Stretch Your Social Media Dollars with the Right Technology

As the world of marketing evolves, social media will likely gobble up more of your budget. Fortunately, investing in social media doesn’t require spending a king’s ransom for results. In fact, the real emphasis should be on maximizing the value of your efforts and implementing the right technologies for accurately measuring ROI.

How do you choose reliable technologies that match the goals and needs of your business? Here are six steps that will help steer you in the right direction.

1. Know What You Need – This, of course, varies for business to business. Once you identify exactly what you’re trying to measure (fans, number of hits, attitude toward your product), you can then fine-tune your efforts to maximize your results.

2. Build a Team – Organize a group of social media experts to keep your strategies on track. Members of this formidable group could include a social media strategist, IT person, and a financial rep who can free up the all-important funding for your efforts.

3. Create a Tool Inventory – This document should spell out in vivid detail what social media tools are currently in the arsenals of each business unit. Then confirm their compatibility with any new tools you’re considering.

4. Identify Potential Partners – Create a list of partners who can provide reliable assistance with various social media metrics, covering everything from listening and sentiment to profile management. It is critical to ask questions that build your understanding of a particular tool and its true potential to meet your needs.

5. Test the Waters – Demo each tool to ensure suitability and reliability. The majority of vendors will be more than willing to accommodate your business with a free trial lasting a month or longer. Once the product proves itself to your satisfaction, investing in it will be a much easier decision.

6. Final Decision – You’ve tested, evaluated, and run a particular social media tool through a million trials by fire. Now the moment of truth – do you invest in the product or not? Even if you decide against purchasing the tool under consideration, your team will have gained a valuable education on the subject of social media technologies. So no matter what the outcome, your efforts clearly will be time well-spent.

Do you have any questions or comments about social media metrics, or about any other marketing topic? Feel free to send them our way. You can connect with The Young Company team at 949-376-8404 #205 or byoung@youngcompany.com. And be sure to follow us for the latest industry news and tips.

The Five Launch Buttons of SEO Success

In today’s rapidly-evolving marketplace, Search Engine Optimizers must go well beyond the standard SEO practices that once held sway over the web. With the rules of visitor engagement constantly changing, optimizers who restrict their efforts to basic SEO will be in for a rude awakening -- both in terms of visitors and revenue. Currently, there are five launch buttons that belong on every optimizer’s control panel. Together, they underscore a certain reality prevalent in today’s marketing universe – full optimization must consist of a complete range of integrated tactics working in tandem. Here they are in no particular order --

Technical SEO
Yes, good old on-page optimization is necessary. But even more important is mastering the machinery of technical SEO. Enrich and enlighten yourself with all aspects of this technical universe, including server-side settings, sitemaps, server response codes, and rewrites.

Social Media
The big push for social media, of course, is driving major traffic from all those social sites. Proven ways to capture big crowds are: developing fan-acquisition strategies, building a following and optimizing YouTube content.

Links
Effective link-building is a big boost to optimization. Building strong external links requires strategies such as creating directories and association sites. Naturally, you’ll want to integrate these efforts with internal link optimization on social media platforms such as Facebook. For maximum marketing muscle, it’s a good idea to strike a balance between external and internal links.

Information Architecture
The importance of information architecture cannot be overemphasized. This crucial phase involves organizing content on your site, determining folder structure, and labeling elements.

Content Marketing
Content is the key to bringing visitors into the fold. A savvy optimizer must be well-schooled in content creation. Part of the process is knowing the difference between effective and ineffective content ideas, as well as understanding keyword research, content gaps, and content distribution.

If you have any questions or comments about effective SEO, or about any other marketing topics, feel free to send them our way. You can connect with The Young Company team at 949-376-8404 #205 or byoung@youngcompany.com. And be sure to follow us for the latest industry news and tips.

Social Media Will Be Gobbling Up More Money

If you own or manage an SMB (small or midsize business), watch out – social media will be gobbling up more of your money. In fact, you’ll probably be tripling your expenditures for national social media advertising during the next five years. For local markets, your spending is destined to be seven times higher. At least, these are the well-grounded predictions of Borrell and Associates. In 2011 alone, SMB’s funneled a staggering $1.1 billion into local social ad campaigns. Remember, this hefty chunk of change doesn’t even include other types of online marketing, such as Google Ad Words.

Are SMB’s expecting astronomical revenue boosts over the coming years? Maybe. But most of the funding will be siphoned off of other types of advertising expenditures. Remember that phenomenon called ‘printing’? A big slice will be cut from the budgets for this category, with the cash generously redistributed to social. Basically, less money available for newspapers, phone book ads, and direct mail means more for Facebook and Twitter. But print won’t be the only category taking it on the chin. Paid searches, email campaigns, and other strategies will also be feeding the growing cash appetite of social media.

Given this impending scenario, should SMB’s be forking over big bucks for social media advertising -- especially when the likes of Facebook and twitter offer them so many free options? The truth is, many business owners and managers feel more comfortable hiring expert help than doing it themselves. After all, there’s a very real risk of creating a marketing fiasco, especially in the still-uncharted social media waters. So in many cases, the costs might well be worth the price tag. It all depends on the knowledge, available time, and interest level of an SMB’s social marketers. If the decision makers can implement these assets on their own, do-it-yourself social marketing has a definite appeal. If not, better to spend for expertise then risk disaster.

What do you think? Should SMB’s pour big bucks into social media advertising or enjoy the available free ride? Feel free to fire off your comments below.

And, of course, if you have any questions or comments about social media, or about any other marketing topics, feel free to send them our way. You can connect with The Young Company team at 949-376-8404 #205 or byoung@youngcompany.com. And be sure to follow us for the latest industry news and tips.

Bring a Few Friends to Your Marketing Campaign

Share and share alike, we’ve all heard the phrase. Many of us often practice the principle. Now this noble concept of give and take will play a major role in propelling marketing into a new realm of possibilities.

GE has unlocked the doorway with a recent test campaign. To quantify the value of online buzz, the company distributed their ‘GE Show’ video through two separate channels -- paid placements and sharing. The results told a fascinating story – there was a marked difference in recipient attitudes, depending on how the video was received.

As it turned out, viewers of the shared content responded with greater gusto than people who saw the paid placements. The former group awarded GE very high marks for creativity and innovation. From a quantitative standpoint, the sharing folks were 83% more likely to view GE as creative as the paid placement group. The results were culled from thousands of responses to online surveys.

Based on this study, content shared through online word-of-mouth reaches much further and deeper than the paid variety. Undeniably, platforms ranking high on the share meter have a distinct advantage over their lower ranking rivals. Marketers would do well to take note. Nevertheless, experts believe that both paid and shared content are necessary components for a successful campaign. One seems to feed off the other.

The hope is that quantifiable results garnered from studies such as the GE test will help marketers determine the potential value of their media campaigns. It’s important to remember, however, that we still are only in the early stages of this new approach. Only further research will tell the full story.

Do you have any questions or comments about shared content, or about any other marketing topics? Feel free to send them our way. You can connect with the Young Company team at 949-376-8404 #205 or byoung@youngcompany.com. And be sure to follow us for the latest industry news and tips.