A presentation posted by Lee Odden on Nov 18th, 2013 has given out some inspiration of B2B social media marketing trends & Tips for 2014.

Attached is the short presentation he will be giving this week in Moscow (in addtion to a 3.5 hours social media marketing workshop)

While there are flavorings towards a Russian audience, (Yandex, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki) there’s also plenty of good advice for any B2B company that hasn’t fully embraced opportunities on the social web.

In particular, He thinks newer B2B marketers will appreciate the Social Media Marketing Maturity Model that outlines various stages that companies will experience as they gain more experience and confidence with social media.

Back in those days, the term microsites had often been used interchangeably with mini-sites, those one page stand-alone Web pages used by direct marketers in the 90s.

Microsites are perfectly acceptable to serve as landing pages or hubs for search engine advertising. This is one main reason for creating microsites –  to create a hiper-focused website that meets the needs of a specific search query – and to satisfy Google’s Quality Score criteria.

Pros of using Microsites:

• Visitors can quickly navigate to the content most relevant to their search
• Marketers can use the data from those choices to naturally segment their audience
• Build around a set of reusable templates that let you leverage the design assets of one microsite concept across a number of campaigns
• Microsites live outside the formal framework of your main website, they can often be deplyed quickly
• Use A/B testing to compare the performance of one microsite against an alternative single-page landing page.

Cons of using Microsites:

• Forces users to adapt to different user interfaces when they stumble across the microsite while exploring the main site
• May cause confusion
• A poorly designed microsite can actually reduce conversions
• To  make a microsite effective, requires long-term maintenance, which can be expensive.

 

Read more about microsites:

Content Marketing With Microsites: Pros, Con, Examples & Best Practices

 

According to a study by Lab42, the No.1 reason people like a Facebook page is to receive a discount or other promotion. To utilize this finding to drive online sales for your business, images and graphics that feature discounts and promotions are an engaging way to give your Facebook fans what they want.

Here are the six ways for commerce brands to boost online sales using graphics on Facebook.

#1: Offer Promotional Codes for Holiday Sales

• Include a promotional code allow company to track revenue from your campaign.

#2: Reward Fans Who Tell a Friend

• Unlock a special promo code IF your image receives a certain number of shares
• This also increases organic engagement

#3: Show Off Product Features
#4: Give a Free Gift with Purchase
#5: Countdown to a Deadline

• A Countdown promo keeps your fans hyper-engaged for an extended period time.
• Create a graphic that reveals, for example, a 24-hour sale on a different popular product from your ecommerce store each day for 10 days.

#6: Promote a Limited-Time Offer

• An image that promotes a limited-time offer helps create the sense of urgency needed to drive sales now.

For more detail, please go to:

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-sell-on-facebook-using-images/#more-49515

 

I recently read a post named “Social Media Doesn’t Hurt My Offline Social Abilities, It Helps Them” by Daniel Etcobitch. With curiosity, I read through it and found that the author use following points to support his argument.

• With social media, we can get feedback on the value of what we’re saying, such as Facebook ‘likes’ or Twitter ‘favorites’.
• Get a more genuine metric of the quality of your post as people often engage in an unprovoked action in a no-pressure environment.
• Use social media to learn more about the people we want to interact with.
• Social media gives us more practice in social interactions.

I agree with most of the points that Daniel listed. However, we should also consider the downside of social media. Social Media is like a two-side sword, if we use it properly, it would help us expend personal networks and maintain better relationships; however, scandal or gossip can also spread quickly and broadly throughout the network. Those rumors may not be real but can bully anyone in the network. Social Media is no difference than any other conversation happens in real life; it does have impact on people’s day-to-day life.

If people can utilize social media properly, they will certainly get some valuable abilities which can be transferred to real life, if not, then don’t use it. In a word, whether social media can help offline social abilities, depend on the personality and civic virtue of the user network.

 

Reference: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-etcovitch/social-media-doesnt-hurt-_b_4289032.html

 

 

One day when I was on YouTube, an advertisement caught my eyes. It was introducing the Chromebook. The dynamic background music and fresh-looking animation first got my attention. But soon I found out the idea was really awesome!

Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqe8ieqz10

• Chromebook is defined as something neither a laptop nor a computer but a “web in a computer-like object”.
• There are no programs – you don’t need to start up, and just seconds and you are on the web. You can do everything on the web such as using Google document, Google map etc.
• No desktop and not even a desktop background
• Is portable
• Everything is saved to the web “since it has more space than any computer”
• Doesn’t need virus protection and systems are updated automatically

Despite the brilliant ideas, I have got some concerns for it.

• Security Issue:

Everything you do will be recorded as some form of data to the web which means there is risk they will be exposed.

• Backward Compatibility

How does Chromebook understand data generated by other devices such as laptop or computer? it seems that it is designed only for people who just want to surf the internet and that’s all