Merry Xmas 2012

Merry Xmas to you and your family!

-Randy

“People Talking About” on Facebook – a Useful Metric?

Beth Kanter, social media expert to the nonprofit world, just wrote about the new feature/metric on Facebook fan pages called “people talking about” . Her post at http://pulse.me/s/22Xea essentially says why, why did facebook create this meaningless metric. She is right, why doesn’t facebook integrate campaign metrics to your website? Do u know how many ppl come from facebook to your website and get converted into a lead? Perhaps u use Google Analytics but Facebook should integrate that into their insights dashboard.  What do u think? Comment below.

Randy

Is your Mobile app in the Top 10?

Great article on analyzing your user’s mobile usage patterns and matching that up to your strategy. Some of the data mentioned is from a Google study where they say the avg. user downloads 26 apps and they use 10 frequently. Hopefully u are in the top 10 and you have some longevity to your app and you keep users coming back. I found this article on the Omniture blog while using the Pulse Android app for my MOTOROLA XOOM.  Read “Is your Mobile app in the Top 10?” at http://pulse.me/s/Opb3

This might make u rethink your mobile strategy. Let me know what u think.

Randy

White House Aims to Optimize Facebook & Twitter Efforts #socialmedia

Very interesting study via the White House. Did anybody participate in the survey? Did they use FB questions? How did they survey ppl on Twitter?

White House Aims to Optimize Facebook and Twitter Efforts – http://pulse.me/s/blGv

New Photos: This is the good life #maui

I love Maui and the beaches!

Rk
P.s. I’m raising $ for the leukemia and lymphoma society. $5K short of my $20,000 goal by May 21st. Donate and help researchers find a cure as well as fund peer support groups, edu seminars, and financial aid for patients. Go to http://10kin10weeks.wordpress.com/donate

Randy
@djksar

Using Social Media to Create an Emotional Connection

One of the great things I love about social media is getting people to show their emotion and passion for a certain topic.  If the user can see that in a video or audio podcast then you have sold the audience and they will talk about your brand or topic online or offline to their friends, family and co-workers.  One topic that I’m passionate about is the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I met with the Mingus family last month to learn more about their son’s diagnosis and survival with leukemia.  I worked with Heavensent Films and my bro-in-law Justin Adkinson on filming the interview.  I made sure Matt’s mom, Kat, was comfortable with the questions so I just had a causal conversation with her because sometimes the lens can be scary for people. It’s just starring you down and putting pressure on a topic that should be easy for the interviewee to speak about.  So to ease into the video I started chatting “off camera” about how there day was going, the questions we were going to ask, the weather, family, etc..It really helped both of us have a great causal yet emotional conversation for apprx. 2 hours.   Justin with his great camera and video editing skills created a great 4 minute re-cap of the conversation and really focused on the goal which was to spread awareness about the Society and raise crucial dollars for research and patient services.    The video is posted below and Justin did a behind-the-scenes blog post to see how something like this is created.  Comment below and how you use social media content to create an emotional connection.

New Video: Volunteering with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

My bro-in-law Justin Adkinson filmed this great video of me talking about my 10 year volunteer experience with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society doing over 20 different events (marathons, halfs, 100 mile bike rides, mountain bike rides, walks, 10Ks, 5Ks, etc…) and raising over $100K for research and patients. Watch the video below and see how you can help raise $10K in 10 Weeks.

 

BTW, I love Vimeo for the amazing video content! The videographers on Vimeo are far superior than YouTube don’t you think or is it just more concentrated. Comment below and hope you can help out the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

-Randy

Measuring Twitter’s Influence

So you got that Twitter account and people are following you (and you’re following @oprah just for the heck of it)..Great job! Now how are you suppose to use it for your business and your boss is asking “how do you measure Twitter’s influence on our company’s goals?” – good question boss.  Remember, Twitter is used by consumers to talk about what is going on in their life plus they use it as a search engine to find the latest trends/news/etc…

If you are interested in measuring your impact to the Twitter community take into account the following:

• Impressions – how many times do people talk about your brand. count the # of mentions per week
• Influencer impressions – how many times do people re-tweet and how many followers does each influencer have. This will show the reach that you have on Twitter.
• # of active conversations – hopefully you are using Twitter as a two way conversation and responding to people that have questions
• Average klout score of your followers – Klout is a way to measure your follower’s influence.

If you are interesting in measuring how Twitter impacts your bottom-line:

• Determine the amount of traffic your website gets from Twitter
• Determine an actual goal that they would do on your website, e.g. download software, and see if you can use some type of campaign tracker to see how many downloads come from Twitter. Google Analytics is a free tool and has some basic functionality for tracking campaigns.
• Ask your yourself “How does Twitter impact my goals versus other channels?”. Twitter vs. Facebook vs. direct email vs. paid search.

Hope this gives you a better grasp of how to measure Twitter.  If at all, it plants the seed that you need to measure and not jump on the bandwagon.

 

-Randy

@djksar

Writing social content with your voice

Tip of the day: every now and then show some personality on your business social accounts and say “Good Morning”. Social is all about starting and fostering relationships. With a lot of businesses still wondering whether social media is for them i ask them how often do you have real conversations with your customers or prospective customers. Spend the time to create a content strategy that shows your voice and personal brand. Those ppl faning you on Facebook or reading your blog want to hear and engage with people that are making a difference in your products. They don’t want a canned response but a response like you are talking to them in-person. So the next time you are thinking of writing social content think how do you speak to your customers in the real world and make sure that is reflected in your social sites.

The Social Ksar

Sears using bloggers at #CES to gain consumer tech influence

If u don’t have the experts then hire out. That is what Sears is doing this 2011 CES to gain credability with consumers that they are a trusted resource for consumer electronics. Now hopefully this is a longer term strategy to bring more ppl to sears.com and/or the store. In terms of using external bloggers this is genius because Sears can expand their brand to a network of ppl that aren’t familiar, needs to get reaquainted, or haven’t  purchased from Sears. Another promo option that they probably had was to send their own staff to CES but they don’t have a huge social following as this external blog crew does.

As far as my experience with the Sears brand, I bought my washer and dryer before from Sears but never any consumer electronics. How about you? What do u think of the Sears brand when it comes to consumer electronics? Comment below.

This blog post got started when I was using the Pulse Android app on my DROID 2 Global and read this:
Sears Recruits ‘Blue Blogger Crew’ for CES – http://pulsene.ws/EymI