Just published: The Social Media Marketing Handbook for CEOs, CMOs and General Managers

← Look inside!

Our communication channels have changed significantly in the last few years. However, the marketing communication mix of most companies has not adapted acoordingly.The book answers the most pressing questions of CEOs, CMOs and General Managers:

• How to come up quickly with a professional social media marketing concept?
• How do you plan social media marketing?
• How can you monitor and measure social media marketing?
• How to formulate a strategy?
• Where to take the content from?
• Was is SMO and SEO? How does seeding really work?
• What can social media marketing really achieve? How to measure it?
• How to integrate social media marketing into the company processes?

← Look inside?

practical handbook with:
- instructions
- checklists
- decision trees
- examples

…or order it now! →

(ISBN 978-3-8442-0453-7)

The book has been written in German language. The English version is in the works.

Test yourself: What was this Social Media Campaign for?

Microsite pulling in updates from Facebook, Twitter and Flickr
Charity microsite
Facebook Page
Live Stream on Facebook
Embeddable Stream on Facebook User’s Walls
Twitter Feed
Official hashtag
Curated Tumblr page
Flickr Photo Stream
Flickr crowdsourced photo album
YouTube Channel with commenting option

Click here for the key!

The Social Media Marketing Check List

In my recently published recently published book you will find a chapter on Monitoring of online social presences. The book comes with many checklists to make decision making for top managers quick and easy.

The social media marketing check list includes all the research and all the homework to be made to answer 3 basic questions and to come up with a proper strategy:

• What the heck is going on (online)?
• Where is my target group (online)? In which suspicious corners of the internet do they mingle and talk about my brand???
• How can we target them? (How can we meet them online, how do we start a conversation with them?)
  [Continue reading →]

Paid Monitoring and Measuring Tools for Social Media

Today’s offerings of paid tools for social media monitoring and measuring are not yet satisfying, even the much hyped Radian6, which has just been aquired by Salesforce.com. There is still no comfortable solution to substitute your manual research. But the software options being offered can of course support your efforts and make your work easier.

In my “Social Media Handbook for CEOs, CMOs and General Managers” you will find a list of paid tools and their main features.

Free Monitoring and Measuring Tools for Social Media

Always start out with free tools to measure social media presences and social media marketing results.

Why?

If you are not PepsiCo’s Gatorade and can afford a “social media command center” then find out about the necessary features for your measuring purposes by trying as many free (online) tools as possible. You will definitely be able to gather a lot of data with these tools, but you will also be able to decide what is necessary to satisfy your measuring needs. With this know-how you will be much better equipped to decide on the proper paid measuring tool to buy or subscribe to. Here are two lists: free tools and paid tools.
[Continue reading →]

How to check, analyze and manage randomly started online presences

Many marketers have started Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and other social media presences without a plan, just to experiment with social media. What do you do if they have grown, but now your CEO wants to know what social media can do for the brand? [Continue reading →]

Check also: The Social Media Marketing Concept Kit

Promoting a Game Event in Social Media

Recently uploaded:The Queen of Social Media @ the SonnCom Video Channel on YouTube.

Some of you may find this inappropriate content, but here is why I find it worth to discuss:
The target group can connect instantly.
It’s totally clear to them what the publisher wants to promote.
He is promoting the event just by talking, while showing the target group the ultimate thing they can relate to: the game itself.
He is mentioning all the various social media sites, where the target group can get more information.
And notice that he mentions, that some of the target group (rather the most young part of it), do not like communication via Twitter.

Facebook’s new messaging service – what is it really?

- it’s promoting technological convergence of email, SMS and IM which was there before but Facebook messaging is now joining them (read more about the features on TechCrunch)
- a clever way of integrating communication from outside
of Facebook after they got a grip on outside content by opening the ‘like’ feature to outside websites

Facebook’s Video about the New Messaging System: http://on.mash.to/aYKteD

7 study results showing the impact of social media on purchasing decisions

What applies to SMEs is very likely to apply even more to big enterprise, brand products, etc.:

Everybody does Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – few have a strategy

Read it in German

Today, research for clients and prospects shows always the same: they all have social media presences, but they all have them on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, e.g. the most popular sites. Sorry, that’s not a strategy!

Effective and efficient Social Media Marketing uses the Long Tail of Media to spread communication far out to the niche platforms of the target group(s). To explore the potential of that long tail, you need a strategy and a concept. The big three can be very helpful, but social media does not work like prime time TV.

Well, why not? Because social media is not like traditional media which offer advertising opportunities designed to be spread according to reach metrics. The reach of social media has not much to do with Facebooks 700m users, even though they may help to spread the word. And thats the point: social media is a communication method. Users communicate about things they want to communicate about. Your brands ad budget can be huge, but your Twitter and Facebook account still have the same weight like mine. Only if users are picking up your message, will you gain friends, fans, subscribers. Sure you can advertise your Facebook page, but thats missing the point of using social media for marketing.

To use the potential of social media you need to understand how your target group is using them. Set goals and formulate a strategy accordingly. Then develop a concept on that basis. See how the 7 step approach to concept and strategy works for you.