Filed under: Social Media
Two years from the birth of this blog, I’m about to commence a full social media campaign, one that I’m really excited about. Not just a Facebook page, not just a Twitter handle, but a strategy I hope will take this brand forward.
Am contemplating having a media and blogger outreach to build awareness of our Facebook and Twitter presence and this sure came in handy for inspiration from Mashable:
Posted: 05 Jul 2010 09:40 AM PDT
The Internet’s love affair with Facebook might hit a rough patch from time to time, but there’s no denying that it’s the social networking giant that keeps us connected to everyone and everything we like in one easy online platform.
So, to celebrate all things FB, we’ve rounded up a selection of Facebook-themed real-life products, from witty tees to cool stationery (because someone is still sending snail mail) that you can nab now to show your love for online social networking in the offline world.
1. Facebook Reminder Birthday Card
You probably shouldn’t send this to your significant other (unless they have a great sense of humor), but you can’t beat this witty birthday greeting card, especially for a fellow social networking enthusiast. This high quality card pokes fun at Facebook’s handy highlighting of forthcoming birthdays.
Cost: $3.50
2. Bonaroo Facebook/Movie T-Shirts
We love these tees that offer something different from the “you like this” message, which is so last year. Bonaroo has taken characters from popular movies and imagined their “likes.” The example above is from The Goonies, but over on the site you’ll find fun with Predator, Back to the Future, Anchorman and more.
Cost: £12.99 (approx $19.50)
3. Facebook Status Mug
No doubt we’ve all commented on our need for, or love of, caffeine in the Facebook status bar at one time or another, making this mug a great option for coffee-loving Facebookers.
Cost: From $13.95
4. Facebook Like and Dislike Stamps
Just genius, we love these Like and Dislike stamps that bring Facebook feelings into the real world. You can buy the stamps separately or as a set, with the guys behind the design stating: “The Like/Dislike set combines everything you need to silently judge everything that surrounds you with nothing more than a flick of your wrist.”
Cost: From £9.99 (approx $15)
5. Facebook Ruined My Life Watch
You have to rock a certain type of style to pull off this Facebook-blue, talking-point timepiece with the pithy message “Facebook ruined my life.” Strap it on as you bemoan the hours you’ve lost thanks to the addictive nature of social networking (Or maybe Facebook did actually ruin your life?). Put your sob stories in the comments box below.
Cost: $7.99
6. Facebook Wall Decal
Although we’re not convinced most people would want it decorating their living room walls, we suppose this decal could add some Facebook fun to your office. You can personalize the word shown above the “You like this” text, and share your preference for a company, brand, person or website (hint, hint) with everyone.
Cost: $13.99 for one word, but custom orders are also available
7. Personalized Facebook Stationery
We adore this stationery set with its clean, Facebook-esque design that comprises 14 personalized cards and envelopes. For special missives, you can go old school and actually send a note via snail mail, rather than write on someone’s wall, but still keep that Facebook look and feel.
Cost: $10
8. Book of Fame
You can personalize this blank hardback notebook with your — and any other Facebook friends who boast a witty turn of phrase — status updates, which are printed randomly on the bottom of the inside pages, making it unique to you.
Cost: $18
9. Facebook Mousepad
Promising a “precise and consistent glide,” this mousepad is just what you’d expect from the Meninos team — a witty take on a techie topic. Asking “what’s on your mousepad?” the Facebook wall icons are lovingly recreated for an FB-themed accessory any fan would be happy to have.
10. Anti-Farmville T-Shirt
Tell it like it is with this anti-Farmville tee.
Cost: $20.25 from MySoti
Thank you Mashable… for starting my career in social media and reminding me of it today…
Am due for a client review, and was asked to talk in detail about a social media campaign that we undertook and to elaborate on the results. Found this excellent article from iMedia Connection that’s helped me in putting together a qualitative analysis of what we achieved.
Published: September 09 2009
How to measure your social media campaign’s impact
By Daz Connell
Co-author Cheryl Dandrea is senior scientific editor for DAZMedia’s healthcare agency division.
Brands can benefit from advertising in the social media space. The approaches offer a means to engage consumers, enhance brand reputation and image, build positive brand attitudes, improve organic search rankings, and drive traffic to brand locations, both online and offline.
The steps in any advertising campaign will begin with setting campaign objectives and end with assessing the effectiveness of the strategies and tactics to determine the degree of success in accomplishing the stated objectives and to inform the next campaign. The challenge is to develop a set of measures to assess success and plan for future strategies and tactics.
The appropriate approaches to measurement will vary depending upon the campaign’s objectives and the social media strategies and tactics used. However, there are the basic steps any measurement program should include. Those are the steps this article will outline.
At this stage of development, social media advertising lacks the standard metrics that have served as a primary advantage for online advertising. Online advertising as a form of direct-response advertising has measurability built into its very existence. Advertisers can measure reach (the number of people exposed to the message) and frequency (the average number of times someone is exposed), and analyze site stickiness (the ability of a site to draw repeat visits and to keep people on a site) and the relative pull of creative presentations (a comparison of the ability for different creative executions to generate response). They can also monitor click-throughs (the number of people exposed who click on an online ad or link), sales conversions (the number of people who click through who then purchase product), and view-throughs (the number of people who are exposed and do not click through but later visit the brand’s website). These metrics are applicable to the use of display advertising in social spaces. If L’Oreal buys display ads on Facebook, all of these metrics are available to gauge effectiveness.
However, for the more innovative approaches available, metrics like number of unique visitors, page views, frequency of visits, average visit length, and click-through rates are either totally inappropriate or irrelevant, or simply fail to capture information about the objectives of a social media advertising campaign. Our tendency is to count — count impressions, visitors, friends, posts, players. There is still a place for numbers in the social media arena, but the numbers may be different from the ones marketers have traditionally used — and they may not be effective if not combined with more qualitative data.
Knowing the number of community members involved in brand-related conversations can serve as an indicator of exposure, and the number of message threads and lines of text within a thread can serve as proxies of conversation depth. However, counting does not capture the essence of the interaction consumers had with the brand, the degree of engagement felt during and after the interaction, or the effects of the interaction, exposure to brand messages, and brand engagement on measures like brand likability, brand image, brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand affiliation, congruency, and purchase intent. Jeep may have 8,500 MySpace friends, but the number does nothing to tell us how the friends feel about Jeep. An ARG may boast millions of players, but the sheer quantity of players does not reveal the success of the strategy.
To measure outcomes of social advertising, organizations must balance quantitative metrics with qualitative insights. Here’s how to go about doing this.
1. Reviewing objectives
Step 1, reviewing the campaign objectives, assumes that the objectives were set prior to pursuing advertising opportunities in social media. Not all brands set formal objectives. Some are simply experimenting with social media, and for them, the experience of executing a campaign using emerging platforms is sufficient.
For most brands, though, failing to set clear objectives is a mistake. When it comes to assessing success, if there are no objectives, how do you know if where you ended up is where you wanted to be? The specific objectives identified can vary dramatically from brand to brand but usually encompass three overarching issues:
- Motivating some action like visits to a website or sales
- Affecting brand knowledge and attitudes
- Accomplishing the first two objectives with fewer resources than might be required with other advertising and promotional methods
2. Mapping the campaign
Step 2 calls for mapping all of the social media aspects of the advertising campaign. This activity results in a visual representation of the tactics used and how they may interact. Maps can be crude, simple drawings, but even a rough sketch can be valuable as brands seek to measure accomplishments in the social media space.
An effective map would display the types of branded messages produced and distributed (e.g., written vehicles like blog posts and white papers, ads in the form of display ads or rich-media video, and podcasts), invitations for consumer engagement with the brand (e.g., games, consumer-generated advertising contests and promotions, and interactive brand experiences), and the online location for these materials. It should also include online locations where others can go to distribute content relating to the brand. For instance, are there viral videos on YouTube that highlight the brand? Are there product reviews on sites like Epinions.com? Are there MySpace pages with brand icons and information posted? Are there bloggers writing about the brand? Are members of Delicious tagging the brand’s website, and are Digg members voting for branded content?
Once all the sources of brand information are identified, the map should sketch out the chain of all possible touchpoints. A touchpoint is simply a contact point between the brand and the consumer.
MINI Cooper “touches” a consumer when someone visits the dealer showroom, visits the MINI website or one of its microsites, receives brochures and other promotional materials from the company, or brings a car in for service. These are all brand-controlled touchpoints, but many touchpoints that the brand does not control do exist, especially online.
In addition to the consumer-generated content that relates to the brand, there may be conversational touchpoints going on. Are people reading the blog postings (or even responding to blog posts) that mention the brand? Are people watching videos posted on sites like YouTube? Are they voting for content on Digg? In other words, is the media (whether brand-generated or consumer-generated) being consumed by those it reaches and is it being “fortified”? Ultimately, the map should show four levels of contact:
- Brand-generated content
- Consumer-generated content
- Consumer-fortified content
- Exposures to content consumers
3. Choosing criteria and tools of measurement
In step 3, the criteria for assessing effectiveness are determined, and the tools necessary for measurement are selected. The objectives and the map should direct both the identification of criteria and the best tools for measurement.
For example, imagine that you seek to develop brand awareness for a new product. You also want to drive traffic to the product website and reinforce the brand’s image. The brand enters the social media space with an advertising campaign, which also includes traditional media components. The brand website and its microsites would be sketched on a social media map, along with other tactics, like a celebrity MySpace profile (featuring your brand as a sponsor).
What criteria and tools then should you use to evaluate success of these techniques? Your campaign objectives emphasized a desire to:
- Build awareness of the new product
- Drive visits to the websites
- Strengthen the brand image
Objective 2 is easily addressed with traditional website metrics and measurement tools. The brand site and microsites can track hits, page views, and unique visitors; if the sites enable registration, then registrants can also be tracked. Organic search engine rankings can also be assessed for the brand name and its slogans.
Awareness (objective 1) can be suggested with website traffic and traffic to other branded components. For instance, your celebrity endorser’s MySpace profile will have friends, some of whom will fortify the profile with comments. Awareness can also be suggested with brand mentions in other online spaces. You might ask, “Is the brand being talked about? If so, how much, and where?”
The criteria for answering these questions are straightforward. One simply needs to identify evidence of the brand in online conversations and publications, get a count of those occurrences, and note the source of the material. The tools necessary for this could include a virtual version of a clipping service to determine what is being said about the brand and the brand’s competition online. This can be an in-house project, or outsourced to companies like CyberAlert, which can then monitor specific publications or the entire internet for brand mentions. Collecting brand mentions in-house can be accomplished with tools like Google Alerts. These tools can provide a count of mentions, and the sources, but they should be combined with other tools to determine whether the communication was positive, negative, or neutral for the brand.
Next you might ask, “How many people are exposed to these third-party messages?” To assess the impact of these brand mentions across the web, one can turn to companies that measure the size of a site’s audience. Media Metrix, Nielsen NetRatings, and comScore offer measurement services that include hits, unique visitors, and page views for sites. Such assessments will need to consider all the locations of postings mentioning the brand and the audiences for each location.
In our example, you also set out to strengthen your brand’s image (objective 3). This can be influenced by what the target audience thinks and feels about the branding for the campaign. Is the audience engaged with the interactive games you are using? Is your association strategy using celebrity endorsers effectively? Does the audience feel that the quiz and the recommendations included in the quiz’s answers enable your brand to symbolize their own self images? The campaign itself will influence the brand’s image. You could use primary research in the form of surveys and focus groups to answer these questions.
4. Establishing a benchmark
For all of the criteria and measurement tools you have chosen in step 3, to apply them effectively to your brand, you need to move to step 4 and set benchmarks, which will give you goals to reach so you can determine if your campaign is on the right track or if changes are necessary.
Assuming you are employing a combination of quantitative and qualitative measurement tools, your benchmarks will most likely consist of not only traditional quantitative measures — such as a set number of unique visitors — but also more qualitative metrics — such as positive focus group feedback indicating heightened brand awareness. Then you can use the data you collect from the measurement tools to observe as you get closer and closer to reaching those benchmarks.
5. Analyzing the outcomes and proposing changes
After selecting your measurement tools and the benchmarks you are striving for, step 5 is to analyze the data you collect using your measurement tools, compare the data versus your benchmark, and, if you determine that your campaign is falling short of reaching your goals, propose active changes that might help you attain those goals.
6. Continuing to measure
While it may seem like your job is done once you’ve measured your success versus your benchmark, the work is far from over. Measuring should be a regular, continual part of your social media campaign — so really, step 6 never ends.
Setting regular intervals of measurement (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually, depending on the type of metrics chosen and the campaign’s needs) can help maintain discipline in this regard, and continuous measurement can also help you assess consumer reaction to any changes that are instituted mid-campaign.
Filed under: Blogs, Online presence, Social Media, Social networks | Tags: blogs, facebook, linkedin, Social networks, twitter
This is an article (it’s really too long to be a post!) that is too good not to share in its entirety, from Mashable…
10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips
Posted: 28 Oct 2009 01:18 PM PDT
Ross Kimbarovsky is the co-founder of crowdSPRING, a community of 43,000+ graphic designers that helps small businesses from around the world with graphic design needs. You can follow Ross on Twitter @rosskimbarovsky and @crowdSPRING.
Capacity – especially to plan and execute effective marketing strategies – is a big challenge for every small business. In this post, I’ll offer 10 suggestions for how small businesses can supercharge their marketing efforts by leveraging social media. For each suggestion, I will discuss a basic strategy – for those who simply want to get their toes wet, as well as an advanced strategy – for those who want to spend a bit more time and go a bit deeper in their social media marketing efforts. These tips are based on my experience leveraging social media marketing for my company, crowdSPRING.
I suggest you begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.
1. Facebook
Facebook offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business. Facebook now has over 300 million users, and while that seems like an outrageous number for small businesses to be targeting, Facebook offers a very powerful platform on which to build a presence. If you’re not already active on Facebook; you should get started right away.
Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up for Facebook yet, you absolutely should as soon as possible. Once you’ve signed up, you should also consider securing your company’s username. Be aware, however, that if you reserve your company name for your personal account, you won’t be able to use it for your Business Fan Page (more on those in the Advanced Strategy), so you may want to create a Page before registering your company’s name. Fan Pages have special rules regarding usernames, which you can read here.
You should do one other thing: search for your competitors and evaluate their Facebook presence. What types of Pages have they built? How many fans or “friends” do they have? Spend 15 minutes (per competitor) looking at their posts, photos and/or videos to understand how they’re using Facebook.
Advanced Strategy: You may already have a personal Facebook account, but how do you extend that presence for your business? You have several options. You can register a Business Account – which is designed for a very simple presence on Facebook. There are many limitations on such accounts (read the FAQ here), however, so you’ll most likely prefer to have a Business Fan Page. A Business Fan Page lets you create a page where customers or fans of your business can register as a “fan” — expanding the presence of your business (because your updates will also flow to their pages). You might also want to consider running hyper-local ads on Facebook.
2. Twitter
Twitter has grown tremendously over the past year. For some small businesses, it offers an incredible marketing platform. BusinessWeek’s recent profile of 20 ways businesses use Twitter might give you some ideas about how you can leverage Twitter for your business.
Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up on Twitter yet, you should sign up today and reserve an account in the name of your business. While you might ultimately tweet in your own name, you’ll want to have the option to tweet from a business account. More importantly, you don’t want your competitors to register your business name. Twitter has put together a simple guide to help you understand what Twitter can do for business. You can also check out Mashable’s Twitter Guide.
Next, you should spend 15-30 minutes on Twitter’s homepage, doing basic searches to become familiar with the type of content available on the service. For example, if you are operating a small gift basket business, do some searches for various terms and phrases such as “gift basket,” “gifts,” “gift basket business,” etc. You should also search for the names of your competitors to see whether they’re on Twitter and if they are, how they’re using it. And don’t forget to search for your small business name – your customers may already be talking about you! Once you become comfortable with the content that’s already available and how your competitors are using Twitter, you can begin thinking about a strategy for how you’ll leverage Twitter for your business.
Advanced Strategy: To truly leverage Twitter, you’ll want to learn and use a few more advanced tools. This includes desktop and mobile Twitter clients like TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Tweetie. Desktop clients give you more flexibility and more control over your Twitter strategy than you’ll have on the Twitter website. Among other things, you’ll be able to pre-define searches (so that you can monitor certain keywords, including your business name) and group people you follow so that you can minimize the noise and focus on the real content. You might also consider using a web tool like Twitterfall, which will allow you to define (and color-code) various custom searches that you can review from time to time, and also to follow trending topics. For example, I use Twitterfall to identify helpful graphic design and industrial design resources to share with the crowdSPRING community.
3. Company Blog
Although there’s more attention focused today on social networks than on company blogs, blogs continue to offer great value for small businesses.
Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should consider reserving a domain name for your blog – if you don’t already have a custom domain for your business. If you’re comfortable enough to set up your own blog, that’s generally the best way to proceed – although this requires a bit more technical knowledge (many hosting providers offer a 1 step easy setup for blogs that will automatically install WordPress for you). You can also setup a blog directly at WordPress.com (it’s easier to do, but you don’t have full control over everything that you would on your own site).
One easy alternative is to set up a simple blog at Posterous – a place to post stories, photos, videos, MP3s, and files. There are pluses and minuses to all of these options – you should take some time to compare them and do what makes sense for your business. I caution you only about spreading yourself too thin.
Advanced Strategy: Now that you’ve decided to start or improve your small business blog, how do you build an audience for it? It all starts with great content. Decide on a focus for your blog, and write awesome content that people will enjoy. For example, some months ago at my company, we decided that we wanted to write more about small business issues, so we’ve been writing original posts focusing on issues affecting small businesses. Think about your expertise and more importantly, think about the things that you’re interested in writing about. A blog requires a long term investment of time (and resources), and you don’t want to be stuck writing about things that bore you.
You’ll also want to consider how you can make it easier for your readers to help promote your content. For example, install helpful plug-ins, such as a TweetMeme button, which makes it easy for people to retweet your posts on Twitter. Don’t be afraid to experiment with plugins to add to the functionality of your blog, but keep it simple. You want to keep the blog focused, and easy for your readers to use.
4. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business oriented social network for professionals, and it’s huge, with nearly 50 million users from over 200 countries.
Basic Strategy: Once again, you’ll want to at least reserve your business name (or your personal name) so that others can’t use it. Similar to the way you might start exploring Facebook and Twitter, you should look around on LinkedIn to see how your competitors are using the service. You might also look up your customers and connect with them.
Advanced Strategy: LinkedIn has some powerful features that most people don’t use. For example, you can encourage your customers, clients or vendors to give you a “recommendation” on your profile. Recommendations are useful because they’ll make you and your business more credible with new customers. If you’re a roofer, for example, ask your customers to recommend you after a successful job. You’ll find such recommendations useful – particularly since your LinkedIn profile will come up high in search engine results. I recommend that you read Chris Brogan’s post from last year discussing the elements of a good LinkedIn recommendation.
Another strategy involves the many subject matter groups on LinkedIn. Find some groups that have a connection to your small business and become involved in the conversations. Answer questions when you can, and help to establish yourself as knowledgeable about specific topics related to your business. There are many small business and general marketing groups that will be very useful resources for you, and if there isn’t a group that interests you, consider starting one.
5. Participate On Other Blogs
It might seem counter-intuitive for you to spend your valuable time by participating in discussions on other people’s blogs, but the payoff can be very valuable. Remember that it takes time to build a reputation and establish your credibility, and you can’t always expect everyone to come to you. Sometimes, you have to go out and build your own credibility and reputation.
Basic Strategy: Identify 2-3 blogs in your industry, or those that focus on small business, and get into the habit of regularly reading the content and participating in the discussions. Whenever you can, try to add value by sharing a personal story about what has/has not worked for you. Get to know the writers – they’ll be valuable contacts for you. One strategy for identifying good blogs is to use Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, which is a directory of popular blogs across many different subject areas. For example, for blogs focused on crafts, you might follow this page on Alltop. If you want to participate in blogs focusing on small business issues, you might start at Technorati’s list of the Top 100 Small Business blogs.
Advanced Strategy: Once you’ve spent some time on other blogs and have participated in discussions, you’ll find that you’ve built a level of credibility and trust, based on your participation. You should consider reaching out to the blog owners and asking whether they’d allow you to guest post an article on their blog (kind of like this post). This is a nice way for you to get in front of a bigger audience, and many blog owners will invite guests to post from time to time. Agree on a topic in advance and provide a draft of your post sufficiently in advance of the publication date to give them an opportunity to review.
Alternatively, ask if they would consider guest posting on your blog. Since you’re looking to attract more readers (and more potential customers), either option works well for that purpose. Don’t worry so much about going after the A-list blogs right away. There are many excellent blogs and it might take a bit of time to build your reputation to such a level that you’ll have opportunities to post in the top blogs. That doesn’t mean you should wait, though – make opportunities for yourself and offer to guest write whenever you can find a new audience. I recommend you read How To Guest Post To Promote Your Blog from blogging expert Darren Rowse.
6. Mobile Social Networks and other Local Strategies
Yelp publishes millions of reviews about local businesses. Foursquare is a combination city-guide, friend finder and competitive game. It allows users to “check in” by cell phone at a local venue and announce this via other social networks such as Twitter.
Basic Strategy: Yelp, Foursquare, and other mobile social networks can be powerful marketing channels for small businesses. You should at the very least register accounts on the popular services and get to know them. If you have a restaurant or a retail store, for example, you’ll want to get to know Yelp pretty well. You can set up a business account on Yelp (no cost), which will let you answer questions about your business, track how many Yelp users view your business page, add information about your business, and announce special promotions. Similarly, you’ll want to sign up with Foursquare to take advantage of local advertising opportunities. Using Foursquare, you’ll be able to push promotions to potential customers who’re in the vicinity of your business.
You should also consider other local strategies. For example, you can add your business to Google Maps, or update your listing to include additional details. You can do the same on Bing.
Advanced Strategy: If you believe that your business can truly benefit from a presence on Yelp, Foursquare, or similar networks, you’ll want to do more than just register accounts with those services. For example, Yelp allows you to include a website URL for your business. Nearly all sites will let you upload photos to your profile, and photos will make your profile more trustworthy.
You can also proactively use Yelp and other similar services to promote your business. Ask your customers, friends and family who have used your services for a review on Yelp. You can encourage reviews by running promotions or discounts – offering free appetizers, for example, to a customer who will write a review about their meal at your restaurant (or to one who already wrote a review), or a small discount to a customer who hires you for carpentry work and mentions that they found you through Yelp.
Similarly, you can find ways to promote your business using Foursquare and similar networks. If you have a TV display in your store connected to a computer, you can display the people who are checking in. You can offer specials or discounts to the person who visits your location the most (this is similar to frequent buyer cards that many businesses have used for years).
Don’t forget to also consider how you can improve your use of other basic local strategies. For example, many small business websites are optimized for specific keywords or subject areas, but are rarely optimized for local searches. If you have a gift basket business, you’ll want to be sure that users searching for gift baskets in your geographic area will find you.
7. Comments and Conversations About Your Company
Whether or not you are a party to the conversations, people will talk about your company. How do you monitor and, when appropriate, join those discussions?
Basic Strategy: There are five simple steps you can take today to begin paying attention to conversations about your business.
First, set up Google Alerts. Google Alerts are free email updates from Google search results about any topic you’re interested in tracking. For example, I track, among other alerts, the names of our competitors, the name of our company, and certain other terms I believe are important to my business. Anytime Google adds something to its index that mentions my company or the other terms I’m tracking, I receive an immediate email notification with a link to that item. Alerts can be set up for web, blog, news, video, or groups searches.
Second, review the results in your web analytics data. At my company, we use Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that provides detailed and very useful information about your website traffic and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. When we run social media campaigns, we’ll often attach tracking tags to those campaigns so that we can properly monitor them in Google Analytics. This is important because without such data it will be nearly impossible for you to evaluate the success of your social media marketing efforts. But analytics are important for another reason: they’ll tell you which sites are sending traffic to your site.
Third, search Facebook. In August, Facebook rolled out a real-time search engine (the search box is on the top right of any Facebook page). One effective way to take advantage of Facebook search is to search for your company’s name to see who is talking about your company and what they’re saying. In several months, you’ll be able to search Facebook updates directly from Bing, which will be integrating Facebook public updates into Bing’s search results.
Fourth, search Twitter. You currently can search Twitter for real-time results (if you’re not logged in, just go to Twitter’s homepage). One easy way to monitor conversations about your company is to search for your company’s name. You can also currently do this on Bing, which is indexing Twitter updates. Very soon, you’ll also be able to search Twitter updates (and other social media content) via Google’s Social Search (Social Search was rolled out to Google Labs recently, as an experimental product). You can also use Twitter clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic to save searches and monitor in real-time whenever someone uses a specific word or phrase in a tweet.
Finally, take advantage of services that will, similar to Google Alerts, push data to you. I use and like BackType, which is a real-time search engine that indexes online conversations in thousands of blogs and social networks. I use BackType primarily to keep up with conversations in blogs. Every day, I receive emails from BackType with links to comments that include the keywords I’m monitoring. Without these alerts, I would be unable to monitor so many blogs, and my ability to respond to posts about my company would be very limited.
Advanced Strategy: If you’re having trouble keeping track of your various search strategies, you should consolidate your efforts and leverage one of the many applications that will help you monitor the social web. I have not personally used these services, but they appear to be held in high esteem by knowledgeable people who have. For example, truVOICE provides keyword monitoring of the social web with an emphasis on blogs and forums, while Radian6 pulls in a lot of information from the social web, analyzes it, and provides consumer sentiment ratings for your brand. A good resource to learn about paid social media monitoring tools is Mashable’s post Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For.
In addition to monitoring, you’ll need to decide how, when, and where you’ll engage in conversations. It’ll be very difficult for you to engage in conversations everywhere, so you should spend some time learning the various networks and deciding where you should focus your efforts. Looking at your website analytics data — if you own an online business — will help a great deal because it’ll help you to better understand where your traffic is coming from. If much of your traffic originates from Twitter and Facebook, for example, you’ll want to spend more time on those services.
8. Multimedia
Multimedia (video, photos, audio) is a bit more complicated for many small businesses to execute, but can provide excellent social media marketing opportunities.
Basic Strategy: YouTube has been constantly evolving and adding features that make it an attractive social site for small businesses. Although you don’t have to produce videos to participate on YouTube, you should consider whether simple videos can help your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re already posting videos to your blog, you can upload them to YouTube to reach a broader audience, and embed the video content in your blog posts. YouTube has also been adding more comprehensive activity updates for its users and has made pretty powerful analytics tools available so that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your video content.
Similarly, you could start a Flickr account for your business and post photos of your customers or your products (or both). Flickr offers a place where people can share photos with others, but also has discussion groups, many focused on local markets, that offer additional opportunities for you to market your business. You can also consider setting up your own Internet radio talk show using BlogTalkRadio, which is another way to use multimedia to speak directly to your customers. Get creative with it — own a restaurant? Start a call-in show for people to ask cooking questions. Are you a piano teacher? Perhaps you could start a show to talk about classical music.
Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies using multimedia are complicated and typically benefit from using experienced consultants. One effective way to leverage video, for example, is to create content that has the potential to become viral. While I don’t believe you can set out to make a viral video (an incredible amount of luck is typically involved), there are a number of things you can typically do to build awareness about your small business using viral video (these strategies are beyond the scope of this post). Once you’ve created good content, you’ll want to distribute it using as many social networks as you can.
When you consider how you can leverage social networks, think about whether each network provides an audience or a technology solution (or both). For example, YouTube provides both a huge audience and a solution for uploading video files. Flickr can also provide both an audience and a technology solution, but not for every business. While your customers might not be on Flickr, you can still use Flickr as a place to store and tag your photos, and then distribute those photos to other social networks where you prefer to invest more time and effort.
9. Maintain Brand Consistency
We’ve discussed only a small handful of social networks. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of others, and new ones spring up every day. That means that your customers will have many different ways to find you. But they won’t find you if your brand is scattered across social networks using different usernames and profiles. Let’s review some strategies for making sure that your brand is consistent across social networks.
Basic Strategy: Usernames and user profiles are already showing up in search results. Do a search for your company’s name on Google right now — if you also have a Twitter account with the same name, odds are pretty good that the Twitter account will appear very high in the search results. This means that having a consistent username across the various social networks is very important. At a minimum, if you haven’t registered your company name on the major networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), you should do that today. For many small businesses, their user accounts on social networks will be the highest ranked pages in search results.
You should also evaluate your email and web presence strategies. For example, are you using a Gmail email address when you can very easily be using a custom email address with your company name as your domain? Compare: restaurantname@gmail.com with john@restaurantname.com — which looks more professional? Similarly, are you hosting your blog at WordPress.com instead of on your own custom domain? Little details can make a difference.
Advanced Strategy: Things get a bit more complicated when you consider that there are many different social networks, and it’s tough to predict which of them will become popular and which will fail. Use a service such as namechk or KnowEm to see whether your username is available on dozens of popular social networks and if it’s not, to see which username could be registered across all social networks.
Maintaining name consistency is important, but isn’t enough by itself. You’ll also want to make sure that your brand speaks with a common “voice” across the social networks. This may be easier said than done. Social networks differ in significant ways from one another and present unique challenges for interacting with customers and potential customers on those networks.
Speaking with a common “voice” doesn’t mean that only one person should execute your company’s social media marketing strategy, but it does mean that everyone who speaks on behalf of your company in social media reflects your brand in a consistent way. I recommend you read Shel Israel’s recently published book “Twitterville,” for excellent tips and stories focusing on how large and small businesses can develop a consistent voice in social media.
10. Leverage Combinations of Social Media Tools
One of the best ways for small businesses to leverage social media marketing is to use various social networks in combination with each other.
Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should do several things today to cross-market across the various social networks you’re most likely already using. Here are three suggestions:
First, connect your Twitter account to Facebook so that your tweets will appear in your public updates on Facebook. This will let you leverage your time on Twitter to also update your Facebook fans.
Second, connect your LinkedIn profile to your WordPress blog. LinkedIn allows you to publish, in your profile, synopses of the most recent blog posts on your blog. This application will automatically update your LinkedIn profile with your most recent blog posts.
Third, integrate Twitter tools into your blog. I like and use the TweetMeme retweet button on my blogs to make it easier for users to tweet about the blog posts. I also use the ShareThis tool to enable readers to quickly share content on multiple social networks.
Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies require careful planning/execution and appropriate tools. In nearly all cases, your goal is to maximize the value of your content. For example, if you’re posting videos on YouTube or Vimeo, you can blog about those videos on your company’s blog. Then, you can tweet about the blog posts on Twitter (which I assume is integrated with your Facebook account). This way, you’ve taken one piece of content and found a way to leverage it across multiple social networks.
You’ll also want to consider ways that you can optimize the distribution to multiple social networks at the same time. Leverage tools to help you do this. For example, Ping.fm lets you update multiple social networks all in one go. Keep in mind that not all social networks will make sense for every business. Learn which networks are best for your business and find ways to leverage combinations of those networks to make your marketing more effective.
Conclusion
Social media marketing can be a phenomenal marketing channel for small businesses. I hope that the strategies I’ve outlined above provide a starting point for you to explore how you can leverage social media marketing for your small business.
From SocialMediaToday:
Which Twitter Strategy Is Right for You.
Is there a one-size-fits-all Twitter strategy? Contrary to popular belief and snake-oil Twitter schemes, there is not. Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester Analyst says, picking a strategy for your business or organization doesn’t have to be hard. It really depends on your goals.
Currently there are five Twitter strategies Owyang see working well for businesses and organizations:
- Listening to your customers.
- Spreading your message.
- Selling products or services; announcing discounts and deals.
- Supporting your customers by addressing their problems.
- Collaborating with customers on product/service development.
The idea is to pick one and concentrate on it. Learn it. Leverage it. Use it.
Here’s how they fit into larger strategies:
Listening. Use search.twitter.com, or other listening tools to monitor what’s being said our your brand and company. Talk directly to your customers. Create a dialogue and give them information they can use.
- JetBlu and Southwest promote flight deals and send out company news.
- Rubbermaid and Dunkin’ Doughnuts listens and responds to consumer chatter.
- Dell sold $1 million in merchandise and promotes discounts on its products.
Energize. Find and engage brand advocates to do the “heavy” lifting for you.
- Zappo harvests a feed where its name is used by others and publishes it on the company website.
Support. Engage customers and provide and interactive channel they can use to stay connect to your company and reach real people anytime they want.
- Comcast does this with ComcastCares. The company monitors Twitter for customer complaints and addresses openly. By the way, they fix them too.
Enhance. Ask customers for immediate feedback.
Filed under: Advertising, Online presence, PR | Tags: piano stairs, the fun theory, volkswagen
A great campaign from Volkswagen, combining creative concept and execution with the viral power of social media, topped with impactful, resonant yet subtle branding right at the end. All in the spirit of innovation, experimentation and interaction.
Check out the campaign website here: http://thefuntheory.com/
And take a look at this brilliant video of the Piano Stairs!
This is a great, but very lengthy, post by Brian Solis about sponsored conversations in social media marketing – something I truly believe is the way forward in social media marketing, which will ultimately blur the lines between marketing (traditionally paid) and PR (traditionally unpaid).
In the eyes of imaginative and opportunistic advertisers and marketers, bloggers and online influencers are the new celebrities and athletes. Brands are showering them with endorsement deals rich with products, cash, trips, exclusive access to information, and VIP treatment each and every day, creating a new genre of star spokespersons.
Many expert and lifestyle “citizen” bloggers and online weblebrities are creating communities around their personas as they freely and actively share personal and identifiable experiences online, in social networks and also in the real world. Those who can successfully connect their stories to others in and around their peer groups earn trust, visibility and authority – limited only by ambition and ingenuity. They’re rewarded for their presence and ability to point their followers in strategic directions.
These new brand ambassadors are almost the perfect instruments for surreptitiously sparking and cultivating a groundswell of desire within desired target markets.
Consumers look to experts and trusted peers for guidance and insight when making decisions.
But who’s to say that the information they’re receiving from their trusted sources is indeed truthful and honest? Many of these followers are blind to the fact that some of these authorities are actually directly or indirectly compensated for their opinions and insights.
Journalists and reporters on the other hand, most of them anyway, are held to strict editorial guidelines and policies that denounce the practice of receiving products, gifts or compensation in exchange for editorial coverage. There’s at least a line that separates ethical press from advertorials —whether it’s crossed, is another story.
But in the new online world of citizen influence, there’s no line on the horizon—at least not yet. Driven only by loosely defined and sporadically practiced methodologies that promote at-will disclosure and transparency, many brands, intentionally or deliberately, are blurring a consumer’s ability to discern the distinction between partisan and genuine experiences.
The New FTC Guidelines: Even Citizen Journalists Must Disclose Paid Endorsements
That’s all about to change. Under new guidelines proposed by the Federal Trade Commission, brands and bloggers both may be held liable should either the FTC or scorned consumers deem that their actions or claims misguided them, or misrepresented the actual performance or efficacy of the product or service in question..
According to the FTC, the ability for a consumer to exercise better judgment and common sense is indefensible when a glaring absence of disclosure is pervasive.
Earlier this year, The FTC published recommendations to update its guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising and public relations. A new set of guidelines, enforceable by the FTC Act, is due soon.
The Guides, 16 C.F.R. Part 255
, are designed to assist businesses and others in conforming their endorsement and testimonial advertising practices to the requirements of Section 5 of the FTC Act. The Guides interpret laws administered by the Commission and therefore are advisory in nature. However, proceedings to enforce the requirements of law can be brought under the FTC Act. The Commission would have the responsibility of proving that a particular use of an endorsement or testimonial was deceptive.
In its review of the proposed guidelines, BusinessWeek observed, “The world’s more ambitious bloggers like to call themselves ‘citizen journalists.’ The government is trying to make sure these heralds don’t turn into citizen advertisers.”
I disagree with BusinessWeek’s observation and so does the FTC.
In a discussion with Mary Engle, the acting deputy director for the Bureau of Consumer Protection, she articulated to me, “It’s not about preventing citizen journalists from becoming citizen advertisers, that’s just not true. We’re acting to ensure that bloggers don’t create a bias in the consumer decision-making process. Consumers just need to know that what they’re reading is technically an advertisement.”
Whether the post is compensated with cash or with free product or rewards, the FTC views them equally. Engle observed, “The real test is whether or not the consumer’s impression or decision would change if they knew the post was sponsored.”
The FTC Guides advise that an advertisement employing a consumer endorsement on a central or key attribute of a product will be interpreted as representing that the endorser’s experience is representative of what consumers will generally achieve.
It’s about responsibility and credibility.
But honestly, why chance it?
The practice of paying bloggers and influencers or providing them with free products not only clouds their ability to share an impartial story, but also risks the credibility and trust of brands and influencers among the very people they’re trying to inspire and galvanize.
With or without the new FTC guidelines, the practice of disclosure is not an option when the potential for significantly damaging customer relationships in a very public spotlight is at stake. Unfortunately, such disclosure is not at the forefront of most marketing programs.
Free Products are Gifts that Keep on Giving
Ignorance is bliss, until it’s not…
In 2006, Microsoft introduced its Vista operating system to consumers using traditional and new media. In one of the programs, bloggers of varying levels of influence, received Acer Ferrari notebooks to potentially review and share their experiences of the OS and also the notebook. Initially, it wasn’t made clear to these bloggers that disclosure was encouraged. I saw many variations of the packages and letters. Depending on which version a blogger did or didn’t receive, instructions and intentions were also vaguely communicated. What was commonly perceived and understood by other bloggers and ultimately consumers, was that these expensive notebooks were theirs to keep whether or not they shared anything online. To say it created a blogstorm of controversy would be a gross understatement. The lessons learned here served as precedent for those seeking guidance, but didn’t necessarily translate intro industry-wide standards.
Brands view the practice of sending products to bloggers and online influencers as a natural extension of their product PR campaign. In many cases over the years, companies simply didn’t expect to receive product back from reviewers, whether or not they were employed by a publication bound by editorial guidelines against the acceptance of gifts or free products. Bloggers and online influencers, until the recent FTC attention, were viewed no differently.
Sending free products, according to the FTC, is viewed as compensation, which translates into an advertisement or paid endorsement.
Under the FTC guidelines, disclosure is required in any case where the brand is hopeful of obtaining a published review of the product, when its return, either explicitly or implicitly conveyed, is not expected. This attempts to ensure the protection of all parties against liability or legal action.
Sponsored Posts and Conversations
Whether or not disclosure is evident and forthright, the question really is, whether or not the practice of giving gifts to encourage reviews or outright paying for them is ultimately effective and sound for channeling influence, community building and revenue generation for the long-term.
I am now talking about “sponsored conversations”: outright paying for posts and conversations versus simply sending free product or rewarding influencers with various other incentives and hoping for complimentary posts and discussions in exchange.
A recent report published by Forrester Research defines sponsored conversations as, “A marketing technique in which marketers provide financial or material compensation to bloggers in exchange for their posting blog content about a brand.”
In the report, which is available for $749, Forrester recommends adding sponsored conversations to the corporate marketing toolbox, “Sponsored conversation is controversial; many bloggers believe it threatens bloggers’ reputation for independence. But we think this practice is here to stay. Why? Because bloggers want to get paid and marketers want to pay them.”
According to the FTC guidelines, if there were a financial or other relationship between the advertiser and the endorser that would affect the credibility of the endorsement, that relationship would have to be disclosed under Section 255.5. So, as long as the blogger is clear that the post or conversation is “sponsored,” all guidelines are respected and satisfied.
Wait, what about the brand?
Just because bloggers want to get paid and brands want to pay them, doesn’t make this a no-brainer business practice. Or, put another way, does it actually enhance the product/company brand or the personal brand of the blogger in the long run?
Some of the biggest brands in the world are already experimenting with paid posts including, 1-800Flowers, Black&Decker, Cold Stone Creamery, Dell, Disney, MTV, Sears, Sony Pictures, and TiVo. For example, Kmart recently sent several high profile bloggers on $500 shopping sprees in exchange for “sponsored posts” about their experiences.
I suppose, it’s in the way that you use it . . .
So, let’s examine something of deeper impact and consequence. Every community thrives on interaction rooted in respect and defined by credibility and trust—at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
For bloggers to risk or leverage their existing, and more importantly, potential credibility in exchange for blogola is either absurd or shortsighted. It might be simply gratifying and motivating for now. Maybe the bigger picture has yet to come into focus for many bloggers and the act of recognition is enough. And, for brands to either take generations of a brand ’s integrity or shape its new and emerging identification on the backs of bloggers who’ll loan their stature and reputation is brilliantly foolish. In the end, it’s the consumer who holds the power to decide his or her degree of affinity and affiliation or mutiny and backlash.
Integrity and Reputation vs. Buzz and Google Juice
The impending FTC guidelines and whether or not bloggers and brands are at risk of legal punishment isn’t the issue. We just have to deal with it. We can choose as consumers whether or not we want to engage with this content.
The real discussion should center on why a company or blogger should even care to participate. The things we do for money are governed by personal boundaries. As individuals, we define those lines and how clearly we wish to view and abide by them.
If we examine Forrester’s case for sponsored conversations, we’re essentially fueling word of mouth by paying for social or topical authorities to share their views about our company or product brand in their domain. This is important. We’re talking about paying people to write about a company or product on their existing, personally-branded content platform associated with it’s already existing, captive audience. This theoretically sparks Webwide buzz that connects a brand to the community of would be customers who rely upon these personalities and voices in the both the blogosphere and statusphere to make informed decisions.
Seems simple enough, except two things are going to prevent this from effectively promoting the sponsoring brand over time — 1) disclosures read like warning signs; 2) Google is downgrading any blog or site that actively publishes paid content.
Let’s walk down this path a bit farther . . .
As a consumer, when’s the last time you read an advertorial and walked away inspired or informed? Other than the Snuggie or ShamWow, when is the last time you actually watched an infomercial, let alone bought a product or shared it with your friends because of what you viewed?
Perhaps this is the wrong audience for a discussion probing the shrewdness of the typical consumer. But, I bet many of you reading this now are responsible for the direction, visibility, and perception of a brand. So as brand managers, your brand is what the market says it is, tethered to the credibility and stature of the people who collectively voice their thoughts about it (paid and unpaid). In the world of pay-per-posts or sponsored conversations, brand association starts to paint a picture of guilt by association, not necessarily the building of strategic brand presence or resonance.
This is a deeper discussion of reputation and trustworthiness versus funding word of mouth buzz and viral marketing. To simply state that “disclosure” alleviates and resolves all risks involved with sponsoring conversations trivializes the discussion.
Brand Ambassadors and Inspired Communities
Whether we like it or not, many new companies are offering brokered services to facilitate “pay to play” campaigns in Social Media. Concurrently, many brands are also running these programs from within.
Clearly a balance scale exists where integrity and paid buzz are on opposite sides. So the real question is, how do you leverage the laws of perception management in your favor? One way to do so is through traditional public relations.
Identify target bloggers and work genuinely with them on developing a meaningful story that helps and informs their community. Bloggers will write about products and brands they really care about. You don’t have to pay them to do that. It comes naturally.
This is not to say that there is no place whatsoever for paid endorsements on the Web. Obviously paid endorsements work when the platform for conveying paid messages is understood and accepted. Celebrities have effectively pushed products in commercials without tarnishing their brand for decades. Essentially, the difference is the forums and networks in which these paid messages appear and the fact that the celebrities are usually aboveboard about the fact that they are endorsements.
Look to the existing business of paid endorsements to build and manage a campaign that effectively reaches and compels potential customers without the negative attributes that cling to pay-per-posts.
Hiring or recruiting influential weblebrities and online experts is not unlike the model for linking real world celebrities to brands through commercials, events, appearances, or other dedicated vehicles to promote the alliance and the story. These campaigns, when conceptualized and executed properly, effectively link the product/company brand to the celebrity’s persona and prestige to convey a relationship that connects to consumers through their affinity to the spokesperson. The idea is to create and host a two-way street that still inspires word of mouth and viral marketing.
For example:
Mozy hired iJustine as an official spokesperson airing content on Mozy.com as well as across multiple social networks including YouTube and iJustine branded properties.
Wal-Mart established Elevenmoms, an expert group of independent bloggers who receive free sample products to review and then freely choose which products to review based entirely on their personal opinion and experience.
Baby-products manufacturer Graco launched the Graco Nation Ambassador Program, a dedicated community of select Graco fans.
Based on the company’s successful foray into influencer relations with its Flex loaner program, Ford is currently trying to spark consumer buzz for its impending launch of the Ford Fiesta by enlisting every day consumers to share their experiences online and in social networks.
In the end, sponsored conversations will continue to receive funding, as brands try to insert themselves into the conversations online. The FTC is simply striving for truth in advertising. The point is that when establishing a paid Social Media campaign, anything that is less than clear, honest, or actively contributing back to the bottom line of the business or to a brand’s resonance is actually taking away from it.
The Digital Vibes 