It got the buzz - it got the press - and it got your attention. Everyone is loving talking and playing social media. However, you blog, you tweet, you Facebook – so now what? Social media is the new frontier with new rules and players. Skeptics don’t get social media because they don’t see how they can measure results. In today’s world a mention on a social media Web site is just as valuable as getting your name in The New York Times, but not all companies understand that. Many CEOs still believe that traditional media are the only media that matter, but think again. To convince these skeptics companies have been pulling their hair out trying to show them the value of a blog or tweet, but don’t know how to convince the non-believers. This session will look at the importance of social media hits and how to measure them, what you can do to convince non-believers, and what you can do to show them that social media is just as good as print media.
Moderator: Roger B. Dooley Speakers: Guillaume Bouchard, CEO, NVI Kent Schoen, Facebook Product Manager, Facebook Brian Carter, Director of Search Marketing, Fuel Interactive Warren Whitlock, Social Media Strategist, BestSellerAuthors.com
Warren Whitlock is up first.
He says that everyone should be using Twitter or they should go home. (Early adopters like me wince at this call for "please use Twitter" 2 years too late.)
There are thousands of people on Twitter who watch what you are doing. Communicate with your customers, listen to what they say, and respond. Be authentic.
Three stages of Twitter acceptance: - Denial: why would anyone care what I ate for breakfast? - Relucant acceptance: I have a TWitter account but I don't see any traffic. - Meaningful Connections: How did I ever live without Twitter? - Last night, Twitter had 1 billion Tweets! He equates this with a small-town shop. Would you shoplift from that store if it was the only one? No, then you'd be banned. In the 20th century, we had mass production followed by mass media and mass distribution. Everybody now has the same thing. Today there are more choices and we're all publishers. The more you give, the more others will want to help you. How do you get more followers? Give more. Share good new things with people.
Why should you be on Twitter? That's where your customers are and they control your market.
http://twittinsecrets.com - from the guy behind "The Secret". http://twitterhandbook.com
Next up is Brian Carter. His presentation is on the Social Media Trifecta - the three pronged strategy to achieving online awesomenymity.
What is the Trifecta? It's a name for blog + bookmarking + Twitter. Why is that so effective? Optimization getting the results you want faster. 1. Identify your goal 2. Establish a measurement/measurement 3. Where are you at? 4. Plan route to goal - where you're at to where your goal is 5. Let results guide progress In social media, if you want to succeed, you need a brand that is more powerful than your target market's brand. You need a goal that is more powerful. For a route to your goal, you need to choose something that works.
Trifecta results: he was not public in this industry until the end of March, but since, he's spoken at 4 conferences. He has gotten regular columns in prestigious blogs. He has established good contacts with big brands.
Why does the trifecta work? Blog is authority, the bookmark is social proof, and Twitter is attention. - Blogs are like guacamole, bookmarking is spicy, and Twitter is hot.
Twitter - you can crowdsource. Networking is like team building.
Next up is Guillaume Bouchard.
Catalyze natural link growth. The realistic role is that you should produce link worthy content and take luck out of the equation.
Digg - onsite voting, it's getting tough to succeed and you can get buried. Success: home page. (My note: Digg sucks.) StumbleUpon: toolbar voting, not as tough to succeed, can get down-thumbed, lower total and more gradual spike. Success: recommendation surge. Worth a look - propeller.com, Reddit.com, Mixx.com, and Buzz.Yahoo.com
Digg - then and now - Way more votes required, less illegitimate content, hot in upcoming is not equal to homepage, and recommendation engine exists
StumbleUpon strategies - Sending a page to a friend FORCES a view - Should be tagged with popular categories - Reviews increase chances of views exploding 5 factors to hit Digg's frontpage: 1. Content: give quality (they like to lack but will deried failed attempts at humor, they appreciate hard work but deried build-content quick schemes, they like learning, they follow the community's dis/approval, they do not like spam/SEO/marketing) and save time (they don't want too much text, they want to be able to skim and get the basic idea, they don't like having to click unnecessarily, they resent when your server can't handle their visits, and they like being able to vote right away) - SEO concerns: keyword use (blog titles for backlink with great anchor text, page titles can have more keywords), interlinking (wait until after the push to interlink strategically, post regularly to dilute), 301 redirection (resist the temptation and let the content be) 2. Platform: both digg staff and users value trust. Unfortunately, trust isn't easy to learn. The numbers- trusted domains account for 90% of the homepage stories. Of non trusted domains, 30% are images, 10% are videos. There are 100-125 stories that hit the homepage every day. - Bottom line: Only 6-8 text articles with juicy text from non-trusted domains are likely to hit the front page of Digg PER day. This means you need to work for trusted domains are we should all coordinate ourselves to share a piece of the pie. Platform options: - blog - pros: direct domain links, established trust/PR, brand extension via community. Cons: content limited by brand, flaggable as spam - Client owned external blog: pros - content freedom, not non-trusted, link exchange potential. Cons: wasted link juice, more involved development/new brand, optimization increasingly suspicious over time. - SEO/SMO Company Owned External Blog: pros: ultimate content flexibility, content and link variety means less usspicion, subsidized asset building, new income stream. Cons: tough sell, develoment costs, zero client brand extension
3. Submitter: domains are trusted, but so are people. Less likely to be buried, immediate friend votes, strong accounts are natural to combine with shouts, 30% of home pages are from top submitters. Some top submitters eventually find out you work for a client as you ask them to submit or vote often on the same site - they can bypass your company and contact the sites directly.
Vote solicitation - do exchanges, Instant MEssanging, in-site communication services, vote on lots of stories. It takes 12-15 hours of work. 10% of the stories will frontpage with <50 votes. 200+ has 11%. (It depends on the submitter!)
Social media metrics: you can get between 100-300 links for minimal success or 1k-10k with strong success. This generally peaks between 1-3 months after the push.
And then he ran out of time.
Kent Schoen is up next. Facebook has 120 millin active users, 15 million mobile users, 1 billion profile details, 20 million daily status updates, 100 million pokes, and 20 million daily wall posts.
Word of mouth is what people are excited about, but people are being influenced by people who are passionate.
Get people to be engaged. They can become evangelists and spread the word. - News feed
In our environment, there are marketing tools - they are really just regular features but you can use them in a marketing context: pages, events, application, share & connect
Measurement and analytics: passive measurement and active measurement Some passive tools: - Facebook Lexicon - Ad tools
