Facebook's Top Marketing Partners Offer Their Best Insights For Building Successful Campaigns

There is no better window into the fast-changing world of social media marketing than a conversation with Facebook's top marketers and strategic partners.

For a recent report, BI Intelligence spoke with some of Facebook's ultra-elite "strategic preferred marketing developers," or SPMDs, of which there are only 14 in existence. They have privileged access to Facebook, and often help the social network develop marketing and ad-focused products.

BI Intelligence interviewed executives at four leading SPMDs

who pointed to the key factors driving social media marketing's future, like the changing relationship between paid, owned and earned media. They spoke about why the future of social media marketing will be determined by the companies with the best data, software and technology. Creative will play a role, but it won't determine the kingmakers. And they described the best tactics for driving results on social media.

Here are some of the insights gleaned from our conversations:

• Moving beyond last-click attribution: One Adobe client, a hospitality and entertainment group, realized their apps were driving sales through other online and offline channels. They only realized this once they stopped obsessing on the last click before a sale, and tracked customers across channels.
• Pre-Testing Paid Media: Other elite Facebook marketing partners like Brand Networks and Adaptly understand that owned and earned media isn't just valuable in and of itself. It's also valuable as a source of analytics and data that will hint at what types of content will work as paid media. One airline brand using this technique saw total reach more than double to 63% of its targeted fans.
• Measuring Quality Of Engagement: SPMDs understand that the best metrics don't just measure quality, but quantity too. SPMDs have the best technology and interfaces for sifting through data.
• Understanding Facebook Activity In Emerging Markets: SPMDs and PMDs more broadly can be marketers' field experts, sensitizing them to seasonal, cultural, and local economic factors.
• Influencing Facebook Product Development: SPMDs have influence at Facebook and have pushed Facebook to make many needed changes such as streamlining its paid media ad product line.

But the landscape will change quickly:

• With over 260 PMDs all vying for the same pool of ad dollars, it is unlikely that they all will be able to remain in business. Our sources see industry consolidation via bankruptcies, mergers, and acquisitions.
• The key to this game is the technology. It's not about a flashy name and a reputation for social media knowledge. The best social media marketing specialists will have a great tech stack at their foundation.
• PMDs should see a greater share of revenue come from software and technology licensing, or software-as-a-service.
• Already, one prominent PMD has folded after failing to reach sustainability. Syncapse was overly dependent on a single client, BlackBerry. And it had not achieved any significant revenue figures for its software package.
• The lessons for social media marketing specialists? Diversify your client base, and build your company on a foundation of great technology, not fee-skimming.
• Other social media networks like Twitter and Pinterest will build out schemes similar to Facebook's PMD ecosystem, and push agencies and brands to connect with their ad solutions via these partners.

To access BI Intelligence's full reports on the future of Social Media Marketing as seen by VALIANT PUBLIC RELATIONS, sign up for a free trial subscription here.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN HYDERABAD

How to measure the value of social media marketing

There are many ways to measure a company's return on investment in social media, and often effective methods depend on how small-business owners are using social media and for what purpose.

The "amplification model," also known as the purchase equivalency calculator, is used to measure the value of social impressions, which is how many people have seen the content, and actions, such as clicking on a link or sharing information, said Jim Tobin, founder and president of Ignite Social Media, a social media marketing agency in Cary, N.C.

The amplification model doesn't calculate return on sales from marketing. It shows the value of impressions and actions and compares them to the cost of buying that level of activity through traditional advertising means, Tobin said.

Using the amplification model, look at the number of organic impressions on Facebook, Twitter or your blog post. Facebook Insights is one of several tools that can track views and interactions.

"We can calculate the number of impressions that our organic efforts, such as our updates, have generated," Tobin said. "And we can put a value on them by multiplying by the common cost per thousand impressions."

For a highly targeted online media buy, such as one on Facebook and Twitter, impressions easily cost $10 per 1,000, Tobin said.

Owners can also measure actions that are more valuable than impressions, such as if someone reacts to a post, shares it or clicks on a link.

"So we could begin to say, 'What's a click worth?' " Tobin said. Owners can determine that by looking at what marketers pay on the cost-per-click model, which can vary.

If a company knows it spends an average of 50 cents per click for a website, such as Google, or 20 cents per view from YouTube advertising, then look at social media analytics and figure out how much the social media clicks are worth.

 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN HYDERABAD

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/10/17/4394344/how-to-measure-the-value-of-social.html#.UmKQ5nBpmpA#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/10/17/4394344/how-to-measure-the-value-of-social.html#.UmKQ5nBpmpA#storylink=cpy

How much is your social media marketing worth?Honda has created a social media teaser campaign as it ratchets up the tension ahead of the launch of the new Honda Civic Type R hot hatch in 2015. With a YouTube film showing the new model being tested at the Nurburgring race track in Germany and a call for fans to tweet pictures of their own journeys in a Type R, social channels will be vital in boosting awareness and engagement for the new launch. Calculating the value of this social media investment falls to Honda Europe social media manager Simon Nicholson. Working out the return on investment - "ROI" - of social media activity is one of the big challenges for those promoting social channels. One of the main ways of doing it is through assessing the "opportunity cost" of the campaign - comparing how much it costs to achieve a given result compared to other forms of marketing. One of the big uses of social media for Honda is responding to customer service requests. By comparing the cost of a request via a call centre with the lower cost of handling it via social media, the social ROI can be measured by the saving created. Yet another measure could be the positive brand sentiment from simplifying the customer service process through social media, though it is hard to put an exact figure on an emotion. As the Honda Civic Type R will not be launched for another two years, it is impossible to tie the social media campaign directly to sales. But a social media campaign's ROI can be analysed in a variety of ways. From a PR perspective, it could be measured by awareness - the "type r" film got over 300,000 views online while hundreds of fans tweeted pictures and there have been thousands of Twitter comments using the hashtag #typer. Then again, from a marketing point of view, the measure could be based on conversion and targeting, for instance through the number of people who watched the YouTube film and were then re-targeted with ads, perhaps then signing up for more information. "The metrics you use change depending on the department the social media is working for," says Nicholson. "Social media has great return on investment. There are some aspects that are difficult to measure, though others you can measure. My advice is to look at all the individual social media activities and measure their specific value rather than trying to judge the ROI of a whole channel of communications," he says. Salesforce Exact Target Marketing Cloud believes it is possible to directly attribute revenue increases and cost savings back to social media campaigns. For instance, a social media campaign that drives visitors to a brand's website could be compared to the cost of a banner advertising campaign with the same goal. Meanwhile, if a brand creates a social media campaign garnering recommendations from people's friends and contacts, this can boost the amount users spend with the brand. The Salesforce BuddyMedia publishing tool could also save substantially on production costs. According to Salesforce, all of these cost savings and revenue boosts can be added together to give a single figure for the benefits of using a particular social media platform, as well as a percentage ROI. Many brands are content to use social media to promote conversations about their brand messages rather than trying to make social stack up financially against other forms of marketing. As Victoria Cripps, brand manager at children's healthy eating brand Ella's Kitchen, says: "It is very hard to put a worth to a Facebook Like or put a financial measure against it. Social is a new medium, so trying to use a lot of metrics against it is quite tricky. But we know it's really important, it drives word of mouth recommendation and brand advocacy." As the brand's use of social media develops, the marketing department is moving towards calculating hard measures of its effectiveness. The brand tracks a number of factors such as engagement scores and the increase in Facebook fans, though Cripps says the soft measures like "brand love" are most important at present. The big change could come if Ella's Kitchen moves into e-commerce, as it will then be possible to directly track the effects of social campaigns on sales. Just Eat, which allows people to order meals from local take-aways online, sees social media as a driver of positive conversations about the brand and as a customer service tool. The main costs of running social media campaigns are the wages of the one or two staff involved, so the company's finance bosses do not demand detailed evidence about ROI. Social media manager Sarah Morton says: "One thing that's really important in social media campaigns is to work out what you want to achieve. For Just Eat, social media is less about selling take-aways and more about building the brand values and our "don't cook" message. Social is important in creating the anti-cooking theme and establishing a rebellious tone of voice." The brand measures the success of this through analysing comments using the Salesforce Radian6 social listening tool. Putting a financial value on social media spending is far from an exact science. As brands get more experienced at running social media campaigns, this will give them benchmarks by which to judge new campaigns. For the moment, many seem content to use social as a tool for building up their brands and to get people talking about them.

How much is your social media marketing worth?

Honda has created a social media teaser campaign as it ratchets up the tension ahead of the launch of the new Honda Civic Type R hot hatch in 2015.

With a YouTube film showing the new model being tested at the Nurburgring race track in Germany and a call for fans to tweet pictures of their own journeys in a Type R, social channels will be vital in boosting awareness and engagement for the new launch.

Calculating the value of this social media investment falls to Honda Europe social media manager Simon Nicholson. Working out the return on investment - "ROI" - of social media activity is one of the big challenges for those promoting social channels. One of the main ways of doing it is through assessing the "opportunity cost" of the campaign - comparing how much it costs to achieve a given result compared to other forms of marketing.

One of the big uses of social media for Honda is responding to customer service requests. By comparing the cost of a request via a call centre with the lower cost of handling it via social media, the social ROI can be measured by the saving created.

Yet another measure could be the positive brand sentiment from simplifying the customer service process through social media, though it is hard to put an exact figure on an emotion.

As the Honda Civic Type R will not be launched for another two years, it is impossible to tie the social media campaign directly to sales. But a social media campaign's ROI can be analysed in a variety of ways. From a PR perspective, it could be measured by awareness - the "type r" film got over 300,000 views online while hundreds of fans tweeted pictures and there have been thousands of Twitter comments using the hashtag #typer.

Then again, from a marketing point of view, the measure could be based on conversion and targeting, for instance through the number of people who watched the YouTube film and were then re-targeted with ads, perhaps then signing up for more information. "The metrics you use change depending on the department the social media is working for," says Nicholson.

"Social media has great return on investment. There are some aspects that are difficult to measure, though others you can measure. My advice is to look at all the individual social media activities and measure their specific value rather than trying to judge the ROI of a whole channel of communications," he says.

Salesforce Exact Target Marketing Cloud believes it is possible to directly attribute revenue increases and cost savings back to social media campaigns. For instance, a social media campaign that drives visitors to a brand's website could be compared to the cost of a banner advertising campaign with the same goal. Meanwhile, if a brand creates a social media campaign garnering recommendations from people's friends and contacts, this can boost the amount users spend with the brand. The Salesforce BuddyMedia publishing tool could also save substantially on production costs. According to Salesforce, all of these cost savings and revenue boosts can be added together to give a single figure for the benefits of using a particular social media platform, as well as a percentage ROI.

Many brands are content to use social media to promote conversations about their brand messages rather than trying to make social stack up financially against other forms of marketing.

As Victoria Cripps, brand manager at children's healthy eating brand Ella's Kitchen, says: "It is very hard to put a worth to a Facebook Like or put a financial measure against it. Social is a new medium, so trying to use a lot of metrics against it is quite tricky. But we know it's really important, it drives word of mouth recommendation and brand advocacy."

As the brand's use of social media develops, the marketing department is moving towards calculating hard measures of its effectiveness. The brand tracks a number of factors such as engagement scores and the increase in Facebook fans, though Cripps says the soft measures like "brand love" are most important at present.

The big change could come if Ella's Kitchen moves into e-commerce, as it will then be possible to directly track the effects of social campaigns on sales.

Just Eat, which allows people to order meals from local take-aways online, sees social media as a driver of positive conversations about the brand and as a customer service tool. The main costs of running social media campaigns are the wages of the one or two staff involved, so the company's finance bosses do not demand detailed evidence about ROI.

Social media manager Sarah Morton says: "One thing that's really important in social media campaigns is to work out what you want to achieve. For Just Eat, social media is less about selling take-aways and more about building the brand values and our "don't cook" message. Social is important in creating the anti-cooking theme and establishing a rebellious tone of voice." The brand measures the success of this through analysing comments using the Salesforce Radian6 social listening tool.

Putting a financial value on social media spending is far from an exact science. As brands get more experienced at running social media campaigns, this will give them benchmarks by which to judge new campaigns. For the moment, many seem content to use social as a tool for building up their brands and to get people talking about them. 

http://valiantpublicrelations.in/

Use Social Media to Steal Market Share (and More Good Advice for CMOs)

Use Social Media to Steal Market Share (and More Good Advice for CMOs)

Social media has proven itself an invaluable venue for businesses promoting their products and specials, but its value doesn't end there. The direct and unbiased feedback customers share via social media opens a universe of possibilities for CMOs who want to blow the doors off of the competition while driving measurable results.

The first step in this process is to operationalize social media feedback for a more informed strategy, more engaged customers, and increased market share.

Here are five ways CMOs can start getting more out of social media today.

1. Look for brand impact

Marketing teams know their company's brand mission and brand promise best. When looking at social feedback, keep a keen eye on how the brand promise is aligning with operational delivery—on the ground, every day. Look for reviews that provide insights into whether your business is meeting, exceeding, or falling short of customer expectations. This is a key metric that few CMOs consider. If you're missing the mark, work with your operations team to put a solution in place that addresses the issues.

"An important part of our business model is to seamlessly integrate into the local community," says Jeremy Morgan, senior vice-president of marketing and consumer insights for the popular gourmet burger chain Smashburger.

When entering a new market, the company develops specific menu items that reflect the culture and cuisine of the region. "We've set the expectation that guests are going to get a unique experience when they choose us, and our social intelligence tools to let us know if we've hit that bull's-eye—or not. If their experience [shared online] is not aligned with that brand expectation, believe me, we'll hear it and adjust."

2. Share the wealth

Social media has clear value for marketers, but the data and insights it produces are useful to the rest of the business, too.

As quickly and as often as possible, CMOs should share that information (even in the form of a weekly alert) with operations, product teams, merchandisers, and suppliers for timely "gut checks" and insight into whether the organization is delivering on its brand promise.

Morgan is a huge advocate for sharing social intelligence within the organization. Smashburger executives get daily emails with guest reviews, so they can quickly identify patterns at specific locations or across the business, and the marketing and operations teams meet regularly to review overall trends in guest feedback.

"The marketing team is ultimately responsible for the customer experience, and we serve as the central hub for guest feedback. So it's critical that we get that information into the right hands, whether it's operations, IT, packaging, or personnel," Morgan says.

Consumers don't care about your corporate silos; they care about their experiences. So break down the walls and share your wealth of knowledge.

3. Redefine your approach to marketing strategy

You're a marketer; clearly, you've mastered the 4 Ps. But maybe you didn't realize that there is a wealth of information on your products, pricing, promotions, and placement hiding in your online reviews.

Products, locations, and customer personas vary widely from region to region, but don't let that complexity hold you back. Use the location-specific insight from social media reviews to drive regional strategies and shape targeted marketing plans.

Know that not every promotion or customer engagement strategy will be worth the effort. Find out which ones work best by using social media feedback to gauge the response to your offerings, both in-store and online. Says Morgan, "Social feedback drastically reduces the time it takes to gauge customer sentiment. It's a direct line between the guest and the business that's open 24/7."

4. Don't just listen—act

This one may seem obvious, but few companies do it well. Start by putting a priority on social media feedback across all review and social sites, and then assign people on your team to actually engage with customers. When you communicate with a personal touch, you turn positive reviewers and commenters into brand advocates—and, often, earn a second chance from negative reviewers.

Since its launch in 2007, Smashburger has been vigilant about communicating with guests, making a commitment to respond to questions and comments within 24 hours. "We were born in the age of social media, so those tools have always been an important part of the way we do business," says Morgan. "What we try to do now is take that guest engagement to the next level, reaching people who are not just talking to us but about us. That's where we have a real opportunity to differentiate."

5. Steal market share

Customer experiences aren't happening in a vacuum: You're constantly being compared with your competitors, and simple brand loyalty isn't going to be enough to keep customers coming back. Turn social media into a competitive advantage: Use others' potential gaps or missteps and maximize your own successes.

If you know where your highest and lowest satisfaction ratings are coming from, you can help shape your operations and long-term strategies to reflect the most lucrative opportunities.

According to Morgan, everything comes back to the brand expectation: "Different restaurants are evaluated by different standards based on the expectations they set for their customers. You have to decide where you want to really outshine your competitors—ingredients, variety, value, service—and then commit to exceeding those standards. Your bottom line will tell you if you've been successful, but your guest reviews will tell you why."

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites.

Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. A corporate message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it appears to come from a trusted, third-party source, as opposed to the brand or company itself. Hence, this form of marketing is driven by word-of-mouth, meaning it results in earned media rather than paid media.

Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. Increased communication for organizations fosters brand awareness and often, improved customer service. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns.

Social networking websites allow individuals to interact with one another and build relationships. When..

The Future Of Social Media Marketing: Less Players, With Better Technology, Competing For More Dollars

There is no better window into the fast-changing world of social media marketing than Facebook's preferred marketing developer program. It has only been in existence for 18 months, and already there are over 260 such partners operating worldwide, helping brands plug into Facebook's ad platforms and parse performance. Within the program, there's an even more elite group of fourteen "strategic preferred marketing developers," or SPMDs.

Since they have privileged access, and often help Facebook develop ad products, these so-called SPMDs are arguably the best sources to turn to when trying to predict the future of social media as a high-tech marketing platform.

In a recent report, BI Intelligence interviewed executives at four leading SPMDs, who pointed to the key factors driving social media marketing's future, like the changing relationship between paid, owned and earned media. They saw consolidation in their area - the tech side of things, as opposed to the creative side - as inevitable, and believed only the marketing developers with the best technology would win out. As more brand dollars flow into social media, some firms will be able to build scale and others will lose the race and fall by the wayside.

• With over 260 PMDs all vying for the same pool of ad dollars, it is unlikely that they all will be able to remain in business. Our sources see industry consolidation via bankruptcies, mergers, and acquisitions.
• The key to this game is the technology. It's not about a flashy name and a reputation for social media knowledge. The best social media marketing specialists will have a great tech stack at their foundation.
• PMDs should see a greater share of revenue come from software and technology licensing, or software-as-a-service.
• Already, one prominent PMD has folded after failing to reach sustainability. Syncapse was overly dependent on a single client, BlackBerry. And it had not achieved any significant revenue figures for its software package.
• The lessons for social media marketing specialists? Diversify your client base, and build your company on a foundation of great technology, not fee-skimming.
• Other social media networks like Twitter and Pinterest will build out schemes similar to Facebook's PMD ecosystem, and push agencies and brands to connect with their ad solutions via these partners.

Here are some of the other insights gleaned from our conversations with Facebook's strategic marketing partners:

• Moving beyond last-click attribution: One Adobe client, a hospitality and entertainment group, realized their apps were driving sales through other online and offline channels. They only realized this once they stopped obsessing on the last click before a sale, and tracked customers across channels.
• Pre-Testing Paid Media: Other elite Facebook marketing partners like Brand Networks and Adaptly understand that owned and earned media isn't just valuable in and of itself. It's also valuable as a source of analytics and data that will hint at what types of content will work as paid media. One airline brand using this technique saw total reach more than double to 63% of its targeted fans.
• Measuring Quality Of Engagement: SPMDs understand that the best metrics don't just measure quality, but quantity too. SPMDs have the best technology and interfaces for sifting through data.
• Understanding Facebook Activity In Emerging Markets: SPMDs and PMDs more broadly can be marketers' field experts, sensitizing them to seasonal, cultural, and local economic factors.
• Influencing Facebook Product Development: SPMDs have influence at Facebook and have pushed Facebook to make many needed changes such as streamlining its paid media ad product line.

The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014

With new social networking platforms appearing from behind every corner, it can be hard to know exactly where to commit your time and resources. And as we move into the latter-half of 2013, it’s important to look ahead to where social networking is going, and how we can get on board.

As I think about the trends in social media so far this year, I’ve compiled a list of my predictions as to where we’re headed as we inch towards 2014.

1. Investment in Social Media Will Become a Necessity, Not aLuxury

While I’d argue that investing time and resources into a social media strategy is most definitely a necessity in 2013, I believe the tipping point in public sentiment from ‘should have’ to ‘must have’ will occur in 2014.

Businesses are already coming to terms with the need to integrate their social media efforts with their content strategy, and are seeing the impact of social media in terms of lead generation, referral traffic, and revenue.

As businesses see these very real and measurable benefits, I believe we’ll see a move away from assigning social media tasks to existing employees, and see even more companies hiring social media strategists or full-time social media managers.

The benefits of social media are many, but they include:

• Improved social signals (which are a factor in the search ranking algorithm).
• Company branding
• Improved brand awareness
• Word-of-mouth advertising
• Increased customer loyalty and trust
• Improved audience reach and influence

Social media is also one of the three pillars of SEO.

2. Google GOOG +13.8%+ Will Become a Major Factor

While Facebook FB +3.85% continues to lead the pack in terms of number of active monthly users (1.15 billion at last count), Google+ is quickly gaining steam, and in fact, now has the second highest number of monthly users (343 million).

With Google using the platform to collect personal information (think demographics, location, etc.), Google+ should no longer be thought of as ‘just’ another social network. It’s increasingly proving itself to be an integral part of Google’s grand scheme in terms of SEO, social signals and providing a more personalized search experience. This is especially apparent with the importance of Google Authorship, which I project will be one of the key components to Google’s search ranking algorithm by the end of 2014.

I believe that businesses who are finding themselves spread thin with their social media efforts will increasingly turn to Google+ as the closest thing we have to a ‘one size fits all’ social network.

As Google+ moves towards even greater integration with other aspects of the web – as they’ve already done with their foray into local search – I think we’ll see its growth skyrocket, both in terms of business and personal use. For information on how to start using Google+, read “How to Breathe Life into Your Google+ Profile.”

3. Image-Centric Networks Will See Huge Success

We’ve seen a consistent trend in 2013 toward sharing through image andvideo, rather than text-based content. Visual content will increasingly become a critical piece of any solid content strategy, and social networking site Pinterest will continue to shed its reputation as a ‘women’s only’ network and become an integral part of retailers’ marketing strategies.

Other image-based social media sites like Slideshare, Tumblr, Path, and Mobli will continue to grow, and businesses will need to become more mindful about the ‘sharability’ factor of photos on their websites and blogs in order to derive significant benefit from their social media content marketing efforts.

4. We’ll Witness the Rise of Micro-Video

It seems that writing 140 characters and taking 3 minute long videos is becoming too tedious for many of us. Micro video to the rescue!

With the emergence of micro video apps like Twitter’s Vine and now Instagram’s video sharing feature, we’re seeing even more movement toward real-time video sharing. And not just any videos; with Instagram allowing 3-15 seconds per video, and Vine allowing precisely 6 seconds, users are even more likely to create and share videos from their smartphones.

It will be interesting to see if and how these bite-sized pieces of content will change the playing field when it comes to video-based social media.

5. Foursquare Will Decline Sharply

With stale traffic numbers, and significant difficulties raising capital in 2013, Foursquare continues to struggle its way towards 2014.

With other social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter offering location-based features, it seems like only a matter of time before Foursquare folds and their users are absorbed into these other networks.

6. MySpace, Love it or Hate it, Will Grow

With their radical makeover and re-branding efforts earlier this year, MySpace appears to be getting its second wind. Offering an iPhone app that allows users to network, receive private messages, and listen to their own personalized radio station, MySpace seems to be on track for growth in 2014.

I don’t see MySpace ever again competing in the same space as Facebook or Twitter, but it will be interesting to see how the network grows among bands and music-lovers.

7. LinkedIn Will Become a Major Player for B2B Business Growth

Still holding steady as the #1 social networking site for professionals with 238 million users, LinkedIn isn’t just sitting on its heels. With the launch of itsInfluencers program, LinkedIn is positioning itself as not only another networking site, but as one of the largest sources of content creation and curation for professionals.

As it grows and attracts even more users, the advantages of being “linked in” will become enormous for B2B marketers. For a guide on how to use LinkedIn for Marketing, see my article “The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Marketing.”

Final Thoughts

Facebook and Twitter show no signs of imminent decline, but it will be interesting to see how they innovate to keep up with the growth of Google+ as well as image and video-based networks.

With social media behemoth Facebook turning 10 in 2014 (has it really been that long?), they’ll continue to focus efforts on mobile, and on offering advertisers opportunities to better target their ads. And while Twitter continues to be the golden child amongst B2B marketers, I’m curious to see if and how the rise of Google+ will impact its market share.

While most business owners are aware of the necessity of having a social media strategy, I believe 2014 will be the year where a majority will finally understand the necessity to commit the necessary time and resources to their social media efforts. I’m excited to see which up-and-coming networks grab a share of the market, and which have already run their course. If you’re a business owner looking to build your social media presence, I recommend this article: “How to Determine Which Social Media Network Fits Your Business.”

Which social networking sites do you think we should be watching? Which do you think are on their last legs? Let me know in the comments below!

14 Ways to Promote Your Latest YouTube Video

If you’re like me, you put a lot of time, effort, and thought into your YouTube videos.  Even if you don’t, since YouTube is the second most searched engine in the world (and owned by the #1—Google), there is good reason to make the most of each upload.

Here are the 14 tasks bloggers should do whenever you upload a YouTube video to your YouTube channel.

1. Add an SEO-optimized title: Your YouTube video title is essential in helping your video be found, so use appropriate keywords.
2. Add an SEO description: Include a description that isn’t keyword stuffed, but does include your main keywords.
3. Add your website link to the description: If you have a website or blog, be sure to provide a link back to that.  You can also include links to all of your social media channels.  When posting links, be sure to include the “http” or the “https,” as that’s the only way YouTube can automatically hyperlink it.
   
   Also, be sure that your main link is visible above “the fold”—in other words, above where the Show More section. Most people will not click on Show More, but will click on your main link.
4. Maximize your tags: so many people do not maximize the number of tags that they can have. Tags are your keywords, and they are critically important to being found. Include any relevant tags. Then, check back in a month or two to see how that particular video is being found—and change out some of the tags that are insignificant. For your long-tail keywords, be sure to include them within quotes, like “Business Blog Writers,” so that they’re searched as single phrases, rather than three separate words.
5. Post on Pinterest: In August, Krizia taught us How to Add Your YouTube Videos to Pinterest. Note that Krizia also suggests branding every video that you have on your channel because Pinterest allows people to watch the video directly on Pinterest. Unless they have motivation or reason to find out more, most viewers will not click through to your YouTube channel.
6. Like your video: The number of likes on your video helps it gain popularity, so by liking it, you’re just helping it get the attention of the audience you’re trying to target.
7. Share it on Facebook: Whether you have a Facebook page dedicated to your blog or website, or whether you just use your personal Facebook profile, you will want to share your video there for people to see.  You never know who they will share it with—this is how many videos have gone viral. If you are posting a video that involves a company, take the time to tag them in the post with the video link.
   
8. Share It on Twitter: As usual, you want to shoot a link to your video out to all your Twitter followers. Be sure to include relevant hash tags and, if your video features a company and its product, then you definitely want to include their Twitter handle in the tweet too. For example, when I upload a product review for Floppycats, I then send out a Tweet like this, “Ragdoll Cats Chow Down on Eden Foods Bonito Tuna Flakes—Floppycats http://ow.ly/cU6Gp @edenfoods #cat #cats”.
9. Share it on Google+: YouTube is owned by Google and so is Google+. They like each other, so make sure they like your videos too.
10. Share it on LinkedIn (if appropriate): If your video is business-related and will help your efforts to grow your business, then you certainly want to share it on LinkedIn.
11. Schedule it to post on HootSuite monthly, for the next year: I like to come up with a Tweet or a Facebook posting for each new video, and reschedule them for release once a month for a year. As a blogger, it shows companies you’re promoting that you are looking to maintain your relationships with them, and also helps an old video enjoy new life every month.
12. Create a video response: Search for a video that is similar to yours, and rather than writing a comment about it, create a video response that will attract the audience you want.
13. Write a blog post and embed the video: More than likely you are trying to get Google to love your website and want to put it at the top of their search engine results. So make them love it more by embedding your YouTube videos into your blog posts.
14. Add it to a playlist: Whether you have already established playlists, or need a new one for this video, add it to a playlist using a relevant keyword from the video.

They’re the essential 14 steps, but are other things to do when you post a video, like adding annotations, asking people to subscribe, and adding transcripts, as Deepak covered in SEO Your YouTube Videos in 10 Steps.

What are some of the things that you do when you upload a video to YouTube?  What would you add to this list?

Jenny Dean is the Editor over at Business Blog Writers, online SEO content writers.  She also runs her own blogs and each of them has a YouTube channel:  Floppycats, Antioxidant-fruits and Guide to Couponing.  Business Blog Writers offers a YouTube enhancement service to help you execute these 14 things to do!

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Facebook testing celebrity-only mobile app

Facebook are currently testing an app built for celebrities that is designed to help them manage their public persona.

Sources speaking to AllThingsD said that the VIP-only mobile app would help the famous reach out to fans, monitor their feedback, and respond quickly to “become part of the conversation”.

Facebook have since confirmed the app’s existence, saying: “We are currently testing some mobile features designed to help public figures interact with their fans. We are testing these features with a small group of partners and will share more details should we roll it out more widely.”

The new app would help Facebook to compete with the likes of Instagram and Twitter; social networks which make it easy for interactions between fans and the public to be monitored and that attract a lot of attention and traffic from this.

Twitter is often used for celebrities to make quasi-public announcements, and the capacity for fans to reply directly to tweets using the @-sign makes it easy for VIPs (or their staff) to gauge reactions and feedback.

Despite Facebook encouraging brands and companies to use the site, the social network has not adapted well to covering current news stories. It’s recently ‘borrowed’ certain features from Twitter including hashtags and trending topics to try and ape the micro-blogging site’s success in the public arena.

Facebook have had some major coups in this area though, and AllThingsD point to the example set by Channing Tatum, an American actor who posted the first picture of his new born son to his Facebook account.

Tatum’s example shows how increasing the celebrity-friendy aspects of Facebook is beneficial for everyone except the paparazzi; allowing famous people to have greater control over their media coverage and let fans feel more ‘involved’, whilst also boosting traffic for Facebook itself.

Facebook's most liked celebrities

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the top-ten most liked celebrities on Facebook are almost exclusively musicians, with the exception of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.

The highest-ranked actor is Will Smith (#12 with 49,316,545 fans) and the first non-musician/actor to make an appearance in the league-tables of global popularity is, of course, Barack Obama - sneaking in at #28 with 36,500,786 followers.

And, as Michael Jackson and Linkin Park both show, you don't have to be culturally current or even alive, to achieve acclaim on Facebook - a vocal fanbase is all it takes.

See below for the top ten, or visit fanpagelist.com for the full rankings.

#1 Eminem - 74,565,095

#2 Rihanna - 74,514,822

#3 Shakira - 68,363,237 

#4 Michael Jackson - 62,533,881

#5 Cristiano Ronaldo - 59,682,299

#6 Lady Gaga - 58,723,598

#7 Justin Bieber - 56,155,492

#8 Katy Perry - 56,010,181

#9 Linkin Park - 55,869,431

#10 Beyonce -  49,777,553 

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Facebook Takes on Twitter by Courting Celebrities, Building Twittery Tools

• in

When Channing Tatum anted to publish the first picture of his new baby in June, he didn’t go to People or Us Magazine. Instead, he posted on his Facebook page.

And when Andy Murray won a surprise victory in Wimbledon in July, he headed straight to Facebook, where he hosted a Q&A with his fans.

That’s not a coincidence. Facebook has been ramping up its efforts to get more famous people using the site. In recent months it has bulked up a global team tasked with courting and hand-holding stars; in some cases, it offers incentives for those who post.

It’s all part of a bigger push to encourage more “public” content on the site, beyond the stuff only you and your friends care about. Facebook wants you to spend more time talking about things in the news, or stuff you see on TV. And it would like you to pay attention to things your favorite celebrities do on the site.

In other words: Facebook is acting more like Twitter.

Facebook officials won’t say that out loud. They cast their moves as a response to user behavior that has existed on the site for a long time, which is reasonable enough. But some will privately concede the Twitter parallels. And Twitter management is certainly taking notice.

Acting a bit like Twitter might not be a terrible idea. Advertisers are happy enough with Facebook — they’re on track to spend more than $6 billion on the social network this year — but marketers and TV networks seem intrigued with Twitter’s approach, as well. So why not take a few pages from that playbook, even if you don’t want to say that’s what you’re doing?

Which explains the Twitter-like tools and features Facebook has rolled out in recent months: “Verified” accounts to let users know that a famous person’s profile is legitimate; “hashtags” to help group conversations around the same topic; and embeddable posts, which let interesting things that happen on Facebook also appear on blogs and other sites.

Later today, Facebook plans to introduce another Twitterish feature. It will start experimenting with “Trending Topics” — a billboard that highlights things lots of Facebook users are talking about.

In Facebook’s version, which it said it will test with a small percentage of U.S. users on the company’s mobile website, users will see a banner flagging a particular topic. If they click on it, they’ll see what some of their friends are saying about it, and then they’ll see comments and posts from people they don’t know.

Justin Osofsky, the Facebook executive who oversees platform partnerships and is heading up the “public” push, said the company isn’t trying to move Facebook away from its original mission — connecting users with people they know.

But he said that lots of people are already using Facebook to sound off about politics, or TV shows, or celebrities. Like Facebook users who generated 65 million “Likes” and comments about the Oscars on the day of this year’s awards show.

The new initiative, he said, will help Facebook “unlock and surface the conversation about shared interests that’s already happening.”

And if it can spark more conversations, even better. Facebook has always helped celebrities navigate the site, and at times has had various outreach programs, including some led by Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi.

But earlier this year, Osofsky expanded the team that works with stars, from four people to “more than 10.” Among the new hires is Glenn Miller, who had formerly been in charge of digital strategy at the CAA talent agency. Talent managers and agents say they’ve heard a lot more from Facebook reps in the past few months. (Of course, they continue to hear from Twitter and other tech companies, too: Last week, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and product head Michael Sippey made the rounds in Hollywood.)

Nick Grudin, who heads up Facebook’s talent team, said its main job is to encourage “best practices” for celebs who want to use Facebook, like posting candid thoughts and pictures. (An example Grudin loves: Kobe Bryant’s impassioned, late-night ramblings after a season-ending injury.)

Grudin’s team will also let them know about some of the ways Facebook can help increase their profile on the site, like exposure on Facebook-controlled pages such as this one.

In a few cases, Grudin said, Facebook has used advertising inventory to help promote a celebrity’s Facebook page or presence. And for one star, he said, the company provided a photographer to take “behind the scenes” shots at a sporting event; Grudin said Facebook might consider doing that again.

Facebook is also being louder about the fact that all of this is happening on its site. Last month it announced, via social TV tracker Trendrr, that it has much more TV chatter than Twitter does. That’s not surprising, given the fact that Facebook has a billion users and Twitter has 200 million, but the announcement still riled Twitter employees.

Expect Facebook to keep beating the drum at the same time it courts talents and urges its users to talk among themselves. Said Osofsky: “This is an area of strategic importance for us.”

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