Category Archives: Social Media

Too Many People jumping on the Band Wagon?

I haven’t blogged for weeks now.  I’ve been getting tongue tied.  Let me explain why.

The market place seems to be getting so busy with companies and individuals claiming to be a social media expert. From IT, design, creative, PR, branding, communications, copy writing, advertising, digital and marketing (sure I’ve missed some).

Each sector has a different take social marketing and what it means.  To some it’s about running training courses on how to use LinkedIn. To PR people it’s about creating the buzz and getting coverage online. (more…)

Book Review of Enterprise Social Technology

Social Media has take the business world by storm.  There are those companies who have embraced the technologies and succeeded. There are those who have attempted to embrace the technologies but have not delivered the ROI they were expecting.

Enterprise Social Technology was recommended to me by a client.  The CEO of the organisation had read the book and had driven social media to one of the key objectives this year as part of their overall marketing strategy.

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Is Social Media Failing Companies?

There was an interesting discussion in the IoD LinkedIn Group this week titled ‘Is Social Media failing’, which as certainly sparked a debate.

Recent figures released by the IAB (prepared by PWC) demonstrate that social media is showing a rapid growth.  Budgets for social media increased  by 200% in 2010 vs 2009.

A recent article by AdAge shows that some big brands have not seen ROI on the social media campaigns: (more…)

Klout – what’s your social media influence?

I recently came across Klout (as it’s a factor integrated into Hootsuite) – which is a site where you can measure your influence on Twitter and Facebook.  The definition here are taken form the Klout site.

Klout Score
“The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1-100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. (more…)

Use the Hash tag and don’t send all tweets to LinkedIn

This article from @jorgensundberg really got me thinking about how I use Twitter on LinkedIn.

Integrating Twitter into LinkedIn
I previously had the Twitter app integrated into my account, which sent all Tweets into my status on LinkedIn,

The up shot of this though is that on the status updates on my connections home page on LinkedIn, it would be full of my updates from Twitter.  Some relevant but the conversations I have on Twitter are not relevant to everyone.

Listening to the feedback from of my connections – this could be an annoyance – especially when I was tweeting at a conference or event.

Adjusting the settings on LinkedIn for Twitter

Changing the settings on the application on LinkedIn, so only tweets containing the hash tag #in show up in LinkedIn is the solution.  That way you can be more strategic in what you send into LinkedIn which will be relevant for your contacts.

If anyone else is using the Twitter application on LinkedIn – I suggest you change your behaviour too on which tweets are sent to LinkeIn!

The forecast for 2011 for SEO and SMM

2011 will be a crucial year for social media and SEO. Here’s my thoughts on what’s going to be hot or not split down into individual, companies and industry.

For Individuals
Personal Brand Online – people buy from people therefore more business individuals and leaders will grow their presence online to boost their business profile (more…)

Results Yorkshire Social Media Survey

The survey ran from 1st to 30th November 2010 and was answered by companies within the Yorkshire Region. The aim of the survey was to understand how different sized companies in  Yorkshire are using social media in their business and what return on investment they see from the campaigns. Download PDF from slideshare

The main difference is how SME versus Large companies are using social media in their businesses.  Smaller and medium businesses (1 – 49 employees) feel that social media has be responsible for creating or helping create sales or new business.   LinkedIn is a more important business tool to small businesses which is reflected in the fact that more of the key people within a small business are promoting themselves on LinkedIn compared to a medium or large organisations. Whereas larger companies (50+ employees) are not promoting  as much on LinkedIn, nor are their key people actively using LinkedIn.

Companies are using tools such as blogs, Twitter and LinkedIn more than video content (YouTube). Which makes sense as there is more investment required to creating a professional video compared to setting up a blog.

Companies overall are using social media to boost their PR activity with 75% respondents said social media had been responsible for creating positive PR about the company and 40% saying social media had helped mitigate any PR problems.

Companies are  promoting their social media sites on their websites with 55% respondents are linking their social profiles online on the home page of their website and 30% saying they have a dedicated page on their site for ‘community’ aspects, which sign-post people to the various sites.
This research paints a picture that Yorkshire companies that are engaged with social media as a key business tool are finding social media helps create or contribute to finding new business. Companies are also using social media to boost their PR activities and feel that social media has helped mitigate PR problems.

Charlotte Britton, MD Optimum Exposure says ‘Social Media is becoming a core part of the marketing mix.  Companies that are adopting the technologies and techniques are creating a competitive advantage for themselves as more people are using sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs. Companies need to understand the objectives and metrics for success before embarking on any activity, so they know what success looks like as the campaign grows’

What do you think?  How do you use Social Media in your business?

Yorkshire Social Media Survey – get involved!

There’s seems so much hype about Social Media – but we all want to know which company is using what and the million dollar question – what Return on Investment have companies got and what does success look like to different companies.

So we have decided to run a Social Media Survey of companies in Yorkshire to see what and how companies are using Social Media to grow their companies.

We want to hear from all companies large or small, sole trader or LLP, agency or client side, from solicitors to manufacturers – your opinion counts!

The survey will only take 2 – 3 minutes of your time  -> Visit the Online Social Media Survey

We will publish the results of the online survey once completed so don’t forget to check back to keep up to date!

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