Social Media and Your Circle of Influence, Past, Present, and Future. Presented at Trine University for the Ketner School of Business by Kevin Mullett.
A look at how college business students can use social media and online reputation management to differentiate themselves and their businesses from others.
3. increased adoption or proliferation does not
mean new. the tools and nomenclature are
new but "social media“, websites, and blogging
is not.
// newasperception or reality?
@kmullett // #SMTrine
5. there is a lot of misinformation, speculation,
opinion and hype being spread. worse is the
expectation that social media should be free,
effortless, and easy, yet produce greater ROI.
// verifyingclaims? expectingtoomuch?
@kmullett // #SMTrine
6. // it’svisibilityandall about thebenjamins
photo by David Evers: http://flic.kr/p/5XwMZC
• you have to be where your ideal demographic can see you
(do you know who that is?)
• in front of competition if necessary
• obey the rules or have your sign removed
• tell a better story
@kmullett // #SMTrine
7. // winningrequiresknowledge& strategy
• what are the rules
• how can i optimize within the rules
• which races can i win while staying within my budget/resources
• am i dedicated to the winning strategy (no trying it out)
• how much is winning worth
@kmullett // #SMTrine
8. // marketingresourcesaretight
where should businesses spend their marketing
resources (time/budget)?
A. traditional advertising (off-line; radio, tv, print, listings)
B. social media (advertising, facebook, sponsored tweets,
etc)
C. social media (organic)
D. paid search
E. all of the above
@kmullett // #SMTrine
what can you bring
to the table?
10. // doessocial media work?
• opportunity
• visibility
• traffic
• top of mind
• likeability
• expertise
@kmullett // #SMTrine
11. // whydon’tthey“like” us?
are we clear with our message?
• is design or action most important?
• what is our call to action?
• what is in it for them?
@kmullett // #SMTrine
12. // almosthaditright?
ugly but descriptive
• i know who they are
• what they want me to do is clear
• i’ll be rewarded
@kmullett // #SMTrine
13. // connectingthedots with social media?
do these printed pieces promote social channels?
what is the social strategy?
@kmullett // #SMTrine
14. // social media worksbestwhen…
• are you willing?
• do you see value?
• add to your lifestyle
@kmullett // #SMTrine
15. // social isnowinSERPs
how will it change social participation? how will it
change where we click on a SERP page?
(flickr, friendfeed, gmail, facebook, buzz, reader, google social connections)
@kmullett // #SMTrine
16. no marketing media channel has 100% eyeballs
or is 100% effective. prioritize based on goals,
resources, and business objectives.
// prioritizeyour marketingefforts
@kmullett // #SMTrine
18. // whatsetsyouapart, thatyoucontrol
• your visibility
• circle of influence
• knowledge outside of degree
WIIFM
@kmullett // #SMTrine
have you heard the Alec Brownstien story?
19. // who’sincontrol of your reputation?
what will they find?
100’s more?
stopping/or disabling isn’t the same as removing
@kmullett // #SMTrine
20. // onlinereputation management
own your brand
• clog the SERPs
• push competition off
• proactive not reactive
• sentiment aware
• alerts/lists are crucial
@kmullett // #SMTrine
21. // but…myprivacy!
• formerly found on street corners
• who did we do business with 30 years ago?
• distribution does not equal visibility
@kmullett // #SMTrine
22. // beproactiveandpositive
treat online reputation
management as a positive
ongoing activity rather than a
defensive situation.
@kmullett // #BIN2011 #ORM
24. // social media, doyouownit?
• Ars Technica (suggested copyright infringement?)
• Jonathan Rivera’s page with 47’000 fans (vanity url)
• are you relying on free services?
@kmullett // #SMTrine
25. // jobswill change, your namewon’t
job changes?
you are likely to change
jobs many times in your
lifetime, however save
for a few reasons,
your name will not.
free services come
and go!
own a domain!
$10/ year (do it)
@kmullett // #SMTrine
26. // ownyour brand&/or identity
control?
• clog the SERPs
• push competition or bad
info down
• be proactive not reactive
#4 on page 6
#7 on page 4
@kmullett // #BIN2011 #ORM
27. // easysocial media brandcheck
grab your brand
• mass id check with namechk.com
@kmullett // #SMTrine
28. // gowherethebotsare
article awareness, social visibility and
distributing RSS
@kmullett // #SMTrine
tell potential visitors
and the search
engines you have
new content
33. if talking to me about defining ROI of social
media you best be prepared with examples
from your other marketing efforts.
// it’sasmeasurableor moreso…
@kmullett // #SMTrine
34. // bonus idea
video!
• differentiate from your competition
• easy and inexpensive
• increased visibility
@kmullett // #SMTrine
Social Media and Your Circle of Influence, Past, Present, and Future. // Presented by Kevin Mullett on September 28th 2011 for the Ketner School of Business at Trine University.
Social Media and Your Circle of Influence, Past, Present, and Future. // Presented by Kevin Mullett, Director of Product Development for Cirrus ABS. You can find Kevin: http://www.kevinmullett.com (blog), http://twitter.com/kmullett (twitter), http://www.facebook.com/kevinmullett (facebook), and on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmullett
Social Media and Your Circle of Influence, Past, Present, and Future. // Presented by Kevin Mullett, Director of Product Development for Cirrus ABS. You can find Kevin: http://www.kevinmullett.com (blog), http://twitter.com/kmullett (twitter), http://www.facebook.com/kevinmullett (facebook), and on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmullett
Social Media // Increased adoption or proliferation does not mean new. The tools and nomenclature are new but "social media“, websites, and blogging is not.
The “Social Three” // You are here to find out how to add social media into your event marketing mix, but let’s start by actually talking about what I call the “social three”. Why? Because people use these terms interchangeably, when they are not in fact interchangeable. If you think about it we could just remove the “social” moniker off all of these and we would have good old fashion traditional media, networking, and marketing methods. Today we will discuss various aspects of the social sphere and social media optimization. Now the information I present today, much like search engine optimization information, will have a limited shelf life. A scant 7 years ago Facebook was created in a dorm room and now has more users than the population of the United States. A year ago many of you had no idea what Twitter was, now it has gone mainstream and is in countless TV commercials. I could waste the entirety of this seminar just talking about the rise and fall of various social services, percentage of market share, types of people who use each, etc. Instead I am going to breeze by some of those items at a high level, so I can spend more time giving you social marketing tips that will help your business.» social media which represents the tools we use for building followers, friendships, & contacts. Tools like twitter, facebook, linkedin, youtube, friendfeed, Buzz, foursquare, ning, to name only a fraction of the available services. Each have strengths and weaknesses and each need to be evaluated so we can put our time into the ones that will reap the largest ROI. I have both online and offline media tools represented because they are all just visibility tools.» social networking is the day to day interaction we have with contacts built using the various social media tools/services, in other words the “social” part. It is no different then when you attend a party, that you might otherwise pass on, in order to touch base with clients or potential clients. Now some might also toss in social networks, but let’s not make things confusing. Each tool has the potential to reach a percentage of your ideal market segment, group, individuals, or demographic. This is also to extend and optimize your circle of influence.» social marketing is the subtle, or not so subtle, use of one or more online tool to promote your business to the network you have established. Again no different than reminding those people you meet at parties, “hey I build killer websites, you should have me do one for you”. Over simplified? Maybe, but the real reason we’re here is to learn how to put this all into motion. We want to avoid the Me Monster. (me monster by Brian Regan)
There is a lot of misinformation, speculation, opinion and hype being spread. worse is the expectation that social media should be free, effortless, and easy, yet produce greater ROI.
It’s visibility and all about the benjamins: as with most forms of advertising you have to be where your ideal demographic can see you, which sometimes means you must be in front of competitors if necessary, but you must obey the rules or have your sign removed. If they see both signs, you need to tell a better story.photo by David Evers: http://flic.kr/p/5XwMZC
Winning requires knowledge: To win against your competitors in the search optimization game requires some knowledge, unless your competition isn’t trying. It’s easy to win if there is no competition. To win requires an understanding of the rules so you don’t get disqualified. You can be the best driver, but if you are stuck in the back of the pack you will not have a chance to show it. Optimization is part of the race regardless if you have the knowledge or not. Of course you need to decide early on how much winning is worth and what your budget is to go after it. And like most things if you don’t have a strategy, well, we all know how that goes.At this very race a competitor was disqualified for getting a bit too creative with the rules. This is analogous to black hat search optimization techniques.
Where will you spend your marketing resources in 2011. One of the questions those board members and business owners ask is where they should put their marketing budget! How do we spend it wisely?traditional advertising (off-line; radio, tv, print)social media (organic)social media (advertising, facebook, sponsored tweets, etc)paid searchall of the above
Social Media Optimization // Right now, you need to be going where the traffic is or more pointently, where you can be visible. And while being visible is great, if efforts are put into areas where there is no intent for action it will be wasted time, money, and effort. Keep in mind too, that this is not a singular action. Social media campaigns are just another part of a NetCentered marketing approach. We will talk more about that later.Just who or what do we want to be visible too? The obvious answer is people who would like to use our product or service. The not so obvious answer is search engines. We want to make sure we are out where they are actively crawling.
Does social media work? That depends on what our strategy has identified as a win.What we really want to know is how to use social media as a means of; winning new business, enhancing customer service, providing offers and notifications, press releases and general promotion, manage our brand and reputation, awareness of our industry, promoting our knowledge experts, and keeping tabs on the competition. opportunityvisibilitycontacttop of mindexpertise
Why don’t they “like” us // Are you being clear with your message? Do you have a message? Most of the time businesses worry to hide the action behind the aesthetics. Make sure you tell them what is in it for them and what to do.
Social Media // So is this business winning at social media?I know what they want me to do.Instructions and identity are clear.I know I will be rewarded, even if not specific.The failure was a training breakdown. When trying to redeem the check-in offer the staff was not aware of it.
Social Media // Do these printed pieces promote social channels? What is the social strategy?Most make nothing more than feeble attempts. Literally amounting to nothing more than after thoughts. The AAF makes no attempt at all.
Social media works best when…: Social media generally works best when you are a willing participant and treat it more like a lifestyle, instead of a task.are you willing?do you see value?add to your lifestyle
It is time for brands who have been waffling to pull their heads out of the sand and participate in social. People struggling to comprehend keep harping about ROI without considering other value social media brings to the table. All else being equal, who do you think people will click on if they see a friends “recommendation”?How might this change who we select on a SERP page?Google enhanced social search on 02/17/2010. Connected via sources include, flickr, friendfeed, gmail, facebook, buzz, reader, google, more? Sometimes it is unclear why it picks the service because I will be connected to the person in more than one place.More on Google Social connections: http://www.google.com/s2/u/0/search/social
Do you know a business that everyone seems to like? Do they treat their business as a 9-5 job or do they seem to be involved with the community?
What sets you apart from other people in this room? From others who will vie for the same job? From your competitors who offer a similar product?
What sets you apart from others looking for the ideal job you want?Will you be another Alec Brownstien? In the summer of 2009 he paid, a whopping 15 cents per click, for the top spot for creative directors names. Mashable reported he receieved calls from all but one of the targets and the whole thing cost him $6!http://mashable.com/2010/05/13/job-google-ad-words/
What circle of influence will you bring to the table?
Who’s in control of your online reputation and visibility? What will potential employers find?What do you think I could find right now? Stopping use isn’t the same as removing nor isdisabling an account.
What about online reputation monitoring? Caught being reactive instead of proactive! Not a good position to be in because it can take time to correct depending on when you catch it. Own your brand spots and push competitors off or down. setting up alerts is crucial to being aware of what is happening with your brand even if that brand is you.socialmention (sentiment, rss,csv), google alerts (email & rss),topsy (email & rss), samepoint (sentiment & rss), tweetdeck (twitter search), tweetalarm (email), tweetbeep (email), kurrently (rss), etc Other paid solutions: Lithium (ScoutLabs), radian6, sysomos, netbase, trackur, AuthorityLabs, etc
One of the common objections to participating in social networks for business use is privacy and mixing business with pleasure. In reality our information has been publically available for decades, albeit in a different format. It used to be on almost every street corner dangling at the ready for any stranger who took the time to peruse it.We used to do business with people we knew. They knew our kids, what we drove, our views, and sometimes when we where on vacation. A percentage of the market desires a move back to relationships with who we do business with.
Treat online reputation management as a positive ongoing activity rather than a defensive situation. Why do most want to always treat this as a negative? This is positive message buildingand is part of normal business activities. Are you providing good service.
What is Google +1?Announcement:http://www.google.com/+1/button/Video how to trick it: http://www.youtube.com/cirrusabs#p/a/u/0/ztYjWXwr6ik
Expand your IRL contacts google.com/plus
Separating you & your business: Set up your Google Profile, tie in your various websites, social services, and create anchor text links in the about me section. You will also want to go through the process of verifying your name, which needs to be done through Google Knol. After you have your profile filled out and your name verified we optionally want to associate your Google profile with Google Buzz. Be aware though that as of right now, if you choose to cancel buzz it will close your Google Profile. Directly tying Twitter to Buzz is frowned upon because of the way Google pulls in tweets.While Google Buzz is still extremely new, it started life with a huge boost since it tied directly into to Gmail. Something that not everyone was crazy about. Either way it is already approaching the size of twitter in far less time. As with all the social services it really boils down to where you ideal client is spending time and what other perks come along for the ride.Simply “liking” a Google Buzz post can show your name or company name in the SERPs.
Social Media Optimization // What if one morning your shop was chained closed, sealed off, and you had no idea who to call to resolve the problem? ArsTechnica is just one of the latest stories where Facebook has shut down their page with no obvious way to reinstate it. http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/04/facebook-shoots-first-ignores-questions-later-account-lock-out-attack-works.ars?comments=1#comments-barhttp://techsavvyagent.com/video/facebook-shuts-down-page-with-47000-fans/
Jobs will change, your name won’t: you are likely to changejobs many times in your lifetime, however save for a few reasons, your name will not. Free services come and go so own a domain! $10/ year (do it)
While I really wouldn’t call this controlling the SERPs, you are setting yourself up to have something to work with should something happen. More things indexed that can be pushed.
Easy social media brand check: Use a service like namechk.com to go grab your brands social id’s. I think it is wise for both branding reasons, and for online marketing presence to grab them. If you have an intern, this would be a great task to set them out on. Which ones are important? Which ones don’t you want a competitor or squatter to have? While the backlink value for many is not high, the fact that search engines are constantly crawling these networks is worth noting. This is especially important while the crawl rate on your website is low.Posting links to some of these networks, like ning.com or mybloglog.com where the search engines already spend a significant amount of time, can lead to pages being indexed in under an hour and subsequently lead to radical improvement in new pages being indexed on your site.
We need visibility: Here is an idea. Go where the bots are. Now lets shoot for some social visibility. This concepts takes content you post via your website, twitter, facebook, linkedin, delicious and posts it on other services where others are spending time and where the search engines are crawling. Each unique URL on each service is a page that Google could choose to serve up in a SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
Measuring the right things matters. The trap many fall into is trying to hard for friends, fans, and followers due to pride or greed. They have mistaken followers as accurate measures of value. Since followers can easily be bought or faked, they cannot be accurately used for valuation. Instead we must build organic followers with intent to interact with us.
Looking at bogus social media analytics and measurement. We also must consider carefully how much weight we put on the types of people we engage with. These are great people to engage with, but they are likely to fill our pride tank before filling the coffers of our companies.
Social Media // We need to look to other criteria to judge the success or failure of our efforts. Things like reach, engagement, attention capture, connectivity, interactions and more. We can use tools like Klout, TweetStats, Twitter Analyzer, Facebook Insights, TweetReach, and there are now ways to hook up Google Analytics to your Facebook fan page now as well. I could go on for a solid half hour or more on the various tools and methods for measurement. The point I want to drive home is to make sure we are measuring the right things.What are good metrics for social media success? To name just a few: influence, traffic, reputation and brand management, visibility, engagement, competitive intelligence garnered, and of course revenue. Let’s not forget revenue!
We need to know what winning looks like. This would be a great time to input keywords you have selected based on validation efforts earlier into a tool like Rank Checker, a Firefox add-on, to establish a baseline for both your site, and that of your competitors. It is FAR from perfect but you can watch trends!When checking rankings use: IE = “InPrivate Browsing”, Firefox =“start private browsing “ , Chrome =“incognito”, Opera = “new private tab”, to avoid personalized results.You will also want to express the need for everyone in the company to be committed to monitoring contacts, calls, and lead sources for clues on what is working so you can do it again.http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker
If talking to me about defining ROI of social media you best be prepared with examples from your other marketing efforts.
// bonus idea: videodifferentiate from your competitioneasy and inexpensiveincreased visibility
HELP = Humanize message, Encourage conversation, Listen first, Promote Less.
Don’t forget to keep it fun!
Social Media and Your Circle of Influence, Past, Present, and Future. // Presented by Kevin Mullett, Director of Product Development for Cirrus ABS. You can find Kevin: http://www.kevinmullett.com (blog), http://twitter.com/kmullett (twitter), http://www.facebook.com/kevinmullett (facebook), and on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmulletthttp://www.cirrusabs.com, http://www.twitter.com/cirrusabs, http://www.facebook.com/cirrusabs, http://www.youtube.com/user/cirrusabs, http://www.linkedin.com/compaines/cirrus-abs, by email: info@cirrusabs.com or by phone: 1.877.817.4442.
This is where people normally suffer paralysis by analysis. I can hear the questions forming in your heads right now. How can we make this work for our organization? Won’t this take a huge chunk out of our day? The answer is not unlike any large project. We need to make plans, prioritize our goals, delegate responsibility to those who can do the job, optimize our efforts by using the right tools, and get organized. Although it can be very different for specific markets, by and large, we see internet activity run a normal cycle. People slowly ramp up in the morning, are very active during the lunch hour, then wind down till after supper. We can minimize our time commitment by first prioritizing when we post and interact. We can further maximize our time by using tools like tweetdeck or post once services to spread the news one time and have it appear on many services. Thought should be given to the message going out and the target service. This is at the root of social media activity and participation optimization.
So how will google stay relevant as social grows? How will this impact what you click on? You mean you wouldn’t be more likely to take the suggestion of a friend?
SEO for Visibility, Action & Conversion: Google +1 hits the scene.Will be used as “A” signal for google search to fight web spamvisible in search results and adson sites ala “like” buttonAnnouncement:http://www.google.com/+1/button/http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/08/google-studying-re-ranking-search-results-using-1-button-data-but-its-touchy/ info about use as signal