Showing posts with label Social Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Media. Show all posts

Thursday, 6 March 2014

Can CMO’s increase their social intelligence with software-as-a-service?

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Marketing experts have climbed every ladder and left no stone unturned to connect to people and interact with them. They have used all the resources possible such as direct mail, surveys and email marketing. Online and mobile applications have replaced these techniques as they deliver better results, save time and are very cost effective.

Technological consultants have endeavored to identify new ways of meeting theses needs. HCL Tech, a leading technological consultant has earned a name in innovation with its expertise in engineering and R&D with their research and publications. In a recent study they have tried to identify the role of a CMO is changing along with IT today and how convenient it is to acquire data and connect with people.

Business Insider stated in a recent survey that one in almost five consumers are using smartphones and have internet access. This can be very beneficial for CMOs as they can collect data and interact with people on-the-go.

smartphone activities worldwide
As seen in the illustration above, a smartphone user surfs the internet the most as compared to other devices. Social media savvy mobile users want their internet experience to be personalized. The social software is used to analyze, gather data including comments, navigation and shared content.

What’s on The CMO’s Coffee Table?
Data is readily available on online social software applications. Externally hosted Software-as-a-service (SAAS) applications such as Tealium Tag Management System and Google Premium Analytics are being used by CMO’s for better interaction with users. 

A CMO adopts the hosted servers of other groups within the organization such as Customer services and Public Relations, and uses their data in order to interact with people. The new social software gathers information of people participating in social media forums, blogs and also mobile based applications. This information allows organizations to be immediate and precise when reaching a specific user. Traditional methods like direct mail and surveys were much more time consuming and inefficient.

If cost-effectiveness is what CMO’s are looking for then, then an internal collaboration with the CIO and the CTO would be the answer. This supported with the unbridled freedom offered by SAAS and cloud services can enhance your platforms, reduce costs and increase reliability.

The above article has been written by Experts at HCL Technologies. To know more about the topic, please check an interesting and informative whitepaper on the subject published by HCL Technologies.
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Friday, 12 July 2013

Alternatives to Google Hangouts

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Google announced a unified messaging system, Hangouts. Hangouts is available for Android, iOS and the web via the Chrome extension, allowing you to stay connected with your friends regardless of what device you are using it on. But what if you don’t want to be on Hangouts? We round up three instant messaging clients with comparable features.

1) Adium
Adium is a free and open source instant messaging application developed for MAC OS X. It supports an extensive list of instant messaging services such as Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Facebook Chat. One of its key features is tabbed messaging, where you are offered the flexibility of fitting all your conversations into one window. This maximizes efficiency and screen real estate. Another feature of Adium is its ability to merge multiple contacts into one entity on the contact list. This is extremely practical as many of us have different user names for different services. By combining them into a single entry, it makes the contact list leaner and easier to manage.
2) Trillian
Trillian is another powerful instant messaging application that is available on Windows, Mac, Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad and the web browser. Besides keeping you connected to a wide range of messaging clients and social networks, Trillian comes with POP3, IMAP and native IM mail integration. This means that you will be alerted to new mails. A small tab appears where you can decide whether to open the mail, mark it as read or spam, or archive it. The desktop version of Trillian helps to keep a record of your chat history. You can choose what to record contacts, conferences, connections, text conversations and images.
3) Digsby
If you combine the best of Adium and Trillian, you get Digsby. It is an instant messaging application for Windows with email and social network integration. Not only does Digsby support tabbed conversation windows, it also enables you to drag out individual tabs into their own windows for important conversations. Another nifty feature is the popup notification window. Even if Digsby is minimized, the popup window allows you to reply and then get back to what you are doing. You can personalize many aspects of Digsby from the look of the conversation window to the layout of the contact list. You also can customize what events or updates to be notified on, as well as how.
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Friday, 26 April 2013

How Social Media Can Help Your Business

20:12
Social media Technologies offer the possibility to deeply understand target and to generate several kinds of insight from listening activity. Those insights are used to define a detailed profile for main clusters of communication and marketing initiatives.

 The use of social media websites is not limited to individuals and consumers. It is also a tool that can help a business grow and thrive when it is used appropriately. The key is learning the best ways to use social media websites for your business and current company goals.
Impact on Business

 If you do not know the potential impact of social media on your business, then it is hard to use it in the most constructive and efficient ways. Although some variation exists between different social media sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, the impact on the company as a whole is often positive.

 Social media is a powerful tool to help advertise services, communicate with the target audience and even streamline business productivity within the workplace. According to Forbes.com, businesses are using social media websites to communicate and connect with potential employees, generate leads and even brainstorm new business ideas.

 Tapping into the potential of social media can improve productivity and communication within the office. It is no longer limited to marketing, which means that it can have a strong impact on the way a business performs in the future.

 New Corporate and Business Practices

 Although some variation exists between companies and the social media outlet used, businesses are starting to apply new practices to social Internet.

 Communicating with potential employees is a key benefit of social media websites like LinkedIn. The media outlet is primarily designed for business needs and it can help companies streamline the application process and communicate with potential employees. Human Resources professionals are able to review profiles on the social media site and connect with potential
employees who seem like a good fit for your company.

 Companies are also using social media to improve organization within the company and encourage creativity. According to USA Today, using vivid images and creative designs can help potential customers feel comfortable with the company and change previous thoughts about the business. By focusing on designing social media pages that are appealing to your target
audience, you are able to reach a subconscious level and generate new interest in your business.

 In the office setting, social media is still a useful tool because it helps improve communication between employees and divisions. Every business requires effective communication, even if the divisions are responsible for different parts of the company growth. By communicating and working together to generate new ideas, the business will thrive. Business-centered
social media like Chatter and Yammer are allowing internal communication that helps companies improve their productivity or gather new ideas in real-time.

 Gaining the Most from Social Media

 Although social media has many potential applications for your business needs, it is important to avoid straying from the ideas that benefit your company the most. You need to recognize the services and options that will help reach business goals while discarding the uses that are distracting.

 Social media is a great tool for communication, both internally and externally. You need to communicate with your target audience as much as with other teams within the company to improve. That means you need to provide content that is worth sharing with the followers on a social media site and listen to those who place a comment.

 Learning about what your clients want is a key aspect of improving on your business. You can learn by reading the comments your clients put and then brainstorm internally to meet or exceed expectations. If a client complains about services, then you need to brainstorm ideas to overcome that obstacle. If a client is happy with a product, then you should focus on the aspects
the client liked and strive to make improvements from that point.

 Beyond the ability to communicate, you can also gain from the ability to find talented employees. Talking to potential employees over a social media outlet and asking about experiences will allow you to reach more potential talent and find out about the weaknesses that might be overlooked in a traditional interview.

 Social media is a tool that allows you to improve your business plan. Keeping up with the latest methods of using the tools will make it possible to grow and thrive as a company. Modern society has changed, so companies need to make changes to keep up with customer expectations.

Author Bio: Matt Smith is a Dell employee who writes to help raise awareness on the topic of Social Media and other network management subjects.
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Thursday, 28 March 2013

10 Reasons Why Social Media is Vital for Your Business

19:41
10 Reasons Why Social Media is Vital for Your Business

There are many reasons why social media is crucial to the future of your business - as well as allowing you to access a cost effective way of promoting your business, social media provides an excellent way to engage customers with your brand. At the same time, social media enables you to produce tailored promotions, while also creating detailed demographic records that can be used to enhance customer offers. For these reasons, and many more, social media should be a vital consideration for your business.
1 - It’s Cost Effective

Generally speaking, an entry level social media campaign should be very simple - create a Facebook and a Twitter page, and use these to promote yourself through new content and links; you can also create LinkedIn accounts, and build towards cross promoting different sites. Of course, you can still spend a significant amount of money getting a well designed website, but with the understanding that social media will feed you links.

2 - It Provides Great Brand Engagement

A successful social media profile for a business can allow for daily user interactions, and can produce a very high degree of engagement between users and your brand - effectively, if you can continue to produce great content and remind subscribers of why they should follow you, it can be possible to create strong relationships.

3 - It Allows For Detailed Demographic Analysis

By using tools like Google Analytics to go into depth over how many people are visiting your pages, and whether they’re using links from your social media pages onto your landing website for conversions, you can get a clearer sense of who’s using your online resources - this can be broken down by location, and combined with surveys to gauge average ages and genders.

4 - It Lets You Promote Yourself Locally

One of the major advantages of using social media for your business is that you can tailor your promotions to a local audience; by recognising who’s accessing your sites, you can produce local specific offers, and can encourage new degrees of brand engagement.

5 - It’s Excellent for Networking

As well as marketing services to your followers, you can also use social media sites such as LinkedIn to build positive business connections, and to recruit new employees; Twitter following can work in a similar way by getting your business involved in various discussions.

6 - It Can Make Your Customer Feedback Better

It’s possible for customers to use Twitter and Facebook to provide you with feedback and questions; this is important if you there are any emergencies that need to be addressed, with social media giving you the chance to put a more human face on events.

7 - It’s Essential for Mobile Phones and Tablets

More and more users are accessing the Internet and shopping via their smartphones and tablets. In this context, you need to be able to connect to this audience by using mobile optimised social media sites, as well as apps that can allow customers to make rapid conversions.

8 - It Can Make Your Brand Global

A well placed viral media campaign, while difficult to achieve, can turn a small company into a globally recognised one in the space of a few weeks - again, this is rare, but there are more opportunities than ever before to engage with a truly global audience through social media.

9 - It Can Make Your Brand More Relevant and Personal

Producing blogs and Tweeting can help to make your brand relevant and more personal, rather than being perceived as faceless. Again, putting out content in your name is all about boosting brand engagement on the part of consumers.

10 - It Can Help Your SEO

Search Engine Optimization is becoming increasingly dependent on great content being shared on social media; Google likes high ranking social media sites as link sources, and making a blog post or an offer go viral can substantially increase your brand awareness over time.

Author Bio: Liam writes about technology and he highly suggests you take the next stop online through web development London. In his spare time he enjoys testing and creating apps.
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Thursday, 21 March 2013

How to Use Social Media as a Marketing Tool

11:23
It’s important to know how to use social media as a marketing tool for your business. Social media is now such a ubiquitous part of everyday life that it would be a serious mistake not to have a strong presence on networks; you need to be able to use social media as a way of engaging with consumers in ways that can encourage long term brand loyalty. This can be achieved in a number of ways, from coordinating platforms and networks to using analytics and great content to create a more distinctive online presence.
Coordinate Platforms and Networks 

 Make sure that you have an established presence on key networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but use them in complementary ways. Facebook can be a focus for competitions, photos, and news, while Twitter can be an ideal way of updating followers on new deals and stories. LinkedIn can be set up to help build professional links for small businesses.

Engage Communities

 Try to make the most of social media’s potential to engage with communities of users around the world; make sure that you respond to queries and complaints, even if a large section of it may be negative. Use surveys, word of mouth, and tailored content to ensure that users are receiving engaging content on a regular basis.

Make the Most of YouTube

Putting up high quality videos can be a great way to market new products and services; create product reviews, and ensure that all campaign advertisements have an easy to find link through the site. Similarly, create a community page and try to create links to commercial partners.

Use Analytics

Essential for making the most social media, analytic tools can allow you to break down data on who’s visiting your pages; tools such as Crowdbooster and Google Analytics can provide you with a very detailed impression of how well your social media profiles are doing, and can allow you to make calculated changes to sites.

Use Great Content

Social media is nothing without great content, which should be more than recycled or low quality material; ensure you have a blog that accepts guest posts to keep a site up to date, and put up videos and other content on other sites on a weekly basis.

Take Calculated Risks

If you’re a small business, be prepared to take risks on marketing campaigns to make yourself stand out on social networks; be careful, though, not to cause offense, and avoid pitfalls like hijacking popular Twitter hashtags to try to promote yourself.

Know What to Focus On

Keep a healthy perspective on feedback from social networks, as this can become very negative very quickly. Check to make sure that employees responsible for monitoring and updating social media feeds know what the best approach to take is for a problem.

Make Use of Tools

Use third party tools to make it easier to stay on top of your various social media pages; this might include ReFollow for Twitter, as well as Flickr Uploader, and StumbleUpon.

Take Advantage of New Networks

Check to see what new social networks are being created, and consider creating a small presence to get in on a potentially new trend. Not every network will be suitable for your business, but be aware of what’s out there; some sites to look out for in 2013 include Soci, Microsoft’s network via Bing, a relaunched MySpace, and Branch, an in-depth conversation collaboration between Twitter and Blogger. Sina Weibo, the microblogging network from China, might also expand this year into new markets, so keep an eye on it.

Author Bio: Liam Jones writes about technology, from managed hosting to the latest tech advances. In his spare time he enjoys building apps.
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