Results Time

Well, it’s 2013.  It is absolutely astounding how fast time flies.  The research I started, what seems like ages ago, is finally coming to fruition.  I set out back in June 2011, to set up an Alumni network that would help keep us all in touch and up to date on what’s going on.  I’ve got some data on all of the network ties that were set up and they’re pretty interesting and surprising.  I set up this blog, a Facebook page, LinkedIn subgroup and twitter feed.  Each channel ended up being so very different!  By far there are more LinkedIn group members than anything else with 104 in that group.  There are 67 in the Facebook page.  The blog get’s quite a lot of traffic but I’m hard pressed to tell you how many of those are actually IB alumni.  This blog gets over 1000 views every month from over 131 different countries!  That’s something!

With the exception of a handful of people out there, my lovely alumni, you have been so very quiet.  I would love to hear what you’re up to.   What countries are you in and what are you doing?  Did you open a surf shop in Bali?  I myself graduated in 2004 and am finishing my masters degree and working at JAMK as a secretary.  Who knows what the future will bring?  IB as a programme is doing well.  The next round of entrance exams will be in April with 50 fresh faces coming in fall.  Risto Korkia-Aho is still taking care of International matters but no longer teaches language courses.  Matti Hirsilä is still our fearless leader.  Kevin Manninen has moved back to the USA and Robert Webber turned up in the UK and all is well with him.  Those of you that know the “Robert Webber Mystery” will understand why that’s so funny.  Juha Saukkonen, Heidi Neuvonen, Steven Crawford and Piotr Krawczyk still maintain their teaching positions and are as innovative as ever.

Limit Breakers bit the dust some time back.  It just couldn’t cope with the changes and had to be closed down.  All good things must end.  On a good note a new study track in music and media management will be added  to the IB curriculum.  You may have heard about the High Tech Management study track, but there’s also a ‘Culture’ study track which examines cross cultural communication in the work place.  Life is good.  Wherever this might find you, I hope you’re doing well and wish you all the best in 2013!

Best Regards,

Alison

 

5 Must-Haves for Social Media Management

Posted on 12th December, by Peter Marino in SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Design

http://reelwebdesign.com/blog/2012/12/12/5-must-haves-for-social-media-management/#sthash.Zt5EmQnj.HYBVpuyH.dpbs

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Social media has grown from a curiosity to an integral piece of corporate strategy in the space of only a few years. Nearly overnight, companies have brought on whole teams of specialists to craft effective social media strategies and manage multiplying numbers of social media accounts. Companies are hungry for better social media tools to engage their constituents. Below is a list of five features key to delivering on a social media strategy.

1) Scheduling
Social media doesn’t sleep, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to! Ensure your social media management tool of choice allows you to schedule messages in advance. So even if you’re in New York, you can schedule messages out to your customers in Tokyo during their workday.

If you want to take scheduling to the next level, look for a tool that offers the ability to schedule large batches of messages at once. This will be a super useful time-saver when it comes to managing campaigns or contests that require heavy messaging around a certain period of time.

2) Geo
When it comes to interacting with your customers, those in different locations may have different needs, speak different languages or follow different trends. You’re going to want a tool that optimizes your searches and filters your searches by language to help you curate relevant content for different demographics.

3) Keywords
Social media is also an effective way for businesses to keep their finger on the pulse. Setting up keywords or search streams provide insight into what is trendy among your customers. This can help you develop a marketing strategy that focuses on customer’s lifestyles and personal preferences.

Keywords are useful for keeping track of competitors’ activities but they’re also useful for tracking brands that are complementary to your offering. If your product is often purchased in conjunction with another product, keep an eye on the complementary product’s social media activity to take advantage of promotions or recent sales, as these are potential leads ready to be converted.

4) Collaboration
It takes two to tango especially when it comes to being social. Collaboration is key when it comes to developing and executing an effective social media campaign. Ensure your social media management tool enables you to seamlessly collaborate with your team to ensure you execute an integrated social media management strategy.

5) Reporting
Gone are the days of social media purely being about ‘building buzz.’ It is now a line item in budgets as companies invest resources in these channels and there is an expectation for reports which show ROI for social media outreach.

Make sure your tool has the ability to analyze important metrics such as click-through rates on shortened links, clicks by region and top referrers. It’s also important to have access to Facebook Insights and Google Analytics.

The most effective tools will provide the ability to access in-depth granular metrics on the efficacy of your social media programs. This will allow you to determine which messages resulted in the highest number of conversions, which platform is providing the greatest return and which time of day is most effective to drive traffic.

What does it take to go Pro?
Social is here to stay and to maintain a competitive advantage, businesses need to stay abreast of this ever-evolving space. HootSuite Pro help teams engage with audiences and analyze campaigns across multiple social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn from one secure web-based dashboard.

- See more at: http://reelwebdesign.com/blog/2012/12/12/5-must-haves-for-social-media-management/#sthash.Zt5EmQnj.HYBVpuyH.dpuf

TOP 6 Social Media Measurement Tools #SocialMedia

Source: http://hosting.ber-art.nl/social-media-measurement-trustcloud/

Social media measurement is quite immature, just as Web analytics was back in the mid-1990s. It will evolve quickly as marketers attempt different approaches and hold enterprise measurement firms accountable to help make sense of all the activity data generated by social media interactions. In turn, social media can seem very challenging, and at times even impossible, to measure with regard to its effects.

1. TrustCloud (Facebook Group)
TrustCloud measures your virtuous online behaviors and transactions online then turns it into portable TrustScore you can use anywhere within the Sharing Economy. TrustCloud helps you leverage the good behavior you’ve built online – and gauge the trustworthiness of others offering products and services online. Like a credit score,TrustScore boosts confidence and smoothes Sharing Economy transactions. TrustCloud collects your publicly-available data from networks like Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, then analyzes it to assign your trustworthiness a ranking between 1 and 1000. We don’t share your private data or email address with third parties, and never access private communication like Twitter DMs or messaging services.

2. Empire Avenue
A game platform where you earn virtual currency for being social. Empire Avenue is a stock market simulation social network game that allows users to buy and sell shares of people and websites. Expand: Empire Avenue’s comprehensive social media suite is powered by the Social Stock Market, where you use your virtual currency to expand your social media audience. Your virtual investors will share in your success as they earn valuable currency through your online activity and engagement. Engage: Use Empire Avenue’s powerful Missions to drive traffic and engagement to your online content and social profiles, and to gain relevant new fans, followers and subscribers on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and other networks. Evaluate: Finally, use the built-in Network Scores and other metrics to gauge the effectiveness and progress of your social media efforts, to pinpoint areas of improvement and to keep an eye on your network growth. With all of these tools in one place, Empire Avenue is the social media rocket fuel you’ve been looking for.

3. Xeeme
XeeMe is the fastest growing Social Presence Management software company. A Social Presence is the sum of all social profiles and accounts of an individual or brand. Since all social media activities are initiated from, or pointing back to that social presence, it is an individual’s or brand’s most important asset. A “XeeMe” lets users or brands organize their entire social presence, discover new networks and people and grow their presence and influence. XeeMe has the most comprehensive social presence analytics and the largest number of supported networks. XeeGraph provides a unique way to benchmark presence value and network relevance. XeeMe is free and will remain to be free. Additional business features or applications are provided as subscription service. The XeeMe team and its trained and authorized business partners are providing professional social presence building and customization consulting services.

4. Klout
Measure influence and style Klout is a visual, logical way to quickly see the main thing most organizations want to know about Twitter: where you stand against the competition. Klout digs deep into social media to understand how people influence each other, so that everyone can discover and be recognized for how they influence the world. Influence is the ability to drive action, such as sharing a picture that triggers comments and likes, or tweeting about a great restaurant and causing your followers to go try it for themselves.

5. Kred
We all have Kred somewhere. Kred, created by PeopleBrowsr, measures influence in online communities connected by affinities.Kred Story creates a visual stream from a person’s most popular content and what people are saying to and about them. Simply enter any Twitter @name to get an overview of their social media interactions. Also try entering @names of brands, companies and media to get a full view of their most influential content.

6. PeerIndex
Assess your online social capital. Where Klout was accessible and easy to decipher, I found PeerIndex a bit better. PeerIndex measures interactions across the web to help you understand your impact in social media. We want you to learn about the people you influence and see who influences you. We believe that everything you do is valuable. You make the videos, you write the reviews and you form the connections. YOU are the contributor – you are the content – you are the link. In short, without you the Internet would suck. We recognize this and aim to make your experiences in social media more rewarding.

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Here are some others that are also Social Media Measurement Tools

• Twitalyzer: A subscription-model tool Twitalyzer operates mainly on a subscription model, but gives away some basic features for free.
• TweetStats: Graph your stats! Tweetstats remains true to its name, as it compiles a bar graph for quick viewing of your monthly stats.
• Pinreach: PinReach, LLC (Formerly PinClout) is a fresh new startup created by Chris Fay (Chris Fay Consulting, LLC) and Daniel Schimpfoessl (PureField, LLC), focusing on bringing insight and analytics to Pinterest. We both felt that beneath the fun of Pinterest lay a powerful platform, one that if leveraged well could prove quite the upper hand for people and brands. We set off to create a new service offering valued insight into the activity on the site, launching initially with the PinReach score, a numeric representation of a member’s Pinterest influence based on a series of social attributes.
• Crowdbooster: Schedule and analyze. Of all the applications I used, Crowdbooster was my personal favorite.
• TweetGrader: Score your profile. Part of a suite of free online marketing tools powered by HubSpot, Tweet Grader is a straightforward tool that measures the power of your Twitter profile.
• TweetReach: Insight into your tweets. Ever wondered about the value of a tweet? With Tweet Reach, you can get analytics that measure the impact of social media conversations.
• Postrank: Intelligence from the social web The social web connects people where they share, critique and interact with content and each other. PostRank is the largest aggregator of social engagement data in the industry.
• Pinpuff : influence is measure of your popularity, influence and reach on Pinterest. It also decides monetary value of your pins & traffic your pins generate.
• We are doing some really cool stuff around Pinterest and first 1000 beta users will get exclusive invite to try out our experiments with Pinterest well before it is opened for all.
• Twentyfeet: Check your track. TwentyFeet is an “egotracking” service that will help you keep track of your own social media activities and monitor your results. We aggregate metrics from different services, thus giving you the full picture of what happens around you on the web – all in one place.
• SproutSocial: Super-charge your company’s social media efforts. Sprout Social builds powerful, intuitive social media management tools used by thousands of businesses across the globe. We help businesses delight their audience and get real value from their social efforts.
• Twylah: Get a custom brand page for your tweets. Twylah exists to drive deeper engagement with your Twitter followers.
• MyWebCareer: Discover, Evaluate, and Monitor Your Professional Online Brand. Enables you to uncover and evaluate your digital footprint. It’s a great networking tool and is useful when exploring the way your social profiles connect across the Web to create an overall picture of yourself or your business.

 

How to Use LinkedIn Powerfully: 10 Tips to Know

 

By Tracy Gold
Source: http://www.marketingtrenches.com/marketing-careers/how-to-use-linkedin-powerfully-10-tips-to-know/

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for making business connections—but it is just that, a tool. Even the most active users miss on some simple ways to optimize the way they use LinkedIn. This was true for me—I recently attended a seminar on LinkedIn by Colleen McKenna, and learned a few ways to kick my LinkedIn presence up a notch.

Now, I’m not going to give away Colleen’s secret sauce (you’ll have to head to one of her seminars for that) but below are a few tips from both my experience and Colleen’s talk on how to make the most of your LinkedIn presence.

1. Think about your goals. Why are you on LinkedIn? To find new employees, partners, and contractors? To be found? A mix? Your goals should drive your entire presence.

2. Post a picture. Please. Of your face. You should have a professional looking headshot as your LinkedIn photo so people can put a name to a face. If you’re uncomfortable with recruiters or prospective clients seeing your picture next to your professional credentials (a valid concern), you can change your privacy settings so only your connections can see your photo.

3. Use LinkedIn to remember names. LinkedIn can help you with offline networking too—simply checking out someone’s profile after meeting them at a networking event, even if you don’t connect, can help you remember their name and what they do. This is another reason why having a picture is important—it will help people remember you.

4. Make the most of your headline. Colleen really stressed this one—your headline does not have to be your job title alone. Job seekers, use “Talented [Your Profession] Seeking New Opportunity” not “Unemployed.” Students, use “Aspiring [Your Profession] Seeking Internship,” not “Student at [Your University].” Keep it concise, but make sure it communicates what you do and what your skills are. Here’s mine:

5. Post statuses. Updating your status gives you visibility on your connections’ LinkedIn home page. If you have found something online your business connections would like, or have good news to share about your work, spread the word by posting it on LinkedIn.

6. Write a rich but concise summary. Your summary should be about you, not your company—don’t just copy and paste the “about” page of your employer’s website. Your profile should be about what you do at your company, not what the company does as a whole. Tip: use concrete details like results you have generated and tasks you do on a daily basis to show people how awesome you are, not tell them.

7. Explore LinkedIn applications. Colleen encouraged us all to add Amazon’s Reading List application to our LinkedIn profiles. I was skeptical—I wasn’t sure how the fiction I love would be relevant to my professional connections. However, Colleen got more comments on this list, she said, than anything else in her profile. Sure enough, a few hours after I added Reading List to my profile, in came a message from a connection. She had written her senior thesis on Steinbeck and wanted to know what I thought of East of Eden. If you’re not a big book person, you can still enrich your profile with apps like Slideshare for presentations, WordPress for blog posts, and any number of others (the directory is here).

8. Add sections to your profile. LinkedIn offers several sections beyond the standards so users can showcase volunteer experience, projects, foreign languages, even test scores. This is especially helpful for young networkers who may not have extensive work experience, but adding more sections can add weight to any profile.

9. Connect with care. Your LinkedIn network is only as valuable as the strength of your connections. For some professionals—like recruiters or salespeople—it is advantageous to connect generously, but personally, I favor being a tad picky. I’d like to think I could recommend—or at least answer questions about—anyone I am connected to on LinkedIn. If you want to connect with someone and think it might be a stretch, be sure to personalize the message you send with the invite to explain why you want to connect—and why this person should want to connect with you.

10. Join and participate in groups. Some groups are full of spam, but others are generally valuable. For example, in the marketing industry, the Marketing Director Support Group is a great place to get and give advice. Do a little research, think back to your goals, and you’ll likely find a group that will help you reach them. If you can’t find a group, just start one!

Did you find anything new in this LinkedIn advice? Have anything to add? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

About the Author: Tracy Gold is a Marketing and Content Associate at Right Source Marketing. Let her know your thoughts on this post—comment away! Follow Tracy on Twitter for more marketing commentary.

 

101 Social Media and Social Network SEO Tools

Source: http://hosting.ber-art.nl/101-social-media-and-social-network-tools/

Social media is a type of online media that expedites conversation as opposed to traditional media, which delivers content but doesn’t allow readers/viewers/listeners to participate in the creation or development of the content.

Social media essentially is a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing, engaging, networking, and bookmarking online.

Social Media is media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue.

101 Social Media and Social Network SEO Tools

MUST-SEE SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

• Percolate – Turns brands into curators. Creates content for the social web.
• HubSpot – Inbound Marketing > marketing hub for small biz
• awe.sm – Analytics for social media.
• TweetReach – How far did your tweet travel?
• Contaxio – Contact management for your social networks.
• PostPost – Awesome stuff gets lost on Twitter. Strip-search your timeline.
• SocialScope – A mobile inbox for your social networks.
• NutshellMail - Delivers a social media summary to your email inbox.
• Amplicate – Find out what people love and hate on social media.
• Bottlenose - A smarter way to surf the stream.
• AddShoppers – Reward sharing, measure results, add shoppers.
• GroupTweet - Create a more dynamic Twitter account with multiple authors.
• HowSociable - Measure your brand magnitude.
• North Social - Quickly create and manage Facebook pages.
• BrandMyMail - Include live social content in your Gmail emails.
• CardMunch – LinkedIn app scans business cards to your contacts
• Social Mention - Real-time social media search and analysis.
• FeedMagnet - Social curation for websites and events.
• TabJuice – Ultimate e-commerce solution for Facebook (100% free).
• Conversocial – Deliver great customer service in Facebook and Twitter.
• Bitly Enterprise – Short URL branding, real-time alerts, monitoring and more.
• PeopleBrowsr – Social analytics for marketers.
• Needium - Social media lead generation.
• Crowdspoke – Find relevant content to share with customers, fans.
• The Archivist – Save and analyze tweets.
• MyLikes - Publishers promote your content through social networks.
• Postling - Provides small businesses with social media tools.
• bre.ad – URL shortener like bit.ly with customizable billboards
• Evernote – never lose a random though again – all stored in the cloud
• Eventbrite - online tool for events and selling tickets

MARKETING

• Shoutlet - Enterprise social marketing platform.
• Awareness, Inc. - Publish, manage, measure, engage.
• Unified – The world’s first social operating platform. Enterprise marketing.
• Wildfire – Promotion, analytics, monitoring and more.
• EngageSciences - The fastest growing European social marketing vendor.
• LocalResponse – Helps marketers respond to real-time consumer intent.
• GraphScience – Leverage the social graph. Optimize Facebook marketing.
• GoChime – Reach the people who are a perfect fit for your products.
• Adly – Celebrity endorsements in social media.
• Hy.ly - From fans to leads. Facebook presence, contents and more.
• SocMetrics – Engage influencers.
• MarketMeSuite – Your free social inbox. End-to-end social marketing.
• Fanplayr – Social game marketing.
• memelabs - Branded Facebook contests and much more.
• PowerVoice – Advertisers harness a consumer-to-consumer platform.
• Lithium – Social community and marketing solutions.
• Syncapse - Social media marketing, measurement and management.
• Vitrue - Helps you utilize social communities for business.
• Adotomi – Performance marketing for social media.
• Zoniz – Full-service social marketing management platform.
• Argyle Social - Data-driven social media marketing software.
• Buddy Media - Offers a social enterprise marketing suite.
• Extole – Consumer-to-consumer social marketing.
• BuzzParadise - International network of social media advertising.
• Zuberance - Energize your brand advocates.
• Involver - A social marketing platform and more.
• Silentale - Market and customer insights for Facebook page data.
• SocialTwist - Acquire new customers using social referrals.
• eCairn - Social media marketing solutions for marketing agencies.
• Bazaarvoice – Ratings and Social Commerce software

MONITORING and INTELLIGENCE

• Netvibes - Social media monitoring, analytics and alerts dashboard.
• Brandwatch - Social media monitoring tools.
• ThinkUp - Free open source social media insights platform.
• DataSift - Unlock insights from historical Twitter data.
• Odimax - Actionable intelligence for social media marketing.
• GlobalWebIndex - Provides data on users of your web presence.
• Attentio - See what the world is saying about your brand.
• Traackr - Find the influencers who matter to you.
• Unmetric - The social benchmarking company.
• LiveWorld - Moderation, community programming and actionable insight.
• PeerIndex - Understand your influence across social media.
• Jive - Social media monitoring and much more.
• ethority – Social media intelligence.
• CliMet - Maintain your brands reputation on Facebook and Youtube.
• YourBuzz - Get the buzz on your business.
• Eqentia - Enterprise content curation, monitoring and republishing.
• Sentiment Metrics - Social media monitoring, measurement, engagement.
• MutualMind - Intelligently monitor, analyze and engage.
• Appinions - Discover and engage leading influencers on any topic.
• Social Fixation - Apps. Automation. Awesomeness.
• Digimind - Competitive intelligence and online reputation monitoring.
• StepRep - Listen to what people are saying about your brand online.
• Trackur - Social media monitoring made easy.
• CustomScoop - Online news clipping and social media monitoring.
• Beevolve - Comprehensive and affordable social media monitoring.
• Visible - Social media monitoring, analytics and engagement.
• Sysomos - Social media monitoring tools for business.

SOCIAL CRM

• Radian6 - Social media monitoring and engagement, social CRM.
• Sprout Social - Social media management, Twitter tools, social CRM.
• Spredfast - Social CRM and enterprise marketing.
• Nimble - Social CRM simplified. Turn communities into customers.
• Sprinklr - Social CRM, enterprise social media dashboard.

MANAGEMENT

• HootSuite - Dashboard for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.
• SocialFlow – Optimized publisher for Facebook and Twitter.
• uberVU - The intelligent social media dashboard.
• tracx – An end-to-end social media management system.
• thismoment - Engage everyone, everywhere, easily.
• Hearsay Social - Enterprise social media software.
• Sendible - Social media marketing, monitoring and management.
• Pluck - Integrated social media solutions from Demand Media.
• SocialVolt - Social media management software.
• Engage121 - Social media management  that enables customer relationships
• Parature personalized approach to web-based customer service & help desk software
• Tweetdeck Dashboard for teams using Twitter and Facebook

BLOGS and WEBSITES

• The Future Buzz – Digital marketing and social media blog.
• SocialTimes.com – Your social media source.
• Social Media Today – News, strategy, tools and techniques.
• Mashable – Social media news and tips.
• Socialnomics – insights from brands & experts on the why & how of social
• Social Media Explorer – A blog about social media marketing.
• Social Fresh – The business of social media.
• The Social Media Marketing Blog – Marketing insights from Scott Monty.
• Chris Brogan – Learn how human business works beyond social media.
• Brian Solis – Defining the convergence of media and influence.
• Britopian – Discussing the latest in social business.
• Social Media Examiner - help businesses discover how to best use social media
• Michael Hyatt - Christian slant on leadership, productivity, publishing, social media

AGENCIES

• Banyan Branch – Social media strategy, engagement, analysis and more.
• Converseon – Social strategy and analytics agency.
• Brickfish – viral map software – top clients (Redbox, Lemonhead)
• Splashcube – Social media marketing and training.
• WannaBeeSocial – Southwest Airlines of Social Agencies
• Webtrends – Social, mobile and web analytics and tools.
• iStrategyLabs – Experimental social media marketing and more.

OTHER

• Klout - Measures social media influence.
• ShopVisible - Social commerce solution
• Yammer – The enterprise social network.
• Gigya - Social login, social plugins, analytics, gamifaction and more.
• TrustYou – Social media monitoring for the hospitality industry.
• Cyfe – All-in-one business dashboard and real-time monitoring.
• Janrain – Social login, social profile storage, game mechanics, analytics.
• BzzAgent – A word of mouth marketing company.
• IZEA – Connects social media publishers with advertisers.
• Lotame – Data and audience management platform.
• OneDesk – Connect employees, partners and customers.
• SocialVibe – Engagement marketing.
• TwentyFeet - Social media monitoring and ego-tracking.
• Timehop – What were you doing 1 year ago today?
• Refollow – Discover, manage and protect your Twitter social circle.