New Gmail Image Feature Makes Email Marketing More Social

and Gmail, Google has now taken yet another step toward integrating email and real-time social networking. And this topic should concern you, my fellow marketer. 

Email to Catch up With Social; Google to Catch up With Facebook 

In early 2012, it was announced that Gmail had 350 million active users. While this is an impressive number, Gmail still has a lot of catching up to do to reach Facebook’s 800 million users. In fact, not only is Gmail behind Facebook on overall user adoption, but it also seems to be behind in terms of engagement. A 2010 Nielsen study shows email as the third online channel on which Americans spend most of their time, ranking behind social networks/blogs and games.

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13 Ways to Create a Cringeworthy Social Media Presence

This week, a new free social media tool called Klouchebag hit the web. If you haven't played around with it already, it's a tool that tells you how ... uh ... annoying you are on Twitter. Yeah, we'll just go with "annoying" for the sake of this blog post. But it got me thinking: social media can be chock full of valuable content, but it's often buried among the mundane and useless social media updates, or hidden behind poorly constructed social media profiles. And this makes a marketer's job mighty hard.

So this post is going to outline all of the worst offenders we've seen in social media. If none of these apply to you, congratulations! Use these as entertainment over your lunch break. Otherwise, consider these cautionary tales to help protect your own social media strategy.

13 Ways to Make People Hate Your Social Media Presence1) Launching a Private Social Media Account

Social media is about talking with and meeting new people. It's right there in the name -- social media. So why on earth would you set up a social media account and then set it to, gulp, private? That's exactly what CVS did when they launched its CVS_Cares Twitter account. If you had tried to follow them around launch time, this is what you would have seen:

 

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Why You Need Social Media, Even if Your Customers Don't

Well, here's the thing: your customers probably are on social media. Can any B2B company make the case that its target audience isn't on LinkedIn? Are there B2C companies without potential customers on Facebook? I guess it's possible, but it certainly won't stay that way for long. 79% of US adults use social media (if you were tuning into our webinar with Facebook today, you would have heard that very stat)! And eMarketer predicts there will be 1.43 billion worldwide social media users in 2012. Wow.

But this blog post isn't an attempt to convince you that your future customers are using social media. It's an attempt to convince you that there are many other reasons why social media is a crucial component of a well-rounded inbound marketing strategy -- and they have nothing to do with "engaging" with your target audience.

So let's pretend that your customers aren't on social media, or that you work for someone who thinks they aren't and, as such, doesn't see the point in investing in a social media marketing program. We all know how hard it is to convince non-believers of the importance of social media, so this post will serve as your guide for having that conversation. Here's how you can make the case for social media marketing to your boss -- even if he or she doesn't believe your target audience is using social media!

1) Social Media Activity Impacts Your Organic Search Presence

If you're investing in content creation, it would be a shame not to get it any visibility in organic search. Social media plays a bigger role in the visibility of web pages in search engines every day. In fact, Google even started to incorporate Google

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10 Ways to Instantly Amplify the Social Proof of Your Marketing

An individual's purchasing decision can be influenced by a large number of factors. Are you considering how influential social proof can be in that mix? According to Google, 70% of Americans now say they look at product reviews before making a purchase. Furthermore, a CompUSA and iPerceptions study revealed that 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews.

While product reviews are only one type of social proof, those are some pretty persuasive statistics to consider. It demonstrates that people can heavily influenced by others' experiences, making a case for why social proof is such a powerful concept for businesses to leverage. 

Are you giving the social proof of your business the visibility it deserves? In this post, we'll lay out exactly what social proof is, discuss the various types, and explain the ways you can leverage it in your business' marketing efforts.

What Is Social Proof?

'Social proof,' also referred to as 'informational social influence,' is the concept that people will conform to the actions of others under the assumption that those actions are reflective of the correct behavior. In other words, it's the mentality that, if other people are doing it, and I trust those people, that's validation that I should also be doing it. This third-party validation can be a very powerful motivator for your site visitors' and prospects' actions.

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Social Media Outsourcing Increases 128% in Two Years [New Report]

Social Media Examiner's Michael Stelzner is releasing his 2012 State of the Social Media Marketing Industry report today after his 1:00 PM EST webinar with HubSpot's Content Strategist Kipp Bodnar, where the two will review all the juicy data. Part of Michael's research included asking social media marketers whether they're outsourcing any of their social media marketing tasks, and if so, what specifically they're outsourcing. Turns out, in 2010, only 14% of marketers outsourced social media marketing. Last year, that number doubled to 28%. And this year, the percentage rose yet again, with 32% of marketers outsourcing social media.

It's not exactly "news" that marketers are strapped for time, so when budget allows, it can be a huge relief to outsource activities to reputable agencies or contractors. But if you've spent any time on Twitter, you've probably seen more than your share of social media "experts," "gurus," and "ninjas." In other words, it's really easy for a marketer to get sucked in by contractors or agencies that might not be qualified to manage their social media presence.

So let's break down the activities social media marketers have decided to outsource, and examine the pros and cons for outsourcing the most popular activities that show up on the list. That way, if you do decide to outsource, you know what to look out for so you actually see ROI on your outsourced social media spend.

What Social Media Marketers are Outsourcing in 2012

So, what are social media marketers outsourcing? Let's take a look at the research from the report!

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