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Author Archive for Your Expert Webman – Page 5

Return on Investment Musings

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Sunday, March 20th, 2011

A Return on Investment calculator seems to be a subject that most tribes have little experience with. Usually the results come from an ROI formula that someone had invented. I think most follow the ROI=NetPfrofit over sales times sales over investment algorithm. That might be a little difficult to get your head around though

Return on Investment is important because these statistics are used to make conclusions about whether your current marketing efforts are working or not. This way we can determine if its time to take profits for the tribe.

Before you can get to this point there must be a management detail in place. This plan should discuss what the goal of the marketing plan is. What tribes do you wish to talk to? This is your objective viewpoint. You need to have a strategy to help you accomplish the goal and objective.
What tactics will you use? How will you measure things like ROI? Is there a budget for all this and what is it? Costs and tactics are related subjects and you’ll observe that your measurement system does not help with calculating ROI. But when it comes to calculating all costs must be budgeted.

The raw data , when calculated for ROI, is actually a percentage. Usually this is expressed as a dollar figure though. The ROI confusion often results when we assume that the marketing sections of the equation sum up to 0 . This is not true.

Some authors state that the first portion of the equation is actually figuring the profit percentage of sales. Which can be influenced by some marketing considerations such as sales volume and advertising.

It is suggested here that corporations work with their accounting teams to really get a determination on what net profit is. Not that you aren’t already, ay? So the accounting team should have total access to the size of the marketing investment in order to be accurate with their determination of the ROI.

At this point you can go into the other products if there are any to perform the same operation.

If the company is a non-profit, this does not mean it has no ROI. Most likely it will need to do more with less and less in the coming years and a penny saved is a penny earned here. Outsourcing projects like marketing will make it more important for enablers to provide more financial information in order to make the calculation more accurate. As social media marketing becomes more widely used this will become more true. By the way, non-profits can be sensitive about words like sales. Try to use a term like support or donation.

The big question may be , should PR and branding require ROI? Just for the sake of standardizing the Field? Does it make sense to calculate ROI on these projects?

This is an argument I would like to discuss here. Let me know what you think.

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Social Media News Releases

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Your expert webman is pleased to announce that this article is going to be written like a standard press release about Social Media News to demonstrate the many ways that a press release could work for your organization.

Social Media Websites and Blogs have matured alongside improvements and refinements that the major search engines have incorporated into their formulas. What this means is that if your company wants to issue a press release, then you will need to have someone that understands the Search Engine Optimization rules. You will then be able to take full advantage of a press release.

You need to take into account what platforms you would like to share the information on and with what tribes , also. The circulation should contain the things that will be needed to share a story in a way that shows what your original intent was .

One thing you don’t want to do is talk about a lot of things in the message. Stick to the main message . Make sure your keywords are clear and targeted for the tribe you want to reach. This way it will have the ring of truth to your readers. This is usually a way to make the tribe grateful in addition. By using targeted keywords , your release should get a good ranking in the online world.

Make your release the right size so that you give the most information and not be too long. Remember , you only have ten seconds. The size of the article should be around 550 words or so, which translates to a page or so. Search engines like this also.

Links in your anchor text comes highly recommended. Usually about 2 links per 5 to 6 hundred words or so will be ideal. Using anchor text to phrases like,” for more information”, is sometimes frowned upon, according to my research. You should use your most important keyword in your headline and your lead sentence. It will focus the search engines on it.

When you are describing your product, use language that will help you connect with the tribe you want.
Don’t forget to use your targeted keywords here so that the search engines will be able to find it, too. Try to get your release on Social Media Websites and Social Media Blogs.

In your headline , it always helps to use the keyword phrase that is most important to your message. Also, you will be repeating it in the content . If you keep the headline to 75 characters or so, your readers wont lose interest. Try to keep subheads to less than two lines.

Make sure the news is of interest to the tribe and make sure they can share it through Social Media Websites, Social Media Blogs and other platforms. Social Media News platforms can help here too.

You know its true that a picture is worth a thousand words. So share your images with the tribe so they can share it with their tribes. While you are at it, upload videos, wave files,links to your relevant websites and more of your releases. This will help to pique the interest of the tribe and attract more attention for your product.

These few suggestions are what seems to me to be pretty basic means to getting the word out via press release. But as you know, there are plenty of other ways to do it. A press release is just another tool for you to use. Make sure you use it correctly.

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Data Mining Activities Using Social Media

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Sunday, February 27th, 2011

One of the advantages of social media for marketers is that searching the information that is available can aid Marketing efforts by supplying current patterns of purchasing and making decisions about buying behavior. An example of this would be a Social Media Company that sells Alternate Energy Solar Panels. They would be able to introduce their products to consumers that have a history of purchasing Alternative Energy Devices. Data Mining , as this activity is called, can help with predicting which products a tribe may be interested in. With a little bit of luck marketers can surprise their customers and make the customer happy.

One problem with this is that personal privacy is at risk. With the Internet being so cheap and easy to access, privacy concerns have increased . Some tribes won’t shop on the internet because of this. They are afraid of someone getting a hold of information in an unethical way and using that information against them.

This is the reason I think that Social Media Artists are constantly being ushered to the PR agency’s. Even as social media is rapidly evolving in the Corporate arena, it is still thought of as another form of :push: marketing. Social Media Marketing, as we all know, is more influential marketing that push marketing.

The marketers job is to try and establish a relationship with current and prospective customers , and Social media is the way to do it. Reviewing the data we have is a way for the customer to voice his opinion about what he wants by using the social networks.

There is so much customer data available from the online tribes that is so very dense with information that if you were a Merchant, you would know all about your customers needs and concerns. You also have the information to give that customer what he wants in the future. And you are getting the information on a continuing and consistent basis.

Now all of that data has to be changed into useful information. This is because social media data is different from the transactional data that most systems use. Therefore, it is stored in different formats. Fortunately , it can be converted by using another technology.

This process is a way of managing important business data on an ongoing schedule, maintaining the status quo and creating the records needed. This way the data is validated . So we know it is correct, consistent and complete. This format has been used for 11 or more years. Its a great format for integrating disparate databases for a more complete view of their tribes. It is equally effective in integrating social media data into existing CRM systems, and filtering that data for relevance.

For instance, we now can achieve important process furtherance with improvements in the bottom-line significance. This means that it is possible to obtain behavioral data that will allow them to more appropriately target tribes for better social marketing optimization. Building that one to one relationship with tribes is going to be easier because of the availability of information on personal data and interests. This will enable targeting to the next level.

Usually the process of finding clients on social sites is a slow, arduous process, for most companies. It’s time intensive and expensive too. On some platforms, a business can obtain the information of anyone who clicks their like button, for instance. With the right activity, game or article, a company can get a lot of likes.
Because of the availability of this new technology, the process is more encompassing and is a lot quicker. For instance, there is a matching technology that can take a name and check to see which john smith it is. It will also allow a company to identify a tribe on the basis of one or two pieces of information.

I could talk about this for quite a while as there is so much to digest. But time and space limit me. So, I will close with a question. How are you using Data Mining Technology to help your business be more successful?

I would love to be able to get some answers to this.

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Social Media Websites

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Sunday, February 13th, 2011

What is your whole technology activity – In other words , what things do you like to do to generate website traffic for your product? Lets take social media advertising as an example.

You need to have a social media website with a social media blog. This way you will be able to talk about your product to your tribe and influence more readership. One strategy in the past has been to link to other tribes blogs or other relevant blogs. This way you may be helping other social media websites to gain recognition and they may link to you. You will gain more influence because the links can increase far above where you thought they might go. These links that you gain can increase inbound links to your site and your tribes.

An added advantage is that most sites allow linking to your other platforms and social media blogs. Go for it, link your Facebook and Twitter account to your blog site and link the blog to your RSS feed and then find more places to link to . Search engines love those links. Especially if they are reciprocal. This is the simple version but I think you and the tribe get the idea.

Social Media Blogs are popping up everywhere and this leads to the assumption that more tribes and individuals are getting into the internet world. It turns out that there may be a learning curve to figuring out how to do all this stuff.

There are so many social media websites and social media blogs out there that handle social media advertising and all kinds of other stuff that it is usually better to stick with just one or two. Sit down and figure out the social media sites that are going to be the most useful for you and your tribe and stick with those . If you can handle 10 social media sites, that’s great, but no more that 5 is a good thing too. Just remember to keep your sites updated and keep your clients and prospects informed.

One thing that your blog should be doing is brand building. Start talking about whats so great about your product and give some visuals. You can customize pages so they fit within guidelines that you set.
I like to have the same logo on all of my invoices business cards and website. This way when a customer lands on your website they will know where they are. Do your own promotional stuff here.
Takeaways, giveaways and coupons will all keep your customers coming back to your site.

The first word in Social media Marketing is Social . Why would you not get to know your customers and their products and needs? Find out about their likes and dislikes and get their opinions . Allow discourse and posting to your blog . Make yourself significant and take part in the action to.

One tip here, don’t try to sell using social media. It has a strong tendency to not work. Social media is not push marketing. We are trying to talk about our products in a conversational way. The word will get around and bring us clients. We are trying to be in the loop and to find new friends . Don’t update every day because it may begin to look spammy to your recipients .

Here I’ve set down some expectations that you may have for your social media business. Well, this is the simple version . In other words, there’s a lot more to it than this. So check out some articles on this subject and let me know if you have a comment or question. See you next time.

Director of social media for YourExpertWebman at www.yourexpertwebman.com

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Compelling Tips for Social Media Campaigns

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Sunday, February 6th, 2011

It’s been said in the past that if you give a man a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. I don’t know how true that really is, but it’s still nothing more that a tool. You need tools to build a business or a house.

Campaigns and other projects involving social media may be a great tool for your company. But you have to be trained to use it well. An advantage here is that Social media influences your potential customers. However, they also have the opportunity to post bad product reviews. You definitely don’t want them to denigrate your product or even tell their acquaintances not to visit your place. On the other hand though, potential clients can list what they want and tell you what they like. I believe this could result in in your sales and profits going up quickly. This is absolutely a large amount of power to put in the hands of an inexperienced tribe.

One of the reasons for this is that social media campaigns are built on developing and influencing relationships. Many businesses try to use Social Media as a format for making sales noises to their tribe. This is probably a misstep because it may be viewed as just a cheap shot to get a sale or be totally ignored altogether. No matter what you do here, you are wasting the company’s time and resources. Your time would be better spent by developing professional relationships and trying to connect with the tribe.

A possible thing you can do to connect in this area is to post an affirming congratulations to a client for getting a project , and its a great way to build a relationship. You get to mention your product and services at the same time this way, while making a personal connection. With a little luck, your clients will begin to ask questions like, “how did they get that project” And we all know the answer too that , right? Its through the excellent work of the consultant. They could also ask, “why is the event being organized for the restaurant?”. It could have been and online contest that brought them all together. Or it could be a monthly promo. By doing it this way , you get some subliminal promos while building your relationship with the tribe.

I addition to this, it’s very important to grow and maintain a professional relationship with the tribe and format ideas of how a professional posting should look. You will need to move the tribe into this from a social standpoint too.

Its essential to have an active presence in social media projects because of the influence factor and the amount of exposure the company will receive. You will have two way communication between the company and your tribe. You will be able to develop a poll if you like about a recurring subject or question. This will stimulate conversation and keep you in the tribe’s mind.

It seems to me that it is advantageous to have a local element to the campaign. A local tribe following is the best way to start. Then you can branch out to state or region, before going nationally. Network and construct relationships with other companies in your region and within your sphere of influence.
This will help to create a small network or base to operate from. It will also bring more attention to your products and services. More attention could include things like promotional events or other mutually beneficial opportunities for networking.

So to sum it all up, make sure you are using social media optimization properly for your product or service and for your tribe. I think a major problem here is that most of the popular social media platforms are free. So after reading this, you will all run out and sign up for social media accounts to promote your product or service. Just remember that social media for business is not the same as social media for individuals. The way to be successful here is to have a professional consultant advising you and helping you avoid mistakes with your tribe.

Your Expert Webman provides SEO Services and Social Media Marketing Consulting for businesses.
Visit www.http//:yourexpertwebman.com and leave a comment on our contact us page.

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Business to Business Social Media

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Sunday, January 30th, 2011

Recently, Business to Business social media has taken on an increasingly important role. Because of this ,it has generated lots of events and quite an assortment of groups are popping up all over the place to to meet the increasing demand. More businesses are looking for ways to generate awareness of what they do and how to do it better.

There are so many events available out there that it will be impossible to list them all here. Many of them serve the digital professional and many of them are more broad in focus. I have put together some of the groups that I find to be the most effective.

This is a list of conferences , meetings and other organizations that are excellent starting points for social media marketers and social media strategists. You are welcome to make your own comments here also.

In addition, online media conferences are available . There are so many of these that you can be busy for quite some time.

Let’s start off with Social media week. It usually happens in February and September and is hosted by social media groups and digital experts in a lot of cities around the world. Most of the time it is spread out so that the conferences are in different places. So watch for this in your city .

In March there is SXSw in Austin. You can find the best in film, music and interactive media here. There is a trade show and presentations as well as networking events. They are all centered around start up technologies that may provide you with a new audience.

Visit San Francisco to meet with industry leaders , as well as global executives for web 2.0 . You will be amazed at the conversation around the latest trends on the web.

The Blogwell conference presents , in their words, “eight great case studies on the best social media programs at large corporations.” There are some great Blogwell events that have taken place in Philadelphia, Chicago and Seattle.

Don’t forget BlogWorld. Blogging and Internet TV Gurus will be attending this one . Participants are welcome to learn about new strategies, tools and technologies they will need to make their presence known on the web.

Its a fact that While you can learn a lot from attending conferences, you will need to do more in the way of learning and training for your niche. That’s because the low frequency of these once or twice a year events can only take you so far as a practicing social media strategist. Supplementing them with monthly or weekly networking meetings will come in handy.

Look for technology networking and blogging events on the web that are being held on a regular basis . Preferably not far away from where you are. Real Entrepreneurs will look into starting their own groups.

There’s always the option of traveling to New York or San Francisco too.

Some may be looking to make an even bigger commitment in the way of social media training though.
If networking and conferences and meetings don’t seem to be enough to keep you busy, joining a social media club or another organization may be a great choice.

Relevant comments and suggestions will be welcomed .

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What is Social Media?

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

When I talk to tribes about their social media optimization needs , the question always seems to arise, what is social media. Since the technology is changing and evolving and this makes it an arousing and exciting field, I’ll try to shed some light on the subject.

In the beginning, Social media services originated as strictly a personal tool that tribes used to interact with friends and family. Later on Social media services were adapted to business projects in order to take advantage of a popular new communication platform in order to reach out to prospects and customers. They used it to influence their clientele for example, by informing them of sales and offering them special deals.

To make a long story short, Social Media includes any tool or service that uses digital media to facilitate production and exchange of information and action using telecommunication technology. In this context, private versus work-related use and factors such as the demographics, gender and age of users influences how social media is used for a specific niche.

To be more detailed , Social Media turns consumers of content into producers of content relatively quickly and easily, without having to be technologically savvy. This means that in part social media can shift communication from a broadcast model of tribes to tribes or individuals. in most platforms, Social media means interaction with the tribe. For instance answering questions or replying to an email, exchange of opinions, information, feelings and emotions that hopefully result in better understanding with the tribe’s members. The demographics of the tribe and their niche influence how these processes occur.

Interactions can be between tribes , content creators, readers, colleagues, friends and sometimes strangers that may result in action being taken by one or more of the tribes.

The final result of all of this tribal interaction is that social media services take time to do and engage with. There’s a lot of opportunity here as well as the risk of wasting time. An example of this , as expected by readers of the platform you’re using, is to be authentic and personable. This means you have to write thoughtful answers yourself to blogs and articles.

In addition, when you are a member of a group or tribe on one of the platforms means that social media monitoring is a factor. This means you have to take part in the discussion and comment on on other tribes posts since this is part of the exchange. Lots of social media activities are aimed at being members of many groups, but this makes it hard to spend the time to contribute. In fact, we are not even sure if they have the time to read what group members post.

What all this comes down to is that less is probably better. Tribes should join fewer groups , but stay more active and more visible and interact with more substance. The number of friends you have online is really limited to about 150. This limit is called the Dunbar number and theoretically is the number of actual cognitive friends you can handle.

Some of the platforms have recently reported that even though you may have thousands of friends online , in reality, you can only interact with about five to ten percent of them. So you may ask, can you really have 2000 friends?

I welcome comments to this article as the social media services arena is still changing and we like to roll with the punches , so to speak.

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Important Steps to Picking a Social Media Consultant

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Sunday, January 9th, 2011

Picking a Social Media Consultant could turn out too be one of the most important decisions you could make for your tribe. That’s because the World Wide Web attracts and is full of social media activities . Major Industry players are on top of the platforms as are small businesses and start ups. Most are trying to use it to increase their influence in their chosen niches..

Becoming familiar with the wide variation in platforms is a job in itself, so if you are not familiar with them, you might be able to use some help from someone with experience in this area. So the question becomes , Where do you find social media specialists with the right expertise for you?

There are a few things to look for that will tip you off.

A social media consultant should have some sort of social media strategy that can be discerned. They should be experts in using using their chosen social media strategy to drive and attract new buyers to the clients niche. Being adept at offering their social media methodologies too you will help show their expertise. Look to see if they are practicing the same things they are talking about.

There should also be some obvious signs in the specialist’s social media blogging skills. Look at a sampling of the blog entries made for other clients , for instance. If there are relevant quality entries there, he just might be an expert. Consistency and relevance are important here as entries may at first seem to be clear and concise , but be aware of articles that look like they were generated by spin. Specialists very rarely will use spin in their articles.

You might look at a few testimonials about your consultant and some comments from other readers. Happy clients will generally show their gratitude for superior service and this will tip you off that you have found a good expert.

There are so many applications that are available for social media today and applications that are under development making this niche very exciting to many different tribes. There are new technologies being formed around social media applications daily. There are applications that allow your friends to know what businesses you are in for instance. Many social media platforms are gearing up for mobile access and this has the potential to really change the social media blogging landscape.

Diverse applications are in development and are developed now that will use your actual location to find the closest mens or ladies room, a new eatery or even letting you know who has a sale going on for a product you need.

Having a well defined social media strategy and a relevant social media blog influencing the niche you would like to be in is the way to get started in this diverse area of online marketing. Remember to be adaptable and don’t get locked into a single platform in case that platform changes into something that won’t work for you. You don’t have to be 100% internally focused. Link to other blogs, videos, and news articles. Re-tweet what others have to say as long as it is relevant to what you are saying.

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Social Media and Public Relations

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Friday, December 31st, 2010

After tons of research and work on my project, the thought occurred to me, Is Social Media really what Tribes want? After all, we measure our Social Media Optimization efforts just like our PR Initiatives, it seems to me.

It has been said that there is lots of merriment in watching Tribes behave badly. A lot, if not all of major websites, have some sort of social media features embedded in the site. I think this is an indication that the Tribes want it.

So our attention turns to how targeted are the responses that we get from our social media efforts , as well as the Public relations efforts. We need to know what kind of buzz are we generating from those efforts and are those responses purchasing anything. It’s really no different than measuring any of the other platforms that do this.

Interestingly enough, there are advantages too the Buzz that we are generating for and by the tribes and that makes it important for a lot off reasons..

According to some sources, advertising has lost over 40 percent of trust from Tribes. However, social media platforms engage Tribes with content that encourages trust. Some Tribes still agree that word of mouth advertising is still the best , though.

This means that social media optimization still has the potential to hold and attract the attention of large Tribes who have grown immune to the current push advertising scheme of things. It is also stickier than traditional media.

One effect that social media has is its propensity to go viral and reach broad swaths of tribes in shorter and shorter amounts of time. This has been described as a threat to communications professional, but I don’t think it is. Negative viral outcomes are a possibility too. This could result if the tribe has not allocated enough Social media budget and is not prepared for the tremendous amount of interest generated.

Social media’s ability to be interactive means that Tribes now have the ability to get immediate feedback from other tribes and are able to communicate more defectively. This could be a simple as enabling comments on the Tribes main blog. This means the tribe doesn’t have to spend time doing research in order to track ROI.

Something else that works for social media is high visibility. Social Media has matured using internet tools. So it holds a very good position in searches for visibility. There are several good examples of the effect this has , such a s Wiki-leaks.

For me, this indicates to the Tribal Chieftains that social media optimization can have a beneficial effect on the way the tribe communicates with the other tribes for business purposes and the average person on the street. Because of the ability to communicate with all of these tribes, social media has mega-possibilities if it is used properly and effectively engaged .

In the past decade, interactive communication has become a torrent for the tribe. This has made it easy for tribes to communicate with their audience and find out their needs and get feedback too.
In closing, a good thing to remember is to tailor your message and know the tribe you are talking to.

What effects do you think it has to know what you’re selling?

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Social Media Networks

By Your Expert Webman · Comments (0)
Friday, December 24th, 2010

What is it that draws us to online Social Media Networks ?
For thousands of years we have formed tribes to meet our security needs and now we study why.

Most Studies done by reputable tribes show that friendships and other social relationships tend to have a powerful effect on physical and mental health. This relationship had been noticed and talked about for many years until about the mid to late 1970’s. This was when other tribes turned to this issue to study it.

One study done in California around about 1979 showed a relationship between those who had a lot of contacts and those who had only a few. People who lacked tribes , tended to die sooner. In 1982 in Michigan, another study showed a similar association for women, but not men. About the same time similar results were reported between older men and women.

What this means is that your tribe consists of individuals drawn together by a variable such as age , sex , work or family. This is not to say that only these variables are used, though. In fact, one variable that has been proposed in the past is the number of contacts. You have to have about a hundred to a hundred and fifty, to be a social network.

One variable that has changed is that there is a whole new paradigm to include a company’s employees or even a politicians venue. You should be able to relate this to your target market.

Some have opined that its not really social unless the users can interact with one another. That it needs to be more that just an ability to generate content. That this piece of the puzzle has so far been missing from the platforms that are available today.

Part of the problem here is that Social Media Networking has changed the definition of friends and tribes. You will always have your best friends and much trusted business associates to still back you up, only now you can cast a wider net for contacts . This includes business contacts as well as personal contacts. This system is still evolving and expanding for the better, we hope.

If you could leverage social media networking to help drive business relationships and possibly other relationship, why wouldn’t you? Social Media is helping us to engage a much broader Universe of possibilities.

There are those out there that think that defining Social media is difficult because tribes get confused because of the implications of the thing itself. One definition is that Social media is simply content generated by the content view themselves. Of course, and you know this, its a huge implication. From here we can jump off into viral marketing , the masses influencing their tribes and other tribes. Even the Dissemination of information will become easier.

The Social Media Phenomenon seems to be mostly confined to the internet right now , but is it possible that this won’t always be the case? It’s possible to me , at least, that some new outrageous technology will allow social media in other dimensions.

I would love to get some feedback on that one. There’s a reply form on the bottom of the page. What are your thoughts about social media in other realms or platforms. What would those other dimensions be?

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