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Category Archives: Social Networks
Readings & Twitter Activities for Week 4
Here are the readings for Twitter, part 1, along with several activities that will help you begin to use Twitter more effectively for strategic marketing, relationship building and listening:
Remember as you begin to approach Twitter for this course:
Think like a marketer, a professional in the business world, not a student.
Take a look at HootSuite (works with any browser, use the free version) and TweetDeck (web version). Select one (or both) and set up so you can use to monitor social feeds through a browser. You can still use whatever phone apps you prefer for Twitter but I want you to experience the browser-based monitoring experience, too, especially the ability to set up multiple columns for monitoring various streams.
Open up: analytics.twitter.com while you are logged into Twitter and begin to consider which of YOUR tweets get engagement.
Get acquainted with http://hashtagify.me and how you might use it to do hashtag research.
Readings (you’ll have more later)
7 Simple Twitter Marketing Tips
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/7-twitter-marketing-tips/
Review this post from Twitter:
https://business.twitter.com/make-it-habit
And this post from Twitter
https://business.twitter.com/best-practices
Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hook: Begin reviewing the chapter on Twitter
Facebook Power Editor
If you’re going to spend money on Facebook advertising, you probably want to manage your ads with as much efficiency and control as possible. Facebook Power Editor is a powerful tool that helps you do so.
What is it?
Once a plug-in that had to be installed, Facebook Power Editor is now located within the ad manager portion of Facebook. The editor is only supported in the Google Chrome browser and can be found at www.facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor. The Facebook Power Editor can be used to create multiple campaigns. Then within those campaigns, you can create your ads. The editor allows you to have powerful control over your Facebook advertising. For example, the editor gives some useful tools to target your ads to very specific audiences. It also allows for bulk editing of multiple ads.
How do you use it?
Once you’re in Facebook Power Editor, you need to download the account (or accounts) you want to use into the editor. Once the account is loaded into the editor, you can navigate using a side toolbar with options such as the campaign dashboard, an image library of images used in your ads and an audience page. Navigating the editor can be a little tricky, and before seriously delving into using it, you may find it helpful to watch a tutorial video (or a few of them) such as the one by Marketing Genius embedded below:
What does it cost?
Facebook Power Editor is a free tool within the Facebook site. However, you do have to pay for implementing the ads associated with it. The cost of running an ad campaign on Facebook can differ pretty widely depending on the options you choose. Typically, you set your own budget, either a daily budget for a continuous campaign or a lifetime budget for a campaign with a set end date. Then you choose from different types of bidding such as cost per thousand impressions (CPM) (based on how many view your ad) or cost per click (CPC) (based on how many click on your ad). If you want to research more into ad pricing, you can check out Facebook’s official help page on the topic.
What are some of the things you can you do with it?
1. Convenient Ad Creation and Editing
One function of Facebook Power Editor is that it simply makes it more convenient to create Facebook ads. For example, it allows you to create an image library (with a bulk-upload function for importing images) that can be used for your ads. You can also apply actions such as pausing ads to a large number of ads at once. The editor also allows you to import and export data into Excel to save time in your editing process. Additionally, if you create a specific group of people to whom you want to advertise, you can create a “saved target group” and use it for future ads.
2. Custom Audience
Custom audience allows you to choose very specifically to whom you want your Facebook ads to appear. By importing email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or app user IDs, you can target your adds to the specific people associated with them. These specific people form a “custom audience.”
3. Lookalike Audience
Once you’ve created a custom audience, you can also create a lookalike audience for your ads. Facebook analyzes your custom audience to create a new “lookalike audience” with similar qualities.
4. Ad Placement
Within Facebook Power Editor, you can control where your Facebook ad will be placed. These options include: All Facebook, News Feed (Desktop and Mobile), News Feed (Desktop Only), News Feed (Mobile Only), Desktop (Right-Hand Column and News Feed on Desktop Only) and Right-Hand Column (Desktop Only).
5. Partner Categories
Partner Categories is a Facebook Power Editor feature available only in the United States. It allows you to target people based on their non-Facebook activity. For example, it allows you to target ads towards people who are strong buyers of certain types of products. Social Media Examiner provides examples of categories such as “pickup truck owner,” “household size of 6” and “healthy & fit.”
How would you apply it to a business?
Using one of the fictional companies for the social media plan project, Max Life Fitness, here’s just a few examples of how the Facebook Power Editor might be useful.
For example, one of the objectives for this client is to build an email list for prospective new customers. Facebook Power editor would allow the business to target these particular users (if they have a Facebook account associated with the email address) through Facebook using a custom audience. Because they already have reason to believe this audience will be interested in their business, this could be an effective use of their advertising dollars.
If Max Life Fitness isn’t happy with the size of its email list and would like to reach other, similar customers, they could use a lookalike audience based on their custom audience.
If Max Life Fitness were to develop an app, they might decide it would be most beneficial for them to advertise only on Facebook mobile. The ad placement feature of Power Editor would allow them to do that.
Partner categories could be extremely valuable to Max Life Fitness, allowing them to very specifically target users who would likely be interested in them. For example, they could target users within the “healthy & fit” category. Their user avatars could be very helpful in helping them choose which categories are the best fit.
Mini Report #2: BuzzSumo
What is it?: Buzzsumo is an online search and analytics app that works across the main social networks to give your business valuable insights for content marketing and SEO purposes.
It is currently in the Beta Period and is being developed by James Blackwell and Henley Wing.
Cost: free while it is in the Beta Period.
Advantages:
- Free to use while it’s in the Beta Period
- Identifies engaging content based on what people are sharing the most on social platforms.
- Can search for any niche or topic
- Find interesting content to curate
- Helps you discover influential experts, writers, and influencers who can promote your content
- Analyze your competitors top content
- Analyze what topics, headlines, and content formats work
- Saves times. A different search platform than Google.
Disadvantages:
- In the Beta Stage you have to register with Twitter in order to get full access to the search engine.
- You do not have unlimited access to the search engine unless you sign up. You have a quota of how many searches you can do per day if you don’t sign up via Twitter.
- Because it is a new app, there is not as much information available as a Google search. A simple search for articles on “fashion tips” on Buzzsumo only turned up one page of results.
How it can be used in a social marketing campaign:
- We can use Buzzsumo when creating our editorial calendar
- We can find and share popular and valuable content (articles, videos, interviews etc.) that our audience would be interested in
- For us it’s a one-stop-shop. And it’s free!
In summary, BuzzSumo is a good tool and one-stop-shop for formulating your business’ content strategy, finding influential people within a niche and discovering popular content. However, it is still being developed and does not have as much information readily available as one can find on other search engine websites (like Google).
Twitterrific {mary lyndal & drew}
Twitter is a social media platform that can be used in a variety of ways. With only 140 characters of text available per tweet, it’s important that the content be concise and to the point. Blasting out breaking news information or attaching a link to a blog post is a good way for a company to push out content. One can also engage with clients and customers easily, which has made some companies rely on Twitter for much of the macro customer service operations.
It’s easy to send out text on Twitter, but how does one know if it’s being picked up effectively? Well, below are four sites that prove to be beneficial when analyzing the reach of one’s social media grasp.
This service tells someone when the most optimal time is to send out a tweet by looking at your tweets and your followers’ tweets. It’s a free service and analyzes up to 1,000 followers at a time. The processing takes about an hour or two to complete, depending on the number of followers one has. The free version only generates one report per month, but they have a Premium version that can be purchased for a monthly fee of $4, which offers more features.
Twitter #analytics is the name of the game with this website. Its features include:
- tweets per day
- how many links you’ve shared
- how often other people mention you
- who you retweet most often
- who you reply to the most
- hashtags you’ve used the most
- which of your tweets have been retweeted and favorited the most
This service is used to analyze tweets from all over the world based on topics and #hashtags and has free and premium versions. Once the topic or tag is searched, you can organize it into a “Binder.” The free version includes up to 2,000 tweets that are sent within the past 6 days. It was created for marketing, media, and event companies so that they could develop useful analytics based on things like keywords, hashtags, photos, text-only tweets, check-ins, and retweets.
As discussed in a previous class period, this service lets one see how far a tweet travels, including information on reach, exposure, tweets, and contributors. It shows just how many people are talking about a particular topic or keyword.
For Campaign Purposes:
All four of these websites analyze Twitter usage but in their own ways. While sometimes it’s not fun to have to go to four different places to get the job done, using all four of these effectively will help a company make the best use of its social media coverage. After doing this, you’ll know when to send out tweets, how and when to respond to tweeters about a specific topic, how to manage the buzz in real time and over a period of time. A company can determine which hashtags work best based on the amount of coverage it gets and which Twitter users would be most beneficial to contact about brand representation.
Smith’s Pharmacy
Rachael Headley, Julie Matthews
Smith’s Pharmacy: Your independent home-town pharmacy. One location, owned by one pharmacist who employs his daughter as a second licensed pharmacist.
Goal: Build better relationships with existing customers, increase sales, promote health and wellness
Long Term Goal: Add a second location and add two more staff pharmacists
- People
– Existing customers: build loyalty
– New customers: expose them to why Smith’s pharmacy is different and more personal
– Reach pharmacists in the area - Objectives
– Get 70% satisfaction on customer service survey
– Get 500 people to sign up for online health community
– Get 20 pharmacists for free online webinar - Strategies
– E-mail an infographic on what common medications shouldn’t be taken together
1. E-mail preliminary satisfaction survey two weeks before the infographic
2. E-mail the infographic
3. E-mail the next survey a day after the infographic
4. Measure the changes in satisfaction, working towards 70% satisfaction
– Offer e-mail reminders for upcoming refills
– Online Health Community website
1. Allows for an “ask the pharmacist” message board anonymously or by name
2. Allows for message boards for people suffering with the same diseases,
serves as grief support.
3. Measure success by engagement/interaction working towards 500.
-Webinar for pharmacists
1. Offering a free resource to existing pharmacists to build relationships for
future hire
2. “Bridging the gap between the pharmacist and the customer: becoming more
involved with your customer”- theme of the webinar
3. Provide information about the webinar a month in advance to the Professional
Pharmacists Organization
4. Work towards goal of 20 pharmacists sign up - Tactics/Technology
– E-mails
1. Ask customers for e-mails for surveys/infographic
2. Offer to send refill reminders via e-mail
– Online Health Community Website
1. Create a website with an easy to remember url
2. Develop message board structures/categories
– Webinar
1. Webinar software: anymeeting
2. Create simple website using wordpress to opt-in
Chicken Thistle Farm- Mary Lyndal and Jenna
About:
- Based in Walworth, NY
- “Fresh, healthy, local food raised the way nature intended, transparently, pasture to plate.” -Chickenthistle.com
- They sell: chickens, eggs, pigs and turkeys as well as fresh veggies. Their goal is to raise the animals giving them a healthy life, not to bulk them up with hormones. They feed their animal’s natural food and strive to raise them in the right way.
Coopcast:
- The farm posts podcasts several times a month with varying topics about farm life and updates about the business.
- Coopcast (Credit: Chickenthistlefarm.com)
Blog:
- Chicken Thistle farm uses their blog several times per month to keep their customers updated with happenings around their farm. They also answer how to questions, for example, how to build a root cellar. Their blog creates online content so when people search for certain topics, they may be lead to the farm’s website for their search, thus generating exposure to the farm.
Coopcam:
- Coopcam is a live video of what is happening at the farm so anyone can see what the chickens are doing at different points of the day.
Facebook:
- They have 1874 likes on Facebook and they consistently post almost everyday. They interact with the public by replying to posts regularly as well as keeping them updated with happenings around the farm. They not only post about the farm, but they share inserting articles and other relevant farm topics.
Twitter:
- On Twitter, they have 482 followers and like on Facebook, they are very good about interacting with their customers.
Youtube:
- On their YouTube channel, they have 271 subscribers and have posted 30 videos. They focus on sharing glimpses of farm life and their animals. Their last post about the life of pigs has 602 views, so a good number of people are interested in seeing an insight into farm life.
Overall, the farm does an excellent job of interacting and talking to their customers through various social media platforms. They also create a good amount of relevant content on the internet that can lead potential customers to their website.
Mayo Clinic
What is the Mayo Clinic?
Mayo Clinic is a non-profit hospital and research group based in Rochester, Minnesota. It is the largest first integrated non-profit medical practice in the world. The Mayo Clinic has three hospitals in the United States located in Minnesota, Florida, and Arizona, within these three hospitals, the Mayo Clinic employees more than 42,000 people. The Clinic also owns and the Mayo Clinic Health System which consists of over 70 clinics and hospitals employing more than 14,000 people. The Mayo Clinic specializes in treating difficult medical cases through tertiary care.
Mayo Clinic spends over $500 million a year on research. The Mayo Clinic also operates several schools of medicine, including the Mayo Graduate School, Mayo Medical School, Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education and May School of Health Sciences.
Mayo Clinic has been close to the top of the U.S. News and World Report List of “Best Hospitals” for more than 20 years. It has also been on Fortune Magazine’s list of America’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” eight years in a row.
http://www.kaaltv.com/article/stories/s3155695.shtml
Lee Aase is the Director of the Mayo Clinic Center of Social Media. After his day job, he serves as Chancellor of Social Media University, Global, a free online higher education institution that provides hands on training for social media.
What the Mayo Clinic is doing to bring social media to health care:
The “Gold Standard” for Social Media
The Mayo Clinic has 464,915 “Likes” on Facebook, 623,000 Twitter followers, over 69,000 followers on Google Plus, and around 7,900 followers on Pinterest. The Mayo Clinic also has a Flickr, YouTube, and 6 blog posts.
Joan Justice, author for socialmediatoday.com states that the Mayo Clinic is the “gold-standard for the use of social media by healthcare organizations.” Justice also states that Mayo Clinic is the “most popular medical provider channel on YouTube.”
The Mayo Clinic’s YouTube Channel has over 13,000 subscribers and more than 10 million views.
The Mayo Clinic’s Pinterest Page has 20 Boards consisting of health related topics.
The aspirations of the Mayo Clinic are intentional that they have a center for a Social Media Center. This center is offered in ordered that the correlation between patients as well as employees may be expressed through the medium of social media.
The Mayo Clinic website states, “Mayo Clinic believes individuals have the right and responsibility to advocate for their own health, and that it is our responsibility to help them use social media tools to get the best information, connect with providers and with each other, and inspire healthy choices. We intend to lead the health care community in applying these revolutionary tools to spread knowledge and encourage collaboration among providers, improving health care quality everywhere.”
The Mayo Clinic has SIX blogs. They have a news blog, “Advancing Science” blog, two blogs for patient sharing, a “Diversity in Education” blog, and a “Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation” blog.
The Mayo Clinic has made sure that each special interest is represented in their blogs.
Life Technologies: video animation with Jasmine & Drew
Life Technologies is an American based company focusing in biotechnology. This corporation formed out of a few different mergers over the past 30 years, and they now have many brands that seek to provide products and services to members in the fields of scientific research, genetic analysis, and applied sciences. A few of their brands include Applied Biosystems, Ambion, Giboco, Invitrogen, Molecular Probes, Novex, and Ion Torrent.
At a Glance:
- $3.8 billion revenue (2012)
- 10,000 employees
- 180 countries
- 50,000+ products
- 5,000+ patents & licenses
- 675,000 citations
- #296 largest company
Upon doing online research, it can be seen that Life has a significant presence in the social media world. They currently have 10,044 followers on LinkedIn, 67,030 likes on Facebook, 18,407 followers on Twitter, and 4,829 subscribers on YouTube. They use these platforms to engage anyone and everyone involved in the industry by posting articles with helpful tips, pictures from events that support their various causes, questions to help achieve goals, and promotional material about rallies they support.
Life Technologies does a great job utilizing social media platforms, releasing content in a timely and consistent fashion that encourages good discussion. One thing to note is how effective their YouTube channel is. It currently has 601 videos uploaded with over 2 million views. The videos are grouped into categories like Spotlight, Recent uploads, Our Products, How-To’s & Demos, Popular Uploads, and Careers. This helps to direct viewers right to what they might be looking to find.
The use of video animation to showcase various pieces of their everyday work life is an innovative way to keep viewers engaged by showing instead of telling. Most other companies submit long documents with large bodies of text, so this technique sets them apart. By posting videos like “Life Outside the Lab,” Life Technologies tries to make every conversation relatable to and enjoyable for anyone and everyone.
Another way Life Technologies uses videography to is display information from the Executive Summary of its Annual Report, which is a great way for everyone to know exactly what the goals are and how things are going without having to read a lot of jargon. In it, the CEO Greg Lucier says,” We’ve hired over 200 salespeople so that we can have a more direct selling relationship with these new researchers coming online in [China].”
In our view, in order to be a great company, you have to be a good company. For us, that means being a great corporate citizen but also a steward of the environment.
Email Marketing: Not What You Say, but How You Say it
It is clear that companies who spam via email have given email marketing a bad rap. However, studies show that email marketing is still the number one cheapest and most effective way to contact the masses.
It’s rather funny to think how important just one or two lines in an email can be. It could be one or two lines too long, or maybe those few sentences just aren’t appealing enough to your potential consumer. Each sentence you put (or don’t put) into the body of an email is crucial to keeping your prospective customer hooked.
As most people have heard since they were a kid, “the first impact you make on someone is the greatest,” it goes the same for hooking potential customers while sending that first welcoming email.
I have reached out to the rookie social media search engine site, Quora for feedback to find the best welcome email ever received.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-welcome-email-you-have-ever-received
Social Media Practices 