Google+ Communities: What Marketers Need to Know

Google+ Communities: What Marketers Need to Know

By Mike Delgado
Published December 20, 2012

Have you heard about the new Google+ Communities?
Google+ Communities allow you to collaborate with others on topics you’re passionate about.
And it’s a great opportunity for marketers to network, engage and build the businesses they support.
This article will reveal everything you need to know about Google+ Communities and how to leverage them for business.

What Is a Google+ Community?

A Google+ Community is a place to meet and engage with people on topics you’re interested in. If you had trouble finding engagement on Google+ in the past, it’s time to take a second look and check out active communities on topics you care about.
Watch this video from Google+ to see how communities work...

Read more at:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/google-plus-communities/

Building a Powerful Brand

Overview

Keller's Brand Equity Model is also known as the Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) Model. Kevin Lane Keller, a marketing professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, developed the model and published it in his widely used textbook, "Strategic Brand Management."
The concept behind the Brand Equity Model is simple: in order to build a strong brand, you must shape how customers think and feel about your product. You have to build the right type of experiences around your brand, so that customers have specific, positive thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions, and perceptions about it.
When you have strong brand equity, your customers will buy more from you, they'll recommend you to other people, they're more loyal, and you're less likely to lose them to competitors.
The model, seen in Figure 1, illustrates the four steps that you need to follow to build strong brand equity.
Figure 1 – Keller's Brand Equity Model

The four steps of the pyramid represent four fundamental questions that your customers will ask – often subconsciously – about your brand.
The four steps contain six building blocks that must be in place for you to reach the top of the pyramid, and to develop a successful brand.

Applying the Model

Let's look at each step and building block in detail, and discuss how you can apply the framework and strengthen your brand..

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/keller-brand-equity-model.htm#np

The Science of Sharing

 http://mashable.com/2011/10/25/social-consumer-sharing-infographic/

If you're buying a car, do you check Facebook? Or do you read up on Kelley Blue Book values and scour the company website for every spec, from horsepower to miles per gallon? What about music -- do you check Top 40 radio charts or scope out what your Facebook friends are actually listening to on Spotify?
Social media has infiltrated the purchasing funnel, helping consumers make informed decisions, from what to have for lunch to where to go on vacation. Depending on the decision, sometimes you turn to your social graph, and sometimes you turn to Google. So, as a brand marketer, you want to know what online channels you should be targeting in order to reach the perfect audience for your product.
But regardless of what kind of consumer you're trying to reach or what you're selling, your SEO better be top notch -- search is the most important influence on the web.
The infographic below, featuring data from M Booth and Beyond, analyzes the differences between high and low sharers and various purchasing decisions, helping brands to understand how should be targeting consumers.
What kind of consumer are you? Let us know in the comments below.

Do “Likes” On Your Facebook Business Page Really Help Your Business?

http://willsherwood.com/design-inspiration/40-excellent-facebook-business-pages-for-inspiration/

52 Cool Statistics About Social Media

http://willsherwood.com/business-education/52-cool-statistics-about-social-media/

December 11, 2012 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that social media has continued to gain momentum as a bona-fide communications and business resource. And given that the new year is almost upon us, our author, Danny Brown, thought it might be fun to have a cool statistic for every week of the year.
Here are ten statistics each for the five best-known social media outlets – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogging – with two more bonus facts thrown in just for fun. (For a total of one statistic per week for a year).
If you enjoy this post, you might also like to check out these others:
15 Ways You Can Use Social Media to Boost Business
40 Excellent Facebook Business Pages for Inspiration
Advanced LinkedIn Techniques for Getting More Clients

Facebook

1. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.
2. More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) is shared each month.
3. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application.
4. More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month.
5. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.
6. There are more than 600 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
7. People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page).
8. The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.
9. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
10. There are more than 1 million entrepreneurs and developers from 180 countries on Facebook.
Statistics from Facebook press office.

LinkedIn

11. LinkedIn is the oldest of the four sites in this post, having been created on May 5 2003.
12. There are more than 187 million users worldwide.
13. Two new members join LinkedIn every second.
14. Members of LinkedIn come from more than 200 countries from every continent.
15. LinkedIn is available in nineteen native languages.
16. Oracle’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Epstein, was headhunted for the position via his LinkedIn profile.
17. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.
18. LinkedIn receives almost 12 million unique visitors per day.
19. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn.
20. Recruiters account for 1-in-20 LinkedIn profiles.
Statistics from LinkedIn press centre and SysComm International.

Twitter

21. Twitter’s web platform only accounts for a quarter of its users – 75% use third-party apps.
22. Twitter gets more that 11 new users every second.
23. There are currently 465 million users of Twitter’s services.
24. Twitter receives 180 million unique visits each month.
25. There are more than 600 million searches on Twitter every day.
26. Twitter started as a simple SMS-text service.
27. Over 60% of Twitter use is outside the U.S.
28. There are more than 50,000 third-party apps for Twitter.
29. Twitter has donated access to all of its tweets to the Library of Congress for research and preservation.
30. More than a third of users access Twitter via their mobile phone.
Statistics from Twitter and the Chirp Conference.

YouTube

31. Over 800 million people around the world use YouTube each month.
32. 500 years of YouTube video are watched on Facebook every single day.
33. YouTube receives more than 4 billion views per day, 600 million from mobile devices.
34. Every minute, 72 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
35. The U.S. accounts for 70% of YouTube users.
36. Over half of YouTube’s users are under 20 years old.
37. You would need to live for around 2,000 years to watch all the videos currently on YouTube.
38. YouTube is available in 19 countries and 12 languages.
39. Music videos account for 20% of uploads.
40. YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the entire Internet used in 2000.
Statistics from YouTube press center.

Blogging

41. 77% of Internet users read blogs.
42. There are currently 1.6 million blogs listed on the blog directory Technorati.
43. 60% of bloggers are between the ages 25-44.
44. One in five bloggers update their blogs daily.
45. About two thirds of bloggers are male.
46. Corporate blogging accounts for 14% of blogs.
47. 15% of bloggers spend 10 hours a week blogging.
48. More than half of all bloggers are married and/or parents.
49. More than 50% of bloggers have more than one blog.
50. Bloggers use an average of five different social sites to drive traffic to their blog.
Statistics from Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2011.

Bonus Facts

51. 90% of Internet users know at least one social network.
52. The average social user has 195 friends.
Statistics from Online Media Gazette.
So there you have it – a fact for every week of the year, just in case you need it for your next presentation, or if you want to let folks know why social media isn’t so dorky after all.
Original Source
This article is reproduced here thanks to Danny Brown. It has been updated and presented here for your education, inspiration and enjoyment by:

Non-Profit Social Media Presentation

http://www.slideshare.net/NPOchick/tweet-talk#btnNext

Social Media & Supply Chains

Social media monitoring can be used to predict when product surges may occur

Some companies, such as electrical supplier RS Components, monitor search trends on their website to assess whether a certain type of component is beginning to become more popular with small orders - normally a sign that engineers may be working on prototypes which could lead to a big order down the line.
Other firms, particularly in fashion, monitor social networks to gain a handle on what is creating buzz - gaining early insight on products that may be about to face the Kate Middleton-effect.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20668700