2014
Autospeak-Straight Talk contains articles covering digital and social media marketing social communities and events marketing
Before Vocus gave me the opportunity to contribute to their blog, I was a fan. Not just of the product, which is a robust, multifaceted social CRM tool, but also of the quality of their inbound marketing content.
Last week I downloaded “The Marketer’s Guide to Social Media 2014†and was once again incredibly impressed by the content and its insights. I recommend that you download it if you have opportunity to do so.
One of the marketing opportunities that Geoff Livingston identifies in the piece are social logins, the somewhat common and seemingly innocuous logins that many sites use to authenticate users. It occurred to me that I really haven’t read too many even-handed accounts of the pros and cons of social logins.
What I want to do in this post is give you an overview of social logins, dig into what information marketers can glean from the two most prevalent ones (Google+ and Facebook), talk about technical considerations for implementation and how social logins can enhance social CRM.
Want more about social media? Get your free Marketer’s Guide to Social Media 2014 now!
Login with almost anything, but mostly Facebook and Google
You see social logins nearly everywhere you go on the web. Spotify, Pandora, Triberr, MySpace (just to name a few sites I’ve perused this morning) – all use some social authentication mechanism to prompt users in. Even Mashable, Forbes, and the New York Times use social authentication to some degree. So what’s the benefit?
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One of the marketing opportunities that Geoff Livingston identifies in the piece are social logins, the somewhat common and seemingly innocuous logins that many sites use to authenticate users. It occurred to me that I really haven’t read too many even-handed accounts of the pros and cons of social logins.
What I want to do in this post is give you an overview of social logins, dig into what information marketers can glean from the two most prevalent ones (Google+ and Facebook), talk about technical considerations for implementation and how social logins can enhance social CRM.
Want more about social media? Get your free Marketer’s Guide to Social Media 2014 now!
Login with almost anything, but mostly Facebook and Google
You see social logins nearly everywhere you go on the web. Spotify, Pandora, Triberr, MySpace (just to name a few sites I’ve perused this morning) – all use some social authentication mechanism to prompt users in. Even Mashable, Forbes, and the New York Times use social authentication to some degree. So what’s the benefit?
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Information. The social networks become privy to additional data about their users, and in exchange they allow websites (user-authorized) access to social data of users… including email.
If this sounds like a great deal, it comes with some caveats:
If this sounds like a great deal, it comes with some caveats:
- You have to have content that can be tailored to the user (ecommerce, content, et cetera). If there’s no benefit to use a social login, odds are people won’t use them (you’ve probably encountered sites like these). This is why talking about technical implementation isn’t worthwhile in this piece, because a social login implementation is far more involved than simply implementing the buttons, the back-end of your site needs to be able to customize the user experience based upon these additional data.
- There are practical considerations for social logins. For instance, Facebook and Google+ dominate the social login space. It’s not that they provide information that is any different than a site like Twitter or LinkedIn, but they have scale. Odds are good that nearly anyone can login with a Facebook ID, and the vast majority with a Google ID. Only 20 percent (if that) can login with Twitter. It’s not an insignificant consideration.
- The data isn’t always reliable. In my humble opinion, the biggest “get†from a social login is an email address (both Facebook and Google have CAN-SPAM compliance reminders for marketers that collect email addresses). If you recall a while back, Facebook made @facebook email addresses the default email for user profiles. Facebook announced that they are ending the @facebook email, but I still have acquaintances on Facebook whose email is that worthless default email. Also consider that many users use pseudonyms and false identities on sites like Twitter. Marketers need to weigh whether the data that they’ll receive is worth the cost of implementation.
- Because users approve each of the pieces of data that marketers request with their social login, more information could (does) result in lower opt-in.
I don’t mean to ignore other social logins (and I’m sure it’s quite easy to find the same information for these), but I want to focus in on the specific data that marketers can get from the Facebook and Google social plugins.
An initial request for Facebook gives marketers access to what Facebook calls “basic information,†which is:
- id
- name
- first_name
- last_name
- link
- username
- gender
- locale
- age_range
- user_about_me
- friends_about_me
- user_activities
- friends_activities
- user_birthday
- friends_birthday
- user_checkins
- friends_checkins
- user_education_history
- friends_education_history
- user_events
- friends_events
- user_groups
- friends_groups
- user_hometown
- friends_hometown
- user_interests
- friends_interests
- user_likes
- friends_likes
- user_location
- friends_location
- user_notes
- friends_notes
- user_photos
- friends_photos
- user_questions
- friends_questions
- user_relationships
- friends_relationships
- user_relationship_details
- friends_relationship_details
- user_religion_politics
- friends_religion_politics
- user_status
- friends_status
- user_subscriptions
- friends_subscriptions
- user_videos
- friends_videos
- user_website
- friends_website
- user_work_history
- friends_work_history
The initial scope for a Google + login gives a user’s name and photo URL, which are always public, and a birthday or gender if the user has made them public.
- aboutMe
- ageRange
- birthday
- braggingRights
- circledByCount
- cover
- coverInfo
- leftImageOffset
- topImageOffset
- coverPhoto
- height
- url
- width
- layout
- currentLocation
- displayName
- domain
- emails
- type
- value
- etag
- gender
- id
- image
- url
- isPlusUser
- kind
- language
- name
- familyName
- formatted
- givenName
- honorificPrefix
- honorificSuffix
- middleName
- nickname
- objectType
- occupation
- organizations
- department
- description
- endDate
- location
- name
- primary
- startDate
- title
- type
- placesLived
- primary
- value
- plusOneCount
- relationshipStatus
- skills
- tagline
- url
- urls
- label
- type
- value
- verified
Technical difficultiesImplementation of social logins could potentially be challenging. Email service MailChimp reported over 100,000 authentication errors directly attributable to their social logins. Because implementation isn’t just the login but the personalization that the data informs, social logins aren’t easy to do.
A group of SaaS (software as a service) providers such as Gigya and Janrain have developed products that implement different social logins on a site and help to collect usable consumer data. For businesses and marketers that want to collect user data with social logins but don’t have the organic resources to implement this themselves, this type of software may be an option.
Enhancing social CRMI had never shot a rifle before I went into the Army. And for the good part of 1o years, I continued to be one of the worst shots anyone had ever seen (I did manage to concentrate my shots at my own target starting in year two, though). One of the most important skills that I never mastered was to triangulate my shots. The principle is pretty simple: you get a rifle that you’ve never shot before. You shoot at a target three times, and if your shots are close enough together you can see exactly how you need to adjust your sights to shoot where you’re aiming.
The marketing equivalent of triangulating a rifle’s shot group is segmentation. This is how social login data can be utilized with a social CRM tool like the Vocus Marketing Suite to enhance its marketing value. Demographic data are kind of like my shot groups: erratic and not especially helpful. Segmenting me based on gender and geographic location probably doesn’t tell you that much. But if you understood from Facebook that I like Joan Osborne, Indian food and Arrested Development, you may come to the conclusion that I have exquisite tastes (I’m kidding). My point is that additional data points provide you a better opportunity to reach and convert customers with your digital communication using deliberate segmentation.
Social logins are popular, useful and difficult to implement. At best they provide a rich complement of user data points that would be difficult to acquire otherwise, at their worst they provide useless or empty data points that may make segmentation less precise. That said, social logins have the potential to be an important tool for marketers to create customized user experiences.
Jim Dougherty is an expert on social media and technology who blogs at Leaders West. For more marketing advice from Jim, click here.
As I prepare for our Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, and Sydney workshop tour in March, I can't help but think about how few of my U.S. and Western digital marketing peers know about China and APAC in general. And I think about how much I've learned beyond the anecdotal cultural experiences, like the everyday Chinese "looggeey" spit fest or 100-year-old egg cuisine, the two-handed business card introductory bow, and my subtle but important favorite, the homogeneity of an Eastern society (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) in understanding the world is not about self but the communal good (ahem, Gen Y'ers).No, let's talk about digital and how far ahead Asia is in so many respects and how we can all better apply it, especially all those Westerners setting into their 300-meter flats in Hong Kong or Shanghai looking to build the APAC presence for their companies.
First, let's get history straight. The Western world, for nearly all of civilized man, save the opium-induced decades of darkness, has been woefully behind Eastern society. This is happening in digital, mobile, and social, too.
- Take the Terracotta Warriors, where we learned that China had steel melding and modern metal-tipped arrows nearly 1,000 years before us.
- Or China's first emperor commanding an army 10 times the size of the largest army Rome ever assembled.
- And of course the bit more trite observation of who created the pasta noodle first.
Before I jump in, allow me to give a quick "Asia for Dummies" version of the players for our Western counterparts. In short, China mainland (Hong Kong is a bit different) is always the main focus, so will use that as the example going forward. But in looking at greater APAC, remember, Australia is very much aligned with U.S./English trends, but is just a bit behind on adoption. India is part of Asia, but most, like myself, treat it as its own market, as it is so unique and so large. Indonesia is handled in the same manner. Japan, Taiwan, and Korea need to be on your radar for APAC despite the largess of China and have very similar adoption curves, yet extremely different cultural nuances that simply can't be ignored. And Singapore is a great business- and tax-friendly place to set up an APAC office, but is just a city so not a "market" unto itself worth addressing in comparison.
With all that out the way, using China as the example, here is your quick first lesson to talk the talk when thinking about Asia and its comparatives here in the U.S./Western world.
Weibo = Twitter
Alibaba = Amazon (x 10)
Baidu = Google (for China); Google is still big elsewhere and Yahoo! for Japan
WeChat = WhatsApp
Renren = Facebook
Tencent QQ = Mobile app meets IM, with social gaming plus online shopping
Let's start with simple dollars (or RMB) and cents. Alibaba on its biggest shopping day saw $5.75 billion of transactions. The entire U.S., on its biggest day, saw $2.29 billion on all trackable e-commerce sites. Now, many of us are trying to determine the mobile implications and best practices. If you look at the fact that 41 percent of all shoppers buy their mobile device in Hong Kong, you'll quickly get a peek at what's coming our way in the U.S. and Western world.
It reminds me of a trip to Tokyo nearly seven years ago, where I was awestruck by nearly everyone looking down at their phones and texting while walking on and off a very busy subway stop in Roppongi. Literally, I thought... are these people addicted to their phones or just plain crazy?! And here we are today in the U.S., and anyone who has taken the 3 train across town in New York, nearly ran over a pedestrian in a crosswalk in San Francisco, or just looked around any given street, would see nearly the same. Point of the matter, Asia was and still is a great sneak peek at what's to come in adoption of digital, social, and mobile. And when you look at research showing us a 31 percent increase in digital/search advertising spend, and massive retargeting adoption, one must pay attention to how that ripples back to the U.S. market, which is heading in the same direction.
Quick note: If you are not retargeting today, stop reading this article and go set that up on Facebook and Google Display Network.
Now take a look at adoption; Twitter being in the limelight today seems like a good example. Last year only 15.1 percent of consumers said they use Twitter to share information, whereas in China more than 91 percent use Sina Weibo to share. Incredible, right? Maybe time to reconsider buying some Twitter stock, let alone looking seriously at how to leverage Twitter to get the following and awareness before it gets super competitive.
See these concepts in action at ClickZ Live New York 2014:
- Beyond the "Like": Social Media Tracking, Testing & Targeting
- The Marriage of Social Media & PR: Making it Work for Your Brand
So, if you are looking at Asia, China, and APAC, there is no option but to get engrained in social and mobile. If you are in the U.S., it's just one more wake-up call to remind us, Rome was not the first great civilization from which the world could learn its lessons - China and greater Asia was. Let's use its lessons to our advantage in our efforts to grow market share online.
By Aaron Kahlow
We are all looking for that magic elixir that will keep people visiting our sites and result in conversions of one kind or another. Although it is not magic there are recipes that include ingredients for an overall marketing mix that can please the most discerning palates.
Conversion marketing is an eCommerce term that is the conversion of website visits into sales although today some measure conversions that result in some type of engagement other than a sale. Examples of this would be a campaign to sign up visitors to a newsletter or downloading a white paper or some type of interaction to gain contact information for further engagement.
However the desired end result in any type of conversion marketing is the eventual sale of a product or service.
Using content to drive site visits has become one of the most successful tools today in conversion marketing as customers want to be informed about products or services and left to make their own decision in their own time on who offers the best product or service that fits their needs and how a company fits their overall expectations when it comes to customer service and or sense of community.
Using content to drive conversions is a constant work in progress to Improve and focus the content of the website (which may include text, pictures and video) to target conversion.
Generating user reviews of the product or service has become a good way to instill trust and create social buzz through social sharing of individual experiences, satisfaction and recommendations.
Improve credibility and trust by showing third-party trust logos and by good site design. Site design must be structured so that users can navigate the site without thinking too much about where to click.
As consumers tend to abandon sites after only three clicks, online chat can be an effective tool for live engagement to produce more conversions during customer visits. Click to call also supports cross-channel conversion without losing the context of the conversation when visitors move from the website to the phone.
After the fact re-target and nurture by Identifying the visitors interested in particular products or services based on previous site search to offer relevant content through targeted ad placement and e-mail personalization that contain recommendations and content that make the customer feel it was tailored personally for them .
Targeting offers attempts to fit the right promotion with the right customer based upon behavioral and demographic information.
Use AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) to move the user through the conversion process and you'll be well on your way.
William Cosgrove
Bill Cosgrove Straight Talk
The importance of an integrated marketing plan is important to provide consistency across all your marketing channels.Your ad design and message should function in harmony so when the customer hears and ad on the radio or sees and ad in a newspaper or magazine and takes that next step to visit your website site they can recognize from what they saw or heard that they are in the right place from the uniformity across your marketing channels.
First Impressions
We all know that first impressions can often be the deciding factor and good website design as the first impression is critical and is going to determine if someone is going to engage with your site or not.
And never before has your company’s website’s first impression been more important. If people land on your site and it looks old, outdated or they just plain don’t like it – they leave – and most often will not return.
Now, thanks to search engines algorithms bad web design and poor navigation will get you poor search rankings. Search engines watch people’s habits in an effort to produce better search rankings.
So with that thought in mind search engines reward sites that have good navigation and design with higher organic search rankings because they stay longer and navigate deeper. Compare that to a poorly designed web site that people simply land on the site and leave because of its look – Sites are then penalized and placed far down on the organic search list.
 This makes Good website design the foundation on which all your marketing efforts will be based and will determine the flow of guiding someone through the process of making a purchase or having the opportunity to follow up with them to nurture them up to the point at which they are ready to make a purchase.
Behind The Scene
Once you tackle the task of having a well designed website with great content and properly placed calls to action you must then be sure that you have a functional, easy to use and fully integrated marketing platform working behind the scene from which to control everything and launch your marketing initiatives.
Good website design will open the door to potential customers but the marketing platform technology is the engine that is going to give you the tools necessary to obtain information, communicate, analyze and drive all your online marketing.
Good website design and the platform technology behind are the foundation on which you are going to build your online presence and will determine how effective you can be.
Your website and the technology that powers it is where it all starts. These are the building blocks that are going to mean the difference in how effectively your marketing initiatives reach your audience.
Today Digital Marketing has the biggest impact of all your marketing initiatives. You need to have the latest technology from a company that is constantly creating better ways to keep your digital marketing effective.
You might think that what you already have in place is good enough but is good enough- good enough? There have been a lot of changes and your current technology, if outdated, could now be working against you. You cannot afford to be complacent in today’s Digital Marketplace.
You might have created the next great marketing campaign that is going have everyone hitting those retweets and like buttons and sharing it with all their friends. But if you don’t have the latest updated technology powering it- that great marketing campaign may not fulfill your expectations.
Great innovative technology is what is going to power your everyday “bread and butter† social media, earned media and paid marketing campaigns that will get you noticed - get your message out and keep it there.
William Cosgrove
Bill Cosgrove Straight Talk
Traditionally, marketing has always been thought of as business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C). With social media in the mix, marketing is no longer so black and white. Marketing messages are getting lost in translation on Facebook, Google Plus and when cut to 140 characters on Twitter. The idea is that all this content has been optimized for consumer engagement, but in reality consumers can’t all be quantified down to statistics. Consumers want to be marketed to as individuals, not based on the general tendencies of their demographic.
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Consumers are tired of content being fed to them. In turn, they are becoming content creators and user generated content (UGC) is on the rise. All visual platforms allow consumers to create their own product photos and fan videos. Essentially anyone with a cellphone can snap a photo or be a model. Social media and the rise of Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat, enables businesses to connect with consumers on the individual level and for consumers to respond. With UGC, consumers are shaping and molding brands. Businesses are able to react and interact with consumers on a personalized level. It’s time to market H2H, human to human.
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Humanize Your Brand
Away with B2B and B2C marketing, consumers are seeking a more personal connection with a brand on social media. Following a brand is more than expressing what you like, a consumer wants to be informed of the company culture, news, and product releases.
As the ease of information sharing increases, the consumers’ need to know more has also flourished. Companies have realized the way to satisfy consumers’ inquires is to be genuine and simple, qualities people want to see in friends, family, society, and now businesses. Companies are starting to change their social media strategies to a more humanized approach and social commerce is no different. eCommerce sites are jumping on the UGC bandwagon, integrating fan photos onsite with social curated galleries.
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Social Curated Galleries
Create a social and visual site experience with live galleries filled with original images of real customer showcasing your products. Track these photos by using a unique and creative hashtag for your brand. Emphasize a specific product, event or create a general one for your brand as a whole. Display photos featuring this hashtag on your homepage to drive new product discovery or feature them on product pages for increased conversions.
Allowing your consumers to upload personal product photos will help other shoppers visualize your products in real life. Implementing a social curated gallery will allow consumers to see your products in the hands of people like them and in turn allowing them to relate to the product on a more personal level. This personal connection results in great conversions, social gallery participants have a 23% higher conversion rate than a regular consumer.
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Increase social reach with Top Influencers
Not only will a social curated gallery humanize your brand, it will also spark incentive for consumers to take product photos and spread awareness via their social media networks. On top of being displayed on your site, the photos will be spread over consumers’ networks like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Recognize top influencers and trendsetters in featured galleries or take it to another level by turning it into a contest. This recognition will increase brand loyalty and drive consumer engagement. Shoppers that interact with social galleries discover, on average, 5 new products to which they express purchase intent for.
Content creation is an armed race, but every once in awhile, slow down and listen to what your consumers are saying. Use social curated galleries to see which products are trending, what consumers are sharing, and what they want more of.
By Alinn Louv
The 34m Americans planning to buy a vehicle in the next six months are twice as likely to be swayed by auto-focused digital marketing as the population at large according to new research.A study from the from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Prosper Insights –Digital Influence on Auto Intenders, based on intelligence from the Media Behaviors & Influence Study which polls some 19,000 respondents once a year – found that 21% of automotive shoppers were influenced by relevant digital ads compared to 12% of the general population.Â
Nor did the effect stop at that category as 71% of this group were also more likely to be influenced by digital advertising across multiple retail categories as the average consumer.
Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics and Measurement, IAB, noted that automotive had consistently been a top sector when it came to interactive advertising spending in the US.
"In particular, there seems to be tremendous mobile and digital video opportunity that auto marketers should be optimising along with other digital and legacy media," she added, pointing in particular to the need to leverage the always-on nature of digital media.Â
The study also showed that a majority of vehicle buyers regularly embarked upon online searches for automobiles (86%) and they are twice as likely as the average person to be influenced by sponsored search ads (20% vs. 10%).
In addition to digital, all forms of media influenced the automotive path to purchase, said the IAB, so emphasising the importance of a solid media mix in order to effectively reach prospective vehicle buyers.
"These findings underscore the fact that automotive brands, as well as marketers in related areas like car insurance and vehicle maintenance, would be remiss in not including digital in their media strategy," said Pam Goodfellow, Consumer Insights Director, Prosper Insights.
Several digital lifestyle differences were apparent between auto buyers and the typical adult. For example, automotive intenders were more likely to own a smartphone (75% vs. 54%) or a tablet (42% vs. 33%).Â
They were also heavier digital video streamers, both online (69% vs. 56%) and on mobile devices (52% vs. 35%). Consequently they were more likely to regularly watch digital video commercials before streaming video programming (66% vs. 53%).
And in general, auto-intenders were more likely to regularly research all kinds of products online before buying (58% vs. 42%).Â
Data sourced from IAB; additional content by Warc staff
Forrester Report:Â Tag Management is the New Standard for Collecting Digital Visitor Data (Download Now)The success of today's marketing organizations is largely driven by their adoption of digital technologies to transform the business. As a result, the CMO and CIO need to work hand in glove to ensure marketing is enabled with the IT tools and processes to further engage with customers in an increasingly connected world. Whether it is with mobile, cloud or social technologies, marketers must embrace digital if they want to be relevant to today's customers. But this can only be achieved by working closely with IT to fulfill the goals of the business.
As we move towards 2014, the digital transformation of today’s organizations will only accelerate, with several trends driving this forward.
1. Online Communities Fuel the Social EngineThe companies that will thrive in today’s connected world recognize that customers are their most important asset. Customers today have higher expectations than ever before, and communities can provide the perfect platform for them to share their opinions and needs.
The community serves as the central hub for all social interactions. Communities can help companies determine the content that makes the most significant impact on the market, adding a new level of intelligence that can then successfully drive sales. According to an IBM study, 85 percent of users say social networks influence their purchasing decisions. Moreover, the community serves as the “ultimate social network,†facilitating meaningful relationships between customers and companies to bolster customer satisfaction and, ultimately, sales.
2. Ignore the Cloud at Your Own PerilMore and more organizations are utilizing cloud-based tools and applications to advance their businesses. IDC predicts that by 2015, one of every seven dollars spent on packaged software, server and storage offerings will be done so through the public cloud model. Furthermore, SaaS models can help organizations enhance collaboration and share information in near real-time.
We use Salesforce Chatter to communicate critical updates throughout the company and to foster an open, unified environment. We also use predictive social analytics to enable our customer service team to evaluate existing customer temperature. Such real-time interactions and data will drive the most innovative companies forward in the year ahead.
3. Gamification Accelerates ProductivityCommunities can also serve as a sufficient medium for companies that want to adopt new models for driving productivity and gamification technologies.
Many companies, such as Accenture, have recently experienced technology adoption growth through the implementation of gamification technology. The company promotes an interactive environment at its global leadership council, made up of the top 150 leaders at Accenture, displaying statistics on blogging activity, video and audio minutes, and more. The top participants are also rewarded and ranked in comparison to their peers, encouraging a fun competition throughout the council.
We have also enjoyed the benefits of gamification in the enterprise through an award-winning Sales 2.0 approach, which gamifies the sales process and tracks employees’ sales progress during a given time period. This has resulted in a 30 percent boost in sales productivity from our inside sales team.Â
4. The Rise of the Chief Digital OfficerIt’s predicted that there will be a 40 percent projected growth in global data generated per year versus only a five percent growth in global IT spending, per McKinsey. As data analytics and the world of big data explode, the relationship between the CIO and CMO will take on an even greater meaning.
The CIO can no longer work in a vacuum. We are seeing the blending of the CIO and CMO roles, with the IT budget going outside of IT, and with every aspect of business becoming digitized, the new role of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) is starting to emerge as well. In a recent Gartner poll, while only 500 Chief Digital Officers were identified worldwide, the company stated “they seem to be sprouting up faster than we can count them.†This trend will only increase as companies place a strategic emphasis on digital content.
5. Your Consumers are Mobile, So are YouIn 2013, smartphones outsold regular phones for the first time. The shift to mobile is already here and companies that don’t make the transition through the implementation of adaptive websites and a more mobile friendly user experience for customers are risking obsolescence. In the end, today’s CMO has to be mobile-first focused when it comes to marketing to the customer. Nowadays, it is more about catering to consumers’ lifestyles and how they choose to interact with businesses.
6. Focus on Inbound ContentAll companies want to strengthen their relationship with customers and prospects. One of the best ways to do so is through a rock-solid content strategy. Interesting content is one of the top three reasons people connect with brands on social media. And 68 percent of consumers spend time reading content from a brand they are interested in.Â
Paid, earned and owned content all offer ways to increase your brand’s awareness and better connect with your audience. But it is through earned content, from organic search and industry blogs, that you can increase share of voice, which will be a key consideration for 2014.
7. Contextual Content via Marketing AutomationMarketing automation, integrated with CRM, is only accelerating as companies look to refine sales influencer reporting. It is squarely about driving revenue for the company through targeted content.
Businesses need to be able to map the influence of marketing along the buying journey for a customer. As Gartner analyst Jake Sorofman wrote, “digital experiences and engagement draw consumers closer to a brand and more efficiently drive conversions and transactions, both online and off.†This process needs to include nurturing existing customers and delivering the right content at the right time across the right channel to the right audience.
8. Measure Your Social ImpactThe science around social media metrics has become much more precise of late. Social metrics such as engagement, conversion and reach all point to a new level of science when it comes to your social media activity.
It is no longer about broadcasting your message, but instead finding ways to engage with your audience and turn them into customers. Including the customer in that social content is key to gaining their approval. According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, today’s digital CMO has “more opportunities to develop compelling and relevant brand identities by including your customers in the narrative creation process right from the start.†Make the customer part of your story, and your social media program will immediately see the benefits.
While business leaders must be the ones to drive the digital transformation, company-wide employee participation and momentum will help companies evolve into open, collaborative and socially connected organizations. It is only through the efforts of a collaborative environment, which includes a seamless relationship between marketing and IT, that the benefits of digital transformation will be realized.
Title image courtesy of iQoncept (Shutterstock)
Editor's Note: Read more from Vala in his The Pursuit of Social Business is Not About Technology
About the AuthorVala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) is the Chief Marketing Officer for Extreme Networks, responsible for global marketing. An award-winning inventor of social technologies and customer services operations, Afshar is a two-time Stevie Award winner stemming from his previous leadership of the company's Support organization, and is considered a pioneer in cloud computing, social collaboration, business intelligence and customer relationship management.
If A Picture is Worth A 1000 Words, Then is Video Priceless?
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(Posted on Nov 30, 2013 at 12:05PM )
Did you know that videos provide a 74% increase in your visitors’ understanding of your product or service compared to pictures and also increase the likelihood of your visitors purchasing your product or service by 64%?
If you’re not currently using video and that doesn’t convince you to start, maybe the infographic below will.