5 Social Media Marketing Trends: New Research
Are you being asked to prove the value of social media for your business?
Do you struggle to accurately measure the return on investment (ROI) of your social media marketing?
You’re not alone. Several new research studies reveal that marketing managers are under increased pressure to show measurable results from their social media efforts.
But these same managers indicate that measuring the returns is one of their top two challenges for 2012.
See how your experience compares to others in the industry. 
4 Steps to Selling With Social Media
Are you wondering why your social media efforts aren’t working?
Social media success sometimes appears arbitrary.
Perhaps you’ve wondered, “Why does company X generate leads and business from their social activity while my company wastes resources on blogs that don’t get read and tweets that go unanswered?”
Social media is so new, sometimes the path to success is unclear and it’s easy to lose your way.
If you want to demystify the experience and improve your ROI (return on investment), you need to make sure that your marketing and campaigns include these four essential components:
6 Ways to Measure Your Social Media Results
How much time are you spending on social media? Can you tell if it’s helping sales?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a framework for measuring the impact of your social media efforts?
That’s where Susan Etlinger’s new research for the Altimeter Group comes into play. Susan did qualitative research with 60 social media marketers and vendors to understand how businesses currently measure their social media performance.
Her goal: to develop a framework for tying social media performance to business goals.
NOTE: Because Susan’s original research targeted enterprise-level companies, I interviewed her to add some small business insights. The following comments combine results of the research and that interview.
How Google Analytics Is Impacting Business
In this video I interview Avinash Kaushik, the digital marketing evangelist for Google and author of Web Analytics 2.0.
Avinash shares how the free enterprise-class tools available through Google Analytics impact businesses today.
He explains how your social media activity influences the behavior of your business audience to help you improve your results.
Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.
6 Ways to Track the Impact of Social Media on Public Relations
Have you used social media strategies to support your public relations efforts? Are you struggling to show whether social made a difference?
This post will focus on six metrics you can use to measure the impact of social media on public relations (PR).
Why social media and PR?
As news outlets continue to boost their online presence, public relations professionals have a tremendous opportunity to leverage social media outlets to enhance their outreach efforts.
Social media networks like Twitter provide a new level of access to reporters that open dialogue in new and exciting ways. As social media sites become the “source” for news and breaking stories, marketers are seeing media coverage spread more rapidly than ever before.
5 Tools That Help Measure Your Social Media Influence
Do you know if you’re having an impact on Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks? Do you want some tips on how to measure your social media influence?
As Twitter continues to grow, tools to enhance your Twitter experience and measure your influence are popping up all over the web. In this article, I’ll highlight five free tools that offer easy ways to keep track of your influence on Twitter and beyond.
#1: Klout
Perhaps one of the more well-known resources for measuring your Twitter influence is Klout, which is available as an extension for Chrome and Firefox, as well as the stand-alone site. Late last year, Twitter client Seesmic also integrated Klout scores into its desktop and web versions.
12 Social Media Tools Recommended by the Pros
Are you struggling to make social media work for your business? Sometimes a few well-chosen tools are all you need to get your social media marketing working for you.
In our recent Social Media Success Summit, there were presentations that covered all the key topics you need to make your social media marketing easy. In this article, I’ll share 12 of those tools that were recommended by the pros.
Tools to Refine Your Visibility and Engagement
Here are three tools recommended by Mari Smith during her first presentation on increasing your visibility and engagement on Facebook.
