Google+ Has Mark Zuckerberg’s Attention, Shouldn’t It Have Yours?

Have you started experimenting with Google+? Are you sitting on the sidelines thinking “I’ll wait until Google+ matures,” or letting the in-crowd like Robert Scoble, Scott Monty, and Chris Brogan figure it out before you test it. If either of these options sounds like you, know that Google+ isn’t another flash-in-the-pan social media site. Google+ is in the social media battle to win your time and attention as an individual and a marketer.

Need data to motivate you to jump into the Google+ fray? Google+ had 1.8 million total visits as of the week ending July 16, according to Experian Hitwise. While less than 0.5 percent of Facebook’s traffic, Google+ has Mark Zuckerberg’s attention. Why? Because he’s got a competitor that’s growing fast and has the potential and financial resources to keep growing exponentially without hurting its bottom line.

Read the full article by Heidi Cohen at ClickZ

 

Five Tips for Marketers From MTV’s Study of Millennials’ Digital Habits

It’s Not Just a Medium, It’s an Ingrained Part of the Younger Generation’s Culture.

MTV was Facebook’s No. 1 fastest-growing brand last year. As they experienced this meteoric rise in social media, they were also madly studying their audience to understand their movements and behavior in the social space, or what we came to call their “digilife.”

The study that emerged from that work turned over a plethora of fresh insights into what makes this generation tick (or should I say what makes this generation click).

The insights lead to some provocative questions for the marketers attempting to connect with this elusive crowd in its native tongue and on its digital home turf.

Here are some findings from the study, posed as a few key questions that marketers might want to consider as they strategize about how to connect to the latest version of consumers.

Read the results of the study at AdAge

Does QR stand for Quasi-Ridiculous? (an analysis)

I understand QR codes are the new “it” thing, the Taylor Lautner of calls-to-action. And indeed, given the increasing ubiquity of smart phones (41% in the U.S. according to new research by my client ExactTarget), many of your potential customers have the capacity to interact with your QR code.

But whether they will or not isn’t about technology adoption, it’s about design, relevance, ease-of-use, and suitability of purpose.

Read Jay Baer’s complete analysis on his blog Convince&Convert

Increase Your Exposure On Twitter With This One Simple Trick

On Twitter, you can tweet all you want, but unless your tweets are actually being seen by people, they won’t have much of an impact. And while many people think having more followers means they’ll be listened to by more people, they’re dead wrong. Instead of paying 50 cents a follower or following back everyone who follows you, why not try this simple trick that will increase your exposure organically.

 

Read the full article at Media Bistro

Infographic: The Cost and Benefit of Social Media

Check out this infographic by Focus  -  it’s one of the better visuals that shows the true cost and return of social media activities. Is it perfect? No.

The use of Facebook stats is a bit misleading: they don’t show causation. If I like Apple enough to become a fan, it’s a good bet that I would already have bought more Apple products/services than the next guy even if there was no Facebook page. What we want to know is whether becoming a Facebook fan made me buy even more Apple products/services. We should be comparing regular Apple customers who aren’t fans to regular Apple customers who are fans; or spending before becoming a fan to spending after becoming a fan.

But it’s a nice start.

25 Social Media Tips From Five Big-Time Experts at Engaging People Online

Awkward question: are your social media followers actually interested?

As more brands get online, customers are getting bored. They hit the ‘like’ button but you never hear from them again.

Here’s the solution: 25 tips from five big-time experts at engaging people online.

It’s a whitepaper with a difference. No wishy–washy theory; just a goldmine of ideas and tactics from Scott Stratten, Greg Jarboe, Neal Schaffer, Adam Singer and North Social’s David Brody.

It’s all the ideas you need to reconnect with your followers and fans forever. And it’s completely free.

Download the whitepaper from Vocus.

What Is a Klout Score and Why it Is Important

The Klout score is a metric of your total influence online. The higher your Klout score, the larger and more robust your sphere of influence. The variables that go into calculating a Klout score are interesting and important for business.

Klout scores are calculated from variables on the various social media channels, including Facebook and Twitter, among others. It is measuring True Reach, Network Score and Amplification Probability.

• True Reach: True Reach is the size of your audience (your engaged audience) and is based on your followers and friends who interact with you on a consistent basis.

•  Amplification Probability: This is the likelihood that your online messages will promote actions (for example, likes, comments, @messages and retweets); the scale is 1 to 100.

• Network Score: The Network Score is a measure of how much influence your engaged audience has. It is also on a scale of 1 to 100.

Remember that the Klout Score is closely connected to clicks, retweets and comments. When thinking about what the definition of influence is, it is basically your ability to drive people to take some sort of action. This can be in the form of a reply, comment, click or retweet. Testing is being done on a regular basis to make sure that the average click rate on shared links is tied into a person’s Klout Score. In other words, the Klout Score represents the measure of success that a person achieves when it comes to engaging his or her audience and how much of an impact his or her messages have on other people.

Read the full article by Michael Cohn, founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications LLC.

7 Benefits of QR Codes for Content & Inbound Marketing

What are QR codes?
QR codes consist of black modules arranged in square patterns on a white background. “QR” stands for quick response: the contents can be decoded at high speed. QR codes have been around since 1994, but have until now been used mostly for industrial applications. Their usefulness in marketing is starting understood.

Why are QR codes valuable for marketing?
The marketing potential of QR codes lies in the fact that they are open source, free to generate and have a hyperlinking capability. You can generate and print your own QR codes for free, for others to scan, by visiting one of several sites that generate QR codes. QR codes can connect a person equipped with a camera phone and the right reader software to not just text or contact information, but also to email, IM, SMS, a web site, or a wireless phone number.

How much information do they hold?
QR codes can include up to 7,100 characters of numeric code, 4,300 alphanumeric characters, or 3,000 binary (8 bits) units.

How easy is it to create a QR code?
Very easy. You enter the information into one of the many free QR codes generators, the entire process takes just a few minutes.

Read the full article by Jean-Marie Bonthous

How LinkedIn Changed The Way I Do Business

As I’ve built my business, two digital tools have been invaluable: my blog and LinkedIn. In terms of the latter, everyone asks me the same question: Have I actually gotten business directly from LinkedIn?

The short answer: Yes. My participation on LinkedIn does bring in queries and the revenue from it is small but growing.

The longer answer: Yes, but your active involvement on LinkedIn is equally important in building your brand and making connections that can improve your business. Do those things, and the revenue will follow. My targets are B2B companies, an audience where LinkedIn shines: B2B companies favor LinkedIn over Facebook and Twitter, according to a recent study (though the gap is closing).

By Jeannette Paladino, Write Speak Sell, Writer-in-Chief. Read more.

5 Ways to Get Started With Social CRM Today

There has been a lot of buzz around social CRM (SCRM) recently, with Salesforce and Radian6 joining forces, the sale of JitterJam and Bantam Live, and the continuing evolution of community providers like Jive and Lithium into the SCRM arena.  Yet, despite all this activity and a lot of hype, a couple things strike me when it comes to social CRM:

• First, there’s still a pretty big gap between the vision of full-on, all-inclusive social CRM, and what is available today, despite a lot of great vision, investment and good intentions and,

• Second, if CRM is more about the journey than the destination (as we used to say in the go-go days of CRM 1.0), a whole lot of companies are already doing – or could be doing – social CRM, and they may not even know it.

This is a guest post by Allen Bonde (@abonde), CMO at Offerpop and Principal at Evoke CRM Partners. Read more