making sense of social
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Separate territory fan pages are a bad idea for your brand

Social media allows brands to communicate with new ways and on new levels with their customers. Facebook for example allows you to create a brand presence in a social space, allowing fans a deeper connection with the brand than ever before.

However, this new opportunity also brings with it challenges. What if fans of your brand speak more than one language and live in more than one country? Obviously you can’t communicate with people in a language they don’t speak, and also, it’s difficult to be relevant to users when you are trying to talk to users of multiple territories at once. Read More

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Followers and fans are just useless numbers

numbersI don’t care that your Twitter profile has thousands of followers or if your Facebook fan page has thousands of fans. Until you can show the value of those users they are just meaningless numbers.

Social media marketing is full of metrics that can impress clients such as follower count, but until they are put in context they mean absolutely nothing. If your Twitter account has 1000 followers that may seem good, but when you some research and find that all of your competitors have at least 3,000 followers, the sheen wears off. Read More

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The Psychology of Social Currency

Social currency is a term that is gaining popularity in the social media community, but as a concept it is not a new idea. Social currency simply refers to the value that information has when it is shared between individuals, something has a good social currency if people want to continue to share it. Read More

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Having a social media campaign is a stupid idea

Social media is no longer new territory. Gone are the days where we are impressed by a brand interacting with users in social spaces. Social Media is tried and tested, with case studies from Starbucks, Dell, Wallmart and many other huge brand names.

Now attempting to create a social media campaign is outdated. Now is the age of integration. Creating any element of a campaign in isolation is not only the sign of a poor strategy, but it’s a wasted opportunity.

Social media should now be considered in the brainstorming sessions of fully integrated campaigns, and no longer reserved just for seeding or tacked on to the end of a larger campaign.

Just like any other medium, social media works better as part of a fully integrated offline and online strategic approach to campaigns, with each element complimenting and amplifying each other.

Just having a Twitter a page doesn’t cut it anymore. Having an isolated social media campaign is a stupid idea.

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Why you shouldn’t set up a Facebook page for your brand

Contrary to popular belief it is not a good idea just to jump in to social media. It’s not important to “just be there” – you need to know why you are there. You need to have a clear understanding of what you want to put into your online presence, and what you want to get out. In other words you need to have a clear strategy for your online activity. Read More

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8 reasons you should be blogging

blog boardThere are many benefits to starting a blog, or contributing to a pre-existing one. Other than the fact it can be an enjoyable experience you can gain a lot simply by sharing your thoughts online. Here’s a quick list of 8 reasons you should be blogging  Read More

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Your Facebook fans aren’t a community, and probably don’t want to be either

One of the biggest problems to face social media marketing is that due to it being a relatively new area there is little in the way of “text book” theories. That’s not to say that there aren’t books on the subject, there are hundreds. But, whilst many share similar ideas, the field just isn’t as developed as traditional marketing.

As such, the industry tends to suffer from buzzword mentality, jumping from one buzzword theory to the next. One term in particular that has stuck is community marketing, upon which many other loosely developed theories have been built. In fact, the term has become fundamental to how many in the social media industry think about their work and sells it in to clients. “You need to engage your community!” self pronounced social media experts (read social media douchebags) decry, probably because someone writing for Mashable has told them so. Read More

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Alerts

Search engines such as Google allow you to save specific searches and receive an update whenever a new result appears for that particular search, typically delivered by email or RSS.

This is particularly useful for brands wishing to monitor mentions of their brands online, in particular on blogs and websites.

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Aggregation

The collection of content from various online sources such as blogs and websites using their RSS feeds. Typically presented on aggregator websites and customisable portals such as iGoogle and newsvine