As I’m the ‘social media person’ at my company I was just sent this video by a colleague and had to share it. Massive cringer all round but a fairly accurate representation of the various social networks and an apt summary of social networks as a whole.
One of the biggest challenges I have faced whilst working in social media is how to maximise my outreach and measure success. Social media measurement is still a relatively grey area but as long as you are clear on what your goals are then there are a number of social media tools that can be utilised effectively to help you make the most of your campaigns.
Along the way I have come across a number of free tools that I have found hugely helpful. I have listed some of my favourites below and hope they help you too! Any additions are always welcome so if there are any others that you know of, then please feel free to comment below and I’ll add them to the list.
Finding Followers or influencers
One of the biggest challenges people face is finding people who share the same interests or are in the same area so they can start conversations and engage. For brands, this may be finding their target audience so they can better understand their needs or what they are talking about or it could be to find local people to promote an event or launch.
Twitter directories are a great way of finding relevant influencers to engage with, search for people who share the same interests or find followers in the same local area as you.
Those listed below have been the most effective for me but I’m sure there are others out there as well.
http://nearbytweets.com/- Useful tool for finding people in the same area.
My favourites
Exportly is my favourite tool of the moment! It allows you to export a CVS spreadsheet of all your followers. This allows you to have a proper look at who they are, where they are from and who are the most influential. You can do this by sorting the data by number of followers. Once you know who of your followers is the most influential you can target your engagement at them in the hope of increasing your reach.
Klout- http://klout.com/
Calculates the level of influence your Twitter account has taking into account reach, followers vs followees and level of engagement
Kurrently- http://www.kurrently.com
Useful tool for searching for keywords or competitors on Twitter and Facebook.
http://twoolr.com – Gives good stats with regards to tweet times, see followers and recent interactions. Find out what times retweeted the most.
http://twileshare.com/app/share – upload docs to twitter, pdfs, ebooks, images and gives back stats.
http://twtpoll.com/ – Twitter poll. Great different way to get customer feedback. Share poll with twitter followers and Facebook friends. Can later post this onto a blog or Facebook page to gain further followers and fans.
Measurement
http://twoolr.com – Gives good stats with regards to tweet times, see followers and recent interactions. Find out what times retweeted the most.
http://twiangulate.com (gives diagram + compares 3 profiles followers) Great way to compare twitter profile followers and friends. Finds who follows who, who your most influential followers are and compares.
http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/# – great visual of followers/ connected conversations via hasthtags
http://www.foller.me – Shows tweetcloud of @mentions + world map of engagement
http://twileshare.com/app/share – upload docs to twitter, pdfs, ebooks, images and gives back stats.
http://manageflitter.com/ – manage followers
http://friendorfollow.com/ – manage followers
http://twitterfeed.com/- Feed your blog/ news into Twitter
You Tube has become a global online video phenomenon in the space of a few short years. The attraction is obvious; it provides a platform for anyone to share their content, lives and products with the world for free. No need for third party partners, TV companies or pitches. The content ranges from informative and interesting to the down right extraordinary. You Tube caters for every possible audience, taste and interest and can now boast to having an audience who watch more than 13 billion videos a month.
However as with all social media techniques and platforms, online video is still a relatively untapped technique for brands and is only now being recognised as powerful direct marketing and PR tool. Online video provides brands with an additional opportunity to tell consumers about themselves and their brand message. It also has PR benefits in that, if done properly, it provides a proactive opportunity to reinforce a positive perception of your brand. You can also utilise it for reactive reputation management as an additional response to any negative press.
With this in mind, brands are consistently failing to emulate the success that individuals and artists have had in utilising YouTube to propel themselves into the spotlight. The mistake many companies are making is that they consider video optimisation and social media in general things they ‘should be doing’ and consequently rush into setting up social channels with no real thought of what they want to achieve and what message they want to convey. Social media works, and works well provided that it is carefully thought out and factored in as part of an integrated marketing strategy.
Mashable published an insightful report exploring who was doing online video well and why. The results; ‘brands that achieve long-term success on YouTube are the ones that consistently and frequently publish refreshing content that has intrinsic value for audiences online.’ This reinforces what social media needs to be about; providing your audience with content they actually want, that is relevant, interesting and encourages interaction.
For success on You Tube there are a few simple techniques that will go along way to helping build a strong brand presence online.
- Build your own YouTube Channel and make it unique to you.
- Reap the SEO benefits and make your channel keyword rich with links back to your site.
- Create playlists and inject some personality into your brand.
- Don’t make your content too salesy or no one is going to want to watch it. If you are selling a service let people know about what you do but in an interesting and engaging way.
- Upload content regularly this will help you maintain a fresh presence and keep you relevant and visible.
- You Tube is a community. Use it as one! Interact with other people, send them messages and comment.
- Integrate You Tube with the rest of your social media strategy. Post it on Facebook, Tweet about it and most importantly encourage people to share it!
With Facebook and Bing in discussions over the dawn of ‘social search’ the way we look for information will continue to evolve and You Tube is sure to play a big part in this. Therefore it is worth investing some time and thought into what YouTube could do for your brand and laying the ground work for a successful campaign now before you get beaten to it.
