Spiral16 has a holiday themed social media infographic of the common social media marketing mistakes that will get you on the Big Guy’s naughty list.

Let’s be honest–if Santa put everyone who was doing something stupid on the naughty list, it would double!

Dig, if you will, an example from this weekend.

My friend Henry Copeland, who is CEO of BlogAds pointed out a promotion @kmart launched right after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  I think Henry makes an excellent point:

Folks have been bashing @kmart for tweeting its toy giveaway hashtag, #fab15toys, in combination with hashtags like #PrayforNewtown. In context, the tweet was actually understandable. But that context — running a toy giveaway in the hours after a massacre of children — is what’s unimaginably stupid. For the most stunningly decency-deaf example of autopilot marketing ever, please take a look at (some) of the “twitterchat” @kmart promoted yesterday…

Along the lines of Henry’s post, BBR Marketing offers some insight on social media sensitivity in times of tragedy that @kmart (and other brands) should read.

True North has a great list of the Top 5 Social Media Mistakes that is a must read.

True Story: A British couple loved a brand so much that they got married in one of their stores.

On Wednesday December 12, Sallie-Anne Shotter and Jon Ross are got married in a Helzberg Diamonds store in Orlando Florida. The retailer hosted the wedding ceremony of Sallie-Anne Shotter and Jon Ross in the Helzberg store in the Florida Mall at Noon. According to the groom:

“We knew that we wanted something different for our wedding day, something memorable, but especially fun. To sum everything up, we are getting married in a country we love, in a state we adore, with people who are like family.”

Do customers love YOUR brand?

A study by American Express revealed that nine in ten of Americans surveyed (93%) say that companies fail to exceed their service expectations.   The study showed that 55% of respondents walked away from an intended purchase in the past year because of a poor customer service experience.

How do brands inspire fierce customer loyalty?  Marketing ninja Shelly Kramer says it’s pretty simple.  She tells companies if they want to sell more stuff…they need to humanize their brand.

Enchant Your Customers

Marketing guru and former Apple chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki wrote one of my favorite books about business and life.

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions outlines the power of enchanting your customers.  Brands that enchant their customers are successful–it’s the reason why Apple customers are obsessed with their  iPhones and Starbucks addicts pay a fortune for a cup of coffee.  According to Kawasaki:

“It causes voluntary change of hearts and minds and therefore actions. It is more than manipulating people to help you get your way. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility. It reshapes civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers.”

Getting married in a retail store is unusual but it speaks to the “enchantment” factor of the Helzberg brand.

Do your customers love your business? If they don’t, do you know why?

Photo: Helzberg Instagram

Over and Netpage are two iPhone apps you can’t miss.

This picture was created using Over.  I love this app because it allows users to add typography to photos.  I’ve tried similar apps but Over is so easy to use!

This iPhone app has been out since July–like ten years in the mobile app world–so you might already know about it.  Over has gotten raves from the media.  Techcrunch wrote a glowing review of the iPhone app:

Unlike other photo-editing apps, which let users add filters to make their photos look old-fashioned or fancy or whatever, Over is focused pretty much entirely on adding whatever text they want to photos. The Over app lets you take a photo or pull one from your camera roll, add whatever text you want, then choose from various different fonts and sizes, add tint, and adjust the alignment of the text. When all that is done, you can save the edited photo to your camera roll or share it out to various other social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and (surprise!) even Instagram.

Read more about this cool iPhone app on the Over website.

Netpage is a mobile app that allows you to clip, save and share content from a print publication.  Netpage delivers interactivity to catalogs, newspapers and product packaging–and it’s a game changing solution for print publications.  The app was launched two weeks ago and it has already received rave reviews from  The Wall Street Journal, ADOTAS and Mashable.

Digital guru(and friend) Dustin Jacobsen is part of the team that launched Netpage.  To read more about this cool mobile app, visit his blog.

The Hostess Twinkie might be saved from extinction and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appeared on “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live” last night.  Coming up on a holiday week, I’m in deep denial about real news and issues!

There could still be hope for Twinkie lovers! According Huffington Post, Mexican company Groupo Bimbo might save the Twinkie and other junk food favorites.

In 2010, Bimbo bought Sara Lee for $959 million, which includes the Sara Lee brand as well as Entenmann’s and Thomas’ English Muffins.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appeared on Saturday Night Live last night during the “Weekend Update” segment. Christie seemed right at home on-camera and held his own with Seth Meyers.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Christie “continued an unusual tradition last night wherein Republicans tend to be the butt of the majority of political jokes but then shine when they’re given the opportunity to actually appear on the show.”

The end of the Hostess Twinkie and other Hostess products has become a popular topic on the web the last few days.  Here are a few of my favorites from the Twinkie meme:

Let’s not forget Keith Richards!  It has been said that at the end of the world, only Twinkies, cockroaches and Keith Richards will remain.   One down, two to go.

Showing social proof is a way to gain trust with existing clients and gain more of their business. Everyone knows this. But just like taking vitamins or eating more vegetables, promoting your own work is hard find time for when your clients–who pay the bills–need their work done yesterday.

Social proof is a short-hand way to explain the complex nature of social influence.   By showing your company’s social proof you are validating the your business expertise in the digital world.  One of the best ways to explain social proof comes from HubSpot:

‘Social proof,’ also referred to as ‘informational social influence,’ is the concept that people will conform to the actions of others under the assumption that those actions are reflective of the correct behavior. In other words, it’s the mentality that, if other people are doing it, and I trust those people, that’s validation that I should also be doing it

Current customers are the best way to GET new business!  According to Inc Magazine,   acquiring a new customer is five to ten times the cost of retaining a current one.  Another big incentive to gain more business from current clients is that existing clients usually spend 67 percent more than a new ones!

In the age of digital media, social proof is an important marketing tool.  It needs to be a priority if you want to show current clients (and potential new clients) how great your business is!   It doesn’t have to be a major undertaking to show the proof of your business success!  You can promote your work without investing a ton of resources by taking baby steps.

Dig, if you will, two ways to strut your stuff without getting bogged down or becoming totally obnoxious.

Divide and Conquer – In 2011, the Spiral16 blog DOUBLED in traffic and page views and won a Bronze Quill Award for the blog performance.  Marketing director Eric Melin created a strategy to increase blog traffic (and generate more leads) by using a tactic of “You’re It!”.

Eric assigned different members of our team blog posts each week—which spread the additional work of creating more blog posts out over the whole company.   Everyone at the company has a little skin in the game but it didn’t overwhelm anyone.

Re-Purpose Presentations to Share Easily – I’m the queen of re-purposing presentations for multiple uses because if you create good content and make it easy for other people to share the information it’s more effective.

More people sharing your content instantly creates a larger audience—without extra work on your part.  Plus social sharing of your work by people other than you (and your mom) show credibility.

Let’s say you make a presentation at a seminar about the importance of social media marketing in the health care industry.  You have already created the presentation, so why not use the material in a variety of different ways?

• Put the presentation on Slideshare
• Create a blog post about using social media marketing in health care–and embed the Slideshare presentation
• Create an infographic with the statistics from the presentation–I use infogram to create infographics*
• Create another blog post that features the inforgraphic
• Tweet the infographic + share on other social media networks

From one presentation, you’ve created multiple ways for other people to share your content.  If you want more information Hubspot has a great article on how to amplify your social proof.

*=I cannot draw stick figures but I can create infographics using infogram.

Nielsen has discovered what mothers have known for years.  According to recent infographic published by Nielsen, mothers are social media savvy consumers, who are more plugged-in online than the average American woman.

Hello? This is not news to mothers!  The job of being a mother requires multitasking, which is one of the biggest reasons why moms and social media are a perfect fit.

Modern mothers must juggle on a daily basis and we get the information straight from the experts—other mothers.  But now research firms like Nielsen are starting realize mothers are plugged-in online.

According to the infographic from Nielsen, moms are using social media on the go:

“50% of all moms actively participating in social media access platforms via mobile devices, in comparison of females overall, and 37% of the overall population.”

Read more about Social Moms on the Rise over on the Spiral16 blog and see the infographic.  Another reason moms are early adopters of mobile and online media?  Women–especially mothers–get things done.  In the words of Margaret Thatcher:

If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.

What does a Klout score mean?  Should you care about your Klout score?  This morning’s launch of parody site Klouchebag topped off a week filled with chatter about Klout, an online influence calculator.  A recent article in Wired magazine stirred the pot in social media circles with tales of employers that are using Klout scores as benchmarks for new hires.

Klouchebag is now the new standard in measuring “how much of an asshat you are on Twitter.” Whether you love or hate Klout, Klouchebag is funny because it brings a little levity to a subject that people get really upset about–putting a score or value on online influence.

Klout measures influence online using data from social networks. Klout uses your online engagement information to provide you a Klout Score that measures your overall influence.  I don’t think that Klout is perfect but it’s a place to start.  There are zillions of people using online platforms to communicate every single day and Klout is one way to benchmark online communication.  You may think Klout is evil (like the New Yorker) but growth of social media is exploding and just like the Nielsen ratings, there are going to be scores and benchmarks for social media.  This train has already left the station.

Dirty Little Secret – Nielsen Ratings Aren’t That Accurate

Nielsen ratings are the gold standard of the multi-billion dollar television advertising industry.  So much money rides on the rise and fall of Nielsen ratings—and the dirty little secret is that Nielsen ratings aren’t that great of a measurement!  Ratings are determined by calculating data from a tiny sample size of results from TV box measurements and diaries.

Nielsen determines ratings based on a sample size of 5,000 homes what 113 million+ U.S. television-viewing homes are watching. Nielsen ratings are not totally accurate but it’s all the industry has as a benchmark to measure TV audiences—-so that this information can be monetized for business use.

One of the best articles about the way Nielsen calculates ratings is from Cornell Daily Sun—from 2007!  No one wants to come out and say that the Nielsen ratings aren’t accurate because billions of dollars are riding on the fact that the ratings are RIGHT.  The article, Nielsen Ratings: An Inaccurate Truth sums up the problem:

The biggest problem for Nielsen is that it relies on excruciatingly small samples to predict what the rest of the country is watching. There are approximately 10,000 households with Nielsen set top boxes across the country, about 450 of which include college students. And out of those 450, 30 percent agreed to have their children’s viewing habits recorded while away at school. This translates to roughly 135 students — a painfully small number to be considered representative of the entire country’s college student population, yet still more than the zero who represented us before.

Scores Matter Because There’s Money to Be Made

I get it that people don’t want to social media communication scored.  People are not the sum of their Klout score.  But one of my favorite social media books No Bullshit Social Media by Jason Falls uses the following stats to illustrate why social media is important to business:

• 81% of people with an Internet connection use some form of social media. (To put that into some real numbers, 170 million Americans are on Facebook.)
• 78% of these social media users interacted with companies via social networking sites and tools, like the company’s Facebook page or their Twitter account.

There is no Santa Claus.  The tooth fairy doesn’t exist.  And social media will be measured by Klout or by other companies.  Because there’s money on the table .  Nielsen ratings and Klout scores ain’t perfect—but it’s what we have to work with and it’s a start.

Sources: Media Math, NTC Publishing, SRDS, Media Post

Disclosure: I’m part of the Klout Squad, a group that gives feedback to Klout and Klouchebag gives me a score of 47 because I’m quite noisy.

Friends don’t let friends put their intern in charge of their company social media program.   Over on the Spiral16 blog, I recently posted about the fact that social media isn’t just for kids.  Social media can be important to your business and if you think that online media is for “geeks and kids” then I’ve got a wake-up for you.

A recent report shows that social networking accounts for nearly 1 in every 5 online minutes. Social networking sites now reach 1.2 billion users–roughly 82 percent of the world’s online population.

Read more about why you shouldn’t put Bambi–or any other inexperienced person–in charge of your social media program over on the Spiral16 blog.

Social media and digital marketing can drive sales.  Market research and  marketing strategies are critical to digital marketing success—that’s where I can help.

I have years of digital and traditional marketing experience in a variety of industries. I have 13+ years experience as an agency account manager and served as a primary client contact for over 10 years.

My background is a combination of market research and account management and I’ve worked with many Fortune 500 brands.  I have a proven track record for translating consumer and category insights to build successful marketing plans.

Read more about me or see examples of my work performance here.

Pinterest is like crack for online addicts.  Since I analyze all things digital for clients, it’s part of my job to keep up with online trends and hot social media trends.

I didn’t join the Pinterest wave until a few weeks ago—and became completely hooked in less than 24 hours.  I’m not alone in my Pinterest obsession.  According to VentureBeat:

Emerging social network Pinterest, an addictive site that lets people spotlight products and items they like, is helping drive increasing amounts of traffic to retailers, according to a new infographic by Monetate.

Pinterest, which attracted nearly 11 million unique visitors in mid-December, is now one of the top 10 social networking sites. It’s one of the rare cases of a social network generating strong word-of-mouth interest without much help from the tech community. The site is especially popular with females and arts and crafts enthusiasts between the ages of 25 and 44.

Pinterest is a smart tool to engage potential customers for certain businesses.  One reason Pinterest is so hot is because…it’s fun. The simplicity and fun of Pinterest should be noted by those who want to create a hot online community—if you make it fun and easy—people will come!

If you are a fellow Pinterest addict, feel free to reach out to me.

You can find me pinning away as michellelamar12. (http://pinterest.com/michellelamar12)