The Approaching Apocalypse And What Only You Can Do About It . . . Or Maybe Not.

Posted on November 30, 2012 by admin

A Third Of Cell Phone Owners Search For Health Information

Posted on November 28, 2012 by admin

According to The Pew Internet & American Life Project, in conjunction with Princeton Survey Research, 85% of U.S. adults (264,853,129 million) own a cell phone, and 31% (82,104,470) of them have used their phone to look for health information. Two years ago, only 17% of cell phone owners had used their phones to look for health advice.

Smartphone owners lead this activity: 52% gather health information on their phones, compared with 6% of non-smartphone owners. Cell phone owners who are Latino, African American, between the ages of 18-49, or hold a college degree are also more likely to gather health information this way.

80% of cell phone owners say they send and receive text messages, but just 9% of cell phone owners say they receive any text updates or alerts about health or medical issues. Women, those between the ages of 30 and 64, and smartphone owners are more likely than other cell phone owners to have signed up for health text alerts.

Smartphones enable the use of mobile software applications to help people track or manage their health. Some 19% of smartphone owners have at least one health app on their phone. Exercise, diet, and weight apps are the most popular types. Mobile health continues to climb in popularity, especially among smartphone owners.

Among all cell phone owners, some demographic groups are more likely than others to look for health information on their phones: Latinos, African Americans, those between the ages of 18 and 49, and college graduates.

Mobile Health Information Seekers’ Demographics (% of cell phone owners within each group who use their phones to look for health or medical information online)
*Segment*	*% of Respondents*
All cell phone owners	31%
Men	29
Women	33
Age
18–29	42
30–49	39
50–64	19
65+	9
Race/ethnicity
White, Non–Hispanic	27
Black, Non–Hispanic	35
Hispanic	38
Annual household income
Less than $30,000/yr	28
$30,000–$49,999	30
$50,000–$74,999	37
$75,000+	37
Education level
No high school diploma	17
High school grad	26
Some College	33
College +	38
Source: Pew Internet/CHCF Health Survey, November 2012

Mobile health information also seems to appeal to certain groups of health consumers: caregivers, people who went through a recent medical crisis, and those who experienced a recent, significant change in their physical health such as gaining or losing a lot of weight, becoming pregnant, or quitting smoking.

Mobile Health Information by Phone: Health Status (% of cell phone owners within each group who use their phone to look for health or medical information online)
*Group & Health Status*	*% of Respondents*
All cell phone owners	31%
Caregiver
Yes	37
No	27
Those with chronic conditions
No conditions	34
One or more conditions	26
Faced medical crisis in last 12 months
Yes	40
No	30
Significant health change in last 12 months
Yes	41
No	28
Source: Pew Internet/CHCF Health Survey, November 2012

In 2010, when the same percentage of U.S. adults owned cell phones, 17% of cell phone owners reported using their phones to access health information. Today, that number stands at 31%, almost double the previous figure.

Nearly all demographic groups report significant increases in this activity, with the exception of those over 65 and those who did not complete high school. A few groups stand out: cell phone owners who are African American, college graduates, women, those with an annual household income between $50,000 and $74,999, and those between the ages of 30–49. Smartphone ownership has greatly increased over the last two years and no doubt had an effect on this trend.

Health Information Accessed by Phone,Then and Now (% of cell phone owners within each group who use their phone to look up health or medical information)
*Category*	*2010*	*2012*
All cell phone owners	17%	31%
Men	17	29
Women	16	33
Age
18–29	29	42
30–49	18	39
50–64	7	19
65+ 8	9
Race/Ethnicity
White, non–Hispanic	15	27
Black, non–Hispanic	19	35
Hispanic	25	38
Annual household income
Less than $30,000/yr	15	28
$30,000–$49,999	17	30
$50,000–$74,999	17	37
$75,000+	22	37
Education level
No high school diploma	16	17
High School grad 1	2	26
Some college	21	33
College+	20	38
Source: Pew Internet/CHCF Health Survey, November 2012

Text messaging is a nearly universal activity, especially among younger cell phone owners, but it has not yet had a significant impact on the health market. 80% of cell phone owners say they send and receive text messages, but just 9% of cell phone owners say they receive any text updates or alerts about health or medical issues.

Health Apps Users (% of smartphone owners within each group who have software applications on their phone to track or manage health
*Category*	*% of Respondents*
All smartphone owners	19%
Men	16
Women	23
Age
18–29	24
30–49	19
50–64	16
65+	10
Race/ethnicity
White, Non–Hispanic	19
Black, Non–Hispanic	21
Hispanic	15
Annual household income
Less than $30,000/yr	14
$30,000–$49,999	21
$50,000–$74,999	21
$75,000+	23
Education level
High school grad	11
Some College	24
College +	22
Source: Pew Internet/CHCF Health Survey, November 2012

Source, all data: Pew Internet/CHCF Health Survey, August 7–September 6, 2012. N=3,014 adults ages 18+. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish, on landline and cell phones. Margin of error is +/– 3 percentage points for results based on cell phone owners.

For additional information and the PDF file, please visit PewInternet here.

10 Tips to Turn Webinars Into Masterpieces

Posted on November 28, 2012 by admin

Thanks to Eric Vidal of Target Marketing for this excellent tip sheet for webinars. It makes a compelling case to produce one but it eliminates tons of mistakes that would surely occur without a handy Top 10 Webinar Tips Checklist. It’s filled with common sense and lots of excellent marketing synergies available from following these steps.

I’m fond of the Neuro Linguistic Programing (NLP) supposition that the meaning of a communication is the response that it elicits. That’s particularly appropriate for webinars.Audience attendance, participation, questions, feedback and sharing make webinars an ideal tool for refining business strategies and tactics.

Weninars or webcasts have become popular for delivering important information to a targeted—yet geographically-dispersed—audience, and bringing new leads into the sales funnel. Webinars provide the immediacy, intimacy and interaction of a live presentation, but without the need to rent a large room or have participants travel from all over to attend.

If it’s promoted well, the event can reinforce your relationship with existing clients and prospects, or attract new prospects and show them you understand the questions they’re facing in the marketplace.Yet as with any tool, a webinar is only as good as the people presenting it. These 10 tips will help ensure your webinars grab the attendees’ attention, holds it throughout the presentation and deliver the insights they’re looking for.

1. Create Goals, Strategy and a Plan
When webinars were first introduced, companies were very careful to ensure they knew why they were offering them and the results they wanted to achieve because webinars took a lot of work. Now, because webinars are so common and the technology is so easy to use, some of those initial steps are often left out in the rush to get the next one out.

Start by defining your goal, and then build a strategy that will help you reach that goal. To get you started, here are the top responses from a recent survey of 341 business leaders on how they use virtual solutions to impact their businesses:

Get products and services to market faster
Reach more audiences at a lower cost
Develop more effective and efficient sales teams and channel partners
Shorten sales cycles
Create stronger relationships with prospects, customers and partners
Reduce support costs by training customers

2. Use a Catchy Title and Description
Having a catchy title and description will help your webinar stand out from all the other emails and announcements your target audience receives and ensure they know there’s something in it for them. As you develop your title and description, keep these tips in mind:

Take a cue from copywriters and use action verbs to amp up the wattage.
Include searchable keywords if you’re promoting your webinar to people outside of your invitee list so search engines will pick up your content.
In the description, be sure to spell out clearly what the session is about and what attendees will get out of it for the time they invest.
Use bullet points to make it easier for busy people to read and understand your key points quickly.
Offering an incentive for participating, such as a free download, can also help increase attendance.

3. Create a Promotion Plan

With your message created, it’s time to start promoting your webinar. Start with marketing tools that have little or no cost attached to them, such as your website, intranet, and email blasts to prospect lists. Send two or three email invitations, and create a robust microsite that easily walks respondents through the registration process.

Social media tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook can help you spread the word quickly. Find LinkedIn groups relevant to your audience and post there. Create a hashtag for your event on Twitter and then use it to post roughly three times per week prior to the event. You can also create a Facebook event page and then update it at least once a week.

If you have some marketing budget to support your event, consider issuing an e-newsletter, perhaps supplemented with additional names from a list broker. Purchase Google Adwords Opens in a new window and place event sections in local newspapers and/or trade publication websites. Leverage any public relations you’re doing and be sure to take advantage of any mechanisms your partners have, as well.

Finally, be sure to embed a “promo code” into each communication so you can track the effectiveness of each vehicle. That way you can find which worked best so you can refine your marketing efforts for your next webinar.

4. Use Slides as Visual Aids, Not Visual Points
While it’s not uncommon to see a PowerPoint presentation packed with information on every slide, the truth is, having too much information distracts from the presenter and usually ensures that attendees will have trouble understanding and remembering the material. Instead, use your slides to guide your conversation. Use graphics frequently; for text-based slides, include only the main points, and just enough about them to help viewers keep their place. Your presentation will be more natural and it will be easier for attendees to stay focused on your message.

5. Use Story-Telling Techniques
The most effective speakers, whether they’re in front of a live audience or on a webinar, use stories to hold attention and illustrate concepts. Common analogies and specific examples, such as case studies, help your audience relate to the material better than a dry recitation of facts. You can use one or two statistics or hard data points to move the material from the theoretical to the practical, but don’t overload your audience with details or you’ll risk losing them. You can always make more information available after the webinar for those who are interested.

6. Keep the Session Interactive
Involve your audience throughout the presentation to keep them interested, minimize “multitasking” and encourage them to contribute. Make it clear in your introduction that the session will be collaborative, and encourage them to ask questions or make comments via the webinar client throughout, rather than waiting until the end.

Another technique you can use is to ask one or two poll questions within the first two to three minutes. You’ll set the tone and gain information that can help you tailor your delivery to the points of greatest interest to your audience. Be sure to reserve time at the end for Q&A as well as a way to wrap things up. If you have an ongoing forum, refer your audience there to continue the conversation.

7. Create Memorable Content
In the webinar virtual world, content is king. Select interesting speakers, engaging subjects and timely themes that resonate with your audience. Invite industry experts, customers or high-profile pundits to join you and help draw more participants. Keep the topic general and educational rather than specific to your products or services, because adding to your prospects’ knowledge base will attract more interest than a blatant sales pitch—and increase your chances of bringing them back for another webinar down the road.

8. Extend the Conversation Before and After the Event
Use your webinar as a conversation driver, not an isolated event. Create interest in advance by blogging about it and posting to discussion boards or groups to build anticipation for the topic. Use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to generate awareness and excitement as well.

After the event, create a centralized place such as a virtual environment or conference where the conversation can continue. Be sure your subject matter experts are prepared to continue participating as well.

9. Remember the Folks Who Register but Don’t Attend
Although not everyone who registers will be able to attend your webinar, anyone who registers is probably interested in your topic. Follow up diligently with all. Send attendees a “thank you for attending” note; send those who didn’t a “sorry we missed you” note and encourage them to access the webinar on-demand by sending a link to the archived content. The on-demand period can generate 40 percent or more of your total attendees, so don’t take it for granted.

10. Conduct Post-event Analysis
Evaluate your content, presentations and event from your own perspective as well as that of your attendees. Read feedback, survey results, chats, polls and Q&A from the session. Determine how many people actively participated, and whether their comments/questions were appropriate to the topic. If not, go back over your promotional materials, content and audience composition to determine if they were aligned. Also look at how many stayed through the entire session and how many dropped out (and at what point). The more information you can glean from this session, the better and more successful your next webinars will be.

Eric Vidal is the director of product marketing for the Event Services Business Segment at Chicago-based conferencing and collaboration services provider InterCall. Reach him at ericv@unisfair.com.

How To Improve B2B Lead Generation On LinkedIn

Posted on November 15, 2012 by admin

Here’s a helpful checklist for optimizing your LinkedIn effectiveness. Seeing it all laid out makes the steps appear obvious, but then having a condition of workability usually does once everything is laid out and put in the proper order. Thanks to the folks at Simply Zesty for sharing the shortcuts.

Because of its focus, it’s been stated many times that LinkedIn is the perfect site for generating B2B & B2C leads. It was only at the beginning of the year when Hubspot found that when compared to Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn was 277% more effective for lead generation (Facebook was .77% while Twitter was .69%).

While those stats sound great, most people tend to be unsure about what steps to take to generate leads. The thing is that lead generation isn’t limited to either your personal or your company page, it’s an amalgamation of both. One misconception about B2B lead generation is that it’s only about generating new leads, it’s also about maintaining the ones you already have and ensuring that you’re presenting yourself in the best possible light. So if you have a personal page or lucky enough to have both.

Have a Complete Profile & Company Page

Very obvious, but it’s surprising the number of people who don’t take the time to complete their profile. The more information you provide about yourself and your company, the more likely people are going to reach out to you when they view your profile. With the new profile update, LinkedIn has broken down these sections further and allows more customisation. Remember you can put in things like course scores, volunteer work, projects worked on and organisations you’re with so take some time out to complete these and give potential business leads something to work with.

There have been a number of changes made to LinkedIn company pages in recent times. Tips on how you can improve it and get the most out of them can be found here. Those wanting to fine-tune their profile can find a similar guide here.

Place Keywords In Your Descriptions

When you’re filling out your profile, personal or company, it’s a good idea to place a number of industry keywords into your description. While company profiles have specialities – keywords that describe your company – it’s a good idea to place some of these in your company description as well so LinkedIn search engine will have an easier time finding you.

Avoid jargon or high-end words and instead use terms that people would search for. It can be a little difficult to achieve this without compromising your description, but you can avoid that by writing out the description first and then adjusting it slightly to include these keywords.

Know Your Audience

While it’s clear that LinkedIn caters towards professionals, the real strength of the site is that you can find out more details about your connections and followers. Thanks to the new profile design, you can now get a breakdown of what industries your connections are based in. While it doesn’t provide you with a list of specific people, it’s a good way of finding out who going to see your posts if you have a large number of followers.

Company pages go into far greater detail, showing you an accurate breakdown of your audience by industry, location and profession.

Share Valuable Content

The same applies to Facebook and Twitter so why should it not apply to LinkedIn too. LinkedIn Today is becoming one of the most popular areas for news consumption (thanks to the company’s redesign) and as a result, the content posted by its users follows suit. Make sure the content you’re posting, either on your personal or business page, is useful and relevant to your audience.

Don’t Wait Until You Need Something

You know how annoying it is when someone only talks to you when they’re looking for something. Whatever you do, don’t be that person, it’s annoying and people will question why they’re even connected with you if you’re not offering something. Instead, offer assistance whenever the situation presents it, provide helpful answers and be useful to your connections and the wider community.

Use LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers tends to be a section that is often overlooked, yet provides a wealth of information for professionals. While you can ask your own questions, the real benefit is having the opportunity to answer questions on subjects you know, it gives you the chance to show off your expertise and knowledge. Browse through the questions in your area and even if it’s already been answered, contribute to the discussion. This will build up confidence and get you into the habit of answering.

Research Groups

There’s nothing worse than taking a scattergun approach to joining groups so before you request to be apart of a marketing or technology group, do a little bit of research first and see whether it fits your needs. What’s usually discussed? What sectors are its members from? Is there anyone you know that’s a member? What’s their opinion on it? The aim of joining any group is to give yourself a platform for you to showcase your knowledge so join groups that you can participate in and learn from.

Advanced Search

Another often overlooked feature of the site are the advanced search tools which delve deep into the site and finds the people you’re looking for. While there are a number of search features that are only available for premium users – seniority level and experience are just two – there is more than enough different criteria to carry out an extensive search. This is handy if you’re looking for 2nd or 3rd connections from a particular sector.

Use Targeted Updates

Both personal and company pages give you the option to let certain status updates be visible to a particular audience. While personal profiles give you a simplistic option (you can choose whether just your connections see an update or everyone), company profiles allow you to target more specific demographics. Different audiences respond to different things so if you can, send out two or more different updates to cater for them. It may require a little more thought from your end, but the results are worth it.

Make A Note Of Those Viewing Your Profile

LinkedIn now notifies you when somebody views your profile, similar to how Facebook updates you, and this can work in your favour. While it can be weird to see who has been looking at your profile, you should take a note of those that have. Who are they? What industry are they in? Where are they based? Do you share any mutual connections? It can sometimes be worth reaching out to these people if either of you share common interests.

Use Endorsements

For those who uses LinkedIn on a daily basis, you’ll know that endorsements have always been one of the key features on the platform. The idea is that if your peers and people that you have worked with in the past are saying you’re good at what you do then you must be worth hiring or doing business with. The old way of endorsing was pretty simple and didn’t do much except allow people to write nice things about you that would then appear on your profile.

You’ll see with the new LinkedIn profile design that endorsements are now a key part of the site and they have been given a number of new features that allow people to effectively score you across your skill sets. With endorsements starting to pop into the news feed, it’s an excellent way for people to find out about you and increase the amount of business that comes your way.

Place Follow Buttons On Your Site

When people first stumble across your LinkedIn profile, they may not be ready to do business with you so it is important that you stay relevant and have them follow your company. To follow a company means that you get all of their updates coming into your feed, and when you do go looking for a product or service, there is a very good chance they will have you in their mind.

You can pick up follows organically on the site (in the same way you would get Twitter followers or Facebook likes), but the fastest way to get followers is to add a simple follow button to your website.

Use LinkedIn InMail

Most of the connecting, finding new business or looking for jobs on LinkedIn happens through people within your network, but users often get frustrated when they want to contact somebody for business reasons that they are not connected to. The reason that LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to message any user you want to is to cut down on spam and the number of people who are constantly sending messages. However, it’s smart enough to realise that this is a massive money making opportunity, which is why it introduced inMail.

inMail comes in many different forms and you can choose your one here. You can buy credits (they cost about $80 for 10, but do get cheaper the more you buy) and those credits allow you to send messages to anyone you want. Once you have inMail, it means that you can get in touch with pretty much anybody you want to and can start to drive new business through the platform.

Opinions & Guides

– MathMarketing looks at how B2B firms can use LinkedIn to generate leads for their business.
– Marketing software service Marketo speak to Neal Schaffer about B2B lead generation on LinkedIn and the best ways for businesses to take advantage.
– Oktopost looks at the major differences between B2C and B2B lead generation and why taking a one-size-fits all approach is dangerous.
– MarketingSherpa gets seven experts to give their tips for B2B lead generation across social media.
– Social Media B2B shows how focusing on multimedia

The Quick & Easy Guide To Social Media Scheduling

Posted on November 15, 2012 by admin

Here’s an excellent primer on keeping your social media campaigns and conversations alive and vital.

Social media is a tool that has immediacy at its very foundation. Its direct nature and lack of restrictions makes it valuable to businesses who are looking for cheaper and faster ways to communicate with their audience. Regular communication with your fans and followers is vital if you want to grow your audience and develop a good reputation online and reaching a potential global audience makes this more desirable.

However, this has presented its own set of problems. For one, you can’t be around your computer or have access there will be occasions where you’ll be out of the office, or away for the entire day and have content you want to share.

Also, while we have now have access to a global audience, unless you’re a major company that has offices in different parts of the world, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to reach all of your audience at prominent times. When you’re under pressure to maintain a consistent social media presence, this can be testing when you’ve many other things to be concentrating on.

Therefore, one of the best solutions you can have is to schedule content in advanced. This way, you can cover yourself for times you’re not on your accounts, giving you more time to concentrate on other jobs. However, while scheduling is a useful feature, you shouldn’t rely on it exclusively. You will need real-time posts to deal with mentions, comments or for posting content that is time sensitive so a mixture of the two is preferable.

Preparing Content

Clock symbol via Infinity Kim of The Noun Project

What type of content you schedule is important as there are certain posts that are better to post immediately instead of later. When you’re preparing content, the first thing you should consider is the shelf life of a post. Will it still be relevant in a few hours time? Is it something that users will want to come back to? To use an example, a news story about Instagram’s new profiles would be relevant for a few hours, but will quickly become old news. However, a feature post or guide relating to it would last much longer.

Once you’ve that settled, who your audience is the next thing you should consider. Sending it at a time where they will all see it is so you will need to consider where they’re based and factor that in. If you have two difference audiences, one local and the other in a different part of the world, it’s best to post one straight away and schedule the second for later on. What times work the best can be found out through trial and error so schedule posts, use a URL shortener – so you can find out how many times a link has been clicked – and experiment.

The third thing is coming up with an advanced schedule of your posts. This is to say when exactly these posts are going to be published so when you have the times sorted out, make a schedule where you decide exactly what times you post something online and stick to it. You can either write the schedule down or create a spreadsheet or Google Calendar (with reminders) telling you when to post. Not only is consistency important, but you want to make sure your audience is given the best possible opportunity to see your posts.

The fourth and final thing to do is to create a space online where you can source content from. This is something that your entire company can get involved in. Create a new Google doc file (word or spreadsheet) and ask that everyone posts any interesting content they find on it. It’s better to index it under certain headings (social media, marketing, technology, etc.) and to place the date it was published as well in case time is a factor.

This way, you’ve sourced a number of interesting articles and content without having to do much work although don’t rely too much on others to do your work.

Social Media Tools

With that said, there are a number of different tools that will help you out with scheduling content. Finding which one works best for you depends on your needs and what type of social media channels you use, but there are a number of great tools out there to choose from.

Facebook
Anyone who is a regular user of Facebook pages would probably know that the site has its own scheduler for you to take advantage of. Not only can you update your posts on desktop, but you can do it through the Facebook pages app too. Anytime you’re writing a post (make sure it’s in the voice of the page and not your own personal account), you will notice a clock icon at the bottom. Clicking on it will let you schedule the date and time your post will go online.

Tweetdeck
The old reliable for when you’re handling multiple streams and accounts, everyone pretty much knows what Tweetdeck has to offer, one of those features is scheduling tweets. If you haven’t been put off by the numerous changes Twitter has made to it over the last few months, then you’ll find it useful.

Hootsuite
A great alternative if Tweetdeck has put you off. Hootsuite offers the same features as Tweetdeck, but what it has to separate it from other products is its AutoSchedule feature. It will choose the best times for your tweet or post to be published.

Hubspot
If you’re having problems organising content to post or you become inconsistent with posting, Hubspot’s solution might be what you’re looking for. It created its own handy social media scheduler which can be used for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. The scheduler in question is a Excel spreadsheet, but it’s a great way of gathering your thoughts and arranging all your content into one easy space. You have to use it in conjunction with another publishing tool like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, but it’s great if you want that extra level of organisation.

Buffer
The original auto scheduler and one that has gained a lot of fans since it was first released, Buffer lets you queue up posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and App.net and automatically posts them for you throughout the day. The service will space out your posts and post them during times your followers will see it. It’s available for major browsers and smartphones meaning it’s can be used no matter where you are.

Sprout Social
Another scheduler that has garnered a lot of praise, Sprout Social’s primary purpose is a social media monitoring tool, but it also allows its users to schedule posts and messages on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. As well as being able to queue up posts and cross-post content, it also allows you to integrate RSS feeds for sharing, allowing you to queue up content easily.

If your social media responsibilities are broken down between three or more people, then Sprout Social is a tool definitely worth looking into.

Tweriod
Another good auto scheduler tool for Twitter, Tweriod analyses your tweets and your followers’ tweets to determine the best times for you to tweet. The service is free if you have less than 1,000 followers, however. After that, the cost ranges from $4 a month for accounts with 1,001 – 4,999 followers to $15 a month for accounts with over 50,000 followers.

Social Media Metrics – Separating Vanity From Valuable

Posted on November 15, 2012 by admin

Thanks to Simply Zesty for an introduction to metrics to pay attention to, especially when getting started.

No matter what industry you’re in, data will always play a key part. Data provides certainly and cold, hard facts that can help businesses thrive. It’s no surprise that by their very nature, the Web and social media have sped up the progress of analytic tools, becoming faster and more accurate. It’s why the majority of social media sites offer up their own analytics tools and why there are many so many are looking for real stats to work from.

Yet sometimes having a lot of data at your fingertips can be a hindrance. Our analytics can be filled with so much data that it can be difficult to determine what data is useful. It can be dangerous to take one metric on its own at face value so a combination of different metrics can help paint a picture of how well your social media activity is going.

Type of Metrics

There are a number of different engagement types out there, but here are the ones you should keep in mind when you’re devising a strategy.

Engagement
Perhaps the most important metric you can find, knowing the type of engagement levels is paramount to success on social media. These are the conversations, the likes, the retweets, the mentions and shares that happen online around your brand and page.

Some sites provide an engagement figure for you to work from, but it’s usually better to look beyond that and analyse each post in particular. How many people commented? Did anyone share it? What was the quality of comments like? Has the post sparked a discussion? Delving into how people interact can provide greater results, as you’ll discover what topics resonate with your fans.

For most social media analytics, this figure is made up of likes, shares and comments and while it’s fine to take this figure at face value, but sometimes a deeper analysis is required.

Reach
Basically how many people are able to see your posts when you first publish something, making this the second most important metric for a business. More importantly, you’ll be able to see whether your audience is growing or not. Again, you shouldn’t use this figure at face value simply because reach only tells part of a story (for one, it doesn’t tell how many people actually engaged with your content), but using it in conjunction with engagement figures can tell you how much of your audience is actively engaging with your content.

Views/Time Spent
Mainly for visual mediums like slides, images and videos, views basically tells you how many people have watched or looked at your video. For the most part, YouTube relies upon this metric to say whether a video has become a success or not, but it’s introduced another new metric which shows you how many minutes were spent watching a particular video.

Referrals
Mainly for those using web tools like Google Analytics, referrals tells you where your traffic is coming from, be it from search engines, social media and third-party sites. The aim for any site is to ensure that more people stay on the site so looking at this figure alongside the amount of time spent on your site. If you’re using a particular site to drive traffic (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.), this is a good way to see what content works and engages with users the most. It’s better to compare it with two different sites as you could have vastly different audiences for each.

Another area worth looking at is the bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who enter the site and immediately leave). A high bounce rate is common for blogs and any content posted via social media as it means that people are only visiting your site for that particular link.

Sentiment analysis
A recently formed metric, this looks beyond the hard data and measures the overall mood of people on social media. This metric is imperfect at best as there hasn’t been a sophisticated enough algorithm to properly measure this. The best to currently measure this, provided you aren’t overwhelmed with mentions every day, is to take each tweet/comment individually and determine whether’s it’s positive, negative or neutral. Tools like Social Mention can calculate this for free, but it’s best not to rely on this method too much.

Share of Voice
Another metric that’s been around for a while, but has received a new lease of life through social media, Share of Voice refers to how many times your mentioned is mentioned in comparison to other brands who are in the same category. Calculating it is by dividing the number of conversations or mentions of your brand by total overall mentions. A number of tools like Radian6 offer features that can calculate this for you

Danger Of Vanity Over Real Metrics

While there are a lot of metrics to choose from, it’s important to know which ones are worth noting and which ones are just nice to look at. Some of the figures that are thrown about in social media tend to be vanity metrics – those that look nice or sound important, but provide little overall value.

A good example would be Facebook, pretty much everyone knows that using likes as a way of measuring success is shortsighted at best. Instead, you focus more on engagement metrics like “People Talking About This” and combine them with other metrics to get a better idea of how you’re progressing.

Social Media Metrics

Facebook
As mentioned earlier, don’t resort to likes as a way of measuring success. Instead what you should focus on is engagement figures like “People talking about this” and delve into insights. For each post that you publish on the site, you will also get figures for engaged users, the reach and the overall virality (those who created stories out of your post).

LinkedIn
While LinkedIn provides the usual impressions and engagement statistics, one features that you should keep an eye on as well is follower demographics, most specifically function. This shows you exactly what industries your audience is in, which gives you an idea as to what content will resonate with them. Region and industry can come in useful too, but since your audience will be looking for content that relates to their positions, it’s better to plot your updates this way.

YouTube
The number of views your video gets is still king, but you should also take into consideration the other metrics at your disposal. One that will be very useful in determining the success of your videos will be the “estimated minutes watched” section. Dividing this number by the number of views your video has received should give you an idea as to whether people are watching the full video or not.

Google Analytics
If you’re new to Google analysis or just want to simplify the experience, there are a few metrics you should focus on. The first should be traffic sources. This can be broken down into four main sections, search traffic (from Google. etc.), referral traffic (from social media, third-party sites), direct traffic and campaigns. If your traffic from search is high (more than 70%), you may want to address it as any changes to Google’s search algorithm will hurt you badly.

The second is visitor count which comes up when you first login to analytics. While this can be a vanity metric at the best of times, you should monitor it for any notable change in the number of people visiting your site. If a change occurred because you modified your site or tried a different social media strategy, then the results will begin to show themselves here.

The other factors to take into account is average time on page/site and bounce rate. The latter tells you what percentage of people who visit your site leave without viewing a second page on your site. If the bounce rate is high and the time spent on your site is low, you might want to reconsider the type of content you’re putting out there.

Why 2013 Will Be The Year Technology Disrupts The High Street

Posted on November 15, 2012 by admin

We all assumed technology would impact the quality of our lives and innovative ways to interact with the world are beginning to paint a picture of future opportunities.

The high street has been under threat for many years from the emergence of the Internet, but although many have predicted doom, people have continued to shop in the real world in surprising numbers. Roughly two decades after the Internet first starting gaining traction, a cruel combination of factors are emerging that will pretty much disrupt every retailer that lives on the high street.

Technology is at the heart of these changes, mainly a mixture of mobile, social media and cloud technologies are coming together to cause what I predict will be a year of huge turmoil for shops, brands and retailers that have been around for as far back as our memories stretch. Here is why the high street is about to change in front of our eyes over the next couple of years.

Entrepreneurs

You know you are in trouble when all the tech entrepreneurs are starting to invade your space with dollar signs flashing in their eyes. The companies that are getting the biggest buzz in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs around the world are ones that are attempting to disrupt the connection between online and the real world. They are all getting massive funding and you only have to look at LeWeb conference next month – which is focusing on “the Internet of things” – saying that with 50 billion devices connected to the web by 2020, the real world is the next place open for disruption.

We are at the very tip of the iceberg with companies like Airbnb (Hotels), Uber (Taxis) and Fab.com (Designer goods) leading the way in real-world disruption, but the next wave will be companies who target the high street across every possible niche. The best entrepreneurs in the world are taking aim in 2013 and they are being incredibly well funded to do so.

Second Screen Shopping

So pretty much everyone will have a smartphone by the end of 2013 in the western world and there is a good chance that this holiday season will see those of us who don’t already have tablets getting one. We tend to use those devices when we are doing other things like watching TV, working, listening to the radio or going to the cinema. It’s called the second screen experience and it is going to mean an awful lot more items bought online.

Advertisers are spending an absolute fortune on trying to target us on our second screens and it is this simple change in human behavior that will eat into high street sales the most. If you are a company selling physical CDs, a retail giant selling sports jerseys or a high end fashion designer, you are going to be hit hard by this.

Online shopping was very linear and didn’t always have a great experience, which is why so many have not fully embraced it, but the highly visual nature of shopping on our second screens is going to be huge and only getting bigger as the apps and solutions get even better.

The Cloud

If the big movie rental, music shop and book stores weren’t already under enough pressure from the ability for consumers to download their products, things are about to get an awful lot worse. Streaming is nothing new, but with the emergence of the cloud, smartphones and tablets, the large high street names will completely crack.

Unlimited streaming packages and movies on demand are going to disrupt the market while digital book downloads have already been exploding and no matter what the book industry tries it is already too late. As the number of tablets increases, book sales will diminish in 2013 at a record level. If you are in any doubt about the speed at which it is increasing, have a look at the following chart from Amazon.

Mobile Payments

This has been bubbling under the surface for a while now and there are so many factors coming together now that it is absolutely inevitable that 2013 is the year where mobile payments finally start to hit the mainstream. Unlike the other items on this list, this is the one technology shift that we think is actually going to be a bit of a saving grace for retailers. Companies like Square, Google Wallet, Paypal and even banks like Barclays are fighting hard in this space because they all know that the ultimate winner will take home huge profits.

The smart retailers will be the ones that embrace the technology as early as possible because we are going to be seeing a lot less cash in the world and a lot more digital transactions – probably all powered through our phones. The opportunities here for retailers are endless, but the disruption will be savage and brutal as consumers change from using the oldest form of transacting (physical money) in favor of a digital alternative.

Local

Every big technology company in the world from Google and Facebook through to Yahoo and Microsoft have a laser like focus on local at the moment. They all know that the company who gets there first with really good solutions will make a fortune. Forget about Foursquare. That is only a smokescreen about what is to come and that arrived to the game far too early.

The big guys have all the data they need about us and now that we are walking around with our phones telling them where we are, it is inevitable that local is the next big tech advance. Like mobile payments, this could be used especially well by retailers who embrace it, but you fear it will only be the big brands who get their heads around this quickly enough for it to make a difference.

2013 = Armageddon For High Street Retailers

This massive disruption that is about to happen does bring some good news for high street retailers, but for the most part, it spells trouble. The danger is that many laugh it off in the same way that the Internet was dismissed, but the forces are much stronger this time. Sitting in front of your computer shopping still doesn’t appeal to a large percentage of the world, myself including, but the convergence of these new technologies is a completely different story.

The real world simply won’t be able to keep up and it’ll happen a lot quicker than people realize. Many retailers have their eyes pinned on a good holiday season in 2012 followed by the economy picking up again in 2013, but there are stronger market forces than that about to kick in.

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