When it comes to social media, and any other marketing strategy, there must be a way to calculate ROI in order to see whether or not the steps being taken and the tools being used are working to the benefit of the brand. One cannot tweet without checking to see that what they tweet is getting a response and engaging the target market. It’s important to know what type of blog posts are being read more, and what type of items being shared are working towards the overarching goal, whether it be more referrals to the brand’s homepage or leads for the sales team.
Here are five tools to help you and your marketing team see if your social media tactics are working for you…
Now we know Google has some great tools including the Google Reader, but their Google Analytics is more than essential. It is a great web analytics tool to let you and your marketing team get a better insight into the traffic that comes to your blog and/or website. It is a great way to determine how effective your social media tools have been as referral sites. For example you can see where your Facebook andTwitter ranks among other sites in referring customers to your blog or website. And you can see how often people visit, how many are unique visitors, how long they spend on certain pages, and more. It is a great way to see when traffic was higher so you cancorrelate with a certain campaign you may have had going on at that time. For example perhaps you were tweeting about a great blog post that was about a certain type of topic which people responded more to than previous posts. This is a great thing to learn from so you can see what type of campaigns, posts, and more drive more traffic to your site.
Facebook provides analytics for Facebook Pages in order for brands to monitor traffic, “likes”, demographics, and more. Although the insights are fairly simple and standard, they are still helpful in determining what posts received greater engagement than others and what works better with your target market on that specific platform. Note: you must be an admin of the Page to see the insights/metrics.
Hootsuite is not only a great platform for integrating your social media tools in one place in order to Tweet, Post, etc in more efficient manner, but it’s also useful for keeping track of your analytics. In the pro model (5.99 a month) there is a feature of creating reports in order to show your boss how successful your campaigns have been and how Twitter and/or Facebook are leading prospects/customers to your website and creating more traffic. It’s also super great for click data that enables you to see if those clicks translate into transactions or impressions on your other sites. Helpful? Yes. Awesome? Totally.
HubSpot offers some cool tools to their customers including the Keyword Grader. The grader allows you to measure numerous keywords in order to figure out which words are most relevant, have high volume, and optimize your website. The hardest part is determining the terms people are using to search for your products or services. Of course HubSpot has thought of this and provided Keyword Discovery to find the “best” keywords to optimize your site. In their words, “the best keywords are relevant to your business, searched often, and non-competitive.”
These keywords can then be utilized not only on your website but in your blog posts, tags, social media posts, and more. This tool is very helpful in figuring out how best tofocus your content around these keywords whether it be in your latest post or your next Tweet or your homepage. Last but not least you can also track these “search terms over time so that you know which keywords are driving actual traffic and leads, and helping you as you create more relevant content on your website or blog.”
A great tool that not only provides custom RSS feeds, but also management tools for your blog in order to measure how many people subscribe to your blog via email or via RSS. This is a great tool to stay on top of your blog, since so many people use feeds to subscribe rather than via email. You can see when they subscribe in order to see what post may have initiated this action.
These five tools are some of the essentials I use on a regular basis when it comes to monitoring my professional and personal brands.
What else do you use? Feel free to share in the comments section, as ROI is one thing we all need to measure, and the more help we get doing so, the better!
Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot.
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So your brand is utilizing the main social media channels but wants to go a step further? Kick it up a notch with an online contest in order to
So your brand is utilizing the main social media channels but wants to go a step further? Kick it up a notch with an online contest in order to increase engagement with your target market and generate buzz about your brand.
A few tips to get started:
1. Determine your end goal: ROI for brand awareness, conversion, or what have you
2. Be prepared to give up the keys: especially with User-Generated Content
3. Keep it simple
4. Offer value and relevance. If you’re not sure how, follow some of these great marketing tips!
5. User your social channels to promote, promote, and…promote!
You can learn from the following companies on what they did right (or wrong), to do just that!
A great conference, which is known for being interactive, so of course they would have contests for the attendees. They had a fun game called SXSW Bingo that allowed attendees to use apps like Twitpic, Twitter and hashtags to document people and happenings at the conference. Value prop? The company who sponsored the game gained tons of brand exposure for their brand and product. Awesome.
Click to see an example of online contest gone wrong…
Unfortunately for Chevy, their contest efforts were not so fruitful. They tried to have a contest which allowed Tahoe lovers to make videos using content that was slightly made for them, in order for them to tinker with it and make it their own. The best commercial made would be used on TV and other advertisements.
Problem: The contest was in strict control by Chevy rather than “giving the keys” to the user. Users responded by creating mock videos.
Takeaway Lesson: If you are going to have a contest with user generated content, you have to give them the control to have fun, get messy, and be creative. Control is a relative term here.
Mass Appeal Entertainment is a local record label in Boston known for artists such as Left Eye from TLC, Lisa Lisa, Memphis Bleek, and Jordan Knight. In the beginning of my social media career I interned there and worked on campaigns for the artists. One of the campaigns I observed was an online contest that allowed fans of artists to win concert tickets for submitting pictures (ex. best 80s pic for Lisa Lisa concert). It was a great way for fans to get creative, show how much they love the music, and engage directly with the brand and artist via social media apps and channels. Not only did we receive a myriad of entries, but the winners were unbelievably appreciative of the opportunity. Great brand engagement!
Tools used:
Twitpic: Great for contestants taking instant pictures of themselves to submit as well as the artists sharing real-time pics with their audience.
Twitter: Perfect for real-time sharing by the artists on the contest, how things are going with the contest, deadlines, and prizes.
Facebook: Like Twitter, perfect for sharing happenings before, during, and after the contest by both the makers and contestants.
MySpace: Although not the pick of faves for platforms, it still worked well for music brands at the time.
Perkstreet participated in and won a community-based social media contest for marketing and advertising agencies created by Offerpop, a social media marketing software firm.
Offerpop‘ s contest showcased their Photo Contest app. A great part of the contest was Offerpop‘’s unique comment-to-vote model, which made it simple for people to participate and share their opinions around the contest. Even Dan O’Malley CEO of PerkStreet, stated: “We are thrilled to be recognized by Piehead, Offerpop, and the many marketers and creatives who voted for the various entries. Social media remains a key channel for us to communicate with our customers and is a unique place to educate the marketplace about our banking services. We also look forward to working with Offerpop and Piehead to explore their offerings and develop some exciting new promotions on Facebook.”
Click below for info on how to create your own Facebook Photo App contest byOfferpop!
Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot.
]]>1. What is Google Reader?
Google Reader is basically an app where you can monitor happenings of your brand, your brand category, products, keywords, blogs, competitors, as well as any other news feeds that interests you. It’s great for keeping up with industry related blogs, and specific keywords related to your brand. Best part all you need is to import an RSS feed into your Google Reader (which almost everything has nowadays as seen below) and “wah-la!” you have a news station ready and waiting right on your browser. Bonus: you can organize your searches, news, etc via categories as you see fit.
2. How to set up Google Alerts
Google Alerts are awesome for key word and brand monitoring. You can have a Google Alert set up for any time your brand is mentioned somewhere across the web. And you can have it ping you immediately via email or just sit and wait for you in your Reader. Whatever suits your fancy!
3. The search terms you should set up
Not sure what type of search terms to use? Well, let’s take an example. Let’s say your brand is a cell phone provider. Five possible keywords may include the types of phones available, specific competition, as well as complementary products:
Takeaway: Google Reader: Simple and intuitive like most Google products; Feedly a nicer more appealing magazine type layout, which imports via your Google Reader.
The following are tools you can hook into your Google Reader or Feedly to be more productive and efficient with keeping up with your brand:
Topsy is a search engine powered by Tweets. It’s a great for a quick and easy social search of your brand and what’s being said, where it’s being said, and more. Topsy‘s take on the web is that it’s a stream of conversations, and therefore provides the conversation taking place, as it happens. You can have these updates emailed to your inbox, or my preference, through a RSS feed into your preferred Reader.
Topsy is a great way to save time constantly checking what’s being said about your brand, and who’s saying it in order to stay on top of it in real time. Instead, it comes to you, and you can read or check it as you please. Time saver!
Twitter as we all know is a great micro-blogging tool in order to share news, information, build awareness and more regarding your brand. But Twitter is also a great way to keep up on your brand and brand category.
For example, you can search keywords related to your brand and have that search fed into your Google Reader in order to keep up efficiently. When you have time to take a look — whether it’s with your morning coffee, your dedicated social media time, or whatever suits your fancy. Either way, Twitter makes your life easier, especially when integrated into your Reader.
Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches for information regarding your key words from across the web. It searches a myriad of social media platforms and allows you to see what people are saying about your brand, product, conference, trade show, competitors, and more with the simplicity of entering your search terms and then using the RSS feed to send into your Reader. My only word of caution is thatSocial Mention can have some issues with search errors when first loading your search terms in order to utilize the RSS feed. But overall it’s definitely helpful for searching the social sphere for keywords regarding your brand and being more efficient in that search.
Postrank is not just about your brand’s influence, but about the influence of those mentioning your brand, your product, and/or spreading news regarding something related to your brand or product category. When curating content and using a Reader to do so, Postrank is a great integration to allow you to see how worthy and influential that content truly is and whether you should use it or not. Saves you time from reading content that is not so valued by others. Why waste your time, right?
No time to do your reading, consuming, and keeping up with your brand category yourself? Too many brands to keep up with? Why not buy a service that can help you out and save you the hassle? I’ve met with Traackr once, and they have a great service which allows you to track influencers in your category as well as keep track of mentions on your brand and product on a regular and real-time basis. Easy, simple, and super awesome.
And don’t forget to remember it’s also important to “stick out” in other people’s news feeds in order to increase your brand awareness. It helps to have tools such as those above to help you find what’s important, what’s being said, and where it’s being said and by who — next it’s up to you and your brand!
Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot.
]]>Too much content to create, too little time? This is when having a blogger staff and an awesome editorial calendar are key. Not only are they key but vital. As a freelance blogger as well as a marketing communications manager I definitely have a few tips on the topic. Here I share a few of my most helpful tips on how to create an efficient and user-friendly editorial calendar for your every-day use!
In my opinion an Excel spreadsheet is easiest in order to be organized with a table/chart and to be able to alter/revise as needed. However, I also advise to use a Google Doc version (or upload to Google Docs) in order to share with bloggers and have the ability to easily revise and show revisions without having to constantly email out. Efficient and easy to use.
Up to your own Type A and/or OCD nature. However, I suggest columns which include the following:
1. Category
2. Topic
3. Due date
4. Author
5. Post date
6. Status (aka under revision, etc).
1. Ask them to pick a weekly or monthly due date (and be stern about deadlines)
2. Schedule out posts according to frequency of blog posts and category/topic type of said posts
3. Always have some extra content in case you encounter a “lull”
4. Don’t forget to schedule time to review/edit/revise
5. Make sure publish day/time is a good time for readers – aka 9am with coffee not 5pm on a Friday
1. Hard part: finding the right bloggers who can produce great valuable content that people actually want to read. Not only do you need awesome bloggers but you need to find out what your target market is searching for in regards to content in your category. What keywords they are using and what they’re reading. Inboundwriterallows you to do just that! How? Here are the perks:
2. Developing a content strategy which aligns with your business/marketing strategy. This takes more thought and should be planned out with your CMO and/or VP of marketing in order to be most effective.
3. Make a bank of blogging content ideas for bloggers to choose from and/or add to. This saves time and make bloggers excited about the topics they write about. Need help thinking of topics for the bank? Check out these awesome blog topic ideas for your brand! Remember, the more excited your bloggers are, more likely the better they write, and in turn your target market will see the value.
4. Tip: It’s not always easy to review, critique and revise blog posts of your blogging team, especially if they may technically be your superiors in your company. However, you must remember that in this area of the company, it is your job to critique and be honest. It’s ok if you “rip apart” their writing because it is for the benefit of the brand. In addition, it teaches your blogging team the best tactics, learning their voice in writing, and within time it’ll be like clockwork. Critiquing isn’t always easy, but it’s essential to creating valuable content for your target market.
5. Have a social media policy? Community guidelines? Why not have editorial guidelines to make things more unified and efficient too? For example, in your guidelines you should/could include criteria for hyperlinking to previous posts, pages of your website, images, embedding videos, word count, style such as headings and bullet lists, and whatever else suits your fancy.
6. Cool new tool: WordPress editorial calendar plugin! Although I suggested Excel and Google Docs above, there is a new tool available for you WordPress junkies! The new plugin is an editorial calendar, which “gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog.” Awesome, right?
Experiment! You need to give it a shot, try out a calendar, and see what works for you and your organization. Adapt to what works best and create that awesome content!
Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot.
]]>a) A one-page Twitter dashboard: convenient, simple, and informative
b) Can track frequently – even hourly
c) Manage multiple accounts
d) Export analytics and data as a PDF or CSV
e) Brand report specially for your clients
Note: Takes a little time to generate as it’s still in Beta.
a) Can focus on Facebook and Twitter campaigns specifically
b) Can plan ahead for Tweets in order to save time and focus on other marketing efforts
c) Can produce reports to see effects of Facebook efforts, reach, and demographics/traits of those you are focusing upon
d) Helps you manage your networks
e) Suggests types of content to post and provides easy access to articles, blogs and other original content based on your industry and interests.
a) Already offered Twitter insights and now offers Facebook page analytics too!
b) Insights into “who” your audience is via their impressions (aka ReTweets, etc) on your brand.
c) Make reports on your analytics: Excel or PDF
d) Recommendations for your marketing strategy
Note: They will get back to you re: your invitation.
a) Cool easy to use dashboard to have all your social goodness in one place.
b) Search for targeted prospective customers, local target market, and related conversation occurring in real-time.
c) Twitter and Facebook analytics for clicks, mentions, responses, and more.
d) PDF reports
e) And now offering google analytics integration!
f) Schedule posts ahead of time
g) Keep track of check-ins, especially of particular/loyal consumers.
Note: this post was originally written for oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot.