Terametric - Are you Cooking the Social Media Books?

by @KimberlyACole
I read a great post today on socialnetconomy that talked about measuring social media ROI. This topic is near and dear to us at Terametric. This blog pointed out that increasing your Twitter Followers and Facebook Fans by purchasing them may boost your metrics today, but in the long run, you will dilute your true influence and damage your brand reputation. The may be a quick way to “cook the Social Media Books” but what happens the next time you need to give a report to the CMO and your brand identity is suffering?

Personally, I don’t have many followers on Twitter yet, nor do I follow that many people. But the followers I do have (and those that I follow) I have cultivated organically, and I know that the people are real, and are involved in social media. My followers can count on me to deliver quality tweets revolving around social media measurement because that’s what Terametric is all about. This is how you build your brand reputation and it takes time. But it will pay dividends in the long run by ensuring that your voice can be trusted, and your community will be loyal. And after all, that’s what we all strive for, loyal and happy customers.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE AT TERAMETRIC

Twitter's Small-Business Big Shots

The Wall Street Journal On-line

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

The small-business community has flocked to Twitter in recent years, but only a handful of its members wield great power with the words they tweet, a recently released ranking finds.
Using a proprietary algorithm, Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.'s head of social media, Dustin Luther, came up with a list of the 68 most influential small-business voices on the micro-blogging site. Why 68? Luther says he set out to create a top-50 ranking but there were several ties among the tweeters he identified—mainly small-business owners and self-employed professionals who provide consulting or social-media services to entrepreneurs.
"There's a lot you can learn from these folks," says Luther, whose formula is based on the type of followers a Twitter user has—with more weight given to those who are being followed by people within the small-business community—as opposed to the overall number of followers a user has. "They produce high-quality content."

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

How to Use Twitter to Change Careers

http://money.usnews.com  Whether you want a more lifestyle-friendly career or a job that offers a bigger paycheck, transitioning to a new field can be a daunting task. It requires making new contacts, acquiring new knowledge, and maybe even gaining new skills.

That's where social-networking site Twitter comes in. Because Twitter allows you to showcase your expertise and connect with people you want to know—compared with Facebook, where we tend to connect with people we already know—it can help you gain the momentum you need to change careers. Or, if you're a new graduate entering the workforce for the first time, the site can help you build credibility in the field where you want to work.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

Hey, Online Display Ads Don't Suck After All!

Businessinsider.com
"placing ads in front of people is effective even when they don't click them,"
Since the dawn of time, advertisers have been worried about the efficacy of online display ads.  This is in part because, in the mid-1990s, they were taught that online display ads had one purpose in life, which was to get people to click on them.
Of course, nothing could have been farther from the truth.  Online search ads are great for clicks, because when people encounter search ads, they're looking for something to click on.  When people encounter display ads, meanwhile, they're not looking for something to click on--they're looking for something to read.
Advertisers have long known that placing ads in front of people is effective even when they don't click them,

READ MORE HERE

Smye Holland Associates - Social media marketing. Can you afford not to?

The rapid growth of social media has added another string to the bow of many marketing campaigns. Here we take a look at how social media can be beneficial to a B2B marketing campaign and the issues surrounding that all important return on investment (ROI).

Pretty much every survey you read on social media marketing cites the 'big three' as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, so for the purposes of this article we'll focus on those three.

Many people use various social media sites for personal use – catching up with friends, sharing news and keeping up to date with happenings in our own areas of interest – but how does that translate in a business environment?

READ IT HERE

GlobalPost Social Media Power Rankings

GlobalPost.com

Welcome to the GlobalPost Social Media Power Rankings. If popularity is power, we thought, how powerful are the world's sitting heads of state?
Social media gives us an easy way to quantify a leader's popularity (or a city's popularity, or a corporation's, and so on).
So we looked at the most popular social networking sites around the globe, including Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, Bebo, Badoo and several others. Most of the sites, we found, had no official pages for world leaders, so we nixed them. We then added up the friends, likes and followers of the rest to determine which world leaders wielded the most clout.
Here's what we found:

READ THE STORY HERE

Mashable - HOW TO: Manage Your Online Reputation Using SEO

It’s a fair bet that your boss, dates and anyone you give your business card to will type your name into a search engine. If something negative appears in the results, your online reputation can quickly damage your offline reputation — and affect your life.Of the almost 80% of U.S. hiring managers who had searched for candidates online, 70% of them said they had rejected a candidate based on what they found in his or her search results, according to a 2009 study commissioned by Microsoft.
While you might not be able to remove damaging content from the Internet, there’s a good chance that you can minimize its impact using simple SEO techniques. And even if your search results are squeaky clean, the same techniques can help you control how you’re perceived online.
Here’s how to get started.

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Step 1: See Where You Stand

READ THE STORY HERE

Twitter is the world's second most popular social networking site after Facebook

By Daily Mail ReporterTwitter is planning to blend adverts into the free micro-blogging service as the website looks to harness its profit-making potential.
It has so far failed to earn as much as other social media sites but hopes that 'promoted tweets' could change its position.
It is likely to draw complaints from users who have seen limited marketing over the five years since Twitter was set up.

Wise words: Co-founder and CEO Evan Williams has built Twitter into a $100 million business

This year the company expected to earn $100 million, a figure dwarfed by  Facebook's $3.5 billion profit.
Twitter was launched five years ago in New York after a brainstorming session among members of podcasting company Odeo - Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams and Biz Stone.
it now has 300 million users with Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber and Barack Obama the most 'followed'.
The website is the world's second most popular social networking site after Facebook.

More...

• Men are savvier online networkers than women… who 'shy away' from schmoozing for professional connections
• Google breaks the BILLION barrier with record number of users in a single month

Twitter is the most popular social media service among FTSE 100 companies, a survey by web development firm The Group discovered earlier this year.
According to the study, 45 per cent of the UK’s blue-chip index now have Twitter accounts.   Read more here

Social media use directly benefits more than half of businesses

Fresh Business Thinking

23/06/2011

By Max Clarke

More than half of professionals report a direct boost to their business as a result of their social media usage.

This is according to the results of an online survey of business decision makers, carried out by Fresh Business thinking.

Some 83% of the respondents surveyed possessed a LinkedIn account, closely followed by Facebook at 79%, with 70% using twitter. Further, one in four reported spending more than five hours a week on the various sites, while just 1% of respondents did not use any social media platform.

“Social media has crept into every facet of business,” said Rebecca Rocca, PR Manager at Mango Marketing, “and those not utilizing it are at a very definite disadvantage.”

Read the entire article here