No one likes a showoff.
But you’re doing all of these great things — delivering great service, selling great products and earning new fans. Wouldn’t those make for great stories to share?
Absolutely. And as a word-of-mouth and social media marketer, it’s your job to help those stories get shared. But before you e-mail everyone that news release or tweet that #humblebrag, consider how these beloved companies show off without annoying their fans and followers.
- Show off your employees: If you want to humanize your brand with social media, you’re in luck — humans work for you and run your social media presence, too. So make them the focus of your content. For example, during an ongoing contest, Threadless fans were rewarded with videos of employees performing weird skits, such as a one-person pillow fight or a sandwich-making contest. The brand’s fans loved it and shared it, and the brand got tons of new fans to participate, too.
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: Would you use a two-step authentication process to secure your social media accounts if such a service were available?
- Yes: 75.80%
- Not sure: 14.65%
- No: 9.55%
Recent security breaches at Twitter have certainly gotten SmartBrief on Social Media readers’ attention. But even before the Associated Press was hacked, Twitter was already working on a multifactor security solution, which should shortly be available to all users.
Security experts are uncertain, however, as to whether these kinds of security features will actually protect users from such attacks. I think readers would be wise to embrace a two-step security solution — but not rely on it. The truth is that we’re always going to be in an arms race with hackers and other malevolent Web forces. (read more…)
There is a direct correlation between the success of your inbound marketing and the reach of your social media network. In short, if you have more people liking you, following you, connected to you, you get more leads when you create compelling educational content as part of an inbound-marketing effort.
If you think about it logically, it makes sense. Here are examples of two companies with the same amazing educational content and inbound-marketing program but with very different social media networks.
Company 1 is an IT services company that has about 500 visitors to its website each month. It recently created a new eBook and a series of related blog posts. It has 37 likes on Facebook, 15 followers on LinkedIn and 4 followers on Twitter. It doesn’t have a YouTube channel. It has an internal e-mail list of 1,200 clients, prospects, partners and friends. It has 21 blog subscribers.
The company publishes its new eBook, tells its friends, family and peers, posts it to its social networks, blogs about it and -mails its entire database announcing the new e-book. (read more…)
Kickstarter’s unfortunate and inaccurate reputation of being a place where dreams get magically funded has been wholly corrected by recent media coverage. It has become overly apparent that running a Kickstarter campaign is not easy; it takes a lot of work around promoting and leveraging your networks, exercising every connection you have to drive traffic to your Kickstarter page. Lucky breaks are few and far between.
As we have come to understand that the difference between a success and failure are primarily around the creator’s network and promotional efforts and having a video, there hasn’t been a lot of information about what quantitative and tangible aspects of a project help it to succeed or fail. I set out to answer some of the most pressing questions on creators’ minds. Michael C. Neel collected data on more than 73,000 successfully funded and failed projects, with end dates from May 2009 to January 2013, and posted his findings. (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 you do feel about Twitter’s recently announced multimedia partnerships?
- I’m unsure: 62.26%
- I’m excited: 26.42%
- I’m unhappy: 11.32%
Count me among the almost 6 in 10 SmartBrief on Social Media readers who aren’t yet convinced that Twitter’s multimedia content plans are a good idea. Twitter is all about bite-sized content. How does that translate to multimedia?
I applaud Twitter’s initiative in experimenting with video using Vine. But I have to say, I haven’t seen many six-second videos worth sharing so far. As a feature, it’s not totally without its uses, but it’s never going to be what people come to Twitter for.
Twitter has also recently announced a series of partnerships with traditional TV providers, such as BBC America, allowing for integration of second-screen content. (read more…)
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