A Brief Overview Of What I Have Learned About Social Media Marketing In My New Media Drivers License Course At Michigan State University

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A Brief Overview Of What I Have Learned About Social Media Marketing In My New Media Drivers License Course At Michigan State University

This article is for my class that has introduced me to many new facets of online social media; from Digg to StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Reddit and of course, Facebook and Twitter. A great guide for finding out more about social media or reading the social media policies of companies can be found at http://123socialmedia.com/2009/01/23/social-media-policy-examples/ Another thorough introductory overview of media policy can be found at http://mashable.com/2009/06/02/social-media-policy-musts/

A real life example of how social media can be utilized is when a few weeks ago I was looking for a curling iron online and doing a lot of research i.e. reading a ton of user reviews. Before learning about social media marketing I never would have thought twice about my purchasing and research process but now that I have learned about the marketing opportunities presented by social media, it was all to clear that the brand I wound up purchasing, Hot Tools Professional, is ignoring a lot of possibilities and missing a lot of sales opportunities by not being more involved.

All of the reviews for Hot Tool Professional on Amazon and Folica are great, which is the main reason I wound up buying from their company, but in all the searches I performed, there wasn’t a single video result from the actual company which is a major lost opportunity. They could be utilizing websites like YouTube to promote their brand by having professional stylists demonstrate how to use their products or recommend certain products for specific hair types but in the hour or two that I spent on YouTube, although their products were used, I saw no videos put up by the company.

Considering that Hot Tools is widely considered to be one of the best brand of curling irons, not just by reviewers but by professional hair stylists as well, it is such a shame and a major lost opportunity that their website doesn’t even show up in the first 5 pages of Google results! Although they do have a twitter account, even that does not show up on the first 5 search result pages. I feel like the Hot Tools company could be doing a much better job of getting brand exposure and interacting with consumers and potential customers. Another example is their facebook page, they have 142 followers and just one post and nothing under their information section.

This experience is just one small example of how everyday purchases can be influenced by social media and the major opportunities they can present to a company who knows how to utilize them well. For more information on social media, visit http://newmediadl.com and start doing your own research today!

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Lessons learned: what Apple has gained having lost the PC war to Microsoft

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Lessons learned: what Apple has gained having lost the PC war to Microsoft

The unleashed war actions like Apple’s suit against HTC which is a Google’s partner, Adobe-Apple tension, and many other minor signs all that gives certain ground to view the relations between Apple and Google as a full-scale war similar to that Apple had in the past with Microsoft. Google being a relatively new company can hardly boast of big expertise in building an overall marketing and promotional product strategy, while Apple having suffered in the past a bitter defeat had to get some useful experience. And it seems that it really has learnt something.  

Consumer-oriented distribution channels. During the PC Wars, PCs were delivered through a rather limited retail shelf space. There was a range of branded stores. To be successful one should place its products there along with products of other manufacturers. No technical support was guaranteed. Today the situation is completely different. Apple runs a range of stores that provide a superior environment for consumers to experience hardware hands-on and learn about the full line-up of Apple products. By contrast, Google is absolutely lacking that consumer cooperation feature while Apple has learnt its lesson.

Pricing. Apple used to price its Mac products at a higher range, pointing at a unique nature of their devices in comparison to Windows-based PC offerings. People turned out to be more saving –oriented and chose cheaper Microsoft-IBM products. Now Apple is leading quite a reasonable pricing policy, not leaving a sufficient pricing gap between its products and products of its major competitors. Besides, iPad is the cheapest new product category delivered by Apple.

Development environment. To have a quality platform can be good but it is definitely not enough. It must attract developers who will enrich its content with diverse apps focused on different target audience. While competing with Microsoft, Apple forgot this, launching and abandoning technology initiatives, co-opting and competing with their developers and at times missed promised milestones. 
By contrast now Apple is following the path Microsoft routed almost 20 years ago. It integrates core technologies across all products (moving on to the 4.0 stage of its mobile platform at all devices), made sure developer tools readily support these core initiatives (SDK kits which are updated on the regular basis), has consistently hit promised milestones, and has ensured that the iPhone application development process makes money for the third parties engaged. 
That’s why the number of iPhone only apps has past over 140 000, and iPhone and iPad developers all over the world are eager to be engaged in the pious activity. 

Target audience choice: PCs first came to offices of large enterprises giving them a possibility to dictate standards or types of solutions. Common users kept to the same hardware they used at work. Moreover, a more conservative nature of Microsoft was a safe harbor when compared to weird Mac products. Microsoft managed to straddle enterprises which were the key audience and drove the company to success. Today Apple is good at defining its target audience and making its products mass-market friendly. Though the slogan “Think different” seems to be out-of-date, as Apple products are in the consumer mainstream now, while Google occupies the niche Apple had many years ago – tech focused adherents. 

To sum it up Apple’s market success is evident and undoubted though the company itself is becoming that powerful evil enterprise Microsoft was in the previous decade. And it is that resilience and all embracing reach that has averted many prior adherent Microsoft’s followers. Can the scenario repeat?

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Social Media Pitfalls: 5 Lessons Learned

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Allow me to introduce my friend Jordan Kasteler also known as Utah SEO Pro. His background is in organic search engine optimization, which has been doing professionally for 4 years now, and has stayed pretty focused on that and has’t delved much into paid search at all. But as of late, he told me he has been playing a lot lately in social media and there are quite a few things he has learned. He also told me that there were quite a few things historically done he wishes he could erase. He doesn’t want to look like an idiot, especially to the SMOs, but what he wants to do is save a few headaches for people getting into social media. Today I am going to take what Jordan has taught me and I’m going to focus primarily on Digg because, it seems to be the most complex social media site out there due to its sophisticated algorithm. I am going to write his exact words, of course with his permission. So everything below will be straight from Jordan, which is some great insights on Social Marketing.

Mistake #1: Abusing self-promotion

For the past year and a half to two years I’ve had social media accounts but I never used them. If I did ever use them it was just to submit some of my own blog posts or my company’s blog posts too.

Let me note that self-promotion isn’t bad all the time. If you’ve established an authoritative status in a community or are a power-user then you are more likely to get away with it if you do so sparingly. Nobody likes a self-promoter or person who is greedy. It is essential to contribute to other people and help them promote their stories. Karma comes full-circle when it comes to social networking.

Mistake #2: Not understanding the scope of the site or the community in its entirety

I’ve heard a lot of social media experts suggesting to take a look at the site and community before you register to understand what it’s about. That advice is half the battle but before you can really understand what it’s about you have to observe, participate, and test significantly. My mistake was not knowing that the one community perceives things differently than other communities.

For example, Digg.com hates SEOs. I learned this by my low response on SEO articles submitted. Good thing I was currently operating under the name “jordankasteler” instead of “UtahSEOpro”. This could have been bad had I started participating with the name “UtahSEOpro” and then realized, after much wasted time and effort, that none of my stuff will ever get promoted because nobody likes me.

Another example happened lately on Mixx.com. I submitted one of my own articles to a group on Mixx that had a rule strictly against self-promotion. Needless to say that didn’t go over well.

Moral of the story here is know the community, know the rules, know that goes hot and what doesn’t, know who’s hot and who’s not and imitate them.

Another tip is to seek out niche communities that aren’t as big as say Reddit, Digg, Delicious, or StumbleUpon. There are niche sites like sphinn.com for Internet marketers, Sk-rt.com for woman, and Hugg.com for nature lovers. Relevant content in niche communities can drive more traffic and links than broader communities sometimes.

Mistake #3: Not having goals When I very first started using Digg used it almost as a bookmarking service. At the time, I probably didn’t even know the difference between Digg and Delicious. When I found a site I liked, I submitted it to Digg not considering or caring if the community would like it or not or if it was news worthy. What a horrible waste, I now have 70+ submissions and only a small percentage of them are actual quality content that I’ve submitted with intentions of promoting news worthy or remarkable article, video, or image.

Start by creating goals for every piece you submit. Your goals should be to promote everything you submit and do so with pride. If you submit low-quality content then you’re a low-quality contributor and the community will recognize it quickly. Don’t just submit and forget. Use a tool like Digg Alerter to watch your submitted content. If someone comments on a post then respond back to them whether the comment was positive or negative. The key here is to engage with the community and try to start a conversation. Comments are a good quality indicator of a post so this is an important part detail. If you don’t have a good response for the comment at least vote it up or down depending on the quality of the comment.

Mistake #4: Choosing quantity over quality when it comes to friends

Initial thinking of a newbie would be the more friends the better, right? WRONG! I’m not sure if this is recent with Digg’s new algorithm change or what but what I’ve found out is that the more friend you have the higher the threshold is for a story to go popular. My mistake was adding too many friends and not monitoring if they were voting for my content or not. After decreasing my friend count on Digg from nearly 500 friends to about 65 friends I’ve seen the threshold drop dramatically. For most social media sites you want to keep your friends very relevant to your interests and make sure that they are active users. Having non-active users, people who don’t appreciate your submissions, and people who don’t help you promote your submitted content is useless. I’ll go back to Karma here, if you’re not being active and helping others yourself then don’t expect your friends to do the same.

A wise thing is to constantly monitor your friend activity and trim down friends who aren’t beneficial to your success or not. This isn’t to hurt anyone’s feelings but if they aren’t going to play they need to get off the field.

Mistake #5: Not using RSS

I hate RSS when it comes to reading my news so I’ve stayed clear from it but I discovered that RSS is my best friend for social media. There are a couple reasons why. The first reason is if you’re contributing a lot of content, especially news worthy items, then timing is everything. It’s wise to subscribe to news sites like CNN.com or NYTimes.com so you can catch hot stories as soon as they are posted.

The second reason is that you can subscribe to what your friends are posting so you can help them promote their content without having to go to each profile and check up on them daily. It’s a huge timesaver and an easy way to keep tabs on your friend’s activity.

*BONUS Mistake* Not considering submission timing

There are certain times in each community where there are more eyes on the site or certain categories than others. Knowing those times and submitting during them is important. Generally, most people surf social sites in the morning or around lunch time during their break at work. It’s a good time to submit around then to capture people’s attention. It can make the different of whether your story goes popular or not.

If you’re up at 3:00 a.m. and you see a hot story pop up on your RSS reader from CNN then it’s probably not wise to save that until lunch-time the next day to submit because then you run the risk of someone else submitting it first. So be wise and use common sense.

Summary

Hopefully learning from my mistakes will help you avoid them in the future. I like to teach people the correct way of doing things based on my experience and hopefully you can take what you’ve learned and do the same.