As I talk to companies about “Going Social” one of the concerns they offer is the “Risks” of going social. What if we lose control of your message? What if someone makes negative comments? What if it takes more time that we anticipated? What if we look stupid because we’re not social savvy? How do we measure the business impact? These risks and more keep many companies from getting started in social. What many companies fail to consider is the other side of the equation; not doing social.

What Are the Risks of Not Going Social?

Companies that don’t go social also face many risks. With 94% of their customers involved in social media, not having a social plan means #1 — you are not where your customers are. If your competitors are social, to concede the territory to them. Also, your customers are already social, so if you avoid it, you are not participating in the discussion. Isn’t it better to be involved and have a voice than to let everyone else control what is said about your company?

A Case Study In Going Social at Domo; the Business Intelligence Company

Here is a very good case study about how a CEO decided to jump into social and get his entire company involved. This case study is writter by Steve Olenski on Business2Community.com.

“Ah yes, social media. We love it. We hate it. We’re somewhere in between. Regardless of which of the three aforementioned buckets you happen to fall into, one thing is for sure: social media is here to stay and while some companies/businesses/brands are still resisting as if they’re being drug into the dentist chair to have 5 cavities filled – without Novocaine, the smart ones know that social media is not painful and in fact can be quite pleasing, AKA beneficial and profitable.

And is truly essential to its long-term growth.

The title of my article speaks directly to one such company - Domo, the business intelligence company headed by former Omniture CEO, Josh James. The words are in fact verbatim from their website – taken from the section that deals with the Domo Social Media Experiment – hashtag #domosocial.

In case you missed this story, hang on to your Tweets for it may surprise or even shock you for the experiment mandates – yes mandates, that every Domo employee get social – literally. Realizing the importance of social media, James informed his employees back in May that in order to keep their jobs (aghast!) each and every one of Domo’s employees needed to complete 20 social media and other online tasks over an eight-week period.

The tasks range from updating their Facebook to reflect the new Timeline feature, creating three circles in Google+, creating a blog, creating a playlist on one of the music services, Pandora or Spotify and more.

As a reward – in addition to keeping their jobs that is, the staff receive badges plus there are rewards for individuals who accomplish the goals and of the entire company meet its collective goals, everyone gets a free day off from work.

Now I’m sure of you out there are either wondering to yourself or flat out saying aloud “Why would a company force its employees to use social media? Isn’t their time better spent on other things?”

While I would not agree with such thoughts – I happen to be a big fan of this experiment – I was curious to learn how this whole thing got started and I also wanted to know what some of Domo’s employees thought about it, too. So I reached out Josh James to hear from him directly why he started this, what the results have been to date and so on. I also asked Josh if I could speak to some employees and he willingly granted me full and complete access.

James told me he had reservations about launching the experiment telling me he was “concerned that employees would feel overwhelmed” by the experiment and also he had concerns about those employees who were already very active in social media and thus “not learn as much from the tasks and technologies with which we were asking them to experiment.>

As for what he would say to any C-level suite folks who would look at this experiment and offer one of the aforementioned concerns, James turned it around a little “I would say it’s a good concern, but maybe the wrong one.  I think the right concern is, “What are you risking by NOT having your employees using social media?”

James said the effects of the experiment are very positive even going so far as to tell me the “impact on our brand has been priceless.” He also said the experiment has actually brought his employees closer together and also brought his company closer to its customers – always a good thing.

As for other companies following in Domo’s footsteps, James is all for it but can foresee some companies in some industries being reluctant “I think there will be companies – such as those in the financial services industry – that will be fearful and resist the transparency and closeness to customers and employees that comes along with being a social organization.”

And as for what the employees thought, I was able to speak with three Domo employees – Whitney Rosenberg, a Quality Assurance Engineer, Hondo Seitzinger, an Implementation Engineer and Scott Jackman, a Senior Software Architect.

I asked each of them a series of three questions below, along with a sampling of their responses to each:

What was their initial reaction upon learning of the experiment?

• “The idea of amplifying one’s influence to reach a wider audience always interested me and I was excited to spread that influence even further as I completed the experiment.”
• “Oddly enough, in the weeks before the experiment was introduced, I had recognized my ignorance in this field and started wondering how and when I would be able to understand this more.”

Were they already “active” on social media prior to the experiment?

•  “Before the experiment started I had used more than half of the applications on the list, but I would only consider myself as being “active” on a few of them.” 
• “I’ve tinkered with it a little here and there. Most of the time I was looking solely for utility in the use of these tools. I used Facebook fairly extensively. I had a twitter account, but didn’t really use it.” 

What was the reaction they received from others outside of the company in regards to the experiment?

• “Most of my friends couldn’t believe that we would “waste” so much time engaging in social media applications at work.  To use a familiar adage, they couldn’t see the forest for the trees.  The perception was that we were spending all our time posting on Facebook and figuring out how to game the Klout scores, instead of actually building a product to ship.  In reality we were spending time on social applications to better understand our own product.” 
•  ”As time went on there were two main reactions from the experiment outside the company. First was, “where are you going to find time to do that?”; and second was, “condition of employment? Really?” Yes, it will take a lot of time to complete this experiment — more than I have, but the value is well worth it. Requiring it as a condition of employment is a bold move, but it essentially forces people to a recognition that user experience is important, which most engineers aren’t going to stumble upon on their own.” 

Let the Debate Begin

Ok, let’s hear it.

Let’s what you have to say about all of this.

Should a company mandate the use of social media?

Are you in the C-suite? If so, what do you think of all this? Would you ever want your company to follow in Domo’s footsteps?”

Read the original article on Business2Community.

So, what do you think about “Going Social”?

Which is greater the risks of going social, or not? Have you jumped in? Why or why not?

The post Social Media Case Study: Which Risk is Greater? Going Social or Not Going Social? appeared first on Snapshot Social Media.

Here are 5 Great Ideas on How to Use Content Curation by Susan Gunelius of Keysplash Creative. You can follow Susan on Twitter.

1. Publish Editorialized Content that You’ve Curated

It’s important to understand the difference between content aggregation, content syndication, and content curation before you can effectively curate content to publish on your blog. Here are some simple explanations of each:

• Content Aggregation: When you gather links to content and provide nothing else but those links (and perhaps content titles) in a single place, you’re using content aggregation.Alltop and PopURLs are examples of content aggregation websites.
• Content Syndication: Syndicated content is aggregated and redistributed (in whole or in part) for consumption or publishing through a third party. Sites like Newstex and NewsCred are examples of companies that offer varied content syndication services.
• Content Curation: When you review content from a variety of sources, gather links to those sources, share descriptions of that content, add your own commentary to that content, and publish all of those pieces in a single location, you’re curating content. While aggregation and syndication are primarily automated processes, curation is not. True content curation requires human intelligence, interpretation, and intervention.

2. Publish Curated Round-up Blog Posts

One of the most popular methods of leveraging content curation to increase your blog posting schedule and to share interesting content from across the web with your audience is by publishing round-up blog posts on particular topics.

3. Publish Slideshows to Highlight Curated Content from Multiple Sources

Slideshows are visually appealing and can boost page views for your blog because visitors have to click through each page in the slideshow to see all of them.

4. Embed Curated Content on Your Blog

There are a variety of tools that can streamline the content curation process, and some of those tools enable you to embed the content you curate on your blog.

5. Curate Content into an Online Video

Create a video that includes your insights added about a single piece of curated content or multiple pieces of curated content, publish it to your YouTube channel, and embed it anywhere on your blog.

Read Susan Gunelius’ complete post on About.com here: “5 Ways to Curate Content on Your Blog”

The post 5 Ways to Leverage Content Curation for Your Content Marketing Plan appeared first on Snapshot Social Media.

Here is some helpful perspective on the pros/cons of a small business managing their own social media campaign – from The Social Media Hat.

“Many small business owners are struggling to justify investing in an Internet . Some may think that it’s not worthwhile or not a good fit for their industry, while other owners may believe that with enough research and time, they can accomplish a good marketing strategy on their own. The former is false, while the latter is true, to an extent.

It’s safe to say that nearly every small business owner is in business to make money. It’s also safe to assume that most small business owners are in the business that they’re in because of some skills and experience they have in that particular industry.

Unfortunately, any time a small business owner tries to perform a task that is outside of their existing skill set, there is risk involved. Take, for instance, my friend Joe who owns a landscaping business. Joe has been working on lawns and custom landscapes since he was a kid and has gotten very good at it. He has also developed management skills and has become adept at running his teams of workers. When one of Joe’s trucks broke down, he had two choices: call a mechanic or try to fix it himself. Joe was familiar enough with cars to know that the repair was likely to be expensive. However, not having any particular skill or experience in automotive repair, Joe also knew that if he tried to fix the problem himself, he wold likely waste a lot of time, with no guarantee that he would be successful.

Business marketing is the same, though many business owners fail to see it that way. A business owner who tries to handle their marketing themselves risks wasting a lot of their own time, and potentially getting nothing in return.”

See rest of article at The Social Media Hat.

The post Social Media Management: Do It Yourself or Get an Agency? appeared first on Snapshot Social Media.

According to Lee Odden of Top Rank Blog, you must have marketing software in order to scale and succeed!

“Invest in Software & Systems to Scale – Speaking of software, it’s impossible to scale digital marketing and PR efforts without leveraging a SaaS marketing software platform. There are specific types of course, from marketing automation to social media marketing management services. Picking the right platform will require some investigation into understanding your own needs, the features offered by the platform and the support (internal or external) you’ll need to implement, operate and scale.”

Does Snapshot Social Media Agree that Companies Need to Adopt Software to Scale their Social Media?

Well…yes, we do…but you might be surprised to hear the nature of our rationale. Being a provider of content curation & social media management software you might question our “objectivity”. And you would be right to ask that fair minded question. However, we came at this situation from a direction you may not have expected.  We came from “the other side of the tracks.”

That’s right, we started out being on the “content producer” side of social media, not the “technology provider” side. We were running a branding and internet marketing agency and our clients kept  asking us to help them with their social media. Since much of our focus was on branding, design, marketing strategy, website development and SEO, we were not eager to get into social media. That required a unique and evolving set of knowledge and skills. But clients trusted us with their brand story and their message. They knew we understood the mindset of their customers and they eventually persuaded us to jump into social media with them.

We Learned “The Hard Way” That You Can’t Scale a Social Media Program Without the Right Software

Wow! What a time drain it was! All the connecting to the social media channels, determining how to write in the right social style, trying to engage with followers and fans, not to mention coming up with what to say every day — day after day. The demands to create, find and publish at the required frequency were very demanding. Even the most creative minds occasionally run out of new ideas. As such, we determined there had to be a better way. A way for the average company to get involved in social media without hiring a dedicated staff of people or outsourcing it to an agency. A way to produce a steady stream of engaging content and build a winning social media campaign while still running a business.

We learned about the importance of “Content Curation” and the role it needed to play.

We learned about all facets of social media management. And, we understood the day-to-day challenges companies face when they need to produce social media content, but have to deal with other important issues of the business. This revealed the important needs “finding content” and “time shifting”. You want to have a Continuous Social Presence, but you can’t afford to be continually doing social media.

Therefore, you need social media software that can help you find relevant contentcreate a bunch of posts and then schedule them to go out over a period of time. And, importantly, most people want software that “thinks like they do” and that is easy to use and intuitive. We reviewed many of the existing social media management products. While there were many, and some were even free, we didn’t see anything that really solved the problem the right way. For example, when scheduling is of Primary Importance, how could a leading product require people to save files into csv format iThi

As such, we started creating Snapshot Social Media. The idea was to be able to quickly and easily create content or to find content someone else has created and capture it, save it to a library and effortlessly repurpose it into a post for your campaign while giving credit to the original source, of course.

Why the name “Snapshot”?

We wanted the product to be quick and easy — “a snap”, if you will. In addition, we knew that content curation had to be a key component in keeping the pipeline of posts filled with ideas and stories. With so much great, relevant content on the web and on your computer in documents, we thought — “Wouldn’t it be great if you could just “Take a Snapshot” of content from virtually anywhere and then post it?” So, that was the origin of the name “Snapshot Social Media”. The name grew out of the core benefit and uniqueness of the product — the ability to simply take snapshots of great content and repurpose it for your social media.

So, yes, we believe SaaS marketing software is absolutely necessary in order to effectively scale up a social media campaign. We confirmed this hypothesis by talking to hundreds of people who faced the challenge of scaling their businesses social media campaign. After listening and learning the challenges faced by so many organizations, we began designing a software application that would solve these core problems. We focused on a great user experience and we added a little “magic” with the Snapshot MagicPad™. That is how Snapshot Social Media got started. We wanted to solve a scalability problem and we thought software was required. We hope our unique approach can help a lot of businesses create successful social media programs and save them precious time.

The post You Cannot Scale Digital Marketing Without Leveraging SaaS Marketing Software! appeared first on Snapshot Social Media.

Naturally, there is no simple answer to this question because it depends on what your goals are what medium you are publishing the content to. But let’s keep it simple and and try to be concrete. We’ll consider posting to blogs and the top 3 social channels: LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook and determine some good rules of thumb.

Blog Posting Frequency -  According to Susan Gunelius’ recommendations,  Blog Frequency on About.com, if you want to build a reputation and an audience you should post at least 1 time per day and between 3 -5 times per day for a power blogger.  If you take the median and say 3 posts per day, that’s 15 blog posts per week. Most companies find it a challenge to post even 1 time per day, or 5 times per week.

Social Media Posting Frequency – The nature of social media posting is different than blogging. In general, the audience expects blogs to be longer and more “meaty”, while social media posts will have fewer words and will have a higher frequency. Twitter, of course, is limited to 140 characters and many heavy duty Twitter users will Tweet dozens of Tweets a day. Tim Parker of Exposition Creative makes some data-driven recommendation in an article on How to Optimize Twitter and Facebook Posts for Higher Engagement. The LinkedIn Posting Frequency is recommended by Katie Klein SMM.

• Facebook Posting Engagement - 1 post a day is a good rule; less frequently gets less engagement
  • Post 1 to 2 times a day and see 14% higher engagement
  • Weekends get 14.5% higher engagement than weekdays and Wednesday is the lowest day
  • If you post too much, engagement goes down.  Try to keep the weekly posts around 7-10 times per week
• Twitter Posting Frequency – 1 to 2 Tweets per day for most companies; more if you are a power user
  • 1 to 2 tweets per day for most companies
  • power users up to 4 tweets per day
  • engagement drops after 4 Tweets per day
  • # hash tag Tweets get twice the engagement
  • Tweets with <100 characters get 17% higher engagement
• LinkedIn Posting Frequency – The nature of LinkedIn is not a fast-paced at Twitter or Facebook to posting anywhere from 1 to 3 times a week is enough in most cases.
• LinkedIn Group Posting Frequency – Different groups have different characteristics. If you post frequently to smaller, less active group you can come across as pushy while the same frequency to a large, active group could be fine. Learn the group and determine what is appropriate. In general, 1 to 2 posts per week to a group should be good and possibly as high as 1 post per day  for the biggest, most active groups.

In summary, a healthy and realistic frequency would be:

• Blog: 1/day; 5/week
• Facebook: 1/day; 7/week
• Twitter: 3 per day; 21/week
• LinkedIn: 3/week
• LinkedIn Groups: 2/week per group

From a content production standpoint, this requires creating & publishing 36 pieces of content per week excluding LinkedIn Groups.

The post Content Marketing: What is the Proper Frequency to Post? appeared first on Snapshot Social Media.

If you are looking for an easy to read book that offers valuable, practical advice about how to have a winning social media marketing plan for your business, pick up a copy of “The Tasti D-lite Way” by BJ Emerson and James Amos. It’s not a “theory” book or a book written by “social media experts” that know a lot about social media, but have never run an actual business or carried a P&L. Instead, what you get in this book is a real life case study of how a franchise business brought social media into their company as a way to build customer loyalty, grow their business and drive their bottom line.

For anyone who has run a business and wants to get practical, proven ideas for how to get started and ramp up a winning social media plan, the “Tasti D-Lite Way” is a must read. There are many important themes in the book as well as concrete tactics and plans. And every chapter is filled with visual examples of social media posts and real world examples. As you go through the book you feel like you are “right there” in the journey with the authors as they learned what worked and what didn’t as they “learned by doing” and built up their best practices.

From this social media journey through time with Tasti D-Lite, I have pulled out 50 lessons learned. These are just the headlines of some of the rich insights and wisdom you can gain from the book.  You may like to follow BJ Emerson on Twitter or check out his social media website at buzzadelic.

Top 50 Lessons Learned from “The Tasti D-lite Way”

Here are 50 nuggets that I pulled out of the book. Read the book yourself and collect your own gems.

• Lesson #1 – When it comes to customer loyalty, there is no final destination. It is a journey.
• Lesson #2 – Join the conversation.  While customers don’t need a corporate presence to interact around a product, the company has an opportunity to be part of the conversation.
• Lesson #3 – Neglect can be perilous. If you choose not to be part of the conversation, your competition can take control and leave you out of it.
• Lesson #4 – Transparency and face-to-face conversations will separate the winners from the losers.
• Lesson #5 – There are no shortcuts. It takes time and effort to build real relationships.
• Lesson #6 – At the core of social conversations is the basic desire for people to connect. Social media is just a means for facilitating the connection.
• Lesson #7 – It all starts with LISTENING. Understand and get to know your customers and their interest first.
• Lesson #8 – Be in a position to succeed. Bring on the right technologies and platforms that enable you to succeed.
• Lesson #9 – Think “now” instead of thinking “big”.
• Lesson #10 – You can steal culture. Each business needs to have an approach that is true to them.
• Lesson #11 – Be authentic. Customers expect real interactions with real people. That builds trust.
• Lesson #12 – Be inclusive. Share ideas and get opinions from customers.
• Lesson #13 – Get over the fears. If you don’t get social it will happen without you.
• Lesson #14 – Jump in with both ears. Listen first, then act.
• Lesson #15 – Be responsive. Customers expect social media to move fast. Don’t wait to be perfect.
• Lesson #16 – Be aware of compliance, but don’t let it stop you.
• Lesson #17 – Take a Human Approach.  Be real and be personal. That’s what social is about.
• Lesson #18 – Create and curate your own content.
• Lesson #19 – Think like a search engine. Use key words to improve SEO.
• Lesson #20 – Monitor your results
• Lesson #21 – Don’t just hear; listen.
• Lesson #22 – Don’t be boring. There’s a lot of noise out there; be interesting.
• Lesson #23 – Follow but don’t lurk. Be tasteful in how you follow customers.
• Lesson #24 – Use hashtags to get found.
• Lesson #25 – Try interactive quizzes and promotions.
• Lesson #26 – Be relevant. Understand what is interesting and provide it.
• Lesson #27 – Know when to stay quite. Sometimes just let customers drive the story.
• Lesson #28 – Be a storyteller.
• Lesson #29 – You can’t outsource relationships.
• Lesson #30 – Yes, customers do care. They want to connect.
• Lesson #31 – Don’t chase “fans” and “followers”. Drive real relationships.
• Lesson #32 – Keep an eye on the competition.
• Lesson #33 – For retail, all relationships are local.
• Lesson #34 – Choose the right social media platform for your business.
• Lesson #35 – Know how to interact on each social media channels.
• Lesson #36 – Choose a “creator” to lead your brand story.
• Lesson #37 – Learn how to curate to add value to the story.
• Lesson #38 – Share the social learnings with the rest of the company.
• Lesson #39 – Create a cycle of transparency throughout the business.
• Lesson #40 – Be responsible for all the content and its impact.
• Lesson #41 – Learn how to use social media for customer service.
• Lesson #42 – Your customers are “co-creators” to your brand story.
• Lesson #43 – Build loyal customers and they will defend your brand for you.
• Lesson #44 – Crowdsourcing can provide valuable design and product input.
• Lesson #45 – Not all customers are equal. Learn different things from different customers.
• Lesson #45 – Make sure your follow up.
• Lesson #46 – Listen Effectively.
• Lesson #47 – Engage creatively.
• Lesson #48 – Execute locally.
• Lesson #49 – Embrace with transparency.
• Lesson #50 – Curate & tell stories.

Feel free to add your own tips and lessons learned.

The post Social Media: Top 50 Tips & Lessons Learned from “The Tasti D-lite Way” appeared first on Snapshot Social Media.

As a natural outcome of the increased emphasis on content marketing, organizations are faced with new challenges.  Companies need to find answers on how to:

• generate a higher volume of content,
• create a wider variety of content,
• produce content that engages,
• publish quality content that builds a reputation, and of course,
• develop content that leads to conversion and a transaction.

The #1 Challenge is “Producing Enough Content”

Given that many companies with a sound Content Marketing Plan are producing content in the range of 5 blog posts per week, 7-10 Facebook post per week, 20 Twitter posts per week and anywhere from 3 to 25 or more LinkedIn posts per week, it’s no wonder that producing content is the #1 challenge. That alone adds up to a weekly average of between 35 to 60 pieces of content per week. Add in article writing, slideshare, YouTube, Pinterest and other media channels and the content production challenge is even higher.

Some light is shed on these dynamics by the Content Marketing Institute’s “B2B content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends” report which highlights the #1 challenge as indicated by 29% of all companies is “Producing Enough Content”. This increased nearly +50% from 20% last year and surpassed last year’s top challenge which was “Producing the Kind of Content that Engages” as that metric dropped to the #2 challenge at 18%. Clearly, we are seeing a shift as companies mature in there understanding of what is required to be successful in content marketing.

First, a company needs to understand what kind of content your audience is interested in. Then, they learn how to produce the right type of content that engages. Next, learn “what” to produce, then to gear up the operation and create more good content. It’s like a high quality assembly line. After you learn how to produce the right product, you need to scale up production volume. This is exactly the trend we are seeing in this year’s report.

In order to scale up content production, there are 2 primary options: 1) hire more people to produce the content or 2) bring on the right tools and technology to increase the efficiency of content production. Many new applications are available to help companies more efficiently create content in a time efficient manner. To combine content curation and social media management into a single, easy-to-use application, take a look at Snapshot Social Media.

The post Top Content Marketing Challenges appeared first on Snapshot Social Media.

Content marketing is rapidly growing as a leading tactic in most company’s marketing strategies. This is being driven by the fact that, over the last 2 to 3 years, companies are aware of: 1) the importance of growing their online presence and 2) the need to have a content marketing plan that attracts traffic and engages their audience. As a result, the overwhelming majority of companies now use content marketing which involves developing a variety of content and publishing it to multiple destinations.

How Does Your Company Compare to Industry Benchmarks?

Based on a report by the Content Marketing Institute, here are some of the key B2B Content Marketing Trends for 2013. Compare your company to where the rest of the industry is. Where are you in your evolution of the use of content as part of your marketing plans?

1. Content Marketing is BIG! With a whopping 91% of businesses are now using “content marketing”, it’s probably a lot bigger than you thought?
2. Content Types are Diversifying. As companies mature in their understanding of how to effectively deploy content, they are no longer relying on 1 or 2 channels for distribution. The Top 5 places to publish content are:
   • Articles on the company website – 83%
   • eNewsletters – 78%
   • Blogs – 77%
   • Case Studies – 71%
   • Tie: Videos & Articles published to other websites – 70%
3. Social Media Distribution Continues to Grow. Companies increased their usage of social media to generate awareness of the content from 74% in 2011 to 87% in 2012.
4. LinkedIn Overtakes Twitter & Facebook First Place in Social Channels. In a somewhat surprising move, LinkedIn overtook Twitter as the most used social media channel for promoting content. Specificaly, LinkedIn usage increased to 83% as B2B companies became more familiar with how to use the LinkedIn network to reach selected targets of business people with their message. The “Top 3″ are clearly LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, but other channels are growing. Here’s the run down of the top social media channels used:
   • LinkedIn – 83%
   • Twitter – 80%
   • Facebook – 80%
   • YouTube – 61%
   • Google+ – 39%
   • Pinterest – 26%
   • Slideshare – 23%
   • others in the 10% range include: Vimeo,Flickr, and StumbleUpon
5. Top Objectives of Content Marketing. Companies have a range of goals for their content marketing. Top among them is building Brand Awareness at 79% with Customer Acquisition at #2 with 74%. In third place is Lead Generation at 71%.  Next are Customer Loyalty (64%), Thought Leadership (64%) and Engagement (63%).
6. Top Measurements for Content Marketing are Traffic Volume and Leads. Not surprisingly organizations want to see results from their content marketing efforts. Top among these success criteria are measuring the volume of web traffic (60%) and generating both lead quality (51%) and lead quality (43%). An additional measurement is improving the companies SEO Ranking with 41% measuring search engine page rank.
7. The Majority of B2B Companies Project Increased Budget for Content Marketing. 54% of companies plan to increase their budget for content marketing while 34% plan to hold it at current levels. Only 2% foresee a decrease.

The post Content Marketing Top Trends for 2013 appeared first on Snapshot Social Media.

When you really get into content marketing you realize there’s a lot more to content curation than just creating content and publishing it. To build a loyal audience takes a bit more thought and work. Remember, people have a thousand other places they can go to get content and on the web, those “competitive” sources are just a click away. And once people get used to going to another place for their content, they will develop a habit of going elsewhere instead of coming to you.

To really connect with your audience you first need to understand them and their interests. Here are some questions to think about in order to determine what content to publish and how to interact with your audience:

•  What are the readers interests?
• “What” content should I present to my audience?
•  Do they prefer a variety of content or are they looking for depth on particular topics of interest?
• How much original content do they expect?
• Do they appreciate it when I add “gems” of content that I select from other relevant authors?
• How do they feel about engagement and collaboration?
• What tone and voice should I use? Do they appreciate humor or should I be serious?
  • See When & How to Use Humor in Social Media for Business

If you take the time to better understand your audience, present the right mix of content & engage with them in ways that build the relationship, you will grow a larger, more productive social community.

Add Collaboration to Content Curation to Build a Productive Audience

Here are some great ideas to start building a productive audience by using social collaboration. These tips are from Sarah Skerik at PR Newswire and you may read her full article here: 5 Tips for Using Social Collaboration to Inform Your Content Strategy.

1. “Train your social media teams to interact with your audiences, re-tweeting generously and responding to comments and wall posts.  Interaction is the pathway to engagement.
2. Curation can lead to more than an interesting news channel.  People are flattered when others tweet their blog posts and re-post links they’ve shared.  And often, curation is a two-way street.
3. Find the online groups where enthusiasts live, and participate.  These plugged-in groups are fantastic sources of intelligence, ideas and influence. Listen to the conversations. Which questions come up over and over?  Which complaints never seem to go away?  Within these conversations are opportunities for your brand. (Here are some ideas for developing traction within these types of groups:  Virtual Focus Groups for Communicators.
4. Look to your own customer service teams and customer surveys.  Mine customer questions and problems, and turn those into content in the form of blog posts about the solutions. (Related reading from BlogBrevity: Content Marketing Biz Blog Idea: Turn Customer Problems Into Solution Blog Posts
5. As you get to know members of your online audience, seek their opinions.  Interview them for blog posts, invite them to preview content, solicit their opinions.  In addition to generating good feedback, you’ll have solidified relationships.  These folks are more likely to amplify your messages.”

When you better understand your audience and engage & collaborate with them, you will be on the path to becoming a preferred destination for content. A place where they get more of what they are looking for and where they feel they will get treated the right way. And this of course builds preference, loyalty and makes your audience more valuable in helping you achieve your goals.

The post Content Curation & Collaboration: Building Blocks for Social Media Success appeared first on Snapshot Social Media.

I used to hate content curation…

As a social media and digital marketing expert and blogger, one of the regular tasks I consider critical is researching and selecting the best and most relevant information on digital marketing, both to keep myself current and to share with my clients, followers and blog readers.

How I used to handle content curation and social media sharing.

In my own case, the process I followed to perform quality content curation traditionally involved reviewing hundreds of individual links and articles, choosing what I found most relevant and then sharing them individually across my multiple social media outlets including my George Levy Twitter profile and my George Levy Linked In profile.

For years, this process took me multiple hours on a weekly basis of sifting through multiple RSS feeds, Google alerts, Twitter streams and other sources, then choosing the individual “golden nuggets” of valuable information and proceeding to share them across multiple tools such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Social Oomph and others.

Every time, I would go through the same process gathering all the raw information and filtering out the “content gems”, I would then assemble my content calendar of what to post, remembering WHEN and WHERE to post each piece for maximum effect, and then reviewing multiple analytics tools to see what content had the best performance…

As technology evolved, I kept adding different tools into the process to automate the process and help me become more efficient.

Still, this too posed a different set of challenges as not only was there a learning curve with each new tool, but I had to figure out a way to make all these separate technologies work together.

It was getting out of control…

….read the rest of the article on George Levy’s Blog at BreakthroughDigitalMarketing.com

 

 

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