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Engaging Your Customers in Unconventional Ways

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5 Social Media Infographics You MUST Read

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Who doesn’t love an infographic? We sure do! And there are lots of them out there – but not all of them provide information you can take away and use. These are 5 social media infographics we think present truly useful information – whether you’re kick-starting social media efforts or looking to improve your current social media program.

Social Media Infographics

Social Media Advertising Reaching New Heights: If running ads on social networks like Facebook is something you’re considering, this infographic provides some helpful guidance on the current landscape and how valuable social media ads are to marketers.

Pinterest Deconstructed for eTailers and Content Marketers: Pinterest is the 3rd most popular social network on the web at the moment, and this infographic gives you the “who, what, where & when” to help you utilize Pinterest effectively.

How to Train Employees to Handle Social Media: According to this infographic, 48% of senior financial executives (apparently the industry used for this survey) feel that “social media will be an important component of corporate marketing efforts going forward.” So how can you train your employees to handle these efforts in the most effective way possible? This is an excellent how-to infographic.

7 Reasons to Embrace Online Culture: We have a saying here at Tuvel: Social media isn’t just Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – it’s all about being social. It’s not enough to just be on social media, your brand must be social to survive and benefit. This infographic gives 7 reasons why.

Email Marketing + Social Media: We have another saying here at Tuvel: It’s not one thing you do, it’s everything you do. So if you’re not integrating social media and social sharing into your email campaigns, you’re missing out on some big marketing benefits.

What are the most useful social media infographics you’ve seen?

Leveraging Social Media Partnerships for Your Event

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As we’ve worked with more and more events over the last couple of years, we’ve come to realize the importance of building lasting relationships that provide promotional value to everyone involved. Don’t get me wrong, everything we do is about building lasting and valuable relationships through social media with people who can help spread the word. But we’ve taken that a step further with our event clients by building cross-promotional partnerships on their behalf – what we call Social Media Partnerships.

What are Social Media Partnerships and how can they be valuable to your event? They provide a way for you to team up with a company or organization to create mutually-beneficial social media marketing opportunities. Many events (like conferences and trade shows) have sponsors and media partners who help promote the event to their audiences in a variety of ways – such as banners, offers and promotions, and coverage. By adding a Social Media Partnership level, you can create additional opportunities for promotion of your event through social media channels – not just Twitter or Facebook, but via groups, blogs, forums, newsletters and online communities. There’s incredible potential in Social Media Partnerships to reach hundreds or even thousands of prospective attendees through partner networks.

What to look for in a Social Media Partner:

  1. Relevance: Look for blogs, online communities, or associations with the most potential to reach your audience. Conduct research for those discussing or championing topics covered at your event.Social Media Partnerships
  2. Reach: Vet prospective partners based on how many of the right people they’re reaching. Find out how many newsletter subscribers, blog readers, group members and social network followers they have (Twitter, Facebook, etc).
  3. Opportunity: Identify as many different opportunities a partner can offer to promote your event. Can they write a blog post, tweet, post to their Facebook page, or run a banner? How about including a mention in their next newsletter or podcast?

How can you leverage Social Media Partnerships for your event?

A Social Media Partnership is about building a mutually-beneficial relationship with the partnering company or organization, while getting as much promotional value as possible from the partnership. We work with our event clients to put together an agreement that outlines exactly what both sides will be providing and receiving. If you already have a trade and barter agreement for other marketing and media partnerships, it will provide a good template for a Social Media Partnership agreement. The main difference, however, will be the inclusion of social media promotion and exposure.

Here are a few strategies you can use:

  • Co-branding opportunities: Offer logo exposure on your event website and in onsite printed materials (such as show programs and signage) as a Social Media Partner, while your Partner runs a banner or logo on their website. A high-profile, credible Partner will lend brand equity to your event and raise its profile through their endorsement. You can also give your Partners exposure through your Facebook page, or even by adding their videos to your event’s YouTube playlist.
  • Exclusive offers and discounts: Remember, a Partnership will need to provide value to the Partner and to their readers or members. For instance, you could give them an exclusive discount code to offer their communities online.
  • Contests and promotions: Provide a free pass to your event for your Partner to give away through a contest on their website or via Twitter. Here’s a great example of a giveaway held on CodeBetter, an online community for web developers and programmers. Through a partnership with our client, Visual Studio Live!, they gave away a pass to attend a conference and even chipped in money for travel expenses!
  • Social capital: Leverage your Partner’s social networks by asking for tweets, posts on their Facebook page, or through their LinkedIn group (if they have one). Provide them with tweets and trackable links they can use (like a campaign tracking URL to your website shortened through a service like Bitly).
  • Email communications: Ask for a mention for your event in your Partner’s next newsletter before the event, or even for a dedicated promotional email sent to their list (where you agree to provide them with the HTML content).
  • Coverage: Provide your Partner with a press pass to attend your event and cover it for their blog or publication. This will result in even more exposure both during and after your event!
  • Onsite advertising opportunities: If it’s appropriate for your Partner and space is available, offer a small booth space to them so they can get in front of your attendees. Another option may be to provide them space in the press room for their marketing materials.

Do you currently leverage social media relationships for event partnerships? If so, how? Tell us how it’s working for you!

What is Social Media Optimization?

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Bryan Haines of About Online Business/Hosting recently interviewed me on social media optimization. This is an excerpt from his post. You can read the full interview here. 

Bryan: To get started, maybe you can clarify: What is social media optimization?

Kari: Social media optimization (SMO) is basically optimizing your website and content to be as socially-shareable as possible. How easy is it for people to share your content via social media, and how present are you on social media so people can connect with you.

Bryan: How does social media optimization (SMO) differ from search engine optimization (SEO)?

Kari: SEO is a method by which you optimize your website content so it can be easily found in search engines. But, SMO factors greatly into your search engine visibility. As I mentioned before, SMO is about making it easy for people to share your content. Valuable and shareable content continues to be king – and how much your content is shared is becoming an important factor when it comes to search engine rankings. Run any search on Google and you see a +1 button on every result – a +1 for a certain result is a recommendation, increasing that site’s exposure. Any links you share within Google+ are also picked up in Google search results. So, while SMO is different from SEO, it’s also an important SEO strategy.

Bryan: What components are involved to properly optimize a site for social media?

Kari: I think the foundation of SMO is to create content that people will value and share. But what will people value? Listen to and monitor social media channels to find out what people are sharing and what they want to learn. Then, give them what they want. Use this data as a basis for creating content that will help them.

Secondly, it’s important to make sharing easy. Do your blog posts have social sharing buttons in an easy-to-spot place? Do you provide ways for videos, slide presentations and other documents to be embedded?

Bryan: What role does SMO play in online reputation management?

Kari: It plays a huge role! Actively staying on top of your social media presence by updating it with relevant content (your own and from others), making your content easily shareable, and engaging with other people will help you build and maintain a positive online reputation.

Bryan: It seems like every day there is a new network being launched. And they are becoming much more specific. How can a business owner know where to direct their efforts?

Kari: Social networking fatigue can be a big pitfall, and it can be difficult for marketers and business owners to figure out where they should be. Basically, they should direct their efforts where it makes the most sense. Don’t feel like you should be everywhere in social media just because it’s new and available. Do some research to find where your prospects and customers are hanging out – this may even include surveying them to find out what social networks they use.

Read the rest of Kari’s interview here!