'Net Features : social marketing

Pinterest Contests Come to Wishpond

Allison Howen — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 21:06:00 GMT

Interacting with fans through social media helps merchants foster relationships with their customers, and a new application from Wishpond makes this task easier than ever.

This is because the social marketing solutions provider has launched the Pinterest Contest App, which allows merchants to create Pinterest contests that can be deployed on multiple channels, including Facebook, websites and mobile. For example, merchants can encourage their audience to create boards on Pinterest with the items that the merchant sells. The boards can be submitted to the contest and then the merchant’s community votes on each of the boards to determine the winner. Moreover, merchants collect each entrant’s email address and social data, which can be valuable for segmenting future marketing initiatives.

It is also important to note that these contests can help boost a company’s reach and engagement metrics. This is because the social voting encourages entrants to share the contest with their Facebook network, and the app also requires voters to be a Facebook fan of the brand in order to vote.

“Our clients have been asking for an effective way to get users engaged on Pinterest,” said Ali Tajsekandar, CEO of Wishpond. “Our Pinterest Contest App is a simple way to get users sharing a brand’s products on Pinterest, leading to more engagement and referral traffic to their online store.”

The Pinterest Contest App is just the latest offering in Wishpond’s All-In-One Marketing Suite, which includes apps for launching photo contests, voting contests, photo caption contests, sweepstakes and social stores.

Social Ads, Analytics Come to Shoutlet 6.0

Allison Howen — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 17:37:00 GMT

Shoutlet just unleashed a host of new enhancements for its platform, which make it easier than ever for users to build, launch and analyze social marketing campaigns.

Shoutlet 6.0 includes tools for social ads, analytics, contests and social listening. Additionally, the cloud-based social marketing platform has partnered with Kenshoo Social in order to provide marketers with better visibility into how their paid, owned and earned media drive conversions and social Web traffic.

Learn about how the new partnership and features help marketers design, execute and manage comprehensive social marketing campaigns below:

Social Ads – Social marketers can leverage this feature to create, publish and promote Facebook page posts. Additionally, the platform’s integration with Kenshoo Social provides access to analytics that can help users more accurately forecast and measure social campaigns.

Social Listening – This feature gives marketers the ability to visualize and track conversations that are happening across social sites, blogs and online news sites. Moreover, marketers can dive deeper into conversations by accessing Klout scores for influencer metrics.

Social Contests – Clients can schedule, launch and publish an unlimited number of contests and sweepstakes on the Web with this feature. Furthermore, Social Canvas allows marketers to customize every aspect of the contest's design. Marketers can also monitor views, votes, and entries to help them build a more valuable data set for customer social profiles.

Social Analytics – Shoutlet's Social Analytics easily integrate with leading Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, IBM Digital Analytics, Omniture, and Webtrends.

"Brands, marketers and agencies are constantly looking for the newest tools and metrics to help drive not only engagement, but also revenue," said Jason Weaver, CEO of Shoutlet. "With Shoutlet 6.0 additions of Social Ads, Social Analytics, Social Contests, and Social Listening, we are giving brands everything they need to transform their complicated marketing projects into an easily managed process that captures opportunities and data to help execute intelligent, successful campaigns. Shoutlet's DIY approach is the answer for brands looking to achieve uncomplicated, yet sophisticated, social marketing."

Measure Social Effectiveness with Crowd Factory

Allison Howen — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 20:00:00 GMT

How many "Likes" and "Shares" did your last blog post receive, and what kind of impact will they have on your company's bottom line? If you have ever wondered how effective your social media campaigns really are, you are far from alone.

Concrete numbers in relation to social's return on investment (ROI) can be hard to nail down. However, Crowd Factory’s new Social Marketing Suite aims to take some of the uncertainty away from social media measurement.

The company has just released updates that include analytics designed to help businesses measure the effectiveness of their social media campaigns, as well as to better enable Web marketers to evaluate the virality, impact and traffic of their blog posts.

The new social metrics include the following features:

Social Reach and Social Impressions – View how many people were exposed to a campaign through social sharing, and monitor social impressions – which is the number of potential views from shares.

Share Rate – This metric provides a measurement of campaign virality by showing what percentage of campaign visits generate shares.

Clickback Rate – The percentage of people that clicked on shared content.

Influencers – View the social reach and impressions that are attributed to an individual influencer.

Social Lift – Analyze how much impact social sharing had on overall campaign traffic by viewing the percentage of website or campaign visits that resulted from shared content.

Total Profiles – Look at insights from completed social actions, as well as how many social profiles were generated from all Crowd Factory social campaigns.

Other features of Crowd Factory's new Social Marketing Suite include social marketing applications that allow companies to embed social elements into marketing such as videos, emails, registration pages, e-commerce sites and ads – with built-in analytics that track, measure and optimize these programs in real-time.

Why Do People Friend and Follow Brands?

Mike Phillips — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:20:00 GMT

Two separate studies have been released over the past week that show why people "friend" and "follow" brands on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The first, from Google, looked at Facebook. The study found that 55 percent of Facebook users do not friend or "like" any brands on Facebook. Of those who do, 18 percent become a fan of one or two brands, 11 percent do so for three or four brands, 10 percent five to nine brands and just 6 percent ten or more brands. And why do they become fans?

25 percent to receive discounts and promotions
18 percent to show others they support the brands
10 percent because it's fun and entertaining
8 percent to hear new info first

The second study comes from ExactTarget and surveyed Twitter users ages 15 and up. They found that:

38 percent of users follow brands to get updates on future products
31 percent to receive discounts and promotions
30 percent to get updates on upcoming sales
28 percent to get a "freebie"

The writing is on the wall. Your top business social networking priorities should be to offer discounts and promotions, and to keep users informed about product releases and other company news that will benefit the user. This does not mean announcing a new CFO, but rather a new product line, an update to an exisiting product or news about how your products can help improve consumers' quality of life, for example.

Of course, discounts and promotions loom large. Build a value system with users by rewarding their loyalty with discounts and you are likely to see new fans and followers. And, don't stop at promoting this strategy solely on networks - make sure your website provides links to your network profiles and informing users that, by becoming a fan or follower, they can expect discounts and promotions. As always, set a strategy including well-defined limits. After all, you don't want to give away the store should a discount go viral.

StrongMail's Social Studio an All-in-one Marketing Platform

Linc Wonham — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 02:00:00 GMT

E-mail and social marketing leader StrongMail has launched Social Studio, an all-inclusive platform for campaign management, viral marketing and social sharing. The application is available immediately in the U.S. and the U.K., and StrongMail is offering a 14-day free trail.

Every product in the Social Studio suite provides detailed performance metrics all the way to the conversion. Highlighted features of the platform include the following:

•    StrongMail Influencer – Combines word-of-mouth marketing, e-commerce and the social web
•    Social Direct – Targeted direct-response campaigns into Twitter and Facebook
•    Social Notes – Share branded content across the top social networks, blogs and e-mail

E-mail with Social Features Boosts Click-through Rates

Mike Phillips — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:19:00 GMT

Over the past several months, many industry voices are surmising that social media messaging could one day replace e-mail. While that might seem far-fetched, recent research* from e-mail marketing company GetResponse shows that social networking and e-mail are most definitely cross-pollinating.

The study, "Email Marketing and Social Media Integration Report," shows that e-mail marketing messages with a social sharing option generate 30 percent higher click-through rates than e-mail without those features. What's more, when three or more sharing options are offered, the click-through rate is 55 percent higher, and a Twitter sharing option resulted in 40 percent higher click-through rates -- than those messages without sharing features.

Other findings of the study:

60% of all social e-mails included just one sharing icon.
Only 11.2% of social e-mails included three icons or more.
Twitter was the most popular social sharing option, included in 67.2% of all social e-mails. Facebook came in second at 62.7%.
E-mails shared on Twitter resulted in CTRs of 10.2% -- over 40% higher than messages not linked to any social media.
Nearly 19% of SMB marketers used the Twitter integration feature at least once. Just 13.5% included social sharing options.
SMB marketers used Twitter social media integration twice as much as social sharing links.

*GetResponse analyzed data from approximately 500 million e-mails sent by 19,149 GetResponse users.

You might also like: E-mail Marketing Gets Social With NutShellMail Acquisition

Ping.fm Now Supports RSS

Mike Phillips — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:33:00 GMT

Ping.fm has become an essential tool for many Internet marketers because of its ability to post updates to many social networks at once. Now, bloggers and publishers get a new feature - RSS support. This feature, powered by Superfeedr, can be set up in your Ping.fm dashboard. Enter your feed and each new blog post will be posted as a status update to all of your chosen networks, up to 50 of them.

For now, the service only supports one feed, but plans are already in the works to support multiple feeds.

While this might be enticing for bloggers and publishers, it's also somewhat of a slippery slope. If you publish several blog posts per day, expect some kind of blowback from other users. As noted countless times, we are still dealing with a personal space in other users' social profiles - so tread lightly until you determine if automated blog posting is even wanted by your audience.

Looking for Press Coverage? Get Social

Mike Phillips — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:30:00 GMT

A new survey from PRWeek and PR Newswire shows that more journalists are using social networks and blogs for story sources. In 2009, 25 percent of journalists used a company blog for sources, and 24 percent used social networks (such as Twitter and Facebook). In 2009, those numbers jumped to 34 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

"Journalists are doing more with less," said Sarah Skerkik, VP of distribution services at PR Newswire. "They seem to be acting more aggressively about finding their stories, digging a bit deeper for story angles."

But it's not just broadcasting news, dropping links and providing content on company blogs that is gaining the attention of journalists. What might be even more important is the opportunity for good old-fashioned relationship building - the ever-important virtual rolodex that is and has always been the most important tool for any journalist. According to the survey, 43 percent of journalists have been pitched through social media, up from 31 percent in 2009.

Looking for a head start? Review this list of 100 Retweet Targets for Web Professionals, including many accounts to follow to help get in front of journalists and PR professionals.

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Inside The Online World - May 2010

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:40:00 GMT

Website Magazine's May, 2010 issue is now available online at WebsiteMagazine.com (review the contents here). As always, it's chock full of insightful, useful content that's not to be missed. Below is the May Editor's Letter to give you a glimpse inside.

The practice of search engine optimization (SEO) has served Web professionals well over the past decade. But there is a new darling in the Web world and she goes by the name of social media. She is sexy, alluring and draws the attention of hundreds of millions of admirers. But should you shun SEO entirely and make a full switch to social? Maybe. But you will need to bring along all of the SEO techniques and tactics you’ve learned and mastered over the years to make social media really work for your enterprise. And you won’t be alone when you get there.

Forrester is predicting a significant rise in Internet marketing by those in the B2B space. In fact, it’s predicting spending will almost double over the next five years — from $2.3 billion in 2009 to $4.8 billion in 2014. Much of that will be invested in social media marketing. So, taking the medium seriously will greatly benefit your business. Those Web enterprises and entrepreneurs that understand the balance between SEO and social media will be those receiving the most traffic from search engines and social networks, and exposure from those that make the greatest impact on business — the consumer.

The feature story in Website Magazine’s May issue, “SEO in a Social Media World” offers a practical glimpse into the techniques and tactics Web enterprises can employ today to improve search engine positioning and attract new users through social media, simultaneously.

Once again, an incredible lineup of articles and information briefs from some of the Web’s leading minds fills this issue. In addition to our stellar contributor columns (Tim Ash and Conversion Cache, and Dante Monteverde’s SEO Corner), this month’s absolute must-read list includes Michelle Wicmandy on Press Release Distribution, Ken Lyons on Outdated SEO Tactics, and Lars Johansson on Assessing Editorial Impact with Google Analytics. Other articles not to miss include E-commerce Software in Action, Managing Site Redesigns and the first article from our new Associate Editor, Linc Wonham, on The True Cost of Hosting.

Enjoy this issue of Website Magazine and remember to share your stories of ’Net success online at WebsiteMagazine.com.

-Peter Prestipino, Editor-in-Chief

Peer-to-Peer Branding Losing Credibility

Mike Phillips — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:14:00 GMT

In a recent survey by marketing firm Edelman, it was revealed that consumers are losing trust in each other, when it comes to providing credible information about companies. In fact, confidence dropped by nearly half, since 2008. In 2008, 45 percent said that friends and peers are credible sources of information about companies. In 2010, that number fell to 25 percent. Trust has evaporated in other categories, too. TV news dropped more than 20 percent, and newspapers dropped about 20 percent. The reason this is significant to Web professionals is that many businesses have put faith in social media to help them market their brands - a place that, in the traditional view, relies on peer-to-peer branding. We've seen evidence of many businesses shifting significant portions of their marketing budgets to social media based on presumptions of the value of social sharing. Many will surely see this as a significant cloud over their social marketing initiatives. There is a very bright silver lining. But first, let's examine why consumers' trust in each other might be fading.

The significant "noise" in social media. The more active users become in social media, the more noise they encounter. More friends means more updates, more followers means more links to click, and so on. Facebook, for example, is a prime culprit. How many Farmville updates have you seen recently? While a game, it is absolutely a brand. And, it is quite easy for friends to assume any other "brand speak" falls into this "nonsense" category.

Payola. Related to branding messages and Farmville on Facebook, the concept of "payola" has been introduced to social media. Many companies give away freebies in exchange for a branded status update or tweet. Very quickly, this can erode confidence in friends and their updates. It also diminishes any future updates from friends about a brand, even if it's entirely altruistic.

Seeding. Companies have long been "seeding" posts, ratings, reviews and forums about their businesses. This might be anything from a forged Yelp review to a Twitter or Facebook update from an employee of the company. Businesses have encouraged employees to utilize their networks to promote the brand. It appears to be backfiring.

And it all comes down to ... marketers doing their jobs. Directed to build friends and followers, and acting like consumers have taken its toll, according to the Edelman report. Company employees lost trust too, from 31 percent down to 28 percent. Social networkers used to revolt against brands on social media. Now they just ignore them. This seemingly adverse condition, however, is precisely where companies can take advantage of the "ownership" of brands on social networks, by conveying their own messages directly to consumers and letting it stand on its own merit.

In the same Edelman study, CEOs saw the biggest increase, from 17 percent trust in 2009, to 26 percent trust this year. Why? In part, because of social media. As businesses have come to embrace social media, they have become more accessible. And, accessibility leads to trust. Think about a few big brands: Sprint's CEO did a series of TV commercials, and Papa John's has had wild success with images of its CEO driving and delivering pizzas to "regular Joe" consumers. And no matter what your opinion on Barack Obama, he is easily one of the most accessible Presidents of all time, largely due to the office's engagement in social media and the ability for anyone with an Internet connection to reach out and be heard.

The point is this: Social media might be less trusted than before and friends might not be seen as the most reliable sources of business information - and that's not a bad thing. The opportunity is there for brands to take control in a space typically viewed as uncontrollable. The best social media marketer in your company might be your CEO. Consider a weekly update, blog post or tweet coming directly from your CEO. This is not to suggest that a CEO should try to hawk a product on Facebook. The normal rules of social media still apply. But this is an excellent opportunity to connect a brand's highest authority with its consumers, gain trust, and possibly even get a message spread across a network from a most trusted source.

Also read: Are Businesses Drinking the Social Media Kool-Aid?

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100 Million Users Access Facebook via Mobile

Mike Phillips — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:27:00 GMT

A recent entry on Facebook's official blog states that more than 100 million people are "actively using Facebook from their mobile devices every month." This figure is growing fast, and it's not just limited to those entering via a Facebook app on the iPhone and AT&T. From the blog post: "This usage happens on almost every carrier in the world and comes less than six months after we announced 65 million people on Facebook Mobile."

Contributing to the uptick in mobile users are the Facebook mobile apps available across a variety of carriers and mobile devices, enhanced Facebook mobile-ready Web pages (m.facebook.com, for example) and the ability for users to post to Facebook via SMS (including Facebook's new link-shrinking capability with FB.ME). Should Facebook start providing analytics to users with their URL-shortening service, you might see even more mobile activity.

For businesses, this news puts even greater importance on marketing within the world's largest social network. Mobile is a tricky proposition. But if you can merge mobile with social - and with Facebook, you can - you have a win-win situation. You gain access to the social sphere, as well as mobile users. Consider this when updating Facebook Pages for your business.

To target the Facebook mobile user, keep updates relatively brief and include mobile-friendly calls-to-action, such as brief blog posts, links to maps, and links to specific, mobile-friendly Web pages. Want users to call your business? Link to an offer on a landing page with a highly visible phone number. Many devices will automatically enable click-to-call. Brick and mortar businesses have a great opportunity here to drive foot traffic by providing instant coupons through Facebook updates, for example. Some updates to avoid might include links to resource-intensive Web pages (including Flash-based elements) and other multi-media.

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Are Businesses Drinking the Social Media Kool-Aid?

Mike Phillips — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:30:00 GMT

E-mail marketing firm Exact Target, in conjunction with Econsultancy, has released results of a report on digital marketing budgets that shines some light on what businesses are planning to do this year - and not do. What's very interesting (and alarming) is that many companies have decided to spend their budgets on some marketing channels somewhat blindly.

The survey included data from more than 1,000 respondents in December 2009 and January 2010. Of those, 648 are client-side organizations, and 385 are agency/supplier-side, both from the US (45 percent) and the UK (33 percent).

When asked about their planned marketing spend on social media for 2010, 70 percent of respondents said they would increase spend on off-site social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) while 64 percent said they would increase spend on on-site social media (blogs, or ratings and reviews). Also, 56 percent say they will increase spend on mobile marketing. At the same time, just 54 percent said they would increase spend on e-mail marketing.

But when asked about measurable ROI for these channels, respondents appear to be rolling the dice. In terms of ability to measure, just 19 percent of respondents say that measurability is "good" for on-site social media and 17 percent for off-site. As far as mobile marketing, just 17 percent say that measurable ROI is "good." That's in stark contrast to e-mail marketing, where more than 50 percent say measurability is "good."

It would appear that measurable ROI is much higher for a proven channel like e-mail and significantly less than social media or mobile. Either these businesses are measuring social media and mobile through unseen means, or they're drinking the social media Kool-Aid.

Does this fall in line with your marketing budgets for 2010? Please leave a comment below and tell us if you're on the bandwagon, or sticking with what's worked in the past?

And don't miss Website Magazine's upcoming April 2010 issue, where we address concrete strategies for e-mail marketing.

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Domino's Pizza: Reverse Engineering Reputation Management

Mike Phillips — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:57:00 GMT

Reputation management is a term often thrown around the Web as a way to respond to criticism (warranted or not) before it gets out of hand and a brand is damaged. But Domino's Pizza is proving that reputation management can go a long way as an offensive manuever; before any damage has actually taken place.

Domino's new ad campaign skewers their own product; with the intent of selling a new, tastier brand of pizza. You might have already seen the spots or heard them on the radio. It can be quite alarming (or at least eyebrow-raising) to hear a company blast its own product. For example, one spot features the voice of a past Domino's customer saying, "Domino's pizza crust to me is like cardboard." The commercial then goes on to announce Domino's new formula, including new crust and sauces. As little as just a few years ago, such a tactic was unheard of. Not anymore. Not in an age of empowered consumers.

Domino's does not need a lesson in bad publicity in the Internet age. Just last year, employees did plenty of brand damage by posting YouTube videos documenting the mistreatment of food before serving it to customers. This time, however, Domino's is striking first. It's a bit of reverse engineering that might start a new wave of reputation management tactics as brand promotion, not damage control.

I don't recall an outcry from consumers about how bad Domino's was in the past. But that's not the point. I've come to believe that the consumer's voice is all-powerful in this day and age and so have many others. So, Domino's decided to use the power of the consumer voice to its advantage. Even if there was little negative being said about Domino's, the commercials make me think there was an entire movement of dissatisfied customers taking their displeasure to the Internet and beyond. In other words, I'm led to believe that my fellow consumers had a problem and Domino's fixed it. (I think.) Domino's: the pizza place that cares. Nice, huh?

Because we're dealing directly with consumers, it's crucial that Domino's "walks the walk." Their Twitter account is loaded with "@" replies - everything from saying "thanks" to a compliment, to responding to criticism or customer service issues, and even chatting with customers about a new movie. Their Facebook page offers coupons and provides another way for customers to communicate, even vent. Plenty of fans have left positive feedback about the new pizzas, and in some creative ways such as one that reads, "My dogs hate the new Domino's pizza. It tastes so good we eat it crust and all. No doggie treats left. Cudos, Domino." That's like a free commercial in itself. Of course, there is negative feedback too. But in the mold of true social media responibilty, Domino's replies with solutions to the problems, and in a timely fashion. Domino's has more than 400,000 fans on Facebook and close to 9,000 followers on Twitter. In fact, they gained 10 new followers during the time it took to write this post.

Domino's took a certian leap of faith here. Certainly, new customers and previous customers are being targeted with the promise of a new, better product. There will be loyal customers who are not happy about the change. But if nothing else, Domino's comes out of all this with a new respect from consumers - whether real or imagined. Reputation management is not all about reacting to negative publicity. In this case, it's about creating a reputation, and backing it up.

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ClearSaleing Updates Ad Analytics, Includes Social Media Tracking

Mike Phillips — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:08:00 GMT

ClearSaleing, a leading provider of attribution management and advertising analytics has announced Release 4.4 of its attribution analytics platform, which allows marketers, to make and schedule ad text changes across all search engines. This type of optimization on the fly becomes particularly important at this time of year - for seasonal ads, and the ability to respond rapidly as consumer's spending habits take shape in a volatile economy.

“While other analytics programs can show you top rankings, ClearSaleing moves far ahead by using our attribution platform to accurately assess an ad’s true performance by profit, revenue, and other appropriate metrics. And, since immediate action is so critical during a peak buying season, we enable the marketer to create and push ad changes out to all the search engines right from ClearSaleing’s platform,” says ClearSaleing Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder, Adam Goldberg.

What's more, Release 4.4 now integrates social media ad attribution. Marketers can track over 3,000 social media sites and provide critical data needed to assess the true value of marketing efforts on these burgeoning platforms.

"ClearSaleing now shows where a customer visits a social media site along our purchase path. If a brand creates a fan page on Facebook, ClearSaleing shows the value of the traffic from that social media site and how customers are interacting with it, and their other advertising,” explains Luke Tuttle, ClearSaleing’s Chief Information Officer.

Some of ClearSaleing's clients include American Greetings, SafeAuto Insurance and Nationwide Insurance.

Media Buyers Target Social Networks, E-mail in 2010

Mike Phillips — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:28:00 GMT

According to a new study by the Center for Media Research, media buyers plan a big push on social networks in the coming year. The study, "2010 Media Planning Intelligence Study," surveyed more than 1,900 MediaPost subscribers, 1,164 of which claim to have planning, buying and approving responsibility for 2010. Of those, 56.3 percent "realistically" plan to include social media in their plans, second only to e-mail with 56.8 percent - not a large gap. Third on the list was keyword search (49.7 percent) suggesting that PPC is still alive and well.

What does this suggest? Quite simply, social networks are seen as a bona fide marketing channel for more than half of your competition. Another interesting finding is that regional newspapers outscored national newspapers by a count of 31 percent to 14 percent - dead last.

Other findings of note include:

About twice as many would "ideally" buy mobile video than will "realistically" buy, suggesting that the mobile channel holds high hopes, but is not a viable channel yet.
E-mail sponsorship is well below actual e-mail marketing, at 29.5 percent. This might be a good time to get low rates on sponsored e-mail messages.
The traditional media buy of magazines outweighed online display, by a factor of 42 percent to 40 percent.
Online video (26.7 percent) lags behind many tradtional media buys such as event sponsorship (36.9 percent), direct mail (34.7 percent) and regional TV (32.8 percent), but just ahead of mobile SMS text (26.1 percent).