Mediaboss Marketing

Social media marketing seems to get more complicated every day. But you can't ignore it. This article, the third in a series, focuses on several categories of social media and explains what they are, what they do, and how you can use them to reach your target audience.

In previous articles, I've touched on Twitter apps and Facebook apps and games. In this article, we're going to move a bit beyond these two social giants. While some of the items I'll discuss will be best known for their use on these networks, you can use them elsewhere as well.

The most obvious of these is URL shorteners. If you're typing on a site that limits the character count of your posts (such as Twitter), these can come in very handy. The best known of these is bit.ly; you can create a free account or just shorten a URL as a one-off. Tinyurl serves the same function. The latter site notes that long URLs can break in email, forcing the recipient to cut and paste it back together. You might want to use shorter URLs in certain advertising to avoid such problems. It's worth noting that some social media control panels (again, I'm getting ahead of myself) include URL shorteners as one of their features.

Use URL shorteners with caution, however; some people are wary of shortened URLs because they can't tell exactly where they're going. Indeed, some malicious hackers have baited users to click on shortened URLs, making the users vulnerable to attack.

Next is a group described as stream platforms. These include UberMedia, TweetDeck, twhirl and AOL Lifestream. All of these are designed to help users manage their social media streams and feeds. They can help users find posts of interest and schedule their own posts. While most of the ones I've listed focus on Twitter, AOL Lifestream covers multiple social networks, and UberMedia has been expanding beyond its Twitter roots. Stream platforms offer multiple tools to help you get a lot done from one place, whether it's your desktop machine, laptop, netbook, or mobile device. Many include alerts, filters, various ways to customize and monitor your feeds, and more.

At this point, I imagine it's pretty obvious how using a stream platform can help you manage your social media marketing. Isn't it simpler to conduct your interactions from one place, even if you're using multiple social sites? Just make sure the stream platform you choose covers the sites in which you're most interested.

I only have room to cover one more social media marketing item in this post, so let's go with social commerce platforms. Examples include Payvment, Moontoast, Shop Tab, Dotbox, and Vendor Shop, but to be honest, Business Insider's infographic on social media marketing includes more of these than I can ever list.

So what, exactly, is a social commerce platform? Judging from these companies, it's a way for businesses to reach out to their fans and customers and reward their loyalty and the fans, in turn, can help promote the business. It's not just loyalty deals, though; these companies will help you set up your shop on Facebook, monitor your social analytics, create special deals and one-of-a-kind offers directly to your fans, create engaging polls, and a whole lot more. A social commerce platform could get you engaging your fans and customers socially in ways you haven't even imagined yet.

A word of warning, though: I know I said that we were going to move beyond Facebook and Twitter in this post, but it looks like most of these services focus specifically on Facebook. They may be great if that's where you want to go to promote your business and there's nothing wrong with that but if you have a wider strategy in mind, make sure you ask the right questions as to what they can and can't do. Given how complicated social media marketing has gotten, however, it may be too much to ask to be able to use any one solution to cover everything.

That's all I have for your this week. Next week, we'll cover several more areas of social media marketing and SMM services. Have you found one that worked particularly well for you? Share it in the comments!

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Social Media Marketing: Beyond Twitter and Facebook

SAN FRANCISCO, June 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --In partnership with several major media companies, enterprise social sales and marketing software company Hearsay Social today launched Content Exchange, a content curation platform that allows marketers and salespeople to easily discover, curate, and post engaging updates to their profiles across all the major social networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+. As part of the launch of Content Exchange, leading media companies have partnered with Hearsay Social to offer its customers the latest in financial news, entertainment news, photos, video, lifestyle articles, and other content.

"With 82% of online users accessing social networking sites, social marketing content has become a critical battleground in the quest for customer mindshare and brand differentiation," said Hearsay Social CEO Clara Shih. "We are thrilled to partner with the leading global providers of content to empower marketers to achieve ROI on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+."

Hearsay Social also announced today the release of The Language of Social: A Guide to Content for the Social Business, a free e-book on the best social content marketing practices, in addition to a free social media ROI study by independent researcher Mainstay Salire.

Integrated into the Hearsay Social Content Library starting today, Content Exchange allows brands to easily discover, curate, and publish third-party articles, videos, and blog content designed for social media, as well as:

In particular, Hearsay Social's core user base of relationship-based sales professionals, such as financial advisors, recruiters, insurance agents, and real estate professionals, stand to benefit from investing in a scalable social media content strategy to create client value, trust, and differentiation over time.

"The key to any successful social marketing program is sharing timely, relevant content on a consistent basis," said Marc Zeitlin, Vice President of Marketing at Farmers Insurance Group. "Hearsay Social Content Exchange reduces the amount of time my team spends curating pre-approved content for our Agents while improving the relevancy, timeliness, and therefore effectiveness of their social media efforts."

Hearsay Social Content Exchange: Media Partners

Media leaders Demand Media, Tribune Media Services, and Thomson Reuters have joined in supporting the launch of Hearsay Social Content Exchange by providing Hearsay Social customers with access to content (once customers' appropriate licensing is executed).

Existing Thomson Reuters subscribers to Content Exchange will be able to access and curate premium content and create multiple channels inside of their Hearsay Social Content Library. Through Content Exchange, Hearsay Social customers will also have access to the full selection of award-winning lifestyle content from Demand Media, including eHow.com, LIVESTRONG.com, and Cracked.com.

Additionally, Hearsay Social has entered into a business relationship with Tribune Media Services (TMS), a global content licensing and syndication company, representing a variety of renowned writers and content brands via a suite of custom publishing solutions for media and corporate publishers. Hearsay Social clients who have an interest in adding content from leading experts, brands, and journalistic quality sources will be referred to TMS to work directly with their editorial and marketing professionals to publish content ready to engage their customers through social networks via the Hearsay Social Content Exchange.

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Hearsay Social Unveils Content Exchange, Fresh and Relevant Social Media Content for Marketers

12-06-2012 13:23 Hands-on workshop unlocks insider secrets to social media success The latest techniques for producing engaging press releases for social media, were demonstrated by industry leaders to PR and Marketing pros in sunny Miami (PR NewsChannel) / June 12, 2012 / MIAMI GSMI hosted a social media workshop on the old school vs. new school method of creation and distribution of press releases. Unlike other social media seminars, GSMI's hands on workshop goes into the "how to" of digital press release success. Mike Henniger, international marketing director at Thompson Rivers University, commented that, "The workshop gave me direction on how to select press release targets and keywords for search engine relevancy for the social media platform." This year's 2012 Social Media Seminars brought together representatives from diverse industries from around the world to participate in the Social Media Hands-on Workshop. Participants in the popular "Press Releases for Social Media" session learned to craft a message which would reach and engage the intended audience and drive traffic. Based on this year's high-profile attendees, it is clear that in today's day and age, companies need to know how to use social media to engage their customers. If you are interested in connecting with consumers through social media marketing, don't miss the next Social Media Strategies Summit, August 21-22, 2012 in Denver. For more about GSMI visit: About the Press Releases for Social Media ...

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Social Media Strategies Conference hands-on workshop for PR, marketing pros - Video

Social media is a huge market that branches out across several different areas, and enterprise is among them. Thismoment is among the more prominent vendors that managed to capitalize on an organizations need to manage its presence across Facebook, Twitter and mobile, evidently getting the attention of VCs along the way.

Today the company announced it raised $22 million in a third funding round led by Trident Capital. Venture partner Eric Jeck was picked to join Thismoments board of directors, and is now serving alongside Mark Fernandes of Sierra Ventures and Tim Mayhew, the managing director of Fenway Partners.

We are excited to support Thismoments rapid growth in the emerging social content management space. Thismoment provides robust solutions that help enterprises market in a more engaging manner, utilizing rich media and user generated content, user profile data and insights from user behaviors.

The firms flagship solution is the Distributed Engagement Channel platform, which has seen a lot of growth based on some of the statistics provided by the company. Thismoments revenue tripled in 2010, and currently over a fifth of the Fortune 500 companies are using DEC to handle their social media interactions.

The funding will be used to strengthen operations in the U.S. and expand to Europe, Asia and Latin America. A sizable portion of the money will be going into development as well.

Thismoment has managed to establish itself in a very solid position within a market that is only becoming more valuable. SAP made a $4 billion push into this industry with the acquisition of Ariba, and rival oracle followed suite with two buyouts of its own. Something similar happened after the German BI firm bought SuccessFactors last year.

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Thismoment Raises $22M to Further Solidify Social Marketing Position

11-06-2012 07:14 Developing social network marketing campaigns is the trend for businesses these days. The goal is to help marketers successfully leverage 3rd party resources to run social marketing campaigns effectively and cheaply. This is the same case for many people, small businesses and large corporations who start out with social marketing campaigns. Social network marketing can drive sales for you regardless of your brand! The right online marketing campaigns can engage audiences to drive online interaction, sales, and predictable ROI. The result is developing online campaigns leveraging the popularity of social networks to engage audiences based on existing value and social structures to create real, lasting impact that results in increased sales.

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Social Marketing Campaigns - Video