By studying some mistakes by other companies that have resulted in negative exposure, you can learn how your business can avoid a similar fate. Here are five easy-to-avoid mistakes:
More than 90% of consumers unsubscribe, “unlike” or stop following brands because of too frequent, irrelevant or boring communications, according to a report by social media and e-mail marketing services company ExactTarget.
Here are a few key findings from the study:
- 91% of consumers have unsubscribed from opt-in marketing e-mails.
- 77% of consumers report being more cautious about providing their e-mail address to companies versus last year.
- 81% of consumers have either “unliked” or removed a company’s posts from their Facebook News Feed.
- 71% of consumers report being more selective about “liking” a company on Facebook than they were last year.
- 51% of consumers expect that a “like” will result in marketing communications from brands, while 40% do not believe it should result in marketing communications.
- 41% of consumers have “unfollowed” a company on Twitter.
With 95% of U.S. online consumers using e-mail (and 93% of U.S. online consumers being subscribers to at least one opt-in e-mail per day), the e-mail findings are particularly important for marketers hoping to remain in good standing with their audiences via e-mail.
Egypt has pulled the plug on the entire Internet for its citizens.
Such a flagrant violation of communications--possible only in the less free corners of the world, right? But since last summer, when a Senate bill was introduced by Joe Lieberman, the US has been considering an Internet "kill switch" of its own.
Facebook is retro because, like AOL, it's retro by its nature. It's a closed system. Some people like a closed comfy system and others don't. I, for one, don't. If I want a personal webpage with all sorts of information about myself, I'll go to Wordpress.com and make one. By doing this, I don't turn over any data, control, or information to an onerous third party to sell, use, or exploit. I can close down the site when I want. I can say what I want. I can pretty much do whatever.
The Internet poses a challenge for authoritarian regimes around the world. But Vietnam's leaders think they have figured out a new way to tame it—by launching their own, Communist-friendly answer to popular social-networking sites like Facebook Everyone at Twitter I spoke with today agreed that this is the single biggest change they’ve ever made to the site since its initial launch.
Attention brands: Twitter users aren't talking to you or about you. In fact, they barely know you exist.
Amazing Conversation
Learning
Reputation
Influence
Friends
Business Opportunity
"... the difference between potential value and realized value. There is an appropriate and interesting corollary in the world of high school physics: If you lift a ball off the ground and hold it stationary, it has no kinetic energy but it does have potential energy; drop the ball, and the potential energy becomes kinetic energy. Facebook fans are like that -- all potential energy until you introduce something that creates kinetic energy."Move on, start now. Read the entire post and then think how can you create value from the potential energy of your fans and virtual friends. Looks simple.
Any system for monitoring or measuring social media has three basic components: data collection, analytics, and application. The differences are in the details, and each component can be the subject of its own build-or-buy decision. If your goal is to beat the industry standard in a particular area, you build, but if industry-standard is good enough, you don't have to.
As social media continues to evolve, defining the “rules of engagement” will encourage thoughtful interaction that benefits the business, brand, customer, peers, and prospects at every touchpoint. In the end, we earn the attention, relationships and business we deserve.
