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

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

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