SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
This week, we asked: Who controls the social media efforts at your organization?
- Someone in the marketing department: 51.39%
- Someone in the public relations department: 17.59%
- No one person controls all the organization’s social media efforts: 13.43%
- The CEO, owner or sole proprietor: 8.80%
- Someone else within the organization: 4.63%
- Someone outside the organization: 2.31%
- Someone in the IT department: 1.39%
- Someone in the sales department: 0.46%
It makes sense that a company’s social media presence would have its beginnings in the marketing or public relations departments — after all, those are the most public-facing parts of an organization. But if you look at the adoption path of any other office technology, you’ll find that no tool stays in the hands of a few people for very long. (read more…)
SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
This week, we asked: Is your Facebook strategy focused on acquiring “likes”?
- No: 69.67%
- Yes: 30.33%
Facebook metrics have evolved considerably since the platform first started supporting official branded pages. There was a time when “likes” were the only tool a brand had for measuring whether its content resonated with fans. Now the network’s Insights panel includes more sophisticated metrics, included “Reach” and the “Talking About This” number, that help a brand understand how widely its message is being seen, shared and discussed.
But the truth is, it would be a mistake for your brand to replace an arbitrary fixation with “likes” with an equally arbitrary fixation on your “reach” score. Both are useful tools for understanding how well you’re connecting with fans, but they don’t tell you how effective your messages are at getting your fans to perform actions that support your brand. (read more…)
SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
This week, we asked: Are you in favor of hashtags coming to Facebook?
- No: 53.33%
- Yes: 46.67%
Facebook says it is working on bringing a hashtaglike feature to the network. But a majority of SmartBrief on Social Media readers say they’re not convinced the change would be for the better. Are they right?
Hashtags are widespread, with 3 in 4 social media users saying they take advantage of them. Hashtags are a great organizing principle. They make it possible for users to come together to discuss a topic, even it they’re not already friends. This is probably the easiest way for Facebook to solve its user-discovery problem without it feeling horribly contrived. If users are given the ability to track or hide certain hashtags, it will only help users further tailor their experience. (read more…)
SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
This week, we asked: Which is more challenging?
- Getting happy fans to tell others about you: 65.79%
- Appeasing angry fans: 34.21%
Almost two-thirds of SmartBrief on Social Media readers say it’s more difficult to spur positive word-of-mouth than quiet irate customers. It’s not hard to see the reason. While it’s important to deal with negative reviews and comments in a timely fashion, the process of customer appeasement is much better understood than the process of encouraging positive word-of-mouth. Your critics will come out and tell you what they want from you, but your happy fans offer no such clues.
This means the burden is on you, the marketer, to discover what your fans love about you and find ways to spur them to share that opinion with others. (read more…)
SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
This week, we asked: How many content channels does your social media presence have?
- More than 5: 25.49%
- 3: 20.59%
- 4: 15.69%
- 5: 12.75%
- 2: 12.75%
- 0: 9.80%
- 1: 2.94%
SmartBrief on Social Media readers agree: Multiplatform is the way to go when it comes to digital content!
It’s tempting to focus on how many social networks you or your company are active on — but that metric usually leaves out important venues such as blogging and podcasting. Instead, it’s much more productive to think about how many different ways potential customers can come in contact with your content.
If maintaining three or more content channels — like the majority of SBoSM readers — seems daunting to you, remember that it’s fine to adapt existing content to fit a variety of channels. (read more…)
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