At Weber Media Partners, we love info graphics. This one is so interesting we are going to post it even thought it is enormous. Thank you to Focus.com for putting this together.

In the last of our three-part series on the role of social media in Egypt’s ongoing revolution, we speak directly with Amr Abouelleil, who is one of the growing number of international Egyptian Youth Movement members.

Abouelleil is a 36 year-old Egyptian-American writer and bioinformatics analyst living in Massachusetts with his family. He lived  his early life in Egypt, and  returns every year to visit family, including a female cousin who is active in the revolution. His most recent trip was this past April, where he witnessed the effects of Egypt’s revolutionary activity first-hand.

His take: social media has been the cornerstone of communications during the revolution. Without social media, access to factual information would be limited, and more than likely colored by government spin and propaganda. It has enabled international supporters like Abouelleil to connect first-hand with other Egyptians, and to reach out to a broader audience to both gain support for the revolution and address the misinformation that abounds in traditional media and on the internet.

We hope you find yourself as inspired as we have been by the power of social media, and the strength and passion of those using it to build a better future for their country.

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Two Can Play at this Game: World Governments’ Responses to Social Media as a Revolutionary Tool

In the first part of this series, we explored how social media enabled and facilitated Egypt and Tunisia’s revolutions. By using Facebook and Twitter to broadcast their beliefs, find like-minded individuals the world over, and organize protests in near real-time, the revolutionaries were able to stay one step ahead of their governments. But now, it seems, the governments are catching up.

In Egypt, segments of the government and army are now on Facebook, using it as a means to spread their own propaganda and to keep an eye on known activist communities. At one point during the revolution, the Egyptian government even shut down internet access, fully aware of the threat it posed to the government. Amr Abouelleil, an Egyptian-American bioinformatics analyst and writer who is actively involved with the Egyptian Youth Movement at the heart of the revolution, says the government was aware that without the internet, people would have to turn to state television (which is government-censored) for their news. The government used this opportunity to up their ante, broadcasting pro-government programming to the unwired masses, which in many cases, appeared to work. “The government got some people to change their tune in just a matter of days,” Abouelleil says. “It brainwashed them to go back on Facebook in the government’s favor instead.”

Egypt is not the only government in fear of the power social media and the internet provides its people; when Google reportedly foiled an alleged Chinese attempt at stealing the passwords to hundreds of Google accounts, including those of government officials, Chinese human rights activists, and journalists. The Chinese government has since denied involvement, but is well known for their censorship of the internet and television. Whether or not the government is responsible for the hacking attempt, it’s safe to say that they are well aware of the power of the internet and social media, and doing all they can to control it.

Government reactions to the use of Google and social media have been so extreme in recent months that Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has said he fears for the safety of Google employees in certain parts of the world. “There are countries where it is illegal to do things that Google encourages. In those countries, there is a real possibility of (employees) being put in prison for reasons which are not their fault,” Schmidt told attendees of Google’s Dublin summit on militant violence this past Monday, June 27.

A prime example of this is Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google executive who is now one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2011. Ghonim was held captive by the Egyptian government for eleven days in early 2011 due to his involvement in using Facebook to organize protests via a page called “,” which exposed and raised awareness of the military’s cruel and inhumane murder of Khaled Saeed.

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Facebook is expanding its reach far beyond that of a simple social network. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation is taking on the typical shopping experience with Facebook Stores, attacking Groupon with the new Facebook Deals technology and now even surpassing Google for overall web traffic in the U.S. What will be Facebook’s next move in web domination? Some are saying Facebook pages could replace company websites.

One man who strongly advocates for the idea of Facebook superseding company websites is Stephen Haines, commercial director of Facebook’s U.K branch. Haines, at the Technology for Marketing and Advertising conference in the U.K, said that customers interact so conveniently with businesses on Facebook that the corporate website could become obsolete. He supported his argument by comparing how many times a company’s Facebook “Like” button was clicked as compared with visits to that company’s website. “For Starbucks, a top Facebook advertiser, the ratio was 21.1 million likes to 1.8 million site visitors. For Coca-Cola, it’s 20.5 million compared with 270,000; for Oreo, 10.1 million compared with 290,000.” While Haines is certainly biased, he is not alone in in his vision for the world’s most far-reaching social network.

According to smallbizlabs.com, a total of 9% of small businesses plan on either eliminating or spending less on their websites because of social media. While Facebook is only a portion of this statistic, the number of business has climbed from only 2% last June, a significant jump in less than a year.

Smallbizlabs.com reports that small businesses are focusing on Facebook as a crucial customer channel. When asked “On which of the following social media networks would you want suppliers to actively participate in (e.g., communicating directly with you)?” Facebook had the highest percentage of businesses with 47 followed by LinkedIn at 37 percent and Twitter at 18 percent. What strikes me most about these findings is that business owners would rather communicate  with their suppliers on Facebook, a social network, as opposed to LinkedIn, a professional network.

Smallbizlabs.com notes a massive jump in businesses wanting to shed or slim down their corporate website in favor of social media and shows that businesses want to do more business on Facebook.  With so may places to promote your brand, it makes sense for small businesses with small budgets to focus on the most populous site. Facebook might have started out as a way for college students to network, it’s turned into a something much, much more.

(with Catherine Weber)

 

 

Now that you know all about Quora and how it works, Weber Media Partners gives you three ways that it can help you and your business manage and build its online reputation.

1) Monitoring Your Brand

Quora is a unique way to monitor your brand’s online reputation. The site’s “Account Settings” provide a comprehensive list of options for e-mail notifications. You can choose to receive e-mail messages alerting you to new questions and answers, actions of specific users, and summaries of actions relating to a specific topic. Silicon Valley analyst Jeremiah Owyang recommends tracking brand and product mentions, for it is “likely if one customer is asking questions in Quora, it’s an indicator others are too.”  He further suggests escalating recurring questions or problems to the correct group within the company.

Weber Media Parents agrees, and we would be happy to work with you to develop a Quora monitoring program. We’ll help you identify FAQs, desired product or service changes, potential blog topics, or other industry trends.  for more information.

2) Sharing Your Expertise

You and your colleagues know a lot about your industry – why not share this wealth of wisdom? Since corporate accounts are not possible, companies should instead encourage interested and knowledgeable parties to set up Quora accounts, identify themselves as employees, and comment on questions in their chosen area of expertise. Quora gives employees the opportunity to share valuable information with their contemporaries across the globe, and perhaps even become thought-leaders on a given topic.

These experts can be powerful spokespeople for the company, but they can also cause headaches if they are not given the proper guidelines from the beginning. A meeting among managers and the marketing team to establish ground rules – such as style guides, the discussion of new product details, or non-work-related submissions – is highly recommended before introducing Quora to the social media plan.

3) Responding to Your Customers’ Queries

Quora revolves around questions and answers, making it a powerful customer service channel. Mashable blogger Heather Whaling singles out Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom as one user who is performing this task particularly well on the site. Systrom, who created the popular iPhone photo app, provided in-depth answers to a number of questions about his company. Thanks to his clear authority and knowledge, his responses have shot to the top spot on the pages. By answering his customers’ questions thoroughly and openly, Systrom has both ensured that the correct information is distributed and garnered good will for himself and his company.

The Weber Media team is excited about this newest tool, and we hope you are, too! Share your thoughts on Quora here or via  or . And please let us know if you have any questions about integrating Quora and social search into your social media marketing program.

It’s 2011, and Quora has emerged as the latest social media tool that has marketers buzzing. The site, which was launched in January 2010 with Facebook’s former Chief Technology Officer serving as co-founder, has already attracted significant attention from the top social media blogs and from venture capitalists. Quora’s innovative “social search” is being touted as “future of blogging“ and “much, much bigger than Twitter.”

Yet what exactly is Quora, and how can it fit into your social media marketing strategy? Weber Media Partners will answer these questions in a two-part series. Today, we will introduce this increasingly popular new search site. On Friday, we’ll take you through the three ways Quora can help your business.

What is Quora?

Let’s start with the basics. Quora defines itself as “a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” Users can search the site for specific questions, browse questions by category, or post questions that have yet to be posed by a user. All users can also contribute to the answers, responding themselves or “voting up” their preferred response. Registration is free, and it is easy to connect your Quora account to your Facebook and Twitter profiles, and your blog.

Quora is a powerful tool, but it is not the most user-friendly one. The best way to learn is to practice. After creating your account, start following topics of interest to you. To do this, simply begin typing the topic into the search bar and select from the resulting list. Once you follow a topic, questions relating to the topic will appear in your activity stream (similar to your Twitter stream or Facebook news feed).

The next step after selecting your topics is to post answers or questions of your own. Click on the image at right to see an example of a Quora question and answer page. The answers appear on the page in descending order based on user votes (e.g. “up” votes make an answer rise up the page) and the author’s previous record (e.g. the higher their previous posts, the higher their answers appear).

The Quora team is quick to note that it has protections in place to prevent users from “gaming” the system, and thus negating the accuracy and value of its content. In addition to monitoring its users’ submissions, Quora requires you to use your full name to register. While it encourages users to share titles and employers as a way of verifying the source of the knowledge provided, the site does not permit the establishment of business or brand accounts. Quora has been actively removing accounts that violate this policy, including the blog Mashable‘s account. There are currently no plans to add this feature to Quora.

To learn how this new tool can help your business as part of your social media marketing plan, check back with us on Friday for the second half of our Quora series. And as always, share your thoughts here or via  or .

While there were so many to report on, the Globe and Mail did a great story on what high profile stories worked and didn’t work last year. Three of the ten: Groupon being offered 6 billion by Google and declining, Old Spice ads getting over 28 million hits on YouTube , The Social Network, a movie about Facebook that depicts a young college students idea coming to life.

All of these were important commentaries on how social media is impacting our culture. Talk a look at the story to see all ten here.

Last week I presented to the SEMNE professional organization in Rocky Hill Connecticut to a room full of search engine optimization experts. In surveying the crowd in advance of delivering this presentation, many attendees wanted to know how social media can help build a website’s inbound links. To explain how this works, I used the following analogy.

How many cereal boxes do you have?

We have all noticed the remarkable variety of cereal types in the grocery store. An entire aisle has been dedicated to only a few cereal companies, who each have dozens of brands on the shelf.  Cereal companies provide this varieties to increase the the amount of shelf space the own, and the likelihood of sell at least one box to each shopper. The aisle is a finite space, and they want as much of that space as possible. It is this same philosophy the SEO expert should consider in leveraging social media. Every employee profile created on Linkedin, the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Slideshare accounts, and blog post that mentions the brand, give the company one more item in Google search results. So, like creating another brand of cereal for the aisle, each property is an opportunity to get your brand in front of your customer or prospect. These properties also build an inbound linking program to help raise the quality of the website overall.

Create a Sustainable Content Strategy

It is important to note that setting up these properties is only the beginning. You must have a content strategy that considers your audience and what they are interested in. Your content should be helpful and interesting, not advertising stuffed with key words. This strategy should be sustainable, and relevant to your audience. You should monitor what people are commenting on and sharing, and tweak your content to reflect what you are continually learning from your audience.

Below are my slides from the presentation. Soon I will post the talk itself, with the slides incorporated. Let me know what you think.

While social networking began as a consumer activity, it has become a crucial component of most business marketing strategies as it allows companies to reach highly targeted audiences with custom messaging to build brand awareness and establish a relationship with the customer who now expect companies to be reachable and accountable.

Business Benefits
Businesses are now regularly using tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn for hiring, customer support, product development, brand recognition, and, of course, client acquisition and retention. Social media has another benefit: the cost of acquiring customers is significantly lower than placing ads, and creates a lasting relationship.

The benefits of a quality social media marketing program include:

• Transparent, authentic feedback from your audience
• Integrates well with conventional marketing programs
• Reach highly-targeted audiences
• Improves search engines positioning
• Lower cost than advertising
• More long term and wider impact than conventional public relations

Listen first, Act second
Buyers look to objective internet sources to compare business products and services including existing customers who are more than willing to share their experience with these products. Companies can’t control the chatter, but they can learn what customers want.

Brands such as Comcast have made major strides in customer service by listening on Twitter. When their brand is mentioned, they know. When someone has a problem, they help them within minutes. They follow the first rule of social media: listen first, act second. Maintaining a regular monitoring program helps to understand customer sentiment and how it changes as you implement online programs.

Defining Success
Measuring the success of a social media campaign is possible only if you define your targets in advance. Whether they include increased traffic, website conversions or leads, you must have clear targets for successful campaigns, at short-term and long-term time intervals. A few examples of what success might look like include:

• Gaining a better understanding of your customers
• Increase brand exposure in ways which were not possible before
• Reducing costs for achieving the same targets using other marketing tactics
• Increase sales and conversions

Some great resources to compliment this blog post:

Social Commerce, Social Media Today, November 2, 2010

Content for People, Not Robots, Impressions Through Media, September 18, 2010

Dianna Huff, DH Communications, presented content marketing at the SEMNE meeting on Wednesday. Her presentation focused on why SEO firms should think like marketers and helping clients create content. See her presentation here.

I was excited to hear another marketing consultant expound on this important issue. The challenge for any business, large or small, with making social media succcessful and keeping it on track is to have a content strategy and have a regular stream of valuable content that speaks to your audience. Some SEO practitioners may be optimizing content, but not actually helping them produce it, when of course, SEO is not just about optimized content, but the continued publishing of optimized content that will actually be useful to your audience. It’s not just about the robots that index your website, it’s about the actual PEOPLE who read it!

We at Weber Media Partners recognized this as the main challenge for SMBs to contend with when they consider doing a social media work- from blogs to twitter to Facebook, if you want to stay in front of you customer, don’t annoy them and don’t be invisible- be helpful and interesting. Companies have the same issues when launching SEO and PPC campaigns.  So, having said this, Dianna gave some great tips, which I agree whole heartedly with: (more…)