Experience with Social Media 6 weeks later

This course on social media sure feels like a roller coaster ride. At the beginning there's a steep learning curve filled with social media tools, terms and functions. I'm currently still learning the tools and getting used to "listening" to the conversations. However, I know that once I'm on top of them I'll be at the peak and have a good view of what's out there. Then it will be a swift cruse downhill, and again another uphill learning curve when the next big thing (technology) comes along.

In review of my previous post last month, I've got used to shorten links and its functions, which I'm currently implementing them regularly for tracking purpose.
Also, I've learnt to "listen" better with the tools out there like Social Mention and Google Alert, which can cut down the time in searching through endless number of articles. I've also used Google Alert to help with my job search in adding "Vancouver Marketing Jobs" as one of the alerts. Now I receive daily report on marketing jobs in Vancouver, and that is amazing!

Leads Generation

For this Social Media assignment, I need to devise a leads generation program.

To generate leads for Three Cs Marketing, I will implement the following 3 steps.

a) Create a blog that share marketing/design tips and how we tackle client's project. It will have 2 new posts per week.

b1) Create a twitter account as a funnel that drives traffic to our blog/website. Also we will follow our clients and partners to ensure they are mentions in our tweets

b2) Research on competitors' twitter to see what kinds of tweets they are making and who they are following.

c) Create a facebook page to interact with our customers/fans and act as additional funnel. It will have a landing page to our blog and showcase our work for our clients.

Impression of Web Analytics

My first experience with web analytics starts with Google Analytic, as part of my previous employer’s website design, re-launch and marketing (www.bonicadive.com). It was right before we head down to Florida for a major industry trade show. At first I was very impressed of the information it can collect and show, including the number of unique visitors, where the visits come from, and page viewed per visit. The information shows that most of our visitors are from US, which accurately reflects our large US customer base. This gave me a sigh of relief and cast away some of my boss’s doubt in implementing these web tools.

During our trade show in Florida, we encourage our visitors to check out our website. A lot of them did exactly that, which was reflected in the Analytics as a spike of visits from Florida during the week of show. We have also met many international customers from Europe and South America, and their visits to our website were also tracked by the Analytics. These features and information provided by Analytics certainly helped us to track our marketing efforts when we experiment with SEO optimization, Google Adwords and landing pages.

Twitter tracking tools such as Tweetcloud can be a quick and useful tool to explore people’s recent topics of interest (if they are active on Twitter). It’s a bit like hearing the word out there as if you are working with that person before you even meet him/her. I just did a quick tweetcloud on Globe and Mail. The common keywords are Canada, Canadian, Egypt, protests, NHL, and U.S., which correctly fits its profile. Another search on New York Times results in Egypt, Obama, Protests, Mubarak and Republicans which are more related to the US public.

There are still many web analytics tool out there to be learnt, and they are surely an integral part of any online marketing strategies.

3 Valuable and Not-so-valuable social media tools

The Big 3 social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) are definitely my favorite and most valuable social media tools.

Facebook is already part of my social life as I use it to connect with my friends daily. There are still more things I can learn about it, especially on its business application.

Twitter is great for getting the latest word out there in real time. Also, it allows me to follow people that I admire and would like to learn from easily.

LinkedIn is relatively new to me as I'm exploring its functions. However, it has become the standard for building business and professional connections, so it will be definitely useful as I learn more.


The 3 not-so-valuable social media tools are Hootsuite, bit.ly (shorten link), and Google Reader.

I'm having difficulty with bit.ly as I would like to rename the link so that it'll make sense to me and my audiences. However, it is not always easy to come up with a unique name every time. I'm seeing other people using the shorten link as it is (shorten names that doesn't mean anything) in their tweets, so I can see that it is sort of the standard and very useful to satisfy the 140 character per tweet limit.

Hootsuite and Google Reader are tools that capture updates and list them in an easy to read format. However, as I'm used to visiting the website directly for updates. They have not yet been very useful to me.

Interesting Links found on Mashable.com

http://mashable.com/2011/02/04/amit-singhal-interview-google/

Google representative calling out to Microsoft to stop recording (via Internet Explorer or Bing) what people were searching on Google and what results are clicked in order to improve on its own search results. Microsoft rep. responded by saying they don't copy any search competitor, except to tune into user-opt-in clickstream data.
To me it seems Microsoft is not in full denial of Google's claim, except that Microsoft is doing it through its users, not directly from Google.

http://mashable.com/2011/02/04/facebook-7th-birthday/

7 years that outlined the birth and growth of online social media. It's amazing that the user base continues to double every year.

1st Blog Entry - Welcome

Welcome and thank you for paying a visit to my blog.

This blog is created as part of the BCIT Social Networking class, and will also serve as a channel to express my view of the world.

Looking forward to share with you more as the class and the world continues to roll.