5 Questions to Ask Your Social Media Consultant

5 Questions to Ask Your Social Media Consultant

by Allison Howen

Posted on 03.13.2013

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A brand’s social media presence is only as effective as the person managing it.
This is why it is important for social media consultants to not only be well versed in content posting strategies, but also familiar with important metrics that can be used to measure a brand’s social success.
That being said, every social media consultant is different. One person may measure success by the number of followers a brand has, while another might measure success based on fan interactions. This is why it is important for business owners and social consultants to be on the same page with their social media strategies. In fact, by having the same goals and expectations, teams can work together to optimize social strategies in order to obtain better metrics and a better overall ROI.
So whether you already employ a social media consultant or are looking to hire one in the near feature, consider asking the following questions so that you can be assured that you are both working toward the same goals:

1. How do we measure engagement?

Every business wants to post “engaging” content, but how your social consultant measures the engagement of that content is what really matters. For example, do they weigh certain interactions, like “shares”, more heavily than an interaction such as a “like"? Knowing the answer to this question will help you get a better understanding of what your engagement score means and how your content is resonating with your audience.

2. Are we measuring conversions? 

Measuring conversions on social media can be tricky, which is why it is important to know if and how your social media consultant is tracking this metric. Moreover, this metric can show brands which social network contains the majority of customers that are likely to convert. By knowing this, brands can increase conversions by launching exclusive promotions on that network.

3. What type of content receives the most interactions?

While the answer to this question may vary by network, this is an important question to ask because it can help teams optimize their content production strategies. For example, if videos receive more shares than other content types, then the brand’s social media consultant should relay that information to the content production team. By doing this, the content team can focus more of their time on producing videos and not as much time on producing less influential types of content.

4. How do our follower numbers compare to our competition’s follower numbers?

A social media consultant’s job is not to only manage and monitor your social accounts, but also to monitor the social accounts of your brand’s competitors. By doing this, the consultant can gain insights into the content and promotion strategies of these brands and collaborate with your team for ways to stay ahead of the competition.

5. What tools do we use to measure our social success?

Most social networks have some type of analytics offering, however, the ’Net is full of robust tools that can provide even further insights into your brand's social success. By discussing which tools are being leveraged, you will be able to make sure that none of your brand's valuable metrics is going to waste.

Tennis Player Quits over Cyber-Bullying

Rebecca Marino quits tennis because of bullying on social media

By Shane Bacon | Busted Racquet – 7 hours ago

Rebecca Marino — Getty ImagesThink back to those days as kids when you were standing on a basketball court or a putting green or a tennis court day-dreaming about what it would be like to one day be a professional. A kid's mind wonders to Fenway or Augusta or Wimbledon, creating a fantasy world where you are the person everyone is watching and rooting for and that shot you take or that putt you hit is somehow superimposed on that huge stage.

And then imagine you get there. Hour after sweaty hour you spend on your backhand and serve and you slowly improve to one of the best in the world. And once you get there, you keep getting slammed by people you don't even know and that forces you to eventually leave the game you worked so hard to enter.
Meet Rebecca Marino, a 22-year-old Canadian tennis player who has been ranked as high as 38th in the world in women's professional tennis. Marino has a 150-107 record in her WTA career, with no wins and one runner-up back in 2011. This week, Marino announced that she would be retiring from professional tennis because she was struggling with all the online abuse she was getting from "fans" that berated her on social media.
[Also: Andy Roddick rises in tennis rankings despite retirement]
Marino admitted during a conference call this week announcing her retirement that she has been battling depression for over six years and all the negative energy from the social media outlets just pushed her into a darker place instead of improving her outlook on life.
“Social media has also taken its toll on me," Marino said, saying that she would receive numerous tweets that tell her to "go die" and "go burn in hell" and even scold her for costing her money if people had bet on her during certain matches.
Basically Marino admitted that tennis wasn't fun for her anymore, and there is no point to continue something, even at such a high level, if it isn't fun.
I feel for people like Marino. Anyone in any public position is going to get flak from random people on the Internet (heck, even us writers get hundreds of comments on certain stories calling us out for being "idiots") and while some people can just brush it off, there is a large group of people that see that stuff and have a hard time looking past it. Imagine if you just lost some big match and the first thing you see is people scolding you and telling you to die? That wouldn't exactly be the warming blanket you were hoping for.
Sadly, this is the world we live in. It's almost too easy to get after someone on the Internet these days without any repercussions, and while a lot of people wish there was something that could change this, there simply isn't. Marino is making a life change for the better, and whatever she decides to do I hope it makes her life easier and less stressful and maybe she will find that love for tennis again somewhere down the road.

Exploring White Label SEO Solutions

Exploring White Label SEO Solutions

by Michael Garrity

Posted on 02.19.2013

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A business typically uses a white label software solution to offer its customers a service (or services) it may not have the internal resources to provide on its own. These solutions allow the company to provide additional functionality or resources while using its own unique branding, rather than the name and logo of the company that developed the software.

For Internet marketers and SEO professionals, using white label software can free them up to shift their focus toward other important business aspects. In other words, this software does the vast majority of the SEO work. Thus, these solutions level the playing field for marketers, because despite how much experience they may or may not have with professional search engine optimization, they'll be able to find a solution that will fit their needs. And since this software is white label, it ensures that the results appear, to the marketer's clients, to be coming from an in-house team.

So, if you’re in the market for while label SEO software, check out the following round-up of some of the best solutions available today.

Raven Tools
Technically, Raven Tools is a “marketing platform” that offers a variety of white label SEO tools. These include SEO management, research and keyword targeting, competitor analysis and the ability to research, organize and monitor link-building efforts with ease.

6Qube
The private label SEO software from 6Qube was designed specifically for companies using platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or manual development to offer their marketing services. It comes with source code-level white labeling capabilities, call tracking and recording, lead tracking and management and detailed analytics reporting.

SheerSEO
SEO pros can use SheerSEO to track their rankings on Google, Yahoo and Bing, track the Google PageRank of multiple pages over time, estimate potential traffic, use Google Analytics, check keyword density on select Web pages, submit sites to multiple Web directories and much more. The solution will even gather a list of a site’s main referring links, including page URL, page rank and link text.

WebCEO
WebCEO's white label SEO software comes with a full suite of SEO tools, including a rank checker, backlink checker, website auditor and an online keyword tool, in addition to a number of DIY features for keyword research, SEO and link building.

My SEO Tool
There’s no confusion in the name of this 100 percent white label SEO client management platform, which comes complete with SEO ranking, Google Analytics integration, social media tools and AdWords API integration. It also offers the ability to work with 10 to an unlimited number of websites (based on the package you select), 500-5000 keywords and 10,000-300,000 monitored backlinks.

BrightLocal
BrightLocal enables its white label partners to create a profile, add their logos, colors and unique text to their SEO solution, and customize all of their SEO reports. This means they can take advantage of BrightLocal’s suite of local SEO tools that help companies audit and track their search engine ranking performance, utilize the Google+ Local Wizard tool and stay tuned into the needs and concerns of their clients’ customers with the ReviewBiz feature.

Agency Platform
Professional marketers can take advantage of Agency Platform’s white label SEO solutions, which include SEO, SEO reseller, local SEO and PPC services, which offer a user dashboard, SEO KPI reports, SEO and PPC audits, reputation monitoring, social media management, weekly SEO alerts and the ability to manage unlimited accounts.

Black Hat vs. White Hat Social Media Marketing

Black Hat vs. White Hat Social Media Marketing

by Allison Howen

Posted on 02.13.2013

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When it comes to social media marketing, there is a long list of best practices and worst practices that brand managers should be aware of. 
Sometimes the lines of good and bad get blurry, and even though a brand might simply be trying to improve its follower or engagement metrics, it could be crossing over to the slippery slope of using black hat tactics.
Black hat tactics go against both the written and unwritten rules of social media. These tactics game the system in order to achieve better results. While some black hat tactics are clearly underhanded and easy to identify, other tactics are better disguised and are leveraged by thousands of brands on a daily basis, many times unintentionally. Read below to discover more about five black hat strategies, along with ways to clean up these tactics.

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Black Hat: Buying your Audience

This is an obvious black hat practice, and it really makes no sense. While there are many available services that make it simple for someone to purchase fans or followers, this tactic has little-to-no value. Sure popularity is nice, but you shouldn’t have to pay for it. Not only can this practice damage your brand’s reputation with real fans and followers (if they find out), but chances are that these mysterious new audience members probably don’t care much about what your brand has to say. Moreover, purchased fans and followers could contain spammers and hackers, which have the potential to cause a whole lot of problems for your brand and its real audience.

White Hat: Growing your Audience

The best way to grow your audience is with a variety of engaging content. This includes informative posts, images, videos, promotions, polls and any other type of interactive status update that grabs audience attention. Once this type of content is being created on a regular basis, social media managers should also consider either advertising on social networks or promoting their content so that more people can see it, which can be done on both Facebook and Twitter. These strategies spread the word about a brand’s social profiles, which helps increase real fan and follower numbers.

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Black Hat: Running Facebook Promotions Directly on a Page

This is an example of where the lines between black hat and white hat get blurry. Although many brands run promotions on Facebook on a regular basis, only the brands who are running these promotions within Apps on Facebook.com are actually complying with the Facebook Pages Terms.

White Hat: Running Legit Promotions

The Facebook Pages Terms make it clear that promotions must be administered within Apps, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App. However, social managers should also note some of the social network’s other promotion rules, such as acknowledging that promotions are not endorsed or sponsored by Facebook, disclosing who is collecting each participants’ information, as well as not using Facebook functions (such as likes, comments or check-ins) as valid actions for entries into a contest or promotion.

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Black Hat: Spamming for Traffic

Another obvious black hat tactic is spamming for traffic. Most of us have witnessed social spammers, who tend to comment on popular posts and tweets with a random message in addition to a strange link. While most of you reading this article know better than to click on these spammy links, others don’t, which is why this shady tactic continues.

White Hat: Posting for Traffic

The best way to fight against spammers is to report them, but this doesn’t solve the dilemma of how brands can obtain more traffic to their sites via the social Web. Aside from posting intriguing content, another way brands can boost their visibility (and therefore direct traffic to their sites) is by participating in conversations on trending topics, which is most easily done on Twitter. By using a relevant hashtag in your post, Twitter users who are also using that hashtag to tweet will be more likely to see and interact with your brand and its updates.

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Black Hat: Corrupt Cover Photos

Facebook cover photos are meant to be a representation of your brand, but some brands leverage this area to promote sales or encourage engagement. The Facebook Page Terms, however, clearly labels these tactics as prohibited. In fact, covers images cannot be made up of more than 20 percent text, include price or purchase information, contain website, email or mailing addresses, have references to Facebook actions or other call-to-actions.

White Hat: Innovative Cover Photos

If you are determined to use your cover photo to promote a new service or product, try to use a little imagination in order to not breach the Facebook Pages Terms. Taco Bell is an example of one brand that has successfully accomplished this task. The popular fast food restaurant updated its cover photo this morning to promote the company’s new Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos. While the cover photo definitely gets to the point, it also complies with cover photo guidelines by not including too much text, a call-to-action or pricing information.

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Black Hat: Sneaky Automation

Using automated services for social media campaigns is another place where the lines between black and white hat get blurry. While these services can make life much easier for social media managers, they can also be major annoyances when used in the wrong way. An example of a bad use of automation is when brands send out generic messages to new followers and fans thanking them for becoming an audience member. While this practice isn’t necessarily “bad” when used as stated above, some brands take the thank you message a step further by asking their new fans to take an immediate action in engaging with the brand by adding a link to their website, a product or additional social profile within the message. While this might not bother some audience members, it can come off as pushy and turn others away.

White Hat: Automation to Help Save Time

Automation tools should be used to help brands make the posting process less time consuming. Although service like IFTTT can make some social media management tasks easier, brands should remember that interactions with fans and followers should come off as authentic, and not from a robot.

Pin it to Win it!

Pin It to Win It
Brands Discover Pinterest
by Sam McMillan
Hit the Pinterest homepage at Pinterest.com and it’s hard to see what all the fuss is about. At first glance it looks like a highly-caffeinated editorial meeting for Us magazine. Images of cupcakes, beefcake, celebrities and inspirational sayings abound. And recipes. Lots of recipes. Call it food porn.

So why are brands as diverse as Whole Foods’ Whole Planet Found­a­tion and fashion forward shopping site Rue La La clamoring to get their boards on Pinterest?

Well, the numbers don’t lie. In a few short months Pinterest has climbed the ranks of the top-trafficked sites, joining Facebook, Amazon and Wikipedia, to become a search engine that rivals Google—and drawn over 20 million unique visitors in the US, who looked at 1.5 billion page views in one month. Stats like that get the attention of brands who want to reach customers, build loyalty, and foster engagement. But it’s Pinterest’s ability to drive sales by enabling a visitor to click through an image, and go directly to an e-commerce website, that has marketers stampeding.

SHOW DON’T SHOUT
Lisa Weser, senior director of brand communications at Anheuser-Busch, discovered Pinterest two years ago, “When you had to request an invitation to join,” she says. “I knew it was going to be big when I spent two hours on the site in a single visit.” Since that time, Weser has become a passionate advocate for the site. Pinterest users are an ideal brand demographic Weser explains. “They are overwhelmingly affluent, educated and female. They represent a desirable demographic when it comes to purchasing power and influence.”

To speak to their audience on Pinterest, brands must learn to lower the volume. “Audiences are exhausted from the non-stop chatter of Twitter and Facebook postings,” Weser believes. Pinterest represents a societal shift toward a preference for visual story­telling that enables brands to show without shouting.

It’s a more quiet medium Weser thinks, and it facilitates an experi­ence that’s akin to leisurely flipping through a magazine. In addi­tion to the enviable demographics Pinterest delivers, a recent report from Digital Trends indicates that the average time pinners spend on Pinterest is over an hour. Combine that with the organic pin and share mechanism built into Pinterest boards that connects consumers to brands (and their e-commerce sites) and it’s no wonder that, in Weser’s words, “Every brand wants to reach them.”

http://www.commarts.com/columns/pin-win-it.html

Content Marketing Without a Blog

It’s no secret that content marketing has a phenomenal ROI (the statistics only seem to get better with each passing year). In fact, Kapost and Eloqua recently produced an eBook on the ROI of content marketing in which they stated that per dollar content marketing produces three times the number of leads as compared to traditional marketing.
Unfortunately, many businesses have shied away from content marketing, mistaking the term for a synonym of “blogging,” which is not the end-all-be-all of content marketing. In fact, I can think of seven ways you can do content marketing without a blog…
Vlog
Not much for writing, but love talking? Share your experience and knowledge through a vlog series on YouTube, and promote it through your Twitter and Facebook page. Trust me, this works. If you need any evidence, allow me to point you to the wildly successful "Will It Blend?" campaign by Blendetc.
Podcast
You aren’t much for appearing on camera either. That’s fine – go the route of the podcast. Interview experts in your industry, or just take 10 minutes to address your customers’ frequently asked questions. The podcast is still a viable form of content marketing. Plus, it’s the only non-visual form on this list.
Facebook & Twitter
It almost goes without saying that Facebook and Twitter are great ways to drive a content marketing strategy, but don’t take my word for it. 76 percent of businesses are using social networking for business objectives.
Infographics
Are you in an industry that loves statistics and facts? (Hint – the answer is a resolute ‘yes’.) Put the right amount of creativity and effort into it, and you can have an infographic that goes viral. Seriously, any business can leverage an infographic to their advantage. As an example, take Brilliance, a jeweler whose “Kardashian Wedding vs. Average Wedding” infographic went viral in 2011. The infographic brought in thousands of visitors to the company’s website because it was well done and interesting.
Whitepapers
So, I said I have seven strategies that avoid blogging, but not writing. If you’re a B2B company, then a white paper could be just the thing you need to widen your reach and generate hundreds of new leads. If there’s no one in your company capable of writing a rock-solid white paper, then it’s worth budgeting some cash to pay a professional to do the job. A half-baked white paper receives the same critical acclaim that a half-baked research paper earned you in high school. Back then, it was a C+. Today, it’s money down the drain.
Knowledge Bank
You can approach the Knowledge Bank strategy in one of these two ways (or both): your bank could be an organized index to all of the resources on your website, and/or it could serve as a roundup of the web’s “Best of the Best.” Either way, the point is to make valuable information organized and easy to find.
Pinterest & Instagram
At the end of Aug. 2012, the Los Angeles Times described Pinterest and Instagram’s growth as “meteoric,” citing a 2,183 percent growth over the course of one year for Pinterest. Instagram has performed remarkably well, too. From July 2011 to July 2012, monthly traffic increased from 56,360 to 12 million. On Thanksgiving Day 2012, Instagram users shared a jaw-dropping 10 million photos. If your product or service has a visual draw, then sign up with these sites today.
The Bonus
There are many benefits of doing content marketing with a blog. According to the 2012 Digital Content Marketing Survey, blogging is the second-most utilized form of Web content (75 percent), right behind social media (90 percent). Also, the best results come from social media content, e-newsletters and blogs.
Though we’re still waiting on the 2013 Survey, I’d be surprised if the blog isn’t holding steady.
About the Author
Amie Marse, is the founder and managing partner of Content Equals Money, a content writing service for agencies and Web-based clients.


http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2013/02/08/Content-Marketing-Without-a-Blog.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Search, Social, or Both?

Search, Social, or Both?

by Pete Prestipino

Posted on 02.01.2013

WM: What role does the real-time Web play in digital success today? What “basics” of a real-time strategy can you share with WM readers?

RG: A real-time marketing presence is the new optimization, and the crux of social customer relationship management. Over the last 3 years, consumers have become almost totally networked in the United States and Europe, and these individual Internet users are comfortable interacting fluidly, and “highly addressable” by businesses. When they act fluidly and in-the-moment, they expect businesses to do the same. Real-time marketing is not a new concept, and was first written about by Regis McKenna back in 1995, and touted by many other brilliant marketers at the time. The Internet has always been real-time, but the difference between now in then is that real-time is now a daily reality for marketers. Real-time requires a human presence – an ubiquitous digital existence, if you will – in addition to a technical presence. Being present in real-time doesn’t mean that marketers should go about in a harried manner, but rather that they are prepared and simply present. Being present is the new optimization, and will guarantee more visibility in search and social spaces than a passive approach.

WM: If you were to advise WM readers on one metric/measurement to determine a combined search/social success, what would it be?

RG: If a robust content, SEO, and social strategies are in place, I would recommend looking at the network reach of your efforts. This is found in a variety of ways in different social networks (Ripples in G+, network reach in Facebook, retweets in Twitter, etc.). The core of this philosophy is to get out of the “one-to-many” approach to communication, and extending it to “many-to-many.” Network reach metrics help you gain a sense of how your efforts are working.


Read more:
http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2013/02/01/search-social-or-both.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter