Why Local Businesses Should Stop Focusing On Their Facebook Page

All too often we see local businesses spend way too much time crafting their Facebook pages and trying to force engagement. Even if it does happen, it's not the best way to spend their social media time. They have an advantage over big brands: touching the people.

When Omahama Bob first started using Facebook to help market their local business, they put in a lot of effort to build up their "likes", create engagement on the page, add pictures of patrons, and turn it into a resource for their business. They have been more successful than most, creating posts that people liked and getting some comments.

They have done everything very well when viewed through the lens of a Facebook guru or social media marketing effort. The only challenge is that it hasn't actually helped to increase business.

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60 Minutes to a More Efficient Social Business Strategy

Every company should run a quick social media audit each quarter to make sure content is properly optimized and every aspect of their social presence aligns with their brand. The great news is that it shouldn’t take more than an hour to perform.
This 60-minute audit is different from a full social business audit. You’re not looking deeply at goals, competitors, engagement rates, campaign efficiency, or ROI. The purpose of this is to address the kind of company maintenance issues that often get pushed off into the distance and are then forgotten. Addressing these small issues should help you build a better, more effective, and well branded social media presence. Here’s what you should cover.

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5 Food Brands Building Social Buzz on a Budget

By now, most brands are rightly viewing social media as an integral piece of their overall marketing strategy. However, many still hold the incorrect notion that injecting more money into social media is the only way to build and nurture an online fan base.

In reality, there are several standout social media marketing tactics that can mobilize an enthusiastic audience while remaining cost effective, and the food industry has consistently been a leader in this department.

The most successful brands are discovering three truths about social media marketing. First, food brand marketers know that in order for a fan base to talk, it needs something to talk about. Second, they understand the need for conversations to go beyond company products and services. They get that without appealing to consumers’ broader interests, a brand’s social media presence tends to intrude, rather than engage. Third, they know they don’t need millions of dollars to succeed online.

Here are five food brands that prove a company can build social media buzz without draining the marketing budget.

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The Real Mad Men Ads

Ground-breaking ads from 1950s and 60s

With Mad Men storming onto our screens for season five this spring, we find ourselves once again immersed in the universe of Don Draper and co. - and their never-ending penchant for creative flair.

But that wonderful world of whiskeys and cigars at lunchtime and frenzied pitches for a must-have airline/cigarette brand is not merely the stuff of fiction. Back in ad land's golden era, Madison Avenue was heaving with verve and innovation, as agencies vied to outdo each other with visionary thinking and that killer tag line.

Here Andrew Cracknell, author of The Real Mad Men, introduces us to six ground-breaking ads from the Mad Men era of 1950s and 60s New York, when a handful of renegades changed advertising forever...
Andrew Cracknell's The Real Mad Men: The Remarkable True Story of Madison Avenue's Golden Age is available to purchase now (Quercus, £14.99)

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30 Things to Tweet About Your Brand

Businesses often experience a loss of direction a few days into Twitter. Once they have had enough of following influential people and greeting people in their network, there seems hardly anything worth doing. If you too are facing a similar Twitter-crisis, relax, this post is especially for you. Just use a little bit of imagination and you can transform your Twitter-space almost magically.

Here’s food for thought when you run out of things to tweet about:

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Gap CMO Explains Why 'Digital Is Dead'

Digital is dead, declared Seth Farbman, Gap's global chief marketing officer. He made the bold statement for Ad Age's Digital Conference, explaining that the idea of "digital" ceases to be relevant when brands stop thinking about technology for the sake of technology and simply think about their purpose.

Mr. Farbman joined Gap just over a year ago from Ogilvy & Mather where he had been worldwide managing director. In his first days on the job he came up with two mission statements to return the 42-year-old brand to relevance. The first was "return to the roots," and the second was "go digital."

"We're in quite an analog business," Mr. Farbman said. "We're just getting used to the idea that bricks and mortar and e-commerce can be friends, not enemies. We are a company within an industry that has lagged, so the big proclamation was go digital."

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How to Use Facebook Timeline Without Reworking Your Brand Strategy

Within days of Facebook’s official launch of Timeline for brands, social strategists and brand marketers turned their Facebook strategies upside down and came up with a flurry of ways to attract more fans. Consumer brands like Red Bull, Old Spice, and Ford led the charge with innovative campaigns that incorporate everything from intricate scavenger hunts to elaborate milestones that date back over a century.

  But what about the rest of us? What techniques are other marketers employing to take advantage of Timeline, without having to reinvent their entire Facebook strategy? Here are some practical Timeline marketing examples that didn’t require the marketing team to start from scratch or hire a team of consultants.

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4 Ways to Outdo Your Competitors

However, savvy small business owners can make it in a crowded field, even one filled with a couple of 800-pound gorillas. The key to your business’ success doesn’t hinge on finding a completely empty field, but how you define your company and its place in the market.
Here are four easy ways to set yourself apart from the din of voices in your industry. Do you have any tips for making it in a crowded market? Let us know in the comments.

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What's the Best Book on Creativity You've Ever Read?

The media world has been abuzz about Wired and New Yorker contributing writer Jonah Lehrer's new book Imagine: How Creativity Works.

No wonder, as it's a mind-altering read that sheds light on what happens behind the scenes of creativity, the importance of which has been obvious to the ad industry but whose value is being increasingly recognized in the larger world of business and marketing. The book is full of examples of the alchemy of science, chance, intention, risk-taking and persistence that contributes to innovation.

Mr. Lehrer's most illuminating stories include how Bob Dylan, drained of artistic juice, was on the verge of ending his musical career when he had the breakthrough that resulted in "Like a Rolling Stone," and how Dan Wieden came up with Nike's famous "Just Do It" tagline after thinking about serial murderer Gary Gilmore. He also discusses how the interior of Pixar's headquarters has been set up to fertilize ideas. And there are the famous creation stories behind P&G's Swiffer and 3M's Post-It Note. He also goes into the biology behind some of the more familiar creative conundrums: why it figures that artistic genius is often linked to madness; why, sometimes, the most talented individuals may be the most depressed ones; and why children happen to be "effortlessly creative."

Imagine: How Creativity Works

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The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success

The Social Media Bible, Second Edition (www.TSMB2.com) is the most comprehensive resource that transforms the way corporate, small business, and non-profit companies use social media to reach their desired audiences with power messages and efficiency. In this Second Edition, each of the three parts - Tactics, Tools, and Strategies - have been updated to reflect the most current social media trends.

Covers all major new software applications, including features and benefits, in detail

• Lists more than 120 companies integral to the social media industry with updated data, products, services, and links
• Includes advanced topics like measuring social media return on investment (ROI) and how to develop and implement the Five Steps to Social Media Success strategy plan
• Includes dozens of social media ROI case studies

Author is a widely acknowledged social media authority with numerous media appearances and speaking engagements

The Social Media Bible, Second Edition gives you a fully up-to-date toolbox to revamp your marketing strategy and create new opportunities for growth.

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7 Lessons From Content Marketing’s Greatest Hits

Lately, it’s impossible to open a newsletter, check Google alerts, or visit any news sites without reading something on the benefits of content marketing. It seems as though the entire marketing industry is out to convince the world that this is the wave of the future. While that may be true, there is a real shortage of practical, how-to advice for brands that want to dip their toes in the content marketing pool.

Yes, advances in technology and the rise of social media as a marketing channel have eliminated the need for traditional modes of distribution. But at the end of the day, creating great content and getting it in front of the right audience still demands creativity and skill.

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5 Ways to Market Your Brand With Location-Based Networks

Between the rise in location-based social networks, like Foursquare, and the mobile market’s meteoric growth, a new marketing avenue has opened up. Location-based marketing is a nascent frontier, and marketers are clamoring to take advantage of it.
Already, about 30% of smartphone owners access social networks via their mobile browser, and that figure will continue to grow, according to an infographic by Microsoft Tag. So, if your marketing plans include location-based networks, below are five ways to get started.

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Selling You on Facebook

Not so long ago, there was a familiar product called software. It was sold in stores, in shrink-wrapped boxes. When you bought it, all that you gave away was your credit card number or a stack of bills.

Now there are "apps"—stylish, discrete chunks of software that live online or in your smartphone. To "buy" an app, all you have to do is click a button. Sometimes they cost a few dollars, but many apps are free, at least in monetary terms. You often pay in another way. Apps are gateways, and when you buy an app, there is a strong chance that you are supplying its developers with one of the most coveted commodities in today's economy: personal data.

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G 12:37 PM  1 comment

How to Analyze Facebook Insights to Improve Your Content Strategy [With Video!]

Your Facebook business page is a haven for well-crafted status updates, photos, and links -- it's the ultimate content-sharing platform. But in order to understand which content you post is actually benefiting your business, you need to take the time to analyze your Facebook Insights (Facebook's proprietary business page analytics tool) to capitalize on what works and wave au revoir to what doesn't.

Trouble is, if you’ve ever exported data from Facebook Insights, you understand the overwhelming nature of what you receive. With multiple sheets and columns of never-ending data points, it can be hard to know what you're looking at, let alone what the data means! Many of the data points are repetitive and/or provide no way to improve your marketing. This post will delve into exactly what you need to extract and analyze in order to learn how to improve your Facebook content strategy. Either follow along with the video tutorial, or read the steps below.

Let's get started!

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