Category Archives:

Social Media

 

Three Rules For Increasing Your Earned Media

by Becka Fayon November 5, 2012 in Social Media

When trying to get your name out there, or a product seen, you have three different types of media at your disposal.

Owned media:  Your website or blog.

Paid media:  Paid advertisements on other websites or in a magazine.

Earned media:  The publicity you get when other people talk about your company or product, such as on Facebook or a product review.

Earned media is proven to be the most effective kind of publicity you can have.  People trust an opinion of a friend or family member more than a marketing message from a company.  You can get customers to be your voice and advocate for your company to their friends and family.  However, earned media is not easy to acquire.  People will not share just anything with their friends and family, only those which they truly believe in. 

So, how can you increase your earned media?

Create great content.  If you make something that your consumers like, they will share it.   That means you need to think about your audience and cater to their needs.  This may mean helpful blogs, or beautiful pictures.  For some it might mean creating funny videos.  Making things that are valuable to your customers is the only way to consistently get them to share it for you, thereby increasing your earned media.

Inspire engagement.  Some content will need more push to be shared and publicized by your customers.  There are many ways to encourage engagement.

You can create polls determined by likes or comments about a new product or a pop culture topic.  By asking for their opinion, your customers will feel important and if they feel heard they will more want to engage in the future.

You can also incentivize engagement by offering something in return for their advocacy.  For example using a Splurgy promotion, you can offer a discount or an entrance into a giveaway for sharing a message about your company.

Respond to and engage with your customers.  If your customers comment on a blog post, or tweet your company and you do not respond, they will not feel heard.  Even if it’s something simple like, “I love @Splurgy!,” a quick response can truly make the difference between a customer feeling valued and just being one of the masses.

This is even more critical if customers have a question or a complaint.  Responding to critiques or helping to solve a problem via any of your social networks will not only make a customer feel satisfied with your customer support, but will also encourage them to engage with you in the future.  The more you engage with your customers the more they will reciprocate, because they will see how important their feedback is and they will feel heard, encouraging continued advocacy.

Don’t forget that you can use your owned and paid media to increase your earned media as well.  For example, a Splurgy promotion on your website (owned media) can help encourage your current customers to promote your business.  Or if you utilized Splurgy’s sponsored promotions, you can use paid media to connect with new customers.

 

Facebook ads not working? Take advantage of social marketing tools instead

by Brian Kimon May 21, 2012 in Social Media tagged with 2 Comments

With Facebook going public last Friday, the social network had its share of negative press around its advertising platform. Some of the big stories these past couple of weeks have been: GM announcing its plan to pull $10 million from its paid Facebook ad campaigns, and Greenlight’s report that 44% of Facebook users “never” click on sponsored ads.

An interesting thing to note, however, is GM’s decision to continue investing $30 million a year on other Facebook marketing initiatives. So where is this money being spent?

A quick look at some of their Facebook pages (Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac) shows that GM utilizes several custom Facebook apps in an attempt to integrate into the core Facebook experience.

GM seems to have learned what we have been preaching since the inception of our company – social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, are mediums for sharing and discussion, not for traditional commerce. A successful social marketing campaign, whether it consists of paid advertisements or not, should always foster discussion and participation from the audience. Just focusing on gathering “likes” will only yield marginal results, but once brands begin to truly understand the audience, they will be able to generate both short and long term benefits from their social media followings.

With Splurgy, you will be able to do just that. Our platform provides you with the tools to create offer campaigns that generate buzz and social engagement around your company. More importantly, Splurgy’s business intelligence platform helps you understand your audience’s behavior and accurately measure the efficacy of your social marketing spend.

If you’d like to learn more about how Splurgy can help you, sign-up for a FREE demo session here, and one of our social media experts will be happy to walk you through the product and help you configure the perfect social marketing campaign that is custom tailored for your business.

 

So what is a Facebook Share worth anyway?

by Brian Kimon April 3, 2012 in Social Media tagged with no comments

Social media is all about sharing. Some people prefer to share on Facebook, while others favor using different social channels such as Twitter and Pinterest. There is no denying that sharing something gives a brand that extra exposure, but trying to quantify the monetary value of a like, share or re-tweet is understandably difficult.

While many companies are reluctant to reveal tangible details on their social marketing strategies, Eventbrite has been the opposite. In October of 2010, Eventbrite published a blog post detailing the true worth of a share, like, and a tweet. Their study showed that a Facebook share was the most valuable at $2.52 per engagement, whlie a LinkedIn share and a tweet were worth $0.90 and $0.43 respectively.  While these findings are eye opening, the post is almost 2 years old. So how does it fare now?

Luckily, Eventbrite released some new figures today in their latest report: Social Commerce: A View from our London Office. The report found that in both the US and UK, an engagement via Facebook was the most valuable. Furthermore, the study indicates that the Facebook markets in the US and UK are very similar, with the main differences being in each nation’s taste in brands.

The results also suggest that in both the US and UK, Facebook was the most valuable social network for organizing events. While the study may only apply to ticket sales, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious inherent marketing value of social media.

With the Splurgy universal platform, users can leverage these different social engagements to maximize their brand & product exposure. With companies like Eventbrite continuing to push forward with different social-media-centric growth strategies, perhaps it’s time for you to consider incorporating social marketing methods into your 2012 plans (if you haven’t done so yet).