Does the variety of social media options leave you scratching your head, wondering where to begin?

I hear you!

The choices that you face when you first begin looking at your social media marketing options are enough to give anyone a major headache. I’ve “been there, done that” so I know what I am talking about.

But you don’t need to reach for the extra strength painkiller to get through it. Just take it one small step at a time and pretty soon, you’ll have it all under control.

Just What The World Needed

While the world watched the Facebook IPO debacle last week Microsoft quietly launched its own social media network called So.cl. Unlike most new social media networks this one is being touted by Microsoft as “not” a social media network. In fact, they say, it’s just a social search project aimed at college students which allows them to share information they find while doing their research. Specifically, see something cool and interesting during a web search and instantly share it with your network of friends.

If this sounds an awful lot like the way Facebook started, well, ask Microsoft about that.

While we try to decide whether or not So.cl is a social media network or just a social search tool, people are actively using it just like a social media network. They are creating “rich posts”, “video parties”, bookmarking and sharing their favorite web content–all the things folks are also doing on Facebook and Google+ and Twitter. True, So.cl does have a social search function, but that seems incidental compared with the full suite of activities users can engage in.

Social search has become just another function of managing a social media site. Google+ has “search your world” Twitter has hashtags and Facebook has, well, a “search” bar. It seems unlikely any of these social media behemoths will create a search function which allows for searching a rival social media network. That just doesn’t make sense from a business perspective.

Which leads me to me next point: How long do think it will be until someone creates a search engine designed specifically to search the Social Web? I’m betting we’ll see one in the next six months….

With Facebook hogging the spotlight last week and Google working to stay in the game with Google+, Microsoft has quietly launched So.cl, which it describes as a social-search tool to share information and meet people with common interests.

What it’s not, Microsoft says, is a rival to Facebook.

“So.cl is an experimental research project focused on the future of social experiences and learning, especially among younger people,” Microsoft said Monday in an e-mail.

The tool was launched late last year for students at a handful of colleges and universities. Last week, the company quietly made it available to anyone for a public beta test period.

Click here to read more about So.cl.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Surf The Internet

A new poll out this past weekend showed that for the first time, more people were surfing the Internet using the Google Chrome browser than the Internet Explorer browser. There have been a number of these studies done and Internet Explorer regularly beats the competition, but at least one poll, for the first time, showed that IE was not the most used browser.

This is especially significant when you consider that Microsoft bundles their browser with their Windows operating system. So, if you buy a PC which runs Windows, you get (are practically forced to use) Internet Explorer.

For those of you reading this of a certain age you will remember the days of Netscape, when Microsoft was under attack for trying to bundle their browser and dominate the Internet access world. Ultimately Netscape lost that battle, but won the war when it came to allowing people access to the Internet via any type of browser they wanted to use. Microsoft was allowed to bundle their own browser but was forced to allow users to choose whatever browser they wanted to use.

Now word has leaked that Microsoft might make it difficult for users of its new tablet-based operating software to access third-party provided browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox or even Google Chrome. If true this would clearly give Internet Explorer an unfair advantage over the competition, especially since Internet Explorer comes bundled with every device they sell or license to sell.

It would also seem to fly in the face of reason as Microsoft has already tried and failed to maintain a monopoly on the internet browser marketplace. Of course, reason is hardly what makes for a successful business.

Google Chrome, which is regarded as the hipper, faster and more developer-friendly browser, is gaining ground on the competition.

“Whether Chrome can take the lead in the browser wars in the long term remains to be seen, however the trend towards Chrome usage at weekends is undeniable,” StatCounter’s CEO Aodhan Cullen said in a written news release in March, when Chrome bested Explorer for a day. “At weekends, when people are free to choose what browser to use, many of them are selecting Chrome in preference to Internet Explorer.”

According to StatCounter’s latest report, which was spotted by the blog Global Nerdy, Google Chrome fielded 32.8% of Web page requests on Sunday.

That compares to 31.9% for Internet Explorer and 25.5% for Mozilla Firefox, which once was seen as the most viable alternative to the long-dominant IE.

Click here to read more about the latest traffic report.

What’s With All The Hype?

To say the recent Facebook initial public offering of stock failed to impress is like saying the Titanic was a boat that sank.

The stock opened at around $38 and pretty much stayed there all day Friday. Today (as of this posting) the stock had fallen off its opening by about 11% to around $34 a share even though the wider market has risen more than 1%.

So, does this mean that Facebook is a major “fail” and the company is headed for doom? Not at all. In fact, already some are predicting the fact that the Facebook price has not dropped even further (some analysts predicted it would lose half its value after opening) is a sign of its strength. Also, the price of a company’s stock is hardly a sign of its ability to be successful.

Instead, a stock price has more to do with public perception. And public perception about social media in general is still decidedly a mixed bag. Some folks, in fact perhaps as many as half of all adults in the United States, still think it’s just a “fad” that is likely to go away sooner rather than later. So despite the hundreds of millions of dollars Facebook has accrued, and the 900 million people who use it every day, there are a good number of people who still just don’t get it.

Also, Facebook just bought Instagram for $1 billion. Instagram is a popular photo sharing iPhone (and now Android) app which has a handful of employees and no revenue. Facebook‘s exorbitant purchase price has some insiders questioning whether or not Facebook‘s leaders (Mark Zuckerberg in particular) truly know what they are doing and are the best candidates for leveraging the true power of the world’s largest social media network.

The fact is, you cannot judge a company its stock price. If that were true Apple would have been abandoned when its stock price was in the toilet not so long ago. Today that $15 “dog stock” is now worth $600 a share. That’s quite a turn around and more than enough proof for some to believe that Facebook is only just getting started.

How about you. What do you think of the Facebook IPO fiasco?

Though Facebook was one of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings in recent memory, the stock closed with a gain of just 23 cents on Friday after trading was delayed.

Shares barely breached $42 at their peak on Friday — which came at the start of trading — and spent most of the day floating between $40 and $42 each.

More than 80 million shares changed hands in the first 30 seconds of trading on Friday. Volume spiked to about 567 million shares by the end of the session, setting a new volume record for IPOs.

“When some people didn’t see a pop on day one, they got out,” said Nathan Drona, a senior vice president of equity research at ABR Investment Strategy.

Click here to read more about the Facebook IPO.

Social Media Mis-steps Result In Firings

We have all heard the tales of woe from those employees who mistakenly violated their company’s social media policy only to end up on the unemployment line. This has created an air of concern among those of us who use social media on a regular basis, and even prompted some individuals to delete all their social media profiles, just in case.

Unfortunately, despite the warnings, and the emphasis on using caution when it comes to social media, some employees including high-level corporate executives continue to fall victim to often vaguely worded company social media policies.

If you own a business you should have a social media policy in place and be certain everyone who works for you knows exactly what is permitted and what is not. If you are an employee of a company and you are unsure of their social media policy, ask. Today. Right now. Don’t simply take the stance that you will “err on the side of caution.” Many company social media policies are not definitive guides but suggestions for appropriate behavior and leave the “definite violations” open to interpretation by human resources personnel or company executives.

Social media is an important part of social communication today. In all likelihood you rely on it for networking reason, both personal and professional. Thinking that you can just eliminate your network and continue to be as effective as you have always been is to misjudge the importance of social media. You need it and that’s Ok. But you also need your job, so make certain that you are staying within the guidelines of your corporate policy.

Gene Morphis keeps busy online. He has, it seems, more than 100 friends on Facebook, about 400 connections on LinkedIn and nearly 600 profile views on his personal Blogger site. But one of those sites may have gotten him fired.

Morphis was removed from his position as chief financial officer at Francesca’s, a growing apparel and accessories retailer that went public last year. The company said Monday that it terminated his employment after finding “that he improperly communicated Company information through social media.”

Francesca’s, which said it discovered the activity May 11, isn’t saying what information was allegedly shared, or through what form of social media. But the company is already on the hunt for Morphis’ replacement.

Click here to read more about Gene Morphis.

Social media has been a real game changer for agency and customers alike. In fact, I like to call it the greatest game for playing marketing “chicken” ever.
You know the game “chicken” right?
It’s pretty simple…

You get two cars racing straight for each other seeing who swerves first. Not super smart, eh? Not only that, it’s scary too.

But when I’m in a social media pitch meeting, it’s how I feel some days.

Except in this game of “social media chicken”, the cars are going maybe 10 miles an hour, because neither the agency or the client knows for sure when to actually swerve. Each side – posturing to the other ” we got this”, we know what we’re doing…Why the games?

Because even though social media is a game changer - it’s also a game that is always changing.

Which means, it’s impossible for anyone to maintain true expert status in the field.And if you have any experience at all actually executing a campaign to gain “earned media” without a paid media budget to support you the you also know this…

Social media is NOT the BEST acquisition tool, contrary to popular belief.

With 20 years experience as a direct response expert, I know better. And as a person who led the marketing team for the largest customer loyalty card launch in the country for the national grocery chain, Kroger – I will tell you this…

Social media is an awesome customer loyalty vehicle.

(Note I didn’t say “tool”. It’s a platform or a channel, but it’s not a tool anymore than TV, radio or print is a “tool”. ) In fact, Jay Baer from Convince & Convert and I discuss this in more detail in our interview or download the entire transcript (here).

Social media is one of the best channels you can leverage to increase your lifetime customer value.

(If this sounds like french to you, please read this article at The Brand Builder by Olivier Blanchard, who also gives you an amazing info graphic to break down how to calculate lifetime value of a customer.)

And that’s the name of the social media game folks!

If your client thinks Social Media ROI is attached to a positive in the profit column for customer acquisition, then you have lost before you hit the gas pedal.

Think about it – any seasoned marketer would tell you if that’s the case – it really would be the holy grail!

Because very few, even the best, marketers make money when they “acquire” a new customer.

The truth is…Money is made from customer retention which comes from outstanding value delivered by over the top customer service.

As this infographic shows, your real opportunity to impact the bottom-line using social media.

According to a study from American Express in May 2012, “Sharing of customer service stories is on the rise among the general population, with the typical American telling 15 people about positive interactions, vs. 9 just one year ago.”

Check it out – and please tell me if you’ve used social media well to reduce your cost of customer service or improve your level of customer service. Or both.

You tell me!

Please leave a comment here or at my Facebook page at [link] And if f you liked this post I’d really appreciate it if you would share it with at least one person who it could really help!

Social Media Manager Know Thyself

As with everything concerning social media the exact time when you should post an update to get the highest level of interaction differs widely depending on which social media professional you ask.

Some social media professionals will tell that early in the morning, before people go to work, is a great time to post because social media users are checking their network before they walk out the door, so they have something to talk with co-workers about. Other social media professionals will tell you that the best time to post is between the hours of 1pm and 3 pm, while people are on their lunch break, or just returning from their lunch break.

There is also a school of thought which says that posting around 4:45pm, just before people leave from work, is a good idea because many people log-on just before the ride home.

But here’s the truth: Only you know when the best is for you to post to your social network. If you don’t know when the best time is you are not managing your network properly. There are a host of analytics tools which can help you track clicks on the links you post, so you can easily tell which ones received the most attention. Your web traffic tool (Google analytics, or whatever tool you use to track visitors to your web site) likely will tell you where that track came from, and what time of day it came in.

With this information you can formulate a plan based on what has worked or what hasn’t worked; eliminate what hasn’t worked and emphasize what has worked.

Remember, when it comes to social media marketing, there are no hard and fast rules, just guidelines. Some of these guidelines might work for you, some may not. Don’t try to fit a square peg into a round hole. Find the hole which fits your peg precisely, and use it.

A study conducted by URL shortening service Bitly looked at the amount of clicks on links generated by its service that were posted on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, and during which times of the day that these links saw the most activity.

They found that the optimum time for posting links on Twitter and Facebook was between the hours of 1pm and 3pm from Monday to Thursday. This can most likely be attributed to a lot of users checking their accounts during their lunch breaks.

However, when it comes to popular Tumblr posts, it was found that it is best to post in the evenings, with the majority of activity on Bitly links occurring between 7pm and 10pm, particularly on Friday evenings.

It was found that weekends were generally a poor time for social media posts, with the least activity occurring on these links over Saturday and Sunday.

Click here to read more about social media posting.

Marketing For Mom

If there has been one truism in social media it is this: More women than men use it every day and are more likely to interact, engage and share. Of those women using social media, in fact, most are moms. That means when it comes to social media marketing there is simply no better day to take advantage of its power and leverage with users than Mother’s Day.

Now before you rush out and start scheduling hourly promotional messages for all day Sunday stop and think. Remember, social media marketing is all about building relationships. Chances are, if you haven;’t already built strong relationships with moms through your social media network, you won’t be able to take advantage of the day the way some other campaigns cans. Also, your efforts to mass market during their ‘special day’ could easily work against you.

No. It is a much better idea to carefully consider how best you might strategically turn a message into a meaningful relationship with a key demographic. Regard Mother’s Day not as a promotional opportunity, but as a team building exercise; a day to expand your network into a growth area by force of “nice” not “will”.

There is a fine between social media marketing and spamming and not everyone understands which side they are supposed to be standing on. Holidays which have marketing opportunities are not supposed to be a free-for-all. They require a targeted response with specific goals in mind. If you start pushing, chances are you will get pushed back and the result will be the exact opposite of what you were hoping to achieve.

The ability of social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube to promote ads with emotional elements tailored to consumers is generating increasing interest on Madison Avenue. That is particularly true at holidays, when marketers are seeking to freshen tried-and-true pitches — like, say, ads about buying flowers for your mother on Mother’s Day.

For instance, 1-800-Flowers is teaming up for the first time with Facebook for ads known as sponsored page posts, a kind of sponsored story, in Facebook parlance.

Celebrities who have endorsement deals with 1-800-Flowers are posting to their Facebook fan pages messages like: “For Mother’s Day, I teamed up with 1-800-Flowers to get you a special deal on flowers.” Those messages are transformed into sponsored page post ad units that appear on the Facebook pages of the celebrities’ fans.

Click here to read more about Mother’s Day and social media marketing.

We are women, hear us roar!

The meteoric rise of Pinterest as one of the top three most visited sites on the web is credited in no small part to its adoption, use and sharing by women. Regardless of age (although some specific female demographics seem to be more likely to use it than others) women have flocked to the visually inspired site.

The numbers don’t lie, and in the case, the numbers tell a very interesting story about women and the (social media) influence they wield.

Send Yourself To (Social media) Camp

Social Media Camp is the brainchild of Chris Burdge and Paul Holmes, two social media professionals who have made it their business to differentiate between good social media marketing advice and the other kind. They have so far been doing this with a series of “campy” videos mocking so-called social media experts whose advice is not always spot-on, and often downright incorrect.

The pair are aiming to promote their upcoming Social Media Camp event in Virginia early next month. They have invited digital media expert and noted author Chris Brogan to be the keynote speaker. The camp will also offer a series of “seminars and workshops with all the latest information and case studies for those new to the field and those looking for advanced social media techniques.”

It might seem like a a bad idea, to mock the very sort of professionals Burdge and Holmes (and Brogan) claim to be, but the fact is, as with any profession, no two are exactly alike. We all have a favorite dentist, and the dentist we simply will not visit. The same goes for mechanics, lawn care services–you name it and we pick the professional who does the best job for us and avoid the ones who don’t. Why should social media marketers be exempt from this type of critical analysis?

“Social Media Camp has grown to one of the top social media education events with a line up of respected speakers and industry specialists,” says co-founder, Chris Burdge. “We wanted to get the word out about Social Media Camp and also have a little campy fun with some of the bad social media advice that we have heard of.”

A whole new industry of social media consultants has emerged – some of whom are very knowledgeable and some of whom are not yet aware that Facebook has rules about promotions.” Burdge says, “Co-founder, Paul Holmes and I are passionate about educating people about social media. We are more than willing to get campy to get the word out about Social Media Camp.”

Click here to watch some of their “campy” videos.