How the Digital Age Has Shaped Communication Management

USC's Online Communications Degree for more information on the above infographic. 

The Developing Role of Social Media in the Modern Business World

Jessica Bosari, Contributor

Social media, although a relatively recent phenomenon, is becoming an increasingly important part of any business’s marketing and client base development platform. The perception of social media marketing has shifted quickly—no longer viewed as a trendy or passing fad, having a flexible and well-managed presence in each of the “big three” (Facebook, Twitter, andGoogle+) has become a must for any business seeking to secure a place in both the traditional and digital marketplace. What could once be accomplished by a traditional website now needs to be supplemented by a robust and responsive utilization of the tools social media offers. Navigating this strange, new world can be quite confusing at first, so here are some tips for those looking to bring their business up to speed.

Social Media Quick Facts

Here are some quick facts about the role social media is currently playing in the business world, courtesy of the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report:

1. 94% of all businesses with a marketing department used social media as part of their marketing platform
2. Almost 60% of marketers are devoting the equivalent of a full work day to social media marketing development and maintenance
3. 43% of people aged 20-29 spend more than 10 hours a week on social media sites
4. 85% of all businesses that have a dedicated social media platform as part of their marketing strategy reported an increase in their market exposure
5. 58% of businesses that have used social media marketing for over 3 years reported an increase in sales over that period

The “Big Three”

There are three primary social media outlets that businesses use. Here is a basic overview of each outlet:

1. Facebook: Facebook’s modest beginning, as a simple networking tool for college students (mainly designed to allow students to let their friends know where the parties were, and to look at the pictures from those parties afterward), belies its current status as a variable and integrated tool for business marketing. The primary method that businesses use to exploit Facebook’s marketing possibilities is by creating a “page” for their business (akin to having a website “on” Facebook itself—think of it as having an interactive yellow pages listing), which Facebook users can follow. Businesses can then use their page to market their products, offer deals, and build their brand.
2. Twitter: Like Facebook, Twitter began as a social networking tool—a way for friends to keep in touch—but has blossomed into a full-scale business marketing tool. Twitter uses 140 character “tweets” (short messages) that appear in the homepage of all users who “follow” the account. Businesses can use these to release news, market their products, and direct attention to special offers and new content. Hashtags (a word or phrase preceded by a pound sign) can also be searched for on twitter, meaning that followers or users looking for info on that topic can be directed to your account by simply attaching a hashtag to particular concepts or ideas in your business’s tweets.
3. Google+: Google+ is a relative newcomer but is quickly becoming an important tool for businesses looking to increase their presence in the world of social media marketing. Google+ has features that enable businesses to utilize its model in the ways Twitter and Facebook are used (product marketing, news release, the building of a “follower” base, etc.), but also has several facets these others do not. Google+’s “Promote” option allows you to customize your promotional content by creating different groupings of followers that you can then market differently to, and their “Measure” feature gives businesses an interactive measurement of how their Google+ page is being used. Google+ also offers a tutorial for businesses which gives advice on how best to use its features.

Know Your Business

One of the keys to a successful social media marketing platform is knowing your own business. A large corporation is going to have needs and attributes which require a very different approach to social media marketing than a small, local business will need to be successful. Play to your strengths—if you’re a larger company, focus on using social media to connect with a larger audience in order to get national exposure for your brand and products. If you’re a small, local business, use social media to build a dedicated, loyal customer base by offering the personal touch that only a local business can provide. If your business has a product or service that is primarily used or purchased by other businesses, use social media to network with other businesses in order to increase your visibility in the commercial marketplace. If your business offers a product or service which is primarily used or purchased by individual consumers, aim to use social media as a way to develop a pool of customers who see your brand as quality, hip, and available. No matter the size or nature of your business, a knowledge of your company’s strengths, target market, and product or service niche is an essential part of any successful social media marketing platform.

Consider Creating a Social Media Marketing Position

Lastly, if it is within your company’s financial position to do so, consider creating a position specially designed to create, develop, and maintain your company’s social media marketing presence. More and more colleges are offering degrees specifically tailored to social media marketing, and graduates of these programs are trained and ready to help utilize the powerful marketing tools social media offers to increase the exposure of your brand and the sales of your products. If your company is not able to afford a dedicated in house position for social media management, be sure to hire a third-party service provider that specializes in social media marketing. It is much easier and effective to hire a trained expert in this field instead of attempting to figure it out on your own or task one of your other employees—whose training and expertise are better used elsewhere—to try to manage your social media marketing

4 Simple Ways to Use LinkedIn to Generate Sales Leads

AUGUST 19, 2013 BY JOE SOTO

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you are aware LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network on the Internet, with over 238 million members in over 200 countries and territories.

I’ve shared how to dominate your sales competition on LinkedIn in previous articles, but you can also use it as a lead-generating machine for your business.

Part of the reason many sales and marketing professionals miss out on LinkedIn’s potential is that they don’t realize the breadth of information and networking opportunities available. LinkedIn goes beyond just a personal profile and status updates.

Here are 4 ways you can add additional value, stand out from the competition and earn the attention of your prospects:

1. Join (or start) groups to expand your circle of contacts and to increase your reach and connections. Find the top groups in your industry by searching for keywords and ranking by group activity. Then go find top groups where your prospects spend theirtime and join them as well. Participate in Q&A to position yourself and your company as thought leaders, experts in your field.
2. Post links to content so you become a source of business information and attract connections. Posting is important, but engaging is vital. Just as with any community, make sure to add value to each conversation.
3. Build your LinkedIn company page to position your organization as you’d like it to be seen. Perhaps the best way to make an impact in Linkedin is by growing your company page. This is critical for any business because it’s how you get into the person’s network updates, one of the most used features of the site.  Write the company description to include keyword rich text that resonates with product descriptions and contributes to network search visibility. Then identify a daily posting sequence in an effort to establish consistent brand messaging.
4. Follow other company pages of industry peers, partners, customers, and prospects. Commenting, liking, and sharing of updates from these sources can get your company immediately on the radar around the most relevant conversations that are already taking place.

Now you have 4 simple ways to generate leads on LinkedIn.  You’ll attract the prospects by standing out among your competitors who are either not using LinkedIn at all, or who are using it poorly to just promote themselves and their products and services.  You can be different not by saying you are different, but by behaving differently with how you engage online.

Mood & Music Can Social Media Help In Judging Mood?

AUGUST 18, 2013 |  BY J.P. BLACKARD  |  ENTERTAINMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL, MUSIC, RECREATIOn

Musical preference is unique to the listener. There are so many different cultures and personalities–which makes it quite difficult to decide what to listen to. In addition to different tastes in music, there are times and places where it may not be appropriate to play something.

A scene at the airport would be hard to imagine if one was able to hear hit rap songs over the PA system. A company like Toys’R'Us would not play rock music for their customers. Personally, some kind of rock is preferred. There is a science to song choices. Often our moods can determine what we might be listening to and where we might be listening to it.

According to the infographic, more people listen to rock music when they are upset. More people listen to pop music when they are happy. The study shows that people agree that music changes with mood. I cannot recall a time I saw a person who was really angry listening to jazz. Jazz just doesn’t cut it when you’re in a bad mood.

Letting people be themselves is one of the most important things you can do for them. We all have our own things going on too though. With close to half of people speaking up when they are displeased with the music around them, I’d say that there is a good balance of respecting others and advocating for ourselves. [via]

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The Facebook Social Life PLACE4INFO

Texting Trends

by Shane Snow.

Facebook Introduces Embeddable Posts

BY TODD WASSERMAN

In an effort to inject Facebook into more public conversations, the company on Wednesday introduced embeddable posts that will let blogs and news organizations include status updates, videos and photos in stories.

The posts work in the same way as embeds from Twitter and YouTube. Once your account is enabled, you will have the option to "Embed post." That will produce a code you can cut and paste into a blog entry or HTML file.

For a post to be embeddable, it must be set to public. In its announcement, Facebook used a status update from the British Monarchy about the recent royal birth as an example:

Mashable is one of a handful of media organizations to get early access to the embeds. Others include CNN, The Huffington Post, Bleacher Report and People magazine.

Though an estimated 72% of Facebook users set their posts to private, the company has lately been looking to tap its public posts for added commentary and color on topical issues.

With this in mind, Facebook introduced hashtags in June so users and journalists could track conversations on Facebook about various issues. The new embeds can also include hashtags, which readers can click on to see those discussions.

The intent of such efforts is to provide more inventory to advertisers looking to reach people during live events, like the Super Bowl or the Oscars. Until now, Twitter has offered the lion's share of such ad opportunities, but with 1.1 billion users, 28% of Facebook audience offers a viable alternative.

Image: Getty, Justin Sullivan

The Social Media Bubble Is Quietly Deflating

The Social Media Bubble Is Quietly Deflating

By Joshua Brustein

Two years ago, when the craze for social media startups was in full swing, a former Facebook (FB) engineer summed up the situation with a memorable lament: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,” the engineer, Jeff Hammerbacher, told Bloomberg Businessweek at the time. “That sucks,” he added.

It might be over.

Social networking companies drew a meager 2 percent of Internet venture capital last quarter
Social media companies drew only 2 percent of the venture capital headed to Internet-based enterprises last quarter, according to data published on Tuesday by CB Insights, a research firm that tracks venture-capital investment. In the two-year stretch that ended in the middle of 2012, social media companies took in at least 6 percent of overall venture capital invested in Internet companies each quarter. But for three of the last four quarters, those social startups have brought in 2 percent or less (with the outlier quarter largely the result of a huge investment in Pinterest earlier this year). The peak came in the third quarter of 2011, when social companies led by Twitter took in 21 percent of the total $3.8 billion in Internet deals by venture capital firms.

Here’s how Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vanceexplained it at the height of the social media money boom:

Once again, 11 years after the dot-com-era peak of the Nasdaq, Silicon Valley is reaching the saturation point with business plans that hinge on crossed fingers as much as anything else. “We are certainly in another bubble,” says Matthew Cowan, co-founder of the tech investment firm Bridgescale Partners. “And it’s being driven by social media and consumer-oriented applications.”

If Cowan was right, the air seems to have been released fairly gently—at least in comparison to the Internet bubble of the late 1990s, which shook the U.S. economy. Sure, Zynga (ZNGA) crashed and Groupon (GRPN)burned, but overall tech investment continues at a reliable pace. The total amount of venture investment in Internet companies last quarter was $3.625 billion, close to what it was in the third quarter of 2011—and much higher than it was before then.

New buzzwords have arrived: Big data and cloud companies are grabbing the imaginations of venture capitalists, says Anand Sanwal, founder of CB Insights. Boring companies that make tech products to sell to businesses seem to be in ascendance. But it’s just not the same.

“Social was so unique in that it had taken up a lot of mind-share,” Sanwal says. “Folks were singularly focused on social, and that was unlike anything we’ve seen to date. It was probably most analogous to e-commerce in the last dot-com boom.”

Brustein is a writer for Businessweek.com in New York.

Audience and Marketer Insights on Digital Advertising

AUGUST 3, 2013 |  BY WES MAXWELL  |  BUSINESS, ECOMMERCE, INTERNET, MARKETING, TECH

Looking for marketing advice to add some leverage to your online advertising campaigns? Check out the IDG Knowledge Hub’s infographic displaying the benefits of utilizing more “native” style ads in your advertising campaigns instead of traditional, banner style advertising.

Internet advertising is a constantly changing business, and in order to remain successful within a progressive business, those pursuing internet advertising careers should open their eyes up to the substantial benefits of utilizing “native” ads instead of standard, banner-style ads.

Banner ads are your standard, stereotypical ads that show up at the top and bottom of webpages, almost completely out of context with whatever webpage you are visiting, that blandly attempt to draw viewers to whatever it is they are advertising. Although banner ads have proven to be successful in the past, we live in a very progressive, changing culture, with a very strong, youthful presence, who gets fed up with traditional, banner style ads.

With that being said, native ads offer webpage viewers a fresh alternative to advertising. Native ads are embedded within a webpage’s content, and are somewhat related to a webpage’s content. Additionally, native ads are more straightforward about their purpose as ads, unlike banner ads, that force their way onto a webpage just because their company “paid” to have their ad on a website.

In conclusion, native ads are the closest thing advertising can get to honesty, which in our modern-day culture is hard to come by, and greatly appreciated.

[Via]

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Time to Go Mo-bile