Pittsburgh Social Media Marketing Campaign Strategies

Having completed the planning of your Social Media Marketing Campaign/s it’s time to take a look at your company’s core competencies and shortcomings. The SWOT analysis has been used as a business tool for some time and is a good barometer for analyzing your business. While Social Media is the focus of this series of posts, this analysis tool can be used for any number of business projects.

Being very honest with yourself and using cautious measurement will serve you well here. We like to underestimate slightly for unforeseen factors that arise thus giving us a real world scenario and a better overall picture of how a campaign will perform.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING MIX – ANALYSIS

Go through the SWOT chart with all the parties involved and see where you stand in these areas. A much clearer picture will develop about where your management and employees stand and if they’re on board. This is where your Social Media Campaign starts to take shape and where it gets fun.

If there is a consensus that the company has the required skills to proceed then you can look at ways to leverage your Strengths to drive this Social Marketing campaign. During your analysis Opportunities will present themselves, be sure to document them. When analyzing weaknesses look for ways to turn these into strengths. If extra training is required a third party Social Media Consultant may be an option for you. Turn threats into opportunities by identifying them and devoting resources to combat or overcome them.

YOUR CHOICE OF SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

Your choice of social media sites depends on your current customers, the resources identified in your SWOT analysis and the location of your targeted demographic. Many of these sites require considerable time while others are simply channels of distribution for your content. Consider your time investment and the ability to consistently maintain support for them all. We always recommend starting with a few Social Media channels until you have developed a sufficient proficiency with them and then add channels as you move on or see opportunities. Just remember your consistency and commitment to your Social Media Campaigns will ultimately determine their success.

A great article on the list of links and tools is available at http://www.fredcavazza.net/2008/06/09/social-media-landscape/.

Pittsburgh Social Media Marketing Campaign Strategies

Okay, you have a website that's been well designed and SEO’d for your keywords. Other On Page SEO has been implemented and your site is Indexed in Google and the other major search engines. Your content has been optimized as well as validated. Your backlinking strategy is in place and continuously being improved. What about Social Media?

There are hundreds or thousands of social media websites out there. Which ones should you choose? Facebook? Linked in? Twitter? MySpace? YouTube? Yahoo Buzz? Google Buzz? Mixx? Reddit? Digg? Sphinn? Technorati? BlogCatalog? Stumble upon? Scribd? Twaango? De.li.cio.us? Squidoo? Leapfish? Orkut? I think you start to see the problem.

The Social Media Jungle

THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING MIX - PLANNING

Do you have a PR department? Most small businesses say no. But we say, yes you do. Your Public Relations department is every owner, partner, employee, customer, supplier, and person who knows about your business. That’s the beauty of Social Media.

Your Social Media Marketing mix is the combination of the Social Media sites that you use and the frequency in which you use them. Any good campaign starts with a plan, this is no different for Social Media Marketing or SMM. Looking deeper into Social Media as a strategy is Social Media Optimization or SMO. Before we analyze any sites we must first look at the resources at hand that can be leveraged for your campaign. Once you have a firm grasp of the time and talent you're willing to dedicate then you're ready to move on to analyzing your audience.

When giving a speech, the first rule is to know your audience. This is key in social media as well. What forms of social media does your audience use? Running a Twitter campaign when your target market is all on Facebook won’t help nearly as much. Are there trade specific forums available? This is information you should already have. If you don't, just look at the main keywords you use for your advertising. Your customers themselves can be a valuable tool as well. Just ask them.

Marketing and Advertising on the Internet through Social Media is still based on sound fundamental principles. Good customer service, responsiveness, and a clear and consistent message should be the main themes of any marketing or advertising campaign. Just remember, unrealistic expectations ruin marketing campaigns. Be prepared to invest plenty of time and energies and you will reap the rewards.

Blackball Online Marketing specializes in social media campaigns for small businesses in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. We also provide social media consulting to help you get started or to take your use of Social Media to the next level.

Facebook and MySpace Privacy End Around

Image Courtesy Of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review

I don't know about you, but I would just as soon somebody tell me the truth than lie to MY FACE. (pun intended) On Friday May 21, 2010 Yahoo! News released this story - Facebook, MySpace caught releasing user data

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100521/tc_ynews/ynews_tc2189 . Here’s an excerpt, “The report says that the companies have delivered user data to major online advertising companies such as Google's DoubleClick and Yahoo!'s Right Media, despite explicit pledges to protect such information.”

This makes complete sense. Facebook and MySpace have no interest in protecting our data. They say so right here http://www.facebook.com/terms.php , especially when they can make money giving away our data to developers of Facebook apps, advertisers, and other direct marketing networks. The currency is the data that we've all provided for free. This encourages developers and marketers to pay Facebook and that's their bottom line and their allegiance.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, this is the link to the Facebook API developers documentation -

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Users.getInfo#Description.

A synopsis of the previous link is listed here:

“Description

Returns a wide array of user-specific information for each user identifier passed, limited by the view of the current user. The current user is determined from the session_key parameter.

Use this call to get user data that you intend to display to other users (of your application, for example). If you need some basic information about a user for analytics purposes, call users.getStandardInfo instead.

This call no longer requires a session key. However, if you call this method without a session key, you can only get the following information:

• uid
• first_name
• middle_name
• last_name
• name
• locale
• current_location
• affiliations (regional type only)
• pic_square
• profile_url
• sex

You can call this method as soon as a user authorizes your application. If you do so, you can get the same information as you can without a session (see above).

User Privacy and Visible Data

Important: Depending upon the user's privacy settings (including whether the user has decided to opt out of the Platform completely), you may not see certain user data. For any user submitted to this method, the following user fields are visible to an application only if that user has authorized that application:

• meeting_for
• meeting_sex
• religion
• significant_other_id

In addition, the visibility of all fields, with the exception of first_name, last_name, name, pic, sex, current_location, affiliations, and uid may be restricted by the user's Facebook privacy settings in relation to the calling user (the user associated with the current session). “

The long and the short of it is this – your name and location data, regional affiliations, pictures, sex, religion and any other data you have provided may be exposed and free for the taking. Worse yet it may already be distributed despite setting the privacy for your page. Remember the Facebook privacy glitch a few weeks back that reset the privacy settings when Facebook upgraded their policy? There you go. A glitch? Or a 52 fake-out to make your info public?

If this doesn't anger you after you've been told that your data is safe and private, I don't know what will. The Facebook and MySpace services are not that important to me to give away my private data. If someone wants to sell me ads I would like to see them have to work a little harder.

With all the Facebook privacy changes lately and all the bad press they have been receiving, one would think they would take a more active role and be more public in their disclosure of these problems. That's just not in their best interest and why this post calls their tactics an end around.

Pittsburgh Online Marketing Services by Blackball Online Marketing tries to inform its readers about the privacy and security issues of their social media experience. Our motto is “Helping People is Good Business”. Please tell us what you think…

Facebook, the New MySpace

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had an article today about Facebook's privacy concerns titled Privacy concerns worry some users of Facebook. While this is nothing new, it spotlights the growing concerns of the general public about Facebook and privacy. There was also a segment on the Early Show not long ago about this very thing.

Yogi Berra said “No one goes there anymore, it got too popular.” With all the publicity that Facebook was getting about temporarily unseating Google as the number one trafficked site on the Internet, along came growing concerns about Facebook's privacy policy. Facebook users have swelled to over 400 million and growing. All the while, Facebook has been lifting restrictions on privacy.

Will Facebook becomes the new MySpace? Users on MySpace, the once popular social network among teens, left in droves over advertising and privacy concerns. Will the same thing happen to Facebook? It very well could if these issues are not addressed immediately.

Blackball Online Marketing has chosen a wait and see approach before investing time and energy on Facebook from a business perspective. Our Facebook experience to date is that it has no rhyme or reason. Their implementation and changes are too complex or intricate to understand easily for the average user. We also want to see Facebook address their bipolar attitude towards privacy on their popular social media site before we jump on board.

While very different platforms, a good case study would be Twitter whose microblog is another social media giant. Their approach to privacy has been swift and decisive. Facebook needs to implement a measured and thorough revamp of their brand and their message before usership and advertising dollars go to the next best biggest thing, just like what happened to MySpace.

Blackball Online Marketing provides Pittsburgh Online Business Consulting Services at an affordable cost.

Social Media Icons Explored – A Guide To Social Networking Sites and Tools

Social Media is all the rage – but what do all these icons represent? As in any other business an icon or logo is used to represent the product or company without having to see the verbiage written out. Most people relate visually and these symbols have become commonplace. We thought we'd share a rundown of some of the most popular with you to help get you up to speed in the terms and symbols of this ever-increasing medium called Social Media.

RSS Icon

This is the standard RSS feed symbol. Short for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, RSS has not been adopted by the masses as was thought when it originally came out in 1999. It does however have many uses such as data aggregation and news reader updates that go on behind the scenes. When a website offers an RSS feed this icon will appear in the address bar to the right.

Facebook Icon

Facebook is, as of the time of this post, the number 1 website for traffic in the world having passed even the almighty Google. Facebook is a community based social networking platform that allows users to become fans, add friends, and create groups. The website currently has more than 400 million active users worldwide and growing.

Twitter Icon

Twitter is the 140 character at a time posting and microblogging wonder that allows users to follow other users and send and view their text messages. Users can add other Tweeple to lists and follow lists as well. This is an open API platform social networking site which has increased it's exposure rapidly due to the rapid exchange of information and openness of it's ability to share information.

Digg Icon

Digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. If you enjoy a story you vote it up, or digg it. If you're not so favorable to a story or photo, you vote it down.

LinkedIn Icon

LinkedIn is the premier business social networking tool in our opinion. Gathering a following is harder and more lucrative as well. The quality of business class connections is stronger in our opinion. The site is all about business and that's why it made our list – professional networking at its finest. LinkedIn has more than 60 million users worldwide, of which about half are in the United States.

YouTube Icon

YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos about just about anything. Originally founded in 2005 and bought by Google, YouTube changed the Social Media landscape forever by introducing streaming video and video sharing capabilities that have evolved with the technologies and data capabilities we take for granted now.

These are but a few of the vast number of social media sites out there now. Many are sure to disappear and many more are sure to appear. Do you have a favorite we have not mentioned? Leave a comment and we'll try to include it in a second version of Social Media Icons Explored.

Blackball Online Marketing provides Pittsburgh Online Marketing Services to small business and home based business. We wish to acknowledge Wikipedia, Top Ten Reviews, and Find Icons for their outstanding sites and great information.