. With every passing day, the popularity of this media is increasing by leaps and bounds. This is the reason why analysts have felt the necessity of highlighting the lack of properly skilled social media professionals at different agencies. In fact, a report published by Forrester Research has pointed out that most of the agencies are ill equipped in helping their clients in leveraging opportunities through community connections. Thus, these Ad agencies are not properly structured in accepting the marketing challenges of tomorrow. This has become a serious concern for the agencies because more and more of their clients are asking for social media marketing campaigns, but the agencies are not properly structured to meet their needs.
It has been found that clients complain that the agencies sound good when they give presentations on social media. However, when it comes to the implementation of social media campaigns, a mismatch is taking place between marketer’s expectations and the daily management skills.
According to Suzuki’s E-business Manager, Mr. David Harris, the existing partners of marketing don’t have a clear perception on social media. Thus, they tend to make grave mistakes when they try to apply old models of advertising and marketing to social media.
The polling survey of TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony has also revealed the fact that 50% of the total sample of marketers have stressed on handling the social media efforts at executive level, through proper utilization of significant resources. Another 30 % of the surveyed marketers have regarded that the social media landscape is a “revolutionary opportunity.”
Scott Wilder of Intuit has regarded social media as a Pandora’s Box, where consumers are relying more and more on word of mouth for evaluating products as well as companies.
Social media can be utilized by the organizations for customer service, public relation and marketing. That’s why these organizations are finding it difficult to incorporate these new genres of communication tools in a specific division.
TNS’s Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Jim Nail, has predicted that lack of social media skills at various renowned agencies would create opportunities for new providers. Fila USA’s E-Marketing Manager, Carolyn Holliday, has stressed on the fact that it has become a necessity for companies to keep communicating with their customers, both potential as well as existing ones, in addition to regular practice of Ad placement. This is where prudent utilization of social media comes into play. Thus, opportunities galore for new providers in filling up the existing void of social media space.
The goal for an automated social network is to give our clients the best automated social network marketing system on the planet. We give each client a unique username and password for their dedicated social network broadcast. We let our clients WRITE ONCE and then we PUBLISH GLOBALLY using our social network broadcasting service. Having a social networking broadcast system available to distribute your message across the SocialSphere once a week is a powerful new arrow in your quiver of marketing tools.
ABOUT WWW.WORLDCLASSID.COM
We are a strategic social media agency made up of social media engineers. We provide Strategic social media marketing and new online social media marketing. We are next generation search engine optimization known as social media optimization, using strategic social media broadcasting to provide online social media public relations.
Contact Information:
• Lead Brand Manager
• WorldClass Brand Management
• 1155 Camino del Mar, Suite 521
• Del Mar, California 92014
• http://www.WorldClassID.com
• (+01) 760.445.3315
(e) Contact@WorldClassID.com
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
IMPORTANCE OF KEYWORD SELECTION IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization, as well as traditional Search Engine Marketing, are directly impacted by Keyword Selection.
What most clients do not understand about online marketing, website construction, SEO or SMO is Keywords, more specifically Keyword Selection. If we have a chance to, we will be glad to do an analysis of a prospective client’s website and see whether the keywords for which they rank actually have any value. If the client doesn’t know anything about Keywords, then educating them is likely to identify the pain point they didn’t know existed. Specifically, if they see a demonstration that they may be missing out on 80% of highly valuable target traffic (potential new business) for related keywords in their target audience…the awareness of losing that business should get their attention.
Keyword Selection has become a combination of art and science, so in the following outline I will provide the fundamentals to give you a high level understanding of how sophisticated Keyword Selection has become. Most people do not make appropriate keyword selections, so understanding this will help you guide discussions in the future.
The Keyword Selection issue with respect to impact on search engine ranking is four-fold.
• First is whether the keyword is considered a Root Keyword (also called a Primary Keyword) or whether it is a Keyword Stem (also called a Secondary Keyword).
• Second is whether the keyword is “Global” or “Localized” and this means whether the keyword is geographically concentrated on the vicinity around the clients location, i.e. dental implants Houston.
• Third is the Keyword Value. We want our clients to obtain search engine rank for 3 types of keywords, High-Value, Medium-Value, and Low-Value. What you don’t want is to rank for keywords which have No-Value.
• Fourth is Keyword Length. Root keywords are single words, like Dentist (very broad). Secondary Keywords include both Keyword Stems and Keyword Phrases (two or more words as part of the keyword). There are “short-tail keyword phrases” (two to four words in the keyword phrase, still fairly broad) and there are “long-tail keyword phrases” (very lengthy and detailed phrases which are highly specific, very narrow). Long-tail keywords are typically competitive niche markets rather than the hugely competitive broad keywords
So, here is the simple example for what all the above looks like:
Root (Global) Keywords = dentist, dentistry, dental,
Keyword Stems (Secondary, short-tail) = dentist office, dentistry practice, dental office
Localized Root (Global) Keywords = dentist houston, dentistry houston, dental houston
Localized Keyword Stems (Secondary, short-tail) = dentist office houston, dentistry practice houston, dental office houston
Long-tail keyword phrase = small business dentist office providing top dentistry practice in houston
Keywords in the above categories are further value gauged by some general “rule-of-thumb” benchmarks:
1. Number of Pages Indexed
2. Number of Monthly Searches
3. Average Cost per Click
If you go to Google and search for “dentist” you will see that Google has indexed approximately 36,300,000 pages of content.
In comparison, if you Google “dentist office houston” you will see that Google has indexed approximately 15,100,000 pages of content, less than half of “dentist” total pages indexed. Further down is the long-tail keyword phrase “small business dentist office providing top dentistry practice in houston” which has approximately 6,620,000 pages indexed.
The number of monthly searches done on any keyword of interest can be discovered at http://www.google.com/sktool. If you go to that page and type in “dentist” you will see that 11,100,000 searches were done on that phrase last month. The number of searches done last month for “dentist office” was 74,000 searches, and the “dentist office houston” phrase had ZERO searches last month.
Obviously a website ranking in the first page of Google for “dentist” is going to have much larger traffic volume, but a dentist ranking for that root keyword globally may have patient inquiries from Boston even though his practice is in Houston. A dentist may be able to claim “First Place Ranking” for “dentist office houston” but if no one is searching by that keyword phrase it has no value.
Determining the most likely keyword phrases where you can economically afford to compete to drive the highest traffic is the real goal of Keyword Selection.
Hope that helps lay a foundation, and please understand that there is TONS more detail below all this, so the importance of having a Strategic Keyword Selection process cannot be over emphasized.
What most clients do not understand about online marketing, website construction, SEO or SMO is Keywords, more specifically Keyword Selection. If we have a chance to, we will be glad to do an analysis of a prospective client’s website and see whether the keywords for which they rank actually have any value. If the client doesn’t know anything about Keywords, then educating them is likely to identify the pain point they didn’t know existed. Specifically, if they see a demonstration that they may be missing out on 80% of highly valuable target traffic (potential new business) for related keywords in their target audience…the awareness of losing that business should get their attention.
Keyword Selection has become a combination of art and science, so in the following outline I will provide the fundamentals to give you a high level understanding of how sophisticated Keyword Selection has become. Most people do not make appropriate keyword selections, so understanding this will help you guide discussions in the future.
The Keyword Selection issue with respect to impact on search engine ranking is four-fold.
• First is whether the keyword is considered a Root Keyword (also called a Primary Keyword) or whether it is a Keyword Stem (also called a Secondary Keyword).
• Second is whether the keyword is “Global” or “Localized” and this means whether the keyword is geographically concentrated on the vicinity around the clients location, i.e. dental implants Houston.
• Third is the Keyword Value. We want our clients to obtain search engine rank for 3 types of keywords, High-Value, Medium-Value, and Low-Value. What you don’t want is to rank for keywords which have No-Value.
• Fourth is Keyword Length. Root keywords are single words, like Dentist (very broad). Secondary Keywords include both Keyword Stems and Keyword Phrases (two or more words as part of the keyword). There are “short-tail keyword phrases” (two to four words in the keyword phrase, still fairly broad) and there are “long-tail keyword phrases” (very lengthy and detailed phrases which are highly specific, very narrow). Long-tail keywords are typically competitive niche markets rather than the hugely competitive broad keywords
So, here is the simple example for what all the above looks like:
Root (Global) Keywords = dentist, dentistry, dental,
Keyword Stems (Secondary, short-tail) = dentist office, dentistry practice, dental office
Localized Root (Global) Keywords = dentist houston, dentistry houston, dental houston
Localized Keyword Stems (Secondary, short-tail) = dentist office houston, dentistry practice houston, dental office houston
Long-tail keyword phrase = small business dentist office providing top dentistry practice in houston
Keywords in the above categories are further value gauged by some general “rule-of-thumb” benchmarks:
1. Number of Pages Indexed
2. Number of Monthly Searches
3. Average Cost per Click
If you go to Google and search for “dentist” you will see that Google has indexed approximately 36,300,000 pages of content.
In comparison, if you Google “dentist office houston” you will see that Google has indexed approximately 15,100,000 pages of content, less than half of “dentist” total pages indexed. Further down is the long-tail keyword phrase “small business dentist office providing top dentistry practice in houston” which has approximately 6,620,000 pages indexed.
The number of monthly searches done on any keyword of interest can be discovered at http://www.google.com/sktool. If you go to that page and type in “dentist” you will see that 11,100,000 searches were done on that phrase last month. The number of searches done last month for “dentist office” was 74,000 searches, and the “dentist office houston” phrase had ZERO searches last month.
Obviously a website ranking in the first page of Google for “dentist” is going to have much larger traffic volume, but a dentist ranking for that root keyword globally may have patient inquiries from Boston even though his practice is in Houston. A dentist may be able to claim “First Place Ranking” for “dentist office houston” but if no one is searching by that keyword phrase it has no value.
Determining the most likely keyword phrases where you can economically afford to compete to drive the highest traffic is the real goal of Keyword Selection.
Hope that helps lay a foundation, and please understand that there is TONS more detail below all this, so the importance of having a Strategic Keyword Selection process cannot be over emphasized.
Automated Social Media Marketing Press Release Guidelines
Automated social media marketing is a proven way to distribute press releases across hundreds of social websites. But do you know the generally accepted guidelines for broadcasting press releases into specific social networking websites? With common media, press releases are without a doubt one of the most prevalent resources in order to educate consumers about most recent changes and events at your organization. With regard to social networking websites, notably, many people are not aware of the social media marketing advantages that broadcast press releases provide by connecting to your target audience.
As automated social media marketing specialists, we have determined three main areas where most press releases are not as efficient in social media marketing. A well constructed press release is normally centered towards true news information about your organization and many organizations fall prey to the trap of using a press release as a promotional tool more like advertising. Second, it is also easy to convince yourself that cramming a press release full of promotional language by means of promotional program will yield the social media marketing results you are after, but your target social media audience is often fed up with being presented with promotional material and not newsworthy information. Finally, a press release will miss the mark if it is not actually designed to provide useful information to your target audience about the subject matter.
Exactly how does someone make full use of a press release intended for social networking website marketing? The solution depends on the process you use to combine your current internet marketing techniques. Having an automated social media marketing campaign, combined with a dynamic social internet marketing program using correctly constructed press releases will provide the best results. Below you will find a few directories of solutions to customize press releases meant for social media advertising throughout social networking websites.
Scan your main title and incorporate keywords. Never allow yourself to become too concerned with the corporation's name on the title. Rather, consider rebuilding all your corporate communications with much more focus on embedding relevant keywords to produce dependable documents which will be indexed by search engines and provide social media optimization for your organizations content. Work with uncomplicated although highly relevant keywords with your headline. Keywords at all times enhance your chance of reaching high placement on search listings thus, reaching even more people. Refrain from abusing your desired keywords by over-saturating.
Don’t believe you have to stick to the typical four W's and H. Never get too sensitive around the what, when, where, why, and how. Rather, make use of the "story telling" strategy while keeping focused upon distinct elements in the data that you'd like to send out and also enrich this to reach your main visitors. Surprisingly this method is a satisfying trend to make.
Plan. Think about social networking websites as ways to increase popular methods of racking up your own contact among potential clients. Thereby, it's best not to deluge any release with a pile of data. Have all of them scheduled to be broadcast regularly and consistently.
Work. Reform ones objectives to make certain they can be much more interesting. With this, drive yourself to exceed the actual probability of circulating facts into a larger view. Reasonably, it is recommended to indulge with your main customers. Nevertheless this is essentially the central side connected with social media marketing, to be able to thoroughly associate as well as communicate together with customers.
Positive scheme. It is not sufficient to serve your audience with limited details. A distinct approach to supply detailed information is a proactive approach. Your viewer’s response may actually serve to come up with an evaluation of your effectiveness. Dedicate a reasonable amount of time to connect with your followers and might as well conduct some interviews. Being fairly direct with your content will most likely ignite the interest of your followers for the reason that they won't get bored of your article, so relatively, make an emphasis on your main content.
Automated social media marketing using social media is taking the online social media marketing industry by storm! Marketing with social media is now the holy grail and social media internet marketing is now being blown up with social broadcasting. We have the best social media marketing on the planet and we use social media marketing and our proprietary social media marketing tools to achieve extraordinary search engine ranking for our clients.
As automated social media marketing specialists, we have determined three main areas where most press releases are not as efficient in social media marketing. A well constructed press release is normally centered towards true news information about your organization and many organizations fall prey to the trap of using a press release as a promotional tool more like advertising. Second, it is also easy to convince yourself that cramming a press release full of promotional language by means of promotional program will yield the social media marketing results you are after, but your target social media audience is often fed up with being presented with promotional material and not newsworthy information. Finally, a press release will miss the mark if it is not actually designed to provide useful information to your target audience about the subject matter.
Exactly how does someone make full use of a press release intended for social networking website marketing? The solution depends on the process you use to combine your current internet marketing techniques. Having an automated social media marketing campaign, combined with a dynamic social internet marketing program using correctly constructed press releases will provide the best results. Below you will find a few directories of solutions to customize press releases meant for social media advertising throughout social networking websites.
Scan your main title and incorporate keywords. Never allow yourself to become too concerned with the corporation's name on the title. Rather, consider rebuilding all your corporate communications with much more focus on embedding relevant keywords to produce dependable documents which will be indexed by search engines and provide social media optimization for your organizations content. Work with uncomplicated although highly relevant keywords with your headline. Keywords at all times enhance your chance of reaching high placement on search listings thus, reaching even more people. Refrain from abusing your desired keywords by over-saturating.
Don’t believe you have to stick to the typical four W's and H. Never get too sensitive around the what, when, where, why, and how. Rather, make use of the "story telling" strategy while keeping focused upon distinct elements in the data that you'd like to send out and also enrich this to reach your main visitors. Surprisingly this method is a satisfying trend to make.
Plan. Think about social networking websites as ways to increase popular methods of racking up your own contact among potential clients. Thereby, it's best not to deluge any release with a pile of data. Have all of them scheduled to be broadcast regularly and consistently.
Work. Reform ones objectives to make certain they can be much more interesting. With this, drive yourself to exceed the actual probability of circulating facts into a larger view. Reasonably, it is recommended to indulge with your main customers. Nevertheless this is essentially the central side connected with social media marketing, to be able to thoroughly associate as well as communicate together with customers.
Positive scheme. It is not sufficient to serve your audience with limited details. A distinct approach to supply detailed information is a proactive approach. Your viewer’s response may actually serve to come up with an evaluation of your effectiveness. Dedicate a reasonable amount of time to connect with your followers and might as well conduct some interviews. Being fairly direct with your content will most likely ignite the interest of your followers for the reason that they won't get bored of your article, so relatively, make an emphasis on your main content.
Automated social media marketing using social media is taking the online social media marketing industry by storm! Marketing with social media is now the holy grail and social media internet marketing is now being blown up with social broadcasting. We have the best social media marketing on the planet and we use social media marketing and our proprietary social media marketing tools to achieve extraordinary search engine ranking for our clients.
Social Media Marketing Agency Helps Business Develop Strategic Approach
There has been an EXPLOSION in Social Media Marketing recently, and wise businesses are finding that their online traffic and turnover has benefitted greatly by increasing their online visibility using a variety of social media techniques. People communicate, socialise and network increasingly online, and it is predicted that the numbers of people interacting on online social sites will continue to grow enormously in the coming years. Hence WorldClassID has come up with some effective business promotional ideas that will minimize the time and maximize the distribution in the major social networkintg sites.
Now is the perfect time to get the social media marketing strategies up and running in order to get the optimum benifit.
The approach towards Social Media Marketing starts with a thorough understanding of a business, its services and products. Only then it is possible to devise a social media marketing plan based on goals, competitors etc. within an appropriate timeframe and budget.
For Blogging and RSS Feeds , WorldClassID offers complete solutions on social network sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Bebo, Digg, Delicious, MySpace and hundreds of other social networking websites.
It may look simple, but marketing in forums, social networking and social bookmarking websites can be more difficult than it seems to reap the full benefits, and if it not done correctly can end up as a huge drain on resources, time and money. WorldClassID has the required experience and knowledge in order to introduce a company to the networks suitable for the respective business, as well as advise on how to add value and reap the benefits of a well-positioned product or service. A structured approach on strategy, analysis, monitoring and timely execution is all mastered by WorldClassID.
For more information call +01.760.445.3315 or visit http://www.worldclassid.com/ to get your Social Media Marketing Campaign up and running sooner rather than later!
About WorldClassID:
A social network distribution channel. WorldClassID (http://www.worldclassid.com/) utilizes a variety of peer-to-peer technologies which are even more efficient at reaching a target social network audience than any single method of channel distribution such as print, email, video, social networking, direct mail, network and online broadcasting.
WorldClassID provides a unique methodology to most widely distribute your brand message. Whether you want more clients, are looking to sell more product or want to reinvent yourself…the WorldClassID Social Media Marketing Service is the solution. WorldClassID is a proven alternative to traditional marketing solutions and the only personal branding solution on the market today that can validate the distribution of content through HyperDistribution.
Your Strategic Marketing Plan for Business MUST include Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing Agency Helps Define Your Strategic Marketing Plan for Business a MUST read
You can't open a newspaper, listen to the radio or turn on the television without noticing that having a Social Media Marketing Plan is CRUCIAL to the survival of your business! In today’s world, having a strategic Social Media Marketing Plan is ESSENTIAL to the prosperity of your business’ success.
Surely you’ve heard of Web 2.0, and how successful it can be for almost any business, but have you started
using Social Media yet? For simplicity, we’ll stick to Facebook and Twitter, as they’re the 2 most popular at the moment.
The social media giants like Twitter and Facebook are no secrets to you, right? It can be very frustrating, overwhelming, and just plain confusing to know just HOW to implement Web 2.0 Marketing, even though you KNOW it’s the future of marketing online!
And, chances are, your competition is already on top of this, or at least trying to. If you’d like your business to have a prosperous future, the time to act is you YESTERDAY on these social media Goliaths like YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and supplementary Web 2.0 sites.
Here’s some factual data to further drill the importance of this message:
*With over 260 million active users and counting, Facebook has been deemed as the number one social network, according to Facebook.com and Neilson.com.
*Some predictions by known analysts predict that possibly sooner than 2011, there will be 500 million members on Facebook!
*Between June 2008-June2009, Twitter has increased it’s user base by an astounding 1,928%, making it the fastest growing social network on the planet, says Nielson.com
*Twitter’s user base has increased by a bewildering 1,928%, which made it the FASTEST growing social network between June 2008 and June 2009, claimed Neilson.com
*For a week straight, Facebook was visited more often than Google itself, around about April 2010!
*Statistics show that the age group of 35 and above are currently the most rapidly growing demographic to join these social media groups
*Another interesting fact from Alexa.com is that WORLDWIDE, Facebook is the THIRD most visited site!
*Twitter attained 50 million unique visitors in July 2009 [source:TechCrunch.com]
*Predictions indicate that by the end of 2010, Twitter will grow to 100 million users says Fool.com & Twitter.com
*Facebook says that over 65 million members access their accounts via their cell phones
*When users log into Facebook and Twitter via their cell-phones, they’re known to be twice as active as those who don’t
*Facebook says that over 70% of members are actually based outside of the United States Of America
If these comprehensive statistics haven’t already blown your hair back about the true power of Social Media Marketing, then you’re probably already harnessing it’s force! If you were a business owner, what would this kind of data mean to you? The short of the long is that there’s tons of prospective clients who’re easily accessed by conducting strategic Facebook Marketing and Twitter marketing alone, and they’re open to the marketing of your services or products! Are you going to sit around and allow your competition to capitalize on this phenomena before you do? For the clever entrepreneur, this wouldn’t be very plausible.
Social Media Marketing can be seen as access to a gate opener, or a portal if you will, with powerful communities which can have insurmountable implications for entrepreneurs, businesses, whether small or large. It’s no secret that the pace of rapid change in today’s marketplace is difficult to keep up with, but
still, it’s vital to keep your business informed of the forthcoming trends. Based on the facts described above, you can see that there’s no doubt that Social Media Marketing will become increasingly important to the future of your business’ success.We’ve now surpassed the Information Age, and now have entered the Recommendation age. How many times have you heard people say “It’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO ou know." That statement doesn’t hold so much validity anymore, as times have changed. Let’s put it this way “It’s not WHAT you know, it’s NOT WHO you know…it’s WHO KNOWS YOU!” And with the power of an effective Social Media Marketing Plan, you CAN connect with near anyone in your field of
business, and harness that relationship. The quality of your finances is a direct reflection of the quality of your relationships.
Is Creating Social Media Marketing Plans now higher on your priority list?
Hopefully you’ve begun to realize the importance of implementing a Social Media Marketing Plan.
If you’d like to ascertain more about how to efficiently begin to a social media marketing plan, but don’t know where to begin, you may want to use a social media marketing consultant, such as WorldClassID, who can provide you with a free consultation and discuss a plan which is customized specifically for your business.
You can't open a newspaper, listen to the radio or turn on the television without noticing that having a Social Media Marketing Plan is CRUCIAL to the survival of your business! In today’s world, having a strategic Social Media Marketing Plan is ESSENTIAL to the prosperity of your business’ success.
Surely you’ve heard of Web 2.0, and how successful it can be for almost any business, but have you started
using Social Media yet? For simplicity, we’ll stick to Facebook and Twitter, as they’re the 2 most popular at the moment.
The social media giants like Twitter and Facebook are no secrets to you, right? It can be very frustrating, overwhelming, and just plain confusing to know just HOW to implement Web 2.0 Marketing, even though you KNOW it’s the future of marketing online!
And, chances are, your competition is already on top of this, or at least trying to. If you’d like your business to have a prosperous future, the time to act is you YESTERDAY on these social media Goliaths like YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and supplementary Web 2.0 sites.
Here’s some factual data to further drill the importance of this message:
*With over 260 million active users and counting, Facebook has been deemed as the number one social network, according to Facebook.com and Neilson.com.
*Some predictions by known analysts predict that possibly sooner than 2011, there will be 500 million members on Facebook!
*Between June 2008-June2009, Twitter has increased it’s user base by an astounding 1,928%, making it the fastest growing social network on the planet, says Nielson.com
*Twitter’s user base has increased by a bewildering 1,928%, which made it the FASTEST growing social network between June 2008 and June 2009, claimed Neilson.com
*For a week straight, Facebook was visited more often than Google itself, around about April 2010!
*Statistics show that the age group of 35 and above are currently the most rapidly growing demographic to join these social media groups
*Another interesting fact from Alexa.com is that WORLDWIDE, Facebook is the THIRD most visited site!
*Twitter attained 50 million unique visitors in July 2009 [source:TechCrunch.com]
*Predictions indicate that by the end of 2010, Twitter will grow to 100 million users says Fool.com & Twitter.com
*Facebook says that over 65 million members access their accounts via their cell phones
*When users log into Facebook and Twitter via their cell-phones, they’re known to be twice as active as those who don’t
*Facebook says that over 70% of members are actually based outside of the United States Of America
If these comprehensive statistics haven’t already blown your hair back about the true power of Social Media Marketing, then you’re probably already harnessing it’s force! If you were a business owner, what would this kind of data mean to you? The short of the long is that there’s tons of prospective clients who’re easily accessed by conducting strategic Facebook Marketing and Twitter marketing alone, and they’re open to the marketing of your services or products! Are you going to sit around and allow your competition to capitalize on this phenomena before you do? For the clever entrepreneur, this wouldn’t be very plausible.
Social Media Marketing can be seen as access to a gate opener, or a portal if you will, with powerful communities which can have insurmountable implications for entrepreneurs, businesses, whether small or large. It’s no secret that the pace of rapid change in today’s marketplace is difficult to keep up with, but
still, it’s vital to keep your business informed of the forthcoming trends. Based on the facts described above, you can see that there’s no doubt that Social Media Marketing will become increasingly important to the future of your business’ success.We’ve now surpassed the Information Age, and now have entered the Recommendation age. How many times have you heard people say “It’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO ou know." That statement doesn’t hold so much validity anymore, as times have changed. Let’s put it this way “It’s not WHAT you know, it’s NOT WHO you know…it’s WHO KNOWS YOU!” And with the power of an effective Social Media Marketing Plan, you CAN connect with near anyone in your field of
business, and harness that relationship. The quality of your finances is a direct reflection of the quality of your relationships.
Is Creating Social Media Marketing Plans now higher on your priority list?
Hopefully you’ve begun to realize the importance of implementing a Social Media Marketing Plan.
If you’d like to ascertain more about how to efficiently begin to a social media marketing plan, but don’t know where to begin, you may want to use a social media marketing consultant, such as WorldClassID, who can provide you with a free consultation and discuss a plan which is customized specifically for your business.
Your Strategic Marketing Plan for Business MUST include Social Media Marketing
WorldClass Brand Management, the company behind the WorldClassID Social Media Marketing Service, offering a truly industry changing social software service in the SocialSphere™. Just like Software-as-a-Service or SaaS has become the standard for cloud computing, Social Media Marketing Service or SnsS is predicted to become the standard for social network management. At a time when managing personal brand or corporate brand will become increasingly important as well as tough. Moreover it will also resolve issues faced while managing multiple username and passwords for numerous social networking sites.
Investing in a Social Networking Strategy
Managing your online identity in the social media until now has been overwhelming and challenging, not only because there are already hundreds of social communities, but also because multiple social networks are launched on virtually a weekly basis. We all suffer from networking social overload, the information overload of being involved in a social network, not just one network social, but numerous social networking sites. How many online id, social identities or social user accounts do you have? Are we being consumed with social definition and is brand management being redefined in our newly social society? Until now you were limited to the manual, tedious and boring task of physically managing multiple social networking accounts which is very expensive from both a time and money perspective. In order to evaluate how best to invest in your own social network marketing strategy, you have to determine whether that social marketing plan can 1) save you time, 2) save you money, or 3) make you money. If your social marketing plan doesn’t hit at least one of those three elements, then you’re just wasting resources and you should invest elsewhere.
Social Media Marketing Issues
Social media marketing uses social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to engage with prospects on an ongoing basis. Social media sites encourage discussions, feedback and sharing of information between you and your prospects.
Social media marketing has really sprouted its wings within the last couple of years And its no wonder, YouTube has about 28,000,000 viewers and Facebook has over 100,000,000 users…and over 50% log in daily. That’s why social media marketing is essential to your businesses success.
You’ll see immediate benefits like prospect awareness of your “brand”, you’ll become closer to your customers and find out more about their needs, you’ll build customer loyalty by relationship marketing and social media marketing is cheap but very powerful.
There are several different types of social media marketing, from social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to social bookmarking sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon and it can easily overwhelm you if you don’t have a strategic social media marketing plan.
One important point before you jump into the social media marketing area. There’s a saying that “When a promoter moves in, the prospects move out”. What that means is that you should not use social media only to promote your business. You should visualize it as a public relation tool and a customer retention system. Nothing drives people away faster than self promotion…so be careful, only use “soft promotions” when using social media sites.
So how does social media help your business? That’s a good question and once again it all comes back to back linking to your business website. When done properly, you’re social media sites will drive prospects back to your business website and create back links. The more back links your site has, the more relevant it is seen by the search engines and therefore the higher rankings you will receive. It will be seen as an authoritative site for your industry, bringing your company more and more customers.
As you can see, social media marketing is a very powerful tool and should have a place in your business’ overall marketing strategy. But be careful, you may find yourself spending too much time “posting” and “tweeting”. You should find a web developer who can integrate many of these social media sites and link them together so when you post content to one, it will automatically post to all of your accounts instantly.
Lack of having a social network strategy can be worse than the proverbial ostrich sticking the head in the ground, and doing nothing is a recipe for potential social networking disaster. Do you know whether someone Googled you today? If so, do you know how many times your name was Googled? Do you know what shows up when someone Googles your name? Do you know how to change the results if something negative shows up on your Google name search?
When you are doing social analysis of what your social identity looks like to the outside world the use of social networking software inside the social network is a total necessity. You have already learned, or will come to learn, the logistic challenge of trying to manually protect and defend your personal brand or business brand in the social networking arena. Just managing the top 5 social networking sites is a daunting task, requiring the investment of time and money which you can easily estimate is thousands of dollars on a monthly basis. So how do you keep up with all this social networking without losing your sanity?
Social Media Marketing Strategy
In case you are still trying to figure out whether having a personal brand management plan is important or not, read the following article, “10 Reasons You Have To Manage Your Personal Brand”
[http://www.WorldClassID.com/page/personal-brand-managemnt]
If your believe your social marketing branding and online reputation, online identity and brand development require involvement in social networking websites, the question then becomes where do you focus your limited time and limited money? If one site like Facebook makes sense, should you also participate in MySpace or Bebo? If one social network is good, are ten social websites better and is participation in one hundred or more social networking sites the best? If participating in every possible social network is the best, how do I physically do that?
The logic of just the time required to create and manage just one social network would make you believe that you don’t want to join every social network because the only way you think it’s possible to do that isn’t scalable. You just don’t have enough hours in a day to manage more than just a few accounts. You could hire someone on a full time basis, but even that strategy has limitations that make in unscalable.
List of Social Networking Websites
So if you have limited time and limited money to invest in a social networking strategy, where do you go? We have compiled an ever growing list of social websites, so please go to the following links to see the entire list with URL links:
· Top 10 Social Networking Websites
· Top 10 Social Blogging Websites
· Top 10 Social Video Sharing Websites
· Top 10 Social Bookmarking Websites
· Top 10 Social Photo Sharing Websites
· Top 10 Social Professional Networking Websites
· Top 10 Social Press Release Websites
· Top 10 Social Article Posting Websites
· Top 10 Social Music Sharing Websites
The challenge is the idea that you can limit your social marketing strategy in any way. Even if you decide to limit your strategy to just the Top 10 websites in each of the 9 categories listed above (remember, there are over 350+ in total) that means you’re looking at 90 social memberships! If you believe that having a strategic social networking plan is a valuable investment, then you should also understand that having a presence in ALL the social websites is important. Why? Because there are potential customers, potential eyeballs who are in social networks other than the Top 10 who you’re not going to reach if you don’t show up in the other social networks.
Social Media Marketing Service (SnsS) – an obvious solution
The old adage of work smarter not harder seems obvious. The only way to work smarter and have a reasonable solution to managing hundreds of social networks is through an automated software solution. That is the essence of what WorldClassID is and does. It is a technology solution which takes the manual and highly complicated process out of the equation and creates a repeatable, scalable solution for dealing with hundreds of social networking sites.
Investing in a Social Networking Strategy
Managing your online identity in the social media until now has been overwhelming and challenging, not only because there are already hundreds of social communities, but also because multiple social networks are launched on virtually a weekly basis. We all suffer from networking social overload, the information overload of being involved in a social network, not just one network social, but numerous social networking sites. How many online id, social identities or social user accounts do you have? Are we being consumed with social definition and is brand management being redefined in our newly social society? Until now you were limited to the manual, tedious and boring task of physically managing multiple social networking accounts which is very expensive from both a time and money perspective. In order to evaluate how best to invest in your own social network marketing strategy, you have to determine whether that social marketing plan can 1) save you time, 2) save you money, or 3) make you money. If your social marketing plan doesn’t hit at least one of those three elements, then you’re just wasting resources and you should invest elsewhere.
Social Media Marketing Issues
Social media marketing uses social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to engage with prospects on an ongoing basis. Social media sites encourage discussions, feedback and sharing of information between you and your prospects.
Social media marketing has really sprouted its wings within the last couple of years And its no wonder, YouTube has about 28,000,000 viewers and Facebook has over 100,000,000 users…and over 50% log in daily. That’s why social media marketing is essential to your businesses success.
You’ll see immediate benefits like prospect awareness of your “brand”, you’ll become closer to your customers and find out more about their needs, you’ll build customer loyalty by relationship marketing and social media marketing is cheap but very powerful.
There are several different types of social media marketing, from social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to social bookmarking sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon and it can easily overwhelm you if you don’t have a strategic social media marketing plan.
One important point before you jump into the social media marketing area. There’s a saying that “When a promoter moves in, the prospects move out”. What that means is that you should not use social media only to promote your business. You should visualize it as a public relation tool and a customer retention system. Nothing drives people away faster than self promotion…so be careful, only use “soft promotions” when using social media sites.
So how does social media help your business? That’s a good question and once again it all comes back to back linking to your business website. When done properly, you’re social media sites will drive prospects back to your business website and create back links. The more back links your site has, the more relevant it is seen by the search engines and therefore the higher rankings you will receive. It will be seen as an authoritative site for your industry, bringing your company more and more customers.
As you can see, social media marketing is a very powerful tool and should have a place in your business’ overall marketing strategy. But be careful, you may find yourself spending too much time “posting” and “tweeting”. You should find a web developer who can integrate many of these social media sites and link them together so when you post content to one, it will automatically post to all of your accounts instantly.
Lack of having a social network strategy can be worse than the proverbial ostrich sticking the head in the ground, and doing nothing is a recipe for potential social networking disaster. Do you know whether someone Googled you today? If so, do you know how many times your name was Googled? Do you know what shows up when someone Googles your name? Do you know how to change the results if something negative shows up on your Google name search?
When you are doing social analysis of what your social identity looks like to the outside world the use of social networking software inside the social network is a total necessity. You have already learned, or will come to learn, the logistic challenge of trying to manually protect and defend your personal brand or business brand in the social networking arena. Just managing the top 5 social networking sites is a daunting task, requiring the investment of time and money which you can easily estimate is thousands of dollars on a monthly basis. So how do you keep up with all this social networking without losing your sanity?
Social Media Marketing Strategy
In case you are still trying to figure out whether having a personal brand management plan is important or not, read the following article, “10 Reasons You Have To Manage Your Personal Brand”
[http://www.WorldClassID.com/page/personal-brand-managemnt]
If your believe your social marketing branding and online reputation, online identity and brand development require involvement in social networking websites, the question then becomes where do you focus your limited time and limited money? If one site like Facebook makes sense, should you also participate in MySpace or Bebo? If one social network is good, are ten social websites better and is participation in one hundred or more social networking sites the best? If participating in every possible social network is the best, how do I physically do that?
The logic of just the time required to create and manage just one social network would make you believe that you don’t want to join every social network because the only way you think it’s possible to do that isn’t scalable. You just don’t have enough hours in a day to manage more than just a few accounts. You could hire someone on a full time basis, but even that strategy has limitations that make in unscalable.
List of Social Networking Websites
So if you have limited time and limited money to invest in a social networking strategy, where do you go? We have compiled an ever growing list of social websites, so please go to the following links to see the entire list with URL links:
· Top 10 Social Networking Websites
· Top 10 Social Blogging Websites
· Top 10 Social Video Sharing Websites
· Top 10 Social Bookmarking Websites
· Top 10 Social Photo Sharing Websites
· Top 10 Social Professional Networking Websites
· Top 10 Social Press Release Websites
· Top 10 Social Article Posting Websites
· Top 10 Social Music Sharing Websites
The challenge is the idea that you can limit your social marketing strategy in any way. Even if you decide to limit your strategy to just the Top 10 websites in each of the 9 categories listed above (remember, there are over 350+ in total) that means you’re looking at 90 social memberships! If you believe that having a strategic social networking plan is a valuable investment, then you should also understand that having a presence in ALL the social websites is important. Why? Because there are potential customers, potential eyeballs who are in social networks other than the Top 10 who you’re not going to reach if you don’t show up in the other social networks.
Social Media Marketing Service (SnsS) – an obvious solution
The old adage of work smarter not harder seems obvious. The only way to work smarter and have a reasonable solution to managing hundreds of social networks is through an automated software solution. That is the essence of what WorldClassID is and does. It is a technology solution which takes the manual and highly complicated process out of the equation and creates a repeatable, scalable solution for dealing with hundreds of social networking sites.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Is Social Networking Too Big To Fail? Can You Really Afford to Quit Facebook?
Two overly eager social neophytes named @mmilan and @josephdee got a bug in their bonnet and decided that May 31, 2010 was going to be a day designated as QuitFacebookDay.com. The site states: "If you agree that Facebook doesn't respect you, your personal data, or the future of the web, you may want to join us." A counter indicated that some 33,607 folks are committed Facebook quitters.
Long before Facebook catapulted into its now dominant position in the social networking world, MySpace and other social networking sites had been pioneering this fertile new marketing ground. Facebook was founded in 2004. By August 2008 it claimed 100 million users. According to the company, it now has more than 400 million active users (nearing 500 million), 50% of whom log on in any given day. The average user creates 70 pieces of content each month and more than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each month.
It was Facebook's introduction of new open network features with automatic access by third-party apps (which you have to manually go in and shut off) which set off a firestorm of criticism over privacy issues. Many outraged folks threatened to delete their accounts and some actually did, including some high-profile web industry people. Some people have proposed the creation of an interoperable social networking protocol as an ideal alternative to Facebook (www.readwriteweb.com/archives/more_web_industry_leaders_quit_facebook_call_for_o.php).
What really amounted to a media stunt to get publicity for their own venture was a misguided notion that you might want to have something private out in a very public arena. The whole point of social networking from an economic perspective is to generate new leads. You may disagree with that notion, but why else would businesses spend millions to reach target audiences on social networks? Just like search engines, there are the easy ways to generate leads (Pay Per Click and any of the paid advertising alternatives) and then there are the hard ways through "Natural" or "Organic" search engine ranking. We have been saying for a while that there is a parallel evolution going on in the Social Networking world that tracks quite consistently with the search engine models. Why do you think Google is taking such an aggressive stance towards Facebook? It is because they represent a threat to the core business model and just as with Google, you will achieve better results in Facebook with "Natural" or "Organic" listings than through paid search results.
To be blunt, you are either going to participate in the social networking arena for pleasure or business. You might think your social cause is neither, but it's totally business. It's all about reaching your target audience and influencing them (sell them) that your position should be supported.
Your approach to social networking is a traditional capitalist perspective, so our belief is that once you know what your objectives are you can design your strategic plan to take advantage of the medium.
As far as off-site factors like social networking websites impacting your search engine ranking and the use of social media to positively impact ranking. Don't care how many followers you have on Twitter or how many friends on Facebook.
Take Dell as an example. Dell has 1.5 million followers on Twitter. Do you think they're really engaging those followers in any kind of meaningful social dialogue? They are radically focused on pushing their message, one-way...out into the system. If someone likes the special deal being offered in a particular tweet, the user is linked to their ecommerce site to take advantage of that special offer.
The objective is to drive people to your website and to use your social media marketing to improve your base website ranking (locally or globally). What that means is that you're never actually going to be establishing a dialogue with anyone in Germany on Bebo (or Orkut in Brazil), but your Bebo and Orkut accounts will point both people and search engines back to your core website. Whether a potential client in Germany sees you on Bebo shouldn't actually matter (that would be a bonus), but what does matter is that search engine spiders find your backlink on Bebo and Orkut and give your base website an added ranking score when your "localized" website is ranked. Someone in Germany wanting to "Start a business in Singapore" should see your website in the Top 10 returns on whatever search engine they use if that happens to be your target keyword.
In late May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would roll out a new, much simpler way for users to control their privacy settings. With one control, users would be able to determine who they want to share all of the content on their profile with-though more granular controls would let users specify who could see individual updates. Users will also be able to easily turn off access to their profile info by third-party apps and websites. Here's an explanation of the changes (www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php), and if you want to see what its current policy is (since it changes frequently), go to www.facebook.com/policy.php. All of this, of course, implies that you actually care about privacy as if everything you've ever posted isn't already permanently etched into cyberspace. As I tell my kids, this is not like the saying, "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas", but more aptly is reflected by, "what happens on the Internet, stays on the Internet."
The reality is, if there is something you don't want the world to read about you, don't post it anywhere on the Internet because it will remain there FOREVER! If you doubt the reality to this, just check out the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at www.archive.org and you will see the modern day version of the Great Library of Alexandria which now contains in excess of 150 BILLION archived web pages. And that's just what is publicly published and doesn't include the kind of technology seen in the Wil Smith movie "Enemy of the State" which gave a glimpse into the technology called "Carnivore." If you think Facebook has an issue with their privacy policy, you clearly haven't looked into what our very own government is up to these days under the auspices of the Patriot Act. Funny that the "change" Obama promised didn't include repealing this unconstitutional violation of our right to privacy, but in fact made it premanent. The vote to extend HR 3199 was a YES Vote by Obama to adopt a conference report that extends the authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct "roving wiretaps" and access certain business records through December 31, 2009, and makes the remaining 14 provisions of the Patriot Act permanent.
Looking Ahead
So here is my summarizing question, "Is it possible that social networks like Facebook are too big to fail?" There is some speculation that successful ventures like Facebook will become mostly tools for business (public and private). Useful for social media marketing services, while individuals concerned about privacy retreat to some other less public network? Will sites like Facebook really be just about social media broadcasting, personal endorsements, and influence?
To show the broad appeal of social networking sites, even the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) recently jumped into the social media craze. On May 20, 2010, the PTO unveiled its official Facebook page, www.facebook.com/USPTO.gov. The PTO intends to engage the public and the intellectual property community directly and provide real-time updates including press releases, information on upcoming events, and posts from the PTO's Director's Forum blog. The PTO's Facebook page allows Facebook users to provide comments, discuss, and offer feedback to the PTO directly on a wide range of issues and initiatives. The new Facebook page, however, does not replace the PTO's website, www.USPTO.gov, as the official source of information but, rather, provides a new channel for the public to connect with the agency.
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