You may have heard about the robot that landed on a comet last week. The Rosetta Mission has been quite the social media sensation, with the comet-landing robot Philae Lander earning 380,000 followers on Twitter. Sure, a history-making space mission always has the potential to be a very hot social media topic. But success is never a given, you need flawless execution to make sure an opportunity like this doesn’t go to waste. What, exactly, did the team behind the Rosetta Mission do and what can all marketers do to experience a taste of the same success? Here are 3 Social Media Tips gleaned from the social media team behind the comet-landing robot’s Twitter account.
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I still get it. The question. Sometimes I can see it coming. Maybe at a coffee break during a small business conference. Or a local networking event with lawyers, bankers and other relationship-based businesses. The head cocks ever so slightly. The gaze squints. The weight shifts and a hand shoots out with a palm slightly upturned. Half their body is saying “Yes, tell me more” and while the other half holds all the welcome of a hungover traffic cop: “Stop — I don’t need to feel any more guilty about something else I need to be doing.” The words are different every time but the tension underlying them never changes.
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Let’s answer this question with two others: How often do you check your own Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? A few times a day? Once a day? Once a week? How many Facebook friends do you have? How many LinkedIn connections? And how many people are you following on Twitter? If you are not on social media 24/7 (we hope not!) and you have a moderate number of social connections then there’s no way you’re seeing all of what’s being shared with you. Seeing your own social media efforts from this viewpoint might help you appreciate just how fierce the battle for eyeballs can be. And if you’re using social media
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So you finally gave in. For years people have been telling you to put your small business on social media, but you resisted. Sure, you’ve got a personal Facebook profile. Doesn’t everybody? But when it came to social media for business you balked. You weren’t exactly sure what to do. And you sure as heck weren’t sure where you’d find the time amidst your other tasks. But you’re tired of having it hang over your head, like the threat of extinction hung over the dinosaurs. So you’re finally ready to take the plunge. Yet just one question remains, as you ponder, “I only have time for one social network, so which one should I use?” Here
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Ah, Twitter. It used to be so simple: Follow a user Dig or don’t dig what they’re adding to the conversation Realize they’re not as interesting as you thought? Unfollow! But now there’s a Twitter mute button. Muting a user means you won’t see their tweets or retweets any more, and you won’t get any notifications from them. They’ll also have no idea that you’ve done this. However you’ll still be following them. Why mute instead of unfollow? If your strategy for growing your Twitter followers is to follow a ton of people just so that they follow you back, then mute lets you have your cake and eat it, too. You
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If the social media strategy for your business involves LinkedIn, you might want to know about this easy way to get more visibility. Let’s say your company has a company page on LinkedIn, the most professional social media network. And you’re pretty diligent about sharing new updates about what’s going on in the business, with your customers and in your industry. How many people will actually see that update? Answer: only the LinkedIn members who have chosen to follow your company will see its status updates. Including employees, customers and partners, how many eyeballs does that amount to in your case? Tens? Hundreds? A sobering fact about LinkedIn is that many users don’t
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If you’re using social media for business then you probably keep close tabs on the number of Twitter followers, Facebook likes and LinkedIn company page followers you have. But more is not always better. If you’re Coca-Cola it makes sense to go after literally billions of followers, you’re selling something that’s available to almost everybody. If you’re an optometrist in Washington D.C….not so much. So how do you find the target audience for your business on social media? And how do you convince them to follow you? Here are a few tips. How to determine your target audience on social media Know thyself. What’s unique about your business? Is there a specialty you
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Here’s a brief summary of the most notable developments at the intersection of social media and business. Whose social media account is it, anyway? Law firm Littler Mendelson discusses the gray area that arises when employees represent their company on social media — and then want to take the accounts with them when they leave. They argue that a trade secret framework is the right approach: “The secret of access to the social network account –the password– should be protectable as a trade secret.” When it comes to global brands the Financial Times reports that social media networks are not just kingmakers but are also kings, themselves: Almost a fifth of this year’s top 100
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If you’re questioning whether social media is a) necessary and b) feasible for B2B businesses, read this. B2B social media: the why When we think of commodity products we normally think of raw materials like lumber, oil, and — my favorite — coffee beans. It really doesn’t matter whose tree your coffee bean came from, commodities are products that may be from different producers but are seen as identical. Commodities lack differentiation — in the buyer’s eyes they’re all the same. If you’re not an oil miner or a lumber company, and if you’re selling a product / service whose finished state is only a result of your significant input, then you want to be
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At Emphatic we want to save you time and get you better results on social media. And we think the best way to do that is to actually let us do it for you. With this philosophy of letting you focus on the other important things going on in your business, we’re going to try experimenting with a daily round-up that includes just a few of the best recent pieces we’ve found about social media from others, with a brief explanation of why we think it’s worth your precious time. These could be instructive, entertaining or just plain weird, but they’ll all be chosen for their success in sparking new thoughts about the
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