by christine | Nov 19, 2012 | Business Success, Interactive, Social Media
Great, you now have your Facebook, linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest accounts in place. Fingers on the keyboard and ready to write and hit that submit button. Stop! So now what? Well, you may want to hold off on populating all those accounts. Why, you ask? Well, did you prepare a social brief? How do you know if your audience participates on all the accounts you have signed up for? Have you been monitoring their social media activity on different social communities? If you’re not sure, let’s step back a bit …You develop briefs for print, TV, web, and mobile, so don’t forget to write one for social. I know it can be overwhelming, but if you can create a social strategy that will keep you on point, and you have the talent to help you implement your social accounts, you will become a great social listener and your audience will appreciate it too!
We’ve all heard the phrase, “Content is King”, well before content we need to focus on developing that strategy. This will give you the means and ability to make sense of what you are trying to do, what is the purpose of your social media marketing. By creating a social listening strategy you will understand the importance of “really listening”. In social media, listening is your guide through the continuous online conversations taking place on many social media platforms, being alert and one step ahead, will keep your brand strategy fresh and competitive. Focus on these key steps for success:
1. Who is Your Target Audience(s) and which social platforms to use: Once you have determined who your audience is, it’s imperative to focus on where to engage your audience online. As said earlier, don’t just start opening accounts to social platforms that don’t reflect your brand or your target audience. This could have a negative impact on your marketing campaign and diminish your brand. Research where your audience is already active, capture this data and customize your social media accounts to adapt to your audiences’ socializing habits.
2. Identify the influencers: These are the people who follow, share or friend you. They are more important than the actual volume of traffic. Determining who your influencers are will make all the difference in your listening strategy and ultimately how affectively you have captured the information and affectively communicated with your target audience.
3. What are the keywords and trends in your social world: You want to validate the topics and conversations that matter most to your brand and document them as potential keywords. You then need to determine through social listening if these keywords reflect or resemble the “social speak” that your audience is interested in. Keywords should reflect what’s important to your brand. However, you need to compare your word selection to that of what is being used by your audience. Don’t think traditional marketing here, or specific naming conventions used throughout the industry. Look for real words, used by real people. This approach will help you communicate more successfully with your target audience.
So now that you have your social strategy in place and the talent in place. You can now start selecting your accounts and write content. Make sure you keep it up-to-date and current with specific topics that tie into your brand and relate to your social users…use your customer’s speak, not marketing lingo and always keep it fresh. This will keep your brand on target with your audience…You also need to take a pulse on your brand as it stands today, consistently monitoring social sites that talk about your brand, making sure that your online reputation is strong, active and fresh.
Also, keep in mind that socializing on the Internet is not limited to the traditional social media platforms. Don’t forget about the community blogs, forums and posts, these areas all require your focus and interaction keeping up with conversations across the web to maintain a strong brand presence online and off. Keeping up with what your customers are saying about your product or service will keep you informed and honest about your brand. Yes, this is time consuming, but in the end, the best investment for you to apply, and to keep your brand honest and on target.
Now you are ready to get back to your keyboard and write, and make your Brand a “Social” listener.
Let me know how your social listening strategy has worked for you (do’s / don’ts) and links you might want to share with us pertaining to this topic. Thanks for listening.
by Miriam Hara | Sep 24, 2012 | Advertising, Business Success, Creative, Design
Just how expensive is do it yourself marketing? In an age where technology has everything accessible to pretty much everyone the question begs to be asked… is this smart or not… and how costly is it? Today business owners can create their own logos, tagline statements, ads and websites all on their own. But like everything else in life, you have ask yourself… just because you can… should you? Just like speaking English doesn’t necessarily make you a writer, knowing software such as Photoshop or InDesign doesn’t make you a designer and understanding your market doesn’t make you a “creative thinker”.
Many businesses, B2B, B2C, retail or service proudly give out their business cards or show off their website with “I did it myself” attitude. This always surprises me. Businesses who hire carpenters, electricians or decorators to do up their offices, or even pay extra in rent to be at the right location, will skimp on designing a proper logo, establish a proper tagline and develop a proper site. What is it about the creative part of the Marketing field that makes business people think that it’s just an optional expense when establishing a business? What’s the point of having a website if it isn’t user friendly or it isn’t optimized for user experience so when people actually get to your site they get to access the information that they require effortlessly? How about the copy – if your site isn’t written properly for your target, and more importantly, if the copy written doesn’t take into account keywords for ranking optimization what’s the point of having the site up anyway? Isn’t the whole purpose of having a website to inform and get found on Google in order to call or come to your store?
I once went to a spa that charged me $175 for a 1 hour massage and then gave me a brochure with all their services. The brochure was a mess! Not only was it poorly designed, but it was riddled with typos… words were cut off and even the folding of the brochure was uneven. I felt that charging that much for a massage, the least that the spa should have done is offer their customers a brochure that has the same “upscale” feeling as their pricing! It left me with the feeling that they didn’t want to go that extra mile to sell me… to convince me that they were worth those extra dollars. In this case, good enough just wasn’t.
Most people wouldn’t even consider doing major repairs or transformations to their homes. I too can swing a hammer… most times I even hit the nail. And sawing a 2×4 piece of wood shouldn’t be too complicated, at least I don’t think so… just don’t ask me to saw a right angle! I’ll get it just about right, but not quite. Ask yourself this – if every time you walk into the kitchen and see the work that you did yourself, that isn’t just so… can you live with it?
Contrary to home improvements, the creative part of Business Marketing isn’t something that you can or should ‘live with’. First of all, it isn’t just you living with it… it’s your potential clients and customers that will be subject to it. Designers, writers, and professional marketers don’t just know how to use the tools… they know how to think marketing… they know strategy and market assessment. They do their homework for your business, looking at the competition, evaluating the market, understanding your business. Each of these professional designations (writer, marketer or designer) think in a process to determine the best way to market your business or brand, visually and cohesively… dare I say strategically?
I do understand that designing a logo, developing a tagline and creating a website can get expensive and ultimately it is an expense. But ask yourself how expensive is it to get it all wrong? To ruin your business’ first impression? Or not have the desired result from your website? Before you throw your hands up in the air and tell designers and writers how expensive they are, think of how expensive it would be not to have your business seen in the best light possible, or be found? Sometimes $1 spent poorly is a lot more costly then $1000 spent wisely.
by Madi Secareanu | Jul 19, 2012 | Business Success, Interactive, Social Media
How to Better Leverage Twitter for Business:
Some brands select one social media outlet for their campaigns and do it well. For the most part that outlet is Facebook . Yes, it is a very effective tool for reaching consumers and running campaigns, but let’s not forget about Twitter. To help brands cut through the noise, Twitter has several features that brands can leverage for promotional and engagement campaigns. Here are 5 ways a brand can better leverage Twitter to get loud and reach and engage users.
- Amplify your message with Promoted Tweets
With promoted tweets brands can buy promotional packages to amplify their messages. Promoted tweets can be targeted to search results or to users’ timelines. Promoting tweets in a search allows brands to reach users when they are searching for specific topic, hashtag or term on Twitter. Much like Google search, they appear at the top of the results page. Promoted tweets to timeline reach a brand’s follower base or users who are like their followers. Why is this important? Like I’ve said before, the life of a tweet is generally only a few seconds. Using promoted tweets, a brand can make sure their message is seen. For example, if a brand is running a contest, one quick tweet might not result in many entries, but promoting that tweet will drive higher levels of engagement.
- Get Found by utilizing Promoted Accounts
It’s important for a brand to build a strong Twitter follower base that will then share and amplify the brand message. Also paid, promoted accounts appear in search results and within the Who To Follow section – Twitter’s account recommendation engine that suggests accounts to users. Generating awareness, this can be a useful tool for brands that are new to Twitter and want to introduce themselves and brands looking to get more followers. Brands can also promote their accounts if they are running a campaign or if they are celebrating a milestone.
- Build Behavioural Habits with Twitter Customs
Knowing the Twitter customs and syntax can help a brand integrate itself in the Twitter community. Participating in “Follow Friday” for example can be a part of a brand’s Twitter mandate. Each Friday, Twitter users promote accounts they think their followers should follow. Brands can take part by tweeting #FF of their followers, related accounts, or accounts they find interesting. Before long, and given a brand pushes out interesting content, users will begin including them in Twitter customs. Brands can also create their own customs to engage their followers.
- Make the Right First Impression with Enhanced Profiles
An enhanced profile page allows brands to visually feature important and interesting content. Similar to Facebook Pages’ Cover Photo, brands can add a 835×90 header to their Twitter profile that could be a logo, image, tagline or any other visual branding. They can also feature their content more prominently by highlighting a tweet at the top of their profile, again similar to Facebook Pages’ Pin functionality. Unfortunately, enhanced profiles are currently only available to a select group of brands.
- Make yourself known with Promoted trends
Promoted trends are strategically positioned to amplify the conversation. By promoting a term, a campaign or a hashtag, brands can give Twitter users the opportunity to discover their message quickly and get involved. This can be a great tool for brands that are running contests on Twitter that require users to tweet a specific hashtag to enter.
Has your brand leveraged Twitter and its features to reach and engage users? Were your efforts a success?
by cassie | Jul 18, 2012 | Advertising, Branding, Business Success, Interactive, Social Media
Social Media is a wonderful thing… or it can be! It allows for a brand to engage directly with their customers, one on one… in real-time. It has an incredible and indefinable reach potential. With so much going for it, why is it so hard for Corporations to jump on board? Despite all its accolades, measuring the success of social media remains problematic. Determining ROI is difficult to assess simply because the cost of social media is difficult to assess.
The Creative Group recently did a survey, interviewing more than 250 marketing and advertising executives, and determined that 27% of them found measuring results the biggest road block with social media.
There are multiple factors that contribute to the problem:
- Results aren’t always instantaneous. Social media is used to raise brand awareness and develop customer relationship over long periods of time.
- The value of a “Like” on Facebook can mean different things depending whether or not the customer continues to be engaged after liking a product or page.
- Engagement can be positive or negative.
There are ways, however, to determine the success of your social media campaign based on your goals:
- Awareness: if you want to measure your brands awareness reach and virality are indicators you want to look for. How many people have seen it and how many have shared it?
- Establishing a relationship with customers: if a relationship with customers is your goal you need look at engagement. How many likes and followers do you have? How many people comment and share? Is the discussion positive? Are people retweeting?
- Traffic: Are you trying to drive traffic to a website that sells goods through Facebook? If so, you need to look at actions, number of clicks, cost per clicks and link sharing.
Determining your vision of success enables you to know what to look for once you have the data… then you need to turn all that data into information.
Many social networks provide their on analytic services, for example Facebook insights. Facebook insights allows for a brand to track growth in terms of likes, reach and who is talking about the brand. It provides metrics to let you know where each like came from, to allowing you to evaluate media channels and their success. It provides all kinds of different demographic and geographic profiles… which status posts did well, which didn’t. This allows you to assess the type of future posts to add.
If you looking for the success of a social media campaign outside of the platform used, Google Analytics offers conversion services that helps determine the monetary value gained due to visits directed from social media sites. There are also some very comprehensive dashboard platforms that enables for social media integration.
When determining a brand impression, Sysomos has a service that monitors social media conversation and determines how much of it is positive, negative or neutral.
Knowing how to create and define a successful social media campaign can go a long way in building a brand and achieving a high return on investment. To learn more about ROI, read out blog “Brand Building: How to maximize ROI”
These are just a few of the options available to help make sense of social media. How do you measure your social media campaigns?
by Christine Marr | May 2, 2012 | Branding, Interactive
In today’s market environment we want information instantly and that goes hand in hand with web site performance. We increasingly have a shorter attention span and more and more the concept of brand loyalty is taking on a broader definition than, say, a decade ago. The most relevant reason for all of these to have occurred rests on the “internet”… and more specifically, web sites. It is a property that has taken its place in the brand conversation in junction with social media. No longer can you separate the two. Both combine to provide a stronger brand presence and brand premise. So how can you maximize your ROI on your web site performance and social media. How can you develop, build and maintain that elusive relationship with your consumers, audience and market.
The short answer is that it is no longer important only to get visitors to go to your site… your site is now the basis of the total social media umbrella. Enhancing your web site performance is key. Your web site should be the gateway and the destination through your other social media properties such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Branch Out, Pinterest…. How to do that?
Here’s a quick list:
1. Navigation should be intuitive and make sense. Make your visitor comfortable, it should be easy for them to find what they want from the home page. It goes without saying that you need to look at your competition and see what they are doing. However, you must determine what will provide optimal user experience for your target. The faster and easier the navigation, the more customers will return to your site and stay longer.
2. Content is king… it is important to address your customers’ pain. Do this visually for greatest impact…. and do this copy wise for clarity of position as well as keyword optimization. Find out what keywords are “key” to your industry and speak to them. I am not suggesting that you place every key word on every page… that’s not going to do well. Exercise judgement and common sense. Seasoned marketing professionals and writers will know how to do this well. Make sure you provide your target with a clear understanding of what their pain is, what their needs are and how you can help eliminate their pain. Connect with them on an emotional basis.
3. Again….content is king… it’s important to get in your target’s radar by providing them relevant and timely information. Gone is the the brochure-type of web site. Sites that don’t allow for fresh updates, new posts or tips are losing a huge opportunity in engaging with their customer base and developing a dialogue and relationship with customers. Write tips or mini articles…. share them on Facebook, tweet….regularly and consistently. This will to a long way in gaining the trust of your customers and convince them that you can answer their pain. Blogging is great for keeping your content fresh, so you are found more often.
4. One more time….content is king…. it is no longer important to only get visitors to go to your site… your site needs to motivate them to spend time browsing through your pages withe information that is relevant to them, so much so that they feel compelled to provide their information on your website so then you can engage them on a one to one, or digitally or as part of your community. This is what is called inbound marketing. Create relevant information that lives independently of your site… but still adds value to your potential customers… and adds value to your brand. Web sites need to be built integrating forums or blogs, and providing fresh and diverse information on the home page to continually improve SEO (Search engine optimization) and get found. More importantly this provides a very effective way to generate leads and integrate sales initiatives.
5. Create buzz and excitement driving people through facebook, LinkedIn and traditional and digital media. We are currently running a campaign for Kressmann Wines through Facebook, Twitter, digital and print ads. In less then 24 hours we received over 1400 likes on Facebook and have now started engaging with our community. We are constantly commenting and interfacing with our customers and of course, driving them to the web site as well! This can easily be done in the b2b arenas, niche markets and for community businesses. The digital arena allows for such precise slices of target segments so every dollar you spend is accounted for and relevant!
6. Information, not data, is key as success is in the measurement….! Track your site’s and social media progress and traffic, and respond accordingly. It’s not about just creating a promotion and just leaving it alone. You need to work it! It’s important to set your google analytics properly so you can respond and react to the information you are receiving. Metrics are important to evaluate where your visitors are coming from, why, and what actions they have taken once they land on the site.
7. Keep it fresh… is not only a good adage for food, but for web sites too. Monitor your site on a regular basis. Monitor every page of your site, catch broken links or improve on the elements, make sure pages load quickly. Revisit the site with fresh eyes and fine tune accordingly. Don’t let it go stale. Too often, sites get all the attention when they are being developed and then left alone. That’s a sure way of not being in harmony with the market!
Simple, compelling, engaging, fresh, exciting and trackable. Make your site work for you! Achieve inner peace with your site… Ohmmm.
