There’s little question that for many companies, Twitter is good for business.  With more than 300 million user accounts and about 13% of online adults in the U.S. using Twitter there is increasing potential for companies to build relationships with customers, increase brand awareness and drive revenue.  Twitter has become a hotspot for social media-savvy brands, and the best-of-the-best use creativity and a customer-centric focus to engage their audiences and cultivate true brand ambassadors.  But for a brand to truly succeed on Twitter, they must look beyond the number of followers and retweets, and instead focus on the level of engagement they have with the stakeholders who can – and do – impact their bottom line.  Take a look at ten brands that are doing it right.

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With its highly engaging environment and 800 million-plus user base, Facebook represents unlimited opportunity for companies looking to establish brand presence and develop long-standing relationships with customers and fans.  Many public relations and marketing professionals have found success in building communities around their brands (and their clients’ brands) and adapted their communication strategies to be more “Facebook-friendly.”  In this week’s Pulse, see if you can glean some tips from these world PR agency leaders who also lead in connecting, contributing and communicating online. We think you’ll find plenty to learn from here, and even more to “like.”

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Marketing and PR professionals continue – in droves – to realize the business value of social media within an organization.  They know it can foster collaboration among internal teams, enable real-time customer service, and create communities of fans and advocates who can help to shape a company’s products, services and brands.  Getting the C-suite to open the company doors to social media, however, can be tricky.  Management often cites concerns over privacy, security, brand erosion, and employee training, and they remain unwilling to invest in or allocate the proper resources (both human and financial) to allow social media to contribute to the company’s success and bottom line. 

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#smmeasure Twitter chat recap

Although our weekly Twitter chats (#smmeasure) have been going strong for nearly a year, we took a brief hiatus from posting recaps, but we’re bringing them back! Moving forward, we will hand-pick the chats that provide the most significant insights and comments and share them with you on the Marketwire blog.

In one of our recent chats, we based our questions off a HubSpot webinar that brought some of the most burning social media measurement questions to light. (more…)

Earlier this year, a group of 60 senior-level investor relations officers (IROs) gathered at IR magazine’s invitation-only West Coast Think Tank in Palo Alto, Calif. to discuss pressing issues and trends affecting their profession. Hot topics included equity research challenges, say-on-pay, trends and pitfalls in disclosure, and working with various stakeholder groups.

The first issue in the discussion on disclosure was “The State of Social Media and IR.” Panelist Darin Wolter, Marketwire’s EVP, global sales, asked a question of the audience: “How many of you represent companies that have a social media policy”? Only a very small number of attendees raised their hands. (more…)

I recently had the pleasure of being a panelist at two National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) events centered around social media and investor relations, including a Seattle Chapter program on Disclosure and Best Practices and a Rocky Mountain Chapter program on Measuring, Monitoring and Evaluating Social Media. Both spoke to the increasing role that social media is playing in investor relations and indicated that it is a top-of-mind subject among investor relations officers (IROs). For instance, in a recent survey of NIRI Silicon Valley members, when asked which topics they would like an SEC attorney to address at a future event, nearly 50% said they wanted to know more about the intersection of social media and RegFD. (more…)

PR News recently hosted the PR Measurement Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, and welcomed more than 250 PR, marketing and communication professionals for a day of strategizing, learning, and networking.  With speakers such as Katie Paine (@kdpaine) and Tim Marklein (@tmarklein), the attendees were in for a treat and a vast wealth of knowledge on exactly what it means to have “influence.” (more…)

Most people these days know that websites and content should be optimized for search engine rankability, but what about your social media? Can social media be optimized to better help you reach your audience? Of course it can. (more…)

As the #smmeasure Twitter chat continues to grow as a community, I am grateful for those social media enthusiasts who participate and help spread the word. 

Last week’s #smmeasure chat was on identifying and quantifying your influencers online, a highly debatable measurement topic.  However, for this week we decided to focus our chat on employee use of social media.   Thanks to @sabrina_scott for asking a question that so many people wanted to know about. (more…)

Earlier this month, Econsultancy’s Vice President, North America Rebecca Lieb and Sally Falkow, president and social media strategist at Expansion Plus, presented “Engagement: The Key to Success in 2010,” a webinar that highlighted case studies and other research to show how engagement in social media and other online channels is tied to financial success. Appropriately, this second installment of our Ask the Expert interview series features Rebecca and Sally as they answer Nick’s questions  on social media engagement. (more…)

Note:  This post is courtesy of our guest contributor Sally Falkow, Social Media Strategist at Expansion Plus.

There were many sessions at the recent PRSA conference in San Diego that focused on the need for companies to get involved in social media. Discussions involved the need to move beyond the testing and experimenting phase and put together a social media strategy, the practice of new media relations and how to find the right influencers, the need to treat social media as an ongoing commitment instead of a campaign, and why measurement is so important.

I led a discussion (sponsored by Marketwire) and we took a somewhat different approach. (more…)