Top 5 Inbound Marketing Articles to Start the Week: Social Media Jerks
When referring to examples like the
Pampers diaper fail
or the classic
Kryptonite Lock crisis
, we're all trying to steer clear of the same thing: bad use of social media.
To jump-start your Monday, let's take a look at the top inbound marketing articles of the past week, the first of which discusses some ways you and your company can act like a social media fool. Or, if you'd rather not, Sheila's article will help you prevent some common social media pitfalls so your company is more likable than Steve Martin's character in The Jerk .
1. 4 Ways to Act Like a Social Media Jerk ... & How to Avoid Them
Author: Sheila Beal on Marketing Pilgrim
Sheila's article uses the analogy of a cocktail party to illustrate a few social media scenarios you may want to avoid. And while she recognizes there is sometimes a fine line between social media success and social media crisis, she encourages readers not to be scared of social media as a marketing and engagement channel.
Some of Sheila's suggestions include not spending all of your time talking about yourself (or your brand), not ignoring (potential) customers' attempts to interact with you, taking the time to answer your fans'/followers'/(potential) customers' questions, and making sure your company's social media representative is knowledgeable about its products/services.
Marketing Takeaway: Improve your business' success on social sites by understanding social media best practices.
2. Review Your Posts to Improve Your Blogging
Author: Chris Brogan of chrisbrogan.com
What's the best way to make sure you keep delivering fresh and interesting content to your blog readers? Review your past articles to help you get a sense of what you've been blogging about recently and the format in which you're doing it. It's a simple concept, but how many of you can say you've done it recently?
Brogan's article suggests bloggers take inventory of their articles every once in a while to help them diversify their content, both in terms of subject matter and the manner in which they present information. Published a lot of written content lately? Why not mix it up with video or a cool infographic?
Marketing Takeaway: It's not always best to start with a clean slate. Take inventory of your blog to get a sense of what you might not be offering your readers -- then serve it up!
3. Why Retention Should Be Your Top Priority in Social Media Marketing
Author: Jeremy Richardson on Mashable
Jeremy's article challenges the thought that virality should be the be-all-end-all metric to track when determining the success of a product/service. Although he believes it is an important metric, he also introduces the importance of tracking retention, which A) makes virality last longer and B) measures the overall sustainability of a product.
His main point about retention is this: while something may become viral , that doesn't mean it will stay viral. Furthermore, even if you've built a business without virality, if it's sustainable, it will last.
Marketing Takeaway: The last subheading in Jeremy's article says it all: "Think Value, Not Hype."
4. The Art of the Email Pitch
Author: Audrey Watters of ReadWriteWeb
This ReadWriteWeb article offers 6 useful tips to consider when crafting an email pitch, which is something not only public relations professionals should know how to do. Audrey suggests that an email pitch be similar to an elevator pitch. Her 6 pointers? ...
- The subject line matters.
-
Introduce yourself.
- Know your audience.
- Pictures say a thousand words.
- Make it easy to reach you.
-
Make it happen.
Marketing Takeaway: Do your homework, be memorable, but most importantly -- be yourself.
5. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
Author: Avinash Kaushik of Occam's Razor
It's not uncommon to be so wrapped up in the details of a subject that you forget some of the basics. Avinash's post encourages you to take a step back by indentifying some basic definitions to help solidify your understanding of web metrics/analytics .
Avinash dives into 7 fundamental terms/concepts -- business objectives, goals, metrics, key performance indicators (KPI's), targets, dimensions, segments -- we should all understand when thinking about analytics.
Marketing Takeaway: Before you jump into complex web analytics, it's first critical to understand the basics.
Image from The Jerk
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