Social Media University

This Section will bring you quick Social Marketing best practices, resources, case studies and video trainings from around the world.

Social Media Metrics

 

The book is about: 

- Measuring The business value of social media 

- Measuring the importance of social media to organizations 

- Making the most of social media for businss in a community-acceptable band enhancing way 

- How to engage the value of your social media efforts. 

It is not: 

- Measuring social media ‘s size and popularity 

- Measuring the importance of social media to mankind 

- Auto-posting and auto-tweeting you your make -money-fast message in a scorched earth marketing way 

- how to do social media really well 

Here is a link to check out the new Social Metrics book:  

Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment (New Rules Social Media Series)  

Coke Marketing Strategy

 

Last year Coca-Cola created a new office of Digital Communications and Social Strategy under their Public Affairs and Communication Department.  Below are some interesting insights from  Adam Brown the Digital Communications Director over at Coca-Cola  on how a global company operating across 206 countries is managing Social Media & Communications.   Coke appears to have the start to a solid Social Marketing strategy. They have created Social Communication guidelines for the entire company of 100,000+  direct employees and it’s partners including the botteling plants which takes that number up to over 1 million people worldwide.  They have created a Social Marketing Certification program for their employees and partners with key guidelines that must be followed by employees and partners who wish to speak on behalf of Coca-Cola on Social Networking environments. 

Andy  Brown speaks about what he calls his 4R Social Marketing Strategy: 

1. Review – Constant monitoring of the social buzz
2. Respond – Thoughtful responses  remembering that everthing said on Social Networks is evergreen and will be up for ever!
3. Resource – Commit to putting the appropriate level of resources behind your companies Social Marketing
4. Redirect – Take the conversation in the direction you want to drive it either to your company website, blogs, YouTube channels etc.

  

 

Also Check out the great blog post and video of Adam speaking at the BlogWell NY Conference last year at the link below. This is where Andy really gets into some great detail about the Coca-Cola  Social Marketing Strategy. 

http://vimeo.com/4778751 

According Penny Power, Ecademy founder and author of Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me: what online social networking means for you and your business  is set to change the face of business. In her latest business advice show, Penny  discusses “What Online Social Networking Means for You and Your Business” Penny Power explains the secret behind building credibility and followers. 

Check out her videos for some interesting perspectives.

Post: Warren Raisch, Social Marketing & Media Success Stories and Social Marketing Research: February 2. 2010

How to Succeed Though Failure:

The following section is on how to  succeeding through failure. This may seem strange to you but I find this a good way to define where many of us are in this stage of Social Marketing for our organizations.  My belief is that the biggest winners in Social Marketing will be the people and organizations that are not afraid to step out and fail publicly. This site is an example of this theory. I made a decision to start this journey as an open experiment of learning and sharing my experiences with social networking and marketing and you will see my success and failures over the coming months and years out in the open.  The willingness to take a chance and succeed or  fail and learn from both will be the secret ingredient to leadership and innovation in this space. Here are what others have to say about this theory.

Use Failure to Grow Your Business:

THE MICHAEL JORDON STORY:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life…

The Honda Story

Failure. The mere thought can paralyze even the most heroic thinkers and keep great ideas off the drawing board. But is failing really that bad? We get an inside look at the mishaps of Honda racers…

Twitter Training Series:

DELL CASE STUDY

@DellOutlet: Raising awareness, increasing sales, measuring results

Dell Outlet faces a common but vexing challenge. A division of the giant made-to-order computer business, Dell Outlet carries refurbished equipment and other inventory that it needs to sell quickly. Because the division has to get the word out fast, it doesn’t have the luxury of hiring an agency and developing an ad campaign.

Instead, the outlet relies primarily on email marketing, paid search results, search-engine optimization and affiliate links to raise awareness and drive sales. It’s always looking for new, cost-effective ways to reach people.

Holding Conversations

When company employee Ricardo Guerrero discovered Twitter at the South by Southwest conference in 2007, he thought he’d hit on a good channel for pushing out information. The rest of the team agreed.

“We thought, ‘Great—this has a really short lead time, and it will let us communicate our message effectively,’” says Stefanie Nelson, manager of demand generation at Dell Outlet. “We started using it for one-way communication.”

The company was surprised when people responded. “They wanted to ask questions. They wanted to share their experiences, good and bad,” says Nelson, who’s based in Austin, TX. “We realized that people were really interested in talking with us.”

Raising awareness

So instead of using Twitter just to let people know about deals, the company has come to think of it as a good place to interact with customers—and to raise awareness about the brand. “When we respond to people on Twitter, they get really excited, and we gain advocates.”

That doesn’t mean Dell Outlet has abandoned the deals. In fact, the company often posts offers that are exclusive to Twitter. They twitter only a few times a week so as not to spam their followers, and they use tracking URLs to gauge what followers find most appealing.

Increasing sales

Do the coupons work? Big time. Not only do they get retweeted and picked up by coupon sites—both of which spread the brand name—they also drive sales. Dell Outlet has booked more than $3 million in revenue attributable to its Twitter posts. In addition, the division has done research showing that awareness of the outlet has grown, too. “The uplift has been more than we dreamed,” says Nelson.

Connecting with customers

Dell now has more than 80 Dell-branded Twitter accounts (including @dellhomeoffers for new system deals) offering everything from videos of new technologies to promotions for Asia-Pacific customers. It also encourages employees to twitter, and has well over 100 employee accounts. Dell uses many of those accounts (with names like @StefanieAtDell), primarily for customer service exchanges that require direct messages (Twitter’s private channel) and to reach out to people who are twittering about Dell (which they find via Twitter search).

Nelson has learned when starting a new account on Twitter, it’s smart to reach out to your current customer base. They’re already interested in chatting with you, and they’ll tell other people about you. But no matter who’s following you on Twitter, she says, “offering relevant information that people are interested in is key.”

 

Max Levchin’s Story of Building Paypal up and selling to eBay for $1.5 billion…his new venture called Slide recently raised $50 million and is valued at half a billion.

Max Levchin recently raised $50 million for what many consider to be a widget company. That company Slide now has a market valuation of half-a-billion.

The founder and CEO of Slide, the online personal media company that’s a hit on Facebook with some 50 million users on that social network alone..

Harvard Digital Interview:

An interview with Josh Bernoff, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. Over the past thirteen years, Mr. Bernoff has become one of America’s most frequently quoted research analyst on Social Marketing…

Social Marketing is Core To Dell Computer

Richard Branson on dealing with failure…in Social Marketing you will have your share of failures!

Caused Based Marketing:

CauseCast Seminar Training:

Social Media Consultant Mateo Gutierrez gives a lecture at the Los Angeles Film School about where social media has been and where he sees it going. Initially used as mere…

RESEARCH REPORTS:

2010 Media Planning Intelligence Study

By The Center for Media Research

download report at:

http://www.mediapost.com/research/reports/?rr_aid=7

Media buying today is as complex as it has ever been. Budgets are tight and all eyes are on non-traditional media. It is critical now more than ever that companies understand how to allocate their advertising budgets across media channels. To help in this task, the Center for Media Research conducted one of the largest annual studies on media planning and buying activities for 2010. This comprehensive study provides the intelligence of what is on the horizon for the next year. It is based on primary research conducted across a large number of MediaPost subscribers with input from more than 1,972 participants, including 1,164 having planning, buying, approving responsibility.

The report covers a wide range of industries including technology, retail, pharmaceutical, travel, business services, CPG, education, electronics, financial, restaurant, and more. Partial findings:

• Planned spending for 2010 is larger for non-traditional media than traditional media
• 57% of those who plan, buy, approve media will buy non-traditional media, including online, display video, search, mobile, event sponsorships
• Those who plan, buy, approve media would ideally buy presence on a social network
• Almost two times more would ideally buy mobile video than will realistically buy it
• Agencies and brands both would ideally buy more national TV than they will realistically buy
• 57% will buy email marketing and 56% will buy presence on a social network

The study, conducted in conjunction with InsightExpress, found that advertising with regional newspapers will be significantly larger than with national newspapers. Analysis also identified relatively strong support for email marketing, magazines and radio advertising.

The study covers more than 25 industries, including advertising, automotive, business service, pharmaceutical, restaurant, technology, healthcare, entertainment, education, travel, nonprofit, financial, home improvement, luxury, telecom, media and electronics, among others. Participants include those with job functions of media buyer or planner, brand or marketing manager, chief marketing officer, chief executive officer, publisher, director and account manager, among others. The findings should provide you with needed insight into planned media spending for the next year.