Siri Is Now Our Personal, Social Media Assistant!

Siri is going to make our social media experience more fun and easy! We will be able to update our status, post a comment on our wall, or send a tweet by just telling her. That’s right!

Update Facebook and Twitter without typing a single word! This will make it much easier to get the word out faster.

We Definitely “Like” This!

Facebook will be integrated throughout the entire iOS. Those extra steps of opening the Facebook app to post a photo? Gone! Facebook is now integrated into the Camera and Photos apps. We know you have played Angry Birds as purchases have exceeded the world’s population and downloads are now coming from Mars.

You now have the ability to post your high scores directly from Game Center as well as share links from Safari:

Upset you keep missing birthdays or special events? Facebook events are now integrated right into Calendar. The best part. You will never lose contact information from friends as your Facebook friends’ profile information is integrated right into Contacts. When they update a phone number or email address, you automatically stay up to date. All you have to do is sign into Facebook once!

Using Maps, and want to post your location without opening the Facebook app? You can! Post your location to Facebook directly from the new Maps. Oh yea, we forgot to mention. Make sure you learn how this is going to impact your business: Apple’s iOS 6 Says Buh-Bye to Google Maps.

Sorry, we got a little sidetracked. You will now find the actual Like button in iTunes and the App Store. You can now Like whole albums, songs, TV shows, movies and apps. You do not have to leave whatever app you are in to do it either.

Making Social Media Management Easier!

At Cyberlicious Marketing, we obviously stay ahead of the going trends to ensure our partners stay innovative, creative and competitive. We take the pressure off of you to focus more on your business and less on the new and improved ways to promote it. We take care of that for you as we strategize specifically to your niche and industry.

You provide the content and expertise. We provide the strategy and know how to get your business in front of customers actively searching for your products or services. For more information, visit our Social Media Marketing page or Contact Us today to get your business’s social intelligence on track!

If you like this, you like us. If you like us, we can be friends. If we are friends, we’ll see you on Facebook! And for all you early birds out there, pay attention to those Tweets and ReTweets!

Just so we can always stay in direct contact with you, sign up for our newsletter. Get more awesome tips and internet marketing news right here. Now that’s Cyberlicious!

The post Add Apple’s Siri to Your Social Media Management! appeared first on Internet Marketing | Increase ROI by Increasing Conversions!.

One of the most important things we do for our partners is make sure they stay in front of their target audience. As people use their smart phones even more to utilize the Internet, we have to make sure our partners are made aware of any new features. This so happens to be one of those times.

Quick Links:

• Siri is Getting a New Look!
• Siri Breaks It Off with Google Maps!
• Don’t Forget About Apple Maps Other Data Partners!
• What Does Apple Maps Mean for Your Business?
• Start with Yelp…
• Important Things You Need to Know

Siri is Getting a New Look!

Apple is going to release a very important feature to their new iOS 6 this fall. It will impact businesses in a major way. Lucky for you, you have found this great article that is going to provide you with very helpful information to ensure your business gets creative, stays innovative, and is always competitive!

First, we want to ask you a question. Does your target audience visit your website using an iPhone or iPad? Not sure? Check your analytic reports. We utilize Google Analytics to capture each visitor’s mobile device information such as the name of the device and its operating system:

As you can see, it is pretty important to know your visitors, and to know what changes may be impacting your business! By the way, Google Analytics is free so why aren’t you using it?

Siri Breaks It Off with Google Maps!

We did not want to distract you from the importance of this article by providing a link to Apple’s iOS 6 Preview. We took a snapshot of the entire page for your view here. Check it out (click the image for a larger view):

Don’t Forget About Apple Maps Other Data Partners!

In one of Apple’s copyright pages, it lists other data partners Apple is using for its new Maps application. Here are the important ones:

• Acxiom
• Localeze
• TomTom
• Waze
• Yelp

Acxiom

The data that Acxiom collects helps people find businesses or even other people through their directory services. Their data consists of publicly available information such as information from surveys and from other providers.

Localeze

They are not like other local listing website. They utilize Business Listings Identity Management which is an ongoing process authoritatively updating and verifying business listing information for Local Search. It enables businesses to certify, enhance, update and continually improve their local business listings for distribution to authorized local search platforms.

TomTom

This one gets a little tricky as we are unsure what they are utilizing TomTom for. TomTom receives its local information from Local Search with Google. Most likely for the turn-by-turn directions as the new iPhone 5 will have this capability.

Waze

You may know Waze as a traffic app for the iPhone, therefore, that one will be handling, you guessed it, the traffic.

Yelp

This is simply another local directory system similar to Google + Local. Apple will load ratings, reviews, discounts and images directly from Yelp.

What Does Apple Maps Mean for Your Business?

It means Apple is launching an entirely new local mobile search platform for its iOS users. Put it this way, according to the IDC (International Data Corporation), out of the 152.3 million smartphones shipped in the first quarter of 2012, 23% of those were iPhones. That is a target audience of around 35 million people your business needs to ensure it stays in front of.

You do not want your listing inaccurate or appearing with a slew of negative reviews. This could definitely cause a loss in potential business, but most importantly, affect your pocket book.

On June 11, 2012, Apple sent out a press release mentioning this change, “…local search includes information for over 100 million businesses with info cards that offer Yelp ratings, reviews, available deals and photos.”

Start with Yelp…

Google Maps ratings, reviews, available deals and photos are now being replaced with Yelp’s. Google has around 80 million local businesses listed while Apple is claiming Yelp is going to provide 100 million.

How accurate are those listings? At least in Google’s algorithm, they can track businesses that are trying to manipulate their listing. Google basically knows the IP address of each review. If multiple reviews come from the same IP address, someone is writing their own reviews, and Google will penalize the listing. It would seem, Yelp is still having problems filtering information about the actual business, and its products and/or services.

Think you are going to get away with just hurrying over to Yelp, and polishing up your listing? It is a great start, but only a start.

Important Things You Still Need to Know

We are extremely busy preparing our partners for this enhancement. Once we finish with them, we promise we will post another article going into detail on how to get the most for your business out of Yelp. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter for more great tips and news on the internet marketing industry.

Now that you are “liking us” and all of that, it’s time to click the Yelp link in the sources section below to provide more exposure to your business.

The post Apple’s iOS 6 Says Buh-Bye to Google Maps. What Does This Mean for Businesses? appeared first on Internet Marketing | Increase ROI by Increasing Conversions!.

At some point, we all feel the need to be number one in some manner and it’s often a very challenging feet to accomplish. Whether we are striving for personal proficiency or perfection in our own business… success seems just at the end of our reach sometimes.

As a business owner, you understand the high level of competition on the Internet and maximizing every tool at your disposal is imperative. This is just the reason that Cyberlicious Marketing is here to assist businesses with Google Adwords Management and reach higher goals together.

Our agency is poised right now to begin raising the bar for your business’s Internet presence. As an elite member of Google’s “Engage for Agencies,” we have the immediate ability to tap into your specific business niche for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) marketing strategies utilizing Google AdWords.

If you are familiar with Google Adwords campaigns, you can appreciate the power it commends as an extraordinarily diverse vehicle that drives new business to your website. If you are unfamiliar with Google Adwords, imagine a way to get your company’s name and website on the first page of Google for people actively searching for your products or services? Google Adwords will drive potential customers straight to you when they search for your product or services online.

What Cyberlicious Marketing and our Google Adwords services can do for your business is offer tried and true methods of website optimization techniques that can be trusted!

Don’t be fooled by the SPAM emails you receive from time to time offering to get your business noticed. Those companies use unethical means of ranking and often get their clients black listed by Google. Our Google Adwords Specialists always utilize “white hat” SEO techniques and stand above the rest!

For a limited time, we are giving new customers with new accounts a $100 coupon towards their first AdWords campaign as our way to give businesses a leg up on their competition.

Hey! Who doesn’t like free advertising and what better way to get more traffic to your website than to have Cyberlicious Marketing’s Google Adwords Professionals take the wheel.

We will evaluate your specific needs to maximize the full potential of AdWords by:

• Creating ad campaigns reaching only people interested in your specific products or services.
• Experiment with multiple keywords and phrases for your specific industry.
• Integration into Google Analytics for evaluation and continued optimizing.
• Consult with you on enhancing your landing pages to increase conversions and sales.
• Staying trendy! Search queries change as trends change. We analyze the trending statistics daily to ensure your ads are targeting the right audience.

We encourage everyone to act fast, as to, we only have five (5) of these highly prized $100 Google Adword vouchers available. The sooner you CLICK HERE the sooner you see increased traffic.

As your Google Adwords Manager, we will illustrate to you how we’ll get your website ranked on the first page of Google using AdWords campaigns with our advanced SEO/SEM methods.

Contact Cyberlicious Marketing today and schedule an appointment for success!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter to receive news, tips and techniques on the rapidly changing world of internet marketing. You especially, do not want to miss any of our freebies. Since you are here, go ahead and sign up for our newsletter to your right. Now that’s Cyberlicious!

NOTE: Recipients must be a new AdWords account in order to redeem. It cannot be redeemed towards an existing AdWords account. For U.S. or Canada billing addresses only.

The post Increase Your Business Utilizing Our Google AdWords Specialists! appeared first on Internet Marketing | Increase ROI by Increasing Conversions!.

Now It’s Time to Feel Enlightenment!

We have finally reached the highest level in the Social Business Hierarchy of Needs called Enlightenment. Very few companies reach this phase as many refer to it as an aspirational state. At this point, business processes are adjusted in real-time through social data and insights. Time for “on the fly” reactions!

Target integrated both historical and real-time data to radically improve their “target” marketing. They were able to send out ads and coupons before customers even knew they needed offers.

On the Fly Business Intelligence

A few of these social media platforms have insights built right in such as Facebook Page Insights. There are many third party tools available, such as Google Analytics, that have integrated into the social platforms’ API (Application Programming Interface). For example, Cyberlicious Marketing used Google Analytics to help a partner that was struggling with converting their Facebook fans. We created an A/B experiment on two colored landing tabs. The first one was white, and the one we tested it against was red. The red landing tab increased their conversions from 32% to 50%. This is just a small example of real-time market response generated by low conversion rates in the data driven reports.

The “Holistic” Model

The Holistic or “Honeycomb” model has each employee empowered. As you have forums, portals and knowledge shares organized, the company no longer has to isolate their social media efforts to a few employees. The employees themselves are now organized, and the company can now take a holistic approach.

Check out the statistics on Dell’s EmployeeStorm which was modeled after its IdeaStorm. If your business is generating 4,100 ideas from its employees, you have definitely reached the Enlightenment phase!

Let Us Help Your Business Grow

Starting a business, and don’t have employees? Cyberlicious Marketing works with small businesses just like yours, and within your budget to help create a foundation for your social media marketing campaigns. We also work with medium to large businesses to help organize and educate their staff in an effort to reach this final phase. We will educate your organization on the evolving platforms, giving your business plenty of time to innovate into these new interfaces such as adapting to Facebook’s Timeline implementation.

If you would like to learn more about how all of this can impact your business, contact us today!

The post Social Media for Businesses: Management | Phase 5: Enlightenment appeared first on Internet Marketing | Increase ROI by Increasing Conversions!.

Less Work for You, More Empowerment for Them!

Once you reach the Enablement phase, you have a solid understanding of your baseline needs. Your team has implemented certain processes, and a proper structure is in place. It’s time to loosen the reins, and let your team thrive within your organization. Give your business units the support and flexibility to reach the company’s outlined goals. Start the enablement by helping those business units deploy on their own.

Let the Birds Leave the Nest

With your Center of Excellence or dedicated team in place, actively support the business units to deploy on their own. Help your team find their social voices by empowering them. You will find this as the most exciting part of the process. The feeling of relief knowing you successfully created a group of intelligent individuals to maintain your social presence.

Knowledge Share & Cross-Learning

Encourage your team to use each other by consolidating resources. Even though you may have educational programs in place, your program may not reach all your business units. To supplement, create a centralized knowledge base or an intranet portal that allows practitioners to share best practices. Something as simple as a forum.

Cisco has created a portal called Global Social Media. As shown below, the employees have a place to download resource materials, learn about the social media policies, join meetings and events, and participate in a discussion forum:

Measurement for ROIs

Executives, and business owners alike will want to see return on their social business investment (ROI). In order to stay ahead of these requests, it is key to standardize early and provide business units with enterprise-wide measurement formulas. Understand, each business unit will have different business goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Marketing will focus on engagement and lead generation while support focuses on customer satisfaction and cost reduction. Make sure your reporting reflects each business unit’s need by understanding the calculations for their ROIs utilizing the metrics they define.

Cyberlicious Marketing utilizes Google Analytics to measure social media campaigns. From tracking the likes and retweets on your website to knowing exactly what promotion generated the most traffic and from where.

More About Social Media Measurement!

In an upcoming article release, Social Media for Businesses: Measurement, we will go into greater detail on how to measure your social media campaigns using Google Analytics. We will definitely show you how to track website social buttons as mentioned above. This will provide you with the knowledge on how to experiment on button locations to determine the best, possible webpage position that receives the most shares, Likes, Retweets, etc. Do you know if you get more shares with social buttons in your header, above or below the content of the web page, to the right or left in a sidebar, in the footer of the website, or even in the navigation bar? Always optimize for better results!

Addition Information

Stay tuned for the final phase, Enlightenment.

The post Social Media for Businesses: Management | Phase 4: Enablement appeared first on Internet Marketing | Increase ROI by Increasing Conversions!.

One of the biggest misconceptions with Google’s organic (not paid) results is that your business’s website may not rank on the first page even though the website is found on the first page. We all are probably guilty of it. The average Google user may not know the results they find on the first page are actually their “personalized results.”

Website Owners, Don’t Sweat It!

We will explain in detail exactly how search results are influenced by personal results. We will even help you create a personal free search environment. As a bonus, we will provide tips on how to find even more accurate results. The ones your potential customers are finding.

Google Gets Real Personal!

With the implementation of Search, plus Your world, search results are even more influenced by personal interests. This is another key element in Google’s ultimate goal of providing their users with quality results. Personal results can be shown by clicking the personal results button or hidden by clicking the globe button like shown below:

Show Personal Results

Hide Personal Results

Time to Get a Little More Precise with that Ranking!

We hear this all the time, “We already knew about the Show/Hide Personal Results button, and maintain our rank regardless.”

Not so fast! Google’s personalized results are also determined by search history. The way Google uses search history personalization will depend whether you are logged into a Google account or not:

• Signed-in Personalization: Google provides a more personalized search experience based on Web History. This feature is automatically turned on when creating a Google account. It is their way of collecting information to provide recommendations across their products and services, as well as, offer more relevant search results based on the Google account’s web activity. The information related to search queries, the results that appeared, and the pages visited are all stored in Web History. It lasts indefinitely or until it is manually removed by the user.




• Google Toolbar Expands Web History: Google Toolbar users have the ability to expand their Web History by enabling Web History in the Toolbar itself. This includes webpages you have visited outside of using Google search results. For example, when you visit your company’s website, you most often type in the web address, “www.yourcompany.com” directly into your browser. Google also stores these types of entries into the Google Toolbar.




• Signed-out Personalization: Google will also personalize search experiences by using a cookie stored in the web browser. Signed-out search activity is stored 180 days in the browser’s cookie, in addition to search queries, and results you click. Remember, public computers will display multiple people’s personalized results, thus impacting the rankings. Users are unable to access this information because Google does not provide one.

What Does This All Mean for My Website and Its Ranking?

Google is basically saving all of your search and website visiting behaviors. If you frequently visit your own website, this information is stored and will increase your website’s chances of landing on the first page of Google. This is why we believe the average person thinks clicking their own website moves them up the Google ranks. Unfortunately, this is not the type of ranking your business’s website is trying to achieve.

How Can I Find My Non-Personalized Results?

There are multiple ways to determine your ranking without the manipulation of personalized results:

• Signed-in “Remove All Web History” Non-Personalization: As described above, a signed-in user’s information is stored in their Web History. You will have to remove this information from your Google account in order to receive non-personalized results. You basically have two options: 1) Remove All Web History or 2) Remove Items from Your Web History. Visit Google.com/history to access this functionality. Once you decide to remove all or some of your Web History, you have the ability to pause it. Pausing Web History will stop Google from storing your personalized results, but it will continue to store your search history:








• Signed-in “Turn Off Personal Results” Non-Personalization: Remember, the show/hide personal results buttons? To hide personal results, click the globe button. This setting can be set as the Google account default by clicking the gear button , clicking Search Settings and selecting “Do not use personal results” in the “Personal Results” section.

  IMPORTANT: The Google account will continue to store search history even though “Do not use personal results” is set as the default.

• Signed-in “Disable Google Toolbar” Non-Personalization: The settings within your actual Google account should reflect the settings in the toolbar. If the account has Web History on Pause, the toolbar will not store data to the account. You may want to disable this feature in the toolbar settings just in case there is some sort of disconnect between the two.
• Signed-out “Turn Off Search History Personalization” Non-Personalization: Visit Google.com/history/optout while signed out of the Google account. (Try visiting the link again if you land on Google’s homepage.) Click Disable customizations based on search activity. Remember, this is stored in a cookie and will affect everyone using the computer not signed into a Google account.

How Can I Find Even More Accurate Results?

• Signed-in Google Users: Following these instructions: 1) Remove All Web History, 2) Pause Web History, 3) Turn Off Personal Results, 4) Double check Google Toolbar settings and disable the expansion of Web History.







• Signed-out Google Users: Following these instructions: 1) Turn Off Search History Personalization, 2) Delete the cookie from your browser.




• Third Party Tools: Third party tools are great to use especially if they are utilizing Google’s API. Cyberlicious Marketing uses one of the best SEO managing tools in the industry. SEOmoz PRO is web-based software that combines SEO management, social media monitoring, actionable recommendations, and so much more. Utilizing their Keyword Analysis tool, we can determine the rank for individual keywords based on search engine and region without the manipulation of personal results. Let us help your business grow, and SEOmoz is included with our SEO services.

Visit our search engine optimization page for more information. Already have all the information you need? Then contact us today to get your business in front of those customers actively searching for your products or services!

The post Think Your Business’s Website Ranks on Google’s First Page? Think Again. appeared first on Internet Marketing | Increase ROI by Increasing Conversions!.

It was a busy year in 2009 for Microsoft. They introduced Bing, and they bought Yahoo for $39 billion dollars. When you want to start a war with a company like Google, this is one way to do it. Bing’s idea, “people should expect more from a search engine.” Obviously, with the launch of Search, plus Your World, Microsoft has fired back.

Microsoft Welcomes Us to the New Bing

The new Bing is going to offer a brand new experience. It will have an exciting new information architecture with a three column design. Bing will focus on providing information to help us take action, interact with friends and experts without compromising our core search experience. Take a peak at the new experience:

Our Experience Gets Personal!

Hotel Search: When we search for hotels, Bing will offer photos, maps, pricing and the exclusive OpinionRank from Bing, which shows what people from across the Web think about the property.

Hotel Search – Activity Feed: Bing will introduce an activity feed in a sidebar where people can help answer friends’ questions, ‘Like’ interesting posts or get inspired to discover new things.

Restaurant Search (Standard): Standard restaurant search results.

Restaurant Search (with Snapshot): Bing will provide summarized reviews, location maps and one-click directions, interior panoramas, and building shots right within snapshot without ever opening a new page.

Restaurant Search (People Who Know): Bing will even go beyond friends. They will also identify and surface experts and enthusiasts with knowledge in areas related to our search.

Check Out the New Bing in Action!

Sign Up to Experience the New Bing!

Bing has offered a chance to be one of the first to experience the new Bing by visiting the link in our Sources section at the bottom to receive an email notification when it is available.

Social Media for Businesses

It is the new age of social media marketing as search engines integrate personal information from social media platforms into their search results. Regardless of what they want to call it, this is impacting marketing and advertising in a major way. Is your business adapting?

Get Creative. Stay Innovative. Always Competitive. Now that’s Cyberlicious!

The post Bing Get’s Social with Spend Less Time Searching, More Time Doing appeared first on Internet Marketing | Increase ROI by Increasing Conversions!.

Generate a Solid Formation

Now that we are ready for crisis control, we can move on to Formation. Here you want to organize your social media deployments by connecting business units to increase coordination and reduce duplication. Large companies have an average of 178 social media accounts. It is time to ask yourself, approximately how many official social media accounts exist across my entire organization, including all business units, products and regions?

Some companies went as far as to ask the business units to create a spreadsheet listing all existing accounts, and determine each account’s health level, for example: Active, Abandoned, Fledgling, or Unknown.

Formation: Best Practice Sharing

Once the initial audit is finished, assemble the business units to share their best practices. Review findings, and ask for feedback on how to improve your overall social media management. You will not have all the answers when starting your social media campaigns. It is very important you create social media accounts for only the social media platforms you can control. It is about quality not quantity. Once you get one rocking and rolling, move on to the next as your previous experiences may improve your next platform roll out.

Formation: Center of Excellence

As your team gains experience, you can create a Center of Excellence to share all your best practices. Here you will provide governance, policies and guidelines, training, and measurement support. Even Homeland Security has a Center of Excellence, a group of researchers who work on finding “homeland security solutions” for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Get with your team, and find those solutions and best practices. Optimize those social media strategies!

The post Social Media for Businesses: Management | Phase 3: Formation appeared first on Internet Marketing | Increase ROI by Increasing Conversions!.

Become the Ed Reed of Safeties

Ready to move on to Safety? Do not move into this phase unless you have a strong foundation, and are comfortable moving forward. Here you will define your dedicated team, set clear goals of your objectives, then deploy them. Start preparing your team to quickly and safely respond in your social media networks on a day to day basis, and during crises.

Utilize these five use cases for social media management:

Safety: Case #1 Intense Response

Intense Response is where you will have a high volume of interactions by your support and marketing teams. Requirements may include monitoring and alerting tools, sentiment analysis, influencer identification, workflow routing, and tiered-governance features for tactical support teams.

Make sure you inform your intense response team it is time to put their big boy or girl pants on because some people just are not going to be nice. Never, ever, never get in a confrontation with anyone on the internet no matter how vulgar or disrespectful they are towards you, an employee or the brand. Handle these situations professionally by taking the high road. Consult the team, and release a PR statement on the social network where this occurred. Find a positive solution for the problem, and completely redirect it.

Safety: Case #2 Social Broadcasting

Social Broadcasting is where you will be publishing marketing content by either your PR or marketing teams. Requirements may include the ability to post a variety of media types; ability to target messaging based on time, geography, social networks, and demographics; and a content library.

Content marketing plays a huge role in the social networks. Your content is endless. News, blog posts, specials, discounts, images, and even an employee’s birthday can be used to market across the internet on all the social media platforms. There are social media sites for videos (YouTube), images (Pinterest), and all of the above (Facebook). This is why you need to strategize your social media campaigns with a team of bright individuals that understand this new age of direct marketing.

Safety: Case #3 Platform Campaign Marketing

Platform Campaign Marketing is where you will implement custom applications and features on specific social platforms for interactive marketing. Requirements may include customizable, white-label applications such as contests, interactive media containers, Q&A, commerce features, etc.

ESPN is a huge player in interactive marketing when it comes to social media. They create Facebook applications for viewers to go vote on certain sports related debates.

EA Sports even had an interactive app on Facebook to vote for the cover of their Madden 13 video game.

Both of these marketing campaigns describe the strategies of platform campaign marketing as they are intending to draw people to your social media pages. We know you’ve heard of “Like Us and Receive $5 Off.” That’s platform campaign marketing.

Safety: Case #4 Distributed Brand Presence

Distributed Brand Presence is a high number of dispersed customer engagement points: multiple brands, departments, locations and partners. Requirements may include scalable software that can manage a large number of users with cascading permissions, multiple social networks, and language capabilities.

Intel is a great example of a company implementing case #4. They have multiple departments as their chips go into multiple devices. Keep in mind, they are also an international company. They had to provide content to 35 different markets requiring them to take a look into Social Media Management Systems (SMMS) and train hundreds of end users. Currently, Intel has over 4.4 million Facebook fans. They have nearly 100 live Facebook tabs and more than 35 Pages globally under Facebook.com/Intel. All of this managed from a single dashboard.

Update: Jeremiah’s study was taken in 2010. As of May 2012, Intel has over 9.7 million fans. As Facebook implemented the new Timeline, Intel decreased their tabs from “nearly 100″ to just over 10 tabs.

Facebook Pages. Get creative. Stay Innovative. Always Competitive. Just like Intel:

Safety: Case #5 Tailored Service & Support

Tailored Service and Support can be described as custom development and white-glove support for large and regulated organizations. Requirements may include custom work and reporting, education programs, a large support team, data security and availability, and service-level agreements.

Outside the scope of standard deployment features, this brand sensitive organization had special requirements. They wanted a test environment with fake accounts, queues, and rules weeks in advance of going live. They wanted collaboration with various client business units and agency partners to establish strategy and policies. They requested an around-the-clock dedicated strategy, support and engineers during initial launch week. And of course, they wanted custom daily reports. They partnered with Sprinklr to provide this Tailored Service & Support case.

Safety is Now Assured!

The average size of a social media team is eleven. Large companies are creating war rooms, like the one mentioned here, for crisis control. Some companies like H&R Block have even gone as far as creating an infograph to help model response and engagement for their employees. There are plenty of ideas out there to use for your social media management. Does your company have a crisis plan?

The post Social Media for Businesses: Management | Phase 2: Safety appeared first on Internet Marketing | Increase ROI by Increasing Conversions!.

Social media management continues to evolve as the social media platforms evolve. Everyone is scouring the internet looking for a solution on how to manage their social media marketing campaigns, as well as, their social media accounts. Larger companies have generated a budget and created teams to sit in war rooms to monitor and maintain their engagement.

Gatorade even went as far as to create a video on how they implemented social media management for their company called Gatorade Mission Control:

Social media management is obviously serious business. Companies are implementing full on teams to monitor their business’s activities. They understand the power of social media. It’s time for small to medium sized businesses to understand this as well. Get ready to learn how to apply your social intelligence to your social media networks!

Understanding How the Bigs Do Social

Jeremiah Owyang and his team at Altimeter did a survey on “How Advanced Companies Prepare Internally”. The survey was based off of 63 interviews and briefings with corporate practitioners and technology providers. Companies with more than 1000 employees had 144 survey respondents, and an analysis of 50 social media case studies around crises.

Creating a Social Business Hierarchy of Needs

We will provide Cyberlicious Marketing’s real world experiences utilizing the Social Business Hierarchy of Needs. If you would like to read Social Business Readiness: How Advance Companies Prepare Internally in its entirety, click the link in the Sources section at the bottom of the page.

As Jeremiah’s analysis describes it, there are five phases in the hierarchy organized by dependency:

Quality Social Media Management Starts with a Strong Foundation

You want something that lasts, right? Then you know it takes a strong foundation.

Implement the Four Social Media Policies

Even though corporate polices protect the actual company, social media policies must protect the employees and customers alike. Here are the four social media policies your business should implement before taking on your social media networks:

• Social Media Policy: This policy is intended for the company as a whole. It defines how the company utilizes social media. For example, if employees are mamanging the accounts, you need to define that here. Just search for “social media policies” online as they can help you get started.


• Disclosure/Ethics Policy: This policy was created specifically for rank and file employees. Since your employees have personal accounts, it addresses the concerns involving disclosure and confidentiality. If they are not a member of your dedicated team, they still represent the company and the brand when posting to their personal accounts. Ever wonder how the iPad 3 got out before it was officially announced by Apple? You better get those social media policies in place!


• Community Policy: Now it is time to protect your current and potential customers that engage on your social media pages. You want to protect your social media communities from internet “trolls” and keyboard “tough guys or gals.” The policy will guide your customers toward a common objective by focusing on the desired behaviors within the policy rather than the “what not to do’s.” Link this policy to all social media accounts.


• Privacy Policy: Did you know your business will be gathering customer data from your social media accounts? The team must understand they will be tracking customer engagements utilizing the tools they are provided. Create a policy to explain this, with the intention of if, and how this information is going to be used.

Train & Educate Employees on How to Use Social Media Tools

If your business has elected to use a social media monitoring and management tool, educate your dedicated employees on how to use it. If your business does not plan to use a tool, your employees can still access social media through their smart phones. Due to this, companies have to at least educate their employees on governance. It is imperative to include the social media and disclosure/ethics policies mentioned above.

Once the employees are trained, continue the education process on up the organizational ladder. Educate executives, social media practitioners and business units. Also include people within the organization who require more advanced training. Check out this 28 minute video from IBM on how to become a certified Social Media Practitioner through its Social Media @ Intel program:

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