Join us to hear David Murray discuss “De-Mystifying Social Media and How to Make Social Media work for Your Business.”
Date: Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Time: 7:30 AM — 9:00 AM
Ravinia Club
2 Ravinia Club Drive
Suite #100
Atlanta, GA 30346
David Murray (@DaveMurr) is the Social Web Communications Director for re:group (www.regroup.us), a fully integrated marketing and communications firm in Ann Arbor, MI and member of SEFF.
David has created fully integrated digital and social media campaigns in the health care, franchise, nonprofit, and both B2B and B2C sectors. David is a national speaker on digital communications and social media best practices. He is a published author on the subject.
Come, learn, and share your ideas with the group.
Bring your questions, too!
Register online today at
www.SoutheastFranchiseForum.com.
Advanced Reservations Are Required***
Deadline for Reservations is Friday, August 5th at 3 PM. Non-Members of SEFF and Guests Pay $15 per Breakfast Meeting.
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social media,
social web,
speaking
Surprise! SEO is changing!
All. Of. The. Time. Some trends won’t surprise you — social media, mobile. But there just may be one or two that will. That’s why we like to talk about Visibility Optimization, not just SEO. Search engines aren’t the only ones who see you — people do.
1. Social Media. Huge, huge huge. Did I mention huge? Everyone talks about the conversation, but so few are good at having one. You can’t just post a video and expect people to beat a path to your door. You have to find ways to get other people to get other people to you. Choosing the right options for doing that for your business is like putting puzzle pieces together. You may need some help.
2. Mobile. As thousands of people daily discover the convenience of accessing the web via mobile devices, optimization has to adapt. Keywords need to be shorter, mobile SEM can’t just be a clone of your online SEM, apps like QR readers must be taken into account — all are going to have an impact on how well your business does.
3. Branding. Didn’t expect that to show up, did you? Branding will be more important to getting your business found, not less. It works like this: Google has made personalized search the default option. So unless a HUGE portion of the population opts out, which they won’t, sites that are more well known and visited most often will enjoy better rankings. In fact, because search history is also taken into account, the same sites will keep popping up for people, search after search. Without a strong brand presence, you could get lost.
4. SEM. We all know that online marketing can help build your visibility. But the more relevant it is will influence just how much it helps. Is it showing up on the right content? Do the keywords match the content? What are the trends on sponsored vs. organic listing? While SEM helps optimization is just common sense, because trends change all the time, your marketing optimization strategy has to change, too.
5. The site itself. No-brainer! Just make sure you load it with keywords, write lots of blog posts and update your news section and you’re fine, right? Not entirely. You will also be judged by how quickly your site loads, whether it’s engaging once someone gets there, how long people spend. If your site is ugly, confusing, boring, slow or poorly constructed, no magical keywords or blog posts can save it. According to a study by Canadian researchers, people will form an opinion of your site in less than 1/20th of a second. If engines see that people click off in a second, you’re not so relevant.
All of this just means that unless you’re willing to spend a whole lot of time keeping up with the trends, you’re going to need someone to help out. If you want to talk, call us.
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advertising,
branding,
communication,
interactive,
new media Tags:
new media,
optimization,
SEO,
strategy,
visibility
From MediaPost, some new insights into social media usage.
According to a new study by Social Media Examiner, prepared by Michael A. Stelzner, social media has gone mainstream. And for businesses it represents an unprecedented marketing opportunity that transcends traditional middlemen and connects companies directly with customers. Two years ago, businesses were uncertain about social media. Now it’s here to stay and companies are rapidly responding to new social media opportunities.
Major findings from this report contain insight into how marketers are currently using social media and their future plans:
90% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business. One third of all social media marketers want to know how to monitor and measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media and integrate their social media activities. 58% of marketers are using social media for 6 hours or more each week, and more than a third invest 11 or more hours weekly.
77% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2011.
70% of marketers want to learn more about Facebook and 69% want to learn more about blogging.
The number-one advantage of social media marketing is generating more business exposure, as indicated by 88% of marketers. Increased traffic (72%) and improved search rankings (62%) were also major advantages.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs were the top four social media tools used by marketers, in that order. Facebook has eclipsed Twitter to take the top spot since the 2010 study.
Only 28% of businesses are outsourcing some portion of their social media marketing.
The overwhelming majority (93%) of respondents indicated they were employing social media for marketing purposes, and a significant 90% of marketers said that social media was important.
The self-employed (67%) and small business owners with 2 or more employees (66%) were more likely to strongly agree.
More B2B companies have been using social media longer than a year (52.6% reported 1 year or more) than their B2C counterparts (46.2% indicated 1 year or longer). In 2010, only 31% of marketers were using social media for 1 or more years. Now that number has grown to 50%.
58% of marketers are using social media for 6 hours or more each week and 34% for 11 or more hours weekly. 15% of marketers spend more than 20 hours each week on social media.
Those with more years of social media experience spend more time each week conducting social media activities. For example, 63% of people with 3 or more years of experience spend more than 10 hours a week doing social media activities. Only 41% of those with 1 to 3 years experience spend that much time.
Time Commitment For Social Media Marketing
There’s a direct relationship between how long marketers have been using social media and their weekly time commitment. For people just beginning with social media, 59% spend 1 to 5 hours per week. However, for those who have been doing this for a few months or longer, most spend 6 hours or more per week on social media activities.
A significant 47% of marketers who have more than 3 years experience spend at least 16 hours per week focused on social media activities.
There’s a direct relationship between age and time spent on social media. The younger the marketer, the more time he or she spends on social media. People aged 20 to 29 years spend more time than other age groups using social media marketing (with 41% spending 11+ hours weekly), followed by 30- to 39-year-olds (37% spending 11+ hours per week). This is an increase over the 2010 study.
The number-one benefit of social media marketing is standing out in an increasingly noisy world. 88% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated more exposure for their businesses. Improving traffic and subscribers was the second major benefit, with 72% reporting positive results.
Nearly two-thirds of marketers indicated a rise in search engine rankings was a benefit of social media marketing.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs were the top four social media tools used by marketers, with Facebook leading the pack. In 2010, Twitter was in first place with 88% and Facebook was close behind with 87%. Since 2010, Twitter lost 4%, LinkedIn lost 7% and Facebook gained 5%. In the 2009 study, only 77% of businesses were using Facebook.
The self-employed (80%) and owners of small businesses (78%) were more likely to use LinkedIn. Larger businesses were more likely to use YouTube or other video and less likely to use blogs (68%+).
At least 73% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube/video, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. A significant 86% said they have no plans to utilize MySpace or will reduce their efforts.
Source: Social Media Examiner April 2011
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communication,
general,
marketing,
new media,
search,
social media Tags:
Media Post,
roi,
social media,
Social Media Examiner
We are always listening and learning at re:group. Here is an update on where some of us will be this Fall and information on how you might participate.
September 28, 2010 Social Media Club of Detroit presents Scott Stratten’s #UnBook Tour
6 – 8PM at the Detroit Public Library. Scott Stratten is the President of Un-Marketing.com. He is an expert in Viral, Social and Authentic marketing, which he refers to as un-marketing. Over 60,000 people follow him on Twitter. David Murray, our Director of Social Web founded this club. If you are interested please let us know, we would be glad to have you join us as our guest. For more details click here. Read more »
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events,
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general,
interactive,
new media,
search,
social media Tags:
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conferences,
events,
franchise,
social media,
wordpress
We have spent the last year acquiring staff and technical resources to provide our clients with new media and marketing resources in the area of digital as well as social web expertise.
Social Media Marketing
The reality is that in business you can no longer ignore social media. Whether you choose to engage or not, you will be a part of the social media community. And, for most marketers, developing a strategy is now a part of an integrated media presence in this rapidly changing environment. Within a comprehensive consulting package, we can provide you the following Social Media Marketing services:
Brand and Reputation Monitoring
Listening and monitoring of your customers’ behavior and brand engagement online. This extends into providing documentation of their behavior and provides a solid plan of attack for any social media campaign or customer engagement.
Campaign Development and Execution
Suggested strategies focus on an overall social media marketing strategy as it relates to your business. It then expands into the appropriate communication channels and applications, available to your customers and stakeholders.
Implementation of Social Media Marketing Strategies
We can assist you in implementing social marketing campaigns within current marketing and advertising initiatives. We believe an integrated marketing approach of both traditional and social media is essential.
Content and Communication Strategy
This includes overall strategy, creation, and management of all content initiatives. This would also include content optimization and determining successful communication channels where your customers engage.
Campaign Management
We can oversee and report on any social media campaign. This would include online socially-driven campaigns, contests, mobile app campaigns, email marketing and even offline events.
Continual Client Education
The social web is organic and is in constant change. We continuously keep abreast of the latest trends. The strategies we suggest are built on our knowledge of these trends and current consumer behaviors.
We would love to share our expertise with you, or just update you on emerging trends. For more information, contact Carey Jernigan at 734.327.6630 or carey.jernigan@regroup.us
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new media,
social media Tags:
email marketing,
mobile media,
social marketing,
social media,
social media strategies
We don’t really have a blog policy. We let our team weigh in on topics relevant to our business in their own words, with their own opinions. Sure, we check to make sure there isn’t anything slanderous or mean, licentious or libelous. But if one of us wants to say they like or don’t like something, that’s okay. If we didn’t have strong opinions individually, we’d be a lousy communications partner all together.
Unfortunately, some people take offense very, very easily. So if we do offend, we do apologize. But we do not tell our people they can’t have a viewpoint of their own.
Discomfort can be a catalyst for change, or it can be a reason to hide. What makes blogs valuable is that they are written by real people with real thoughts and opinions. How you make use of the insights they offer is up to you.
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new media,
press Tags:
blog policy,
blogging,
blogs,
opinion
We lost our daily paper paper last July in Ann Arbor. The old Ann Arbor News was replaced by an online product, AnnArbor.com. Like many, I was chagrined. I couldn’t imagine breakfast without ink and newsprint. It just seemed strange to imagine reading the daily news on a laptop across my bowl of fruit. Not getting that dirty ink all over my fingers anymore, that would be good. But spilling coffee on my new paper? That would be bad.
I’m not a total Luddite. I’ve been a heavy online user since the pre-www days of Compuserve and Prodigy. So I’m totally comfortable in the online world. But my daily newspaper? Hmm…
I wasn’t happy about it then. I am happy now. Not with the actual digital replacement product. It’s marginal at best. Maybe because it’s marginal, I have been forced to seek out other sources of local news, information and opinion. What a revelation! I guess I never realized how much filtering was required to reduce an entire community with all of its events, quirks, warts, and diverse personalities into a daily bundle of bird cage liner, packing material and filler for my recycle bin.
Make no mistake, these new sources are not fair and balanced journalism. Most don’t pretend to be. Much is presented as fact that is, in fact, not. Articles and reader comments are often snarky, off topic, offensive, and rude. (I kind of like that part, it takes less energy than polite and politically correct). But you learn pretty quickly who has something interesting to say and who doesn’t.
What used to be twenty pages of news and a quarter page of Letters to the Editor is now snippets of news and screen after screen after screen of Letters to the Editor. I always liked the letters best anyway. The only issue I have with this new order is that the conversation tends to be dominated by an annoying few. Maybe they just have too much time on their hands, or maybe they really do know everything… about everything. You who know it all – and you know who you are – start your own blog.
And then there is the anti-everything crowd. News flash: www.antieverything.com is for sale. And the conspiracy theorists. They think I’m out to get them. (I am, but I’ll blog about that some other time.) There are the mindlessly single-minded. Is that an oxymoron? Or just a moron? Their one pet peeve is somehow relevant no matter the topic. The linkers, they think I really need 100 pages of linked minutiae to learn that the school board spent too much on pencils. And then there those I call the twits. The ones who use that incredibly annoying twitterism of using the @ symbol when replying to another poster.
But, all in all, since I’ve been reading these local blogs, news sites, pseudo news sites, rants, and journals, I certainly feel like I am more informed. I might actually be. It’s hard to tell. It is definitely more fun than the old paper paper. And I haven’t spilled anything on it yet.
Posted in
general,
media,
new media,
press Tags:
ann arbor,
AnnArbor.com,
online news
Will Google Buzz be a winner? At this point, it’s too early to tell. The new application Google Buzz is a social media sharing service that is integrated right in Gmail. You can share photos, links, videos, status updates, etc.
One advantage of Google Buzz versus other social networks is that it populates followers for you based off of your Gmail contact list automatically. They are encouraging social networking by creating another way for you to share content easily without barriers. Some other cool features are the real time updates and the ability to easily embed photos and pictures in your update. You’re also not limited to 140 characters.
Unfortunately, Buzz has a few limitations. Buzz updates are sent automatically to your inbox, as well as your Google Buzz tab. The biggest limitation I see is that although you can broadcast your updates and share information easily among your Google followers, there isn’t a way to automatically share this same information with your Facebook or Twitter followers. For now, it is its own encapsulated network. That, and the fact that you can’t Buzz with someone who is not on Gmail, will slow the viral spread of this new network.
What do you think of Google Buzz? Post your comments. And, once you’ve started playing with it, see PC World’s article on 5 Tips for Power Users
Posted in
interactive,
new media Tags:
buzz,
friend sharing,
GMail,
google buzz,
social sharing
Google Labs is working on more personalized search. It allows the user to more easily find relevant blogs, reviews and other public content from their on-line social circle.
When you sign in to Google and do a search, relevant web content written by people in your social circle will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called “Results from people in your social circle.” So you can see the opinions and ideas of people you know about what you’re searching for.
What is your social circle? It’s a combination of your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you’re publicly connected to on other social sites (such as Twitter and FriendFeed). Check it out and let us know what you think. Learn more about social search.
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search Tags:
GMail,
google,
search,
Social Search,
Web
According to Wikipedia, integrated marketing is “a planning process designed to assure that all contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time. Integrated Marketing Communications is a term used to describe a holistic approach to marketing…Integrated Marketing Communications is more than just an advertising campaign, its a whole marketing policy.”
Well, duh. At re:group, we’ve been talking about how important managing every point on the customer journey is for years. Whether it’s on or off line, guerilla or traditional, whether it’s on social media outlets or on a bus card, messaging must be relevant and consistent. Some have called it 360 marketing, others call it unbiased, people-centric, holistic, etc.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many doing it very well. The companies who started in the digital arena say they’re integrated, and their executions may be flashy, but their messaging and creative is usually, frankly, pretty crappy. The big agencies integrate by buying or hiring littler companies to implement their strategies online – not necessarily through collaborative partnership. What good integration boils down to is – get ready for it – having a great idea and getting in the right places for the people you want to talk to, and who you want to talk back. It’s now WHETHER you’re taking advantage of new media and social marketing, it’s HOW.
Keep that in mind when you’re looking for a partner to integrate your marketing. It’s not who has the most fancy tools, it’s who knows how to use them.
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new media Tags:
integrated marketing,
integration,
new media,
SEO
