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In collaboration with ThinkAccelerator Marketing, Expeditus Media is organizing a social media marketing workshop for all business owners.

This full day workshop aim to help business owners like yourself take your business online and exploit the growth of social media for your marketing in the year of the Tiger. Join us and find out how social media will affect you and your business in the future.

Workshop Highlights

• How to build a social media community around your brand or product
• Creating engaging content for your members to share
• Learn how to create a Word of Mouse Marketing campaign
• Develop and apply your strategies at the workshop

Members are advice to bring their laptop as we guide and show you through the strategies.

Workshop Details

• Date: 27th March Saturday
• 9am – 6pm
• Venue: KnowledgeConnection @ Suntec City
• Fee: $288 before 22nd March, (Usual Investment $488
• Email: engage@thinkaccelerator.com

Register now through this link: http://bit.ly/cSW13K

Want to find out what others say about us? pop by to Facebook and interact with us!

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People are more likely to trust information coming from people they know. Therefore, the folks at Google have come up with a new type of search engine that includes your personal online social networks.

In the tutorial video below, Google show you how their new social search engine works by giving an example of “getting to know Zurich”. In the video, Google outline that in the past, one can search and find information on Zurich on the usual travel site. But with the new “social search”, your friends on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other networking sites will also pop up in the search should they mention the word “Zurich”.

The scope of information goes far beyond simply traveling to Zurich because the information is provided by the people you know and each of them have different level of relationships and different level of experience about Zurich. The information is as unique as the individuals itself. In fact, this type of information is the newest trend on social media as homogenized continues to fall out of fashion.

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HubSpot created a very good graphical timeline on inbound marketing. For those who do not know what inbound marketing is, Wikipedia define it as “Inbound marketing is a style of marketing that focuses on getting found by customers”. HubSpot started the timeline with the invention of search engine in 1994 and end with 220,000,000 iPods sold worldwide.

Take a look at the timeline and you will realize the demise of traditional marketing and the importance of inbound marketing.

Source: HubSpot

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Time really flies. It’s already the second month of the new year and many of you know that this year is going to be the year of social media marketing. From my previous post, we know that SMEs will devote more marketing budget to social media instead of traditional media. But where will the money go? Well, in this post, we will explore some of the avenue where social media budget will flow to this year.

Retail and Ecommerce

The chart below gives you an overview of a dramatic increase in social media budgets across all the industries and how each industry compare against each other. This chart also shows you that retail/ecommerce is stepping up to the plate this year with 79% of marketers in that category increasing social media marketing spend in 2009. For marketers who market in this industry must also realize that there could be more competition within the space and that would determine the social effort they wish to be involve in and how they can break through the noise.

Facebook Will Be The Main Avenue

This year, social media networks budget will begin to flow to the social network of choice, Facebook. The chart below give you an a reason why. In 2009, MySpace recieve $490 million in advertising. E-Marketer however, predict that it will decrease to 21% by this year. On the other hand,, Facebook will increase it’s advertising revenue by $39% in 2010. With this growth, Facebook will also be force to develop services for the brands to justify the advertising budget as well as new opportunities to engage their fans.

In House Budget Will Go Up

According to e-Marketer, about 60% of social media budget will go into staff salaries for blogging, content development and monitoring of social media channels. About two fifth will be spent on outside help such as agencies, consultancies and service providers. This being said, if you are allocating a budget for social media, don’t just allocate all  internally or all to a social media agency. Consider hiring at least 1 social media manager and then an agency to help spark some ideas and implement the concepts.

Expectations of Social Media Will Rise

Along with the rise of social media budgets, also come a rise in expectations. CMO’s concern this year will be the measureable ROI.  An article produce by MarketingProf’s called “CMO’s Want Measureable Results from Social Media” noted, “Nearly three out of four CMOs (72%) who did not attach revenue assumptions to social media in 2009 say they will in 2010, according to the survey; in addition, 64% of CMOs say they plan to invest more in social media in the next year.”

As these expectations rise, how marketers begin to associate revenue with social media marketing will be important.  In my opinion, before budgets are allocated toward social media, companies should conduct research around their sales funnel, and identify the key performance indicators associated with overall objectives.   This is especially important for marketers who don’t have e-commerce functionality, and therefore need this data to make the connection between online activities and offline purchases.

This research should help figure out important questions like:

• Does your product require education before purchase?
• Does the general public know that your product (or the category of your product) even exists?
• Do they use search engines to find answers? If so, how?
• How have your current consumers been persuaded to try your products?
• Does an increase in site traffic typically lead to an increase in sales?

This just barely scratches the surface of the very important question, “How will I know I’m successful?” We hope to explore more into this in the next few posts.

Do you have any predictions to add to this list?  If you are a marketer, how are you changing your social media budget allocations in 2010?

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This is a video to demonstrate how Google is integrating your status updates on Facebook and your tweets on Twitter into their real time search results. It now makes it easier for businesses to be found on the internet without spending too much money on SEO or even PPC. Can you see how small businesses can take advantage of it?

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We all want our videos to be seen by millions on Youtube. Been talk about in prominent blogs or websites and if God permits, a small article will be devoted to that video.

However, reality can be cruel. Not every video you create can go to the front page of YouTube. Not every video have the luxury to be view by millions and not every video can go viral.

Tips in building trust with videos

Here are some tips on how you can make your video go viral and possibly get more clicks. Stick to the tips and start enjoying great viral success.

Firstly, your video have to be genuine. It is ok to promote yourself in the video, however, you should do it in a way that would not allow you to lose credibility. Nothing is worse than being expose as someone with a hidden agenda.

For example, if you are doing a video about houses and half way through the clip you end up talking about nothing but selling your houses, you will quickly lose your credibility and even your viewers.

Next, be original, be yourself! You would think that this would come naturally but you would be surprised how many people jump into the net trying to promote the next big thing with a standard template. The best way to stand out is to be yourself, put in your personality and be original.

Be Concise. People will lose interest if your video is too long. Be concise and say whatever you are going to say in 2 minutes flat. Any video that goes beyond 5 minutes will result in poor viewership.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. As you figure out how to succeed with viral video, you will hit a lot of foul balls and probably a few home runs. So go out and try new techniques, do your research and watch what the big players are doing and apply those techniques to your videos and track the results. From those results, take what works and lather, rinse and repeat.

Stop playing it safe. I think it applies quite nicely here. People don’t want to hear about the same old boring things again and again. They want to read and watch things that excite them or are beneficial to them. Be controversial; elicit strong powerful emotions from others. Give them something new and something that moves them and they will respond.

Over deliver on your promise. Be sure to give them something real, not a scam to get them to watch your pitch. Instead, provide massive value to your readers/viewers and they will be knocking down your door, credit cards in hand to buy whatever you are selling.

In the age of digital media, business owners wonder how they can leverage on these technologies to serve their business objectives. If you can be the first to leverage on it, you will experience massive traffic to your blog and most importantly leads for your business.

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It has been awhile since I post snapshots of offices to inspire you. Finally, I’ve got a reason to do so. It seems like everyone is using Facebook to connect to their friends,but that is not true. There are still many powerful social networking sites around that is worth exploring and Hyves.net is one of them.

Based in the Netherlands, it is one of the largest social networking site in the country with about 9 milllion users. That is almost half the population in Netherlands.

Their office is also very interesting, with bright fun colors dominating the entire place. I believe you can imagine how fun it is to be working in an environment like this. Well done Hyves, you make working in an office exciting!

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While more and more companies are trying to break the ’social media code’, many seem to understand that consumers no longer find it exciting to friend a brand with just a single click of the mouse on the brand’s Facebook page. If that is the case, why are there so many companies trying to increase spending on social media in 2010? Probably because it’s easier to follow the crowd than redefine marketing around consumer’s touchpoint.

Nathaniel Perez provided some guiding principles to help us get beyond the tactical earned social media generation and enable you to create a richer and more successful ’social movement’ around your brand.

You can shape the outcome, but can’t prescribe it. Leave predictable outcomes behind. Successful social experiences all have one thing in common: They relinquish control. Bring your consumers closer to action and let them take over. When insights are scarce, leverage the good old reward method to get them to play, then watch them play. If your brand has risk and readiness constraints, consumer control is not a pipe dream. Make it a priority.

From Communication to Connectivity. Your brand should no longer think of itself as an authority (even if it is one), but rather a facilitator or enabler. Its role is no longer to broadcast, but to connect. Understanding brand connectivity requires more than just digital listening and influence identification. Moving beyond single degree measures is crucial. Examining passions and motives within dynamic behavioral contexts is essential. Digital discovery (or anthropology) can help uncover motive “in action”. Social media is an unbound source of insights, allowing limitless exploration of digital personas and their behavior. Your brand can engage and build connectivity through behavioral contexts it can associate with.

Create mediated experiences. Focus on understanding the potential impact of various media interactions against consumer motives and apply that understanding to your experience strategy. Leverage YouTube as more than an outlet for brand video and search traffic. Instead, study how video sharing can promote the quality of the engagement and motives you seek to trigger. As you plan your experience, don’t limit yourself… Define the media while giving it the opportunity to define you. Create experiences that are engaging but unconfined. Experiences that impose less constraint (or more connection) lead to a greater ability to mine insights from engagement. Branded widgets and social network applications can surely help amplify brand messaging but are really little more than evolved direct media. UGC campaigns with very prescriptive requests cannot allow you to measure much more than response rates.

Listen to your experiences. Leverage digital listening to clearly understand how the media has shaped you. Extend your discovery efforts against your conversation to understand patterns of behavior, motives of engagement, audiences and other measures of how your brand is or can be more connective. Measure impact beyond response and conversion by putting your data to work across all sources to truly understand consumer behavior against key business metrics, both offline and online.

Keep Shaping & Being Shaped. Whether looking to sustain successful initiatives or creating new ones, brands need to understand how to play in a fully dynamic context. Focus too much on the media itself and your efforts won’t scale. Instead, focus on measuring and extending your “connectivity” step by step, creating a well balanced insights & experience machine.

It is nicely put. I would also add that getting people to talk about your brand is NO LONGER enough. Ultimately, you have to convert prospects in to customers and show your management that your social media strategy works (ROI). With all these said, you will still need social media as an intelligence tool and to have a channel for customer feedback.

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Great news for all of you. I have just release 2 ebooks free for download. ‘Twitter Apps for Business‘ and ‘Facebook Apps for Business‘ are a compilations of 60+ apps for business owners and marketing professionals to leverage on and use. It is a list of  apps to enhance and save time when conducting business matters on these two popular social platforms.

We hope you can help us spread these ebooks to your business associates and benefit them too. I will be coming up with 2 more ebooks next month so till then, have fun with these apps.

If you have not gotten a copy of the ‘300 Case Studies of Social Media Marketing’, head to our Free Resources and download it for FREE!

Do you have anything in mind? If it’s useful and beneficial for business owners and marketers, we will consider producing it and make it free for download. Also, if you want to get quality article about social media marketing, do subscribe to our Insider Newsletter by filling up your details on the right. Cheers!

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It seems like conducting survey is a trend now. Everyone I know are coming up with surveys to understand their target market. Therefore, to follow the crowd, I too have a survey I need you to help me with. ‘Challenges Marketers Face With Social Media‘ is a survey to find out more about what challenges you are facing with when it comes to social media. It also allows me to understand how I can design my programs to help you meet those challenges. So, please help me help yourself by giving me the answers to these questions. Thanks!

Challenges Marketers Face With Social Media

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