Von Entrepreneur:

Pinterest. It’s the it social media site. Or, at least, it was back in March. There have probably been four other it sites since then. Feeling pulled this way and that by the latest and (supposedly) greatest social media channel? Remember: While you don’t want to miss out on the action, don’t waste time with the Next Big Thing unless it’s also The Right Thing. With that in mind, here are some guidelines for making the most of your social media minutes.

Snoop. Ignore the chatter about how much web traffic a certain site is receiving each month, and take a look at what your competition is really doing. Poke around online to find out which sites work best for others in your industry. Spend time observing now, and you’ll spend less time backpedaling from the latest social fad later.

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Von GetElasitc:

This week’s featured infographic comes from Monetate, Intelligent Email Marketing that Drives Conversions.

Social media has certainly not killed email marketing, which still converts on average higher than search engine traffic and not surprisingly, more than Twitter. To be effective, you must avoid batch blasting, the email echo chamber, and understand the technographics of your audience.

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Von Mobile Marketer:

Nowadays, marketers are placing QR codes on everything – billboards, print ads and bus shelters. However, many companies are crippling their campaigns with simple mistakes instead of focusing on a clear objective and providing added value.

One of the most important steps in creating an effective mobile bar code campaign is deciding how it is going to add value to consumers. While QR codes are currently a hot commodity, marketers must make sure they are using them correctly in order to drive engagement.

“A lot of the big players are doing QR codes well,” said Laura Marriott, CEO of NeoMedia, Boulder, CO. “One that I saw as a mobile juror at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, which was an innovative means to communicate the QR code and create a significant viral buzz, was Sunny Sale in South Korea which used the sun to highlight a QR code that people could scan to get the deals over the lunch period – and increase foot traffic.

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Von PROTENT:

As a note, this blog post was supposed to publish last month around the announcement of Google+ Local. Unfortunately, I’ve been expecting Google+ to magically fix itself and update our currently blank profile image to one of the images we submitted. We’re still waiting. From what I hear, we’re not the only ones suffering.

Even though Google is still working out the kinks of integrating Google+ Local with the rest of the social network, the following local business optimization tips will help you prepare for when the search empire finally get their Death Star fully operational.

What’s New With Google+ Local?
Besides making your local business profile page look exactly like a Google+ Business page, the biggest change you’ll notice is the integration of the Zagat 30-point review system (Zagat joined the Google family last fall and now they’re doing everything to stick it to Yelp). Check out George’s introductory post about Google+ Local for a more in-depth overview of the Zagat rating system and how it affects your previous reviews.

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Von MOBILBRANCHE.DE:

“Konsumenten haben heute ihr Smartphone immer dabei und bemerken schneller, dass sie ihr Handy zuhause gelassen haben, als ihre Geldbörse. Dementsprechend sind die Tage vergessener Papiercoupons gezählt – die mobilen Coupons hat man immer parat”, sagt Katrin Hana, Leiterin Global Product Management Mobile & Selfservice Terminals bei Payback. Im Vorfeld des Mobile Commerce Summit am 28. August in Wiesbaden gibt Katrin Hana im mobilbranche-Interview einen Ausblick auf ihren Vortrag “Komm zum Punkt! – Mobile Dienste und der stationäre Einzelhandel”. Sie ist sich sicher, dass das Potential und die Relevanz der Nutzung des mobilen Kanals für stationäre Händler weiter steigen wird und setzt mit Payback daher stark auf mobile Angebote.

mobilbranche.de: Frau Hana, auf dem Mobile Commerce Summit werden Sie darüber sprechen, was mobile Dienste für den stationären Einzelhandel bedeuten. Ist das Smartphone tatsächlich der lang ersehnte “Missing Link” zwischen online und offline?

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Von FUTUREBIZ:

Gesponserte Meldungen sind das mit Abstand effektivste Anzeigenformat auf Facebook.

TBG Digital hat 13,8 Mrd. Impressions von Gesponserten Meldungen und Like Page Ads analysiert und miteinander verglichen. Die durchschnittliche CTR liegt um 53 % höher, als bei regulären Facebook Anzeigen. Facebook kommuniziert schon seit einiger Zeit, quasi seit der Einführung dieser Anzeigenformate, wie gut die Performance von Sponsored Stories ist. Jetzt wird das ganze nochmals von einer unabhängigen Quelle bestätigt.

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Von 1to1 media:

Because social media generates an influx of unique customer data, CMOs look to this information to broaden their knowledge of the customer and predict future trends.

Social media offers marketers a new method for analyzing customer sentiment. Such insight becomes useful when exploring possible trends and determining the customer traits and patterns that impact brand awareness and loyalty. Despite social media’s fairly recent appearance on the data scene, such insight provides a unique look into customers and their relationships with various products and brands.

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Von responsys:

In the constant struggle between ISPs and spammers, legitimate marketers get caught up somewhere in the middle. ISPs have an array of techniques and technologies they employ to keep out spammers and to determine legitimate senders of email, and one such technique is the spam trap or honey pot.

What is a Spam Trap?

By definition, a spam trap is an email address maintained by an ISP or third party, which neither clicks nor opens emails, meaning it does not actively engage with the emails it receives.

Marketers need to be aware of two types of spam traps:

• Honey pot addresses, which are email addresses created and spread across websites, forums etc. waiting to be scraped or harvested by spammers. Some organizations involved in fighting spam put specific email addresses on a website for the sole purpose of attracting spammers to use harvesting software to gather and send spam emails to.
• Recycled email addresses, which are email addresses that once belonged to a user, but have since been abandoned or closed. They are then reactivated at a later date and monitored to see who is still emailing to that address.

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Von involver:

So you finally got your brand on Facebook and Twitter! Ahhh. You can take a breath, right? Nope! (Please actually keep breathing.) Twitter and Facebook are two great tools for getting your message out there through social, but you shouldn’t stop there!

Pinterest is the new place to be. The site is built for free brand advertising. Users love the image-oriented layout and are constantly repinning and liking images, pushing your content into their friends’ newsfeeds on Facebook.

If you’re not sure how to get started, or maybe you’re just not sure what you would even “pin”, then keep reading for six tips and tricks for Pinterest beginners.

1. Create a “Behind the Scenes” Pinboard.
Perhaps your brand is already on Pinterest, but you’re looking for a way to reach out to your customers on a more personal level; think about creating a pin board revealing activities that take place behind the scenes at your company.

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Von artegic:

Die Betreffzeile entscheidet im Wesentlichen darüber, ob eine E-Mail vom Empfänger überhaupt geöffnet wird. Betreffzeilen sollten daher kurz und prägnant formuliert werden. Doch was theoretisch einleuchtend klingt, scheitert oftmals an der praktischen Umsetzung. Die artegic AG hat daher sechs Tipps zusammen gestellt, um kurze aber trotzdem aufmerksamkeitsstarke Betreffzeilen erstellen.

1. Synonyme nutzen
Die meisten Wörter im deutschen Sprachschatz sind in ihrer Bedeutung nicht einzigartig. Möglicherweise existieren zu einem Wort Synonyme, die mit weniger Zeichen das Gleiche aussagen. Schon eine Ersparnis von wenigen Zeichen kann hilfreich sein. Macht man beispielsweise aus “preiswert” “günstig”, werden zwei Zeichen eingespart.

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Von GetElastic:

No matter what industry you are in, if you have even one competitor, a compelling value proposition is critical to attract and keep customers.

In the telecom industry, competition comes not only from other operators, but “new frenemies” like OTT (over-the-top) services like Netflix and Hulu, VoIP providers like Skype, and walled digital content gardens like application stores and streaming music services. Telcos face flat growth due to market maturity and saturation and the commoditization of connectivity services and mobile devices. To counteract these business challenges, telecom companies in all markets must look to VAS (value-added services) to differentiate themselves, attract new customers and boost margins and ARPU (average revenue per user).

In our latest webinar Beyond Minutes: How To Sell Value-added Services to Mobile Customers Elastic Path’s digital commerce strategist, David Chiu explores how telecom companies can sell value-added services effectively.

Auf GetElastic weiterlesen »

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Von SOCIABLE BLOG:

The growing social media site Pinterest is certainly proving that a picture can be worth a thousand words, as it grows and gains popularity. With over 10 million users, Pinterest is growing at a faster rate than either Facebook or Twitter did at the same point in their histories. Of course, this makes Pinterest a prime resource for both SEOs and small businesses looking for a little more online attention.

For anyone unfamiliar with Pinterest, the site allows users to take visual images of their favorite websites and create “pins,” each of which link back to the original site. Initially, these links were dofollow, meaning that SEOs started scrambling to take advantage of the free, valuable links. Of course, Pinterest eventually switched from dofollow to nofollow links in March 2012, and many of the SEOs who couldn’t wait to jump on the Pinterest bandwagon find themselves unable to cope with the fact that they can no longer get their easy links.

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Von PR Daily:

Narcissists, unite on Facebook—you’ll find likeminded folks.

That’s the conclusion of a new infographic from PsychologyDegree.net, which points out that people with “high levels of narcissism”—or, conversely, “low levels of self-esteem”—spend more than an hour a day on Facebook. (The average Internet user spends eight hours per month on Facebook, according to a 2011 Nielsen report.)

Question is, where do PR professionals and community managers who spend all day on Facebook for their jobs fit into this equation?

Beyond its basic observations on psychology, the infographic includes some rather eye-opening statistics on social networking—online and in real life. For instance, the average number of Facebook friends is 245 vs. 150 friends in real life. Does the latter number seem a bit high to anyone else? (I can name maybe eight friends, a dozen or so acquaintances, even more friends of friends, some sympathizers, a number of family members, and people I simply know—and I still haven’t cracked 100.)

Auf PR Daily weiterlesen »

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Von Forbes:

Way back in April I made the proclamation that email – despite its many naysayers, and you know who you are – is not only not extinct but is indeed a very effective method of communication and one that is actually preferred by many consumers. (Email: Another Marketing Medium That Can Come Off The Endangered List)

Today I want to share some thoughts from Michael Relich, the CIO of Guess, who refers to email as “the primary mode of communication between us and our customers.”

But first, a little stroll down memory lane, all the way back to April – before we all realized that freedom of speech does not apply to the Olympics, Twitter and NBC – See: More Twitter Olympics: Journalist Banned, Harasser Arrested.

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Von media-TREFF:

Obwohl in Deutschland rund 23,7 Millionen Menschen allein Facebook als Social Media-Plattform nutzen, sind Unternehmen bis heute nicht in der Lage, Social Media-Daten effizient auszuwerten und gezielt in ihr Customer Relationship Management (CRM) zu integrieren. Die Verarbeitung und Transformation der unstrukturierten Daten, die über Facebook-Profile, Twitter-Channels, Blogs und Community-Websites einströmen, lässt sich mit herkömmlichen CRM-Tools nicht bewältigen. Die Leistungen der bisher am Markt vertretenen SCRM-Systeme beschränken sich ausschließlich auf Teilaspekte des Umgangs mit Social Media, beispielsweise Monitoring, Management oder Kommunikation – eine gemeinsame Lösung für den Umgang mit Social Media sowie eine Einbindung in bestehende CRM-Systeme wird noch gesucht.

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Von VOCUS:

Social media is going through a rapid evolution. As a new facet of everyday business, it forces us to rethink, relearn and question everything.

From creative to messaging and to measurement, we need to apply more sophisticated and meaningful programs to combine social media channels into a powerful form of engagement and leadership.

Inspired by Brian Solis’ presentation at the Ragan Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications Conference earlier this year, here are ten ways to keep your social marketing up to date as social media for business evolves.

1. Add meaning. There’s an average of 340 million tweets per day. To a lot of people, it’s just noise. Craft your messages so they are as relevant as possible to your audience. How do you stay relevant? Take the time to listen to the things they like, things they dislike and news that is trending. Stay on topic with your posts, provide new insight or related content.

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Von HubSpot:

How great would it be if you could target your organic Facebook business page updates by more than just users’ location and language? That’d probably be pretty valuable — and more effective — right? If you’re nodding your head in agreement, we’ve got some great news for you. According to TechCrunch, it looks like Facebook has started rolling out powerful new post targeting options today called ‘Page Post Targeting Enhanced.’

New Facebook Post Targeting Options
Facebook hasn’t released a ton of details about its new targeting options yet, but TechCrunch reports that Facebook page admins will soon be able to target posts to segments of fans by a variety of characteristics in addition to the basic location and language targeting options admins are already used to.

Below is a list of the full set of targeting options that will soon be available to marketers.

• Age
• Gender
• Interested In
• Relationship Status
• Education
• College Grad: College Name, Major
• In College: College Name, Major, Years
• In High School
• Workplace
• In addition to existing options — Language, and Location: Country, State, City

Auf HubSpot weiterlesen »

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Von ConstantContact:

Ah subject lines…

Those less than ten-word phrases that can often make or break an email marketing campaign that took weeks to put together—aren’t they a joy to create?

I wish I could tell you that somewhere out there is the perfect subject line, one that could send your open-rates skyrocketing and make opt-outs and spam reports ancient history, but I can’t.

I can tell you, however, that creating almost perfect subject lines is possible and it starts with understanding certain truths about your readers—15 truths to be exact.

1. People won’t act unless told to do so
Before sending your newsletter, stop and ask yourself: What action do I want the recipient to take?

That action won’t always be one that has an immediate impact on your business (buy now!) but it should be the first step in some path toward driving real results from your email marketing. Keep in mind your subject line will be the first impression you’re email has on your reader—making it your first call-to-action will improve the likelihood of that action being taken.

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Von iab:

Illuminating the different ways that smartphones and tablets are changing consumer behavior, the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence released “Mobile’s Role in the Consumer’s Media Day,” an in-depth research report that reveals how receptiveness to advertising and media consumption varies by device, time of day, and location.

Although we regularly talk about “mobile data” and “mobile media” and “the mobile internet,” it is vital to remember that the mobile audience is not monolithic. What device a person using, when they are using it, and where they happen to be all matter critically to their content preferences, usage patterns, and openness to advertising messages.

Mobile value propositions vary by device type:

• Smartphones are mission-critical devices for life, with nearly 70% of smartphone users saying they “won’t leave home without it.”
• By contrast, tablets are a media consumption hub, with nearly 70% of tablet users reporting that their tablet is an “entertainment device.”

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Von Econsultancy:

As we’ve pointed out in several posts recently, email marketing is still an extremely important way for brands to engage with their customers.

Furthermore, the proliferation of smartphones and increased popularity mobile email has opened up new opportunities for marketers.

But while creating an effective email campaign can appear to be a complicated challenge there are some basic rules brands can follow to give their marketing messages the best chance of getting into inboxes and actually being read.

Experian Cheetahmail has published a new report that focuses on three key elements: data integrity, relevance and reputation.

Here are seven of the recommendations:

1. Make sure you have clean, accurate customer data
Your email campaign is only as effective as the data it’s built on, and while you can’t force consumers to give genuine data you can take steps to audit and validate your database.

Yet it appears that a lot of companies aren’t doing this – a recent Experian survey found that more than 90% of companies suspected that up to 25% of their data is inaccurate.

The report suggests that brands should cleanse their database for duplicates and gone aways, and consider enhancing it with additional data sources that give greater insight into their customers.

Auf Econsultancy weiterlesen »

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