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Selfless Giving and Selfish Companies: A Social Media Conundrum

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Wrapped Gifts Retirement Party 7-8-09 8Gifts. When we receive them, we feel special. When we receive them from people we don’t expect them from, they are a wonderful surprise and make a far larger impression.

Gifts are special in part because they represent an investment of time or money someone did not need to make. When we receive these gifts, it makes an impact on us.

However, gifts with strings attached or given out of obligation are not the ones that feel good to give or receive. In fact, we may even come to resent these gifts. [Read more…]

Marketing Gimmicks versus Value: A Disappointing Example

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B2B marketing often includes thought leadership in areas that are outside a company’s core product or service focus.

  • Omniture (now Adobe) wants to be a leader on driving business results with digital marketing, not just measurement.
  • Eloqua has an active voice on the entire spectrum of content marketing.

What happens when a company tries to align with something new to them? It could be a financial software package talking about supply chain management. Or a big cracker brand aligning with back to basics and real food.

In either case, the alignment must be believable. Here is an example that doesn’t make the grade and what B2B marketers can learn from it. [Read more…]

Pinterest: How To See Who Pins Your Content & How Much Traffic They Drive

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Reese's Cups in Magnifying GlassThe latest report shows Pinterest now drives more traffic than Twitter. You may want to know not just how much traffic Pinterest is driving but also what users are pinning your content and driving the most traffic.

Fortunately for marketers, Pinterest is one of the easiest platforms to track.

Recently I published tricks I have learned to discover who is sharing your content on Twitter and LinkedIn and how much traffic each is driving. Here is how to get the same information about Pinterest, even if you aren’t using Pinterest. [Read more…]

Social Sleuthing: Who is Sharing Your Content: Twitter & LinkedIn Edition

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shadow detective servicesHave you ever wondered who is sharing your blog posts or other content on social media sites but don’t have access to expensive social media monitoring applications that can tell you? Here are ways you can find out who is sharing your content, and in some cases how much traffic each share is driving, on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Some of the approaches here use Google Analytics or WordPress statistics, the measurement solutions I use here on B2B Digital Marketing. [Read more…]

20 B2B Marketers Losing their Brand on Pinterest

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Pinterest LogoPinterest is the marketing flavor du jour. Media and press are touting the ability of Pinterest to drive traffic and the time spent on Pinterest.

Many B2B marketers do not have any presence on Pinterest. In my search for major B2B marketers on Pinterest, I only found a handful using it actively. Here are three of the better B2B marketing examples I found. [Read more…]

Replacing “Authentic” in Social Media

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The We Believe Movement.Authentic. You can’t turn around in the social media echo chamber without bumping into this word. The problem is, beyond the social media land of unicorns, authentic isn’t relevant.

As I explored in Don’t Be Authentic: Real Social Media Marketing Advice on SpinSucks, we don’t really want to see authentic in social media. It is an idealized view that for most organizations is as unrealistic as it is attractive. (Aaron Wagner makes some great comments about this in the discussion here on Social Media Today as well).

Authentic is the wrong objective. What is the right one? [Read more…]

How to Market to the New Mass of Influencers

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If cable and online video fragmented TV audiences, then audiences are shattered when everyone produces their own channel or subscribes to a handpicked list of channels produced by their friends, influencers, entertainers and chosen brands.

Once upon a time (approximately 1,500 days ago) companies could reach out to influencers individually. They could brief them and spend time with them. Today, there is a new mass of influencers, too numerous to connect with individually and not influential enough to warrant the expense of one-to-one outreach.

Now everyone has a soapbox and a small audience. As a marketer, if you can figure out how to engage enough individuals and have them share your cause, you can turn this mass of influencers into a marketing channel that delivers scale.

The challenge is: How. How do you reach the mass of influencers cost effectively? [Read more…]

Google+ for SEO? Don’t Focus on Your Brand Page!

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Google, Plus Your World was rolled out just over a week ago, and the online world has adopted the rallying call to get onto Google+ for the SEO benefits.

Multiple articles point to brand pages as the solution. Publications from mainstream (Mashable wrote “get your Google+ brand page into as many influential people’s circles as possible“) to niche (HelloBloggerz.com wrote “brands need to invest more time into promoting their Google Plus brand pages“) are misleading marketers.

The problem is, Google+ Brand Pages are not the ticket to SEO success. In fact, if you focus your Google+ efforts on your new brand page, you will miss the most important search benefits of Google+. [Read more…]

B2B Social Media Opportunities [#B2Bchat Recap]

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Join #B2BChat on Twitter every Thursday at 8:00 PM EasternIn our most recent #B2Bchat discussion, we looked at a number of social networks and how B2B marketers can take advantage of them, and once again I was pleased to have the opportunity to moderate the lively discussion.

Rather than a deep dive into a single network or objective, the discussion quickly touched on a number of social networks or platforms.

Participants identified a number of specific opportunities, however what was most apparent throughout the discussion is that social media is moving quickly. B2B marketers need to stay on top of the market if they are to identify and take advantage of new opportunities. [Read more…]

#NewNewTwitter: A New Opportunity for Marketers

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Twitter announced a new interface, rolling out over the next few weeks, this morning. You can preview the interface and the new features at fly.twitter.com.

Compared to this change, the previous change to New Twitter (the current interface) was minor. This is a major change and for marketers, it is a far more interesting change. New brand pages give marketers a new home, but the changes to everyone’s stream is where the real opportunities are. [Read more…]