Real-Time Bidding: New era of Digital Advertising

New technologies have introduced a variety of challenges to advertising companies. RTB, or real-time bidding, addresses many of these challenges by providing a direct and flexible method of matching consumers to appropriate advertising content. It offers several key benefits to the buy and sell sides.

Real-time bidding (RTB) will be a significant factor in fulfilling the promise of online digital advertising, which has been on the limit of dramatic changes for many years.

RTB, as defined by Parks Associates, describes the automated process of buying and selling online display advertising in real time, and it incorporates enhanced solutions in targeting algorithms and data analytics in order to deliver better targeting, greater control and more granular campaigns.

Given these strong benefits to ad buyers and sellers, RTB is starting to claim more revenues in the online advertising industry, and by 2017, it will account for 34 percent of all online display ad revenues.

Challenges in Online Advertising

Several industry factors will drive this shift to RTB. New technologies have introduced a variety of challenges to advertising companies. Consumers can skip commercials or go completely "over-the-top" in their video viewing, and they are now using multiple screens to consume content. Parks Associates consumer research reports over one-half of U.S. broadband households have a smartphone and nearly one-third have a tablet. All these extra screens make it more difficult to follow consumers and necessitate detailed tracking solutions.

These types of tracking solutions raise privacy concerns, often cited by advocacy groups, which could lead to customer rejection of the online advertising industry as a whole. However, Parks Associates' report Advertising Strategies on Connected TVs finds 45 percent of U.S. consumers are comfortable with targeted ads based on their TV-viewing habits. Over one-third are comfortable with targeted ads based on their online browsing habits, according to the report Monetization of Multiscreen Video: Content Owner Strategies.

While there are and always will be some consumer segments unwilling to share any details of their buying and browsing habits, many consumers are willing to provide personal details in exchange for something of value.

The more significant challenge has been in matching consumers with the appropriate content and, in some cases, matching consumers with any content. For the past 10 years, companies looking to buy and place online ads on a large scale typically have purchased blocks of ads, usually in groups of 1,000, through ad networks. Agencies pay these ad networks a CPM-based rate to reach audience segments with the understanding that a portion of the online ads will not reach intended consumer targets. The industry considers ad networks as "blind-buys": Buyers do not have full control over ad placement; so as a result, ads can appear on any website located in the network.

RTB addresses many of these challenges by providing a direct and flexible method of matching consumers to appropriate advertising content.

How Does RTB Work?

RTB is a data-driven buying model through which ad agencies place auction-based bids for individual ad impressions. This process takes place in milliseconds, allowing agencies to adjust their strategies almost immediately based on the performance of individual sites and ad impressions.

When a user visits a website, in addition to serving up HTML code, the Web server delivers an ad tag to an ad server, which ultimately sends the user's cookie ID to an SSP (supply-side platform) or ad exchange to be auctioned using RTB APIs. Buyers use that ID data to value the ad impression and set their bids. In an RTB environment, ad buyers analyze multiple variables of an ad impression, such as demographics, geography, and publisher attributes. The ad exchange determines the winner, and then the information flow goes back to the ad server to deliver the ad to the user's browser. This entire process is done automatically, in real time.

Below are a few examples to illustrate the meaning of RTB and its benefits beyond the standard targeting parameters (Geo Target, Gender, Age, Category, Demographic, etc.). Let’s say we want to set a maximum bid price for display ads in a campaign (bid = $1 DCPM). We can set the system to change the bids according to a set of rules, and all in real time (50 milliseconds before the ad loads)!

For example:

• If your ad appears below the fold - bid 0.25c
• If the user is seeing the ad for the first time – bid $1
• If the user saw the ad 3 times this week – bid $0.5
• If the user saw the ad 5 times this week – bid $0.1
• If the user saw the ad 7 times this week – don’t bid
• If the user visited your site in the past (retargeted user) – bid $3
• If the user visited your site and left at the checkout – bid $5 (and show him an ad with a discount!)
• If the user usually visits sites similar to yours – bid $2

RTB offers several key benefits to the buy and sell sides.

Core Benefits of RTB

Ad Buyers - Ad Agencies	Ad Sellers - Online Publishers
Accurate audience targeting Campaign control and transparency Improved return-on-advertising spend (ROAS)	Greater yield optimization Higher value of inventory Incremental revenues for display ads sold outside of direct relationships with buyers

While there are several paths for agencies to take when employing RTB, most use a media buying desk (MBD) that relies on demand-side platform (DSP) technology to access and bid on RTB ad impressions. An MBD is a buy-side platform that consolidates the process of planning, buying, serving and reporting online media campaigns, typically leveraging the technology offered by DSPs. Agencies also compile proprietary audience intelligence profiles through their MBDs, which integrate with third-party DSPs. DSPs connect ad inventory to agencies and measure a campaign's efficacy against its goals.

Agencies know who they want to contact due to data management platforms (DMPs). DMPs provide audience intelligence across the entire digital ad ecosystem, not just the RTB ad market, containing info on variables such as purchase intentions, household demographics and behavioral patterns. DMPs collect, manage, and evaluate online user information obtained from multiple media sources to identify and create audience segments. They enable the delivery of the right ad unit to the right consumer on the most effective media channel.

The confluence of these elements boosts the overall value of the RTB process for all players, so much that on the supply side, publishers are beginning to release premium inventory to SSPs to capture larger shares of ad budgets processed in RTB markets.

Facebook and Ad Exchanges

In mid-2012, Facebook announced the expansion of its growing display ad business into the RTB marketplace, with several DSPs already testing the Facebook Exchange, or FBX. RTB-enabled ad exchanges aggregate ad impressions across many online channels and connect ad sellers to buyers. Primarily a sell-side service, ad exchanges provide ad inventory details, such as website type, ad unit size, and user geography to ad bidders (e.g., MBDs, DSPs, ad networks). They also manage the entire ad-auction process - receiving the bid, determining the winner and facilitating ad placement.

Within the FBX system, brand advertisers can target Facebook users based on their Web-browsing history, with ads displayed on a Facebook page based on third-party Web browsing habits. It matches users more closely with not just relevant content but with products where they have displayed purchase intention. For example, Facebook Exchange can serve up ads about cheap flights or local auto dealers to a user who has visited a travel site or the Ford home page.

FBX indicates Facebook is getting more aggressive in its advertising methods -- and is forging new ways to build revenues. According to comScore, the social network serves approximately one-third of U.S. display ad impressions, so the FBX could open up a large source of ad inventory to the RTB market.

Facebook is competing with other companies in the RTB market, notably Yahoo and Google, which have established their presence in the RTB market through a variety of acquisitions. Yahoo acquired Right Media in 2007, Rubicon Project purchased Fox Audience Network in 2010, and Google followed suit in 2011 with the acquisition of Admeld.

Growth of the RTB Market

Agency demand for cross-platform ad synergies will drive the development and adoption of RTB sell-side platforms for emerging media, particularly mobile, online video, and social media, but these markets will remain small, with growth contingent on the maturation of the online display RTB ad market. Even so, Parks Associates asserts this market will grow quickly. RTB is a complicated process, with unfamiliarity and a lack of industry knowledge as potential inhibitors, but even if they have any significant impact, they will serve only to slow growth, not stop it.

The advantages of the RTB process to ad buyers and sellers are simply too great to ignore. Ad spend will shift away from traditional online display advertising to the RTB ad market as buyers become more comfortable with the concept and realize benefits such as cost efficiencies, reduced ad waste, rapid scalability, and improved control and transparency. RTB revenues generated by online display ads in North America will reach US$1.6 billion in 2012 and $7 billion by 2017.

Source: ecommercetimes.com and adgorithms.com 

Social Media Marketing Trends

Social media marketing disappears

Social media is going to be integral part of everything we do when promoting our business. This will make social media an integral part of marketing and it will not be a separate activity. Much like SEO or email marketing, social media will be just one tool in the box.

Integrating social media to corporate websites

Brands start large scale integration of social media content into their digital properties. Big brands will use social media connect and user generated content to get closer to customers. This will help them get most out of true fans and brand advocates by linking their web properties to conversations.

More support through social media

The integration of social media will lead to people reporting their problems in their channel of choice. Social media integration lets some of those problems be handled by the peers. However, companies should find ways to avoid their social media channels becoming a glorified helpdesk.

Social CRM will make inroads in larger organizations

Social data will be added to the CRM systems to find trends in sentiment and individual preferences of customers. The goal is to engage the customer in a conversation and give value that binds them tighter to the brand. As brands lose control of online interaction social CRM will help them react and predict how conversations are taking place. Findings from IBM showed that in the next three to five years, 81% plan to focus on customer analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.

Social media will influence more sales

Social media integration will allow customers to get real user opinions before making purchase decisions. Social commerce is not web shop on Facebook. It’s a digital property where people can make their decision based on marketing materials from the brand and augmented with feedback from existing customers in a form of ratings, reviews and comments.

Social commerce on mobile devices

We will lead into a new era in eCommerce where you can directly purchase from your Facebook account. With proliferation of mobile platforms social commerce will become popular on mobile devices. Facebook’s Open Graph will also let you directly purchase with Facebook credits based on recommendations by your friends.

Social media budgets will grow

Most companies will increase their social media budgets. This includes in-house spending on and outsourced services and part of the investments go to boost their own social presence through blogs and product reviews. Rest goes to external sites like Facebook.

Social media advertising will grow

Social media channels are looking to turn a profit so they are looking for ways to get at your advertising budget. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others are looking into way to display more marketing messages to their users. This will increase budgets dedicated to social media advertising.

Social media advertising will grow to $5 Billion in 2012, 25% of that vill be locally targeted social advertising.

Social media ROI is a must

More result oriented. Still less than half of the marketer’s measure results from social media. Social media ROI is a hot topic but less than half of the marketers report seeing it. We see that the budgets will grow and social gets more important in the brand’s marketing mix. This means that C-level will demand results. Dollars in sales - It can be as easy as direct sales from Facebook or a bit more vague as in conversion rate of people from social channels is higher than average.

In the course of our conversations with CMOs worldwide, an overwhelming consensus emerged. The vast majority of CMOs believe there are three key areas for improvement. They must understand and deliver value to empowered customers; create lasting relationships with those customers; and measure marketing’s contribution to the business in relevant, quantifiable terms.

Rise of the branded content

Next to advertising there will be a push be in the user’s stream. This means brands need to create content that is good enough to be curetted and shared. Content has longer shelf life, can be reused in different channels, and has higher perceived value for customers. This means that content creation budgets may in many cases exceed the social advertising budgets. It wouldn’t be surprising if some brands will kill advertising in favor of content creation.

Content Curation and Discovery

Information explosion has created an attention deficit and people want to have a quick overview of what’s important and easily find what they need. Aggregation and content curation are going to be very important and brands start filtering information to give value to their customers. Brands will integrate curation into their IT or use third party services. News aggregation apps like Flipboard and magazine apps will find a market in corporate circles.

Tabletizing and mobilizing websites

Not exactly a social media thing but businesses start to make their sites mobile. Like 10 years ago companies made websites because everybody else did; now they will make their sites mobile because everybody else does. People will use more social networks’ messaging instead of regular email and IM. (Webmail providers should be worried).

Social gaming will grow and spill over to real world

Social Media Games have more players than prime time TV shows have viewers. In-game ads and branded game items will become important promotional tools. As social media will become more mobile so will social gaming. This means that games that are hosted on social networks, such as Zynga and EA on Facebook, will be playable on mobile devices. 

These kinds of games will be played on-the-go – when you’re traveling by bus, sitting in a boring lecture, waiting for your lunch. Social gaming will be integrated with real life to physically perform tasks offline that have effect in the virtual world. Engage real friends; go to locations, flash mobs, etc. The potential growth of mobile social gaming will be huge.

Location! Location! Location!

Location based services will be everywhere. The Local information, reviews, coupons, loyalty programs and more all tied in with your social graph. We are moving towards an era of real-time need for information. More and more people will be checking for recommendations about nearby restaurants, bars, hotels, etc. Location based services will be part of many marketing campaigns. Near-field communication chips in mobile devices get more common and will pave the way to the new era of “tap & pay” commerce. Loyalty programs will start moving towards NFC and location based solutions. NFC will be a convenient way for you to connect, share and react.

Most social media usage will be on mobile devices

Social media is happening in real time and people share content when it’s happening! As smart phone penetrations reaches majority and tablets become increasingly popular, sharing content will move towards mobile devices. Smart phones give us extra depth into personalization – we can share what we want, when we want. The limits are fading! You will always be connected with social media, no matter where you are!

Group buying sites will add location based services

Let’s face it, it is a brain dead model. Grow a huge list by offering really cheap deals and then sell that list to businesses to get really cheap deals. Group buying will not go away but businesses will understand better what it is and use it accordingly. To spell it out: businesses buy an opportunity to let potential customers sample their offering at a hugely discounted rate in hopes of repeat business. New layer of value can be added by integrating with location based services that will alert users to deals when they are in the neighborhood.

Interacting with live TV in social media

Live TV shows will react to user interactions such as votes, suggestions, etc. We have the ability to change what’s happening by providing real-time feedback on social networks. TV is going to be everywhere through mobile apps.

News will be social

News websites will gradually be replaced by applications integrated with social media technology such as Facebook’s Open Graph. While this won’t happen instantly, we’re going down that road as we speak. People will be reading news from their dedicated applications such as iPad’s Flipboard or Washington Post Social Reader.

Mobile apps will become more social

All of the successful new mobile apps will be deeply integrated with social networks allowing you to share and engage more than ever before. We will be taking in a lot of suggestions and recommendations from our friends, colleagues and other trustworthy peers.

Your social media footprint will grow

Frictionless sharing capabilities and social gestures will make our lives increasingly visible on social networking sites. Music, TV shows, check-ins, purchases and more will be automatically posted to social media sites. Always connected, always sharing! If you don’t share, your friends will. Some may raise privacy concerns but most people will ignore the implications and their lives are going to be more open than ever before.

Facebook will break the 1 Billion people mark

Where do those more than 1 billion Facebook users come from? The countries with more than 20 million people and Facebook penetration below 20% will add most of this growth in 2012. Add the potential growth of other countries and you get to a cool billion or 1.1 billion even. And that does not include China.

Source: www.dreamgrow.com

Free Tools To Measure Social Media

Below are the 14 free tools to measure social media influence on the World Wide Web. 

SEMRush: What does your site rank for?

Just plunk your blog or website URL into the search field a top of the page and SEMRush will show the keywords it ranks highest for. SEMRush will show you what you rank for, what your competitors rank for, what Google AdWords you might consider buying and the terms you should be focusing on in your blog posts.

Woopra: How are your visitors behaving?

We like what we’ve seen of Woopra, a Web analytics tool that provides real-time data about how users are interacting with your site. While the visitor moves through your site, you can see where she came from, her approximate location, and the actions she performs and where she goes off to next. Woopra has a freemium model: While the free version of Woopra is severely limited, you may soon want to move up to the Bronze ($4.95 per month) or Silver edition ($14.95 per month), which let you segment your visitors (say, referrals from Facebook, Twitter or StumbleUpon), print out customized reports and track trends over time. Like SEMRush, Woopra helps you get your own house in order before moving on to your outposts on the social Web.

Klout: Scoring across three networks

Klout offers a daily summary of your organization’s or team members’ social media influence, with a ranking that factors in your reach and impact on Twitter (metrics such as re-tweets, follower counts, list memberships, and unique mentions), Facebook and LinkedIn. Klout has an open API that’s integrated into many Twitter apps: More than 750 partners use Klout data, including Hootsuite, CoTweet and Attensity 360. For the end user, its analytics platform is rich and easy to use, even if the methodology used in spitting out a Klout Score is a bit opaque.

Facebook Insights: Stats you can use

Facebook beefed up its Insights service this year, to good effect. Now Facebook Insights resembles Google Analytics in many ways. As a Page admin, your dashboard gives you access to a trove of data: daily active users, monthly active users, daily new likes, and daily interactions such as comments, geographic location of your visitors (broken down by country, city and language), external referrals, internal link traffic and more. When you have spikes of user engagement, Insights will show you caused them. It’ll show you what content most interests your readers, and it’ll let you and your team understand and analyze growth trends. One big limitation is that you can’t access a lot of the data older than a week.

Bit.ly: Are your promotions working?

Our favorite URL shortener, bit.ly, provides double duty by offering analytics and click data for every link shortened. Click data lets you see how effective your social media promotions are. Nothing much, just log into account to see click through numbers. A new feature, bundles, lets you group similar links together. Both the free version of bit.ly and Bit.ly Pro handle our metrics needs without the need to upgrade to Enterprise ($995 per month).

TubeMogul: Who’s watching your videos?

If you’re familiar with TubeMogul, you probably think of it simply as a way to upload your videos to multiple sites, saving you the hassle of uploading videos over and over. But TubeMogul has developed a rich set of metrics lately, letting you see stats on how many people have watched your videos across networks. Real-time analytics include views, viewed minutes, audience geography, embeds, referring sites and search terms and more, all via your dashboard. It helps us to cross-compare by category, content delivery network, advertising mix or video player. And it’s free!

YouTube Insight: What parts of your video are ‘hot’?

YouTube Insight is a self-service analytics and reporting tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the audience for the videos that you upload to the site. Use the information to analyze marketing your efforts — both on and off YouTube — and determine how best to optimize your campaigns. Watch the video (natch) and see metrics around views and popularity, how people get to your site, the content clicked on, average pages per visit, which parts of your video are “hot” and “cold,” demographic information and community engagement.

Google Analytics: Powerful & easy to use

Google Analytics has become such an indispensable part of the analytics landscape that it’s not surprising we get a little blasé about it. But let’s not forget the genius of this tool: You get super-rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness — for free. Create better-targeted ads, track sales and conversions, measure your site engagement goals, track Web-enabled phones and mobile apps, integrate business info and develop applications that access Google Analytics data.

Alexa & Compete: How do you stack up?

When was the last time you looked to see how your site or blog was doing over time? Google Analytics will provide traffic data more accurately than analytics services like Compete, Quantcast and Alexa, but these firms also show trends, a different set of demographics guesswork and, most pointedly, how your site measures up against your competitors’. Alexa offers search analytics showing the top queries driving traffic to your site from search engines.

Feedburner: Are your feeds radiating out?

Now owned by Google, Feedburner is the easiest way to roll your own feed — and then sit back and watch the stats roll it. It’ll tell you how many people have subscribed to your blog or site — or even a section of your blog, if you set it up that way. Dig deeper and you’ll find your Feed Stats Dashboard, revealing average subscribers, reach, popular feed items (recently and all time) and other interesting factoids. For instance, we didn’t know Cambridge (Mass.) Community Television was aggregating Socialbrite’s open content via our feeds until we spotted it in Feedburner.

Twitter tools! A wealth of options

There are a ton of third-party Twitter apps to measure your Twitter grandiosity. Here are a few of my favorites:
Twitalyzer works for any Twitter account and gives you information about their impact score (percentile score) and the type of influencer they are.
Grader.com is a suite of tools that helps you measure and analyze your marketing efforts. It shows the bio, location, history and the number of followers of the Twitter user you’re researching, and more.
Twittercounter lets you count registrations and comments on a particular campaign you’re running.
Backtweets shows you how many people you reach on Twitter and helps you understand how people interact with your brand and your content.
Type your Twitter ID into Twitterholic (where you can also see the most popular Twitter users in your city) or Twinfluence or Twittorati to see what kind of impact you’re making.
How far did your tweet travel? tweetreach offers reach metrics, statistics and analysis for marketing and PR professionals. Retweetrank, Tweetmeme, Twitturly and Retweetist also measure how often you get retweeted.
Tweeteffect determines which tweets make you lose or gain followers.
My Tweeple is a basic tool that lets you manage who you’re following and who’s following you.
Twittersheep analyzes your follower profiles to assess their likelihood of engagement.
Plus, a whole lot of other Twitter analytics apps.

PostRank: A modest tracking dashboard

PostRank provides detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, Diggs and FriendFeed all in one place. It’s suited to blogs and websites with a lot of content. Under its free plan, you can Track and compare your sites and your competition — up to five sites in all — to get the full picture of your social engagement. You can also track your static and offsite content (PDFs, YouTube videos, SlideShare content) for up to 10 sites.

Flickr: Are your pictures trending?

Flickr was one of the earliest social networks to provide metrics about how many people are viewing your photos. For instance, you’ll be able to see such statistics as views for your photos, sets and galleries — today, yesterday and all time (3.4 million for me, how about you?) — Your most viewed photos and videos and how many have been geo tagged or have comments. I just wish Flickr would tell you how many people are embedding your photos on their sites.

Soovox: For brand lovers

Soovox has a slightly different take on the Klout model: Discover your Social IQ, share your likes and earn rewards. Your “social influence quotient” measures your online social presence footprint and assigns it a value that gets translated into rewards. The money you make can go to your organization or to your favorite charity. Soovox is more geared to individuals who like to share their opinions about brands and products they love, but it’s worth a look.

Other tools - A worth look

Here are some other metrics tools we like. Not all of them are free:

Seoquake is a powerful tool for Mozilla Firefox, aimed at helping web publishers who deal with search engine optimization and Internet promotion of websites. Seoquake allows users to assess important SEO parameters of an Internet project on the fly.

Social Report offers a social network performance tracking, monitoring and reporting tool. It comes with a 30-day trial and prices starting at just $9/month.

Foursquare and Yelp provides business dashboards that have the ability to review check-in data and other metrics.

Technorati and BlogPulse are blog search engines. Look for metrics around bloggers’ influence and authority.

Google Trends provides information on Web search trends around key terms and topics. It shows how often your topics have appeared in Google News stories and in which geographic region people have searched for them the most.

Xinureturns provides a dashboard overview of your site’s standing in social media. Run a report and you’ll receive information on Technorati, Googe PageRank, Diggs and even backlinks to your website.

Tribe Monitor is a social statistics aggregator that helps yo keep track of your fan base on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more.

Source: www.socialbrite.org

The Social Media Marketing Mix - The 4 P’s

I am sure all of you know all about the marketing mix. You know, “The 4 P’s” which includes Product, Price, Placement and Promotion. But now I just wanted to explore the mix with a different angle that relates to social media marketing. The four P’s I am about to bring up are a bit different than what we are used to seeing in the marketing mix. 

However, I believe they are the four fundamental elements of social media marketing.

You will also notice that I have left “Product” out of the mix; the reason is simple, if you don’t have a good product or service there is nothing to market or create customer loyalty towards that. It will fail either now or later. So I have taken product out of the mix because everything else surrounds the product or the service itself. That is why there is a mix and your product or service is fundamental to making this mixture work.

The First P = People

This is the most crucial part of the social media marketing mix. In the old days when traditional media reigned supreme, brands pushed their products. Today consumers are in control. People want to be heard and people know they can be heard. So the first thing that needs to be done to utilize social media is listening to these people. Let’s not even get to participating and engaging right now, because they are secondary. The main goal at this point is to listen to what others are saying.

If you are a known brand, there are people talking about you. They are talking on the web, they are talking over dinner at the table and they are talking on the phone about your product while taking a shit. The power in social media lies in being all ears at first so you can analyze. So as to see what they are saying, what emotions your product is evoking among these people. Whether you call them your target market or people that help you with research and development (yup they can be your R&D team if you listen to them), the first element of your mix is people. Without people you have no one to listen to, you have no one to cater to, you have no one to engage with and you have no one to sell to.

The Second P = Platform

Now that you know the key to making things happen for you business revolves around people, you need to know where these people are hanging out. Although your first reaction might be to jump on Twitter and Facebook, which may not always be the wisest decision. You need to know what platform these people (people you want to reach out to) are on. If most of your consumers reside in Brazil, your first option might be to monitor Orkut which is huge in Brazil rather than Facebook and so on. The key is to know where the people you want to reach out to are. Opening a Facebook account just because everyone is using it may not be the right approach for you.

Maybe your target market is not really heavy on these “social networking” sites; communicate heavily on one of the early forms of social media such as forums. In that case you should be finding these forums where “your people” are talking, and listen to them to see how they see your product or services. Just because everyone is on YouTube, Facebook, etc. doesn’t mean these are the first platforms you should target on. You need to find where the people are (the first element) and choose your platform and then expand to others. It will be much easier to jump in where the people who use your products and services are because that’s where they are comfortable. You can’t move a community that is already thriving on one platform and try and pull them where you want, you have to adapt to the platform they are on and keep listening.

The Third P = Participation

Of course you know all about the participation. Nothing happens on social media without participation and this is the third element of social media marketing mix. You are listening to people, you know where they are and it’s time to engage. It’s time to respond and tell them you are listening. Everyone is always touting you should participate and engage but this is not the first step in utilizing social media for your business. You need to listen first and know what they are saying so you are ready to participate and respond.

Social media is all about participation. But participation doesn’t mean simply starting a conversation for the sake of it. Participation means knowing how to build a relationship with people who are using your products/services or are thinking of it. How do you make these people to buy and talk more about your product so the word spreads? Just listen to them and respond to their concern. Be where they are and BE THERE.

The Fourth P = Promotion

Promoting a product on the web isn’t easy. Sure you can shout and say “buy me,” but it would be hard to sell using that approach. The last element of social media marketing is the one that is already happening if you are integrating the first three elements. You may not see the impact in sale or word of mouth activity right away but as you move forward, you will be monitoring a lot more chatter about your brand, hopefully in a positive way.

Of course to sell products and services you have to promote. Just listening and responding won’t do the magic alone, so you need a strategy to tap into the people you have now made friends with. Try going on Facebook, Twitter, Forums, YouTube or any other community platforms and say “buy our products” and the community will say to you “Don’t tell us what to do, ask us. Ask us politely because we matter.” The words may not be exact but that’s what the implications will be. Be careful when promoting.

Wait it out, build the community around your brand and listen to them when they bring problems. When they have a concern, respond to them what you are doing to fix them. That right there is your promotion. That right there will boost word of mouth marketing. When you have a loyal group of people that are ready to talk about you, unleash the marketing genius in you.

These four elements are very critical to make things happen for your brand through different social media channels. Like I said, although I didn’t include “product” in the mix, don’t assume it’s not there. The product or the service is the reason why these four elements are required. If you have to call it The 5 P’s of social media marketing, so be it.

Source: Scribd.com

How Social Media helps to grow the Small Business 

The business press is full of stories about how small companies are using social channels to attract and engage customers. But while there are plenty of individual success stories, the confidence in what to do specifically is not always clear for small business owners that are strapped for time and online marketing resources.

Case study:

I was talking with a small business owner recently who was lamenting not updating his website and also that his competition was showing up “all over the place” online.  The nature of his product requires some education and an effort to dispel common misperceptions. The rapid advancements in technology of his particular product category are not very well known amongst his target consumer market. But there’s a substantial amount of search volume and interest in the solutions his product provides.  He’s also a small business with limited time and budget.

To me, this was a classic opportunity for the power of influence through storytelling.

My tip for him was to start a blog that answered the most common questions prospects and customers ask.  And to do so in a compelling way that his competitors were not:  with video, images and text. Each new blog post would be another potential entry point to his website via Google and social networks where people share links. With 1 post a week, he’d have 52 more pages and videos on his website in a year, each offering interesting, useful content that could position him above the competitors. Along the way, he’d be able to gather insight from web analytics, social shares, comments and interactions with the blog posts to refine message effectiveness.

A few key questions to start with his blog content plan:

• Why do current customers buy your product? This can come from sales people and/or the business owner.
• What are the misperceptions & objections? Document the things that are educational opportunities.
• What type of information helps them change the perception?  What are the tipping points from skepticism to confidence? Is it demonstration, 3rd party data, credibility of the company, word of mouth?
• Where do prospects look for information on this solution? Talk to sales people, look at website stats and any logged information about lead sources.

By answering these fundamental questions, this small business owner can create a blog content plan that specifically addresses the questions, concerns and triggers that will influence prospects to trust, buy and refer.  Understanding the key features of the product most relevant to the target customer as well as prospect tendencies towards finding a solution of this type can literally translate into topics for him to write or talk about on the blog.

Those topics can be run through Google AdWords Keyword Tool to identify the keyword phrases that people are searching for most often. Relevant search phrases can inspire blog post and YouTube video titles, categories, descriptions and tags.

Some basic next steps might include:

Set up a WordPress Blog, template and hosting (Genesis, StudioPress & Synthesis make this a no-brainer). Plan to write one blog post or publish/upload 1 video per week (2-3 minutes) that answers a key question prospects and customers ask.  The video can be captured using an iPhone or other smartphone and iMovie can be used for editing. If you’re on PC, you can use Windows Movie Maker to edit the video.  For people not comfortable just talking to a camera, have an employee ask the question(s) and answer them while being captured on video.

Create a YouTube Channel and start connecting with other channels and video publishers on relevant topics, 5-10 min a day. After uploading a video, embed on the blog, and share on existing social channels like Twitter and Facebook as well as through email to existing customers or opt-in prospect list. Ashley posted some great examples of SMB Twitter promotion yesterday. When embedding the video on the blog, write a description of what is talked about in the video so search engines can make it easy for people to find.

The initial focus for a basic video and photo blog should be on getting used to the habit of creating useful content on a regular basis.  I know many readers might be thinking that more substantial SEO and social media tactics should be setup as well, but without good content, social networking and optimization won’t work to convert prospects to customers anyway.  Time is usually limited for small businesses, so getting a small base of content built is a great starting point.

Creating a cycle of listening for questions, answering them through content and refinement can go a very long way for small business content marketing. Once things are setup, 20-30 minutes per day can be spent interacting with blog comments and social networks. Establishing a feedback loop means you’ll always have ideas to blog or talk about. It also means you’re connecting with real people, interacting with them and providing something of value that they can share and act on.

In time other promotion channels can be added starting with Facebook, Twitter and Google+ as well as SEO best practices with more specific keyword research and link building. If the initial customer research identifies Twitter as a substantial opportunity, a Twitter Marketing strategy might be involved at the same time the blog and YouTube channel are created. The reason I’m keeping these suggestions simple and basic is that I know how much small business owners can get overwhelmed. Needs to grow outside online marketing consultants or training can always be used to speed up things up.

What else? An email newsletter that re-purposes blog content and the Q/A that happens on Facebook, the blog and Twitter can be delivered to existing customers. Viewing every channel of participation as an opportunity to interact and share will help grow networks, trust and credibility as the “go to source” for the product category being promoted. It’s important to create value, but also to not lose sight that this is business. Don’t be afraid to suggest solutions or promote offers. Just do so in a relevant way.

Finally, make sure web analytics (Google Analytics is free) and basic social media monitoring (Trackur starts at $18/mo, search.twitter.com is free) are set up to assess how people are finding and interacting with blog content. Watch for trends in network growth like fans, friends and followers but especially with quality of interaction through comments, likes, shares and the effect on blog/website traffic that drives inquiries and sales.

For a lot of small business owners not used to online marketing, SEO or social media, these suggestions might be out of their comfort zone. But with the way consumer behaviors are changing and increased competition, getting out of the comfort zone and into a place where direct customer interactions drive content and inspire business outcomes is an essential investment.

Source: www.toprankblog.com

Social Media Marketing – An Overview

Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc., These are all examples of social media, and I bet as soon as you hear these words, you can add at least another three sites to the list off the top of your head. But what is social media?

Social media essentially is a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking online. Most social media services encourage discussion, feedback, voting, comments, and sharing of information from all interested parties.

It's more of a two-way conversation, rather than a one-way broadcast like traditional media. Another unique aspect of social media is the idea of staying connected or linked to other sites, resources, and people.

According to Ron Jones' - "Social media essentially is a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking online."

There is a wide variety of social media, ranging from social sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr through social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook.

In my opinion, social media has shot to the forefront of people's attention because it's fun. Thanks to social media, it's easy to share your ideas, photos, videos, likes and dislikes, with the world at large - and find out what they think of them. You can find friends, business contacts and become part of a community or a bunch of different communities. 

Social media gives you what TV never could - a chance to be engaged and engage others.

Because of this, social media is of particular interest to businesses. Currently, businesses of all sizes are experimenting with social media marketing, grappling with the question of how to get in on what appears to be an especially viral way to get their message (and their products) out there.

Insight of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a recent addition to organizations’ integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing communications is a principle organizations follow to connect with their targeted markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of the promotional mix; advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion. Increasingly also viral marketing campaigns are grouped to integrated marketing communications.

In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and medium of communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external agent, i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms. However, the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate. With the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online.

Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. A corporate message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.

Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. Increased communication for organizations fosters brand awareness and better customer service. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns. With emergence of services like Twitter, the barrier to entry in social media is greatly reduced.

Social media marketing is also known as SMO - Social Media Optimization, benefits organizations and individuals by providing an additional channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight, recruitment and retention of new customers/business partners, and a method of managing their reputation online. Key factors that ensure its success are its relevance to the customer, the value it provides them with and the strength of the foundation on which it is built.

Finally it is a strong foundation to serves as a stand or platform in which the organization can centralize its information and direct customers on its recent developments via other social media channels, such as article and press release publications, etc.

Kinds and benefits of Social Media

Many social media sites come in the form of a blog, micro blog, podcast, video cast, forum, wiki, or some kind of content community. To help you understand social media better, let's break them down into basic forms or groups.

Social news: Sites like Digg, Sphinn, Newsvine, and BallHype let you read about news topics and then vote and/or comment on the articles. Articles with more votes get promoted to a more prominent position.

Social sharing: Sites like Flickr, Snapfish, YouTube, and Jumpcut let you create, upload, and share videos or photos with others.

Social networks: Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter allow you to find and link to other people. Once linked or connected, you can keep up to date with that person's contact info, interests, posts, etc. Many people are connecting to friends and business associates with whom they had fallen out of touch. It's bringing the world together like nothing else has.

Social bookmarking: Sites like Delicious, Faves, StumbleUpon, BlogMarks and Diigo allow you to find and bookmark sites and information of interest. You can save your bookmarks online and access them from anywhere or share them with others.

This is just a sampling of social media sites. More are added daily. Breaking them down into these categories or groups will help you understand their focus and to consider which avenue is right for your approach to social media marketing.

Key Benefits:

Let's look at the general scope of social media universe.

• Five of the top 10 fastest-growing Web brands are user-generated content sites?
• Sixty-seven percent of businesses say that the best source for advice on products and services are their consumers?
• Forty-five percent of adult Internet users have created content online?
• There are about 1.2 million blog posts per day?

So do you think it would benefit you to tap into this ever-growing universe of social media? Absolutely! Many companies are trying to figure out how to get involved. They're shifting money from traditional marketing budgets to social media marketing because it:

• Helps manage company's or brand's reputation.
• Builds brand awareness and helps improve how people view your brand.
• Gets you closer to your customers. Learn about their needs then respond. Discuss converse, debate.
• Offers creative and effective ways to learn insights not previously available.
• Features new and inexpensive ways to support your clients.
• Is typically less expensive than traditional advertising.
• Offers various ways to measure and track performance.

Listed above are some of the key benefits to use the social media is the best channel to promoting the products or services through internet.

Source: scribd.com and searchenginewatch.com