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social media marketing

Social Media ‘Best Practices’ Questioned

by Jerry Battiste · 1 comment

lori r taylor, revmediamarketing, social media, social media marketing, branding, product branding, networking, oneclicksociety, social caffeine, mobile marketing

How Do You Do What You Do?

As the founder of Rev Media Marketing, Lori R. Taylor is always emphasizing the importance of maximizing our clients resources and focusing our efforts on providing the best response for their needs. She is also the first one to point out that there is no point in re-inventing the wheel: if a client has a web site, that’s where we focus our efforts and if they don’t have an effective web site, we make one for them.

This might seem like a common sense approach to online marketing, but as we all know, common sense simply is not that common. In fact, when it comes to social media marketing, it is decidedly uncommon. I have seen many instances of marketers promoting the wrong tools for their clients needs, or over-hyping the importance of social media marketing as a means to an end, when the end really hasn’t been established. (ie. Where are we sending people we are attracting via social media?)

Lori is constantly focusing our efforts on delivering exactly what the clients want, need and expect. Posting YouTube videos is fine, but everything must be SEO with appropriate links to the main website. Revenues must be tracked, and social media monitored and managed to deliver results, not just be a bunch of puffery.

There is no point in marketing just for the sake of marketing. There must be an end in sight; a goal for us and the client to reach. Sales of products or services are typical goals, but sometimes the goal is just a web site visit or a newsletter sign-up. No matter what it is, social media can deliver it, but only when it is properly managed from the get-go.

Don’t think for one second you can create a Facebook page and a Twitter account, link them to your web site and begin reaping benefits. Proper engagement, monitoring and management are integral parts of an effective social media marketing strategy and their benefits, no, their necessity, simply cannot be overstated.

Consequently, many companies have developed a blind spot in their social media marketing. For example, most interactive marketers consider their website the best option for engagement with their constituents; however, the majority of company websites aren’t geared for engagement at all. This is important because social media ROI is realized only when a company attracts and builds a community of advocates around their brand and captures the invaluable data that is associated with that community. The resulting value is amplified when companies are able to make strategic sense of all that data, cast it in the context of their ongoing business pursuits, and profitably exploit it to drive sales. When a company learns how to converge its website and social media strategies into a coherent “community as a resource” initiative, it can actually be a game-changer in many markets.

Click here to read more about social media marketing mistakes.

Social Media Advertising Is Big (And Getting Bigger)

by Jerry Battiste · 0 comments

lori r taylor, revmediamarketing, social media, social media marketing, branding, product branding, networking, oneclicksociety, social caffeine, mobile marketingFacebook Advertising Spawns Cottage Industry

In the early days of social media, when Facebook had just a few hundred million users every month, companies started expressing an interest in advertising on the site. They immediately found the system confusing and had trouble using the free tools which existed to promote their brand via the Social Web. In response to this sudden interest in social media advertising and promotion, new companies began springing up to help them do just that.

Now that Facebook has nearly 900 million active users and sites like Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and even MySpace are attracting their millions of users, just about everyone is looking to take full advantage of social media marketing.

That’s where social media managers work. We strive to bridge the gap between what businesses want to do with social media and what they can do. We help clients use the full potential of social media to get their brand in front of as many people as possible, all while focusing on the specific demographic they are trying to reach. It’s not enough to just say, “I’m going to buy some Facebook ads and be done with it.” If it were that easy everyone would be doing it. But Facebook ads do not equal success.

In order to wield social media marketing to its fullest potential, clients much leverage all the many facets of the Social Web in a cohesive manner. Connecting networks, exploiting niche sites to reach targeted demographics and leveraging a mix of traditional and social media marketing. Remember, although 900 million people currently use Facebook every month, that’s still not everyone in the world.

And even as we strive to maximize the full potential of social media marketing for our clients the rules of the game keep changing around us. New sites are created, old sites fade away; new functions and changes to existing sites seem to happen nearly every day, leaving clients befuddled and customers dissatisfied or just plain confused. Fortunately for us social media is still in its infancy so there are always a host of new and exciting things to challenge us to find better ways of serving our clients.

And fortunately for our clients, social media continues to offer a host of ways for them to increase brand awareness and get their message out to brand new audiences.

For now, Facebook is doing more to nurture social-ad companies than by merely staying out of their way. Through its fbFund, Facebook invested in Wildfire in 2009. It also maintains a stable of 80 vendors, calling them “Preferred Developer Consultants,” that get an early peek at new products.

Facebook executives sometimes refer large advertisers directly to certain startups.

“They approach us and say, ‘We have a client that wants to do a major campaign and they have a short window of opportunity to have it delivered,’” said Don Beck, CEO of Involver Inc., a San Francisco-based social-ad company.

Acquisitions have become one way to win customers in social advertising. Social-ad service provider Context Optional was acquired last year by Efficient Frontier, the online-ad company later purchased by Adobe Systems Inc. Buddy Media said earlier this week it bought Brighter Option, a service for purchasing banner ads on Facebook.

Click here to read more about social media advertising.

YouTube’s Move Toward Original Content Takes Another Step Forward

by Jerry Battiste · 2 comments

lori r taylor, revmediamarketing, social media, social media marketing, branding, product branding, networking, oneclicksociety, social caffeine, mobile marketing

Just About Everyone On The Web Watches YouTube Videos

The fact is, when it comes to videos on the Internet, nobody does it better than YouTube. By better, I mean more of it, in more ways, not necessarily the quality of the videos they host.

YouTube has been talking about improving the quality of the videos they offer viewers for some time. In fact, they have often likened what they are doing to the way cable television offered viewers more channels than conventional television. YouTube‘s problem, however, has been finding ways to nurture and develop original content that wasn’t quite so hit-or-miss.

This week they took another step toward their stated goal by announcing a new plan to generate 25 hours of original content per day with a very specific network of content producers. The growth of this content will be fostered through the use of $100 million in seed money it had already committed to the project.

Their goal is to have 96 new, additional, original channels up and running by the summer time. Just like with all YouTube channels, viewers can subscribe and be notified every time a new video is posted. Unlike conventional television, or even what they are doing at Netflix and Hulu, these YouTube videos are expected to be about 10 minutes long. This is perfect for mobile viewers who want to watch something while they wait in the doctors office, or on the train for their morning commute.

By supplying the seed money to these content producers YouTube is making their business model much easier. Where once they had to create a video and wait for it to begin producing revenue before making another, these producers can make several videos and have them all chugging along at the same time-or have a series of videos ready to go, so viewers get regular updates. YouTube is also planning to share revenue produced by the videos with the content producers, so there is still an impetus beyond the seed money for them to produce original content.

This YouTube plan has been coming for some time, but it appears with this latest announcement that it will be here sooner than we thought.

 

The cash has enticed some of TV’s biggest stars, including “Fast Five” director Justin Lin, who directs episodes of “Community,” ”CSI” creator Anthony Zuiker and Nancy Tellem, the former president of CBS entertainment.

Zuiker is teaming up on a horror series for YouTube after observing his own family’s behavior. His three pre-teen sons spend more time on phones, iPads and computers than watching TV these days.

“We want to jointly take the risk with YouTube and roll the dice on the future,” Zuiker says. “The old regime is going to falter because everybody thinks the TV is the only device that really counts, and that’s just not the case.”

For producers, it’s a chance to create shows that are completely free of meddling from major studios. They can also stay relevant with a younger crowd whose viewing is moving increasingly online.

Click here to read the complete Associated Press story on YouTube’s most recent announcement.

Outsourcing Your Social Media Requires A Solid Plan

December 29, 2011

It’s Still Your Business Just because you’ve decided to outsource your social media marketing doesn’t mean you can take a vacation. Just the opposite. Now that you don’t have the the day-to-day responsibilities of actually managing your social media network you can start working on an effective plan. It is very possible you have outsourced [...]

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Social Web Gaining Ground On Traditional Web

December 27, 2011

What Do You Do With Your Online Time? Check this out: comScore just released a report showing social media usage accounts for 20 percent of all the time spent on the Internet. According to comScore social media is the most widely used Internet feature in the world. When you dig a little deeper into the [...]

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Social Media Trends Of 2012: What’s Next

December 26, 2011

Are You Ready For A New Social Media Trend? Prognosticators abound making them my favorite target. It’s hard to miss when the web is so crowded with them. Whenever I see someone talking about what’s coming next I wonder why they are wasting their time blogging when they are obviously so precognitive they should obviously [...]

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How Businesses Can Get The Most From Google+

December 23, 2011

You Have A Biz Page On Google+ Now What? It is far too easy to get so caught in securing space on the ever widening social media landscape that you forget to properly manage them. I will forgive you for now, but you better get a handle on it for next year. Chief among the [...]

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Can Social Media Save The World?

December 22, 2011

Yes It Can! My boss, Lori Taylor does a great deal of social media marketing work for clients all around the world. She loves helping her clients reach their goals through the use of social media marketing. But her true love is the work she has done for Disabled American Veterans (DAV). By leveraging the [...]

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Is North Korea Ready For Social Media?

December 20, 2011

A Change Of Leadership; A Change Of Direction   Following the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il the world is watching the situation closely. Both for political and social reasons, and from a commercial point of view. Specifically, social media marketers are wondering if the nation will now open its digital borders to [...]

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Don’t Wait For A Reason To Set A Social Media Policy

December 16, 2011

Once The Horses Are Gone From The Barn, What’s The Point In Closing The Door? University of Iowa faculty have been discussing at length the need for a social media policy. Much of this discussion has taken place via social media, where all the world can see them battling back and forth, although to be [...]

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