I have to ask myself this question regularly. There are so many inputs we get every day. Social media, TV and movies, the news, our friends, email newsletters, browsing the internet, billboards, mailed flyers, and many more.

It overwhelms me. I take it all in, and then I shut it all out. Over and over again.

There’s too much for each person to comprehend, much less embrace into life.

So, what really matters?

The answer to this question is different for each of us. For instance, I care about animals’ well-being, but they don’t really turn my brain on in that fun, excited way (except puppies). So I’ll do my best to do no harm where animals are concerned. I’ll look for food sources that treat their animals humanely, and I’ll lower my intake of animal products. But I’ll leave the advocating to those who are really passionate about it.

What really matters to me? What am I passionate about?

• Compassion and respect (including leaving room for others’ experience to differ from my own)
• Human equality
• Environmental protection (hey, animals can join this group too!)
• Lifelong learning
• Creativity
• Travel

In some way or another, all of these intersect with each other. What’s cool about that is that I have the ability to make all of them functioning passions. What’s better about that is that I’ve defined them, and know what I’m working toward. How can you start without knowing where you’re going? Even knowing the general direction of where you’re going is a start to something.

Without that, you’re just that feather in the intro of Forrest Gump that has no say in where it lands or stays. Who wants to hire/work with/befriend/date/[insert your situation here] that feather? Probably no one.

Every successful project starts with a strategy. Every successful strategy starts with an objective. So, what is it for you?

Photo by Dr. Partha Sarathi Sahana

Seven years ago, I went offline. Ok, that’s not completely accurate. I maintained my social media accounts for personal use, I didn’t shut down my Facebook page, and I’ve done digital and social media marketing for companies between then and now. But for someone who was ALL over the internet earnestly trying to become a thought-leader back in 2011, my social media marketing peers would likely say that I disappeared without a trace.

Do they even know who I am anymore? Maybe.

Do they think that I have cutting edge things to say about marketing 2.0 (or whatever number we’re on now)? Probably not.

But that’s ok with me. I maintained this website and domain because I thought there might be an opportunity for me to use it again. And here we are.

My last job in a strictly social media position was 7 years ago. I attended meetups, industry networking events, conferences and nearly any other related shindig I could get into. I live blogged them in exchange for a ticket, which turned out to be amazing advice from my first social media boss! I opened up and then hosted a Beer and Blog chapter in my city. I became low key famous in the local circle from the bloopers of regular Follow Friday videos I did with a coworker, and loved every minute of it. I was in it. Until I wasn’t.

I began to feel like all I was doing was finding information other people had written and regurgitating it in my own voice. I felt cool, but somewhat empty.

A few months before it all ended, I helped raise $20,000 for St. Baldrick’s when my office mates banded together to get our heads shaved. It was amazingly liberating to have the comfort of my waist-length hair revoked, and soul-elevating to send a message of solidarity to those affected by cancer.

This was the beginning of the shift.

Then I saw a video made by the sister of a social media friend about an organization that was still (6 years after Katrina) rebuilding houses in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans. I was hooked. I had to go. And, right after I got laid off, I did.

I spent three months living in a volunteer house with 20 other people, sharing a room with 7 in make-shift bunk beds without railings. I met and befriended volunteers from Mexico, Italy, Qatar, France, South Korea, Turkey and more. I built a staircase into a house with bricks I laid myself.

From there, I moved with a volunteer friend to Seattle, sight-unseen. We both lived and worked in a hostel, where we again lived in bunk beds and worked surrounded by people from all over the world.

Eight months later, I boarded a plane by myself to Thailand, where I volunteered for a recovery community 30 minutes outside of Chiang Rai. Then Vietnam to meet some college friends. Then New Zealand, where I worked for another hostel, made dear friends with housemates, and traveled the country.

So far in my life, this time spent in the house in New Orleans, the hostel in Seattle, the foundation in Thailand, and traveling around New Zealand were where I felt most myself. I was me, and it was working. Except, not for money.

I came back to Seattle, and took a tourism sales job for an attraction icon. As cool as it was (and it was!), I longed for something more meaningful to me. So I got a job at a bootstrap nonprofit serving as the head of operations and communications, and did some fundraising campaigns too. Then I burnt out.

So I’m working a bridge job to calm and reassess where this marketing thing will go. And that’s where we’re at with this blog. Let’s see where it takes us.

Last month, Bing rolled out its new social search feature in which it teamed up with Facebook to provide social context for your searches. Their main message is that you don’t make decisions without your friends on anything else, why should you have to when you’re searching for products or sites on the Web?

It’s not live for everyone yet, but this is how it works:

You go to Bing to search for “Iron Man”. If you’re logged into your Facebook account, you will see something like this.

In this example, the searcher knows that two of his friends ‘like’ Iron Man. Knowing this, it is more likely he will trust that it’s a good movie.

Bing Director, Stefan Weitz explains this concept in this video (2:34).

I think most people are agreeing that this approach to social search is several steps above Google’s new +1 button, but there are skeptics out there that are saying the partnership with Bing is not a desirable one.

As far as privacy goes, if you’re not into the idea that all your Facebook friends will see your preferences when they search, Bing has offered an opt-out. You can change it for each time you search. And for those of you that don’t want this at all, simply sign out of Facebook before searching…or Google it.

What are your thoughts on the partnership and it’s new service?

Read more: http://www.mediatwopointoh.com/facebook-and-bing-do-social-search/#ixzz1PBjErP95

This is a post in a series on the Top Social Media Marketing Questions for 2011.

Today’s question is “How do I effectively find my target audience with social media?”

Social media and the internet have made targeting your audience a lot easier than it used to be. Not only are we able to see what kind of activities people are engaging in online, but with the advent of social media networks, they’re actually telling us what they like. From Facebook profiles, to tweets and Google +1, businesses are increasingly able to market to the exact audience they’re looking for–which means better ROI.

This all sounds great, but you have to find them before you can market to them. This can be difficult, but online listening tools like Radian6 and Sysomos, make it easier. These tools crawl the web looking for mentions of whatever is important to you: your brand name, industry keywords, product types, etc. When you look at your results over a period of time, it’s easy to tell where you should be in social media. If people are mostly talking about your brand or keywords on a particular platform, that’s where you should be.

The second part of this process is the how-to-market-in-social-media-part. How can you gain clients or customers without seeming pushy? How can you grab the attention of your audience? How can you stand out among the competition?

Each industry is different. The approach for B2C versus B2B companies is slightly different. However, what’s not different is that people don’t want to be sold. They don’t want you pushing your product in their faces. They don’t want you to be selfish or self-centered.

Find out what your customers and potential customers want. Then give it to them. Your job as a social media marketer is to make people happy. And that’s pretty awesome!

What are they saying?

If the conversation about your brand is negative, let those people know that they have been heard, and that their feedback is important to your company. If the conversation is talking about how awesome your products are, thank those people who are helping you market your business. Those relationships will come in handy. If people have a lot of questions, answer them. A business that adapts, that becomes more human, will be more successful in the social media space.

Take it a step further by proactively creating relationships with individuals from your audience. It’s hard for a customer to forget the time a brand reached out to them and made them feel important. If you want a good example of this, read the post I wrote about how Healthy Choice helped us raise money for St. Baldrick’s.

What are your tips for finding and marketing to your audience in social media?

Photo by cliff1066

I first wrote this post for the Media Two blog Media Two Point {oh!}. They’ve been awesome enough to let me repost it here.

Google +1, Google’s answer to the Facebook “Like” button, is now live for all. So what is it, and how will it affect search and marketing? I asked our resident search guy, Nick DiPietro, for his thoughts on the new feature.

How does Google +1 work?

When you are signed into a Google account and you search on Google.com, a little +1 button will be located next to the organic and paid search results. Websites can also use the +1 button, so you may see it on certain sites you browse. By clicking the +1 button, you are telling your Google contacts that this is a site, product, etc. you recommend. So your contacts will see your recommendation if their search is relevant to your +1. Google describes the +1 action as “word of click” instead of “word of mouth”.

How does it compare to the Facebook “like” button?

They are very similar. They both show you who has recommended a site, product, etc. It is also similar to the Like button in that the +1 button will be available for website use as well.

Reviews of Google +1 are saying it’s impractical. Do you think it will catch on?

Well I think it will be dependent on the person. For those people that have a ton of Google contacts that login before searching, then it may serve a purpose. For those that don’t, it will be less significant. Personally, a lot of my email contacts aren’t Google accounts, so they won’t be able to share their Google searching experience with me. Also, I may be in the minority here, but the majority of the time when I search on Google I’m not necessarily logged into any of my Google accounts.  I tend to logout of Gmail before my browsing expedition continues.  And if I catch myself searching on Google without being logged into my Google accounts I don’t think I’ll react like this “Oh shit, I should login into my Gmail so that when I search on Google, like I’m doing now, I can see the +1 buttons.” Furthermore, if you are searching and you find a site or ad that takes you to something you like, are you really going to be inclined to go back and +1 those listings? I know it’s just a few clicks back, but I don’t know that the general population will care enough.

If it does catch on, how will Google +1 affect search marketing?

I think any type of trustworthy button or logo will help ads in terms of CTR (clickthrough rate), but I don’t anticipate the success or failure of a campaign hinging on the +1 button.

Is there a value to marketers, or simply users?

If +1 somehow starts making money for companies then there will be a value to marketers. The value to the user will depend on the logged in searcher, their contacts, and how frequently their searching paths cross. Also, how frequently they make recommendations.

As with everything, there are possibilities with Google +1, as well as room for improvement. We’re excited to see how searchers and marketers react to the new feature, and how it might change the landscape of search. In the meantime, we’ll be trying it out right here on our blog, as well as the Media Two website.

Have you tried Google +1? What are your thoughts?

This is the fourth in a series of posts where Morgan and I will be addressing the top 10 questions for social media marketing in Social Media Examiner’s 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

This question – How do I improve customer engagement with social media? – is one I’ve been working for months to answer.

As part of my job, I implement social strategy for certain clients. This means that (among other things) I tweet for them and respond to Facebook posts for them. Of course, this is all approved by the client to ensure that we are maintaining company voice and values. Because of this part of my job, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to engage each client’s audience on social platforms.

What have I found?

It’s different for every business. There is no formula for the right amount of tweets or Facebook posts. It’s all based on the audience. So the secret is to figure out what they want. A lot of this is trial and error. If engagement goes down when you increase amount of posts, go back down. If engagement goes up with more frequent posts, keep increasing frequency until you find the sweet spot. The sweet spot is enough so that they don’t forget you, and not enough to annoy them.

That takes care of people visiting your page or paying attention to you in their news feed or Twitter stream. But you want more than that. You want them to talk to you. There are several different kinds of posts. Helpful content that relates, but isn’t about your product. Helpful content that is about your product. Questions. Trivia. Contests. The list is long. Try out a variety and see how your audience responds.

Questions work really well for me. Ask them questions related to your product. For example, if you sell shoes, post something like “What was your favorite pair of shoes ever?”

Another great post type that works for me is the “Like this” post. “Like this if you have a favorite pair of shoes.” Although the “like” is super passive and doesn’t really mean anything in and of itself, it’s easy to do and increases your feedback on a particular post, which ups your EdgeRank on Facebook. This means that that post is more likely to show up in your audience’s news feeds, increasing awareness for when you want to do a post that means a little more.

The main thing to focus on is relevance. If you do a contest, give away something that’s relevant. If you post something fun, tie it into your product or industry. Also know that people like a clear call to action. If you want likes, ask for them. If you want comments, ask for them. If you want photo submissions, let’s say it together, ask for them.

It may take a while for you to find your sweet spot in frequency and variety. To get there, don’t be afraid to ask your audience what they’d like to see from you in social media. People want to connect with business, but they want to know that those businesses care about them. So asking their opinion is a great start.

What are your tips for increasing engagement on social platforms?

I first wrote this post for the Media Two blog Media Two Point {oh!}. They’ve been awesome enough to let me repost it here.

This is the first in a series of posts, where Morgan and I will be answering the top 10 questions marketers have for social media in 2011 as defined by Social Media Examiner’s 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

The first question in this series is “How do I measure the effect of social media marketing on my business?”

You could measure a hundred different things in regards to your social media marketing efforts, but not all of it will be helpful for your particular business. So the first thing you need to do to measure the success of these efforts is to define some goals for these efforts. They can be the same goals you have for all your marketing efforts (i.e. sales, brand awareness), or they could be specific to social media (i.e. engagement with customers and potential customers).

Each of these goals is measurable using various tools. One tool I believe nearly every business should have is a social media monitoring tool. This will not only help you figure out where your audience is–which will tell you which platforms you should use–but it will also show things like sentiment and brand mentions across the web. Examples of these tools that we use are Radian6 and Sysomos. These come with a price of around $500/month, but are far better than a free option–such as Social Mention–because they are learning tools, and will become more optimized over time.

If your goal is to get more sales, or visits to your website, Google Analytics (GA) is there for you. It’s free, and has a lot of functionality. You can see factors such as time on site and page visits. You can even see where in the conversion process visitors are bailing, and the top content on your site. Each of these metrics can be attributed to specific traffic sources. I would recommend, though, that you watch some of the tutorial videos they provide so that you know exactly how these numbers are calculated.

A tool that we’ve found helpful to build on GA is Argyle Social. This tool will shorten links and attach tracking parameters to them that are recognized by GA. Combining them, you can see what kind of attention specific posts directing fans to your site received. Argyle will also track link clicks and group them by campaign so you can get a better idea of which types of links get more attention among your audience. Pricing starts at $149/month.

To see what kind of engagement you’re getting on your Facebook page, you can look to Facebook’s Insights feature. It’s free and will show demographics of fans, which posts received the most engagement, and growth over time. These are always at least 2 days behind and can take a while to become stable, but these are metrics that only Facebook can give you, so they’re worth paying attention to.

Although Twitter doesn’t offer it’s own analytics right now (unless you’re paying for advertising), there are tools such as Klout and TwentyFeet that can show your rate of follower growth and engagement–@mentions and retweets. These tools each offer free options.

Once you have found the proper tools for your goals, the best way to use these tools is to look at the trends over time rather than specific numbers, as nothing is completely accurate all the time due to privacy settings and other factors. At Media Two, we create weekly or monthly reports so that we can see growth over time at a glance. Know also that this information can overlap other efforts such as SEO, SEM and market research.

A couple weeks ago, HubSpot hosted a webinar with Social Media Examiner about its 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Among many other great facts and stats in this eye-opening document, there is a list of the top 10 questions marketers have for social media this year.

1. How do I measure the effect of social media marketing on my business?
2. How do I integrate and manage all of my social media marketing activities?
3. What are the best ways to sell with social media?
4. How do I improve customer engagement with social media?
5. How do I master the use of specific social media platforms?
6. How do I effectively find my target audience with social media?
7. What are the best practices in social media marketing?
8. How do I use social media in niche markets?
9. What are the trends in social media marketing?
10. How do I best use my time to maximize my social media activities?

In the next couple of weeks, Morgan and I will set out to answer each of these questions in a series of posts. We will also be updating this post with links to each of the answer posts, so check back to learn what everyone in social media marketing is dying to know! And feel free to leave your own insights in the comments.

Social Media Examiner recently published their Social Media Marketing Industry Report for 2011. The report covered value of social media for business, questions marketers have, and trends for this year. Here are a few of the factoids they unearthed.

• 90% of marketers place high value on social media for their business.
• Measurement and integration of social media efforts are top areas where marketers want to better their skills.
• Social media marketing takes a lot of time, with 58% of marketers using social media for 6 or more hours a week.
• Generating more business exposure is the number-one listed advantage of social media marketing.

With all this information, you probably wouldn’t expect that only 28% of businesses outsource some aspect of their social media marketing. But that’s what the report says. Outsourcing social media efforts is underutilized.

Morgan wrote a post a bit ago explaining the advantages of using an agency to handle your social media. I’d like to expand on that with some of the findings from this report.

Social Media Examiner provided a ton of great graphics to show that those who have been doing social media for a while spend more time on it weekly, and get more results–including lead generation, new partnerships, improvements in search engine rankings and increased traffic to their sites.

Then there’s this graphic:

This graphic represents those who are outsourcing parts of their social media marketing, and shows which parts are being outsourced. The overwhelming leader is design and development. That doesn’t really come as a surprise. Those who don’t know design and development know they don’t know design and development. It requires fluency in a completely different language–coding.

Tied for second are content creation and analytics. Monitoring, research, strategy and community management range 4-7% of companies using agency expertise. This is unfortunate in my opinion. Since these aspects don’t require learning a new language, there is often an attitude that one can figure it out through trial and error. How much time is that costing your company? How many leads, new partnerships, search engine rankings and site visits?

As an agency with a social media department, we already know what’s going on in the world of social media. We have to. We have the experience that proves efficient in strategy, analytics and content creation. We don’t have to go through the wasted time of basic trial and error when setting up your social media presence, growing your fan base, developing an engaged audience. Although each audience and client is different, we understand the fundamentals and tactics that enable us to more quickly establish and grow your brand in the social media space so that you can start seeing results.

We understand the ins and outs of measurement. What to measure, how to measure it, and how to tweak efforts based on the results.

Best of all, because we are performing social media marketing for several clients, we gain knowledge that we can use for your brand while working with other clients. That’s more efficiency on your clock.

Are you among the 28% outsourcing social media efforts?

If you weren’t at the Raleigh SEO Meetup last night, you missed a lot of great stuff. If you’ve ever seen Greg Ng speak, you know he offers an incredible amount of super awesome information. Too much for this blog post, so I’ll just hit the highlights of optimizing your video. Don’t worry, you’ll still feel enlightened when this is over.

First, let’s start with some stats:

• 5.7 billion video views took place in the US…last month. (March 2011) *ComScore
• 186 million+ Americans watched online videos, which means that each American watched roughly 20. *ComScore
• Video is 53x more likely than traditional web pages to receive an organic first-page ranking. *Forrester

Are you ready to get in on this action?

Greg says that having a successful video channel involves the following 5 things: SEO, quality content, distribution, community engagement, and promotion. We’re going to talk about SEO.

YouTube

YouTube is the most popular video site, and the second largest search engine in the world. So for the purposes of this post, we’re going to focus on the offerings of this particular platform.

YouTube ranks videos with an undisclosed algorithm. However, we do know that the top five aspects of your video this algorithm factors in are title, description, tags, number of views and rating. When you’re setting up your video, make use of every field available to you.

1. Title – Make your title descriptive, using keywords. For example, instead of “Check out what I just ate”, Greg chose “Greg Eats and Reviews Wasabi Kit Kats“.
2. Description – The description is truncated at 27 characters. Always lead your description with your URL, then use your SEO skills to optimize your description with keywords. Use this space to pique the interest of your audience so they will want to watch your video.
3. Tags – First of all, don’t tag spam. It can cause people to “thumbs down” your videos, which can ruin your search rankings. Greg’s advice is to use 10 tags minimum, with 5 of them being tags you use for all your videos. For multiple word tags, keep them as one word with initial caps. Ex. GregsMouth
4. Category – See how your competition is categorizing similar videos. Search similar keywords and videos. If your video fits into more than one category, go with the one that has the most views. The most popular categories are comedy, entertainment, music, news & politics, and sports. Note that you can always change your category later.
5. Thumbnail – If you have a user channel with YouTube (which you do unless you’ve paid $200K+ for a channel, or have applied and been accepted as a partner or nonprofit channel), you will have a limited choice of thumbnails for your video – frames at 25, 50 and 75%. Pick one that is clear and in focus, has high-contrast, and/or compelling composition.
6. Captions & Subtitles – These are crawlable, and offer a huge long tail benefit. Greg says that the machine transcription is terrible, so don’t use it except for the timestamps. Another tip is that the captions don’t have to match the audio exactly, so whenever you say “it” in the video, replace it with the actual keyword in the caption.
7. Sharing Options – Greg says allow everything but automatic video responses. You never know what you’re going to get with video responses, so you should always monitor those. For everything else, you want people to be able to watch and share your video anywhere.
8. Date & Map – If you choose to set your video with date and map, it will show up on Google Earth. This is especially valuable to a business with a Google Places page. All your SEO work on your YouTube video will be associated with your Places page too.

Final Tips:

I could go on for another 600 words about the second half of the meetup, but instead, I’ll leave you with these final tips for managing your channel and making your videos.

• Optimize your YouTube profile for SEO purposes. Include links to your website, and anywhere else you want people to go.
• Add playlists for your own stuff, it helps YouTube include them in “Related Videos”. More people find your videos through “Related Videos” than your channel.
• Identify relevant subscribers to your channel and engage with them. They can become your strongest brand advocates.
• Respond to comments. YouTubers love that, and will up your rankings with more comments and “thumbs ups”.
• Take advantage of YouTube’s free analytics.
• Audio quality of your video is more important than video quality. Get a mic for your camera.
• Promoted Videos (YouTubes ad system) will trump your SEO every time. Be ok with this, and do the work anyway.

Thanks, Greg!