1. Quality of fans/followers. Are your fans/followers your customers? Are they interested in your message?

2. Social demographics. What is the composition of the groups where you broadcast your marketing appeal? Furthermore, can you draw conclusions about the types of fans an followers you have? Can you segment them for your marketing purposes?

3. Most popular pages, posts and tweets. Maintaining your social accounts in a consistent manner is important, but what is more important is knowing what makes your content popular.

4. Page views and click-throughs. Your social media content is driving traffic to your website — what are your prospects looking at (and sharing) while they’re there?

5. Conversion. At the very bottom of the funnel is where you convert your leads to customers; your social media channels are at the top. How are you converting, and  how can you keep converting? This is where your efforts convert to ROI.

Are you confused about how to begin, or do you need to “sell” the concept to senior management? Either way, these links will help you to get started:

• Social Media Sells More B2B Leads [link]

• The Inbound Marketing Explosion [link]

• Marketing on Social Media [link]

• How Business Can Incorporate Social Media [link]

• How Important is Google+ for Business? [link]

• CMOs Say Some CEOs ‘Don’t Get’ Online Marketing [link]

• How to Defeat the Social Media Skeptics in Your Company [link]

• 3 Strategies to Boost Your Business with Social Media [link]

• A Case Study in Social Media Demographics [link]

• Quark Summary: What Every CMO Needs To Know About The Six C’s Of Customer Engagement [link]

• Why Every Company Needs a Social Media Conductor [link] ]]> http://www.joerib.com/social-media-for-business-resource-roundup/feed 0 http://www.joerib.com/social-media-for-business-resource-roundup http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/joerib/~3/FuZ913CyOpA/are-you-managing-up http://www.joerib.com/are-you-managing-up#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:46:55 +0000 Joe http://www.joerib.com/?p=3632 I’m two weeks into my MBA program at Suffolk University and the amount of my assigned reading for the semester rivals the amount of cumulative reading I’ve done over the past five years. I’m finding it especially interesting, and I’m realizing that most of it relates to business situations I’ve already lived through during my 7-year “break” in-between college enrollment.

One of the topics I recently researched for an organizational behavior class covers managing your boss. The premise of managing your boss, or managing “up” deals with cultivating a trusting relationship with your immediate supervisor.

When good managers manage down, they give their people a clear understanding of what’s expected of them, a basic script to work from, and an understanding of the time they have to accomplish their work. In doing this, the manager ultimately creates a work environment in which there is mutual support, mutual trust, and genuine lines of communication.

When a subordinate (or manager) manages up, they should first have a good understanding of both the other person and themselves. One should use this information to develop and manage a healthy working relationship; one that is compatible with both people’s work styles and assets, is characterized by mutual expectations, and meets the most critical needs of the other person.

Managing up is easier than it sounds. Here are some starters…

• Appreciate your boss’ goals and pressures
• Know their strengths and weaknesses
• Learn their personal and organizational objectives
• Adapt to their preferred style of working
• Know how they like to get information
• What are your boss’ needs?
• Do they strive on conflict or avoid it?

Essentially, it’s all about communication—those who don’t communicate effectively with their superiors, for example, won’t be able to win support for pet projects or promotions for subordinates… they also aren’t likely to be included in helping make important decisions or weigh in on strategy. Learning to adapt to the boss’ preferred way of doing things actually helps you maintain control of your career… once you have that skill you’ll never need to feel apprehensive about working for anyone.

(Click to enlarge.)

Get Personal With Your Customers

“Keep your customers engaged in your brand. Create a buzz and keep your customers talking about your brand. If treated properly, they’ll do a better job advertising your brand than any planned campaign.”

Tweets, Inc.

“If you’re going to invest time in getting your customer base to recognize your company’s presence on twitter- keep it up. Your customers will recognize your disinterest in maintaining you account more negatively than if you never made the commitment at all.”

Avoid In-House Burnout by Getting to Know Your Customers

“Get out of your cubicle and get to know your customers so you can see first hand how you fit into the bigger picture, and why in-house design is so valuable to a company.”

Customer Retention > Customer Acquisition

“Joseph Jaffe (of JaffeJuice.com) explains how through things like customer service, customer experience, dialogue, a proper listening/response strategy, brands can show that they care about their customers.”

Inevitably, I needed to move that printer/scanner/lava lamp after I tamed my cords. I thought about it for a while and came up with this solution. Here’s what you’ll need…

Pick up yourself a pack of cable tie mounting bases, some plastic zip ties, and a few carabiner key chains. You can buy everything online or you can pick everything up at your local Home Depot/Lowe’s.

Crawl on behind your desk, shelf, or credenza and start sticking the cable tie mounting bases in the path that you to want your cables to follow. Then zip-tie a cheap key chain carabiner to each mounting base. Finally, put all of your wired gadgets in place, and “clip” the wires into the carabiners. Use one, use ten- it’s up to you (and how messy your cord situation is).

The beauty of this system is that it’s both temporary and permanent. The sticky backs on the mounting bases are sticky enough that the weight of your cables aren’t going to separate them from your furniture (or wall), and the carabiner allows you to “clip in” or “clip out” wires as needed. Granted, there are a ton of cable management solutions out there, but this is what worked for me (and there’s not a stray cord in sight behind my desk).

Delphine Hirasuna at @issue shares the story of how our country’s flag came to be, and how branding standards were finally adopted.

“By 1912, when the nation had 48 states, Congress decided that enough was enough. It adopted the graphic guidelines that are in place today. When we consider the history of the American flag, it is a miracle that the Stars & Stripes has become so iconic and recognizable when it ignored every rule of how to build a strong graphic identity.”

In any event, now that the application/admissions process is over, I’ll be performing a site re-design over the next week. Please pardon the mess as I do some house-cleaning and hopefully get back to a more regular posting schedule.

Rome wasn’t built in a day; if it was, I would’ve hired their web team.

The Elements of Content Strategy is an excellent compliment to my experience in creating content for various media channels. Here are some of the key takeaways from the book:

1.) Good content is appropriate for the user and for the business. Content is most appropriate for users when it helps them accomplish their goals, offering them precisely what they need, exactly when they need it, and in exactly the right form. Content is most appropriate for the business when it helps the business accomplish its goals (ie. improving sales, improving service, or reducing costs).

2.) Good content is useful and user-centered. Make a plan; know what you want to accomplish with your content. Perform research on your users- who are they; what kind of information are they seeking; do they go anywhere else to find this information? Your research will pay dividends and help you to curate your content to fit the needs of your users. Also, make sure your user can figure out what to do (navigation) and don’t alienate your users by publishing self-absorbed content.

3.) Good content is clear. Organize it!

4.) Good content is consistent. Use a style guide, adhere to branding standards, and monitor your voice and tone.

5.) Good content is concise. Don’t waste the time of your users- especially on the web. Learn what your users need and publish that.

6.) Good content is supported. Update factual content once it’s no longer useful. Also, cite your resources.

“Content people” work for the users. As a content strategist, you can help your teams and clients communicate more effectively by introducing tools like clearly documented editorial workflows, editorial calendars, and content customized for audiences and channels.

“Messages” are high-level ideas you want to transmit directly to your users. These messages aren’t taglines; they’re there for internal use and will act as scaffolding for your content, supporting and shaping the content you actually produce. Look at it from the perspective of rhetorical appeal:

• Core idea: “Our academic programs are strong.”
• Rational appeal: “Most of our programs are nationally ranked, and 70% of our graduates go on to pursue maters or doctoral degrees.”
• Emotional appeal: “Apply here to study with the most inspiring professors.”
• Reputation-based appeal: “We are the most selective university in the state, and our faculty offers an unparalleled reputation for excellence in their fields.”

Define your project. What are you doing and why? Know your stakeholders; interview them, and find out the following:

• Business goals- overarching aims that an entire organization tries to achieve
• Tactics- specific requests like, “clarify the navigation”, or “make it easier to find X”
• Requirements- immovable objects like launch date, budget, and staffing
• Project objectives- ie. “Change our website to reflect our new organizational focus on education.”
• Success- know what it means for your project, and then figure out the best way to achieve it

Do you have a channel strategy? Use what you’ve researched about your users and your and your business goals to figure out the best way of getting your content to your users. Delivery channels to consider are: the website itself, micro-sites/topical sites, blogs, newsletters, social media, webcasts, podcasts, videos, online magazines, mobile apps, third-party apps, whitepapers, ebooks, and special reports.

Evaluate (research, testing, and traffic analysis). Design (communication strategy, proposals for features, and plans for creating content). Execute (writing and revisiting content, set up publishing workflows, and aggregating content).

Buy Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane at A Book Apart.