Social Media Metrics & Monitoring Tools

Social media metrics and monitoring tools provide businesses with information regarding their online presence in order to measure the success of their marketing efforts, and therefore manage them. Common information that is measured are statistics on the amount of traffic that your web site generates, how they found the website link, what keywords were entered in order to find the website through a Google search, and how long a visitor viewed the web page. 

The most popular sources of social metrics and monitoring tools are:

• Bottlenose - for a fee this tool provides its users with a live analysis of visitors activity across all of the major social networks a business is a part of

• Twitalyzer - for a fee this tool allows you one-click access to monitor your followers, mentions, tweets, retweets, and the locations at which they were posted.

• Google Analytics - a free service that provides statistics and basic analytic tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes 
• This is the tool that I use in order to track and analyze the traffic on this blog. It allows me to be notified how many visitors view my blog, when they that look at and how often they look at my blog, and where they are located in the world.

Sources: 

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-metrics-ceos-cares-about
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/7367/9-SEO-Insights-You-Must-Follow.aspx
http://socialmediatoday.com/pamdyer/1458746/50-top-tools-social-media-monitoring-analytics-and-management-2013
http://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/Google-Analytics

Twitter For Business

Over the year Twitter has become very influential in terms of the marketing strategies a company uses, it has become the second most popular social networking site. According to the official Twitter website, it currently has over 230 million monthly active users on its network, sending out over million tweets overall per day. Twitter is a social networking site that allows its users to send out tweets, which are messages up to 140 characters in length. These messages can include links to web content, for example a business's personal website, as well as photos and videos. The content that is shared on a users twitter page is available to be shared with people who subscribe to your twitter page, who are known as your followers. And vice versa, you as a user can follow other users accounts that may show content that interests you. Twitter also allows you to share content with your followers and reply to comments your followers may have made on content that you have posted.

There are a lot of social networking sites out there for businesses to utilize, however Twitter is unique compared to its competitors in various ways. Unlike Facebook there are no filters and so every tweet that you send out will appear on your followers Twitter feeds. While Pinterest allows users to share photos with users, Twitter makes it easier for the users to converse about the photo, versus the comment feature that Pinterest has. LinkedIn, is more of a professional online environment that allows you to connected with individuals based on a two-way agreement. Twitter allows more freedom to connect with anyone, even strangers, which is helpful for company's when they are looking to target potential customers.

How Can Businesses Benefit By Using Twitter:

• Businesses can present their brand to a large audience by using a short, simple messages 
• Twitter has a unique feature termed a hashtag, similar to the use of a keyword, it is used when a user types the number symbol (#) and then an uninterrupted text follows. Businesses can use this feature in order to see what users are saying about their company, their brand, and their products. 
• Allows two-way communication between the business and its customers, that way allowing the customers to be able to voice their opinion
• Businesses have an opportunity to advertise users regardless of whether they are a follower of the business or not. This can be beneficial to reach out to potential customers that may not have otherwise been notified. 

Sources
https://about.twitter.com/company
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-twitter-for-business-and-marketing/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkrogue/2013/08/30/31-twitter-tips-how-to-use-twitter-tools-and-twitter-best-practices-for-business/2/

99 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto

This is simply an overview including my thoughts as to what of some of the statements of the 95 Theses

found within the Cluetrain Manifesto represent based on my knowledge of social media marketing.

The statement below represents a significant change from traditional marketing or business philosophy.

19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.

People within the markets have more power than ever before due to the internet. With the click of a mouse consumers can put their opinion out there and judge anything. Once information is released to the internet it can spread like wild fire because these days practically everyone is connected to the internet, thereby connecting everyone together. Without communication amongst the companies and markets relationship everything that follows, along with the market, will weaken.

The statement below is one that has not been fully realized.

62. Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

Markets do not want to talk to a robot in front of the company, but instead they want to participate inside the company. Companies need to allow markets to talk to someone real who is going to be truthful with them instead to beading around the bush with automated responses. Overall talking to the real thing will enable a productive and healthy conversation to take place.

The statement I don’t think will ever be realized.

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

Human beings are the ones who are experiencing these services and using these products that companies produce. Human beings do not all have the same opinion, need, or want for a service or product. Therefore, to group all human beings in demographic sectors would lead to assumptions. Instead, companies should base their markets around real people, rather than demographic sectors.

The statement below represents a significant opportunity for businesses.

18. Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversations are missing their best opportunity.

For companies a person-to-person networked market allows for a new way of conversation to develop. It helps to break traditional markets and causes the elimination of companies acting inhuman towards markets. Also, it allows companies to learn from each other within the market.

The statement below represents a significant threat for businesses.

31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own “downsizing initiatives” taught us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”

Nowadays with so much of the population being laid off and unemployed, employees are being replaced constantly. This is because employers know that if they are not satisfied with one worker they can have a new worker in seconds to replace the current one. Unfortunately, while there are employees that are not loyal within companies, there are just as many companies that are not loyal that these employees are force to work under because employment anywhere is so scarce. It is a direct relationship within employee and employer, both need to make the effort to be loyal to each other or else both ends of the relationship will suffer.

The statement below describes how businesses with have to change or adjust to meet the new social reality.

94. To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.

Due to vast advances in technology the world is changing in the blink of an eye. Not everyone can keep up with every change and addition to the internet that occurs; it would be impossible. Corporations are and need to continue to branch out and try to appeal to their markets through the new, latest, and most popular forms of social media. Although sometimes in the rush, corporations are not as aware as they should be of how much more productive they could be within the market. For example, Facebook or LinkedIn, corporations may not realize how quickly you can release information about your company, product, or service, as well as retrieve information about an prospective employee or company.

Sources: 

http://www.cluetrain.com/

http://www.cluetrain.com/book/

Social Bookmarking & Its Benefits

Social bookmarking, a simple concept in which websites or content can be tagged and saved in order to be read or used at a later date. According to Mashable, "Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online." By saving the websites, users can then send and share them with their friends, with easy access for everyone. In contrast to search engines, when you type something in you will not be presented with the difficult task of search for a needle in a haystack. Instead, you are able to quickly narrow the items that you are searching for, thereby offering an efficient alternative. The most popular websites that focus on social bookmarking are Digg, Propeller, and Reddit.

Benefits of Social Bookmarking: 

• allows for easy access to your bookmarked sites
• accessible on any computer from any part of the world, as long as internet connection is available
• not only can you views sites that you tag, but you can view the sites that other people found interesting enough to tag
• allows you to specifically target what you would like to see
• offers an efficient alternative to search engines
• user-friendly

Personally, I find that Diigo is the most user-friendly social bookmarking site that I have found. I like that it allows you to establish groups in which you as well as the other members of the group can all bookmark links relevant to the purpose of the group. Not only can this site be used to bookmark website links but also video links that you may have found interesting.This is very beneficial for group projects because then all it takes a few clicks and everyone is able to view the links that you have found but they don't necessarily have to view the links the day that you post them. Instead, the links can be viewed are their own disposal, quickly and efficiently.

Source: http://mashable.com/category/social-bookmarking/

Broadcast vs. Conversation Communication Strategies

The traditional components of a promotional mix include:

·         Advertising

·         Direct Marketing

·         Personal Selling

·         Sales Promotion

·         Public Relations

These tactics are referred to as broadcast or “one to many” communications because the tactics are not personalized toward individual consumers. However, tactics such as direct marketing and personal selling, which are essentially targeted at specific individual consumers. Advertising, sales promotion, and public relations is geared toward a mass amount of consumers based on a mass amount of consumer’s wants, needs, and desires.

These approaches are becoming less and less effective today because such as our internet is becoming more and more personable consumers are expecting their whole way of purchasing goods to be personal to their own individual needs, wants, and desires as well. Unfortunately advertising is seen as the most costly tactic and traditionally you would want a tactic that would be more cost-effective in order to make the most profit in the end. Public relations seems to be a less effective tactic today because a lot of the products in the market don’t require the consumer to be fully knowledgeable about it; for example food items. Overall, because these tactics are referred to as “one to many” communications they are becoming less effective as a whole because since they are traditionally targeted toward the individual it is not the most effective approach due to the geography of the market. The market is dispersed across the entire globe and being able to target everyone’s individual needs seems nearly impossible. 

Riley, Jim. “Promotion – introducing the promotional mix” 23 September 2012. Tutor2u. <http://www.tutor2u.net/business/marketing/promotion

          _factors.asp>. 03 October 2013.

Your RSS Reader & You

RSS Readers are the new and improved form of gaining information, bookmarking is now a method of the past. RSS stands for "really simple syndication" although it is more commonly described as a 'news feed' that you can subscribe to in order to receive all of your information in one place. This is an improvement over bookmarking because as the user you will no longer have to save websites and manually return to them in order to view the changes that have been made.

Thus, we have the cons of bookmarking:

• you as the user have to do everything manually for yourself
• there is a lack of organization, especially when viewing multiple sites at once 
• if you have a lot of bookmarks it can be difficult to make sure you keep track with all of them ha
• if certain websites don't update very often you can risk wasting time on viewing these websites versus those with new updated information

How to decide which RSS Reader is best for you?

There are many different RSS Readers available and it is mainly based off of personal preference when it comes to choosing one for yourself. Here are some attributes and drawbacks of some popular RSS Readers:

http://www.blogdigit.com/feedly-vs-digg-vs-aol-google-reader-alternatives/

Feedly         

Pros:

• ability to customize your layout in order to reflect your own style and personal preferences
• ability to sort your blogs into folders
• keeps track of the articles you have already read and marks them as 'read' so they are not to be confused with articles you may have only skimmed

Cons:

• the user can only sign in to the RSS Reader with a Google Account
• there is no option to change the font size 

http://www.blogdigit.com/feedly-vs-digg-vs-aol-google-reader-alternatives/

Digg Reader

Pros:

• the user can sign in using a Google Account, Facebook, or even Twitter
• you can drag-and-drop feeds into folders in seconds
• feed items can be filtered based on their popularity through using the 'Popular' tab

Cons:

• there is no way to know the number of unread stories in each feed, you need to manually count them
• only 2 feed layouts are available to choose from rather than the 4 that are usually available with RSS Readers

**This is the RSS Reader that I chose to use and have been very                                                     pleased with what it offers its users. I can view inbound                                                               marketing blogs for my assignments and also view updates on                                                       my favorite sports teams via ESPN. Digg Reader is easy to                                                           read, easy to use, and effectively manages my feeds.**

http://bitnami.com/product/newsblur

Newsblur

Pros:

• compatible with all web browsers
• available app (OSx and Android)
• shows the original text, unlike most Readers that just show a text version
• there are 4 feed layouts to choose from in order to view feeds

Cons:

• unlike Feedly and Digg Reader it is not a free RSS Reader
• with a free account you can only view up to 10 stories at a time, it is not updated as frequently, and only public shares 

Inbound Marketing: "The Three Pillars"

Inbound marketing is an efficient way of creating and sharing content specifically catered to needs of your target market and due to the attraction your business provides, through an inbound marketing approach, the customers are left coming back for more. The inbound marketing approach used is called "The Three Pillars", which includes content, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media. 

Content:

 Inbound marketing requires high quality content; if the content is not good then you will not have the interest of your customers. Content is what attracts prospective customers to your business, through the content that is published. According to Hubspot, "you can naturally attract inbound traffic that you can convert, close, and delight over time.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

Search engine optimization is a relatively simple technique involves small changes being made according to the major changes search engines can tell us. The primary goal of SEO is to drive prospective customers that show interest in your company, brand, and products. Its one thing to have high quality content but if the content is not easily available and easy to find through Adwords and keywords on search engines, then it is a waste. PPC is very beneficial for businesses when they are looking to gain more traffic to the their company's website. PPC stands for price per click, its when a company pays Google for to their company's page to be put at the top of a Google search via Adwords. 

Social Media: 

 Social media has become the most attractive forms of marketing that a company can utilize. The social media sites that are most widely used between consumers and businesses are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Twitter is an easy way in order to attract consumers individually based on the companies and celebrities that they follow. Facebook also allows for knowledge about the interests of your prospective consumers. Both Twitter and Facebook allow for two-way communication between companies and consumers to exist, in which consumers can reveal their opinions and companies can provide responses, Two-way communication gives companies an edge with prospective consumers because it allows them to see how they interact with their current customers. LinkedIn is a professional social media site that allows individuals to interact with in the others in the workplace and companies to interact with prospective employees. This site allows students and young graduates to market themselves through the ability of posting
"online resumes" for their prospective employers to view. It helps employers to weed out applicants and decide if they will be a strong asset before they even have them in the interview room.



Sources:
http://mashable.com/category/social-bookmarking/
http://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing?__hstc=20629287.ba10454c3a01de50f9631e5cee0ca713.1381124130997.
1385746380853.1385761776219.12&__hssc=20629287.4.1385761776219&__hsfp=3682095473

Evolution of the Web: 1.0 vs. 2.0 vs. 3.0

The web has been evolving more and more since it was initially created. Changes are constantly being made in order to improve its quality and effectiveness for its users. 

• Web 1.0

In the beginning the web started off at a point which is referred to as 1.0 which according to Tim Berners-Lee is better considered as the “read only web”. Web 1.0 websites were considered static, meaning that they were viewed in such a way that was uninteresting and left the reader with no desire to return to the site to view more. What most likely caused majority of the boredom associated with visiting these sites was the lack of interaction with the reader that these sites provided. Readers were not able to impact or allow their own voice or input to appear within the site, there were no commenting features like the majority of sites have today in Web 3.0.

• Web 2.0

The web begins to improve during Web 2.0, which is when social technologies begin to be introduced. During Web 2.0 improvements are made to the faults that were discovered in Web 1.0 as well as additional improvements beyond that of Web 1.0. According to Cormode & Balachander, “Web 2.0 is both a platform on which innovative technologies have been built and a space where users are treated as first class objects.”   In contrast to Web 1.0, Web 2.0 includes social media websites such as Facebook and YouTube. These sites differ from those found in Web 1.0 because they allow the reader to put their opinion and input into the site through the use of commenting boxes. Web 2.0 is more user friendly for the readers by allowing them to do more than just retrieve information from websites. Oddly enough just because the name Web 2.0 suggests it’s a newer version there wasn’t any actual technical modification that took place.

• Web 3.0

When Web 3.0 evolves the internet is released from its confined walls within a computer and finds itself loaded onto smartphones, cars, as well as other forms of technology. Data can be exchanged through these devices and new information can even be developed on these new devices. Web 3.0 gives way to a more efficient and faster way to perform tasks on the web, whether it be surfing the web, using search engines, or even going beyond the regular classroom setting of a blackboard. Truly Web 3.0 is the most personalized form of Web available at this point in the web’s evolution, for example when students take exams online once the last question is answered the student can instantly learn their exam grade.  A program that my Management Operations professor uses is called myomlab and it even goes as far as to set up a study program for you in order to show you the areas that you need to study in order to improve based on your exam results. Finally from Web 3.0, we have arrived at Web 4.0, which is most commonly referred to as the “symbiotic web”. Unfortunately Web 3.0 needs to evolve itself more before there is much to experienced in Web 4.0, however the internet is constantly evolving, changing, growing, and improving. 

Cormode, Graham, & Balachander Krishnamurthy. "Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0." First

Monday [Online], 13.6 (2008): n. pag. Web. 5 Oct. 2013.

Strickland, Jonathan.  "Is there a Web 1.0?"  28 January2008.  HowStuffWorks.com.<http://computer.How

stuffworks.com/web-10.htm>. 03 October 2013.

“Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0 vs Web 3.0 vs Web 4.0 – A Bird’s Eye on the Evolution and Definition.” Flat World

Business. <http://flatworldbusiness.wordpress.com/flat-education/previously/web-1-0-vs-web-2-0-vs-

web-3-0-a-bird-eye-on-the-definiton/>. 03 October 2013.

Wood, Gregory R. (2013). Social Media: Engaging Your Customer. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from

https://angel.canisius.edu/section/default.asp?id=36909%5FFall2013.

http://www.finextra.com/community/fullblog.aspx?blogid=3003