Human beings are social creatures and our lives depend on other humans. We are born unable to care for ourselves. We develop and learn about the world around us through others. Our connections to others are key not only our survival, but also to our happiness and the success of our careers.

And being social creatures comes the need to interact with others to reassure ourselves that we are liked, admired, respected; and noticed.

Then on April, 30th, 1993, it was announced that the World Wide Web would be free to everyone and the rest is history. Since then, the introduction of social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and even AOL in the beginning, to name a few, has transformed the way we communicate.

Along with the Internet Social media will probably go down as one of the major influencers of every generation since the Baby Boom generation and take its place as one of the wonders of modern time.

Between 2000 and 2002 the number of users on the internet grew a staggering 566.4% Nowhere else nor at any time in history has there been a forum even close to the scale of the World Wide Web.

WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICS
June 30, 2012

World Regions

Population
( 2012 Est.)

With all this connectivity we are now being faced with the loss of our privacy being subjected to Government agencies and even Employers spying on us and collecting information. By putting it all out there for everyone to see one should expect and understand that they are relinquishing their right to privacy to a large extent.

We use all this technology to interact with friends and family, to get the latest news and entertainment, and to research things we want to know about. It was only a matter of time before business saw the opportunities that Social Media offered.

Business saw the opportunity that getting involved with social Media would open up a huge potential resource. Social Media presented Business with ways to reach people in ways that were never possible with other forms of media. It allowed them to put a face to their business and to identify them in new ways.
But this new social medium also comes with risks that if they are not socially responsible in their advertising and communications or have any kind of misstep the consequences could be very costly.

It is all boils down to how you use it to your advantage or disadvantage. We are influenced by, and we are able to influence, people who we know as well as people we never met. We need to look at what social networks hold our interests and decided if the people we are interacting with are the people we want shaping our lives and careers.

We can influence others and gain recognition by posting blogs, getting involved in discussions, participate in forums and even help people by being a tutor online at a language site or any of the many sites available on the World wide Web.
Social interaction can open doors to job or other opportunities. You can meet like-minded people and have discussions with people who can give you new perspectives. The possibilities for whatever we are looking for or want to accomplish socially are limitless.

In the end, we need to take responsibility for how we act socially on the internet because in the end the internet as a social whole will make the final judgment on how it reacts to, responds to and accepts to what it is being disseminated.
Written By Bill Cosgrove
DealerNet Services

This is an interview I did with Klout for their Klout Stars series, where they ask “influencers” about their background in social media. 1. How did you get started in social media? I was originally a political consultant, helping manage campaigns for Governor, U.S. Senate, and President. I moved out of that industry into digital marketing in 1994. Since then, I’ve owned several companies in the online marketing world, including an award-winning agency that I sold in 2005. In 2008, I started Convince & Convert to help corporations and other agencies strip away the hype and successfully integrate social media.

I love social because it’s the perfect combination of online marketing and retail politics. You’re trying to win hearts and minds one at a time, or a few at a time using stories and humanization, but you’re using digital techniques to do so, rather than salacious 30-second ads and cheesy direct mail.

I started my Convince & Convert blog to create a place that straddles the line between social media theory and social media execution, while always trying to show how social is an ingredient, not the whole entree. Same thing for The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social
the book I wrote with Amber Naslund. It’s not a book about doing social media, it’s a book about how companies can BE social.

2. What’s your strategy for the content you produce and share on social media?
My mom and stepdad were both high school teachers, as was my grandmother. Education (and tequila) runs through my veins. I see my role as that of a translator and coach, taking important social media principles and explaining them in a practical way to people who are very smart marketers and businesspeople, but not necessarily social media practitioners day-to-day. With my blog, my Twitter feed, my twice-weekly email newsletter, and other vehicles, I try to curate what matters and add a heavy dose of my own interpretation and advice.

3. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their social media influence and presence to the next level?
Three things to remember:

First, it’s a paradox, but the more you “sell” the less you sell. You earn the right to promote in social, you can’t buy it. The difference between helping and selling is just two letters, but those letters mean everything. Find a way to genuinely help other people via social media, and it will come back to you five-fold eventually.

Second, realize that social media happens fast, but success is accrued very slowly. If you think you’re going to be able to get involved in social media and have massive influence in two months, you’re kidding yourself (unless you’re a celeb, in which case your influence just needs to be unlocked, preferably from aboard a yacht).

Third, there is NO shortcut. People invariably try to game the system, to increase their Klout score by doing this or doing that. I’m fortunate enough to have interacted with a lot of people who are (at least according to Klout score) considered influential in social media. And the only thing that is universal among them is that they worked extremely hard to make it happen. I firmly believe that just about anyone can make social media work for them, but you have to love it and you have to put in the time.
By Jay Bear

Definitions of native advertising still vary

Native advertising has seen a growing chorus of interest among publishers and ad buyers. Integrating sponsored content into digital channels has opened new doors for marketers to reach distracted consumers and provided publishers with new opportunities to generate ad revenue.

According to a June 2013 survey from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) and Radar Research, while many publishers may still be experimenting with how and what native advertising they will offer, most have already rolled out some native ad opportunities. Nearly three-quarters of polled US publishers said that they already offered native advertising on their site, and another 17% said they were considering offering it this year. Only 10% had no native ad plans of any kind.

But even as more publishers roll out native advertising, there is still variation in how they think about and begin to define the new ad products. Nearly all publishers attested to the most essential definition of native advertising as “integration into the design of the publisher’s site and [an ad that] lives on the same domain.” And nearly nine out of 10 also said that native advertising was “content produced in conjunction with the advertiser, or by the advertiser, that runs within the editorial stream.” A slightly lesser 79% believed native advertising must be clearly delineated and labeled as such.

These may be crystallizing as the central tenets of native advertising.

To evaluate their native ad campaigns, publishers said engagement was the leading metric marketers used, cited by 57% of respondents. That was followed by traffic, at 43%. Social sharing came in at one-third of respondents, indicating that while advertisers may want to get consumers sharing their native ad posts, this is not their No. 1 priority.

Market research company BIA/Kelsey estimated in April that this year, US native ad spending on social sites will reach $2.36 billion, or 38.9% of total US paid social ad expenditures. By 2017, social native ad spend will grow to $4.57 billion, and its share of social spending will inch up a few percentage points to 41.7%. But with native advertising reaching into so many digital channels besides social, this is likely far below the total outlays that will go toward native ads in all their different iterations.

eMarketer

DealerNet Services

Most C-level Executives, CMO included, view “Social” as media—but they don’t know how to interact with consumers there in a meaningful way. They want to buy CPMs or Likes—but don’t know what to do with them afterward.

CMO’s also make the mistake of assuming that the social audience has the same pain and passion points as their face-to-face or store audience. Most often that is not the case.

In order to get the real value out of Social, you must connect emotionally to the people who are there and find out what they’re looking for. CMOs are used to ads and campaigns, so that’s the place they gravitate, but even Facebook ads are only media buys. Ads are good for building initial likes, but they really are targeted to demographics just like any other ad.

Your mission is to go beyond that initial like and really get people excited about your brand, engage with you, buy from you, become a social advocate and sell for you. To do that you need to get into the heads of your social buyers.

So assign that as a singular goal to appropriate personnel on your team. Make it their mission to follow or friend your followers (not only on Facebook and Twitter, but everywhere online) and listen to their conversations. Their sole mission should be to pay attention to your social consumers. Find out what they like to talk about, the other brands they like, what their problems are–what makes them tick. That’s not a one-and-done task either… it’s ongoing.

Have you noticed that more and more ads have been creeping into Google’s search results over the last few years? The result is that all the actual search results (known as “organic” results) are being pushed further and further down the page. The Problem In the screenshot below you can see the Google Ads highlighted in the red rectangles. This is what the Google results page looks like if I search for “Brisbane mechanic” on a laptop with a screen resolution of 1280×800, which is fairly common for 14″ or 15″ laptops (different screen resolutions will show more or less of the results page). As you can see, only two organic results show on the page without needing to scroll down. The content that shows at the top of the page without having to scroll down is known as being “above the fold“. In the same space there are SIX ads! Not to mention the ads get pride of place at the top of the screen, encouraging more people to click on them.

For some results there aren’t ANY organic results above the fold. That means everything you see after you search is advertising!

• Embrace social media. I don’t mean go and post funny cat photos on Facebook. I also don’t mean to go and buy a bunch of fake Facebook likes on Fiverr. I’m talking about actually being social. This gets right to the heart of what social media is about. Do some research and find out where your target market is active online – is it Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest? TripAdvisor? The answer will vary depending on your industry and the demographics of your target market. Once you know where your target market is, go and be social with them! Think about what that means. Is standing on a soap box yelling about your latest products or services “being social”? No! Yet that’s exactly what most companies do on their social media accounts. What you should be doing instead is being helpful, getting involved in conversations and solving people’s problems.
• Become the authority for information or news on your topic. Seek out and write for relevant publications that may reach your target audience. A good way to do this is to look on websites like SourceBottle for journalists and bloggers that are seeking sources for their articles. Get in contact when they’re looking for something that you can help with, and you’ll often end up in a magazine, newspaper or on a website appearing as the expert on a certain topic, with a link to your website.
• One of the best ways to get extra exposure and PR is to network with other people in the industry, and with opinion leaders. Do the groundwork and build up these relationships and it will pay off in the longer term. If you need help with networking, I’d highly suggest reading Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi.
• Make the most of your existing customers and website traffic by getting them to sign up to regular e-mail newsletters. Once a month or quarter may be enough, depending on your website. Don’t send out updates just for the sake of it. Offer something interesting, insightful, newsworthy and/or funny. This will keep people coming back to your website and keep your brand front-of-mind.
• Find relevant blogs and comment on them. You’re not commenting for the power of the backlinks, but once again to help build your name as an expert and someone helpful. Be sure to use your name (not your company name) as this will make it much easier for people to relate to you, and you’ll come across as much more genuine and approachable.
• Go the extra mile for your customers. Word of mouth always has been (and still is) one of the most powerful forms of advertising you can get. Your customers will become advocates for your company (and website)!
• Branding is super important. Make sure your brand is consistent and easily recalled by customers. A nice clean website design is also important, as bad design can result in visitors clicking the back button straight away. Come up with a great tagline or business name and it will stick in people’s minds much longer. Guess who they’ll think of when they need the product or service that you provide?

#2 – Feature or write about industry influencers

When you start any content marketing campaign, one of the first things that you should do is map out the influencers in your industry – think about the type of people that you follow and whose opinion that you value.

I recently published a group interview on my blog where I invited a number of industry experts to talk about how they build reader engagement with their audience. You can view the post here.

I started by inviting a number of influencers within the marketing industry to answer a number of questions on improving reader engagement – something that all of the people I asked did very well.

In the end I managed to publish responses from Seth Godin, Anita Campbell, Neil Patel and 30 other industry experts.

 

What did I do to promote it?

I reached out to everyone that took part using social media sites such as Twitter and Google Plus – sites that would notify them that they’d been mentioned.

This was then followed up with an email to let the participants know that the post was live, where they could find it along with a call to action.

The call to action was to help share the post and vote for the post on BizSugar.

The post was then imported into my Triberr account – If you’ve not come across this before, it’s a platform that allows you to link up your Twitter profile (along with Facebook and Linkedin) and join tribes of like-minded bloggers, marketers or business owners that will see your content and get the opportunity to share it with their followers.

 

What about the results?

In just over a day the post was the 2^nd most popular post on BizSugar in June:

The post has gained quite a significant amount of traction on social media:

The post also earned some good links according to Ahrefs.com (Majestic shows more referring domains, but I prefer the graph in Ahrefs):

It also helped me get contributor of the week on BizSugar.com:

You can find the post here.

Continued Part 3:

http://onebigbroadcast.com/autospeakstraighttalk/view/287/_Part_3__There_Is_More_To_This_Content_Marketing_Than_Just_Clicking_Publish.html


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