so·cial me·di·a - n. a big, scary term for "real life."
7 Things Your Social Media Coach Should Do for You December 3, 2009, 2:48 PM by ROB Posted in SOCIAL MEDIA, COACHING | 587 views Lessons that every consumer can relate to (and that every social media pro can learn from)
I'm a social media coach. There are a lot of people selling social media out there. Not many of us take the coaching approach yet, but it's coming. I've learned a lot over the past few years of developing my core services, so here are some of the lessons I've learned the hard way since then.
I write this not to toot my own horn, but to educate. If you're a social media pro, please take the time to learn from a few of these. If you're looking to hire a social media coach, trainer, or speaker, be sure to match your prospects with these criteria.
1.) Listen first.
If you're thinking about hiring a social media coach, you're probably doing so because you know they have the experience and knowledge to help you be successful. We could try to dazzle you with our brilliance, but you just want to tell us about you. A good coach will stop yapping and listen to your story.
2.) Ask the right questions.
Listening can only take us so far. We'll need some clarification before we can get to the steps that will help you be successful in social media. A good coach will ask the questions that will help get you to the real problem.
3.) Look beyond what you WANT and help you find what you NEED.
You'll tell us that you want to use Twitter. You'll tell us that you want to have 100,000 fans on your Facebook fan page. You'll tell us that you want to be able to market to your list of 1,500 email subscribers. But maybe that's not what you need. We'll work through your specific goals to find the strategy that will reach them. Trust us; we've been around the block a time or two.
4.) Balance tactics with strategy.
Sure, tools like Facebook and Twitter are important. Sure, we could teach you about every feature of every platform on the face of the planet (if we learned them, first). But those tools aren't everything. It's our job to give you the strategy behind the tools. Remember: we're having conversations with people, not shouting for a soap box.
5.) Serve as a resource for you, not as a crutch.
We're here for you whenever you hit a roadblock, but sometimes, the best way to learn your way around a tool is to explore. We can guide you through the important parts, but we'll want you to get comfortable with a tool on your own.
6.) Empower YOU to successfully manage your web presence as a part of your daily life.
Tying into number five, we're here to support you, not manage your accounts for you. For the average small business owner, no one should manage your social media accounts for you (more on that later). To make that process easier, we'll show you how to handle your social presence in a way that fits your schedule.
7.) Realize that it's YOUR business.
No matter what steps we suggest you take, at the end of the day, it's your business and you know best. If you get that gut feeling that something just isn't right, we'll take your word for it. We may explore another option, but a good social media coach won't push you into implementing a strategy that you aren't comfortable with.
What about you?
How could a social media coach best serve you? I'd like to better myself, so I've got a personal interest in your comments.
This post is sponsored by The Social Media Mastery course, a 10-week group coaching and training course designed to get you beyond the basics of social media and using social media like a pro for your business. Our next session starts on December 9 and seats are limited, so register now by visiting http://mysocialmastery.eventbrite.com.
Face it. If you're not addressing how and why you plan to use social tools every time you sit down at the keyboard, chances are you're going to derail your efforts. Here are a few ways to ensure you screw up.
1) Promote, promote, promote.
Don't we all love the blatant promoters? You know who you are—you show up to a networking event with the only goal of passing out as many business cards as you can. I've literally had people throw cards at me. Don't be that guy. Start a conversation and build a relationship.
2) Put all of your eggs in one basket.
Sure. Social tools are great. You know what? They're not going to support your business alone. Your social media efforts need to be augmented by your traditional advertising. Plan for it in your strategy.
3) Sell a crappy product.
Have a crappy product? That's your problem. Do you want people to talk about your brand? If they do, do you really think they're going to say good things? Have a look at Walmart's Facebook Fan Page. It's turned into an employee complaint forum. That could be you if you've got a crappy product or service.
4) Outsource your accounts to your kid/neighbor/dog/whatever.
There are social media "pros" out there that will just manage your accounts for you. "Great!" you shout. "I don't have time for this $#!% anyway!" Wrong. You know your brand best. What happens when a crisis arises? What happens when a customer asks a question that your "expert" doesn't know the answer to? If you fall into this crowd, for Pete's sake, get in touch. We'll teach you how to use social media tools yourself on a schedule you can manage.
5) Automate it.
Go ahead. Go to Google. Find a tool that will automate your Twitter account. Send all of your tweets to Facebook. Let me know how that works out for you.
It's called "SOCIAL Media," not "Anti-Social Media." You need to be there to participate in the community. Please do so.
6) Use it as though you were talking to your buddies at the bar vs. talking to your customers.
If you're using social media for business, be professional... Comments like these have little place in a professional setting. Be advised, folks, that everyone can see your @replies. If you feel the need to use "colorful" nouns, take it to private messages.
7) Jump in with no plan.
Sometimes a road trip with no map or no place to go can be fun, but not when we're talking about a brand's reputation. Develop a strategy. Follow it. Don't just wander aimlessly around the social landscape.
8) Don't measure.
"Hey, we've got 1,034,285 followers!" Great, how is it affecting sales? "Umm... what?" Enough said. Establish a baseline, set goals, track your results.
There are dozens of ways to trainwreck your brand with social media. Anyone have a real-life example to share?
The question is inevitable. "Rob, how often should I tweet?" Some pros answer that by saying "don't post a lot." Some say "post all the time." Some say "once a day." Some say "once an hour."
Let's cut the crap. None of us can tell you how often to tweet. You all have different personalities. You all have different audiences. Here's my take.
I used to tell people, "Four times a day." I don't quite know why, but I thought that was appropriate and I've since changed my mind.
Let's consider a couple things. The average Twitter user (last I heard) has 126 followers.
I took that image above from our @mysocialmastery account (under which we're following 118 people). That's the bottom of my timeline, folks. What that shows is that at 11:00 PM, your window of opportunity to even be seen by a similar audience to mine is "about an hour."
Now, that assumes that you're looking to use Twitter as a presence application. Most Twitter users I talk to say they don't post too often because they don't want to annoy people. Stop and think... Are you even being seen?
Break out of this "I'm annoying people" frame and recognize that if you have interesting, relevant content, people want to hear from you. Be bold and be seen. If you just stick to that one post a day, how do you expect to get noticed?
For the sake of anonymity, I can't tell you who he is, but I can tell you a little about the gentleman. As soon as I shook his hand, I had abandoned my sales pitch. The look in his eyes told me he didn't need the hard sell—he just needed to know how we could help one another. We took the time to connect—I learned about his background and the business degree he didn't bother using because of his passion for the culinary arts. I learned about his wife and the challenges they were having as business owners. I learned about how he started running the restaurant he loves so passionately and I learned how he's throwing marketing dollars out the window on a contract he's stuck with until March.
I left him two weeks ago with an overview of how I could help and the understanding I'd return this afternoon to follow up with him. Two weeks later, I met him at his venue, sat down, and heard his verdict.
Like I said, I lost a potential client today.
That didn't bother me. If he could have afforded my services, I'd be his go-to guy for social media. If I could afford to work with another pro-bono client, I'd leap on his business in a heartbeat. Instead of finding a client, I found a kindred spirit.
He told me, though, that he had a referral for me. He had mentioned me to his Internet marketing company—who must also remain unnamed—and his marketing guys told him to pass their contact info along to me. He gave me the CEO's card and I gave him a call this afternoon.
The conversation began pleasantly, but things quickly went awry. His tone became caustic, his position condescending. He threw numbers at me like, "150 clients" and "$2 million in yearly revenue." He told me that he would "take me seriously" when I sent him a brochure.
"If you're serious, I'd like to sit down with you and build a relationship," I said.
"I don't have time to sit down with people," he said. "You can send me a packet of information."
Really?
Most interestingly, I was told by this CEO of this Internet marketing firm that social media was too new a product—that they didn't have plans to hire a social media specialist for several years. He told me that his client—my prospect—didn't need social media work because "he already has a fan page." I was told that developing a social platform without a quality website was "putting the cart before the horse."
Ladies and gentlemen, I offer this not to admonish but to educate. Social media is not a fad, we just haven't yet learned to tap its full potential. For thousands of years, "marketing" has relied on relationships. For thousands of years, man has shared value with fellow man and for thousands of years, the core pillars of business relationships involved trust, value, and transparency.
Sixty years ago, this phenomenon called "advertising" found its golden age. Sure, the ancient Egyptians had presented announcements on scrolls of papyrus. Sure, the ancient Romans "hark, harked" about the town square. But once this pesky invention known as radio reached popularity, commercial exploitation became commonplace. Eat Corn Flakes! Drink Coca-Cola! Marketing messages swiftly and relentlessly took over our everyday lives. Billboards went up across the nation, television perpetuated sleazy car dealerships, and the Internet bolstered the pornography industry from an under-the-mattress affair to one of the most booming economies in the world.
Today, consumers are getting sick of it all. Those pay-per-click ads you see lining your search results in Google? They're designed to deceive and influence you. The ads you see on television? Marketing agencies invest millions of dollars in getting them to you, just so you can TiVo past them. The print newpaper industry is crumbling because ad sales are at an all-time low.
At the same time, there are some bloggers out there who are absolutely making a killing on the Web. Small business owners are reaching consumers that traditional ads couldn't even begin to touch. Brands like Best Buy and TGI Fridays are reaching out to consumers across the nation on a level more engaging and more personal than ever before possible and the technology that drives that engagement is 100% free of charge.
That technology is social media. Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. Brands are reaching their audiences and their audiences are reaching back. No longer are consumers settling for any old marketing message that gets spat at them—now consumers are telling the marketers what kind of content they want, where they're going to choose to listen, and what they're going to do with that message. Take heed, marketers. If you're not embracing social media, you're swiftly losing control.
So consider this, Mr. Successful Internet Marketing CEO Man, and mark my words. We are amidst a revolution—not to a new way of doing business, but back to an old way of doing business. The rules were changed once by the rise of your fancy search engine tactics and pay-per-click advertisements, but search engines can't index personality. Search results are no substitute for honest referrals from trusted friends. Learn it, live it, and love it before you even consider listing "social media" as a marketing service that you offer.
Friends (Romans, Countrymen), I beseech thee not to give up your traditional web marketing, but to embrace the power of relationships like our ancestors did once upon a time. Reach out to your customers and clients and tune into their needs, not what you think is important. Most importantly, support small business. I may have lost a potential client today, but I educated a friend.
Rob is a social media strategist and trainer. Learn more about how he can help you enhance your business relationships by visiting his website, http://www.connectiveinsights.com.
If there's one thing that throws people off about Twitter culture, it's the rampant spam. I don't mean spam as in the "V14GR4 4 L3$$" sense, but rather along the lines of "let's follow 13,000 users, hope 10% of them reciprocate, and unfollow the rest 1,000 at a time." Services that manage this
There's an inherent flaw in that scheme: it is totally and reprehensibly the opposite of "social" media. I say this on the following grounds:
1. It's not "social.
First, few—if any—of those who use these services and tactics to meet new users and actively engage in conversations. Instead, they're looking for cheap traffic for the shameless self-promotion of their blogs and services. Don't get me wrong—there are a few who will acknowledge that you exist, but for most, the best you'll get is an auto-DM saying "Thanks for following me! Now read my blog." Buying friends isn't in the spirit of social. Don't buy into the practice by following unless you're genuinely interested in what they have to say.
2. It hinders legitimate relationships
Second, for a hardcore analytics geek like myself, I like to know exactly how many real connections I have at any given time. That not only helps me grow from a personal standpoint by helping me keep in touch with the people who want to actively engage with me, but it also helps me ensure that the content I share is going to be read and passed along by relevant people. Similarly, I will only follow users that I know personally or that have contacted me to introduce themselves so that I can be that relevant reader! Most mass-followers care little about what you have to say (judging by the fact that they'll likely never see a tweet you post), which undermines the spirit of social.
3. It's killing a great platform.
Lastly, if you're a developer who runs a service to facilitate this behavior—especially if you charge for it—please take a moment to kick yourself firmly in the rear. You, mon ami, are the cause of a growing problem. I'd argue that ultimately, this behavior will lead to the decline of legitimate Twitter use over the next several months. The data that supports its growth supports the notion that spammers are flocking to the cheap traffic, not that users are benefitting from the service. Stop enabling and start sharing.
Block them. Like, now.
Have you been spam followed by a Twammer? Go visit TweetBlocker right now, find those who you don't know (and who aren't building your relationships) and block away.
That is all. Cheers!
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Weigh in using the comments below.
Learn how to Use Twitter like a rock star to kick off your next career
I've met a bunch of really awesome, talented people this week and I've started to notice a trend. Most of them introduced themselves as being "between jobs." These are smart people with a long history in their fields, yet they're currently looking for work thanks to a slow economy. Many of them are turning to social media tools such as Twitter to find work.
Meet my new friends
I'd like to introduce you to two of the folks that really stood out to me: Wes Elder and Mark Dodgett. Wes recently found himself looking for a new position after some cutbacks at the major computer networking firm at which he worked. He is an great operations guy who solves problems like a pro. Mark Doggett is a B2B sales professional in the telecommunications sector. A past AMA chapter president, he's one of the friendliest guys you'll meet and he's always eager to help. As you can tell by his Twitter profile, Mark isn't too deeply involved with social media yet, but we'll fix that.
What these two gentlemen have in common is a great social outlook, a "Pay it Forward" philosophy, and excellence in their fields. These two will find awesome new positions, I'm sure, but using social media can help them connect them faster.
When I took the leap as a solo professional in January, I was bringing in most of my new clients through Twitter (no, not LinkedIn or Facebook). My premise was this: if I'm positioning myself as a social media strategist and mentor, I'd damned well better walk the walk. There are dozens of articles about using Twitter for the job search, but here are some of my personal tips to help guys like Wes and Mark find an awesome position through social media.
Follow users who can help you in your search
This is a "duh" point. There are dozens of Twitter job search tools floating about the web. Check out this awesome Mashable post on the subject for a great list.
Locally, we've got @Triangle_Jobs. Which accounts do you follow? Weigh in in the comments.
Outside of that, though, look to power connectors in your industry or geographical area. Make a good impression and show that you're a shoo-in for a challenging position and you may just get a recommendation.
Are you a freelancer? Twitter is great for finding gigs in just about any industry. Graphic design, SEO, programming—you name it, it's there. Tech consultants are in high demand on Twitter as well.
Importantly, don't be needy. A participant in a networking social hour I attended the other night was quite literally begging myself and others for work. While we're happy to help connect you to people who may be able to place you, we're not super heroes. (Most of the time).
Search for users who may be looking to hire
Anyone who can use Google can search Twitter like a pro. You'll find your search infinitely more efficient, however, if you use some of the tools out there. Desktop-based tools like TweetDeck and web-based tools such as HootSuite let you set up and monitor columns for keyword searches you choose. This could include common job posting hashtags (again, see Mashable's list), mentions of specific positions you're looking for (e.g. "Software Engineer"), or specific language that may indicate that someone is looking to hire a new worker. To find social media gigs as I was getting started on my own, I set up a column for the words "looking" and "consultant" used in the same tweet. I chose these broad keywords because often, a potential client looking for an SEO consultant may really benefit from a killer social media campaign and not know it. Where would you look?
Once you've gotten your broad searches set up, it's time to narrow your keywords. "Looking for consultant," for instance, gives me a torrent of positions that are totally irrelevant to my expertise. To cut through the clutter, filters are a must. Check out this Web Worker Daily post on how to craft an excellent filter.
Promote yourself (but remember: don't be needy)
For a recruiter or other potential door-opener to find you, you need to let people know you're looking. Spruce up your profile and your bio to include that you're looking for a new position. Be civil, be respectful, and—most importantly—always represent yourself professionally. As social media geek Brian McDonald mentioned to me this morning, social media is no longer the "Wild Wild West" it once was. Today's social landscape is practical and professional and you'll find yourself left behind if you don't behave like you belong at the big kids' table.
One of the best ways I've found to promote yourself is by sharing your expertise and demonstrating your knowledge in your field. Not only does this establish you as a sort of thought leader in your industry, it makes you easier to find for recruiters who are looking for people just like you across social media. Don't believe talent managers are searching? Check out today's #ereexpo buzz.
Lastly, if you're serious about using the power of social media to help you land that dream job, ask other people to recommend you. It never hurts to have a team of honeybees that help promote you.
Found success in using social media to find your dream job? Find frustration? Let it out in the comments, friend.
Get Over Yourself September 4, 2009, 12:04 PM by ROB Posted in SOCIAL MEDIA, BRANDING, RELATIONSHIPS | 376 views Why Social Media for Business Can't be Strictly Business
I've been blogging (and tweeting, and talking) a lot about social media for business lately, partially thanks to the fact that I've been up to my eyeballs in work and riding the beta brainwaves. I came across Michelle @TriangleB2B's post entitled Are you that friend that only comes around when they want something? Like money? and it made me stop long enough to think, but I was too caught up in work to write a thoughtful comment.
Michelle, consider this my response!
Michelle's premise is that too often, it's easy to "forget" about your friends until you need something from them. I propose we name this phenomenon after one of the most despicable, loathsome souls in recent history. I refer to this as...
Bender's Law
Not a Futurama fan like myself? Here's a brief explanation.
We can wrap Bender's Law up with one line of Michelle's post: If you never come around except when you want something, your return will be dismal at best.
I agree (and just like the rest of us, I'm guilty of that once in a while). I'd like to offer this busines-oriented corollary to Bender's Law:
If you only talk about business, don't expect anyone to talk to you about anything else.
Think about it. "Like attracts like," or so they say. We all have to feed the family and pay the bills, but the way to do that is not to spew marketing messages all over people 24/7/365. It's to build relationships. Build trust with people who you know will never buy your products or services just to provide value for those people and help them meet their goals. One day, it may come back to you.
Wrapping it Up
I bring this to the table in part out of humility, as I've been trying to get traction in a new town for almost a month now. I've built relationships and I've asked for a lot, but I'm trying my best to let people know who I really am on top of my business personality.
Inject some personality into your conversations online—you never know who might be reading.
And if you fail to heed my advice, be warned of the consequences:
Note: this started out as a very heartfelt and serious post until I found Seth MacFarlane's 2006 speech at Harvard's graduation event, at which point I got all full of piss and vinegar and my sarcasm went rampant. Want to see things through my lens? Watch this entire four-part video, then read again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc-yl_8ywiU.
It's like mixing apples and oranges... But the results just might be delicious!
I was a marketing student in college—an experience that played a large part in my move away from marketing as a profession. As an undergrad, I ran simulations, perused dozens of case studies, and—by Jove—I got it. I was the kid that stirred up the hornets' nest with crazy ideas and blew strategy presentations out of the water.
At the same time, I was an active psychological illusionist. In other words, I used psychological principles to convey the illusion of mind reading, clairvoyance, what have you. I put together a couple of local TV series and performed at parties, events, and stage shows. A large part of my job mandated that I be a little manipulative (okay, very manipulative) and covert.
Put two and two together and you'll understand why I really loved the idea of guerrilla marketing.
Guerrilla what...?
Some of my readers may not know what guerrilla marketing is. If you do, skip down to the next subheading. Guerrilla marketing is using unconventional and covert tactics to get your audience's attention, build buzz, and stand out in a cluttered advertising age. It's a hell of a lot cheaper (and arguably exponentially more effective) than traditional one-to-many advertising strategies.
Guerrilla marketing can be hilariously cheeky and fun (as in the example above). I got a kick out of amusing myself with devising clever marketing strategies for campus groups. Then I got into social media...
Why guerrilla marketing and social media are irreconcilable
One of the unbreakable laws of social media is that you are 100% transparent. Every tweet, every blog post, every engagement with your customers has to reveal the inner soul of your business or organization. Social media is about building relationships with your customers, not spitting your message at them.
With guerrilla marketing, the idea is to play on human psychology and sneak in under the radar. Few guerrilla principles are about building relationships—it's still a one-to-many channel in which a marketer (or marketing team) devises a message to push to many consumers.
Some guerrilla tactics like astroturfing—in which advertisers fabricate a grassroots campaign—are utterly out of line with social media principles. While such tactics may have worked in a Web 1.0 world, today's social climate would (and often does) expose them without remorse.
Ergo, the guerrilla marketing and social media cannot be one and the same.
I recently found Damien Steiner Smith's blog, Guerrilla Social Media. I didn't quite get it when I first started reading his work, but I started warming up to the idea that social media and guerrilla tactics (while not in the purest sense) could coexist.
That was until I read his last post, "Social Media IS Guerrilla Marketing." Damien's premise is simple: social media builds trust and makes your consumers more receptive to accepting your products and services. On the whole, I agree.
Here's the part of the post that made my skin crawl:
"Overtly, you've made a friend. Covertly, 'you're in'!"
No. No, no, no! That goes against every principle of social media! To me, that seems to be instructing readers to build trusting relationships with consumers, then abuse that trust to push a marketing message to them. I can't support that thinking as ethical and will never advise any client, colleague, or friend of mine to abuse the trust of a consumer or social media follower.
How to integrate a guerrilla campaign with social media
While guerrilla tactics and social media can't be looked at as the same thing, surely there has to be a way they can live together. So how can we make it happen?
What I believe Damien is trying to convey through his blog is that the buzz marketing concepts that guerrilla marketing preaches can be harnessed and amplified through social media. I'm a proponent of using social media principles in the real world and I'm convinced that a business with a great product or great customer service in the real world will naturally succeed in social media with a strong social media strategy.
I'm not a marketer (for the reasons I've mentioned above), but I consult with my clients on marketing tactics through social media (hence the title "Social Media and Marketing Consultant"). If you're interested in guerrilla campaigns, I'll steer you in the right direction and send you to some awesome people in the field. When it comes to social media, however, remember the basics: be transparent, be engaging, and be awesome.
Social Media in the Meatspace August 3, 2009, 12:49 PM by ROB Posted in SOCIAL MEDIA, OFFLINE MARKETING, WORD OF MOUTH | 507 views Using social networking principles to market better, improve customer satisfaction, and build relationships in the real world
If you think about the principles of "social media," it boils down to an exciting new opportunity for human interaction—a limitless virtual forum for creating shared meaning and building relationships. Since social media emulates our day-to-day interactions with our friends, our colleagues, and our customers, why should it be looked at as an isolated effort? The tools we advocate are based in thousands of years of in-person communication. Therefore, social media not only should but must be used in an offline context as well. I submit that this idea is widely known and understood, but not practiced widely enough.
Look at the vast majority of social media "campaigns" running right now and you'll find scores of links to Facebook fan pages, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos, and social bookmarking sites. Wonderful—the marketers that designed these campaigns are covering many of their bases in the online areas of the conversation space. On very few of those campaigns, however, will you see significant, persuasive calls-to-action for propagating messages in offline interactions.
The average American spends around 67.5 minutes a week on Facebook alone, according to a July 2009 Nielsen study. In the grand scheme of things, that's really not a significant amount of time. Contrast that to the remaining fourteen hours of interaction each day and you'll quickly realize that online social media "campaigns" are missing out on over of their potential "conversation share."
The remedy: be sure to give your users a reason to talk about your brand offline, too. It's easy to add a "click to retweet" button to a blog post, but getting those readers to talk about you in the real world is a totally different story. While word-of-mouth advertising is nothing new, too few social media "experts" incorporate those strategies in their marketing plans.
Here are some essential ideas for real-world social media.
Build Word-of-Mouth Buzz into Your Social Media Strategy
What is the message you want consumers to share with their colleagues, friends, and family? More importantly, why are they going to share those messages? I discuss more products, news stories, and viral YouTube videos to my friends over dinner than I do on social networks. What steps are you taking to earn the privilege to be included in that discussion?
In short, give your social media followers content that they can share. In social media, drop the marketing message (unless, of course, the goal is to build buzz over a commercial spot). Fill your content with information your consumers care about. Add commentary on important issues, totally devoid of a marketing message. Build trust by engaging with those consumers, not just by talking at them. Create a genuine discussion with people and they will continue that discussion with their friends, online and off.
Understand that Offline Conversations are Nearly Impossible to Monitor
With web-based campaigns, you can track your traffic with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Free tools such as Google Analytics can track a host of visitor and referral data. Offline, however, tracking referral sources typically rely on self-reported data and can be prone to poor response rates and inaccuracies.
Further, with online social media, you can listen in on the conversations your customers are having and respond to them. In the real world, that would be considered "eavesdropping." This makes the results of your marketing efforts even less certain than typical social media campaigns.
Even so, Social Media in the Meatspace is Powerful Stuff
To many marketers, consistent, positive messages shared by consumers in the real world are the stuff dreams are made of. Direct, personal recommendations from individuals you know and trust are without a doubt exponentially more valuable than a marketing message that tells you that you should buy a product. Finding and engaging with these consumers may take more of an investment on your part, but your ROI will be far greater than most traditional marketing channels.
How is your business engaging customers in real life? What similarities and differences do you see between those customers you see face-to-face each day and those you merely interact with online? How can you justify not treating them in the same manner? Weigh in using the comments below!
Why Small Businesses Fail in Social Media (and How to Succeed) July 31, 2009, 12:00 PM by ROB Posted in SOCIAL MEDIA, SMALL BUSINESS, PLANNING, STRATEGY, TIME | 508 views Your enthusiasm for social tools just might be the very thing holding you back.
If you are a small business owner, take a moment to think about your social media practices. How many profiles do you have? Which services are those profiles on? How are your employees using social media in your organization? I'd like to know how you rank in the comments below!
The common misconception around social media tools is that a business can create a profile, fill it full of marketing material, and be successful. In some cases, this may be true, but those success stories are few and far between.
The reality is that social media engagement takes time. Between planning, execution, and monitoring your efforts, using the media can become a full-time job. Before you take the plunge, take the time to fully understand what you're getting yourself into. Here are five important questions to answer before you even log in to a social network:
1. Why am I using social media?
How will social media ultimately affect my bottom line? If you're just into social media as a pastime or a hobby, that is fine—don't expect a dramatic improvement in sales, revenue, or profits. If you're decidedly into social media for business, however, sit down and define clear objectives. Those objectives could be "to generate 10% of my leads through social media" or "to boost online sales by 8% in the next quarter." Whatever the objective, be sure to monitor the results of your efforts as you go and respond to changes in your social media communities.
2. What tools will I use?
Momma always said, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." There are scores of social media tools out there, but they're not necessarily suited to your business. Users of each social media tool have a very specific and unique culture. MySpace, for example, proves most beneficial for big brands and performers (musicians, bands, etc) because of its predominantly younger demographic. Facebook—once only for college students—is quickly becoming more popular with adults over the age of 35. LinkedIn is designed specifically with businesspeople in mind and Twitter is popular with early adopters, much like SMS was a decade ago.
3. How will I use those tools?
How will these tools support my traditional marketing efforts (and vice versa)? Social media is not a standalone "magic pill" solution. Like any other aspect of a marketing plan, your social media efforts will ideally support each other initiative in harmony. Television ads, for instance, can be shared on YouTube. A television ad during the Super Bowl may only be broadcast to millions of viewers once, but its reach has far more potential through online media. Similarly, a television or print ad can drive visitors to your social media profiles with an incentive and a strong call to action.
One of my favorite success stories involves [url=http://www.twitter.com/coffeegroundz]@coffeegroundz[/a], a local coffee shop whose owner recognized the potential of Twitter as a tool to drive sales. Asked if he could prepare a to-go order via Twitter, Coffee Groundz owner JR Cohen got the idea to use social media to gain exposure for his coffee shop tucked away in mid-town Houston. Within three months, the store had doubled their clientele and today, Coffee Groundz has over 7,000 followers on Twitter.
4. How will I measure (and respond to) success?
Your social media efforts are essentially useless if you don't track your results. Your monitoring strategy will vary depending on your goals, but there are some common tools to take advantage of.
SocialMention offers an awesome (and free) platform to track social media buzz. Searching for a term on the service allows you to monitor mentions of that term across blogs, comments, events, images, news, video, and more. Users can monitor conversations' strength, sentiment, passion and reach for the given search term and set up email and RSS alerts when the search is updated. In many ways, SocialMention is more feature-rich than paid services such as Trackur, though its update frequency is slower. Trackur lets you save searches on the web and updates your alerts every 12 hours for a personal account, six hours for a business account, and thirty minutes for an Enterprise account. For most small businesses, however, 24 hour updates are more than enough.
5. Am I ready commit to my social media cause?
The question of whether or not to pursue social media is typically a no-brainer. Once you've taken a long, hard look at how social media works, though, it's time to make the decision of whether or not to pursue social media yourself. If you're not ready to commit the time, energy, and resources required to maintain a consistent and persistent social media presence, you may want to consider a well-qualified social media agency or consultant to help.
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Drop a line to set up a free consultation—or just to chat!
Rob Laughter Social Media and Marketing Consultant
Alma Mater: Wake Forest University '09 Degree: B.A., Communications Relevant Course Work: Communication science, marketing, psychology and persuasion, sociology, entrepreneurship
Awards and Recognitions:
2009 Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award for Technology The Wake Forest Center for Entrepreneurship and the Entrepreneurship Society
