Sunday 29 July 2012

How to Maximize Your Facebook Engagement

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If you have a Facebook page, you likely know how important it is to get likes and comments. Without those, your EdgeRank suffers, and your posts are seen by fewer fans in the future. Facebook has already admitted that the average Facebook page only reaches about 17% of its fans. Since less than 1 to 2% of fans go back to your page, EdgeRank and newsfeed visibility are critical.

When you get a new fan, you have the opportunity to keep them engaged. If you don’t, they’ll simply stop reading your posts. Here are some of the things you should keep in mind as you determine how best to engage your Facebook customers.

Which Days are Your Fans Most Responsive?

You need to maximize likes and comments to be visible to fans. Part of getting better engagement results is knowing which days of the week your fans are most and least responsive. This is different for every company and industry. Knowing the best day of the week for all Facebook pages won’t help you with your brand. So even if the best overall day is Tuesday, your company’s best day might be Sunday.
For example, recent research indicated that the most responsive day for high-fashion brand pages is Wednesday, while the most responsive day for outdoor clothing brand pages is Thursday. Why should brands care? Well, even if you post every day, your greatest focus should go to those days when followers are most responsive. So, if your best day is on the weekend, make sure you have that covered.

It also turns out that the best days of the week to post on Facebook are not always the same days brands create the most posts. Sometimes it’s a Sunday, and maybe no one is working. It appears that the amount a brand posts is not based on their most responsive days, but perhaps just on convenience or coincidence.

Case Study: Chanel

When you compare individual companies, you see that the days they do the most posts are not the same days that they get the most likes and comments per post. For example, see the following charts:
Here is when Chanel posts the most (average posts per day over 90 days):



And here is when their fans are the most responsive (likes + comments per post):




Chanel’s fans are most responsive on Saturdays, but it’s their second-to-least posted on day of the week. Most likely, their social media person isn’t working that day, and they’re not scheduling posts for that day. Without realizing it, they’re missing out on a lot of likes and comments, which of course hurts their Edgerank and lowers their fan page’s post visibility.

This highlights that you shouldn’t post most when it’s convenient for you, but when your fans are most responsive.

How to Maximize the Most Engaging Days

If you want to figure out this data for your page, here are the steps:

1. Go to your Facebook page insights and click on likes.
2. Click on export data. Choose post level data, then select at least a two-month range so you have a good sample.
3. Save it and open it in Excel.
4. There’s not a quick way in Excel to group dates by day of week, but with a bit of manual work, you can find the average lifetime of engaged users per post, per day of the week.
The only shortcoming here is that the data is limited by how good and engaging your posts have been. It’s better to look at 10 to 20 brand pages per industry. You will have to manually look at hundreds of posts, or find a way to scrape that data. Then you can find the average likes and comments per post, per day of the week across an entire industry.

If one of your competitors is doing a much better job at getting likes and comments, you might want to follow their lead. It could be, in part, the days of the week they post, and also the type and quality of content.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ymgerman
source: http://mashable.com/2012/04/27/data-brands-customer-facebook-engagement/
author: Brian Carter

Thursday 26 July 2012

STEPHEN COVEY (1932-2012), A MODEL FOR WHAT HUMAN BEINGS ARE TRULY CAPABLE OF

A fitting tribute to the late Steven Covey by the Tony Robbins.
here it is:


“The world has lost a truly great soul today. Stephen Covey was a man whose ‘work was love made visible.’ He touched millions of people by the strength of his integrity and the depth of his caring. He was a personal friend, an extraordinary father, and a model for what human beings are truly capable of. Please join us in sending love and prayers to his family.”

-Tony Robbins

On July 16, 2012, Stephen Covey died due to complications from a bicycle accident.

He was the author of the best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It has sold more than 25 million copies in 38 languages.

I will miss Stephen Covey. In honor of his memory and celebration of life, here are some of my  favorite Steven Covey quotes, a synopsis of his famous 7 Habits book and his PowerTalk! audio interview with me.


One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present.”
-Stephen Covey

“The way we see the problem is the problem.”
-Stephen Covey

“Seek first to understand, and then to be understood.”
-Stephen Covey



The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The seven habits move us progressively on a continuum from dependence to independence to interdependence.

Independence or Self-Mastery
The first three habits are about moving from dependence to independence.

Habit 1. Be Proactive:
Take initiative in life by realizing that your decisions (and how they align with life’s principles) are the primary determining factor for effectiveness in your life. Take responsibility for your choices and the subsequent consequences that follow.

Habit 2. Begin with the End in Mind:
 Self-discover and clarify your deeply important character values and life goals. Envision the ideal characteristics for each of your various roles and relationships in life.

Habit 3. Put First Things First: Prioritize, plan, and execute your week’s tasks based on importance rather than urgency. Evaluate whether your efforts exemplify your desired character values, propel you toward goals, and enrich the roles and relationships that were elaborated in Habit 2.

Interdependence
The next three habits are about interdependence (working with others).

Habit 4. Think Win-Win: Genuinely strive for mutually beneficial solutions or agreements in your relationships. Value and respect people by understanding a “win” for all is ultimately a better long-term resolution than if only one person in the situation had gotten his way.

Habit 5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood: Use empathic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you. This creates an atmosphere of caring, respect, and positive problem solving.

Habit 6. Synergize: Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork, so as to achieve goals no one person could have done alone. Get the best performance out of a group of people through encouraging meaningful contribution, and modeling inspirational and supportive leadership.

Self Renewal
The last habit relates to self-rejuvenation.

Habit 7. Sharpen the Saw: Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle. This habit primarily emphasizes exercise for physical renewal, prayer (meditation, yoga) and good reading for mental renewal. It also mentions service to the society for spiritual renewal.

source: http://training.tonyrobbins.com/1900/stephen-covey-1932-2012-a-model-for-what-human-beings-are-truly-capable-of/

(jump straight to 17:00 mins to watch Steven Covey)

Saturday 21 July 2012

If You Tweet It, The Universe Will Come




The Internet is a vast place, just like the universe — had I written that statement on Twitter, I’d likely get a response from “the universe” itself.

Parody account @THEUNlVERSE responds to Twitter users who include the word “universe” in a tweet. The messages are often witty or sarcastic, and always in all caps.


The account is run by Amathev, who shared the prank on Reddit where it was quickly up-voted to the front page.

Twitter may be cracking down on the spam accounts, but parody accounts have found creative ways of getting around it. Amathev is restricted to a daily limit of @ replies to avoid triggering Twitter’s spam algorithm. The more followers a parody account acquires, the less likely it will be suspended. And with 7 billion of us here on Earth and who knows how many little green men out there, @THEUNIVERSE has the potential to rack up an out-of-this-world follower number.

Image courtesy of Terry Hancock
source:http://mashable.com/2012/07/13/universe-twitter-account/
author:Christine Erickson

Wednesday 18 July 2012

5 Strategies for Marketing on the iPad

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Just 22% of the top 50 retailers in the country have an iPad app. Yet the iPad is the fastest-growing consumer computing device on the planet. Why haven’t brands embraced it as quickly as they have the iPhone?

Clearly, brands have been slow to launch apps for this device – and other tablets – for a combination of reasons. Many marketers have already sunk millions into creating iPhone apps and assume these apps will works just fine on the iPad. Sometimes, this strategy works. After all, some apps offer an almost identical experience on the iPhone as the iPad. But to really get maximum marketing impact, brands do need to create iPad-specific apps that take advantage of the tablet’s larger screen and tap into the unique frame of mind of an iPad user.

There are some hurdles to overcome, like where to start, and whether a brand should go with a native app, a web-based app, or a hybrid app? The short answer is that a lot of this depends on the company. But there are some basic best practices to keep in mind when coming up with how to market your business on the iPad. Here are five tips.

1. Content is King, Context is Queen

People are only interested in the things they are interested in. This means marketers should use the iPad to reach target audiences based on their specific interests. The first step is to not create a one-size-fits-all app and then flood app users with tons of irrelevant content. Instead, plan for user segmentation so the content you deliver to individual users appeals to their interests, needs, and wants. It’s the same segmentation methodology brands are using for email marketing, just applied into the iTunes distribution model. Aside from letting users choose what type of content they want to view, always give them ways to revise their selections.

2. Invest in the Right User Experience

You can create fantastic content, but if users have a bad app experience, they won’t continue to launch the app. That’s why it’s critical to invest in UX testing as you develop iPad apps. Take a look at how Flipboard created a great user experience for content aggregation, or how an iPad app like Collarbone displays content and photography.

3. Focus on the Long Term

An iPad app is like a baby: It needs constant care and feeding. You can’t launch it and forget it. Invest in maintenance, content updates, testing, and optimization. The best way to ensure your iPad publishing app gains and maintain users is to create an editorial team much like magazines do. Hire writers, photographers, videographers, editors, and other creative types to constantly focus on it. They can be freelancers or contractors, or in-house, but everyone must meet regular deadlines. And there will always be iOS updates, so ensure you continue to optimize your app in that way as well.

4. Open the Door to Adjacency

Consumers may love your brand, but they also love other brands. Think about other, non-competitive companies also in your category. These partners can help enlarge the audience for your app if you keep them close. iPad publishing apps are a great potential advertising platform for partner brands. For example, if you develop a monthly iPad magazine full of branded content, let adjacent brands advertise within your iPad magazine to generate increased partnerships and/or ad revenue.

5. Get Your App Found

Consumers don’t just stumble upon apps. You know you’ll have to promote your iPad app. The question is how best to do it among your target audience. One of the best ways to promote apps is through links in paid advertising. For example, tag or promote the brand’s iPad app in print, TV, and display ads. But brands can also gain an audience for their app by promoting it through in-store signage and kiosks, search engine marketing, and social media. The North Face experiences a spike in downloads for their Snow Report and Trailhead apps each time they are featured in a print ad.

The iPad may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for marketers. Brands that can win hearts and minds on the tablet will be ready for the major shift away from the laptop and PC that’s sure to happen in the next decade.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, arakonyunus
source:http://mashable.com/2012/06/28/5-strategies-for-marketing-on-the-ipad/
Author:Gene Paek

Thursday 12 July 2012

6 Ways to Stay on Top of Social Media

To be successful in social media and community management you need to keep track of the constant changes to that ecosystem. That’s because everything you know about Facebook, Twitter, and other social spaces today will somehow be different in six months. Layouts will be altered, features will be added or removed, and new social networks may pop up.

So how should you keep track of all these moving parts? Here are six tips for staying on top of social media.

1. Blogs

There are hundreds of blogs focused on social media. Keep it simple by signing up to RSS feeds and spend twenty minutes every morning catching up on your social media news. Stick to blogs that are updated daily and focus on providing content in social media and technology.

Consider adding these blogs to your RSS feed to get started: SocialTimes, Social Media Examiner, TechCrunch, and SocialMediaToday.

2. Webinars

Webinars are often offered by agencies and make for good social media resources. You can find webinars by searching on Twitter or registering on directories that list the week’s webinars. You can also attend paid webinars that go beyond the basics. In either case, you can find a good starter list at webinarlistings.com.

3. Trending Topics

Yes, reading your blogs in the morning is effective but information travels fast so pay attention to what’s trending on Twitter, too. First, make sure that you check your Twitter trend settings. Certain settings will spit out tailored trends, which you should probably avoid.

Also, if you don’t understand why a certain word or phrase is trending you can check out whatthetrend.com for explanations.

4. Newsletters

Not all newsletters are spam. Some are actually worth signing up for. If you’re OK with getting a daily newsletter, check out SmartBrief. If you prefer a weekly roundup then take a look at SocialFresh. These newsletters curate the best social media content from the web and create original highly informative articles as well.

5. Meetups and Tweetups

Whether in person at a meetup or virtually at a tweetup, chatting with like-minded individuals will keep you on your toes, help you predict what’s coming next, and teach you new things about how others are behaving in social media. To find a group of social media fanatics near you check out Meetup.com.

6. Training and Certification

If you are serious about educating yourself in the social space you may consider signing up for a training program or certification course. Whether you are looking for a six-week crash course or an ongoing education program, resources are available. To start, you can check out WOMM-COM and HootSuiteU.

source:http://mashable.com/2012/07/07/social-media-education/
author:Cara Friedman

Saturday 7 July 2012

5 Tools for Turning Social Media Relationships Into In-Person Connections


Social media can be applied to all kinds of activities, including staying in touch with relatives, getting advice, and playing games. One type of application that is growing is the development of in-person relationships resulting from connections originally built exclusively on social media platforms. Building connections in person is incredibly important despite the rise of social media, according to Ed Keller and Brad Fay, co-authors of The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace.

Keller and Fay’s research uncovered that in the United States, 75% of conversations occur in person, with less than 10% occurring via social media. Their data also showed that, on average, in-person conversations are thought to be more credible, and often skew more positive than those conducted using social media.

Of course, it’s not always easy to manage the transition of a social media acquaintance into an in-person friendship. Here are a few tools that can help make that happen.

1. Lanyrd

Lanyrd, a social conference directory, is a great way of finding out where your social media connections will be so that you can arrange to meet up. The site allows you to sign in with Twitter and then see Lanyrd’s list of suggested events you may be interested in. To help you build connections with your Twitter friends, there’s a “from contacts” tab that lets you see all of the events your contacts have said they’ll attend. A glance at this list will show you which events will be more conducive to making more in-person connections.

Next to each conference or event, Lanyrd offers two main buttons: “Attend,” to signify you’ll be in attendance, and “track,” to bookmark an event and keep tabs on it.

2. LinkedIn

While it’s not too uncommon for a Twitter user to follow thousands of other users, social media practitioners tend to be more selective on LinkedIn and Facebook. Inviting a Twitter acquaintance to connect on LinkedIn or Facebook is often seen as a move towards a more formal relationship.

“I often ask fellow #LikeableChat participants to [join me on LinkedIn] after we chat. It solidifies the connection,” says Valerie Pritchard, a research coordinator and writer at social media marketing firm, Likeable.

For many, LinkedIn is an incredibly useful tool for building and maintaining professional relationships, providing access to plenty of information about someone, such as shared alma maters, mutual connections, and similarities in work histories, leading to opportunities for bonding.

3. Banjo

Banjo is one of the fastest growing mobile platforms used to maintain and develop in-person connections. In April, the service announced it had slightly more than 500,000 monthly active users, with total membership hitting 900,000.

Banjo can find your connections across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and it alerts you when your contacts are within a geographic interval of your choosing. This makes it incredibly easy to arrange spur-of-the-moment meetings with online acquaintances.

Banjo is also great if you’re planning a visit to a place where you don’t have many friends. You simply tell Banjo where you plan to be, and it will load a map indicating where your online friends (and other Banjo users) are in the vicinity.

4. Sonar

Similar to Banjo, Sonar is a mobile app that lets you check in to physical locations and know when your social media contacts are at the same venue or nearby. One key feature of Sonar is letting you know when your friends’ friends are nearby as well, revealing connections you might not have otherwise made. With Sonar, it’s not uncommon to check in to a busy venue such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and find someone with four Facebook friends, two LinkedIn connections, and dozens of Twitter followers in common.

Sonar usage is particularly heavy in fields such as digital marketing and among communities such as parenting bloggers, in which people usually form strong connections online before ever meeting in real life. During conferences where these communities come together in person, Sonar is very useful in making sure users don’t miss the people they really want to meet.

5. Meetup

Of course, going to a meetup is a great way to meet some of your online friends in real life. You can do this by setting up an account on Meetup.com, and linking it to your Facebook account so you can see where your friends will be. You can flesh out your profile with specific interests, which lets Meetup improve the meetups that it suggests to you, or you can simply search by keyword. Meetups are organized for all sorts of interests from politics to botany.

Of course, Meetup.com isn’t the only way to strengthen relationships made online. Google Groups is a very useful choice when it comes to organizing a tight-knit community and planning in-person meetings.

What’s your favorite way to turn your social media connections into actual in-person friends? Have your say in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, IsaacLKoval
Author:Jeremy Goldman
Source:http://mashable.com/2012/06/25/social-media-friends-real-life-connections/

Wednesday 4 July 2012

Sorry, Marketers, You’re Doing Twitter Wrong [REPORT]

Most marketers are tweeting too much on the wrong days, not using hashtags enough and almost never do the one thing that will dramatically boost their retweets — ask for them — according to a new study looking at how marketers use Twitter from Buddy Media.


The social media marketing firm, which was recently acquired by Salesforce, looked at 320 Twitter handles from the world’s biggest brands from Dec. 11, 2011 to Feb. 23, 2012. Among the findings: Twitter engagement rates for brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday compared to weekdays. However, most brands aren’t taking advantage of this phenomenon and, on average, only 19% of the brands’ tweets were published on the weekend. If a brand spaced its tweets out evenly throughout the week, then 28.6% should occur on the weekends. A full copy of the report can be found here.

Depending on the industry, the difference between weekday and weekend engagement is even more stark. The weekend produces 30% higher engagement for fashion brands, for instance. Publishers also enjoy a 29% higher engagement on Saturdays, when consumers are presumably catching up on the news of the week. Yet only 7% of tweets from publishers actually occur on Saturdays.

In general, as the chart below shows, according to Buddy Media, the brands are tweeting way too much in the middle of the week and not nearly enough on the weekend:



Despite the strong showing for Saturday and Sunday tweets, the study also found, paradoxically, that tweets published during “busy hours” performed best. Tweets during such hours, defined as between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. in the study, got 30% higher engagement rates than those those that occurred after-hours. Twitter’s performance in this respect is the mirror image of Facebook, where posts on “non-busy hours” get 17% higher engagement. As a result, Buddy Media recommends using both Facebook and Twitter for your outgoing communication, but using them at different times, which are outlined on the chart below:


Meanwhile, the “tweet spot” for the number of tweets per day appears to be four. After that, the law of diminishing returns sets in.



As for the tweets themselves, Buddy Media suggests keeping them to fewer than 100 characters. Tweets of that length got a 17% higher engagement rate than other, comparatively windy tweets. While you’re tweeting, it’s also a good idea to include a link, since such linked tweets have an 86% higher retweet rate than their linkless counterparts. Of course, the link should work. They often don’t and in 92% of cases, Buddy Media determined that was because they didn’t insert a space before the link.

Other findings in the report:


  • Tweets with hashtags get twice the engagement of those without, yet only 24% of tweets during the time of the study used them.
  • Using one or even two hashtags in a tweet is fine, but if you add a third, you’ll begin to see an average 17% dropoff in engagement.
  • Posts with images have double the engagement of those without even though users can’t see them until they click on them.
  • If you ask followers to “RT,” you’ll get a 12X higher retweet rate than if you don’t. But if you spell out the word “retweet,” that figure jumps to 23X.
  • Though 77% of brands in a recent poll said that Twitter was a top priority, Tami Dalley, VP-insights and analytics at Buddy Media, argues that there’s room for improvement. “It’s great that brands are active on Twitter,” she says, “but it’s crucial they know best practices for publishing engaging content. Reach and engament can vary drastically with minor tweaks.”


What do you think? Is your business using Twitter right? Does Buddy Media’s report jibe with your experience? Let us know in the comments.

Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, sodafish
Author:Todd Wasserman
Source:http://mashable.com/2012/06/26/marketers-failing-twitter-study/

Sunday 1 July 2012

Anthony Robbins - Being A Powerful Leader = Being A Powerful Servant

Here is a Short but powerful video to change your perspective on Business and Life.
Hope you will enjoy it and feel free to share it.