This is a really great insightful post showing how businesses and brands are used and seen by people on Facebook. This article was written by Adam Ostrow the Editor-in-Chief of Mashable. Have a read and let me know what you think. How do you interact with your favourite brands or your customers? What’s worked for you.

While much of finding what works for your business on social media sites is a process of trial and error, recent stats from email marketing firm ExactTarget (which recently acquired social CRM platform CoTweet) shed some light on how the Facebook population uses the site and how it interacts with brands.

First, the good news: based on its study of 1,500 Facebook users, ExactTarget concluded that 38 percent of online U.S. consumers “Like” (formerly “Fan”) a brand on the social networking site. And the average fan Likes nine different brands, giving you plenty of opportunity to find your way into potential customers’ news feeds.

The news that presents a challenge to businesses looking to benefit from Facebook, however, is that just because someone has liked you doesn’t mean they’re ready to see your promotional messages. Citing an earlier study, ExactTarget reports that 70 percent of consumers don’t think becoming a fan equates to opting in to marketing.

Fortunately, ExactTarget didn’t stop there, and did some research into what motivates users to Like companies on Facebook. The results offer some insight into what you can do as a business to keep the fans you accumulate engaged and not hitting the “hide” button in their news feeds. Here’s the breakdown of why users might “Like” your brand, illustrated by the percentage of respondents who said that they use Facebook for the listed activity:

40 percent to receive discounts and promotions
39 percent to show my support for the company to others
36 percent to get a “freebie”
34 percent to stay informed about the activities of the company
33 percent to get updates on future products
30 percent to get updates on upcoming sales
29 percent for fun or entertainment
25 percent to get access to exclusive content
22 percent someone recommended it to me
21 percent to learn more about the company
13 percent for education about company topics
13 percent to interact

On the surface, some of these findings seem to conflict with the idea of users being resistant to marketing messages. But the real takeaway is that users like brands for a wide variety of reasons, and the mix of content you post to your Facebook page should reflect that.

There’s a bit more to it than that, however, if you dive further into some of ExactTarget’s findings relating to demographics and usage patterns. For instance, 65 percent of Facebook users only access the site when they’re not at work or school – typically meaning early morning or evening. That means that if you’re making social media only a part of a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work day, you might be missing out on connecting with consumers during the times they’re likely to be online.

There are also differences in how men and women use the site, with women indicating that their primary focus on the site is on maintaining relationships (by a margin of 63 percent to 54 percent), implying that they have less time for engaging with businesses.

Hopefully, by combining some of these broader findings with your own analytics and anecdotal successes and failures, you can refine your strategy to grow both your fan base and your levels of engagement.

Bouvard Cruises in Mandurah started their journey down the Social Media marketing road late last year by firstly creating a Facebook business page closely followed by a blog called “Mandurah’s Dolphin Blog”, a YouTube Channel and a Twitter account. The strategy was to use the blog to record sightings using photos and videos then use their Facebook and Twitter pages to share the information and drive traffic to their website.

The Rewards

10 months later and they are now seeing the rewards. Over the 10 month period the Dolphin Blog has become the highest referring website for sending visitors to the Bouvard Cruises website, followed by Experience Perth then their Facebook page. They have seen a 72% increase in visitors to their site since last year and it’s still climbing!

But it gets better!

Using Google Analytics to monitor traffic to their website we’ve seen in the last 3 months their Facebook page has overtaken the Dolphin Blog as their highest referring website, it actually referred 3 times as much traffic as their second referring website. In fact their Facebook page sent more visitors to their website in the last month than the combined total of their next 8 referring sites! As far as traffic sources go only Google is higher than their Facebook page!

So what does this tell us?

A social media strategy used effectively drives traffic to your website.
A Facebook page is a powerful marketing tool. Combine it with a blog for more power.
If you don’t have a Facebook page or a blog or a social media strategy… you are missing out.
If you have a Facebook page and a blog keep using it.
Make more postings, monitor them daily and interact with your customers who make posts and replies.
Make it part of your daily office marketing routine to check your Facebook page first thing every morning and again last thing in the afternoon. Make at least 1-2 post a week and make sure respond to yours fans posts and questions.
Most importantly stick at it!

This all this proves that a social media campaign involving a clear strategy is a very powerful marketing tool that drives customers to your website. Just ask Rod!

Just recently I’ve been talking with a few of my clients about the benefits of email marketing and using it in combination with their social media strategy. We were discussing how valuable their email databases were and that they are the most powerful marketing tool they have at their disposal and if used properly with social media can bring huge returns.

So I thought I would share this post I came across on Hubspot that discusses this very topic, it’s a good read.

The following is a guest post from Amy Garland, marketing manager at Blue Sky Factory.

Social media is on the minds of marketers everywhere. With its increasing popularity, marketers are thinking, “We need to be on Twitter! Let’s create a Facebook fan page! Crank out the viral videos!” Unfortunately, this often has no strategy behind it, and organizations are flying blind on the social web. While social media isn’t “killing” email like some people seem to think, it is causing email marketing to be ignored.

Email marketing is the digital glue that holds the social web together. It’s the currency of all accounts, the only common denominator of all social networking sites. You can’t sign up for an account on a social media site without an email address, and each one has an email component (e.g. you receive Facebook friend and LinkedIn connection requests through email). Unfortunately, many marketers are forgetting about email marketing as a key component to online marketing and new media.

So why should you, as a marketer, care about email? I’ll let the following numbers speak for themselves.

• Email marketing returned $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, and is expected to return $42.08 for every dollar spent on it in 2010. (Direct Marketing Association)

• 89% of retailers cited email is the most mentioned successful tactic overall. (Forrester Research and Shop.org’s Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report)

• 67% of subscribers say they’ve purchased products offline as a direct result of receiving an email from a retail company. (Epsilon – 2009 Report)

These are some convincing numbers, but what exactly is it about email marketing that provides such a high ROI and positive response from subscribers?

It’s permission-based. Well, it should be permission-based. (On a recent webinar, I heard Mike Volpe, vice president of marketing for HubSpot, say email marketing is like the phone; it can be used for good or evil. This statement is sad, but often true.) If you grow your list organically and subscribers have given you explicit consent to communicate with them via email, then you have an audience that is asking for information from you. (Sounds like a little something called inbound marketing, huh?) If your subscribers have asked to receive your emails, then they’re much more likely to open, click-through, and share your emails, ultimately resulting in a higher ROI.

It’s subscriber-driven. One of the best things about email marketing is that your subscribers tell you what they want from you, how often they want it, and in what form (e.g. newsletter, product promotions, or upcoming webinar notifications). This information can be collected at the opt-in, through subscriber preferences, or with a periodic survey sent to your email recipients. By being able to choose how they receive your information, subscribers are more likely to engage with your emails. Engagement in itself gives feedback with each send. By using your email platform’s reporting tools, you know how your campaign performs by looking at metrics including opens, click-throughs, conversions, and even unsubscribe rates.

It’s easy. Yes, folks, email marketing is easy. They key to email marketing is sending timely, targeted, valuable emails to subscribers who have asked for them. It’s not difficult to provide your audience with relevant emails based on their preferences, past purchases, activity, etc. Segmenting your database and taking a few extra steps to do this will drive more subscriber engagement and more purchases.

Now don’t get the wrong idea here. I’m not saying you should solely focus on email and ignore social media. These two channels can and should be used together, not only with tools like Share with Your Network (SWYN), but also by repurposing the content, cross-promoting the channels, and cross-pollinating your audience. More on this in a future blog post, but for now, I’ll leave the email and social media topic with these statistics:

• 75% of daily social media users said email is the best way for companies to communicate with them, compared to 65% of all email users. (MarketingSherpa – 2010)

• 49% of Twitter users said they made an online purchase because of an email, compared to 33% of all email users. (MarketingSherpa – 2010)

Email and social media are like peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, milk and cookies, the list goes on. They are simply better together.

Take a step back and think about your online marketing strategy and campaigns. Are you using email marketing to its full potential? If not, how can you better use this channel to engage your audience?

Amy Garland is the marketing manager at Blue Sky Factory, a Baltimore-based email service provider. Follow Amy on Twitter: @amygarland.

Have you ever wondered if you should get a Facebook page for your business? Not sure how it works or how it can help your business? Here is a great video showing how Facebook makes it easier for businesses and brands to connect with their consumers.

While Social Media is all the talk right now and everyone is saying you must be on it, knowing what it can and cannot do is vitally important to your marketing strategy. You should always enter anything with your eys wide open so you wont be disappointed. Knowing what it can’t do will help you to unleash it’s full potential.

This article was posted on Mind Sprout Marketing Blog

Social Media Can’t…

Replace A Marketing Strategy
Social media is powerful, but it isn’t a stand-alone substitute for a marketing strategy. Effective marketing strategies can and should incorporate social media elements. However, simply launching a StumbleUpon account or Facebook Page isn’t going to cut it.

Deliver Instantaneous Success
Creating a Twitter account and expecting a few tweets to have followers flocking to you is unrealistic and highly improbable. Social media is a marathon, not a race and it takes time to cultivate a presence and following. Be patient with social media and you’ll be generously rewarded in return.

Guarantee Influence
Just because you believe that your business, product or service may be heads above the rest, doesn’t mean that others will. Social media is a jungle and it takes an expert guide to navigate the landscape. But even the most seasoned social media consultants can’t generate an interest if the masses don’t care.

Can’t Save A Sinking Ship
If a brand or business is going down, implementing a social media campaign isn’t going to make much of a dent in repairing the damage. Remember, transparency is critical with social media. Neglecting to be open an honest with your audience can permanently tarnish your reputation.

Be One Person’s Responsibility
When a business becomes involved with social media, each employee becomes that company’s social media ambassador. It’s up to everyone to promote the brand, not just the social media consultant. Social networking can greatly enhance social media efforts and it’s important to bolster initiatives by getting involved in positive and meaningful ways.

Social media isn’t a miracle worker, but it’s a definite must-have component for any good marketing strategy.

The original video was first released in August last year and has been viewed over 1.8 million times. It was arguably one of the best social media videos ever. It turns out things are changing so rapidly in the Social Media world that in only 9 months the statistics are outdated so creator Erik Qualman of Socialnomics has updated and refreshed the video….. and here it is!

This video is a fantastic resource to explain the benefits of Social Media and what the future holds for us in business. If the exponential growth in the last 9 months is any indication and the adoption of Social Media to come, expect version 3 to be coming out very soon!

Spread the word my friends, if your business doesn’t embrace Social Media what will happen to it?

There have been 4 major events this past year that have changed the importance and the effectiveness of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
1) Yahoo & Google announced that they no longer use key words and meta tags in their searches that effect search engine rankings.
2) Facebook passed Google as the most visited website on the Internet.
3) The phrase “Facebook” became the most searched word typed into search engines.
4) Google created their own social networking site, Buzz.

SEO is still important but not as important now as SMO (Social Media Optimisation). With Facebook recently overtaking Google as the most visited website on the internet shows that people using the Internet are the ones that are dictating where it’s future is heading and what it’s going to be used for. Searching for information will still be a part of life on the Internet, but entertainment, socialising and sharing experiences is what most users are now looking for and doing online. And the scramble is now on to take advantage of this shift.

Brands and companies need to have a social media presence. This shows that it’s now more important for brands and companies to have their message on social media, it’s now not good enough what companies and businesses write about themselves on their own website, it’s what others are saying about them and how their message is being spread through social media.

This ‘shifting of the cheese’ shows that users of the Internet are the ones that are unconsciously but effectively controlling and designing the way the the internet will be used in the future and how we will interact with it.

Businesses must now combine both SEO and SMO if they wish to be found and have an effective online presence or they run the risk of not getting their message heard.

Dallas Lawrence is Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications, the US’s top crisis communications firm. He blogs on emerging digital media trends and best practices for social media engagement on Bulletproof Blog. Connect with him on Twitter @dallaslawrence.

With 450 million users globally (and millions more being added each week) Facebook is dominating the web in unparalleled ways. Yet, even as the social network has steadily grown over its short but remarkable history, many brands have remained on the sidelines of the social media revolution.

Facebook was the most visited site on the web for the week ending on March 13, 2010, surpassing even Google in week-long stats for the first time in history, according to Hitwise. The shift in user habits and audience targeting is palpable and it provides marketers, brand managers, issue advocates, and political campaigns today with an age old choice: Adapt and change or face irrelevance and extinction.

Realizing the Critical Value of Facebook

In the modern day maze that is the digital and social media realm, these lessons were again on display as the online community debated the value of the new Facebook user statistics this past week.

Viewed simply, the cheese moved again this month –- and just as intelligent companies adapted their marketing and communications models for the advent of Google over the last decade, Facebook’s dominance has forced another “change or become extinct” moment. To thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace, corporate communicators must understand that the shift now underway is just as powerful as the one that transformed Google into the modern Yellow Pages and turned a Silicon Valley start-up into a $200 billion everyday necessity.

Far too many executives still see Facebook as a vast, uncontrollable outpost for college slackers –- one better equipped for picture sharing and random life updates than corporate reputation management, crisis response, and brand bulletproofing.

But the numbers don’t lie. Almost half-a-billion users each spend an average of nearly 6 hours per month on the site –- inhabiting networks that are largely free of corporate messaging, spam, and expensive advertising. This ought to make at least a few corporate titans rethink that next $1 million Super Bowl ad buy (even if Google did buy its first in 2010).

3 Ways Your Brand can Get Started on Facebook

Facebook users are openly sharing their life’s passions, personal interests, and their affinity –- or lack thereof –- for corporate brands, political candidates, and the key public policy stances. In effect, they are openly sharing every bit of marketing data a 21st century company covets.

For those still wary of change but now ready to dip their toe into the waters and begin to understand and benefit from the power of social, there are three free and relatively painless steps to begin the journey through the social media maze:

First, evaluate your current advertising efforts and identify how they can best be tailored to Facebook. Consider allocating 10% of your current Google AdWords or online advertising budget to a 90-day trial run on Facebook. Be sure to develop clear benchmarks for success, and remember, unlike Google AdWords, Facebook ads rely on both keywords and a variety of demographic information –- information you no doubt have already identified as key indicators of your target audience(s). You can now put this information to use to further micro-target your advertising buy, narrow the net you are throwing in the online marketplace, and increase the return on your investment.

Second, conduct a survey of your employees to see who is already on Facebook and thus, who may be your company’s most social media-savvy employees. You may find that your workplace is brimming with talent just waiting to be unleashed. For now, these future brand ambassadors may be ideal candidates to develop your Facebook presence and initial advertising program.

Finally — and this may seem obvious — become a face on Facebook yourself. Become familiar with the site, its features and the value hundreds of millions of people find in the world’s most populous online community. It may ultimately not be for you personally, but as with almost every new platform, the best way to understand its value is to give it a try yourself.
For those still looking for meaning in the numbers released earlier this month, the message is clear: Not only has the cheese moved again, the entire creamery has up and relocated. It won’t be coming back. And no manner of hemming and hawing is going to change that fact.

B.L. Ochman is a Managing Director of Proof Digital Media; publisher of What’s Next Blog, and co-founder of pet site Pawfun.com. Follower her on Twitter at @whatsnext.

Companies large and small are rushing to understand and get involved in social media. But most of the agencies and consultants who are being paid to establish social media campaigns for corporations are afraid to tell their clients three things they don’t want to hear.

1. Everyone Must Work Together

In most big companies, IT, digital, marketing and sales not only don’t work together, they compete with each other. Until they start collaborating as a team, you will not succeed in social media.

For example, I recently handled social media advertising for a major retail chain’s holiday microsite. The promotion was conceived by the digital department and involved augmented reality. But the IT department refused to allow a link from the homepage to the microsite because the microsite’s design was done by an external agency.

Further, the marketing department refused to allow a dedicated e-mail to go out to the company’s mailing list, and when placed in the company’s normal promotional e-mail, the link to the microsite was lost in a sea of weekly specials.

These hurdles made it very hard to drive traffic to the microsite.

But more than that, this lack of internal collaboration and contact makes any kind of social media involvement virtually impossible.

A company that hasn’t learned to listen to its own employees, and encourage them to collaborate internally, is not likely to succeed in integrating social media tools into its marketing mix, no matter what agency or consultant they hire.

2. Top Management Must Be On Board

If the direction doesn’t come from the very top, managers, who have myriad reasons to fear change, will hang on to the status quo.

Despite the best intentions of agencies and consultants, social media integration is bound to meet huge resistance until top management says it’s OK to spend time and money to integrate it into the company’s marketing and culture.

Example: The marketing team of an international manufacturer of electronics wanted to know how the company could begin to use social media and we discussed the many possibilities.

Listening and responding to what customers are saying about the brand in social media can supply good intelligence and give the company a chance to interact with customers.

“Our management doesn’t want to listen to customers,” the PR director said. “They want to talk to them.”

However, that doesn’t work anymore. The status quo is dead. Any company that isn’t willing to listen to customers and be nimble and quick enough to respond, and, when necessary, change, will soon be unable to compete with smart, tech-savvy companies that can turn on a dime.

Willingness to change is the new bottom line for every business today. But top management has to buy in before change can begin.

3. Don’t Expect Overnight Success

Sure there are videos that go viral, contests that attract a lot of buzz, and Facebook pages that get a lot of fans. But what comes after those efforts?

After the tools change (and they surely will) how will social media fit into the company’s overall strategy and help it reach long-term goals?

Example: Smart companies look at the long-term. The Fiskateers, now in its sixth year, is the brainchild of digital agency Brains on Fire, for their client Fiskars.

With the scissors brand losing market share to foreign knock-offs, the company enlisted several actual crafters to blog, attend events, and represent the brand to customers as part of a new community strategy.

“If you empower your customers to become your evangelists, you’d better be prepared to continue it,” says Brains on Fire’s Geno Church. “It’s permanent when you engage in this type of marketing.”

Once you have created the community, listen to it. Fiskars made several changes to its products based on what it discovered through its Fiskateers community. Doing so helped build customer trust and loyalty.

Where Should Your Company Start?

Realizing that employing social media in the marketing mix is a long-term commitment to change, the best way to start is to pick manageable, measurable goals.

Pick a small number of social media goals for the coming year. Some possibilities:

- Turn the company newsletter into an internal blog and give all employees the ability to contribute
- Establish a social media policy for employee participation in social media on company time and beyond
- Let employees vote on the best ideas suggested by other employees
- Resolve to respond to customer service issues within three hours, via social media

Don’t try to do all of these things at once. Pick the ones that are most likely to be possible for your company to start and sustain.

There are nearly 100 million women using Facebook around the world, and for marketers this means one very important thing –- if you have a brand, product or company that has women as part of your target market, Facebook is the place to be.

Unfortunately, unless you’re a brand that every woman knows or loves, then just being on Facebook is not enough. Facebook has done a great job of giving marketers a powerful tool with its Pages product, but like most things in life, it comes down to execution. To help, here is a link to Mashable a social media website with a list of 10 tips for marketing to women on Facebook, so even if you are a multi national company or a local small business building it’s online presence these principles are all effective.

Here is the link:-
10 Musts for Marketing to Women on Facebook