Here’s a comment I read recently in an online forum:
“Other marketing channels, such as email, still prove to be better at driving conversions than social. Despite this, companies are still spending a lot of time and effort on their social campaigns – why?”
My first reaction was: Continue reading “Which Drives Better Response? Email marketing or social media?”
I found a recent reporter’s question intriguing: “Is social media a field of expertise in and of itself? Or will it eventually become subsumed into pretty much everything?”
My belief: ultimately, social media expertise will relate to the field of communications in the same way that graphic design, video, media relations, etc., currently fit under that umbrella.
Social media represents opportunities for communicating with an audience, but that communication does not occur in a vacuum – to be effective it needs to be part of a coordinated communication approach designed to reach some specific target audience with some specific objective. Expertise in using these tools will be important for communicators and there will likely always be a need for tactically oriented roles that focus on this area (just as, particularly in larger organizations or agencies, there continues to be the need for those who specialize in print, broadcast, web development, etc.). Continue reading “Is Social Media a Job, or Part of a Bigger Picture?”
Client question: “What’s the best way to communicate with the under-35 market?”
It’s a legitimate question and certainly marketers need to think carefully about how they will communicate with their market, recognizing that markets are different. The only problem with this question (and it’s one that most marketers ask in one form or another) is that it doesn’t go far enough to identify a specific market focus. The group of individuals who are under 35 is a very, very broad group, after all. What is the likelihood that there would be a single, “best” communication strategy for them?
When it comes to targeting marketing messages, the advice I offer, regardless of what you are attempting to sell or what response you are attempting to attain, is to Continue reading “Want to Excel at Generating Response From Your Market? Focus!”
One of the key decisions that communicators must make is how to segment their audience. Segmenting is basically dividing the overall audience into groups–or segments–that share commonalities so that they can be targeted more specifically. For instance, if you’re a health care organization, you could segment your audience into: women and men. You might further segment the women into audiences of: women of child-bearing age, pre-menopausal women, menopausal women, elderly women. Even among these audiences there might be some need to further segment.
There are (at least) two key points to consider about segmentation:
Continue reading “Narrowing Your Audience: Be Clear to Connect”
For B2B (business to business) marketers, as well as job seekers, LinkedIn remains the most viable option when attempting to select the social media tools that will help generate the best results. Since we work exclusively with B2B marketers (most in the healthcare and not-for-profit arenas), LinkedIn is the tool we use most often and we’ve become very familiar with it and the ways it can be used to leverage online awareness and build connections to build reputation and generate inquiries and sales.
If you’re a B2B marketer, a business person hoping to build credibility and reputation online, or a job seekers, here are some tips that can help you best leverage the benefits of LinkedIn: Continue reading “LinkedIn Best Practices”
It seems that interest in online marketing is hotter than ever; every week it seems we get more questions from reporters, prospects and clients about do’s, don’ts and best practices of online communications. Last week we received a question about what we would view as the “Big 3” online marketing mistakes that we see businesses make, especially small businesses. Continue reading “Common Online Marketing Mistakes”
Once upon a time, many, many years ago, advertising on network television was all the rage. That’s where the big brands connected with consumers and drove sales. And then the landscape became fractured. Cable networking emerged, offering a wide range of new opportunities for advertisers to reach more narrowly segmented markets. The same thing was happening in the print environment. And then, of course, the Internet emerged and the rest is history.
But what’s happening today in the communication world will also, ultimately, be history. And recent reports Continue reading “Is Facebook Fading Away? Why Continually Monitoring All Communication Options is Important”
There’s much talk these days about how social media has changed the communication landscape and, indeed, it has. But, despite the fact that social media has created new opportunities and challenges for communicators, there are really (IMO) only two ways in which it really represents anything “different”: Continue reading “Everything New Is Old Again: In Communication, Basic Rules Still Apply”
A recent article in Inc. asked the question: “Is Social Media Advertising or PR?”
Seriously? Now, Inc. is a well-known magazine and Scott Elser, the author of this piece, is co-founder of an advertising agency and presumably a bright guy, but the question seems enormously naive. Perhaps, of course, it is intended to be so simply to stir some discussion. But, who knows? Continue reading “Is Social Media Advertising or PR? – Duh!”
I admit to being somewhat flummoxed (I like that word!), by the use of the hashtag (#) on Twitter. Sure, I get the general idea and I use hashtags myself. I understand that using this symbol in front of a word or phrase will help those who are interested in certain issues readily find relevant posts. But, doesn’t that happen through organic search anyway? Recently, I came across an article that I thought might shed some insight into the issue and, while it included some relevant tips and suggestions, I’m still left wondering:
“Can’t I achieve the same thing through just regular search results?”
Where hashtags seem to have the most relevance, and where I think they’re most effectively used, IMO, Continue reading “What the %&*$ is a #Hashtag and What Is It Good For?”
