Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart

Home >

Posts tagged as:

social media

How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner

January 11, 2012

This is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Want more? See How to Hire Your SEO Partner from November.

After taking the social media plunge, companies quickly discover that it is vastly more complicated and time-consuming than they thought.  The normal response is,

HELP!

But companies must avoid a panicky response, because hiring a social media marketing (SMM) partner requires careful study. As I’ll run down in a minute, SMM involves a wide range of activities that require totally different skills. So,

  • First, we’ll take a look at what the activities are, to help clarify the type of support you need.
  • Then, I’ll review your best SMM support options.
  • In conclusion, I’ll offer several suggestions of what to look for in a potential SMM partner.

Social Media Marketing Activities and Skills

There are any number of ways to slice and dice social media activities. This is basically how our agency organizes the work. (If I’ve left out anything, your comments and suggestions would be most appreciated!)

Pre-launch SMM Activities

  • Strategy involves competitive research, benchmarking, messaging, audience identification, determining platforms for engagement, setting overall program and conversion goals, and setting up metrics. It requires experience and analytical skills.

This is a preview of How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner. Read the full post (1288 words, 2 images, estimated 5:09 mins reading time)
Continue Reading5 comments
Read the full article →

Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011

January 5, 2012

It’s my birthday and I have some great news!

In January of 2011, I said that I’d make our Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 subscriber only. And I did. Many loyal readers have checked in on the newsletter throughout 2011 to get both evergreen content, the content that typically embraces these monthly updates, in addition to something completely new, monthly digital trends – the stuff you use for presentations and proposals, for arguing that social media and online marketing does have a firm place in today’s landscape. The newsletter, which was sent within the first week of the month, would include new research findings from surveys conducted by research groups such as the Pew Research Center, new discoveries from a marketing firm’s eye tracking study, or data that was recently culled across a multitude of SEO agency case study reports.

This year, I am pleased to bring back our Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 thanks to an excellent sponsor, HubSpot. HubSpot has recently launched a most amazing Marketing Grader tool to help you measure the effectiveness of your website. Please be sure to check it out as it’s one of the best tools I’ve ever seen, and I would be saying that even if they weren’t a sponsor!

This is a preview of Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011. Read the full post (10021 words, 7 images, estimated 40:05 mins reading time)
Continue Reading40 comments
Read the full article →

Why Most Social Media Departments Fail

October 25, 2011

A few years ago, a colleague of mine was given a tremendous responsibility to oversee the social media department at a prestigious well known NYC-based public relations firm. Less than a year later, she was sent packing up her desk, a casualty of a company that jumped into that shiny toy syndrome that people call social media.

As more companies jump into social media, they, too, hear that “social media departments don’t execute” which results in the failure of a social media department that was never meant to be. I’ll be exploring some of those reasons below.

Goal Setting

You could be the biggest and most well-paid social media consultant out there, but if you don’t know what the specific goals are for the client project, you should never sign an agreement with the prospective company. A recent statement of work I encountered read just like this:

  • Manage and grow the our following on Twitter
  • Manage and grow our fan base on Facebook
  • Manage and grow our fan base on LinkedIn
  • Possibly manage the presence on other platforms
This is a preview of Why Most Social Media Departments Fail. Read the full post (1535 words, 1 image, estimated 6:08 mins reading time)
Continue Reading84 comments
Read the full article →

How Social Media is a Lot Like Dating

October 11, 2011

This is a guest post by Shannon Evans Suetos.

Social media, like many things in life, is about relationships. If you don’t build a great relationship (online or offline), you won’t accomplish much. That said, how is social media like dating? You can apply “proper dating etiquette” to just about every aspect of social media.

Don’t Just Talk About Yourself

Ever been on a first date and realize you couldn’t get one word in? I think most of us have. Even if you started the conversation, some people can always make it about them. It’s not fun on a date, and it certainly isn’t fun to listen to someone on Twitter only talk about themselves.

This is where many social media newbies can miss the boat. Using Twitter and Facebook to promote a blog post is great, but make sure to mix it up with other news and topics as well. Using social media as a tool to position yourself or company as an expert is how you are going to gain your followers’ trust.

Tweet industry news as well as your company’s current events. It’s okay to not talk about yourself — your followers will thank you. You might even get a re-tweet or share for doing so.

This is a preview of How Social Media is a Lot Like Dating. Read the full post (1048 words, 1 image, estimated 4:12 mins reading time)
Continue Reading19 comments
Read the full article →

How to Show the World the True Rock Star You Are: 3 Social Media Bragging Techniques

October 4, 2011

This is a guest post by Amy Porterfield.

Selling yourself is hard.

But it’s next to impossible to thrive in a world that’s hyper-engaged if you refuse to bust out of your shell and, well—brag a little.

That’s right: brag.

Bragging is a way to prove you know your stuff. As a good friend of mine says, “If you don’t brag with specificity, authenticity and passion, no one will ever know what a true rock star you are.”

Social media is an ideal platform to carve out a niche and own your territory. But there’s a very fine line between bragging with “specificity, authenticity and passion” and coming off like a self-absorbed egomaniac (or a used car salesman).

Below are three steps to bragging better—so you can stand out, inspire and build deeper relationships online.

#1: True Rock Stars Show—They Don’t Tell

People who brag well online lead with their expertise, not with a sales pitch.

Or like your English teacher used to say, they practice “show, don’t tell.”

In a very noisy online world, your goal is to inspire your market to sit up and take notice of you. You want them to connect, deeply, with your value proposition. But words only go so far.

This is a preview of How to Show the World the True Rock Star You Are: 3 Social Media Bragging Techniques. Read the full post (1116 words, 1 image, estimated 4:28 mins reading time)
Continue Reading6 comments
Read the full article →

← Previous Entries