Archive for July, 2010
How to Cultivate Social Media Success
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Sponsored by JenKaneCo, well known social media evangelist Brian Solis recently gave a presentation to an enthusiastic group of marketers in downtown Minneapolis to introduce the concepts behind his new book: Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web. The following is an overview of his presentation:
Relations vs. Relationships
There’s something interesting that’s happening right now on the web: relations are starting to matter more than relationships. The key lesson for marketers, and what the rest of this overview discusses, is that people will engage around content that compels them in networks where that content spreads.
We are all going to have to shift from relationships to relations: having more thinner (but still relevant) connections is starting to matter more. As a marketer, this shifts the power balance. People are connecting around psychographics rather than demographics, and this means four degrees is the new six degrees of separation. In plain English: we’re all becoming better connected and users are vitally important to the equation of how information spreads.
4 Steps to Social SEO Success
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The sheer volume of social media marketing and search engine optimization advice posted online can make it difficult for companies to make sense out what direction they should take. There are many models and approaches to leveraging optimized content for discovery through search and how to develop social networks to engage customers and promote content. It comes down to fundamentals and I think the following Four pieces of the Social SEO puzzle can help companies of any size get started in a more meaningful way on their journey towards becoming productive on the social web.
Listening, Content, Socialize and Measure could just as well be represented as a cycle, but I think the forward direction is important because you can’t reach outcomes without action. Any good social media marketing effort needs to begin with some kind of Listening effort. That means using social media monitoring tools to collect, sort and manage social content according to topics being monitored. Content is the glue that makes search engines work and content is a critical part of the social sharing experience within social media. Speaking of sharing, socializing with other like-minded individuals as a personal experience can fold well with brand interactions as long as the needs of the buyer persona has been reconciled with business objectives. Successful efforts within the social web can be measured, and should be, in a variety of ways. Measurement justifies objectives and it’s important to identify the right tools for monitoring real time and web analytics.
10 Social Media Marketing Questions Answered by Engage!
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I’ve been familiar with Brian Solis as many have, for several years. We’ve done a few video interviews with Brian and he’s contributed to popular posts here like this one on social media marketing and this one on content curation.
I have to admit that based on his early writing, I thought Brian was overly confident about the opportunities with social media. When I finally met him in person at a Media Relations conference we were both speaking at, I gained a much better understanding and appreciation for the talents and insight behind the evangelism for what has become the most significant change to the web since the introduction of search engines.
As a successful author, speaker and owner of Future Works, Brian has many opportunities to face tough questions from clients, peers and conference attendees. In the realm of social media, it’s not unreasonable to have a lot of questions about the who, what, why, where, when and how.
How to start? How to create a strategy? How to find customers and influentials? How to create engaging social destinations? How to promote without offending? How to measure? How to report? Those are just some of the critical questions answered in Brian’s newest book, Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web.
Getting Connected at SES San Francisco
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The Search Engine Strategies conference from Incisive Media has really taken an amazing turn this year for the West Coast event. Not only have organizers move the conference from San Jose to San Francisco, but SES is now a part of an event called Connected Marketing Week that involves a coordinated effort from a number of organizations providing a 360 degree digital marketing experience.
San Francisco is one of my favorite cities and I think it’s a very smart move to change venues but also to evolve SES into being part of a much larger event. Involving other organizations will give attendees an impressive selection of content to choose from plus even more ways to connect with industry experts, peers, vendors and attendees in general. This year I’ll be giving a solo presentation on Aug 18th called, Content Marketing Optimization. Here’s the official description: