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7 Realities of Social Media that will change in 6 months

Friday, September 17th, 2010

We’ve been thinking a lot about measurement lately at Applebox Studios. Not only measuring our efforts as an ad agency in Pittsburgh, but also our social media efforts, as well as our marketing initiatives and how it all plays out into today’s economy and it utlimately affects you, the consumer. Thus, we came up with a couple of absolutes that for now, make sense to us.

  • Social media measurement will adapt with the changing of external markets and it‚Äôs influencers.
  • The rules of engaging the consumer and marketing to that consumer are changing at light speed with the advantage shifting towards the consumer.
  • Social media engagement should be measured differently in tough economic times.
  • The tone of marketing and social media marketing is changing.
  • Consumer expectations of social media will not change during¬† the current economic woes because they haven‚Äôt set any precedents yet.
  • The importance of social media optimization and SEO has never been larger.
  • Social nets have a better chance to thrive now, more than they did at this point last year.

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Posted in Pittsburgh ad agencies, Social media strategy, pittsburgh social media, social media marketing | No Comments »

Why most people don’t know about your blog.

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Is this your company?

You’ve been told that you should have a blog. Though the reasons why seem somewhat hazy. You’ve been told that you yourself should write the blog posts. Though the last time you wrote anything of length it was a letter to the judge to try and keep you out of Juvee.

Ok maybe I’m kidding about that last part. You know, you probably actually read some blogs yourself. Though you might not even know they are blogs. If I asked you what the basic structure of a blog was, could you tell me? If I asked you what the purpose of a blog was, would you be able to muster an answer?

What If I said it was for SEO purposes-would you know why and how? If I told you that you should write a blog so that you can connect with your customers-would you know how? Would you know what to say? Would you know where they are?

Please don’t tell me that your company does have a blog…

You keep hearing that social media is THE thing that your company needs to get into-but what do you know about social media? Do you even have the time to answer that question, and any of the questions asked above?

If I were you, I would at least make time to learn it before you decide whether it is right for you.

Most people don’t know about your blog, because you don’t what you’re doing or why you’re doing it.

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Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

7 Ways to Doom your Marketing or Social Media Marketing Strategy.

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Sometimes marketers think they know what they are doing. Other times, if they don’t, they pretend that they do.¬† Luckily, our little Pittsburgh based ad agency is smart enough to know that it’s easier to say I don’t know or to appeal to a higher power than it is to suffer these 7 marketing mistakes.

1) The lights are on but no one is home: In your push to increase customer loyalty and retention, you’ve driven your customers away with poor messaging, poor communication and complete disdain and compassion for them and the product they love.

2) We must be #1: In your zeal to hit the ground running with your product, you have failed to realize that the product has serious deficiencies and you choose to launch anyway. Your product awareness campaign has only increased the awareness of how bad the product might actually be. Why? You were not listening and your timing could not be worse.

3) You have burned bridges. In your quest to create brand advocates you have created the anti-brand champions who have made it their goal in life to do everything in their power to make sure that your brand does not succeed. You made enemies and yet you continue to not listen and you decide to push on without addressing it.

4) You really don’t know who your customer is. In pushing to roll out your social media marketing plan, you miss the mark completely¬†and are marketing to the wrong¬†people. In your¬†rush to create new revenue streams, you‚Äôve decided to beat a dead horse. Not knowing your customer and assuming you did. Bad.

5) Stubborn as an old school mule. You decide to do it your way. You think your one way style of contacting and talking at the customer using the latest social media tools should work just fine in its own intrusive way. You have decided that frequency is better than reach and breadth is better than depth. You have not heard a thing that has been said.

6) You’re an impostor.¬† You‚Äôve decided that you need to hide behind a few layers. You don‚Äôt want the customer to know anything about you, the company, the realness of the people behind the product. Nothing.¬† One of the most important aspects of social media marketing is being transparent, or had you not heard that yet?

7) You’re a liar. You’re not who you say you are. This speaks as much to #6 as it does all of the rest.  But one of the keys to any relationship be it personal, or business, is honesty.

Have anything to add?

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Posted in social media marketing | No Comments »

What Social Media is Not…

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Often times we get caught up in the semantics of what social media is and isn’t. In this slide share presentation we look at what social media is not.

Social Media is Not.

View more presentations from Marc Meyer.

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Posted in Pittsburgh ad agencies, Social Media | No Comments »

The RO-Why of Social Media

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

So do we talk about the ROI of social media or KPI’s? Do you know the difference? The difference is similar to the difference between an advertising agency and a company that focuses on marketing. Or better yet, Heinz Field and PNC park.

From a purely definitive standpoint ROI is pretty basic, ROI = (X – Y) / Y, If you invest $10 and get back $30, your ROI is (30 – 10) / 10 = 2 or 2 times your initial investment.

Now let’s apply that to social media. Having solid goals and a realistic baseline measurement is crucial to figuring out your social media ROI.¬† So before you set out to measure and monitor your social media returns, you need to have a clear idea of what it is you want to accomplish. <—-Isn’t this something you would do in any business situation?

So once you have your goals defined, you need to gauge the baseline for your levels before starting or changing your social media strategy. For example, if your goal is to increase social media mentions of your company, in order to measure the ROI of any actions taken toward that goal, you need to know where you stand now. You can’t evaluate the ROI accurately without a baseline. If the baseline is zero, so be it.

Now KPI’s are completely different in that you’re tracking and making sense of interactions, which is a fundamental part of social media. Many of these metrics are factored into the notion of “Key Performance Indicators” and in the same way you can score different interactions to create some kind of interaction index, each one has it’s own merit. For instance here are 15 fairly common social media KPI’s.

  1. Alerts
  2. Bookmarks
  3. Comments
  4. Downloads
  5. Email subscriptions
  6. Fans
  7. Favourites
  8. Feedback
  9. Followers
  10. Forward to a friend
  11. Posts
  12. Social media shares / participation
  13. Uploads
  14. Views
  15. Widgets

So what are the KPI’s that you are using within your organization to measure your social media interactions?

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Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

Influence versus Popularity

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

In the world of social media we at Applebox talk about the need to be authentic, the desire to be transparent. But on a larger scale, is it more important to be influential or to be popular beyond transparency and authenticity?

If we’re to measure the effectiveness of a social media persona, some might say that you have to look at the number of friends, followers or friends. But there is something deeper there. Is that really being effective? You have to look at the impact that you have on those friends, fans and followers. Popularity can be measured by how much you are liked and that in turn can somehow turn into influence but..numbers don’t mean squat-it’s what you do with the numbers that matter.

Conversely, having 20 followers, friends, or fans is not going to get it done either. But that might be pointing to a larger issue and that’s effort.

Effort=Impact in social media but that does not equate to popularity nor does it have an effect on influence.

Effort (tweets, updates,shares, mentions) Total aggregate number

_____________Divided By_____________________________=Impact

Total number of followers, friends and fans added each day

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Posted in Social Media, pittsburgh social media | No Comments »

5 Characteristics Needed in Creating a Social Media Practice

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Often times in the rush for social media adoption, advertising agencies create social media practices based on a house of cards. Their thinking is, “We need to offer this (social media) to the client” or we need to be able to offer Social media to the client so let’s just say that we “do” social media and see what happens.

In that rush, the cards can quickly collapse when a client does hire the agency specifically for their social media practice and then they, the agency looks inward and asks, “Now what”?

Well we know the thinking is wrong but should an agency go down this path anyway? They offer every “other” marketing and advertising solution, why not social media? There has to be a jumping off point for agencies. At this stage in the game, when is the appropriate time for an agency to fold social media into their business offerings?

They would be well served to inherit the following characteristics in establishing their social media practice.

  1. Understand what social media is
  2. Educate themselves and their internal staff
  3. Participate first internally
  4. Hire someone with experience in social media to manage any social media initiatives
  5. Ask for help

What do you think?

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Posted in Social Media, Social media strategy, pittsburgh social media | No Comments »

Collaboration versus Cooperation in Social Media

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Is there a difference between a collaborative environment in social media versus a cooperative one?

The definition of collaborative is to …

Work with another or others on a joint project.

The definition of¬† cooperative is…

“Done in cooperation with others”,¬† “a cooperative effort is marked by willingness to cooperate; compliant”

How does this apply to social media?

We at Applebox Studios see the action words in this being to work with another, done with others…The essence of social media is conversations with others. An environment of working with and exchanging and sharing ideas, thoughts and points of views with others. It’s evident that the two words are not only interchangeable in the world of social media, but they also add a texture, or an additional layer of meaning to the world of social media.

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What is Your Social Media Engagement Strategy?

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Scenario #1 You live in Pittsburgh. In fact you live in Mt. Lebanon. You want to go to PNC Park. Should you take the parkway? Should you cut through the West End?Which way are you going to go and why? Should you take the parkway because that’s the way you always go?

Scenario #2 You’re an ad agency in Pittsburgh. You’ve had success in working with Hospitals like UPMC in the Pittsburgh region. Alcoa has called you and wants to talk about you handling a social media marketing campaign for them. Are you going to take what you do and did for the hospitals and apply it to the Alcoa job?

Scenario #3 You go into the Chinese restaurant downtown by the Grant building. You order a hamburger. Why? Are all restaurants the same?

Different channels require different strategies. Different companies need different things and have different audiences. Don’t forget that no matter how good you are at social media and how slick your Pittsburgh marketing company is, you need to listen.

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Posted in Pittsburgh ad agencies, pittsburgh social media | No Comments »

7 Tips to Stay on Top of the Social Media Wave

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Often times you have to step in it to realize you are in it. With social media, you would have to have lived in a cave on an island in the Pacific to not know how ubiquitous it is. With that being said, here are 7 “things” you should be aware of as we go forward in this digital world.

1) Look for more content to be produced by “others”. This means look to professional content creators. They will blur the lines so much-you won’t know where the value lies.

2) There will be a continued increase in the value of communities but you will also see more splintering of those communities into niches.

3) Mobile will be THE social platform

4) Social data will determine your next move in your future business engagements

5) Engagement strategies will be different on every channel because of the data returned from #4

6) Mitigating loss of control in social media will continue to be underserved and undervalued.

7) Search will still rule, but social search will drive customer engagement.

If there were a way to etch these in pencil, I would do it. Things change so quickly in the digital social world that nothing is finite and everything is fair game. But as an agency or marketing company trying to make heads or tails over what might happen-this is as good a start as any.

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Posted in Pittsburgh ad agencies, pittsburgh social media | No Comments »

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