Blogs

One of the questions that we often get in our social marketing seminars is: what should your status updates be about?  A lot of business owners are concerned that if they post too much about their business that they might alienate their personal contacts, or that their business contacts won’t care about their child losing his first tooth, or that their dog Miffy just had puppies.

You’re a savvy business professional building on years of sales success, and accustomed to driving results by pitching your business and its products to anyone who will listen.  Special offers, deals, and end of season sales are the phrases you use in all your advertising as you try to recruit new customers.  The question is, how do these business tactics translate to your ability to compete in the social media world?

Social optimization is all the rage these days, and with good reason.  Businesses are well aware of how valuable social media can be in reaching large audiences, but in general have found the level of effort and number of resources required to successfully execute a social marketing campaign to be daunting and not always feasible.  Solutions that target ways to streamline social media effectiveness are therefore in great demand.

In the July 19 edition of Augie Ray’s blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals which appeared on SmartBrief on Social Media.com, Ray proposed that while brands like Dell and P&G can track the return on investment of their social media marketing and financial results, many other brands cannot.

A July 7th article on OPENForum.com, a community of business owners that offers tools to connect and collaborate, poses an all-important question for companies looking to social marketing to bring in top tier leads.  "Is Social Media Failing to Produce Business Leads?" explores an assertion of Andrew Heyward as published in an issue of the Harvard Business Review: "'every company is a media company'" and marketing is shifting to an environment

Last week Twitter announced on its blog that it would be rolling out its own link shortener this summer in an effort to streamline and better track the link sharing process on the social network. This new shortener will also provide transparency in the links sharing system by allowing followers to see where the shortened link will take them and reassure them the links are not malicious or spam.

Our parent company, VMT, recently built the brand new Drupal website for Santé, the annual fundraiser event for the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) of Maryland. This "Epicurean Adventure" brings together exceptional craft beers and wines and pairs them with delicious food from Baltimore's most exciting restaurants.

Yesterday Twitter announced that it will be following in the footsteps of Facebook in terms of restricting third-party advertisements being injected into a user's feed.

Over the past few weeks, there has been an epic amount of buzz in the social media world about the many Facebook enhancements announced at F8, the social network’s developer’s summit held on April 21. 

So you want to start a social marketing campaign using the supporters we talked about in our last blog, great! But where should you start? By recruiting your Ambassadors and encouraging their continued engagement. What follows are some helpful tips for recruiting Ambassadors and nurturing your network once it has been established.

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