Last Friday, I had the amazing opportunity to take part in an unique social media event: hanging out with the President of the Cleveland Indians, Mark Shapiro, for a “town hall” luncheon at the Terrace Club at Progressive Field.
Me, Mark Shapiro and my friend & coworker Alison
With great charisma, a surprisingly witty Shapiro took the stage while some of Cleveland’s top marketing professionals, sports bloggers and social media aficionados enjoyed a catered lunch. For an hour and a half, Shapiro answered the audience’s top Tribe questions, poking fun at the idea of bringing Manny Ramirez back and his portrayal in the movie Moneyball (which, he says, was based very loosely upon a true story). So no, the real Mark Shapiro doesn’t make quick-and-dirty trades that happen in a couple phone calls and under five minutes. Continue reading →
You know a social media website has caught on when…
Your grandmother is chatting about her latest “pins” over Easter dinner.
With little surprise, Experian’s 2012 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report found that Pinterest is now the third most popular social network in the United States, based on number of visits, right behind Facebook and Twitter.
Now that the site has captured the (p)interest of consumers and brands alike, a number of tools have come onto the market to help us manage and measure our activity on the site. Continue reading →
The 4th annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report from the Social Media Examiner is out for 2012. With a goal of learning and understanding how marketers are using social media to grow their business, the study surveyed over 3,800 marketers worldwide. Packed with interesting statistics and charts, the study provides great insight for both rookie and veteran marketers.
Here are my top 6 takeaways:
1.) Social media is still vital to marketing professionals.
83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business. Although this is a 7% drop from 2011, social media still proves to be of large significance to marketing professionals.
2.) How to calculate the ROI of social media is still a mystery to most marketers.
The one question that marketers want answered most is how to track the ROI of social media. According to the report, this has been the number one question for 3 years in a row. We know that social media works (if done correctly), but because the return is usually qualitative, it is hard to measure the economic benefits of social media.
3.) Social media has a wide array of benefits.
The top 3 benefits of social media marketing include increasing exposure, increasing traffic and providing marketplace insight. The study found that 85% of marketers indicated increased exposure as a result of their social media efforts.
4.) Social media marketers plan to increase video marketing efforts.
76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing in the future. After witnessing the viral success of the Dollar Shave Club and Kony 2012 videos, I would be planning on ramping up my video marketing as well.
5.) You don’t need to spend hours a day to generate a lead from social media.
The study showed that 61% of marketers saw lead generation benefits with social media by spending as little as 6 hours per week – which is a significant increase from last year’s finding.
6.) SEO and event marketing are used most with experienced social media marketers.
The top 3 other types of marketing social media marketers said they were participating in included email marketing, search engine optimization and event marketing. The social media marketers with 3+ years of experience were more likely to participate in search engine optimization and event marketing than others.
As a social media manager, the beginning of my mornings are spent reading the latest in social media news. I find great material every day, but this morning, I found an something that really caught my eye.
Today on Mashable, an info-graphic designed by Emily Caulfield was published. Check it out below to see a Visual History of Twitter, the most-followed Twitter accounts, and some fun facts.
Earlier today I showed you what the new Facebook Timeline, now I’d like to teach you how to enable it yourself.
It only takes a couple of minutes, and hopefully you can get through the process easily with these steps:
1.Go to Facebook.com and type “developer” into the Facebook search bar at the top of the page.
2. Click the + Create New App button located in the top right corner.
3. This box will pop up:
Enter an App Display Name, I chose Sarah’s Timeline.
Enter an App Nameplace (which you can update later if you choose to do so), I chose sarah_tharp.
Agree to the Platform Privacy Policy and click continue
4. After you fill out the required Security Check and hit submit, you will be at your new application’s page. Click Open Graph on the left side of the page.
5. Since you will be the only one using your app, the actions and objects you insert are not of great importance. I put “People can read a book” and clicked Get Started. If you’d like to learn more about open graphs, you can visit https://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/opengraph/. Again, no one will see what you inserted except for you!
6. Next, you will see the screen below. The only thing that you need to do it scroll down and click the Save Changes and Next button.
7. You will have to repeat step 6 for What are Action Objects and What are Timeline Aggregations . Just scroll down, and click the Saves Changes and Next button (for the last page the button will say Save and Finish).
8. Go back to your Facebook home page. You should see a large invite at the top of the page that says Enable Timeline. This sometimes takes a few minutes!
9. Click on Get It Now, and you will be introduced to your new Facebook Timeline.
A couple of days ago, I enabled the Facebook Timeline for my profile and thus far, am a huge fan! For me, the Timeline essentially organized my Facebook history and provided me with day-by-day documentation. It was like I was presented an online diary of the past 5 or so years of my life.
For those of you who have yet to enable the Timeline, or are just waiting until Facebook makes the change in early October, here is what to expect your new profile to look like:
This week, Nielsen released its quarterly social media report, a compilation of the latest insights on social media trends.
The report found that Facebook continues to be the dominating social network, with over 140 million unique visitors during the month of May. Not only did Facebook come in first, it blew the competition out of the water by generating nearly three times the number of visitors than Blogger, the runner-up.
Sponsored Ads are a great resource on Facebook that businesses can choose to take advantage of. They are simple to create, and have the potential to reach thousands of targeted consumers.
Step one is designing your add. If you have created a customized Facebook landing page, then you have the option to direct your traffic to this location instead of your Facebook wall. You also get to choose a Title, 135 word count body, and image for your Facebook ad.
After creating your ad, you can target exactly who you want to reach by:
Location – country, state, city or by zip code
Demographic – age and sex
Interests – Facebook draws this information from their listed interests, activities, education, and jobs titles, and pages they like or groups they belong to
Connections on Facebook – Facebook users can be targeted by their connections to pages, events, or groups that you are the administrator of
There is also an option for Advanced Demographics, where you can target Facebook users based on their sexual preference, relationship status, language they speak, education level, and workplace, which is drawn from their Information section.
After you fill at the Ad Targeting section, Facebook provides an with an estimated reach for your ad. Facebook tabulates a “Suggestion Bid,” based pricing information for ads similar to yours to help you to determine how much money you’d like to spend per click, or per thousand impressions.
You are given the choice to be charged for CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions). CPC is chosen because the priority is set on how many people click through to their website. CPM is chosen because the priority is brand awareness, not driving conversions.
One of the most important features on Facebook for businesses is the option to create a custom landing page. Second to your website, I would argue a landing page is the most important piece of your company’s online real estate.
Instead of landing on your Facebook wall, a landing page can be set for everyone who has not “Liked” your Facebook page to land there. It is a first impression for everyone who has not yet “Liked” your company on Facebook. You want to make sure that your landing page is an accurate, attractive portrayal of your company or product, and includes a strong CTA (call-to-action).
To highlight some popular landing page trends, I’ve included some of my personal favorites that evoke creativity and intrique:
