For the past decade, people have argued about where social media should sit in a company’s organization chart. But ultimately, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach—social media’s location should be a direct reflection of a business’s core priorities. For some organizations, social media is best seen as an extension of customer service, while for others, it may make more sense to locate it within marketing or communications. Here’s why.
Social Media & SEO
How Communicators Can Get the C-Suite to Believe in Social Media
June 26th, 2017 by ALEXANDER PARKINSONWhat are the best ways to get buy-in on social media from the C-suite? The Conference Board’s senior researcher Alexander Parkinson shares what he found as he conducted research for a recent report on the subject.
How United Way Uses Social Media to Address Drastically Different Audiences
June 23rd, 2017 by Samantha WoodAs United Way of Miami-Dade’s one-person social media team, Shairy Gonzalez has to be nimble enough to address different audiences from day to day or even moment to moment. She might attend a fundraising event with corporate movers and shakers in the morning, and later get her hands dirty at a volunteer site in the afternoon. Gonzalez, who will speak at the upcoming Digital and Marketing Show in Miami, October 17-19, shared some examples of how she engages vastly different audiences on social media.
How Facebook, Snapchat and Pinterest Help Generate and Track Sales
June 20th, 2017 by Kathleen Celano, Brownstein GroupFor many businesses, leads and sales are primary KPIs. But before you can track sales, you have to generate them—and standing out from the crowd on social media is no easy task. Online consumers can anticipate when ads are coming and know when and how to skip them. Fortunately, major platforms, including Facebook, Snapchat and Pinterest, continue to develop new technologies to help generate and track sales, helping to prove the ROI of social media ads.
5 Best Practices for Earning Online Reviews
June 19th, 2017 by Ian James WrightCultivating a body of reviews is an important aspect of engaging with your customers on social. It can further establish you as a reputable brand, teach you which areas you could be improving on, boost SEO, start important conversations and more. If you’re not getting reviews—or if you’re only getting them from one kind of customer (satisfied, dissatisfied, one-time, returning, etc.) you might be missing out on a lot of useful information.
How CompTIA Uses Instagram to Attract Millennials to IT
June 19th, 2017 by Jerry AsciertoKelly Stone is on a mission to evangelize careers in information technology. As the senior social media manager for CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for Information Technology professionals, Stone is tasked with softening the IT industry’s image to a younger demographic. And Instagram has emerged as one of her most effective weapons in fighting negative stereotypes. Here are four ways she uses the platform to humanize the industry and her own organization.
The Bell System: How Taco Bell Assesses a Social Situation Before It Responds
June 19th, 2017 by Seth ArensteinIn part II of our interview with Taco Bell’s social media and brand engagement manager Matt Prince, we ask him about how the brand manages during the initial moments of a potential crisis. With 7,000 restaurants across the country, incidents pop up constantly, he tells us, making social listening crucial. We also discuss the particulars of how Prince and his team measurement and report metrics to the C-Suite.
4 Ways to Change the Paid, Owned and Earned Media Structure
June 15th, 2017 by Brooks Thomas, Southwest AirlinesIf the lines between paid, owned and earned media have become blurred, why is the internal structure at most organizations still so linear? In this commentary, Brooks Thomas, social business advisor with Southwest Airlines, argues for a more integrated approach and provides four tips for smaller organizations looking to bust down the silos between those three types of content.
10 Tips to Draw More Eyes to Your YouTube Videos
June 14th, 2017 by Sophie MaerowitzYouTube videos can sometimes seem like the one-hit wonders of the content universe. But the good news is that through strong SEO strategy and tactical outreach, little-noticed YouTube videos can still be a powerful vehicle for drawing in new audiences. Matt Goldberg, who creates and promotes video content for Chicago-based machine tool manufacturer Lyndex-Nikken—as well as founding production company MBG Films, which boasts 8.5 million views and over 13,000 subscribers—shares 10 recommendations for increasing YouTube views.
3 Tactics to Develop Your Snapchat Presence
June 12th, 2017 by Jerry AsciertoKristy Gillentine spends a lot of time chatting about Snapchat. Host of the popular “ChatSnap—The Twitter Chat All About Snapchat,” Gillentine interviews such social superstars as Shonduras, Brian Fanzo and Madelyn Sklar once a week to share cutting-edge tips and tricks about the platform. But for those brand communicators just looking to establish their presence on Snapchat, she offered the following tips.