Google Catches Fire in Social Media

Allison Howen — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Google is getting even more serious about social.

The search engine giant recently announced its acquisition of Wildfire, a popular social media marketing platform. The ultimate goal of this acquisition, according to Google’s blog, is to help businesses create better and fresher content, as well as generate more meaningful interactions.

“With Wildfire, we’re looking forward to creating new opportunities for our clients to engage with people across all social services,” states the blog. “We believe that better content and more seamless solutions will help unlock the full potential of the web for people and businesses.”

It is also important to note that Wildfire's current clients won't see any changes to their service. Wildfire's blog states that for now, the company will remain focused on helping brands run and measure their social engagement and ad campaigns across the entire web and all social services – including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

Content, Ads Integrated into One Social Solution

Linc Wonham — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 04:00:00 GMT

Adaptly has integrated its social advertising and optimization technology with Wildfire’s social marketing suite of software, both companies recently announced.

Adaptly’s proprietary technology aggregates more than 160 social metrics from a brand’s earned and owned channels; analyzes the impact of paid media on earned media in real time, and continuously refines the content of ads and their target audiences to reach the most qualified social users and drive ongoing engagement at the lowest cost.

Wildfire’s toolset for designing, publishing and managing brand content through social media are used by more than 10,000 customers, including big-time brands such as Facebook, Amazon and Target.

The integration will give marketers unified control over the combined effect of paid, earned and owned social media to maximize consumer engagement such as likes, comments and the sharing of content. Wildfire is the first vendor to bring this self-optimizing technology to the broad market through a completely integrated social marketing solution.

The integrated ad management capability is currently available to a limited number of Wildfire beta customers that have already experienced significant results. For example, beta customers’ “People talking about this” metric on Facebook – one of the most powerful measures of fan engagement – rose on average by an order of magnitude during their campaigns.

Beta customers also saw significant cost improvement, on average more than doubling the size of their fan base while beating their goal for cost per fan by 49 percent

Casting a Wide Net: Successful Social on a Budget

Allison Howen — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:00:00 GMT

Social media marketers are like fishermen: posts are cast out like fishing rods, in hopes that the right bait was chosen to capture the attention of an audience in the deep blue sea of the social Web.

And while social media is a valuable marketing option, it can also be very time consuming. Furthermore, as every successful business person knows – time equals money. Therefore, when it comes to social media, it is important to make sure that one is using the right platforms, as well as has the right tools in their tackle box in order to monitor and manage the best and most affordable marketing campaign possible.

The Platforms

Social platforms come with different audiences and layouts. Since there are many social media platforms on the Web right now – with inevitably more to come – a marketer needs to choose which networks will be their brand’s focus. While marketers might catch the most fish with Facebook and Twitter, which are like the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans of social media, other platforms such as LinkedIn and YouTube are viable options as well.

It is important for a marketer to realize that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to social networks, after all, a fisherman can’t catch fish in a lake that he rarely visits. Choosing the right platform should be based on a brand’s social goals and expectations. For example, a brand that is focusing on location-based offers would want to consider using Foursquare, while a brand that’s focused on informing readers may want to choose a platform like Tumblr.

Nevertheless, a brand should choose the social networks that will relate best to its goals. The networks should compliment the content that will be posted, and above all else the platforms should stay interactive and social.

Saving Time, Saving Money

After choosing which platforms will be the focus, marketers will realize that interacting, engaging and creating content can be very time consuming – just like fishing. However, unlike fishing, marketers can use tools to help them manage social media more efficiently, and therefore cost effectively.

Solutions such as Tweetdeck and HootSuite are both options to consider when looking for a dashboard to manage social networks. Both of these solutions are free, and provide marketers with the capability to post updates, reply to fans and even schedule posts in advance – all in one location.

Twitter’s Tweetdeck dashboard allows users to update their Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Foursquare channels in one spot. Furthermore, the dashboard allows users to filter their Twitter feeds, clear seen updates, and monitor trending topics, as well as create groups for Facebook friends, share photos and links. The dashboard is also customizable, so users can view the information they want to see without having to sort through a ton of tabs or windows. Conveniently, this solution can be downloaded to the desktop, Android and iPhone or Chrome browser, which means that users can manage their accounts from virtually anywhere with an Internet connection.

Outside the Twitterverse is another social managing dashboard called HootSuite. This dashboard allows users to manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Google Plus and more. Additionally, users can view analytics with this solution, which is helpful when monitoring, at least as well as one currently can, the ROI on social.

Analyzing Success

Just like reeling in the big catch, analyzing social success metrics can be difficult. First, one has to define what makes a social campaign successful: is it conversions, a large following or engaged fans? It probably should be all three, as well as some other metrics like check-ins and fan growth rate. But aside from the weekly Facebook report that business Pages’ receive, marketers can get a more detailed look at analytics through a few free solutions.

Facebook users can use the business analytics tool All Facebook Stats, which provides users with a deeper analysis of their fans, distribution, engagement and content. This free tool offers graphs and numbers that will display easy to understand analytics so that marketers can determine which social areas have been successful, as well as which areas can be improved upon.

The social media marketing tool Wildfire, is another solution that is valuable for monitoring Facebook and Twitter success, especially for those with a competitive streak. This solution allows users to compare the likes, followers and check-ins of specific Facebook Pages and Twitter handles. It can be a very useful tool for businesses that wants to compare their own social success with that of a competitor.

Lastly, Crowdbooster is another tool that marketers can take advantage of to help them monitor the impressions, follower growth, retweets and influential followers of a specific brand on Facebook and Twitter. The solution even recommends audience members to engage with, as well as the best times of day to post for the most social success. Users can also post from the solution, which provides graphs and analytics that can help marketers decide their brands social strengths and weaknesses.

Gone Fishin’

It’s time to take that “Gone Fishin’” sign off the door, because with these free tools, social media can not only be a lucrative marketing option, but if the only investment made in it is a little bit of time, the ROI will be on an upward trend as soon as the first post hits the social sea.

'Net Features : wildfire

Google Catches Fire in Social Media

Content, Ads Integrated into One Social Solution

Casting a Wide Net: Successful Social on a Budget