Trends

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7 Success Factors of a Social Business

  1. Define the overall business goal and align social media strategies against it.
  2. Establish the long-term vision for becoming a social business.
  3. Seek and earn key executive support and sponsorship based on the business case, not the trend.
  4. Beyond marketing and service campaigns, develop a list of prioritized initiatives that will demonstrate business value at the enterprise-level and in key functions/lines of business and plot them on a two-to-three year roadmap.
  5. Train and educate executives and employees not just how to use social media, but also how social media can impact business objectives and how to develop and run programs that do so continually.
  6. Get the right people involved at the right levels. An effective social business strategy takes a unified approach with cross-functional support. It’s a combination of social media savvy and business acumen.
  7. Invest in technology only after your vision and strategy are set. Technology and social media in general are only enablers to the overall mission and purpose you set forth.

social media graph

Research by Brian Solis

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8 Marketing Takeaways to Align Your Content Strategy With the New Facebook News Feed

The text below if from Hubspot

1) Publish more visual content.

Facebook’s new look is flooded with enhanced images of every variety — an entire feed can be viewed solely comprised of these vivid images! Just one month after the introduction of Facebook timeline for brands, visual content — photos and videos — saw a 65% increase in engagement. This metric is bound to increase even further with the upcoming Rich Photos emphasis.

Prepare for the rollout of these updates by creating visually compelling content. If you’ve been previously posting text-based statuses and links, think about how you can convert those ideas into visuals.

2) Create image-focused ads.

While Facebook did not speak to how these News Feed changes impact ads. However, according to an interview published by the MIT Technology Review, when asked how the new design will affect ads, a Facebook representative said, “The idea of making things richer, more immersive, includes ads.”

Furthermore, the article states, “Speculation about the changes include the possibility that Facebook will add additional mini-feeds segmented by content (such as one just for photos), as well as bigger, more targeted ads.” Only time will tell, but it’s important to start thinking about your ads from a visual perspective.

3) Keep your copy short.

With the spotlight on photos, Facebook has also changed the way captions will display. While previously captions were scripted underneath the uploaded photo, captions will now overlay images in the News Feed.

This means that photos will be the primary way by which people engage with your visual posts, so any copy you craft should be brief and succinct. It has to provide all the key information the user needs to understand the image and its value, and take action.
likable

With the new Facebook News Feed, users will be able to look at content posted only from their friends. That means that even if someone likes and follows your business page, they may never see your posts because they filtered them out by looking at the content posted only from their friends.

Your solution to this is to focus more on your evangelists and customers. Your evangelists are the lovers of your brand — the people who find you remarkable, and share your updates with their own Facebook friends. Whether they’re customers, or just pure fans of what you do, these people will be instrumental in your success on Facebook.

4) Focus more on your evangelists.

With the new Facebook News Feed, users will be able to look at content posted only from their friends. That means that even if someone likes and follows your business page, they may never see your posts because they filtered them out by looking at the content posted only from their friends.

Your solution to this is to focus more on your evangelists and customers. Your evangelists are the lovers of your brand — the people who find you remarkable, and share your updates with their own Facebook friends. Whether they’re customers, or just pure fans of what you do, these people will be instrumental in your success on Facebook.

5) Create more compelling content.

The way Facebook is now surfacing top-shared articles reminds us of a LinkedIn Today-like method for featuring top content. This means it’s in your best interest to use Facebook as a way to promote your more public-facing content — such as blog content, for instance — to try to get your best content more viral reach.

But here’s the secret when it comes to creating viral reach: It’s all about sharing compelling content. Facebook is exploding with content daily, and unless your content stands out from the crowd in terms of value and interest, it won’t gain the visibility it needs. As shown below, Facebook will, in a news-like fashion, aggregate the most frequently shared content from a publisher, and include the company logo alongside that. As a content creator, you’ll need to work hard to create remarkable content that is shared so widely.

6) Integrate your Facebook and Pinterest strategies.

Content shared through third-party apps will begin to see greater visibility in your News Feed. This includes Pinterest, as showcased below. In fact, 98% of people surveyed with a Pinterest account said they also have a Facebook and/or Twitter account. Even more important, Pinterest drives sales directly from its website — of people with Pinterest accounts, 21% have purchased an item after seeing it on Pinterest.

7) Influence users to check-in.

Location-based activity has been gaining more importance on social media. On Google+, we saw the integration of Google Places. And when Facebook launched Graph Search, it came equipped with the ability to search for content based on location. In addition, results in Graph Search are often local. For example, if you search for the word “coffee,” Facebook’s Graph Search will likely return results on coffee shops near you.

8) Continue increasing likes of your page.

While the number of Likes your Facebook page has accumulated has always been important, the new News Feed makes these Likes even more meaningful.

When a user previously Liked your page, the excitement on the businesses end was around the increase in reach they could provide through their new fan’s friends of fans. There was no immediate benefit. The new Facebook makeover provides an immediate benefit.

When someone Likes your page, a new story is created in News Feed that shows the page’s default and cover photo. This once again shows how impactful your Facebook cover photo is, because every time someone Likes your page, that cover photo will have the opportunity to influence the friends of your new Facebook fan.

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YouTube Translation now in 36 languages

Now, you can get your video professionally translated using two main professional translating services, Gengo and Translated.net.  With them, you can now translate your English captions into 36 languages.  Captioning is great for YouTube SEO because it not only makes your video understandable to more people but the search engine can more easily tell what your video is about.

When you load English captions into your video, which can be simply done by uploading the script into YouTube, you will have another choice available in the Captions section of your Video Manager.  It will say, “Request Translaton.”  After that, YouTube will take you to a screen where you can select which languages you want to translate your video into, and then you’ll get “Translation Options,” in which you can either do the “invite a translator” thing, or use the new professional services:

youtube

Source: http://www.reelseo.com/professional-youtube-translation/#ixzz2LrcyloIy
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The Age of Secret Menus

frings-at-burger-king

It used to be rare to find a restaurant or fast food restaurant with a secret menu. One that has been around for some time is the secret menu at In-N-Out Burger.

Now it is popping everywhere. Panera Bread released its secret menu a few days ago. All of the options don’t have bread. Panera wants to try a new, healthier menu and by creating a secret menu they avoided the costs of creating new paper menus and kept the wall menus simplified. According to an NPR interview, they believe it is a cheap way to test new products and some free PR.

But the real reason why secret menus work is because of a simple concept brought by Maslow. The need for belonging. We all want to belong to a group and a select group that knows about a “secret” menu is even better. It brings mystery and rituals to the process. Mystery and rituals in businesses make people connect and stay.

The brain cannot cope with unanswered questions so it wants to be around until it has all of the answers – and rituals keep us engaged. Note that McDonald’s has a great example of ritual in the menu. The Mc10:35 can only be ordered at you guess it, 10:35am.

Restaurants are unfolding their secret menus but any business can incorporate mystery and rituals in their process. We have an entire audio on this topic that you can get for free at BestBuzzGift.com

Here are a few other restaurants with a secret menu:

  • MCDonald’s has the Monster Burger and the McGangBang. not all stores are caring the secret menu at this point. The Mc10:35 is a special sandwich that can only be ordered for ten minutes each morning, during the changeover from McDonald’s breakfast menu to its standard menu at 10:35 a.m.
  • Chipotle’s has a secret menu with several options. The Quesarito is one of them.
  • Starbucks: Biscotti Frappuccino, the Cinnamon Roll Cappuccino, and the Captain Crunch Frappuccino and the Raspberry cream cheese cappuccino.
  • Taco Bell’s: Chili Cheese Burrito, Double Grilled Quesadillas, and the Enchirito, which is an enchilada stuffed with beef, beans, cheese, diced onions, and topped with red sauce.
  • Burger King: Suicide Burger, Frings.
  • Subway: Pizza. While the pizza sub used to be a staple on Subway’s regular menu, it was removed when the company began pushing its healthy eating initiatives.
  • Jamba Juice: Green Gummy Bear Smoothie
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Billion Dollar Industries

Every year…

$33 billion is spent in corporate training & e-learning industry.
$27.94 billion is spent in the eBook and book publishing industry.
$10.5 billion is spent in the personal growth market.
$17 billion is spent in the mobile app market.
$1.2 billion is spent in the coaching market.

That’s billion with a B.

infoprodthumbHERE is what this means to you…

One word – OPPORTUNITY.

It doesn’t matter in which industry you are, you can create info-products. Check this out

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NeuroMarketing and Storytelling

StorytellingThe human brain is wired for narrative. This is why business storytelling is so important.

People make most of their decisions based on unconscious emotions as opposed to rational logic. Data dumps, dense PowerPoint slides and pure stats do not emotionally connect people with your idea. The best way to do that is with “Once upon a time…”

When absorbed in a story, people detect fewer inaccuracies and inconsistencies. More importantly, they don’t seem to care about the errors. However, when reading dry and factual content, people seemed more critical than when reading a story.

By linking your ideas to commonly known stories, you are leveraging a previously established neurological path in your audience’s memory. They will be able to more easily associate your ideas with that known path provided by stories. This way your ideas become more meaningful and memorable.

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Consumers in Latin AmericaGet Social With Brands

The internet may be a global phenomenon, but browsing habits differ widely from region to region and from country to country. One example: the different ways internet users in various countries interact with brand social network presences, as observed in a recent study.

In Latin America, 70% of consumers in Brazil, 72% of consumers in Mexico and 64% of consumers in Argentina agreed that they were “very much” or “somewhat” likely to regularly check brands’ social media pages. In Brazil and Mexico, just 12% in each country considered themselves very unlikely to check in on them.

infographic
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Consumer Behavior facts

Did you know?

  • Color increases brand recognition by 80%. Brand recognition direct links to consumer confidence. red, orange, black and royal blue attract impulse buyers

 

  • People go to Facebook to find out 2 things: does someone want to be my friend, and can I express myself?
  • They post on Facebook to do 2 things: to get others to appreciate them, or support them. 

  • 70% of people only use their tablet at home

  • 85% of all brand purchases are made by women.

  • 75% of consumers buy nothing (or buy less) if there are not enough employees at the store.

  • Over 30% of consumers are purchasing luxury goods to reward themselves

  • 28% of luxury consumers said they got a good deal through Facebook or Twitter or a blog.

  • Consumers will watch videos 60% of the time they find them on retail sites

  • 66% of consumers will watch a video twice if it is informative.

consumer

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The Art of NeuroMagnetism

First let me tell you what is NeuroMagnetism
NeuroMagnetism is a combination of strong self-positioning with NeuroMarketing. It helps the individual or company become desirable to the market and to inspire the desired reaction in person’s perception as deeply as possible.

Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing research that studies consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli.

Sounds complicate but this shows you ways to hit the consumer’s brain buy buttons.

In one sentence, it is the art to inspire desire because desire leads to action.

NeuroMagnetism goes beyond this and beyond persuasion because it also deals with your brand identity and how you are  perceived.

Why is this the age of NeuroMagnetism?

Old models of selling like AIDA- Attention- Interest- Desire- Action struggle in a world where adults have an attention span of less than 9 seconds.
A much better way is to understand NeuroMagnetism, become irresistible to an audience and  have the approach of Feel- Think- Do which shortens significantly the sales cycle.

The important part to understand is that there is a process you need to follow in order to get results. It is not about a bunch of tips on how you influence people.

I do relate this process to being a secret agent because if you stop to think about it, there are many commonalities.

spy
The steps are:

  1. Embrace your identity. You have to be aligned with your mission in marketing and in sales. The right mindset helps a lot as does the way you position yourself in front of prospects and customers.

2.Canvas the area. There is always a conversation already taking place in the mind of the consumer and it is your job to figure what is going on and what is wrong.- Find the pain

3.Infiltrate: Once you have the key points you should engage in that conversation, create connections and lead the process.

4.Reveal the assets– Here is where you show your value, show possibilities and solutions. What they gain by working with you. Show the gain.

5.Covert close– Where the sales happens without strong calls to actions and most of the time, the prospect will ask for the purchase.

This process can be applied to a number of scenarios but has always to be applied in marketing messages, copywriting and negotiations. All sales scenarios

If you’d like to go deeper in this topic, watch our webinar on NeuroMagnetism