Source: Social Workplace

Infographic – Social Business Imperative: A Playbook for Social Media in Your Organization is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Branding today totally depends on your activity on Twitter & Facebook on.mash.to/tbOWn6 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

— Wim Rampen (@wimrampen) December 18, 2011

My sentiment exactly.

Infographics that show all kinds of statistics are a very influential form of expressing ideas. The problem is, for the most part, they express a general point of view. And the people who like the simplicity of infographics, will generally believe them to be true.

The same can be said of reputation management services like Klout that supposedly measure how influential you are on social media.

I say Bah! Humbug to both!

Branding is not social media

Branding is everything else you do besides posting updates on your Twitter and Fan page.  It’s your actions, your message, your look, your tone. Social media tools can indeed help you develop and strengthen your brand, but they are far from the only branding opportunity you have.

Sure, there are people like Gary Vaynerchuck and Chris Brogan, to name a few internet celebrities, that built their brand through social media channels. But they’ve eventually extended to the offline world.

Technology is just the enabler.

Do you honestly believe that if they were influential, Klout would now lower their overall Klout score because they didn’t use their social media accounts for a few days?

Influence, your brand power is not measured by your Klout score, it’s measured by your share of synapse. Meaning, how many people have you on top of mind. Social media can help you achieve that but it’s not the only way.

Related articles

• 21 Captivating Social Media Stats: How People Interact With Brands [INFOGRAPHIC] (hubspot.com)
• How Branding Works In The Social Media Age (viralblog.com)
• Facebook Brands Are Ignoring 50% Of Consumers’ Posts (marketaire.com)
• Brands Ignore Nearly 50% Of Consumers’ Facebook Posts [Infographic] (readwriteweb.com)
• 5 Killer Facebook Marketing Infographics (jeffbullas.com)
• 5 Noteworthy Examples of Corporate Social Media Policies (hubspot.com)

Branding doesn’t depend on your activity on Twitter & Facebook is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Created by Voltier Digital for ScottMonty.com

Infographic: 5 companies that do social media right is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Here’s a video infographic by Dutch company, Video Infographs,  presenting the latest data in The World of Social Media 2011.

Credit: Viralblog

Video infographic: The World of Social Media 2011 is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Stage marketing experiences. Experiences people want to be a part of. Experiences that are unique and touch people’s lives. That’s the message behind the book The Experience Economy.

You have to remember that their landmark book was released almost 13 years ago. And it’s still relevant today. I’ll go as far and say that it’s more relevant today simply because experiences now extend online. When the marketing is embedded into the customer experience, it doesn’t even look like marketing.

With that said,  I thought it would be great to revisit the main ideas of the book in the video above.

Great customer experiences don’t look like marketing is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Do we really need studies with data that tell us what we already know: Companies shouldn’t ignore customer complaints.

From Fortune:

An October 2011 studyconducted by Conversocial, a London-based software company specializing in social networking, found that many retailers fail to respond to one major type of consumer response: complaints.

Conversocial’s survey noted that retailers Costco (COST), Kmart and Kroger (KR) missed 100% of their consumers’ complaints on social networking sites during September 2011, and Wal-Mart (WMT) ignored 40% of complaints. Out of the 10 major retailers examined over a five-day period in September, only Safeway (SWY) shined, responding to 95% of complaints on their Facebook page.

Joshua March, the CEO of Conversocial, notes that too many retailers “have an ad hoc approach to social networking sites and haven’t gotten serious about customer service. They have one or two people trying to respond, but can’t react to the scale of complaints.”

Although this study was focused on retailers, it applies to any type of organization or industry. You just can’t go on ignoring your customers when they need your help. Ever.

Now it just comes to show you how old habits become irrelevant when the world changes.

Dealing with customers on social sites reveals “a fundamental shift in customer service,” March says. Complaints used to be viewed as a nuisance, but ignoring dissatisfaction on Facebook and Twitter can go viral and trigger a steady exodus of customers. “Companies can’t afford to ignore people,” he says.

There you go.

Related articles

• Conversocial Offers Free Facebook Customer Service Kit (allfacebook.com)
• What Every Social Media Marketer Should Know About Conversocial (socialtimes.com)
• Facebook complaints: Companies are asleep at the wheel (management.fortune.cnn.com)
• 5 Ways To Beef Up Customer Service On Facebook (allfacebook.com)

Companies can’t afford to ignore people. Ever. is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Although the title says it’s for students, it really is for just about anybody who wants to make better use of Google’s search capabilities for online research. That means you: Marketers.

Created by: HackCollege

Infographic: How to Google is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

The iconic brand Mercedes Benz is pretty awesome. So awesome it extends that awesomeness online to it’s fans.

In the video below, Brian Solis talks with Eleftherios Hatziioannou, former Global Social Media Manager at Mercedes-Benz about Mercedes Benz successfully uses social media to engage it’s customers.

A few key takeaways:

1. You don’t need to spend on digital advertising for fans. According to Eleftherios Hatziioannou, Mercedes Benz hasn’t spent a single dollar on digital advertising to get fans. Thinking instead that initiating conversation is a more effective way to gaining their trust.
2. Publish content that’s interesting to your fans. A mix of understanding your customers needs and addressing them through content, and publishing content that is surprising makes a big impact. Ask yourself: Why is this interesting? Why would anyone tell their friends? Would I tell my friends? Is this buzz-worthy?
3. From push to pull. Social media isn’t about spending your marketing dollars and pushing your message out there, it’s about engaging people to share their thoughts and experiences.

Now you might say that you don’t have a brand name like Mercedes Benz and so these lessons don’t apply to you. Not true. One of the main challenges if you’re a small business is the size of your marketing budget.

Well as you can see, Mercedes is a big brand and they’re not putting that big budget to use in social media. Their spending is focused on creating interesting content, not in the pushing it through channels.

The lessons above apply to any type of company, whether big or small. What matters is consistency and the right attitude. I think this also why Eleftherios Hatziioannou’s job description also included ‘change management’.

Related articles

• Video: Shooting the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Roadster (autoblog.com)
• Video: Hear the glorious 2012 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Coupe all by its lonesome (autoblog.com)

What Mercedes Benz can teach you about social media marketing is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

So who owns social media? PR? Brand? Marketing? Customer Service?

It shouldn’t be a question of who owns it but of who leads it. And that, is everyone.

“In the future, all marketing jobs will become social media jobs.” We agree with this statement. This is why we go to great lengths to not only educate our clients about social media in general, but also on how it impacts the way their business operates, and will operate, in the future.

While we are just at the beginning stages of this evolution, there are some companies out there who are experimenting their way to the future. PepsiCo, for example, built the Mission Control Center for it’s Gatorade brand with the sole purpose of analyzing and driving conversations about the hydrating beverage in every platform that matters.

This Social Media Control Center sent a clear signal to the whole company that being social matters. To make it work they created a team from across all functions of the company such as PR, Brand, Marketing and Customer Service. By taking this approach, PepsiCo intentionally ended the discussion about which department owns social media. Everyone owns it and thus everyone leads it.

This is something your organization should look at with desperation because this is how the organizations of the future are going to operate very, very soon.

Remember: In the future, all marketing jobs will become social media jobs.

Related articles

• Social Media as a Customer Service Tool? (customerthink.com)
• Are You Building a Social Brand or a Social Business? (briansolis.com)

From ownership of social media to leadership is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

Conversion. It’s a big issue in web design and marketing. There is no shortage of companies that are tackling this problem and that offer some way to improve conversion. See here, here, here and here.

I stumbled on a Fast Company article about EyeQuant, a startup that uses neuroscience to make websites stickier:

EyeQuant, let’s you upload any web page and get an instant read on where a visitor’s eyeballs are likely to land. The analytics tool can then suggest modifications to the page based on a database of test cases.

I thought this was amazing. It’s very simple simple because all you have to do is upload a screenshot of any page on your website and the analytics software does it’s magic and recommends you specific changes.

This is very powerful.

One of the co-founders of EyeQuant explains further:

Here’s a demo of how it actually works:

Before jumping into any conclusion and make any type of recommendation, I would love to take EyeQuant for a spin.

Neuroscience has moved into marketing and given birth to the emerging field of neuromarketing.

But there are issues with neuromarketing. Mainly that having such a deep insight into how people make decisions can help companies sell us crap we don’t need. Not to mention brainwashing!

With that said, it can also be very powerful if used correctly. ‘Betterness’ could take on a whole new meaning.

Anyway, what do you think of neuromarketing? Do you have any experience in applied neuromarketing?

Is neuroscience a game changer in web design? is a post from: Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency