Archive for the ‘social media’ Category

How to Energize your Social Media Marketing

Are you having trouble getting any activity going with your social media accounts? Not finding them to be particularly productive? Here are some pointers as to how to break through the noise and get some value out of your social media time.

Build Relationships

Your first priority should be building relationships. If you are posting and no one is responding, then you aren’t building relationships now are you? Just think about how you behave at a cocktail party. OK, well that might not work for everyone, but some of you will get that the conversation should be 2-way. You should be talking about 50% of the time and listening 50% of the time.

But how do you get that conversation started online?

Broaden your network

I found that social media really came alive for me when I became an open networker. That means that I will connect, friend or follow anyone who requests it. Okay so I did once decline someone whose entire stream was porn. But in general, if you aren’t a spammer, I’ll connect.

How has that helped? Well, I have thousands of people in my network rather than a few hundred. Now I have people that I haven’t personally met, but they understand the principles of networking which are “I help you and eventually you will help me”. Many of these open networkers are more active in social networks and more productive connections than the people I know in the offline world that aren’t active & open online networkers. Also, as an open networker, people can connect to me without fear of rejection. All are welcome.

It was a bit scary making the transition to open networker at first. I was afraid of spammers and yes, I do get unsolicited communications. Some are valuable, some are not. I sort through and trash the bad ones and act on the good ones.

I’ve had to refrain from sharing information about my family and children that I used to post and share more openly. Not knowing every person who connects to me requires me to be a little more protected of personal information. Other than that, I have found it to be a positive experience and have enjoyed the new friends, colleagues and partners I have made.

So how do I broaden my network?

Join groups and forums with people of similar interests or potential customers. If you are on LinkedIn, join the Open Networkers group and you will get a list weekly of open networkers you can connect with. On Facebook you can ask to connect with anyone you went to high school or college with, anyone in your address book, etc. You can connect to friends of friends. With Twitter there are lots of directories and tools to help you find connections that have similar interests as you or follow people you want to follow or who tweet from a location you want to target.

Be patient

Building relationships takes time. It takes more time online than it does in person. I believe that online is more leveraged and will help you scale your business, but it doesn’t replace the face-to-face contact. When you are first getting started in your business, face-to-face will get you more valuable feedback quickly so you can adjust your messages and style.

When you take your networking online remember it can take 6 months or more to develop a productive network, depending on how much time you attribute to it. Yes, you can get followers quickly, but you will not have a relationship with most of them so they will not immediately buy from you or refer you. They will trust someone a friend referred them to first, or someone they met in person, because it is easier to trust and communicate when you can also assess the non-verbal cues. But, you can only meet so many people in person. It’s easier to get your message spread more widely and to build a bigger list online. Online is where you build leverage and scale.

Provide Content

The best way to get people to connect with you is to provide great content. Content ideas include:

• Tips
• Information
• Blog posts
• Quotes and inspirations
• Promos
• Other people’s content, quotes and inspirations, blog posts, etc.

Engage your audience

The most important piece to energizing your social media networks is to engage them. What does that mean? It means you need to interact with them as you would in a face-to-face conversation. You need to:

• Respond to comments they make to you
• Comment on their posts
• Answer their questions
• Post your own Questions
• Compliment others when appropriate
• Be a person. Share who you are, your quirks and brilliance.

Notice that sending out promotions is only a small part of the content you are able to provide. The more you give the more you will get. Remember to give others a chance to shine and give them credit. People love to be complimented.

This all may sound overwhelming but there are ways to automate some of this and to systematize your processes so you can keep it in line with the time you have allotted. I spend about an hour and half on email and social media each day. I consider the two to be linked as many of my social media accounts shoot me an email when I need to respond to something.

Prioritize you networks

You can’t be super effective at managing 15 social media accounts unless it is your full time job. Feedback shows that most people can only effectively manage 3-5 accounts. The top 3 have become (not in any order):

1. Facebook which is great if you have a consumer audience,
2. LinkedIn which is super if you are b2b or looking for tips and support to build your b2c or b2b company, and
3. Twitter which is great for live streams of information and making connections with people with similar interests (then the relationship often moves to a different forum for more in-depth conversations). It’s great for live event recording, customer service, timely announcements and other time-sensitive information.

There are a myriad of other social media platforms and which ones you choose to focus on should be based on who your target customer is and where they like to hang out.

Remember to bring your own energy to your social media communications. Share your expertise. Share who you are. Be genuine.

I know it’s a bit weird at first when you start communicating with a big black void. But there are people out there and you will be heard. You can be shouting at them, selling them or engaging them into a two-way relationship with you. Which one do you think will be most effective, most productive and most energizing for all parties?

How do you handle an Social Media or Twitter post when you are an affiliate marketer?

Last night I was at an event where an attorney spoke about internet marketing laws. I asked her this very question and she responded about how there was no good legal guideline in tort law established yet. But, based on the new FTC Endorsement Rules, you should somehow disclose your relationship (if compensated for it) when endorsing something via a tweet or status update.

Then, this morning I received this email from a company with whom I am an affiliate. From a business owner perspective, I actually think it is a pretty good policy and guideline for people to follow when posting an affiliate link to Twitter or social media networks so I am posting it here for others to learn from.

Dear Debra Zimmer:

XXX.com will be updating their program terms to include guidelines for advertising in the social media space.  This update was due to recent FTC rules and regulations that XXX.com and its affiliates must comply by.  We encourage you to read through the information below and make the necessary changes to be compliant.

1.     All social media messages must adhere to XXX.com content standards. http://www.XXX.com/affiliate/contentstandards.asp

2.    Affiliates linking to XXX.com on social media sites must disclose their relationship as an affiliate. Reason: We require this so that all affiliates will be in compliance with FTC regulations. If you are recommending a company or product by sharing a link that can potentially earn you revenue, you must disclose this to your followers, readers, fans, etc.

Example of compliant message:
Need dental care savings? XXX.com has 30+ discount dental plans to choose from (affiliate link) http://bit.ly/GoodExample

Example of NON-compliant affiliate message:
Just saved lots of money using my plan from XXX.com. You should get a plan too. http://bit.ly/BadExample

3.    Affiliates linking to XXX.com on social media sites must state in their bio or in the link that they are an affiliate and not a XXX.com employee. Reason: While we welcome affiliates to use social media, we do not allow affiliates to act as official spokespeople for our company.

Contact Information
Have a comment or question about this update? Call or email your Affiliate Manager.

I haven’t seen anyone on twitter or other social media sites using a disclosure statement yet, have you? Have you been seeing tweets and status updates that say “affiliate link”? I would bet that it would make it a lot harder for affiliates to make money. Is it just me or does it seem that the affiliate industry is taking a beating recently?

Have you ever gone to a networking group and listened to a speaker who told you nothing of value except a bunch of statistics and definitions? I went to one of these recently. The networking was good, the group was good, the speaker was knowledgeable, but he really needed an updated presentation with something more useful than a list of definitions and statistics on social media.

Here’s my thoughts on what an introductory presentation might cover. I would love to hear your comments on what would be valuable to you.

Introduction to Social Media Marketing

1. What is social media networking and how does it differ from traditional networking?
2. When do we use social media in our marketing? Why should we use social media?
3. How much does it cost? What is the time commitment?
4. Life cycle of a social media user
5. Demographics, Features and Benefits of each venue.

Social Media Venues to include:

• Bookmarking
• Blogging
• Microblogging
• Video
• Forums
• The Big 4:
  1. Facebook
  2. Linked In
  3. Twitter
  4. Youtube

Advanced topics in Social Media:

1. How to create a social media presence.
2. How to setup and use each network.
3. How to find and connect to your network.
4. How to build your network.
5. How to create ongoing communications.
6. How to convert to sales.
7. How to use for ongoing brand building and customer retainment.
8. How to streamline and integrate your social media together.
9. How to prioritize your social media efforts.
10. How to track results.

What do you think? What topics would you like to see in a 1 hour overview seminar on social media? What would you like to see in a detailed course?

What marketing expert should you be working with for each marketing tactic that you want to implement? This is a short list to help you figure out who you need to call. In a larger business, it is typically the brand or product manager that writes the marketing strategy and plan and then oversees all the specialized experts who make it happen.  Here is a brief list of who to work with…

• Marketing Communications: could be an AD agency or just a graphic artist, copywriter and web designer. The Ad agency would also have a creative director that oversees the other 3 specialists. They create your identity, logo, brochures, website, packaging, ads (both online and off) and most materials. Can also create email newsletters. A direct marketing specialist would also fall into this category.
• Web site: web designer works on the visual representation, web developer handles ecommerce, community forums and other functionality, SEO expert gets your chosen keywords emphasized,
• Social Media: blog/community manager oversees blog content and responds to community members (blogger could also be in a different dept. like PR). Twitter and forum communicator.
• PR: gets feature articles written, product placements, press tours, press kits, press releases, speaker placement, quotes,and more.
• Event Marketing: identifies, schedules and prioritizes marketing events, creates booths, demos, etc.
• Channel Marketing: work with resellers, OEM, Affiliate managers and Evangelists: who get 3^rd parties to sell your products or services or use them in their own products
• Business Development & Sales – works directly with key customer accounts to close a sale.

This is most of the major categories of specialists. The ones you need to work with can vary depending on your type of business.

What other marketing specialists have you used?