CarlosMiceli | Social Media Marketing

Author Archive

Are You Willing To Give It Time?

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

We are living in a fast paced world, where patience is not the strongest currency, and where we are used to getting everything we want with the click of a button and without having to wait long anymore for anything that we desire. Problem is, when it comes to social media, this mentality does not help. Let me share some thoughts on why you need to give it time when you are involved with social media:

Be careful when focusing on ROI

Focusing on ROI may be a good thing to do, but you have to be careful not to prioritize it over spending the amount of time required to get good results. Metrics don’t mean a thing if they don’t reflect a real connection with your customers. The only way to get a valuable ROI is to work and wait.

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Tags: community, content creation, Social Media, Strategy, the right way, traffic
Posted in Social Media, Strategy | No Comments »

Remember, Not Everyone Knows

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Photo by Madame Li

With all the people constantly yapping about social media and its benefits, about how you need to be on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and many other social networks, it’s easy to fall under the impression that everyone already knows all there is to know about social media. Well, hold your horses, because not only there’s a lot of people and companies who have no idea what social media is, but there’s also a lot of people that want to know what it is and still don’t. If you are involved in social media, that’s a great opportunity for you!

Earlier this week, an article on TechCrunch caught my attention. The article is called “Study Finds Marketers Embracing Social Media Marketing In A Big Way” and talks about social media marketing adoption by more than a thousand companies and their goals and strategies for 2010. While many companies are understanding the importance of social media and how it can help and better their businesses (66 percent of respondents will be investing in social media marketing in 2010. Of those, 40 percent would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards social media marketing), there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement.

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Tags: Advertising, Blogging, community, Social Media, social networking, Strategy, the right way, Twitter
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

Learn To Focus

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

When you start getting into social media, learning the system, listening to people and watching how it works in general, you’ll stumble with many “experts” that will tell you that you have to be here, there, and everywhere. They will tell you that you won’t want to miss the wave, that you need tool A or tool B because your customers are there, and that you have to be present to connect with them. This is true, to an extent. Because in reality, you have to be careful of not losing your focus. There’s a lot to say about focusing your efforts in social media, because otherwise, like Tim Ferris likes to say, you are being active instead of productive. Here are some reasons why less is more in social media:

You can’t do everything

If by any chance you think that you have to ability to do everything, you better pop that bubble soon, because not realizing limits in social media can be disastrous. You throw many hours to waste trying to catch up with everyone and trying to do too much. Let some of it go, it’s the best decision.

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Tags: community, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, the right way
Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Strategy | No Comments »

What Are You Waiting For to Have an Event?

Monday, January 18th, 2010

We like to talk all the time about how social media is all about “connecting” with people, meeting others with our similar interests, getting to know those that we can help and that will help us in return. A lot of talk, certainly, but I can’t help to wonder if people and companies worry enough to take it to the next level. There comes a point when you need to stop starting at the screen and start staring at more human faces. That’s why we hold these events when we can, these meet ups, or “tweetups”, where we go and connect with real people in a tangible way. We love them, and that’s why your company should start thinking about holding more of those. Here are some reasons why you should consider having any kind of real life event soon:

We like reality

Everyone enjoys the screen time, but we are people. We need the human connection, we need to get real. That’s where you can come in: give us an excuse to see what reality looks like once in a while! We will appreciate you for it!

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Tags: Events, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Posted in Events, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy | No Comments »

Tease! We Like Anticipation!

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Photo by 7-how-7

After many successful and unsuccessful launches and projects becoming popular in social media, there are some very concrete and specific factors that we can identify in every one of them to see why they did so well, or so bad. One of the common denominators is the strategy of anticipation. “Teasing” your customers, or future customers, has been working for a long time in many industries, with the cinematographic one being the best example. What are trailers other than builders of anticipation? Now that social media is installed, companies and people are using the tools and software to create anticipation in different ways.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples that have been quite successful:

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Tags: community, online marketing, Social Media, Strategy, the right way
Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Strategy | No Comments »

Collaboration in Social Media

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Image by lumaxart
www.lumaxart.com

Every time you want to think about social media, try imagining a huge place where people just get together to talk, debate, laugh, work and do most of the things that they do in real life, with the only exception that distance is no longer an issue. One of the most interesting possibilities that this new (is it still new?) movement, fad, culture, or whatever you want to call it brings to the table, is a whole new way to collaborate with each other. It opens up a door that couldn’t exist before because of obstacles like geographical distance and lack of social tools. Well, fortunately, we have that now, those tools are here. Collaboration can take the next step.

Between Companies

Thanks to the access that companies now have to their customers’ opinions on a massive scale, they can now work together to establish connections and partnerships that can make sense for all the parties involved, not only from a financial point of view of the companies, but from the point of view of their customers as well. As long as companies are responsible, the possibilities of collaboration are endless.

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Tags: Blogging, Business, collaboration, community, content, content creation, conversation, Social Media, teamwork
Posted in Social Media, Strategy | 3 Comments »

Don’t Jump In Right Away!

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Photo by Mark Strozier

You know when you are about to take a shower and you touch the water to see its temperature? The reason we do this is because we have to be careful before jumping right in, otherwise we may get burned or frozen. We do it because we analyze the situation before taking action. Well, social media should be approached in the same way: you look at it, you touch it, before jumping in!

Some recommendations to avoid making big mistakes in social media:

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Tags: Blogging, community, networking, recommendation, Social Media, Strategy, the right way, trust
Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Strategy | No Comments »