Posts by InsightsDigital

We all are aware that social media is now a very important part of internet marketing. But what about measuring it? I found this on the Forrester blog - http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2009/07/why-i-like-the-sim-score.html

1. Calculate the number of positive, negative, and neutral conversations happening for your brand

2. Use the formula (Positive + Neutral - Negative)/ Total brand conversations

3. Calculate the number of positive, negative, and neutral conversations happening for your industry

4. Use the formula (Positive + Neutral - Negative)/ Total industry conversations

5. Divide lines 2/4 and you have your SIM score

What do you think?

There are many sites that provide the opportunity to become a sponsor. Has anyone on this board have done it and if so, what lessons have you learned or any recommendations do you have to share?
Thanks

I do believe that the recession has motivated many users to tap into online communities to network and increase their professional growth. This may be a big reason on why LinkedIn has much more momentum than a few years ago. So how do you think the recession has affected online communities and activities?

As entrepreneurs and consultants, I do believe that blogging is a good way to increase our reputation and visibility. There are numerous plug-ins and tools to help the blogging experience and I just found out of Zemanta. Have you used Zemanta or other blogging assistance tools? What are your recommendations and experiences?

Even in a personal level, it is becoming commonplace for people in relationships to ask for their significant other's login information for all social networking and email accounts. Perhaps not in this administration but I do predict that there will be a federal regulation or guideline about online privacy and employers.

I totally agree. The missing factor is the non-verbal communication. Sales people definitely tap to this to make their sales.

Thanks for sharing the link. I totally agree with the first one - Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew. I have seen many businesses are guilty of this.

Thaks for brining this one up for discussion. I personally have given WSJ online community a try a few times and each time, it did not retain me for the long term. Why? Reasons were:
1. I forgot I even had it.
2. When I did get a reminder - in one case, it was literally a year later, I did update the profile and engaged for that week but I did not find it much value
3. Not much people or activity

I do like WSJ and read its paper. I will give it another try if it provides as much or more than LinkedIn.

We all know that the US is in a financial recession, thus, this will impact on buying behavior and advertising/marketing spending. For myself, I am more conservative and thinking thrice before spending on additional monitoring tools and nice to do advertising but may not directly impact the bottom line. So what changes have you done or what lessons have you learned?

Hi
I am trying to set up an online business and would like to associate a toll free number. Does anyone recommend any vendor/s and/or share any experiences/horror stories?
thanks!

I wonder if in a year, what is the market share Bing will have? Do you predict it will be more than 30% or even 50%?

I totally agree with you. I do believe that there are many blogger outreach program that cast a wide net and not focus on bringing value for the blogger.

One major issue about email campaign is the click through rate thus behavioral or targeted marketing may help increase it with certain niches.

Well actually, there are many companies that are currently either doing this already or are searching/vetting for the right vendor to provide these services. Communispace does something similar but for consumers but I have discovered other vendors that does it for B2B clients. http://www.communispace.com/

Thanks for sharing the article. This brings up a major concern about who is viewing the information and what unimaginable consequences it will bring on. For example, the cheerleader who was coerced to release her login information to her coach because of certain information she released about the team on her feeds. http://mashable.com/2009/07/29/cheerleader-lawsuit/

You probably know this too but I want to share the Twitter blog that discusses more on business and twitter. http://blog.twitter.com/2009/07/enhancing-value-for-customers-and.html

There are also many industrial regulations that does not espouse certain types of social media. For example, chat or tweet feed of medical advice to patients or pharmaceutical companies communicating with patients via chat rooms.

Unfortunately, the click through rate for email marketing is very low. Thus for a business, social media marketing may help increase impressions and visibilities. So I can understand on why companies may shift away from email marketing though email marketing achieves certain personalization that social media marketing may not, for example behavioral email marketing.

Yes it could bring you traffic but it could also add more unnecessary PR clutter which may not necessarily help with increasing targeted traffic.

I wonder from a SEO perspective, if these security warnings (since they are not keyword or SEO related) affects PageRank. I just know that personally, if I see a site that Firefox gives me a warning, I will immediately close off that site, regardless of what it is.

Thanks John for sharing this article about Google's new mobile capabilities. Google is always looking to enhance user's experience which sets them apart from other search engines.

Of course, remember what happened with Skittles a few months ago.
The skittles site has changed since then but it was like listening to the skittles chatter on various social media channels.

For me that was a little overload but creative and innovative. Overall, it received good reviews.

http://mashable.com/2009/03/02/skittles-social/

One of my Facebook friends posted that he added himself using related tags on wefollow.com. I checked it out and it looks like a twitter directory. Perhaps this is a good new avenue for businesses and entrepreneurs to promote themselves online. What do you think?

Not only military but I also believe in other certain types of intelligence (not market research) firms as well as any company dealing with confidential medical information like laboratories.

Both companies thinks of creating a twitter account and let users become Followers. But I read a very interesting post on Jeremiah O's (Forrester) blog on the types of corporate twitter accounts.
link: http://bit.ly/3fZOHt

Below is an excerpt of the above mentioned blog.

So what do you think?

From Corporate to Personal: The Four Types of Twitter Profiles

1) Pure Corporate Brand
100% corporate branded with primarly corporate related content. These accounts, which are often sporting the proper brand name of a company are used often to provide corporate news, deals, and support. There is no indicator of any individuals involved.
Example: Four Seasons corpoate or McAfee News feed which indicates it’s not an interactive feed.
Pros: This account can be managed by a team, and less risk of an individual being co-branded with the brand, as they may leave later.
Cons: This may be perceived as a just an extension of corporate PR or the corporate website with little human interaction.

2) Corporate With Persona
Estimated with about 80% corporate brand and 20% personal brand this account may be a corporate branded account, although it’s clear there’s an individual participating.
Example: ComcastCares, which shows the account is run by Frank Elliason, or CiscoNews, by John Earnhardt
Pros: This account maintains the face of the corporate side, yet shows a human element, building trust with the community.
Cons: The account may be limiting itself …

Thanks for sharing these links. I totally agree and I like the advice from the WSJ about not leaking unpublished news. Also, I would add never to malign a client's hometown like what happened a few months ago on Twitter - http://shankman.com/be-careful-what-you-post/

The reason on why I am mentioning this topic is because I have noticed that many links that are listed by users here have security warnings. Despite the warnings, a study published by Carnegie Mellon mentioned that the majority of visitors ignore those warnings. So if your business site have those warnings, do you quickly pay heed?

Not at all. I have noticed that Twitter does delete accounts occasionally and my Twitter Followers go down by 2 or so. I prefer lower number than having followers who are spammers.

I actually shared this link the other day in this forum. I think they have great case studies and best practice section.

I never knew about level two until now. I am in level two of Yahoo Answers and I think Yahoo Answers is a great way to outreach.

So now it is official. I wonder if Google will team up with a smaller search engine or even a semantic one and fight against Bing/Yahoo. Who knows, time will tell..

I would not use it either because it will look spammy. Also, how much information can actually be released in regards to new products, launch date, contact info, etc in 130 characters?

Thanks for the heads up. Unfortunately, many sites do not operate in good faith.

It wont slow down or shift me away from email. Why? Well, there are many communication I dont want to publicize to my whole social network. There are other information that is none of my social media friends' business, especially if its "boring" or non-related stuff.

I imagine the numbers will grow - why? Well:
1. younger generations are more technology focused
2. certain social networking sites have an attached stigma - like Myspace or Facebook, though slowly, that stigma has been shifting away as well.

Pew Internet Study just released a report today stating that first the amount of people viewing online videos have doubled since 2x and also that men spend more time on YouTube than women.

To see the report: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/13--The-Audience-for-Online-VideoSharing-Sites-Shoots-Up.aspx

So knowing this insight, let say you are launching a new game targeted for men or service for men. It would be a good idea to create a video and upload it on YouTube with the proper social media promotion. What do you think?

Thanks for the clarification. I was consulted on a startup to use Facebook Connect since it helps bring people together via online sharing.

I know for many years many high scale companies never gave discounts until recently. I wonder if offering discounts cheapens the brand. I have been to many sites and I dont see that many discounts, perhaps only for bulk sales or for first time users.

I have tried both and now I use neither for one account. In regards to the automated response, I felt it was impersonal. Then I created personalized direct messages for each follower. This was very time consuming and I only got one or two responses among 100 DMs. Do I see a difference? Not really. I do think it is nice to send a thank you message regardless but the issue is that the member might just ignore it. What do you think?

How complicated is it for a site to add Facebook Connect? Is it a labor intensive process?

Hi John

I like the survey but I felt that the education question did not reflect me. I have a Master's degree and I had to put it as other since university degree usually implies a BA/BS and then the next option was a PhD. The issue with the Other option is that someone who has a certificate in marketing could also put it as other. Just my two cents.

One of my clients is thinking of creating discounts. My question for the membership is which percentage usually work for your business to help increase ROI? What has been your experiences?

The source was actually an article in the Wall Street Journal's digital section and in Ad Age. http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=138177

I have posted links under the sources and not in the answer itself. It worked before for me. I loved Yahoo Answers, especially for cooking advice.

I got an affiliate marketing magazine today and it mentioned about how people make millions. I want to now how do they do it? I betcha many members here want to know as well.

Would you add Facebook Connect as an option for members to sign in and share their activity on your site to their facebook wall? Or why not? As a user, I personally opt out of Facebook connect at times and prefer to sign in as a new member. Why? Well, let's say its a shopping site and I am buying something for a bride to be who happens to be one of my FB friends, I dont want her to know what I am buying, if its a surprise.
What are you your thoughts?

Thanks for the input. Yes, usability is another important issue I have been looking into these templates.

I read on a blog that Yahoo and Bing will be combining forces against Google and it will be announced sometime this week. From a SEO and PPC perspective, I wonder what changes and challenges this union can present to internet marketers. What do you think?

I found a the best practices and case studies in this site and wanted to share it to the members of this site: http://business.twitter.com/twitter101

What do you think?

I forgot to add Etsy - http://www.etsy.com/
It is a site to buy and sell handmade stuff. Very interesting concept.

How have you used the Freemium model on your site? As I am researching it for a client, I found that looking through the journalism/news sites was a good place to start. For example, Financial Times has a freemium model and after the user visits the sites on the 10th time within a month, the user can't access it anymore unless they upgrade.