We kicked off the second year of our new blog with a strong month of posts that covered a wide range of topics including leadership, content marketing, SEO, Pinterest for B2B businesses, trademarks, free tools for social media and PR, and succession planning.
On that final point, we said a sad farewell to a valued colleague last month. For our Linda Forrest, it was time for a new challenge in a new city. After a successful seven years with us, Linda has taken on the role of Digital Media Communities Manager at the Canadian Digital Media Network based in Kitchener/Waterloo. We welcome you to reach out to her on LinkedIn or Twitter to stay in touch.
Without further ado, here are our posts, in case you missed them, from February.
February 8: Giving your team ownership by Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
February 15: Burning the candle at both ends as the clock ticks down by Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
February 21: What an IP Coordinator should know: Something about trademarks by David French
And on a related note…
In addition to our series, our associates and guest bloggers were also busy writing on a great range of topics. Here are our other posts from February, as ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
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By Alexandra Reid
In my last post, I shared and reviewed my favourite (free) social media monitoring tools that I use regularly to carry out social media marketing strategies on behalf of clients. Today, I reveal the management and measurement tools I use to organize and keep track of the zillions of conversations I monitor daily across multiple channels.
To summarize, these tools are free and therefore great for small businesses and new ventures. However, they are useless if they are not aligned with a sound social media marketing strategy. They are also far from perfect so we must always cross-examine data with information provided by other tools and sometimes even check information manually to ensure everything is accurate.
I decided to combine my favourite management and measurement tools because many of them do both functions. Technically, some of these can be used for monitoring social media as well. At the end of the day, it’s not so much the tools that matter, but how you use them. These are the ones that I’ve found excel, particularly in the management and measurement departments.
Without further ado, here are my favourite social media management and measurement tools:
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By Alexandra Reid
I talk a lot about social media marketing strategy here, but rarely do I mention the time-and-money-saving tools that streamline my community building activities and make our social media marketing program an effective solution for businesses.
All of the tools I use are free and available to anyone with access to a computer. They are great for small and new businesses with tight budgets and limited time for experimentation and operation. But while I highly recommend that these tools be used to support social media marketing activities, they are useless for businesses that don’t align them with a sound social media marketing strategy. Additionally, while these tools help abridge the flow of social media content so users can siphon relevant information, engage with their communities and track progress, a key challenge cited by numerous businesses is keeping on top of monitoring, measurement and engagement efforts.
We must also remember that these tools are free and far from perfect. In fact, the biggest criticisms of all social media monitoring tools (free and paid) are that they sometimes fail to provide reliable and accurate data, have lag times, bugs, and are confusing to use. That’s why we must always cross-examine data with information provided by other tools and sometimes even check information manually to ensure everything is accurate.
Today I’ll discuss the tools I use for monitoring social media. In a subsequent post, I’ll reveal my favourite management and measurement tools. You’ll notice that I don’t use many tools to do my job. This is because too many tools act as speed bumps in an otherwise efficient engagement system.
Without further ado, here are my favourite social media monitoring tools:
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By Alexandra Reid
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past few months, Pinterest is a new, visually stunning social bookmarking site that is breaking records for new visitors. It received nearly 11 million visits the week ending Dec. 17, 2011, outranking Google+, and experienced a fourfold increase in unique visitors from September to December. I’ve written on Pinterest here before, but I thought it might be helpful to also share with you the recording of a Focus roundtable I participated in yesterday on the rise of Pinterest in B2B.
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By Alexandra Reid
Blogs are widely known for their SEO-driving potential because they are comprised of content, which is what search engines use to locate and index results. With Google’s Panda update, content has taken centre stage and businesses that post quality material frequently have the best chances of being noticed when their audiences search for relevant terms.
In fact, as reported by Brafton via Search Engine Land, 92 percent of marketers say that content creation is either “very effective” or “somewhat effective” for SEO, and 57 percent of marketers have said that they have acquired new customers from their blogs. On the flip side, 60 percent of business decision-makers say branded content helps them make better purchasing decisions.
I’ve read a ton of information on how to optimize content for search engines, and the vast majority of it can be boiled down into one fundamental rule: write content for your readers, not search engines.
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We kicked off the second year of our new blog with a strong month of posts that covered a wide range of topics including leadership, content marketing, SEO, Pinterest for B2B businesses, trademarks, free tools for social media and PR, and succession planning.
