The new age grapevine today is unarguably Twitter, making it an exciting platform for marketers. While many brands are burning their pockets with high budget marketing campaigns, for others innovation and fan build up increased simply through ‘meme-jacking’.
Yet another compelling marketing tactic that is gaining popularity is ‘Live tweeting’. Not only is it a cost effective way, it also connects your followers and influencers in a never before manner. The best brands in the business today realise this and therefore have been using it successfully to promote an individual event (read Adidas) or product launch, or intelligently plugging in their brands during a high voltage event like the Oscars, something that Taco Bell did quite effectively.
Though the idea of live tweeting sounds quite rad, a brand needs to conceptualise the strategy around it well in advance. Some brands may have a way around ‘live tweeting’ like this one but not everyone!
We therefore are sharing with you an all round guide to live tweeting that would help you gear up for events and provide your twitter audience with relevant, important and engaging updates without road bumps.
If you are a community manager for a brand, an agency employee or a seasoned blogger looking for live tweeting as a marketing opportunity this infograph would make your preparation a cake walk! Always remember that ‘Live tweeting’ involves spontaneity and therefore don’t forget to have fun.
Do share your thoughts and experiences or any suggestions that may be valuable to our readers and before I forget ‘keep the battery charged’!
As a Social Media aficionado, I usually spend few hours exclusively to update myself with the latest in Social Media world, especially through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. While Twitter and Facebook gives me an opportunity to be updated with both personal and real time happenings in my network, I use LinkedIn not only to connect with like-minded individuals, but also to dive deep into quality discussions, something that has helped me evolve better.
Social media and community managers today are entrusted to build an effective online community, and while doing so most of them are all turning to the big 3 – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This aspect provokes me to think about the role that LinkedIn plays for a brand and how do Community Managers dabble in the same? Surely it could be more than just a platform to publicize your company to professionals?
LinkedIn Is More Than Just A Networking Tool
In our quest to understand this perplexed scenario, we got in touch with a handful of social media professionals to understand their viewpoint about this professional networking site. And of course most of them were contacted through LinkedIn. Belinda Nash is a very active LinkedIn netizen and Head of Social Media at Socialize. She is also the online Editor and Community Manager for two very successful ‘Groups’ About Us and #thebigupgrade where she contributes and actively interacts with people. Sharing content on LinkedIn is key for her:
Just like its counterparts LinkedIn marketing is gaining popularity and is being used by brands to explore the numerous marketing opportunities that it provides. David Kyle, Community Co-ordinator at HootSuite also shares why he thinks LinkedIn is an amazing network for businesses to be on:
Brands can use LinkedIn to increase ROI through channels such as LinkedIn Ads, LinkedIn display ads and Custom Groups.
5 Ways Community Managers Can Optimize LinkedIn
Here’s a community manager’s guide to LinkedIn – a 5-step checklist (with inputs from best in the industry!) on how to maximise this social media platform.
1. Maintain An Updated Personal Profile
They say charity begins at home; hence as a Community Manager ensure that as the face of the brand your personal profile is up-to-date as this builds more credibility for job seekers, employees, potential partners and customers. It’s also a great idea to make sure that the employees too have an active profile since it validates the quality of an organisation’s workforce and strengthens its employer brand.
David does a great job at updating his LinkedIn profile with great content.
2. Maintain An Updated Brand Profile
Have an updated company page is important for a brand. A lot of brands today do not understand that LinkedIn is a bona-fide platform for brand and employers alike since it showcase your brand to the world in a more businesslike light. The company page should therefore clearly mention the details about the objectives and vision of the brand, its employee strength etc.
Ensure your brand’s profile is constantly updated as well!
3. Participate Actively In Communities
As a Community Manager involve your followers by introducing superior content. This may include business blogs, updates and job postings. Interact with other people’s post and join and contribute in groups by sharing interesting articles that you stumble upon! This would help you to increase your reach and have a greater chance of reaching an audience that will interact with your business on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great place to get involved with communities of likeminded people. Chances are that there is a community set up for your interest. Join it and get in the conversation!
Always indulge in conversations and contribute in groups
4. Follow Influencers In Your Industry
Some of the best minds are on LinkedIn. Follow LinkedIn influencers and you’ll be on top of the latest trends. In case of a noteworthy announcement, (New COO, change in policy etc) one can also look at tapping this network for e-mail marketing and notifying the people who really matter to the business first!
Follow LinkedIn influencers and you’ll be on top of the latest trends.
5. Aid Organic SEO:
Did you know that an optimized LinkedIn page can boost SEO for your brand, thereby better visibility? Well, now you know! And the task does not require a high level of intelligence. Simple activities like adding a website address, blog address, Twitter details etc can get the desired outcome. Of course, since it is a two-way street this would have better results when the company page, as well as employee profiles, are updated.
Add in social media links to boost SEO!
Clearly LinkedIn is a great platform for Community Managers for both professional and personal enhancement and if you are avoiding these slipshod mistakes, I am sure you are on the right track. Community managers who’ve got more tips that might be missing from this guide, do share your ideas with us!
About: Making sense of all the online conversations becomes a huge task especially when the business is huge and the volume of conversations high. Nexalogy analyzes these conversations in a very unique way.
Usage: From analyzing a personal account to an enterprise, Nexalogy has 3 different solutions – NexaMe, NexaLive and NexaMaster. These are all aimed at different tiers of users who wish to gain a range of analytics from their social media profiles.
Why Should You Use Nexalogy Environics?
Nexalogy Environics helps individuals and companies to keep a tab and understand the big data on their social profiles. Social medias analysis, research and monitoring can be used to guide your business in different strategic areas: customer relations, brand comparisons, community outreach, online and offline marketing strategy, community awareness, issue tracking, crisis monitoring, and thought leadership strategy to name a few.
While we were testing out the tool for our users we got in touch with Naomi Goldapple, Vice-President of Nexalogy Environics who shared with us what sets this tool apart from it’s competitors:
Analytical Metrics
The conversation on these social platforms may range from unwanted banter to important trends. As a brand it is crucial to understand the ‘important’ conversations and Nexalogy helps nail this by a simple but effective method of ‘visualization’ as seen it’s Interest Map. Any other form of unstructured data that is un-related to social media can also be analyzed using the tool. All data is evaluated according to these metrics:
3 Products By Nexalogy Environics
1. NexaMe
NexaMe is a free tool that allows heavy twitter users (especially bloggers) and community managers to explore and understand their own community. It also assists you to quickly make sense of a huge amount of tweets in your timeline. You can also intuitively see the connections in community and easily identify the influencers and even receive follower recommendations. NexaMe also helps to see the top concepts, hashtags and links in accordance with their online community.
Interest Map
Links top 60 ideas being discussed in your timeline through nodes
Further classified as ‘Obvious’, ‘Potential’ and ‘Long Shot’ each symbolizing the importance of that idea to you
Links to the nodes shows how that idea is connected and also lets the user read the specific tweet to that conversation
Interest Maps shows you what your followers are discussing
Key Features of NexaMe:
Provides a breakup of ‘top concepts’ and ‘top hashtags’ through a pie graph. On clicking the graph /list users can view those tweets.
A ‘Timeline’ graph which shows the timeline activity (last 800 tweets). Tweets can be from a particular time or date, which can be handy when community managers wants to narrow down what worked for their campaigns and analyze a specific time frame.
Lists suggested connections, most engaged followers, most active followers and most retweeted followers thereby consolidating the influencers for you or your brand.
HootSuite Plugins
For a lot of users who live by HootSuite, NexaMe offers the same features through an app which is available through HootSuite App Directory and comes with no cost attached.
Nexalogy Hootsuite installation is pretty simple!
In the HootSuite plugin, NexaMe is paired with Nexalogy search, a tool that works in the same way as NexaMe but analyzes a specific hashtag instead. These two plugins pulls out fresh data each time it is refreshed, ideally helping managers be on top of their data.
2. NexaLive
Available at price of $40/month NexaLive allows you to quickly and efficiently set up brand or issues dashboards. NexaLive is a turnkey micro site solution that would assist you in case when you want to capture and analyze the activity on a twitter hashtag, by visualizing your tweets on an interest graph. NexaLive would make a lot of sense to community mangers if they are looking at:
Increase in audience engagement
Gain insights
Boost SEO juice
Community managers can use it for any online or offline event that has a footprint on twitter like a conference, product launch or any campaign that needs to make a splash!
3. NexaMaster
The NexaMaster Dashboard
NexaMaster is a social data analysis platform that allows users to quickly ‘Get Data’, ‘Sculpt Data’ and ‘Share Data’ and is currently available on a subscription basis. Marketed as an enterprise tool, business intelligence professionals and social data scientists can either use their own data or buy data through Nexalogy Environics and pay as per the utility.
Key Features of NexaMaster:
NexaMaster is available on a subscription basis where you can analyze social data of all kinds from blogs to social media profiles and other private data
Easily accessed through your web browser
Packaged to suit all levels of users
Choice of using your own data or buy data but only pay for only the data you use
Fun fact: Nexalogy was actually the result of Claude Theoret, an astrophysicist who related his analysis of stars using gamma rays and incorporated his algorithms to social data!
It is closely pitched alongside Radian6 and Sysomos however each with their own set of characteristic differences. With the thought of being the next Twilio of Social data analytics, Nexalogy Environics aims at providing its users the best in social data apps, dashboards, websites based with their patented technology.
If you are a satisfied user, share your experiences about this incredible tool!
The epic stance put up by Dave Carroll against United Airlines when the airline broke his guitar was all the rage back in 2009. The video that was uploaded on YouTube has garnered a whooping 13 million hits and according to Daily Mail UK this incident brought a 10% decline in its share prices back then. Who would have guessed that a humourous video on Dave’s end to showcase his disappointment with the airline would leave such a dent in on their reputation?!
Brands today provide its customers with numerous open channels on Social Media like Twitter and Facebook. The aspect of ‘social sharing’ today has increased many folds and customers not only engage on these platforms but also double up this platform as a grievance booth. This may land brands in not so funny situations at times. What happens if you are the voice behind the brand and want to get a resolution without the hate speech?
Let Humour Be The Answer
Well, we believe there isn’t a situation that can’t be healed with a good dose of humour and needless to say it is contagious (read: viral) too! It not only controls a bad situation but also wins you followers. Just like the approach taken by Bodyform when they saw a post on their Facebook timeline.
Richard Neill’s note to Bodyform on Facebook
Instead of choosing an argumentative route, Bodyform was quick to respond with witty humour in a form of a video. You\’ll enjoy this one:
Everyone loves to read or watch something funny which makes it one of the most shared type of content on social media networks today and hence the best remedy for social media customer care we reckon. It could even be as simple as this quirky reply by Sainsbury to one of their customers:
@OctoberJones really sorry it wasn’t up to scratch. We will replace Mr. Hogan with Ultimate Warrior on our production line immediately.
While appreciation from customers is always taken on a positive stride, a negative reaction from a customer goes a long way, especially when the debate is hot and may cost considerable damage to the reputation of a brand even before they realise it. That leads an extremely important factor – talking humour has its risks too. Something that may feel humorous to you might not be taken in the right spirit by other just like Kenneth Cole goofing it up again, this time by mocking a war situation.
Boots on the ground\” or not, let’s not forget about sandals, pumps and loafers. #Footwear
As a matter of fact, getting caught in midst of a social media storm (read: negative publicity) is every brand\’s worst nightmare. However, taking a humorous route to address or highlight issues makes the situation a lot better for both brands and followers alike. Who would have imagined that an environmental issue like Singapore\’s haze a while back could be addressed with such ease using humour!
Cadbury Singapore nailed it with humour
For a big company like MOZ that garners loads of traffic on a daily basis, their use of humour while relaying messages on social media when their website was down proved to be a How-To lesson on humour for brands. Of course, humour can be a tricky business and hence we created this awesome infographic (Yes, we heard that squeal!) that would help you with Do’s and Don’ts of using humour:
Have you battled a similar sticky situation and didn’t know what to do? Share your comments below and perhaps it’s time to pin this infographic to your workstation and as they say, get ready to nail it with humour!
I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. I’m careful about the kind of people that I connect with, and as a result I’m exposed to some really interesting discussions and viewpoints – something that I find hard to come across on Facebook. Especially if it’s anything related to the industry I work in.
Over the course of the last couple of months, I stumbled across a number of people who were Community Managers and Social Media Managers. When going through their job description – I noticed that they have very similar… roles? They both described themselves as the voice of their brand, as manning social communities and so on and so forth.
With the change in marketing principles and perceptions, companies today invest a lot in hiring able Community and Social Media Managers. But what are the real differences between Community Managers and Social Media Managers? Is it just the same role addressed in a different way by different companies and countries?
The Overlapping Roles
The most common misconception is that there are more similarities than differences between Community Managers and Social Media Managers. From a distance, they might seem similar in more ways than one because of a host of over-lapping duties, or what they’re expected to do. Most people think that they do the same thing but just have different titles. But the truth is that the treatment and expectation from a Community Manager and a Social Media Manager should be very different.
Crystal Jiang, Community Manager APAC at Hootsuite states, “Social Media Managers and Community Managers are both responsible for engaging audience online through different social networks on a daily basis. While Social Media Managers have a focus on finding advanced tools to manage social content and create measurement, Community Managers also focus on building relationship with communities and influencers through offline events. For example, at Hootsuite, Community Managers not only cultivates online community in different regions, but also organizes offline events #HootUp to bring the local community together.”
Hootsuite knows the difference. Do you?
The most significant role in this context lies at the hands of businesses hiring these individuals. Just like one would not expect an eye surgeon to treat a neurological disorder, considering both are doctors the same situation defines the role of a Social Media Manager and Community Manager. Whether your company has a B2B approach or a B2C approach would clearly define the difference.
Lucie Snape, Head of Social at Vodafone Australia told us, “The biggest difference in my opinion is that a Social Media Manager should have a strategic view. The Social Media Manager sets the strategic direction and the Community Manager implements through tactical execution, namely, effective content creation and delivery, and ongoing community engagement and growth”
So What Are The Differences Between Community Managers and Social Media Managers?
We dwelled into this ‘thin-line’ approach and did some hardcore research by interviewing tons of Community and Social Media Managers. LinkedIn was very helpful at providing a breakdown in their responsibilities as well. Our results have led to the creation of this infographic (What?! Another damn infographic?!) to felt differentiate the roles of a Community Manager and a Social Media Manager.
Not everyone will agree. And we know that. We’d love to hear what you think. There are probably TONS of one-man social media teams out there handling everything and anything for a brand online. Tell us what you think! Is there a much bigger difference that we’re missing out on? Are there a lot less differences and we’re just playing it up? Should there just be one role?
Here’s that line which points you to the comments and asks you to share your views. Because you know, engagement. But seriously, do it. Share an idea, spread a thought!
Nexalogy Hootsuite installation is pretty simple!
The NexaMaster Dashboard
Hootsuite knows the difference. Do you?