Video: Social Media in Plain English. The ice cream story :)))

IMHO this video is awsome and funny!

Good for presentations as entertaining element with deep sense.

Social Media Quotations

"I still hear people say, 'That social-media thing, that's not really going to pan out.' We will learn enormously whether [social-media samples are] representative or not."

Joan Lewis, global consumer and market knowledge officer of Procter & Gamble Co.

2011

Source: Will Social Media Replace Surveys as a Research Tool?

Social Media As Surveys' Substitute Or As New Market Research Tool?

Advertising Age has published the article named "Will Social Media Replace Surveys as a Research Tool?" recently. This peice of paper has provoke an active discussion of research

professionals at LinkedIn Market Research Bulletin Group vlaiming to understood if social media will substitute market research surveys.

If executive researchers from Procter & Gamble Co. see social media as quite important ource of research information, will this result in decline of surveys usage?

Of cource, SM era has changed market reserch world significantly and researches has take it into consideration.

In the opinion of Joan Lewis, global consumer and market knowledge officer of Procter & Gamble Co.:"We need to be methodology agnostic." And what if she is right?

You are welcome to read the full article at the Advertising Age.

Creating Effective Content For Your Best Promotion

SME has published the interesting case study of SMM practice of Indium Corporation which was incredibly successful and "customer contacts increased 600% in a single quarter".
Good example of great SMM results in practice!

Full article:

When Rick Short, director of marketing communications for Indium Corporation, began thinking about his social media strategy, he started with keyword research.

He identified 73 of the most important keywords his prospective customers would search for. Then he created 73 different blogs that focused on each keyword and assigned a dozen employees to write those blogs.

The results amazed him. Once the blogs took off, customer contacts increased 600% in a single quarter. And everyone who contacted a blog author, commented on a blog post or downloaded a white paper opted in to the company’s customer database.

Can you guess what Indium makes? Underwear for Victoria’s Secret? Chocolate bonbons? Power tools?

No, they make solder paste and other electronic assembly materials.

“Most people in the world can’t believe that people really care about this stuff,” Short told Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, authors of the book Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. “But my customers do… They love this stuff!”

Customers like circuit board manufacturers, solar panel manufacturers and the semiconductor industry.

So what can you learn from Indium? It doesn’t matter how obscure your product or service is. As long as you fill a need in the marketplace, you have customers. And you can use the same techniques that Indium used to attract prospective customers.

Namely, focus on content. Content is king, remember? Because we’re a species that communicates using words that are strung together in sentences, paragraphs and stories.

But we’re not talking about stringing together a bunch of words that will interrupt people who are trying to read the newspaper. We’re talking about stringing together a bunch of words that will attract people who are looking for that exact group of words.

Because that’s exactly what people are doing – searching for information. At the time they need the information. Not before, not after. And they’re searching the Internet.

“Your customers read blogs, they Google their purchases and they query followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook,” write Handley and Chapman. “This means that your key to igniting sales is to create online content and optimize it so that it appears on the first page of search results when your customers search for you or the products or services you sell.”

5 Rules for Creating Great Content

Here are some of the rules for creating content:

#1. Show, don’t just tell: Rather than focusing on why your product is great, show people. This can be accomplished through well-crafted case studies (also known as success stories). This type of content draws people in because everyone wants to achieve success. You can create case studies by focusing on a problem faced by a customer, how your product helped solve it, and what the results were.

#2. Stoke the campfire: Try creating content that gets a conversation started. Remember those childhood overnight camp outs? The best times are often had around the campfire. And content that is highly sharable will spark a flame that will care it to other places. This type of content could include new trends in your industry. You could highlight hot new research to your customers and prospects.

#3. Play to your strengths: Do you have a radio voice but can’t write at all? Perhaps you should be focusing on podcasts instead of white papers. Maybe you’re really good on camera? Focus on where your strengths are and produce content in your comfort zone.

#4. Speak human: The people you are targeting are not search engine spiders and are likely not as technically knowledgeable as your engineering team. Speak to people in a voice they understand. That means losing complicated jargon and instead adopting a conversational writing style.

#5. Reimagine: Have you got some great content that is sitting idle? How about repurposing it. For example a great presentation can be transcribed and turned into an ebook. A white paper can be the inspiration for multiple blog articles.

Your Complete Guide to Creating Content

If you’re still struggling with your content marketing campaign because you have no idea what to write about, you need this book. It’s the complete guide to creating content that will draw prospective customers directly to you.

Content that educates, establishes you as an expert and engages potential customers. “Engaging with people is how your company will survive and thrive in this newly social world,” write Handley and Chapman. “Online content is a powerful envoy for your business, with an ability to stir up interest, further engagement and invite connection.”

In the book you’ll learn:

• Eleven content rules, with an entire chapter devoted to most of them
• Nine ways to differentiate your content from everyone else’s
• Thirteen steps for feeding the content food chain
• Twenty-five tips if you don’t know what to say

You’ll even learn the 1-7-30-4-2-1 publishing schedule so you can produce content at a steady pace. Here’s a tip: You’ll know exactly what to publish daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually and annually.

After all, producing good content is like building a campfire – you have to keep the fire burning long enough to gather all your friends around it and tell stories.

Because that’s exactly what you want your prospective customers to do. You want them to gather around your content and share it with their friends.

If these techniques work for Kodak, Boeing and the U.S. Army, they’ll work for you. We guarantee it!

Social Media Examiner gives this book five stars.

About the Author, Ruth M. Shipley

Ruth M. Shipley is a freelance researcher and writer who loves to write a good story. Because that’s what most people love to read! See her Social Media Examiner page for more stories about social media books.

Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-create-content-that-engages-prospects-and-customers/#more-8746

Cool article for those dreaming about job proposal from Facebook.
you luck!:)

HOW TO: Land a Job at Facebook

by Ben Parr 21

Original article at: http://mashable.com/2011/04/03/facebook-jobs-2/


So you want to work at Facebook, one of the world’s hottest companies — what do you have to get your foot in the door and get noticed?

It’s not going to be easy — you have competition. Facebook received 250,000 job applications last year and is consistently rated as one of the best places to work. And with Facebook’s IPO around the corner, the competition for jobs is only going to heat up.

There are plenty of ways to get noticed and stand above the crowd, though. I chatted with Thomas Arnold, head of recruiting for the social network, on what the company looks for and what it takes to get a job at Facebook.

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What Jobs Are Available at Facebook?

Ever since Facebook announced it was moving to a bigger office and raised $2 billion in funding, it has been ramping up its hiring.

While there are many openings in legal, communications, HR, marketing, online operations, business development, IT, design, user experience and internationalization, the company is especially looking for technical talent, especially software engineers and product managers.

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The Facebook Interview Process

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I actually went through the entire Facebook interview process in 2008, before I joined Mashable as an associate editor. And while it’s definitely changed since I applied for a job on the company’s User Operations team, the basic format has remained the same.

The first step is almost always a recruiter phone-screening — Facebook will begin exploring your resume, asking you about your previous work, especially about what you’ve built and what leadership roles you’ve had in the past. Sometimes there’s a second screening, depending on the role.

If you pass the screening, the company will fly you out to its Silicon Valley headquarters for a series of on-site interviews with the hiring manager (your potential future boss) and a group of your peers — in other words, you will be interviewed by the members of the team you’re hoping to join. As Arnold explained to me, these interviews are designed to determine whether you have the skills for the job and whether you’re a cultural fit. The group then makes “a collective decision on whether you’re a great fit” for the position.

The process itself greatly varies from group to group — expect more technical skill challenges if you’re applying for an engineering job. Oh, and one extra piece of advice from me: Always put the user first in any scenario or interview question.

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Standing Apart From the Crowd

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With more than a quarter of a million applicants, how does Facebook whittle down the applicant pool?

“We’re primarily looking for builders,” Arnold says. He explains that Facebook has an entrepreneurial spirit and is a flat organization, and thus it’s looking for people who can thrive in that environment. Employees need to be self-starters who don’t need a lot of direction, so autonomy and self-motivation are highly valued.

Builders — especially engineers who like to build projects on their own and have cool, working products or apps they can show off — are sought after by the Facebook team. If someone builds a unique application and/or solves a problem in a way that hasn’t been done before, he’s going to get Facebook’s attention.

Strong applicants to Facebook also “just get the social space,” Arnold says. They not only understand the product, but can see the company’s vision. Even more important is that they’re active users of the product. This may seem like a no-brainer, but Arnold says his team finds a lot of applicants who haven’t used their Facebook accounts in weeks or even months. And that is a very clear sign to Facebook that the person won’t be a good fit.

Finally, it’s very helpful to know someone at Facebook who can vouch for you — this was true even when I interviewed with the social network three years ago. While I got special consideration due to my unique history with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, I still had a Facebook reference.

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Final Thoughts

While I ultimately failed to secure a job at Facebook, you don’t have to let that be the case for you. For those of you applying to non-technical roles, be sure you’re active users, understand the company culture and have a resume filled with leadership and “builder” activities. It’s more impressive if you launched an organization or product than if you simply took it over.

For technical talent, the best thing you can do is build something. If you build a really impressive iPhone application that gains some traction, you’re going to get noticed. If you are a major contributor of open source code to various projects, you’re going to get noticed.

In the end though, the big filter is cultural fit. There isn’t really much you can do to prepare for that — the Facebook team simply knows if you’re going to mesh well with them or if you’re not going to be able to keep up.

And as I said before, be sure to have an employee refer you. Otherwise, you’re going to have a really difficult time just getting the phone screening.

Have you gone through the interview process and landed a job at Facebook? Tell us in the comments below.

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Social Media Job Listings

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Every week we put out a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we post a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!