Tag Archives: youtube

5 Reasons Law Firms Still Dismiss Social Media…and Why They’re Wrong

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1.“There’s no ROI”

There is ROI for blogs and social media, you just have to enter into the social space having previously determined what you want to track and get out of social media. Without some kind of benchmark such as conversion rates, traffic to your site, likes or engagement on a post, calculating an ROI IS going to be impossible. Tools like Google Analytics, Google Alerts, Bit.ly etc… can help to track interest, click through rates, demographics and where/how people are talking about your firm/lawyers.

2.“The Metrics aren’t reliable”

I don’t really understand why people would think this, because Social Media data is some of the cleanest and pinpointed data there can be. There are hundreds of applications that can tell you how many people have clicked a link, who’s clicked it, where they’re from, engagement statistics, which content got the most activity etc…basically that argument is just not sound.

3.“Social Media is still too young”

…So is the Internet, so is mobile. Does your firm use email, online journals, or other websites for research? I’m sure the answer is yes, and Social Media is no longer just for the innovative law firms–it has become mainstream. Did you know that 81% of law firms are now using some kind of social media platform? If your law firm doesn’t adapt to this social shift, you will be at a significant disadvantage.

4.“Social Media is just another trend that will pass”

A recent survey from The Nielsen Company stated Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites, including blogs. This is up more than 40% from just last year! With the way social media is growing, there is simply no chance it’s going anywhere anytime soon. Social Media is all about adapting to our communication needs, and as long as people are conversing there will surely be social media.

5.We need to control our message

I was watching a webinar with Gary Vaynerchuk last week and he discussed this very topic. He explained that because of the way social media is molding traditional marketing tactics, we too need to adapt to the way with which messages are dispersed and received. We can say whatever we want about our brand, but we have virtually no control over what people are saying about us. This can be scary, but it also allows your brand to grow and adjust your product/services to fit the needs and desires of your consumers.

Pay it Forward Marketing Shift

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Today’s marketing and advertising techniques are undergoing an enormous change, largely due to the integration of the internet and more recently, social media, into business plans worldwide. Plain and simple, today’s marketplace simply does not operate in the way that it used to, and the sooner companies realize this, the more successful they will be in turning profit.

A great example of this shift is the way in which traditional marketing tactics such as direct marketing, email marketing and cold calling are shifting is the emergence of what Gary Vaynerchuck, New York Times and Wallstreet Journal’s Best-selling author, calls the “Thank You Economy (TYE).” This means that in order to advertise and market to the people that you hope to reach, you have to actually “give a crap!”

The way in which the TYE is thriving is through social media. Using old tactics like direct marketing simply isn’t going to work on Facebook or Twitter, as this messaging will immediately be marked as spam, and ignored. In order to turn followers into buyers of your products/services, you need to offer them something of value whether it be through content, coupons, giveaways, or superior customer service.

The TYE works today because people are sick of dealing with automated telecommunication messages and they want to be treated as if their business matters. It also works due to human nature. What I mean by this, is that we as humans have an innate desire to “pay it forward.” We simply can’t deal with owing people, so we repay favors in order to maintain social fairness.

We can return a favor via social media through a follow, a friend, a like, or a share. Every month, 25,000,000 pieces of content are shared via Facebook. Humans for the most part like to give back, so so sharing important/funny/impactful pieces of content to their following is an extremely powerful marketing and advertising tactic.
Consumers also like to know that their opinion and their thoughts have been heard. Reacting to customer’s concerns or praises only strengthens the relationship that your brand has to its following, and if you’re are able to implement changes in order to provide a customized product to your following, then you are thriving in the TYE.

An article that I read the other day defined a very important aspect to the TYE in one word; social commerce. The author of said article stated that social commerce helps shoppers to make smart and saavy purchases so that retailers will be able to listen and adjust their product or service to fit the needs and desires of their valued customers.

In maintaining a sort of ping pong relationship with your customers and/or potential customers, you are creating a mutually beneficial engagement and that is what the TYE is all about.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference!

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Hello all! Just a quick note to let you know that we’re at the Enterprise 2.0 Conferencein Boston today and tomorrow! We’re so excited to meet others in the industry and to see the latest products/services that they have created, and to show them ours as well. The conference focuses on enlightening its participants of the emergence of bigger picture implications of technology and how we can expect to integrate such products/services into each of our own unique business plans and models.

This year, the conference is at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.

Moving from Enterprise 1.0 to Enterprise 2.0 includes but is not limited to the following changes:

Hierarchy to Flat organization
Friction to Ease of Organization Flow
Bureaucracy to Agility
Top down to Bottom Up
Need to know to Transparancy

As you can see the structure and nature of the workplace and work production is beginning to shift, and this conference is a great place for us to enhance one’s own business configuration to better fit into the future of business enterprises.

Stay updated on our conference ventures today and tomorrow via our social channels. www.facebook.com/viraltechnologies or www.twitter.com/viraltech

Journalistic Principles Help Online Content Go Viral!

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Sharing content is one of the major ways within which brands/people gain awareness, increase traffic to alternate Websites, and grow customer or viewer numbers and engagement. As you can tell, getting your followers to share your content is extremely beneficial, and highly attainable. But why do people share only CERTAIN content, and how can I produce material that will be good enough for my follower’s followers to share, and to my follower’s follower’s followers to share?

Here’s where my journalistic brain started to kick in. When deciding whether a lead or story is newsworthy or not, journalists are asked to consider the following attributes, which happen to work perfectly when trying to decipher which content will be shared, and which content is better left unwritten:

Timeliness – people probably won’t care about an event that happened 10 years ago. Your content should keep to same-day or future news events or happenings.

Significance – this quality relates to the number of people who will be affected by your content. Obviously the broader the audience (number-wise and demographic-wise) your content can reaches, the greater its chance at going viral will be.

Proximity – your followers aren’t necessarily going to be as interested in a story across the world as they would be in a story that occurred in the next town over. People want content that they can relate to, and more often than not, a Maine’s newspaper following isn’t going to relate to a woman whose dog got stuck in a tree in China.

Prominence – this refers to the people/things that are featured in your content. The more famous or well-known the subject of your content is the greater chance it has at spreading. For whatever reason, we are enthralled by the lives of famous people—we want to know every minute detail of their lives including their love lives, cars, homes and beauty regimens which makes them a great topic for content.

Human Interest – who doesn’t love a story or video that tugs at the heartstrings? Some of the most viral videos that have been created are those that warrant an emotional response from us, especially when we can utilize our empathetic tendencies. Whose heart doesn’t melt for a good homecoming story of a soldier, or a kitten falling asleep on its best friend the dog…this is good stuff people, trust me.

Weird/Unusual – this content is those stories that make us want to look away, or make us cringe with second-hand embarrassment. Maybe we wouldn’t ourselves do the things that these people do, or think the way they think, but we are still mesmerized by weird and unusual things—think “Octo-Mom.”

So there you have it. Journalists and bloggers can live in harmony! Follow the above tips, and your content will have a great chance at going viral–or at least being shared a bunch of times.

How B2B Brands are Taking Advantage of Social Media

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5 Ways to Grow Your Business Using Pinterest

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As Pinterest becomes one of social media’s top dog, it is important for your business to learn how to capitalize on Pinterest’s ability to increase Web traffic to your sites and translate these visits into dollars.

Right now, Pinterest is the number one referral source to Websites for all of the social media platforms. Not only is it number one, but if you took the referral rates of Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ and added them up, Pinterest’s rate would STILL be higher. Pinterest has linked itself to other social media giants like Twitter and Facebook thus marketing themselves to a greater audience. There are presently 9 million Facebook users linked to Pinterest whose pins and boards can be seen by their friends on their wall.

Okay let’s get down to the meat and bones of this blog. Below you’ll find the top 5 ways to grow your business using Pinterest as noted by entrepreneuress Melanie Duncan in a recent Webinar.

1. Embed Links to your Website or blog in the caption section of your pin. This will allow your potential client to obtain more information, or see the product that they were interested in when they clicked. Adding the link within your caption is almost like a call to action. I can’t tell you how many times I have found an item on Pinterest that I loved, only to realize that I had no way of finding where to purchase it because of the lack of a connecting link. The easier you make it for your audience to find and purchase a product or service, the better your chance of converting that user into a paying customer.

2. Add the “Pin-it” button to your website or blog. With one click, a user can add an image or video from your Website or blog onto their own personal board. Remember that over 80% of pins are repinned, making Pinterest an easy way for any of your products or services to go viral.

3. As you know, Youtube is one of the leading Websites for content to go viral. Not only can you pin images to Pinterest, but you can also pin videos. One of the most popular video genres that are uploaded to Pinterest is “do-it-yourself” tutorials that many pinners often post to their “DIY” or “craft” boards, which are one of the most popular Pinterest boards.

4.Use strategic wording in your photo captions. A lot of people use hash tags as a way to classify their pin and make it searchable within the Pinterest platform, and on search sites like Google and Yahoo. It is also a great idea to include keywords and SEO backlinks to increase the traffic to your Website/blog. Remember that when people are searching specific topics in the Pinterest “search” bar, the only way that Pinterest will be able to find their requested search term is through captions, as they obviously can’t read an image. Be specific as to what your image is within the caption. If you have a bouquet of peonies, use “peony,” “peonies,” “flower” and/or “bouquet.”

This user captioned this shirt as simply, "." Nobody is going to type that in to search for this shirt. Try, "Gold Sequined Top."

5. Make sure to strategically arrange your photos/images to be visually pleasing. Pinterest is all about visual aesthetics so if you have the money, hire a photographer or a designer to make your image pop. Tall/long images have also proven to receive more “likes” and “repins” so when possible, stack related images onto one another to create a bigger buzz for your pin. Infographics and step-by-step do it yourself instructions are very popular. As Melanie said in her Webinar, “take your information, and make it visual.”

This DIY pin received more than 700 "likes" and 4,000+ repins!

Happy pinning everyone : )

America Looks to Social Media on the First Anniversary of the Joplin Tornado

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Today marks the first anniversary of the Joplin, MO tornado which took the lives of 161 people and left much of the city destroyed. The tornado that swept across Joplin on May 22, 2011 cut a path spanning six miles long and a half mile wide.

President Obama Makes Commencement Speech for 2012 Joplin High School Graduates

In the aftermath of the storm, they city’s phone lines and means of transportation were widely interrupted if not altogether unavailable, leaving the people of Joplin without their major means of communication.

Facebook groups emerged almost immediately after the storm hit and were used for storm information, pictures, support, rescue, and for the search of missing loved ones. Groups like “Joplin, MO Tornado Survivors (11,033 “likes”), Joplin, MO Tornado Recovery (173,647 “likes”), and Joplin, MO – Missing Persons and Survivors Page (7,695 “likes”) gained thousands of followers in a matter of minutes all hoping to locate missing lovers, or to inform others of their safety.

On Twitter alone, the word “Joplin” was mentioned 65,459 people on May 22, 2011. Not only were people with ties to Joplin sending their prayers and best wishes to the town, but other people from other states and countries entirely were eager to reach out and offer their services or donations.

After a year of recovery and time to rebuild, Social Media is still buzzing with news, photos and support for the rallying city of Joplin. Today, the term “Joplin” was trending on Twitter racking in 25,644 mentions and counting. People are using the hash tag #JoplinStrong to highlight the strength and determination that Joplin and its residents portrayed in the wake of such a devastating event.

Support for the regrowth and rebuilding of Joplin is still needed. More information about volunteering and donating can be found here.