Being, admittedly, horrible about keeping up-to-date with social medias and different technologies, I decided to do some searching and reviewing of different resources that will (hopefully) help with that problem.  The two that interested me were TechCrunch and PR Daily.

Image via http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TechCrunch.png

TechCrunch.com is a site where numerous authors post recent information on anything social media or technology-related.  They keep it very current, which makes it easier to stay updated with all the helpful information they put up.  As I’ve been typing, there have already been two new articles posted! The authors show their knowledge on so many technologies and social medias related to monitoring and measuring.

PR Daily has public relations and marketing news for all things affiliated with social media. There are articles on any topic you can think of from emoticon dos and don’ts to bad journalism habits. PR Daily has articles that give concise numbered lists for their posts, which I find are the easiest to follow and best to read for those of us who aren’t very savvy with technology-related anything!

Image via http://www.flickr.com/photos/schoschie/3272615732/ by Niels Heindenreich

Both of these sites are great to follow when you need simple sites to help you keep up with the ever-changing technologies and social medias.  They both offer up important information in a professional way and are very straight to the point and so helpful.

Ingenex Internet Market Blog derives its blog posts offers advice and insights on internet marketing. This blogs derives posts from Digital Bus, Eco-Friendly Digital Marketing Internship, The Business Social Networking, and the LA2M blogs. Both full-time employees and interns contribute to the blogs. Lots of research is put into each post, although they are very short and sweet.

Picture via http://ingenexdigital.com

The Eco-Friendly Digital Marketing Internship blog is geared towards young adults who are interested in digital marketing and social media. The posts provide news and thoughts on digital trends, along with information about Ingenex’s internal workings. These blog posts are generally 300-500 words long.

Picture via http://www.ecofriendlyinternship.com/

The Digital Bus Blog has posts with the latest tips and tricks for digital marketing with a focus on social media, blogging, SEO, digital PR, and social networking.  Yes, there is an actual 1972 Volkswagen bus that travels to different locations in Michigan, Illinois, New York, and more during their summer tour. The bus will travel to a business and provide advice and support when it comes to social marketing.

Picture via http://thedigitalbus.com

Mashable is a blog that contains up-to-date posts about social media, technology, business, entertainment, U.S. and World news, lifestyles, and more. Their blog posts are both witty and informative, making each post a very interesting and attention catching read. With many charts, graphics, videos, and cartoons scattered throughout different posts, Mashable is not only literary but visually interesting. There are 20 million views monthly and six million social media followers, Mashable has become a leading source as a digital news community.

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When you want to learn more about current social media trends, read Ingenex or Mashable blogs. Written by social media professionals, you can be assured that everything read is current and reliable.

original image by Terry Sieting ©

This week, I decided to review two social media sources that happen to be big names in the industry; TechCrunch & Google for Your Business. Both of these websites provide information about social media but they have large differences that allows TechCrunch to rise to the top.

TechCrunch.com  is an up-to-date social media, technology, and marketing news site that always is reporting on the most recent topics. They have several writers and are very active in social media in relaying and having conversations about their stories. Personally, I follow them on Twitter because of continuity of relevant and well written articles. In regard to the future of listening and social media monitoring, TechCrunch will prove to be a vial source to gather up-to-date information about the changes happening in these latter fields. Look for techCrunch to report on everything from measurement tools to the tends of social media.

Google for Your Business is a very ego-centric site featuring tools that Google has for your business. The website, or rather the YouTube channel, is a collection of how to’s in regard to Google tools that allow your business to get start. Now, don’t get me wrong, a lot of Google’s tools are really great tools. The issue with the site is the tunnel vision in which is lives in. Apposed to TechCrunch, Google for Your Business will only report on their updated tools, not the spectrum of the industry and world.

Overall, both of the website contain very valuable data but when it comes to eating breakfast, TechCrunch will always pour a big bowl of Google and finish it off with a large glass of egotism.

Key performance indicators have been circulating in the social media world since its inception. It seems as if KPI is coming up in most of our discussions and readings regarding measuring social media. Much like the impressions you generate with traditional advertising such as, billboards, and radio. Social Media uses forms of KPI to calculate their virtual impressions. Erica Swallow writes in her article that each department’s success measurements for social media should be based on their specific goals and metrics. It is obvious that in order for a strategy to work, certain goals need to be set within. If you want to follow certain things about your brand or company on twitter, you need to decide on goals that will help you generate the most data through your KPI.

Setting goals to be measured in social media through KPI is a very important aspect. Adam Singer in his 4 Ideas for Better Social Media Measurement says that, “Go beyond key performance indicators (KPIs) like followers and visitors, and even beyond macro conversions such as revenue and leads generated.” in terms of measuring media. The saying, “Think outside the box”, seems to have a perfect fit to what Singer is trying to say. It is fair to say that setting goals to measure using KPI is very important, but you cannot just stop there. Adam says, “In order to measure social media effectiveness and realize its full potential, you can’t rely on platform metrics alone.” You must find other ways to get an edge on the competition by thinking outside of the box and developing new and improved strategies, especially in a Social Media world that is changing as I type this. Singer says, “Measuring social as part of a formalized process will provide insight into your results and help you make data-driven decisions.”

It is important to set up tools and analytics that follow your goals to successfully complete your digital marketing strategy. There is so much use you can gain from social media, and being advanced in it will help your brand or company tremendously. As both articles have the same idea, it is quite important to measure your social media effectively. They both agree that measuring social media has to go beyond tools that give you basics. You need to be able to analyze interaction amongst your crowd, because those are your customers, and those are the people that will give you the most information.

As we all know, social media is omnipresent in the world that we live in today. What started out as something personal and small has evolved into a craze that has taken over worldwide. Social media is something that we see and use everyday, and not only are we using these websites on a personal level, but more and more businesses are joining the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc everyday. It is something that has become almost essential in both worlds. I’d be willing to bet most of you can’t go longer than a day without checking your Facebook, a week and you’d go certifiably insane. As far as the business world goes, you’d be hard pressed to find a Forbes 500 company that isn’t on twitter. Really try it, I dare you. With this social media boom it seems like a new, hit website is popping up everyday. That is a new website we all must make an account for,a new addiction for us to check daily, a new source of news. So in order to learn more about the growing world of social media I visited 2 websites, socialmediatoday and socialmediadelivered. Both websites were very easy to navigate, but they were quite different. The first website allowed you to login with any one of the aforementioned websites in order to comment or create posts. This website was more of a blog that allowed you to read different posts pertaining to today’s world of social media. The second website, which started in 2008, is one for a company aimed at better helping you or your business through social media. This may be ideal for smaller businesses who do not understand exactly what social media is or how it can help them succeed.

After comparing the two resources I realized there are ways to use social media to draw attention to yourself whether you are the company or the consumer. First, I looked at a media post article, stating the best ways to stand out on a social network. The first couple of tips seemed to repeat themselves. Clearly drawing attention to focusing on creating a buzz on your social network. Which is exactly what the  young man in the PR Daily  article did with his Facebook and Taco Bell. He created a massive buzz on his page about the speedo he couldn’t live with out and wanted from Taco Bell. The grabbed the attention of his followers and the company, which lead to the company responding and sending him the speedo he requested. By making sure this was a real person, who was truly brand loyal, the company gained major exposure, as well as the diver that created the Facebook buzz. I think if companies use this idea of creating a buzz wisely and to their benefit, they can make a major profit and gain more brand loyal customers.

Picture Via

There are many modern approaches you can take by making data presentation more effective and appealing to your audience.

While mind maps and displaying news are just some of the way this article gave me some brief insight on to bring data visualization to life. One cool, interesting approach i found was called displaying connections. It is a form of graphics combusted into words that are eye catching, such as the picture below.

image by “Vitaly friedman”

This article gave me some useful tips on how to make my data stand out from the rest and some tools to use such as swivel and Xtimeline.

Comparing this article to How social data built a better health care app.

Making data more interesting can help make a lot of companies in the right way if they take the necessary steps for data presentation.

When looking at social media monitoring resources, I decided to compare a resource I’ve used regularly to one that I recently discovered.

A resource that I’ve been using for the past few years is PR Daily. This site offers blog articles and resources related to social media, media relations, crisis communications, and much more. While this amount of information can be overwhelming, a little searching can lead one to a variety of useful articles and recommended tools for social media monitoring and measurement. The articles are written by both staff writers and outside PR practitioners. As the name insinuates, new content is produced daily and keeps up with the latest trends.

Which is better -- old or new? Image courtesy of Alasdair MacNeill.

As a new resource, I decided to investigate what Salesforce Marketing Cloud has to offer. Marketing Cloud, formerly known as Radian 6, is a known as a monitoring solution for brands. They claim to go beyond the traditional monitoring platform by also offering measurement and engagement services. While Marketing Cloud is motivated to produce content in order to gain new clients, they do offer a variety of insightful resources. Their resources include case studies, white papers, e-books, videos and presentations. Saleforce also offers a Marketing Cloud Blog that appears to be updated regularly.

I enjoyed exploring both resources, and it’s difficult to say one resource is superior to the other. I enjoy PR Daily for its up-to-date content that is written especially for communicators. I like the Salesforce Marketing Cloud for its content specifically related to social media monitoring and measurement, and that the content is produced by subject-matter experts. I believe I’ll keep the old and add the new to my resource list!

Ad Age vs. Forbes

According to AdAge.com, AdAge is the leading global source of news, intelligence and conversation for marketing and media communities. Ad Age has different groups you can choose from: Agency News, Media, Digital, Global News, Hispanic Marketing, Blogs and Columnists, CMO Strategy, Data Center, and Special Report: CES. Ad Age is a great resource to find out what is happening in the advertising and marketing world for different companies such as Coca-Cola, Career Builder, and Facebook. Ad Age is also one of the most popular sites worldwide for PR. One of my favorite things about Ad Age is that this source covers many different industries. Right now, the Super Bowl has been covered a lot but Ad Age also covers interesting topics such as “Ten Epic Media Feuds of 2012″ and “Apple’s First Ad of 2013.”

Coca-Cola via Creative Commons - fotopedia by Newtown grafitti

Another marketing resource that has been around just as long as Ad Age is Forbes. According to BusinessDictionary.com, Forbes is defined as, a company that is popular for it’s periodic publications consisting of a variety of topics such as the richest business men, most influential individuals and best companies to work for. Forbes is more well known with consumers with many sections: New Posts, Popular, Lists, Videos & Articles are organized in: All, Business, Investing, Tech, Entrepreneurs, Op/Ed, Lifestyle and Lists. Another interesting part of Forbes online website is how it organizes a list of what is the most read on Forbes. Another great part about Forbes online is the “new post” section, where viewers are actively updated when there are new articles posted on Forbes. Since the business world is actively changing every single minute, this is a very important section to keep up with updates as time moves by.

Adweek offers a great perspective on the advertising industry and how it affects our culture. On the home page, it is very detailed to give you multiple stories that can interest you. The three top categories are: Editor’s Picks, which gives you a picture, title, and small description of the story. Most Popular, which shows the five most popular posts on the site and finally The Feed, which gives ten stories and categorizes them according to breaking, buzzed or the time they were posted. The stories all focus on either different brands or different types of advertising being used currently.

Another resource is the salesforce marketing cloud blog that offers multiple articles and tools related to social media. It splits the social media articles by engagement, measurement, and strategy. The blog really breaks down different resources that would help a business or individual looking to use social media.

While both of these resources are fascinating, I found that Adweek was more of an all around website that focused on all aspects of marketing, advertising, and media. It had articles related to montiroing and measuring social media but they scattered amongst many other articles and difficult to find. While the salesforce marketing blog was really focused on social media but the articles seemed that they were just circling around giving tips and never really gave industry insight like Adweek did.

Image By: snorpey

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