Scully on SME: March 2011

Friday, March 25, 2011

Vero Beach Power Sqd

@VBPSPRO Vero Beach, FL

Veros Finest

VBPSPRO on Twitter

What it is..........

Social Media Optimization(SMO)
Often called Social Media Marketing
Benefits organizations and individuals
Recruitment/retention of new customers
Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access

YouTube and SMO

Check out these links

Scully on SMO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB4zPgaA9cg&feature=channel_video_title

Indian River Raftup w/ VBPS

Vero Beach Power squadron Action

District 8 Conference, Ft Lauderdale 2009 http://www.youtube.com/user/scullybobg#p/u/13/GL2YoDqx62k

The Vero Beach Power Squadron PRO has adopted a JUST DO IT policy when it comes to public relations and marketing. What that means if it can be done with very little effort and it does not cost you anything but some time, we JUST DO IT!

What I am talking about is using available FREE social media to spread the word. How much return on investment we are receiving is non quantifiable, at this time. I do know that the experts say the more places you are visible the more likely you are to get noticed. Social media marketing which is known as SMO Social Media Optimization benefits organizations and individuals by providing an additional channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight, and a method of managing their reputation online. In 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media.

According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. So what could social media look like in 2010?

In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive. That mom and dad have joined Facebook is no longer news.What is astonishing is the rate of growth in the number of Baby Boomers joining sites like Facebook, which between this year and last has skyrocketed. Social media use among internet users aged 65 and older grew 100 percent last year, so that one in four (26 percent) people in that age group online are now logging in. The most popular platforms include: Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace and Reddit.

In light of those comments the VBPS jumped in with both feet. You may find us everywhere. Here are a few links

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vero_beach_power_squadron), (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000046572671), (http://twitter.com/VBPSPRO#)

(http://vbps2010.blogspot.com/)

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/46531890@N07/). http://yourmedia.tcpalm.com/MemberGallery.aspx?nickName=Scullyvbps, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeZvUBvFWEQ http://www.tcpalm.com/search/?q=vero+beach+power+squadron&t=&sortby=date&image.x=40&image.y=12.

There is lots more but I think you are getting the picture, so to speak. You may ask how do we measure our success with all this information out in cyberspace. Here is my response. Do a Google search for Verobeachpowersquadron and see what you get.

I "TAG" everything. Do any search over the internet using combinations that include - vero beach power squadron, or vbps, or vero beach power and click on web tab, photos tab, news tab, video tab and see what you get. What you will discover is that we are out there.

References

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_optimization

2. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/15/national/main7055992.shtml

3. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/11/six_social_media_trends.html

Promote your cause without spending $$$

In today’s world of high tech there are lots of avenues to promote your cause without spending a lot of money. It will take you time but that why you are in this arena. In most cases you do it because you are part of the organization or you want to support a specific cause, or both. What I will tell you is how to accomplish the goal or getting you public relations information out to the public via many avenues that for the most part are free for the asking, from my experience. It will take some work on your part but it does do the job.

Newspapers

We have a newspaper that provides a “Community Service” for nonprofit groups. That means they will promote your group at no cost. In our case they put 4 advertisements in the newspaper 3 times each. The ad size is 3”x 6”. You need to provide the artwork.

Magazines

I have been successful in getting numerous articles along with photos about our group by contacting the local magazines. As I am out and about I pick up magazines and find the editor and then call. The call gets me an email address and I send articles I write to the email address. Sometimes they get in the magazine. Because its free the article should be interesting and about the local community. My experience is if the article has to do with “In the service of the community” it gets published.

Internet

All of this is free. You do need to sign up and provide some basic information about yourself but it’s worth it.

YourHub - This is a great place to post stories, blogs and events. Sometimes if the item is interesting enough they put the article and your picture in print in the newspaper.

Yahoo – Yahoo has a place where you can post events that are occurring at the group. I post a lost of data here and the event pop up when you search for things going on in your neighborhood.

Flickr – I signed up for a flickr account originally to post pictures that I took for my friends to look at. I enjoyed it and decided it made sense to sign up for a second account and then posted pictures about my group.

The key here is when you add the tags. Always use you groups name or its abbreviation every time you download a picture. It’s very easy to use. When I do a yahoo search most of the pictures that I put on flickr show up, when I click on my groups name and then click on images.

SEOmoz Founder and CEO comments

Founder & CEO, SEOmoz

Facebook has had an incredible run for the last six years — see the graphic above. Twitter has had a remarkable four years under its belt, now reaching 200 million members.

The growth of these twin networks has brought new discipline to the practice of traffic generation, branding and customer engagement on the Web: social media marketing. But for those of us who participate in the practice, there are clear signs that Twitter and Facebook aren’t enough.

Plenty of recent facts and figures have helped to hammer this point home:

· Social media spending is estimated to be 10% of marketing budgets in 2011 (source: CMO Survey by Duke University)

· StumbleUpon, despite having less than 1/10th the US users of Facebook and about 1/100th the engagement, sends more outbound traffic (source: Statcounter via The Next Web)

· Quora, the social Q+A site, is nearing 500,000 users and momentum is growing (source: TechCrunch + FastCompany)*

· StackExchange, a platform for Q+A sites, already exceeds 650,000 registered users (source: StackExchange)

· Reddit grew 230%+ and now receives nearly 1 billion page views/month (source:Reddit via Mashable)

· LinkedIn has likely passed 100 million users; they were at 85 million in November, adding about 1 million/day (source: CNN Money)

· Tumblr just entered the top 40 US sites (source: Financial Times)

The long tail of social media packs a punch

If your job includes the monitoring, management and/or promotion of a company’s brand through social media, I’d strongly urge you to consider educating yourself about and participating in all the platforms that might matter to your company. The following are my personal recommendations for the average social media marketer to consider, grouped by users:

100 million+ users

· Facebook

· Twitter

· LinkedIn

· YouTube

· MySpace (though they’re fading)

25 million+ users

· Reddit

· Flickr

· Yelp

· Wikipedia

10 million+ users

· Tumblr

· StumbleUpon

· Care2

· SlideShare

· Scribd

· DeviantArt

· Digg (fading)

· Delicious (fading)

Up-and-comers

· Posterous

· StackExchange

· Namesake

· Quora

· FourSquare

· Hunch

· Forrst

· Dribbble

There are dozens, possibly hundreds of others sites worthy of your attention as a social marketer (and possibly helpful to those focused on social as a channel for SEO opportunity). So, please, let’s be cautious about an overly narrow definition of social media marketing – your clients/managers/bottom line will thank you.

As a startup guy and technologist, I’m excited to see even more sites enter the social media playing field in 2011. Unlike search, where Google has a near-monopoly worldwide (excluding China, Russia, North Korea and the Czech Republic), social media offers a myriad of unique platforms for opportunity.

Spread the Word

SMO links on Wiki

•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_marketing

•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysomos

–blogs, forums and Twitter

•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketwire

•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubspot

•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klout

–Twitter and Facebook analysis

MORE SMO - FREE

•

social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform
integrated marketing communications
coordinates the elements of the promotional mix;
Covers all the bases

advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion

SMO - What is it?

•

Often called Social Media Marketing
AKA Social Media Optimization(SMO)
benefits organizations and individuals
Recruitment/retention of new customers
Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access

SMO - The FREE stuff 2

http://www.seomoz.org/article/social-media-marketing-tactics

SEOmoz’s Social Media Guide lists the most popular and effective social media sites for marketing your business. Using this list, you can determine which sites to target and how to engage with them to earn mindshare, branding, customers and links.