Are You Using the 80/20 Rule to Your Advantage?

December 5, 2011 2 Comments

Are you part of the 80%? I’m not talking about an occupy moment here. Instead, I’m referring to the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle. Anyone that’s served on a committee or worked on a team class project has seen this rule in action. It goes like this:

80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Or in business the distribution looks like this:

  • 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers
  • 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers
  • 80% of your sales are made by 20% of your sales staff
  • 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people

Named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1906 after observing that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, he developed the principle by also observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. Since that time the principal has been used in economic theory, optimization efforts and quality control measures. For example, Microsoft noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most highly reported bugs, 80% of the errors would be eliminated (Wikipedia).

How this works with Social Media

Simple. You’ll get the best results and engagement from your efforts if 80% of what do you adds value to someone else, either by providing free information, sharing articles written by others, offering discounts, crowdsourcing ideas or pointing out others’ successes. The other 20% can be about you, your products and your ideas. In other words, talk about yourself only 20% of the time. That’s 2 tweets out of 10.

Do you see this principle at work in your social media efforts? Share your ideas with me here.

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Filed under Business, Marketing, social media, Twitter Tagged with , , , ,

Social Media Trends for 2012

November 16, 2011 5 Comments

Now is the time when the media folks start making their predictions for 2012 so I’d better get on board.  Based on the trends I’ve seen in 2011, the conversations I’m having with clients and the widening gap between what we need and what we have, here are my thoughts on what will be trending in social media in 2012.

Content Curation

This was a trend for 2011 and I don’t see it going away. As social spaces become more crowded and filled with noise (and those pesky Klout seekers,) content curators will become a more important part of the stream. Curators that take the time to review the content before passing it on will become a valuable resource for peer reviewed articles. Taking cues from these curators, brands will become part of the de facto news media as they curate and stream relevant content to their followers.

Social Media Analytics

I’m amazed that we still don’t have a good way to track and analyze the data available to us in social media. As social media budgets increase and more time is devoted to these spaces, demand for analyzing all that data will become more pronounced. The problem is we’re still relying on APIs that are flawed and even (as Twitter admits) purposely throttled. Manual tracking is still the most accurate. While tools like Crowdbooster and Hubspot are promising, it is still very difficult to analyze the data and the trends well enough to structure spending decisions around it. I predict we’ll make progress toward a solution in 2012.

Tech Marketing

Many businesses struggle with where to house the social media team. Many land in the marketing department, which can cut them off from access to the technology they need to do their jobs effectively, not to mention run the risk of becoming too “marketing” in their messaging. As social media becomes more integrated into business I believe we’ll see an integration of marketing and IT. In my corporate position I’m housed with IT, which I believe is crucial. I have access to designers, SEO analysts, programmers and WordPress developers, so if I need a Facebook tab, help with optimizing a blog or the latest keyword research, I can just turn around and ask. Many social media professionals are housed in marketing departments, siloed away from IT functions. Some are dealing with an IT department housed offsite or even overseas. Time differences and lack of access to data make it difficult for these professionals to work quickly and effectively so I think we’ll start to see a convergence of IT and marketing as we increase our social technology.

Decentralized Social Media

Rather than siloed in one department (marketing or IT) I envision social media becoming part of many roles in business. For example, expect to see more customer service departments using Twitter with accounts like @name_brandname monitoring the brand with keyword analysis and intervening when needed. These folks will report to a social media strategist overseeing a team of tweeters. This is a move toward what I call the social transformation of business. Although I’m sure I didn’t coin the term, it describes a paradigm shift in the way businesses will organize in the next several years. As consumers demand less traditional marketing, more access to immediate feedback and better service, businesses will answer the call by incorporating social principals into their practices.

These are my predictions. What did I miss?

Filed under Business, Marketing, social media Tagged with , , , ,

Four Social Media Listening Tools for Brand Management

October 19, 2011 2 Comments

Are you listening?  Businesses involved social media are actively seeking a relationship with their customers. Their ability to listen to conversations surrounding their brand is as important as the messages they’re sending out.

All healthy relationships require listening skills. Social media relationships are no different. So how do you listen in social media spaces? Here are four listening tools I recommend.

Tweetdeck

Twitter is a giant conversation and link sharing medium, but it can be difficult to monitor all those conversations from the Twitter.com website. The free desktop application Tweetdeck is a dashboard of all your social media accounts-Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Facebook, even MySpace. Tweetdeck allows you to monitor them all from one location. Download the desktop application, then add your accounts. Make the best use of the dashboard by also adding columns for your Twitter lists and for any Twitter searches you regularly perform. If you run a dental clinic you might search regularly for “tooth decay” for example. Add a search column for those keywords.

Remember to include your brand name in a search column so you’ll be aware of conversations happening about your brand outside your social circles. Doing so will help you grow your audience as well as intercede in any possible customer service issues you come across. Tweetdeck also allows you to look up profiles, follow new accounts, add accounts to lists and send out scheduled tweets. You can include any URL shorterner in the settings to further customize.

Tweetdeck

RSS Feeds

Rss Feed

RSS feeds are alive and well and very useful for aggregating content. If you see an RSS symbol on any newsfeed, blog or publication you can subscribe to that feed and have the content come to you in any number of RSS readers. If you don’t have an RSS feed reader in Microsoft Outlook, for example, search for a free reader and download it to begin aggregating your feeds. Simply click the button to get the address of the feed, then add it to your reader to begin receiving automatic updates of your favorite blogs and news publications. Get in the habit of checking the feed reader daily for valuable content to share with your audience. To show you what an RSS feed looks like, my blog  Carmine Media has an RSS feed that allows you to subscribe to both posts and comments.

Google Alerts

With Google Alerts Google sends you keyword information in email format. For this you’ll need a Google account, so if you don’t already have one, sign up here. Once you’re logged into Google you can set up alerts for any keyword or combination of keywords you choose. You can set the alert to email you once per day in digest format, or as they happen. Make sure you set up an alert for your name and your brand name along with any other industry keywords you’ll use to curate content. You’ll receive a steady stream of news articles and websites in your email you can use to educate and inform your customers. You can also intervene when a negative mention of your brand appears.

NetVibes

 NetVibes.Com is a web based dashboard that allows you to aggregate RSS feeds, Twitter searches, website bookmarks, Google searches and many other features all in one place. Once you’ve signed up for an account you can personalize your dashboard by adding feeds from any blogs or news publications you follow using their RSS feed, or use one of the hundreds of widgets to customize your dashboard. Here’s a screenshot of my NetVibes dashboard, which I refer to every day in order to find relevant articles about social media and web marketing. From here you can share the articles you find on Twitter and on your Facebook page.

These are only four of the dozens of listening tools available. Are there listening tools you’re using you’d like to recommend here? Leave a comment and share them with me!

Filed under Business, Marketing, social media Tagged with , , , , , , ,

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