Understanding the social web for better brand building (B3)

Understanding the social web

The Social web is complex & Social media tools available to enterprise can be confusing. Social media can definitely drive more traffic than most of the other options of marketing, but only if you do it the right way.

If you look at the past, “word of a mouth” was one of the most popular techniques to market your brand/product. Now years after, I would rather change to decades after, we are actually using the same concept of “word of a mouth” renovated to social web, no doubt this time it reaches the huge masses, beyond our geographical reach.

The way of doing business has changed a lot, If you look at the past it was make my product more better than my competitors, keep a closed approach and just sell my product and leave the customer pissed off. Now the whole approach is changed, business competitors are social now, services are shared to expand business, collaborations done to share the best practices, a better relation is maintained with the customers right from helping them to buy the products to use the products.

According to Hubspot, state of Inbound marketing Report 2011,57% of the B2B companies acquired their customers either from their company blogs or LinkedIn Channels. Facebook and Twitter played a major role too, gaining in 48% & 41% of the customers. Graph below shows the 2010 – 2011 Inbound Marketing report published by hubspot.

It’s really very important to understand the Social media, as you can make a blunder out of it, if you have not used it a right way. Haa!! but that doesn’t mean that you will always approve positive feedbacks/comments on your blogs or social pages. If I see a page with 100% positive comments on a page and millions of likes and no dislikes at all, I will be suspicious, and start thinking that it might be fake. So positive as well as negative comments are equally important, in fact a study reveals that negative marketing have raised the sales for an organisation, I really can’t remember the name, but have gone  through some reading with this case study.

Listed below are some of the social media vendors, which can be effectively used as a tool set for a Social Enterprise.

bit.ly

Around 15,000 users use Bitly and there are 8 billion clicks on Bitly links every month. Bitly is a ULR shortner that can be reliably branded and tracked across platforms from Facebook to Twitter or even an instant message. Track where your link has been visited, this will help you spot your marketing opportunities.

Fliptop

Fliptop is a social intelligence service which turns the email addresses into full social profiles, including public Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn data. Recently its integration with Salesforce, adds Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn data to your leads and contacts, for targeted marketing. Fliptop based on the email address provides every details like Name, Age Range, Gender, Location, Employer, Occupation, Influence Score and all the key Social Networks that person is on.

KLOUT

KLOUT is the standard for influence on the web. The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure

* True Reach: How many people you influence
* Amplification: How much you influence them
* Network Impact: The influence of your network

This will help you leverage the influence of the influential. Who should you ask to review your product? Whose complaint should you prioritize? Who are eligible for your new beta features, before you release it to the masses.

HootSuite

HootSuite is a social media dashboard with 2 million + SME users, including WWF, Pepsi and NBC. HootSuite helps makes your experience on social media more effective, from engagement, analytics, workflow and security to support. Hootsuite provides advanced tools that are focused to businesses so they have a more effective experience on social. One of the best features that HootSuite is well known for is scheduling.

HubSpot

HubSpot need no more introduction, I have already used the HubSpot report in my post. HubSpot is an inbound marketing software gives you one-stop tools from multi-channel analytics to blogging, SEO and social media tools, and marketing automation. Helping you earn quality leads and retain customers by creating marketing that people love.

Sharethrough

The future of marketing is content and not ads. Sharethrough is Google AdWords for video, optimised for sharethrough rates and not clickthrough unlike Adwords. Guarantees views and
maximises sharing of your branded videos. Visuals and videos have always created more impact on customers rather than display ads, this is what Sharethrough is all about, it makes your brand videos seen and shared.

Along with these tools, there are more branding and marketing tools online which can effectively rise your reach among the customers. With social web, the world is very small, increase your reach and amplify.  Signing off  for today !! hope the post is useful.