The top 5 reasons your digital marketing strategy needs a social community

Interactive digital marketing is a fine art, a balancing act, if you will, of supplying just the right amount of info to get people interested, without bombarding them with a pushy, overly intrusive sales approach. Websites are the Digital marketers shop window, a place to show off their wears and entice buyers in. So ask yourself, when was the last time you read an independent customer review? Or better still, when was the last time you visited a corporate website and were given the chance to vote or give your ideas on a new product?

This guestpost is written by Elena Savvides, International Marketing Manager at Telligent. Together with our Tom De Ruyck Telligent is presenting at the iStrategy Event in London, May 23 2012.

Continue reading

Some good reasons to get involved in social media data

A few weeks ago I was invited to speak at the Social Media Analytics Seminar of IBM/SPSS in Utrecht. I had the privilege to speak after Damiaan Zwietering, Sales Engineer Predictive Analytics at IBM. The goal of both out stories was to give a realistic view on the possibilities on the use of textual data from social media.  Damiaan focused on the fact that it is truly doing research without asking questions, and went into depth on different tools and techniques that can be used. The aim of my story was really to put theory to practice and explain how we use social media analytics at InSites Consulting, to give an overview of the do’s and don’ts and more importantly to give insights in what is possible and what is not possible. Social media are there to stay when it comes to marketing and there are some good reasons to get involved in social media data.
Continue reading

[Congress Report]: “Slow adoption of social media is like teenage sex”

Earlier this week I attended the presentation of the first social media benchmark study issued by the Chartered Institute of Marketing at Bloomberg House. Wow. Great venue, sexy use of prezzie, fancy infographics and interesting findings. But…. not many surprises about current use and not too many answers how one should use social media in the marketing mix. Yes, we know people are experimenting, yes we know people are keen on using social media, but no one cracked it yet and certainly not many people measure return on investment. Very typical was the discussion about where social media should be integrated in the organisational structure of a company; with PR/communications or marketing? As long as people don’t GET that social media is for us all – and CONTROL is one of those words that we have to ban from the marketing dictionary, it will be a long slow road towards adoption of social media.
Continue reading