“Our company is new to digital marketing, and we’re not sure what to do or how we’ll know if we’re doing well at it.  What should we be doing?  How will I know if any of it is really working?”

I hear this a lot, especially from small businesses. The best thing I can tell them, is to follow these four steps: Plan, Do, Measure… Repeat.

Plan

First, your company needs to understand who its customers are and what problem it is solving for them.  This is important especially with digital marketing activities because the content you create needs to match the words of the problem that people are looking to solve.  Don’t just think about what you sell (fancy widgets) and shout about that (“Get your fancy widgets here!”), but think about why people will be buying them (our fancy widgets help people do XYZ).  For example, people might search for terms such as ‘relaxing romantic weekend getaway’ rather than ‘ABC Bed and Breakfast’.

Do

Once you know what problem you are solving for people, spread this message across all your digital channels.  Blog about how you are an inn offering relaxing romantic weekend getaways.  Tweet it. Mention it on Facebook.  Put the terms ‘relaxing’, ‘romantic’, ‘weekend’, and ‘getaway’ into the keywords on your website, blog tags, and Google Ads (if you use them).  Explore and use all avenues that suit your brand and resources.

Measure

Now for the fun part (at least for us data-gathering types!):  Check your Heardable Report to see how much your efforts have driven traffic to your site, and increased your sales compared to before you started.  You might find that some activities have been more successful than others.  Maybe your target customers have responded well to particular social media content or keywords.  Maybe more people on a new social media platform are finding you.  Use the data to measure not just how much engagement has grown, but how fast too.  You will see in the report which activities have worked where.

Repeat!

Use your Heardable Report results to create a plan of what you want to do next.  Increase the use of channels that are working.  Change what you tried with avenues that didn’t.  Launch a campaign of activity on a network that looks like it’s working for your competitor. 

Keep up this pattern regularly (some companies will want to check their stats daily; others, weekly), and you will soon likely find that more customers are finding you, and your sales are growing. 

See your latest Heardable Report at:  www.heardable.com

This question may seem premature, or even absurd. Facebook, die?  Could it?  But an interesting fact is that teenagers and college kids that originally made the platform popular are now migrating to lesser-known social media networks and apps to communicate with each other.  You’ll find them using keek, Instagram,tumblr, snapchat.  Why?  A few possible reasons:

1. Facebook used to be their stomping ground, free from adults, but now their parents and even grandparents are there, so they can’t share as freely with each other as they used to without adults seeing everything.
2. They’ve figured out that Facebook is public and permanent, and every photo and post of themselves that goes up, stays there forever. This is bad for job prospects, and college applications.
3. Facebook has become very commercial compared to its early days.  It’s now overrun with advertisers and marketers, clogging up people’s new feeds.
4. Facebook has changed its layout so much, it’s hard to find things that you post, and it seems to be unsearchable.
5. A teen’s Facebook account may now have Friends (boy/girlfriends) they no longer like,games they no longer play, and Liked pages they just don’t care about anymore.  Starting fresh somewhere else can leave all of that behind.

So as a Marketer,what should you do? 

The good news is that there are still millions of people using Facebook every day,including teens, and despite its popularity slowing in that group, it is still the most-used social media network by them, along with YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.  But if you’re looking to keep a step ahead of your competitors, and be where the market is growing, and to get in early enough while it’s still cool, look at how your brand can use the up-and-coming networks and apps.  Here is a short list of cool new digital places that are currently growing in use:

Snapchat:  Take a picture, send it to your friends.  Have it disappear after a short while.  Relax that no one’s going to use it against you in the morning.

Tumblr:  Take a picture.  Make a picture.  Share it with your friends and family more anonymously than on Facebook. 

Keek:  Video sharing platform, as easy as Twitter.

Instagram:  Popular photo-sharing software, known for its photo editing effects abilities. Photos can be easily shared on several platforms.

Pheed: A new social media platform.  Text, video,audio, broadcast.  And the ability to charge for it.

Check these out and others (Vine, Whisper, Tinder) to see if using them would match your marketing strategy.  It’s always better to be ahead of the trends than scrambling to keep up. 

To see your own brand’s up-to-the-minute social media stats, go to www.heardable.com. 

What's somewhat surprising is the few number of branded web properties overall that are utilizing live chat as a customer support or sales enhancement tool, given it's positive business ROI and low implementation costs. 

Only a few companies have employed live chat on their web properties. For example, LivePerson, the top live chat vendor in the world, is being used on only 1% of all websites. 

This is a shame because live chat can help boost a brand's:

1. Customer acquisition rates
2. Customer satisfaction ratings
3. Trustworthiness and overall brand image

Live chat can helps transform an ordinary website into one that is more actionable for the user. An actionable website is one that makes it easier for visitors to respond, communicate, and transact.

A lot has been written about the importance of providing your website visitors with the best possible customer experience. The better the experience, the mantra goes, the more satisfied your visitors will be. And happy visitors behave differently. Visitor delight can translate into increased sales, more frequent and more positive word of mouth, higher ratings and reviews, as well as greater brand loyalty.

Your Tube is in the #2 slot with 3,099,973 followers and 3,394,044 Plus Ones, with FC Barcelona Barcelona in 3rd, Conan O'Brien in 4th and Hello Kitty in 5th.

Click here to see the live, real-time list of the Top 100 brands on Google+.

We've taken on one of the most vexing problems faced by marketing teams - the monthly progress report - and not only have we reduced the time needed to create this behemoth, we've increased the amount of competitive data.

We're also taking our first steps towards allowing custom competitor lists, rather than using NAICS categories to define the competitors, as we have in the past.  Now, when you create your report, it's entirely up to you as to what brands you wish to include - we'll still include the NAICS/SIC ranking in your report, but the more important ranking - how you stack up against your nominated competitors - now drives all table rankings.  

Best of all - our new reports can be created right from our new home page.

One final word - the entire report is now being driven by our v3.0 API.  Which means we can white-label everything Heardable, and produce beautiful custom reports under your brand - or your agency's brand.

Enjoy!  And please give us feedback during the launch phase.

Save 20% Off Any Heardable Report for the Month of October 2012

Heardable's brand health benchmark reports are utilized by hundreds of busy marketing executives, strategy planners and social analytic professionals to better understand the relative performance of brands in all industries.

Now you can save 20% off any Heardable report by utilizing this special discount code at checkout:

145HH7

20% means you save $99 on any report you buy. Not a bad deal, eh?

To redeem this limited time offer, go to the Heardable Store and select from our full list of reports, including:

The Top 25 Mortgage Lenders in America

The World's 10 Best Hotel Chains

The Top Auto Brands In America

The Top Insurance Carriers vs. Insurance Aggregators

The Top 25 Restaurant Chains in America

The Top 50 Leading Brands In Venture Capital

The Top 10 Leading Discount Brokerage Brands Online

The Top 15 Online Store Brands for Pet Supplies

Feel free to share this offer with your friends and colleagues.

Best,

The Marketing Team @ Heardable.com

We're not sure if Stuart got his facts twisted around or if he obtained his questionable statistics from Interbrand...but there are, in fact, two corporate brands that have more Facebook likes than Coca-Cola:

1. Facebook with 72,646,298 likes

2. YouTube with 62,957,369 likes

And there are five celebrity brands with more Facebook likes than Coca-Cola:

3. Eminem - 61,184,449

4. Rihanna - 60,427,146

5. The Simpsons - 54,825,238

6. Shakira - 54,714,348

7. Lady Gaga - 53,305,473

Coca-Cola comes in 8th place. 

Article source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/list-global-brands-keeps-coke-102603087.html

Facebook stats courtesy of Heardable: http://tinyurl.com/aswprsh

1. to help leaders understand the value that 'brand data' brings to enterprise decision-making
2.  to help these same leaders understand the levers through which online brand value is created in order to help identify opportunities to grow the value of their brands going forward
3.  to help showcase how contexual analytics can reveal actionable business insights

For example, the Heardable platform shows that Quicken Loans has 25% more Facebook likes than Nationwide Home Loans with 52,058 likes for Quicken Loans and 38,857 likes for Nationwide. But Quicken Loans has 317% fewer daily mentions than Nationwide -- why is that?

The Heardable platform reveals that Quicken Loans has strong brand equity but weaker brand advocacy than Nationwide, which is somewhat surprising.

Comparing a single data point (likes) reveals that Quicken Loans is doing 'better' on Facebook. But by adding a second data point (# of people talking about this brand), information is put into context to reveal an entirely new dimension -- buzz. In this instance, Nationwide has a more passionate fan base -- more people are talking about their brand online than Quicken Loans.

Is this a temporary blip in the data or an emerging trend? If a trend, what are the key drivers? Is this trajectory sustainable? For this particular industry, daily chatter about a brand may be a critical metric to monitor.

"The core challenge facing brand marketers: how do I contextualize all the data that's available online and make it actionable?," says Jon Samsel, co-founder of Heardable.

Successful brands utilize real-time data and cutting- edge analytics to glean business intelligence to help them make better informed business decisions -- faster and cheaper than their competitors.

Twitter shout outs for Heardable report, "The Top 25 Mortgage Lenders in America," include: 

@FremontBank @UnionBank @GreenlightLoans @asksuntrust @suntrust @HomeLoanInvBank @EverBank @EverBankHelp @EverBankJobs @chasesupport @CitizensBank @PNCBank_Help @PNCNews @cashcallinc @amerisave @citi @askciti @Nationwide @AskNationwide @Ask_WellsFargo @WellsFargo @WellsFargo_Jobs @statefarm @pennymacnews @usbank @askusbank @USBankConnect @hsbc_uk_press @CapitalOne @AskCapitalOne @Discover @BofA_Help @BofA_News @BofA_Careers @BofA_Community @BofA_Tips @quickenloans @QLnews.

Quicken Loans Earns The Title Of Top Mortgage Brand Online With 99% Higher Valuation According to Heardable

Quicken Loans dominates the home loans sector with a #1 ranking, followed by Bank of America Home Loans at #2, Discover Home Loans at #3, Capital One Home Loans at #4 and HSBC Mortgages at #5. 

September 24, 2012 - Today Heardable, Inc., (http://heardable.com), the standard for measuring online brand performance, answers the question: Does building a better digital experience result in a better brand?

Heardable examined 25 brands for our latest online brand health benchmark report, "The Top 25 Mortgage Lenders in America." Quicken Loans's brand health score of 688 out of 1,000 possible points beat its nearest competitor, Bank of America, by 128 points, or 18.60%, and surpassed third place Discover Home Loans by 135 points, or 19.62%. The gap between Quicken Loans and lowest-ranked Fremont Bank Mortgages was 538 points, or 78.20%.

Quicken's brand health score of 688 out of 1,000 possible points was a staggering 99% higher than the average combined score of the 24 other mortgage lenders evaluated in the report.

So how did Quicken Loans rise to the position of category leader? Three areas of competence caught our attention: 

1) website optimization (tech, mobile, user experience)

2) breadth of social media participation

3) search engine best practices & optimization

"Quicken Loans completely dominates the online mortgage sector," said John Sharp, co-founder of Heardable. "Their smart use of technology has fundamentally changed consumer expectations for online lender engagement. Home loan competitors take heed."

"Technology has become so critically important to our business," said Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson in a recent company blog post. "I think it should become more important to the industry. But it’s not just technology alone – it’s technology and process. What we’ve been able to do is take our technology, which has been built internally, and leverage it tremendously in how we handle the mortgage transaction from end-to-end."

The Top 25 Mortgage Lender Brands Online

1. Quicken Loans

2. Bank Of America Home Loans

3. Discover Home Loans

4. Capital One Home Loans

5. HSBC Mortgages

6. U.S. Bank Home Mortgage

7. PennyMac

8. State Farm Bank

9. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

10. Nationwide Bank Mortgage

11. CitiMortgage

12. AmeriSave

13. CashCall Mortgage

14. PNC Mortgage

15. Citizens Bank Mortgages

16. GMAC Mortgage

17. Chase Mortgage

18. EverBank Mortgages

19. Home Loan Investment Bank

20. SunTrust Mortgage

21. Greenlight Financial

22. Union Bank Home Loans

23. Crestline Funding

24. Provident Funding

25. Fremont Bank Mortgages

The full 267 page research report is available at:

http://heardable-reports.myshopify.com/products/the-top-25-mortgage-lenders-in-america

To learn more about the report, Heardable's methodology or get insights into other brands, contact marketing(at)heardable(dot)com or call 1-888-520-0034.

About Heardable

Heardable is the world's first and only real-time contextual brand analytics platform that measures the online health of brands across hundreds of business categories. With its Growth and Accelerator platform-as-a-service offerings, Heardable helps organizations make smarter, faster business decisions to impact tomorrow's quarterly results. With over 15 million brands profiled and 800 unique online variables capture per brand at various points in time, Heardable's Magic Firehose™ API can be utilized by any business looking for ways to optimize their online performance, boost brand awareness and increase revenue. Heardable, Inc. is a privately held company based in Southern California with an office in Singapore.

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