38 posts tagged facebook

Is social media that important?

Social Media is here to stay, whether you want to agree with this statement or not. The question is “what are you going to do about it?” You could wait until your competitors and new entrants grasp the vision and start dominating the social buzz around the topics that are important to your future business growth, or you could start by at least finding if there is any social media buzz potential for your business.

No one is talking about my topics!

I have searched for a rich mix of topics in some of the most used social media sites over the years and I am now convinced that there is at least someone talking somewhere about a topic that is key to your business.

I have often been pushed to demonstrate this so many times that I now feel confident that I can find the answer somewhere in a conversation in a popular or niche social media network somewhere around the world. So let’s assume that there are online conversations happening about your topics somewhere in the world today. So the task is now how to find out in say 10 minutes, without paying a penny!

My top 5 free ways to check if you have social media buzz potential.

I now list my suggested top 5 ways to check if you have social media buzz potential. There are many other sources that I often use, but I have selected my best 5 for you that are free and will give you a good spread of results across the major social media sites within 10 minutes. Yes, 10 minutes!

1)      Topsy.com
This is my number 1 favorite. The search box has an auto complete function to make your search even quicker.  Look to the left on the results page. You will see how often your search term has been mentioned in the past hour, day, week etc. You can refine your search for tweets, videos, or photos, and there is a nice selection of languages. Note that the photo and video results are not the same as a Google image search showing pictures currently used on web sites.

Here is an example using Topsy.com, using a random search term “NFC chips”. I looked at the video results and saw that the top video result was “How to program your own NFC chips”. Topsy.com indicates the number of comments for each result, so I explored further, and found tweets that were about the video that contained the following; “Check out this awesome video” and “I need to get me a NFC phone and some tags. This is HEAVY!”

To achieve this kind of response from a video would need its marketing tuned to resonate with a social media audience but that is a topic for another day. If all of this is not enough for you, try out the trend graph on the right of the search results. Now you see a graphical view of the trending nature of the social buzz around your search term.

2)      Socialmention.com
This site is similar to topsy.com, but has some nice additions. In the top left corner of the search results page you will see four boxes labeled strength, sentiment, passion, and reach. Hover your mouse above each one to see the definition. Note the answers and compare them to a related search. Note that the left hand side also lists the top hashtags and top users as well as other information. Click on any of the items to drill down further into the search results.

3)      Twitter search (https://twitter.com/search)
You do not need a Twitter account to search Twitter. Just use this link. Twitter is the fastest way to get a message to a mass audience so imagine what you would find here! Advance search gives you options for local search and a few more options. I used the “nfc chips” example again and found the latest tweet was a conversation that sprung from a recent Techcrunch post. It was sent while I was writing this blog post. If you are interested, here it is https://twitter.com/TechCrunch/status/260382755731435522

4)      Linkedin search.
Now who would have guessed that this would be my number 4? It is often overlooked as a search option, but it is where you will find many B2B conversations not found in Twitter or blogs etc.

Let’s try my search term again in the Linkedin search to illustrate my point. I searched the “groups” option for NFC chip related groups, and found 197, with the biggest having 69 discussions in the past month and over 7000 members.

5)      Facebook search
Do not discard Facebook as not being relevant for B2B as well as B2C. That is a dangerous assumption. So let’s try my search term for the last time.  The top search result was a fan page with over 609 likes and recent discussions about “NFC Mobile Payments to reach $100Bn in 2016” and “Pay for your Parking with your Phone!” Knowing that there are consumers/targeted users discussing your top keywords in Facebook fan pages and groups might be of interest to you. You can drill down in the search results using the left menu by people, pages, groups, events and many other options.

For B2B, Facebook has even more potential for targeting professionals via ads to raise awareness of your B2B campaigns, but again, out of scope of today’s post.

So that is my top 5 free ways to check if you have social media buzz potential.

If you are new to searching you might spend 20 minutes just using the Topsy.com tool and playing with the trend graph, but over time you will get quicker.

Imagine evaluating the validity of how “social” a search term is across LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in just 10 minutes!  So what comes next?

Maybe start monitoring the social media effect of your events?

I would advise a measured approach. You could go on to start the ground work for looking at creating a campaign with offline and online digital elements, where social media could play a vital part, however, that would need more than 10 minutes!

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About The Author:
Clive Roach is the social media strategist for Philips Healthcare. He is active with strategy development, activation, governance, projects and educational training activities for all aspects of social media within Philips Healthcare. Clive has been working in the eMarketing area since 1997, and previously held roles in engineering, design and sales. Clive is also practical in addition to his current strategic role. In addition to this blog, he tweets daily on three Twitter accounts, has two Facebook fan pages, Google+, Pinterest, So.cl, Instagram, and participates in many other social networks.
Connect with the author via: Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn | Facebook fan page

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Understanding social commerce: check out this infographic made by a company I work with often, called Oxyme, based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. “Understand what consumers expect & avoid common mistakes!”.

In addition to this infographic, there are other sources of information which help us to understand the effect that social commerce is having. According to a Q1 2012 survey of US internet users conducted by market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey on behalf of Constant Contact, half of those surveyed named the recommendation of a friend or family member as a reason they would purchase a deal (as reported by eMarketer).

Click here for a larger version

(Understanding social commerce - Infographic by Oxyme - Click here for a larger version)

Lastly, if you are planning on seeing how you can take advantage of “Social Commerce” for your company, it is worthwhile understanding the positioning of your brand, and the emotion and storytelling quality that your brand messages have.

Forrester Research also issued some research by Tracy Stokes which gives some insight on this topic as it describes how “Remarkable And Unmistakable Brands Differentiate Through An Emotional Connection”

 - Bring the emotional benefit to life.
 - Engage around a shared cause.
 - Bond your brand to your consumer’s real life.

(Source: Forrester Research, Inc., How Social Media Is Changing Brand Building, May 07, 2012)

If you create social messages that bring emotion around a shared cause that resonates with your consumers, it is likely that they will use those messages in whole or in part in their online discussions (or word of mouth offline) to friends and family members about making a particular purchase.

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About The Author:
Clive Roach is the social media strategist for Philips Healthcare. He is active with strategy development, activation, governance, projects and educational training activities for all aspects of social media within Philips Healthcare. Clive has been working in the eMarketing area since 1997, and previously held roles in engineering, design and sales. Clive is also practical in addition to his current strategic role. In addition to this blog, he tweets daily on three Twitter accounts, has two Facebook fan pages, Google+, Pinterest, So.cl, Instagram, and participates in many other social networks.
Connect with the author via: Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn | Facebook fan page

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Social networking can be great fun for personal use, but it can be used for business too, as in business to consumer (B2C) or business to business (B2B). I often say that Social media has a great role to play in a B2B context because B2B is based on relationship building, trust, as well as other aspects like customer centricity, value chain integration etc.

The SM2 social media team have ranked the Top 9 Social Networks for Small and Medium-sized Businesses based on

• Reach: How Many Members
• Time Investment Required
• Quality of Interaction (from a business perspective)
• Fun (our highly-scientific and proprietary research)

Having fun with social media

I love the definition of FUN, and its inclusion in the infographic.

if you have a good feel for social media, managing social networks on behalf of your employer can be fun as well. I checked in using Foursquare when I arrived at work yesterday. You can see that the topic was a serious one but I was going to have fun too.

Are large companies using these 9 networks too?

I like the list of nine networks chosen by SM2. The infographic is based on social networks used by Small and Medium-sized Businesses but I feel it is also relevant for large companies too. I work for Philips, which is a large company, and I have come across all 9 being used in Philips at some time. I also have personal accounts on all 9 and use all of them each and every week, fun indeed! (My daily routine).

Social Media communities

Do not forget specific topic driven communities that you might find on JIVE and similar platforms. They can be great for business too. It is early days for So.cl. Maybe they might appear in this list next year? I visit So.cl daily but even I could not predict where it might go in the future.

LinkedIn is not fun?

SM2 ranked LinkedIn as low on the fun scale. How could LinkedIn not be fun? I disagree with the Infographic on that one! Posting targeted status updates via the Linkedin company page is a thrill, especially checking back to see which post attracted the most engagement. Cultivating leads and making new relationships in groups is also rewarding.. come on!

Check out the infographic below, tell me what you think about it and share it with friends and colleagues. Click to open an enlarged version in a new window.

Inforgraphic created by SM2

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About The Author:
Clive Roach is the social media strategist for Philips Healthcare. He is active with strategy development, activation, governance, projects and educational training activities for all aspects of social media within Philips Healthcare. Clive has been working in the eMarketing area since 1997, and previously held roles in engineering, design and sales. Clive is also practical in addition to his current strategic role. In addition to this blog, he tweets daily on three Twitter accounts, has two Facebook fan pages, Google+, Pinterest, So.cl, Instagram, and participates in many other social networks.
Connect with the author via: Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn | So.cl

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