Archive for January, 2011

Five Useful Tips on Developing Social Media Conversations with Your Customers

January 26th, 2011

By Kenneth Cossin, Professor at Full Sail University

As marketers, we have heard so much about how social media allows us to rapidly build our brand, get the word out regarding our products and services, target different demographics, and optimize consumer engagement. Yet we need to take social marketing to the next level.

Thus, I pose the question: Is your company simply using social media channels to create an online marketing presence, or is it creating social media conversations with your customers?

For example, as a professor at Full Sail University, my students are my customers. I use many different social media channels to get each student to “buy into” my courses. I develop student engagement, but then I also intentionally develop a professional relationship with each individual student. By doing so, each student gains a sense of personal investment in my courses.

Here are my five tips for creating social media conversations with your customers:

1. Your attention, please! Gaining our customer’s attention is pretty simple for us marketers. It is something that we have been doing since before the days of social media. Thus, continue to bring attention to your brand and develop your brand story through your social media channels.

2. Get your customers to opt in. Remember, everyone loves a good story. Therefore, the better your brand tells your business story, the more customers you will get to opt in. Once you have an engaged consumer, it is imperative that you learn what attracted him/her to your business. Traditional marketing methods of gathering metrics on your customers remain important. And with social media, you can discover why a customer is choosing you.

3. Determine your customers’ individuality. Find unique ways to get your customers to tell you how they found you. What about your customers makes them choose you? How are you fulfilling their unique wants and needs? What incentives do you provide to keep your customers engaged?

4. Focus on conversation. Typically, businesses will ask customers a series of questions through the use of impersonal surveys, questionnaires, or cold calls. At this point, many marketers usually stop. With social media, you cannot stop here. You must follow through and build a personal conversation by leveraging social media in new and unique ways. So what are we to do?

5. Develop interaction. Through the use of social media interaction, periodically make intentional contact with your customers. Remember to treat your customer as you would a good friend. We do things for our friends because we care about them; thus, demonstrate to your customers who connect with you through social media that you care about them. Communicate with them. Give them the service they deserve: prompt responses, incentives, and other cool offers. You will receive in return the continued trust and loyalty you need and desire to grow your business.

Posted in Branding, Channels, Conversations, Engagement, Incentives, Individuality, Interaction, Kenneth Cossin, Loyalty, Marketing, Metrics, Relationships, Trust | 1 Comment »

“Mocial” Marketing: 10 Things You Need to Know

January 19th, 2011

By Steve Jarrett, Chief Executive Officer of MePlease

To help retailers seize the opportunity afforded by mobile marketing and social networking—or “mocial” marketing—we have come up with the top 10 tips that we believe need to be worked through to position your brand effectively for your new generation of customers.

1. Mobile marketing goes way beyond text. The first tip is that mobile and social media are meshing, and so should you. There is tremendous power in the integration of social networking and mobile, and we think this marketing sweet spot is the place to be.

2. Why mobile matters—stats don’t lie. A recent study showed that UK consumers send 11 million text messages per hour (MDA Report, 2009). Text usage remains dominant. Facebook’s 500 million customers follow at least one brand or company, while at the same time, nearly 50% of Twitter’s 190 million unique users do exactly the same (ExactTarget Research). A Harris Interactive poll recently showed that of consumers who received some form of permission-based text marketing from a company, 34% said the messages have made them more likely to visit the venue and 27% more likely to make a purchase.

3. In search of the holy grail. Moving from one-to-many to one-to-one communication is the holy grail of marketing.

4. Reach everyone (not just smartphone users). iPhone apps are this season’s must have. Or are they? Focusing on just mobile applications for certain devices like iPhone or Android smartphones automatically pushes you into a corner and limits a retailer’s ability to reach its target market.

5. Voucher promiscuity—how to discourage it. There’s a number of high-profile companies—such as Groupon and Vouchercloud—that are driving high-volume customer acquisition. Don’t get it wrong—new customer acquisition is good, but only if a significant number of those customers visit your business again.

6. Mocial is the new buzzword. Many people think of mobile marketing as a 160-character version of e-mail. Wrong! The very nature of mobile marketing offers retailers the opportunity to reach people at key decision-making moments of the day.

7. Make mobile social marketing cost effective. We think the trend is moving away from one-off mobile marketing campaigns (which can be costly) toward mobile marketing platforms that let any business engage with opted-in customers. Look for companies that offer you long-term value and social media integration.

8. Trust. Seek mobile and social networking partners that have strict privacy policies and will not pass on customer information or send out spam messages just to drive their own short-term revenue.

9. Set goals early. Before even approaching a mobile marketing service provider or platform, be sure to outline the key goals for your mocial strategy. Whether it is to gain more loyal customers, influence their friends, or just get more people into your shop, make your objectives clear to the provider. If they cannot tell you explicitly how they intend to help you to accomplish these goals, keep looking.

10. Don’t wait. Start now. Carpe diem! Those Romans knew a thing or two about communication…

Posted in Coupons, E-Mail, Facebook, Marketing, Mobile Applications, Mobile Marketing, Mocial Marketing, Permission Marketing, Retail, Smartphones, Spam, Steve Jarrett, Text Messages, Trust, Twitter | No Comments »

Twitterviews: A New Medium for an Interview

January 12th, 2011

By John Foley, Jr., Chief Marketing Officer at Grow Socially

What is a Twitterview? It is where people have a live interview on Twitter.

So how does it work? The first step to making your Twitterview a successful promotional tool is to create its hashtag. A hashtag is simply the pound symbol (#), followed by the name of the Twitterview. The name cannot have any spaces or punctuation in it. An example of a Twitterview name with its hashtag would be “#FoleyOnSocialMedia.” You would use “#FoleyOnSocialMedia” in order to search for it on Twitter as well. Once the hashtag is created, the best way to promote your Twitterview to your audience is by announcing it in all of your social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, Web site, etc.).

While the interview is happening, you must always include the designated hashtag for that specific interview in each tweet. This way, every tweet that is exchanged during the Twitterview will show up when your audience searches its hashtag.

I recently participated in a Twitterview with the topic of “QR Codes and Video Tags in Tourism.” By taking part in this hour-long discussion, I was able to interact with tourism marketers from all over the country, including Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, California, and Montana. These were just the people who were actively participating in the discussion; however, I was probably promoting myself to many others who were just following along.

Throughout the Twitterview, we all discussed where QR codes can appear, where the codes can direct a person to, and why they would be useful and beneficial for the user. I was able to promote myself, QR codes, and QReateandTrack, a QR code service that one of my businesses provides. Using the Twitterview, I was able to promote myself in a variety of ways. The first way was by introducing myself with: “Hi, I’m @JohnFoleyJr from @interlinkONE. #TourismChat.” Here, I attached my Twitter handle, “@JohnFoleyJr,” my business’ Twitter handle, “@interlinkONE,” and the Twitterview hashtag, “#TourismChat.” In that one little tweet, I shared links to my personal Twitter profile and interlinkONE’s Twitter profile.

Further into the discussion, someone asked where he could learn more information about QR codes. I responded to this inquiry by including the person’s Twitter handle in the tweet followed with: “If interested, whitepaper here: #QRCodes ‘Using QR Codes to Reach the Busy, Mobile Consumer:’ http://ilnk.me/5058. #TourismChat.“ Here, I not only acknowledged a participant’s request for more information, but I also shared the link with everyone who was following the Twitterview.

Meanwhile, a representative from interlinkONE joined the Twitterview as well by using QReateandTrack’s Twitter handle, “@QReateandTrack.” While using this, she was able to answer questions and promote QReateandTrack on behalf of interlinkONE. Some of the ways she was able to give great tips, answer questions, and share links were by tweeting:

  • “@QReateandTrack: QReateAndTrack.com. There you can create the QR code and also track it. You can see where and when it was scanned. #TourismChat”
  • “@QReateandTrack: You could go about finding more info by setting up a landing page and asking people for more info. That would work. #TourismChat”
  • “@QReateandTrack: We created this poster: http://ilnk.me/5065. Each time it is scanned, the QR code changes its response. Try it out! #TourismChat”

Remember, Twitter only allows your tweets to contain a maximum of 140 characters, so that is why the tweets have to be very blunt and straightforward.

When the Twitterview was close to conclusion, I gave a few final suggestions and tips by tweeting:

  • “@JohnFoleyJr: Tracking needs to go beyond a scan to a page. Metrics are important. #TourismChat”
  • “@JohnFoleyJr: Don’t think big brother! Think reaching the mobile audience. #TourismChat”

Lastly, I thanked all of the attendees for joining the Twitterview and gave one last promotion of myself and the representatives from interlinkONE: “@JohnFoleyJr: Thanks! Any questions, ask me PLEASE! Or follow @QReateandTrack or @JasonPinto. #TourismChat.”

Twitterviews can be extremely useful when you are trying to market to a new group of people or industry. By participating in these online discussions, you are able to make a lot of connections in a short amount of time, and you can learn a lot as well. Take the time to do some searches on your favorite hashtags, and if you want to conduct your own Twitterview, ask some of your favorite tweeters to join in. Good luck!

Posted in Facebook, Hashtags, John Foley Jr., Promotions, QR Codes, Tourism, Trackability, Twitter, Twitterviews | 3 Comments »

Reaching Beyond Your Own Space

January 5th, 2011

By Jay Miletsky, Co-Author of Perspectives on Marketing, Perspectives on Branding, and Perspectives on Social Media Marketing

Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed a very interesting trend among people—small business owners and managers, especially—looking to improve their marketing through social media efforts. They started out skeptical (can this really work for my company?), moved on to anxious (I’ve got to start a social media marketing program, fast!), graduated to proud (I’ve started a blog and a Facebook fan page!), and have now increasingly settled on disappointed (this social media stuff really hasn’t done much for my business).

It’s a sad state of affairs, really, that so many business owners and marketing managers are reaching a point of disillusionment when it comes to their social media marketing efforts. But it’s a virus that seems to be spreading—a quick search on Facebook through practically any industry will show a veritable wasteland of abandoned fan pages that seemed to be launched in earnest, updated with regularity, and abruptly forgotten about when new wall posts failed to generate user interaction and fan counts never reached much beyond an early round of invites to friends and family.

The problem isn’t social media as a discipline, however. The problem is that too many marketers take the lazy way out—or at least fail to realize that small business success in the social space requires more effort than simply launching and updating a fan page and expecting people will engage you there. Even a remote control car only moves when someone’s at the controls steering it.

To gain a following (blog readers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, etc.), marketers need to reach beyond their own social space:

  • Don’t just write posts on your own blog. Reach out to industry blogs to guest write for them.
  • Read popular industry blogs on a daily basis. Zero in on one or two posts you feel strongly about—or at least have an opinion on—and leave a comment. Make it thoughtful and informative, and, if possible, leave it early in the morning, so it’s one of the first comments of the day. That way, other readers will be more likely to read what you have to say.
  • When you comment on someone else’s blog, always remember to leave a standard signature with your name and company name, as well as links to your site/blog, fan page, and Twitter site.
  • Don’t simply leave wall posts on your Facebook fan page. Look for larger organizations on Facebook that have fan or group pages where you can reach a broader audience. For example, suppose you’re marketing a hospital. Don’t limit your interactions to your own wall and fans. There are Facebook groups on general health topics as well as specific topics like breast cancer that literally have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of followers. Posting topics there or commenting on other posts will help expose your brand page to many of those followers.
  • Find #hashtag conversations on Twitter related to your industry, and join in those conversations to build a following.
  • Check out LinkedIn Groups and see where you can add your thoughts to existing conversations or start your own thread based on topics that will be relevant to you and the group.

Most of all, as with any other form of marketing, success requires a consistent effort. Results are rarely, if ever, seen immediately, and only those who persevere through audience droughts will be around to feel the flood.

Posted in Blogs, Consistency, Disillusionment, Facebook, Hashtags, Jay Miletsky, LinkedIn, Marketing, Twitter | No Comments »