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5 Marketing Technology stories you might have missed 2-4-12

iamreff — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:00:54 +0000

Marketing Technology 5

Marketing Technology Stories you might have missed

MT5 Edition: #24

Stories This Week: Pinterst blows up, desk.com, Twitter engagement increase, email effectiveness, and social picks a president?

1. Salesforce launches Desk.com

[VentureBeat] Enterprise cloud powerhouse Salesforce has launched Desk.com, a savvy customer support application that connects agents with e-mail, phone calls, and social channels.

My Take: I spoke with Social Support Superstar – yes a triple SSS threat – Mike Pace and he liked the original acquisition. He also likes the small business price point, what remains to be seen is if Salesforce can integrate Desk.com with it’s other online properties like CRM and Radian6.

2. Study confirms Twitter engagement is on the increase

[link] The article pulls out some interesting data from a recent study showing that active use of twitter has grown and that the global use of twitter is increasing.

My Take: Only 27% of tweeted during a 3 month period. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you figure that some people use twitter in a “read only” mode you actually get a higher # of users.

Email Impact on CMO Goals

3. Does Email Deliver on CMO Objectives?

[Marketing Sherpa] Their chart of the week shows that email drives website traffic, lead generation, nurturing prospects and building brand awareness. What does it not do well? Increase sales conversion/revenue.

My Take: You have to look at the entire sales process, especially for B2B sales. Just because email doesn’t make the sales doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Email is good for filling the top of the funnel. Prospective buyers are going to look to other marketing channels, like the information on a website and a direct sales force, to commit to a sale.

4. Consumers Turn to Social Media for Presidential Campaign Info

[eMarketer] Candidates’ ad agencies invest more heavily in Facebook than Twitter, while Twitter wins out over blogs for more posts about the race.

My Take: I really like the comment from Jordan Bittman of Digitas:

“JFK is considered the first television president. Next year’s victor may well be determined by the impact of Facebook and Twitter”

Pinterest On The Rise

5. Pinterest Drives More Referral Traffic Than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn Combined

[Shareaholic] Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

My Take: The headline astonishes me but Pinterest is pretty crazy. Want an example, look at what it did to Christina Refford’s traffic. After her post got pinned (and repinned) her traffic exploded.

How I use Bufferapp

iamreff — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:00:16 +0000

http://bufferapp.com

How I use Bufferapp

Jeff Cutler asked “How can someone get the most out of Bufferapp?” I started and stopped using Buffer two times before it took hold, now I’m an avid user. With that in mind I’ll try and answer Jeff’s question. If you think I missed something, hit me up in the comments.

What is Buffer?

From the website:

We designed Buffer to offer you a both personal and yet more efficient solution to handle twitter.

Buffer makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule tweets. Work out all your tweets at one point in time during the day. Then fill up your Buffer with your tweets and Buffer schedules them for you. Simply keep that Buffer topped up and you will then be tweeting consistently all day round, all week long.

How I use Buffer?

I use buffer in two ways:

During my commute on the train I scan hundreds of RSS feeds. Articles I want to share I add to my buffer. Usually I find 10-20 articles worth sharing. Without Buffer these articles would all be tweeted all at once – very annoying to my followers and since I’m an early bird, most people wouldn’t see what I’ve shared since they’re still eating their Cheerios. With my Buffer schedule set up, (one time set up) my tweets trickle out through the day.
During the day, if I see something interesting come out during the day I can share content with two clicks. Easy peasy.

Why I like Buffer:

Simple and easy to use
Posts to Facebook and Twitter
Allows me to schedules tweets
Straight forward analytics (see image)
Integrates with Bit.ly Pro so I can use my custom domain shortener (reff2.me)
When installed on an Android phone, sharing is a snap
On an iPad, where integration is less straight forward, I can still send articles to my buffer via email or via a Bookmarklet.
Browser extensions make sharing super easy
Socialbro integration allows my to find the best time to tweet and set that schedule for my buffer

Buffer Analytics

What I don’t like about Buffer:

Free version only allows you to put have 10 items in your buffer at once
The paid version is $10/month when a more suitable price point is $3

Crappy Twitter username? Take your brand back!

iamreff — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:00:54 +0000

Obtaining a decent twitter username is becoming harder and harder as twitter grows in popularity. All the good names are gone right? As a result you may find that your brand being represented by less than stellar Twitter handle. Don’t despair.

Put down the gun. We can get through this.

I’ve identified 7 elements that impact your twitter brand. These in concert can help make up for a somewhat craptastic twitter username.

7 Ways to brand your twitter profile

Username
Name
Bio
Location
Website
Background
Picture

1. Username

This is your twitter handle, the part next to the @. Other than killer, consistent, contextually relevant content, getting a good twitter handle is the best thing you can do for your twitter brand. Here are two tools I use to social check a username:

Someone brand jacking you? Here’s what you can do about it.

2. Name

Pretty self explanatory right? But presenting your business name in your Twitter profile is invaluable brand touch point if you get stuck with a crappy twitter username. Using your proper name fills in the gaps where your username might have left off. For some reason, and I’m a bit baffled, twitter only provides you 20 characters for your full name. A 20 character limit for a business (and many individuals) is entirely unacceptable. But hey, twitter is a free service, what can you do? Credit to Svein-Magnus Sorensen for finding a hack – too bad it didn’t stick.

3. Bio

Tell your brand story here. But you only have 160 characters so tell it quickly! You can decide to describe your company, your value proposition or maybe something else. Remember that this is social networking – it’s not just about your brand. As you craft the bio consider what your customer will connect to. What’s relevant to them?

4. Location

Feel free to think out of the box on this. You can be precise or a bit flighty. Consider this a chance to really support your brand. Here are some examples provided for illustration.

Music band: “On Tour” or “In the studio”
Life brand: “a better state of mind”
Retail: “53rd & 2nd”
Hockey goalie: “in the crease”

5. Website

Pretty simple really. You want to send customers to one of the following:

main page
campaign page
product page
bio page (e.g. about.me or LinkedIn)

6. Background and colors

Just be brand consistent.

7. Picture

If you want to play is safe use a brand logo. Simple. Clean. However, visual expressions are the best way to capture emotion and therefore brand affinity. The big question for brand managers is what to use. There are arguments for the humanity of using a face and consistency of using a logo.

My current favorite brand logo is Schroders. They are an investment firm, but they’re not afraid to add a bit of punch by putting headphones on their statue guy.

Although not a brand, I personally love Jamie Punshill’s previous picture. It made me want to down tequila shots and it provided a window into his personality.

So you good? Not quite yet. Run your twitter account through Hubspot’s twitter grader to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Feature image from Sarah Korf

Next up on #IMChat – Social influence measurement

iamreff — Thu, 12 May 2011 16:06:33 +0000

Please join me, Zach N. Hofer-Shall, Sarah Glass, Suresh Susara and David Deal this Tuesday, May 17th at 2:00 eastern for the next #IMChat. The topic will be social influence measurement.

Here is Zach’s post on the event.

Details

#IMChat is a weekly online chat focused on Interactive Marketing topics
It’s every Tuesday at 2:00 eastern
To join, just go to Tweet Chat

We’ll be covering the following questions in the upcoming session.

How do you define online “influence”?
What metrics do you use to calculate an individual’s influence?
What challenges do you face with social influence measurement?
What are your uses of knowing an individual’s social influence?
What’s next in social influence measurement?

Please follow Suresh Susarla’s ettiquette rules during the chat.

photo credit renjith krishnan @ freedigitalphotos.net

If Facebook is vanilla ice cream, then Twitter is IPA beer

iamreff — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Jay Baer’s story Is Twitter Massively Overrated? put it in a way that finally made sense for me. If Facebook is vanilla ice cream, then Twitter is IPA beer. Of course I had heard the statistics Jay mentions but I hadn’t been able to put my finger on what the meaning was. Certainly Facebook has the eyeballs, but I don’t think it has the “juice“.

Twitter is for content; Facebook is for deep connections

Personally, I’m not a fan of huge fan of Facebook or vanilla ice cream. I don’t feel I learn anything new or interesting on Facebook, it’s a mentally bland experience. On the contrary, at least once a day I see something awesome on Twitter (like this).

Jay’s take-aways were the following:

Do more on Facebook – I don’t think I’ll do that. I check my Facebook feed a couple times a day to catch up with friends and family, but I don’t use it as a public platform. And I struggle to understand why others do.
Use Facebook for B2B – I still feel Facebook is “friends and family”. I don’t think B2B buyers want to connect with your business on Facebook. The exception is if there is some component of your offer that touches people in a very personal way.
Use Twitter in a targeted fashion – Makes sense. Twitterati tend to be hyper-social, super-connected and very aware of outreach. Hitting the right people on Twitter can generate a lot of positive momentum.

Know your audience

My take away was “know your audience”. Where are your customers? What content would they value most? (and in what context)

If you’re B2C you know you need to understand how to leverage Facebook. If you’re B2B, Facebook is a much less clear. LinkedIn and Twitter may also be key networks in your social strategy.

Friends don’t let friends give away my personal information

iamreff — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

I get it.

Facebook has the growth. Facebook has the eyeballs.

Facebook has the data.

More and more apps are looking access a users Facebook account. I have no problem with that. An individual is responsible for deciding what level of privacy and sharing they are comfortable with.

Applications need/want access to our data so they can provide the best and relevant experience for users of their (usually free) services .

Leave my friends out of this!

Applications are looking to access more and more personal information and activity.

See the circled areas in the associated diagram. I have whited out the application in this example and to be sure, there are more than one such application. I worry because I actually do read what these pop-ups say. I want to know what I’m giving applications access to and based on the value of the app, I decide if I want to grant such access. From time to time I even go back and prune the list of applications that I have been access to my Facebook and Twitter accounts if I’m no longer using the app.

What I worry about are my less techy Facebook friends who are less likely to understand the implications of granting access to their Facebook account. This was not something I used to lose sleep over, but given examples such as the one provided, I realize that we all should be concerned. Using the example provided, if one of my Facebook friends accepts the request for permission the application can access my check-ins and my information. It’s one thing for me as an individual to release control of my information. It’s quite another for my friends to be tricked into granting access to information I have “protected”.

Nothing put into a web browser is secure

Of course we know that nothing is secure on the Internet, but sometimes we need a reminder. Let this example be your reminder today.

4 Items for Brogan’s “Managing Social Presence”

iamreff — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:18:22 +0000

Recently Chris Brogan did a post on Managing Social Presence where he ended the post by asking want others want in a presence management dashboard. I’m adding my list of wants to those offered by those in the comments to Chris’ post. As an avid user of Hootsuite, I use its functionality as the jump off point. I’m thinking about what else I’d like in a presence manager.

1. Manage inbound & outbound streams (don’t just publish to other networks)

As many (including Suzanne Vara, Charlie_Screendip) suggested, not only do I want to be able to publish to multiple souces, but I want to be able to aggregate social presence into a single interface. More clearly, a lot of services allow to one to publish to multiple services, but I haven’t found a service that can analyze the content in all your streams and integrate them based on purpose, author, topic and relevance. The first person to do that is going to be HUGE. Know someone doing that? Drop me a note @iamreff.

2. Manage followers better

I’m trying to be better at curating at lists, but its a pain. I recently learned of a tool called Fourmulists and I’m trying it out as a way to dynamically organize my followers and find those with similar interests. It’s great that a multitude of niche products are sprouting up, I just wish they could be included in a single interface (as I’m sure they will as the space matures).

3. Provide Relevant info

Like many, I rely on social networks (especially Twitter) for breaking news. But some news I care about and some I don’t. I use Google Alerts, socialmention, Twitter searches and other mechanisms to find conversations relative to my interest areas. This needs to become easier. I want to be made aware of topics that are influencing people that influence me and my followers. Again based on purpose, author, topic and relevance. Revelant stuff to the top, irrelevant stuff to the bottom.

4. Relevant alerts

Once I can manage my social presence as described above, I want sensible and granular controls over notification. Notifications include UI, e-mail, SMS and device integration (vibrates, LED changes, chirps). An example of notification done poorly? Foursquare ping. There’s no relevance.

What tools do you use?

Like Chris, I look forward to a platform that makes managing my social presence easier. Until that happens, what are your tips and techniques?

Cold Turkey: In Conclusion

iamreff — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 16:01:45 +0000

This concludes the Cold Turkey experiment. For one week I got all news from Twitter. No NPR, no RSS feeds, no newspapers, no website (unless directed to via Twitter), no podcasts and no e-mail subscriptions.

Well, it’s all over, let me share what I learned. In general, the experience was a total drag, but there were some bright spots. If you missed why I did this, refer to day 3. Let’s but this baby to bed.

What sucked

I missed most everything: scanning the newspaper, listening to podcasts, listening to talk radio, etc.

I also missed going directly to news sites. Although most news have social feeds, its not efficient to read the news tweet by tweet, link by link. Part of it was the start & stop nature of twitter. Part of it was substituting reading the paper on the train for reading news via twitter on my Droid. The form factor isn’t ideal and loading web pages takes too long.

What was good about it

It really wasn’t all that bad. I don’t watch TV news and I found Twitter was able to provide me sufficient awareness of major issues. Since I was selecting my feeds, it was news a-la-carte and as a a result I got hardly any “TMZ type” news – so I didn’t miss that at all. Also, instead of reading, I found myself writing a lot more. I wrote about issues with klout and Foursquare’s Ping. Since I was fully engaged with Twitterverse, I found myself making better connections to local social media rock stars – which was kinda cool.

What to make of it

I’m glad I did it! It was definitely a road less traveled. As a result of this experiment, I’m going to continue to get most of my news from twitter but I’ll balance it out with my normal set of NPR, sports radio and podcasts. I plan to not renew my subscription to the WSJ.

—

If you missed it, be aware that I’m participating in Movember, proceeds go to the LIVEStrong Foundation and the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Head over to my website where you can see what prizes are available.

Cold Turkey: Day 4

iamreff — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:37:23 +0000

This is day 4 of my Cold Turkey experiment. For one week I will only get my news from Twitter. No NPR, no RSS feeds, no newspapers, no website (unless directed to via Twitter), no podcasts and no e-mail subscriptions.

A day of adjustment (or perhaps acceptance). I listened to an audio book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard on the way in. Which, by the way, is off to a great start. If you’re in a role that requires you to facilitate change, it’s a great read.

I also read my very own newspaper, The Twitter Times.

My cracker jack publishing team had some great stories today including:

Seth Godin’s blog: Deliberately uniformed, relentlessly so
An fantastic post by Karen Costa: Movember Grows More Than Just Mustaches
Mashable: “Angry Birds” Publisher Acquired for $20 Million by Electronic Arts [REPORT]

Cold Turkey: Day 3

iamreff — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:05:17 +0000

This is day 3 of my Cold Turkey experiment. For one week I will only get my news from Twitter. No NPR, no RSS feeds, no newspapers, no website (unless directed to via Twitter), no podcasts and no e-mail subscriptions.

Better today. There’s some kind of news about Junior Seau. Am I missing that? I’m not so sure.

Here’s a brief history of why I set out on this experience. To explain it, I’ll use the good old Scientific Method.

Observe a Phenomenon: Recently at the Inbound Marketing Summit there was a focus on the “Real-time” nature of PR and news in general. There was a general vibe that “old media” was dead, dying or at least “new media” was stealing old media’s girlfriend.

Formulate a Question: While I totally understand where that sentiment comes from, I felt that was over-simplifiying things a bit. I supposed that even the super-early adopters still absorb news and events through old media channels such as TV, radio and outdoor advertising – I just don’t think people realize that, despite their level of uber-social mogulness, they still get a considerable amount of info from traditional media. Ultimately the question was, “Can a person gather sufficient news using Twitter as a sole resource?”

Create Hypothesis: When push comes to shove, even a well-connected person will feel at a loss once the old media is taken away.

Test the Hypothesis: I decided to push the point by focusing solely on twitter. An easy out would have been to allow for any new media outlets (e.g. mobile apps and RSS feeds), but I decided to take the narrow approach of just limiting myself to twitter. If after a week I feel disconnected from what’s going on in the world I must accepted the hypothesis. However, if I develop new means of gathering news, solely via twitter, I will have to reject the hypothesis and create a new hypothesis.

Formulate the Conclusion: Stay tuned