Tag Archives: social media
Twitter Research: Go with the Crowd.
One of the biggest 
casualties of the recession is market research. Some marketers, like Ideopia, have turned to Twitter for directional information on ideas before making a full-blown commitment. Before you get crazy about confidence levels and standard deviations, let’s be clear: This isn’t a substitute for a quantitative study or even a focus group.
What Twitter offers is insight into how your followers might behave. For example, you might tweet a teaser about an event, “Want to see cows play hockey? Let us know.” Let’s assume that your Twitter following fairly accurately mirrors your target audience. So if you have 1000 followers and none of them reply to or re-tweet your post, you may have a dud on your hands.
Another strategy is to pit two ideas against each other to see which one catches. Twitter research allows you to take the temperature of your idea by crowd sourcing your followers. Give it a try!
![[Facebook]](http://www.ideopia.com/wavybrainy/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Twitter]](http://www.ideopia.com/wavybrainy/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
Internal-Only Twitter Clients Thrive in Workplace
Looking for someone to grab lunch with? Tweet it. That’s what employees at a division of LG Electronics do, using BizTweet, the company’s internal-only version of Twitter.
In an age where companies and organizations face irrelevance for not using Twitter, companies like LG have found their social media niche developing unusual applications.
The informality of BizTweet has helped foster a positive culture within the company. Employees there tweet meeting updates and chat about customer support, as well as the occasional aside on traffic or sports.
In the healthcare industry, professionals may use Twitter internally to bid on work shifts, share patient trends and tweet live from medical conferences.
The possibilities are endless. Do you use Twitter outside the normal broadcast norms? Tweet us @Ideopia. Let’s get the discussion started.
Think Social Media is Free? Think Again.
Before you take an accounting of the true costs of social media, consider what expectations you have of a program. Is it just to get your feet wet? Are you counting on it for customer service? Do you expect to drive traffic to your website? Calibrate your budget accordingly.
Strategic Leadership (Monthly)
What are the goals of your program? What are the metrics? How will it be managed? Who is your target audience? How will you grow or engage your audience?
Tactical (Daily)
Who will create content? How often? What are the rules for acceptable posts and Tweets? How will you achieve economies of scale by deploying the same content across multiple platforms?
Monitoring (Daily)
How will you monitor and respond to interactions on social media? Friend requests?
Analytics (Daily – Monthly)
What are you measuring? How frequently? Will you analyze response to content, e.g. a LinkedIn Group? How will analytics affect decision-making and content?
The software for social media may be free, but the meatware is not. Effective social media programs require investment, brains and tenacity.
Facebook’s Extreme, Almost Creepy, Ad Targeting
Facebook’s ad service is one of the most targeted and dynamic advertising mediums around. And, we believe it’s highly underutilized. From our experience, we’ve found that Facebook can trounce Google Adwords in terms of quality traffic and conversions. That’s because you can cheaply make numerous ads that target consumers based on the usual age and gender demographics, and further sort by state, city, profession, and lifestyle likes and dislikes.
As you select your criteria, the program dynamically updates how many people you’re likely to reach with your ad. Facebook ads are so precise that one man was able to create an ad solely for his wife, and it worked.
Consumers are 10 times more like to buy products via social media, according to one study, so get on Facebook and get cracking on brand promotion!
Don’t Be A Twitter Pest
Companies, tech nuts and job seekers alike use Twitter to sell their products. Unfortunately, some of them are annoying all of us. Don’t be that person.
Don’t spam your followers: If your message is clear and your product relevant to your followers, you won’t need to tweet every five minutes. Followers involved with your brand will likely re-tweet your content and spread the word. Don’t forget to reply and thank them!
Virtual trophy case: We’re truly happy that you won 15 Rainbow Excellence Awards last night, but consistently tooting your own horn is obnoxious. A little bragging here and there won’t hurt, but remember, if your feed is driven by unique and powerful content, your followers will be the ones bragging.
#Too #many #hashtags: Too often we see tweets with multiple hashtags. Keep the message and topic simple and let the content speak for itself.