Matt Owen

Matt Owen is Head of Social Media at Econsultancy. He looks after Econsultancy’s global social media strategy and architecture, where he has led community engagement and growth since 2010.

Matt has a background in music, film and television in addition to marketing, and was instrumental in building the UK's largest entertainment blog network before moving into dedicated social management and strategy for one of the world's largest business schools before joining Econsultancy. He has a particular interest in social measurement and organizational integration.

In addition, he works with a community of 200,000+ digital marketers daily across a variety of social channels and has written best practice guides for popular social platforms. He contributes regularly to the Econsultancy blog, industry titles and makes regular appearances at events and conferences.

Donald Trump, Twitter spam and affiliate marketing

Trump-trump-trump

If you deal in online marketing or the media in general, then you'll probably be familiar with The Trump Network, owned by business icon (and face of the US 'Apprentice' show) Donald Trump.

The Trump Network is currently making a foray into affiliate marketing, pop along to the campaign's homepage and you'll see a short video from Mr.Trump, explaining how his affiliate program can benefit anyone financially, up to and including multi-millionaires like himself.

The network itself wasn't what initially caught my eye however. Instead, what piqued my curiosity was the way in which the network is being promoted across the Twittersphere.

While there's no reason to assume that Trump or his company are directly behind it, the Trump Network does have a number of seemingly automated feeds out there promoting the business, a practice which indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium.

by Matt Owen 10 September 2010 18:10pm 11 comments

Ten great web apps for marketers

There comes a point in every businesses' life when those reams of hand written notes, whiteboards and password locked laptops won't cut it anymore and you find yourself needing to automate, share and communicate more quickly and easily.

Enterprise level collaborative and automation software costs can cost thousands, but if you're a smaller company or freelancer then there's still a huge array of free and low-cost online alternatives.

Let's take a quick look at ten useful web apps to get you started:

by Matt Owen 07 September 2010 10:37am 4 comments

The golden rules of community management

One of the key benefits of social media is the ability to create dynamic, long lasting relationships with customers. Creating a useful community can really add value to a brand or product and greatly increase return business.

If you have a community that’s both inviting and interesting to a customer then you’ll develop a stronger bond with them and have the opportunity to reduce sales cycles.

However, in order to benefit from this you’ll need to implement some solid management strategy.

The internet is littered with empty forums and half-formed Ning groups, so here are a few universal rules that will help you grow a successful, useful online community whether it’s for a blog, forum or dedicated network:

by Matt Owen 10 September 2010 09:30am 6 comments

Why social media needs to learn the marketing basics

Given that it pays my wages, I’m not supposed to let you know that social media isn’t the be-all-and-end-all for marketers everywhere, but try as I might I still can’t quite come up with enough reasons to ditch your other streams and hand your marketing keys over to Zuckerberg just yet.

While it can’t be all things to all people, there’s no denying that social media is still experiencing impressive growth and has great potential for innovation and engagement. Yet traditional media is still huge and it’s concerning that some of the hype surrounding social media could eventually be doing more harm than good for businesses.

One of the major problems is a lack of understanding.

by Matt Owen 06 September 2010 13:20pm 12 comments

Ten ways to really annoy your customers (and how to avoid them)

angry-customer Social media is all about building long-term relationships with individual customers so they become regular, active users of your site, service or product.

Building a relationship to the point where a customer trusts and values your opinion is hard. After all, deep down they know you want to sell them something. Destroying that bond on the other hand is child’s play.

Let’s look at the most common ways companies break the bonds of trust and turn customers off, and see if we can work out how to fix the mistakes....

by Matt Owen 03 September 2010 09:01am 2 comments

Engagement: why social media numbers don't matter

A large chunk of any online marketer's time is spent on engagement. Engaging bloggers and sites to chat about your content, to check out your products and if you prove valuable enough, sign up for a glittering platinum subscription.

If we receive a conversion, we can be pretty sure that our new member is actively engaged with the site right? You want to engage visitors, have them convert, or at least stick around on a semi-regular basis. It’s all about traffic numbers.

One of the largest problems online however, is that we still don’t have a cut and dried method for measuring engagement.

by Matt Owen 26 August 2010 13:12pm 12 comments

Six key tactics for a successful viral video

If you can think of a relevant way to utilise video as part of your marketing then there's every reason you should.

Research shows that audiences are extremely comfortable with the medium (YouTube alone makes up almost a quarter of Google search queries), it's cheap to distribute, needn't be expensive to produce and ranks highly in the SEO stakes.

If you run things properly, then video can drive a huge volume of traffic to your site.

Here are a few key practices to get you started...

by Matt Owen 25 August 2010 10:50am 3 comments

Justin Bieber takes Twitter hack personally

Justin-Bieber As any seasoned Tweeter knows, success it isn't about how many followers you have, it's about reach.

Recent figures may put Lady Gaga at the top of the tweeting pile, but teen-pop bubblegum sensation Justin Bieber may well have the edge when it comes to actual influence.

Not to mention a mischievous streak that could cost one tech savvy super fan dearly.

by Matt Owen 24 August 2010 15:31pm 2 comments

Start Me Up! A profile of Copify

copify This week on Start Me Up we speak to Martin Harrison, CEO of Copify.

Whatever kind of marketing you are involved in, there's almost always a need for quality, relevant copy. Copify is attempting to take the hard work out of sourcing freelance copy at short notice.

by Matt Owen 13 August 2010 12:07pm 2 comments

Stumbleupon figures promote integration, not in-your-face

stumbleupon-logo As social media adoption continues to grow, many marketers find themselves struggling to track down and engage the right audience, which could explain why sharing site Stumbleupon has seen such rapid growth in its advertising platform since launching in March.