social media

1.  Identify audience

Identify who it is you are trying to influence.  Once you've defined them, start to gather data about them.  Your potential data sources include, but are certainly not limited to:

I hope all of you small to medium size business managers are using web analytics to track your ad roi?

From emarketer, B2B Marketers Up Social Spend

Business owners who are wondering how best to attract the attention of Facebook users might want to favor video and images over lots and lots of text. Fresh Hitwise data shows that Facebook users prefer broadcast media over print sources when it comes to news.

Heather Hopkins recently looked at what news and media websites Facebook users most often visit after getting their social media fix. The list includes the Weather Channel, CNN, Yahoo News, MSNBC, People Magazine, Fox News, Google News, AccuWeather, Topix, and the Drudge Report.

Google has put together a best practices paper for B2B marketers who wish to utilize YouTube as a tool in their strategies. The paper, which is free to download covers basics about using YouTube for marketing. "YouTube: Best Practices for the B2B Marketer".

The all-knowing Wikipedia defines social media as "Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings." But really, social media is about connecting, interacting, and sharing online.

From a promotional and marketing perspective, things are not so clear cut or easy. The biggest problem is that some people think of social media as just one more channel to push sales. You can but you have to do it gently and with your customers interests first. This is not a position for an intern.

"Research has shown that display ad exposure can lift consumer response to paid search. Data from comScore, GroupM and M80 indicates searchers are also more likely to keep a brand in mind if they have seen a combination of paid search ads and social media.