Archive for the ‘Channels’ Category

Using Twitter for Marketing and PR: Do the Pros Practice What They Preach?

By Kent Huffman, Chief Marketing Officer at BearCom Wireless and Co-Publisher of Social Media Marketing Magazine

It seems that everyone claims to be a Twitter expert these days. Of course, most are not. But several of the real Twitter pros I know—including those who have written books about using Twitter as an effective marketing and public relations instrument—have figured out how to best leverage the 140-character microblogging tool to promote themselves, their books, their firms, and their clients. And some of them actually follow their own advice!

How Smart Marketing Book Authors Use Twitter

The Tao of TwitterFor example, Mark Schaefer of Schaefer Marketing Solutions is the author of the book The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time. He and his firm provide affordable outsourced marketing support to address both short-term sales opportunities and long-term strategic renewal.

Mark uses Twitter to help deliver on that promise for a number of his blue-chip clients, including Nestle, AARP, Anheuser-Busch, Coldwell Banker, Scripps Networks, Keystone Foods, and the U.K. government. He also very effectively promotes himself and his book on Twitter as part of his own marketing, branding, and relationship-development strategy.

“I’ve literally built my business from networking on Twitter and connections from my blog,” Mark said. “That’s what most people miss. Twitter can be a powerful business networking platform. It’s so much more than ‘what you had for breakfast!’ ”

Hollis Thomases is the CEO of Web Ad.vantage. She is also the author of Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day, a book that offers marketers, advertisers, brand managers, PR professionals, and business owners an in-depth guide to designing, implementing, and measuring the impact of using a complete Twitter strategy.

Hollis uses Twitter to generate qualified website traffic that gets converted into actions, leads, and sales for her clients, most of which are challenger brands or large non-profit organizations.

Much like Mark, Hollis’ strategy includes using Twitter as an effective promotional tool for her book and firm. She also leverages Twitter to expand her speaking engagement schedule, which features topics such as “Social Media 101,” “Twitter Automation,” and “Social Media Etiquette.”

And finally, Laura Fitton, co-author of Twitter for Dummies and founder/CEO of oneforty, has been an active Twitter user for some time. She has amassed approximately 80,000 followers and engages with them daily.

Laura’s firm helps people get started with Twitter, organize the chaos of their daily social media routines, and connect their social media efforts to their core business to drive ROI.

“The single most important thing is to make yourself useful, which you can do by curating great content, answering questions, shining a spotlight on others, and trying to turn everything inside-out to make it more about your readers,” noted Laura. “I tell people to ‘Listen. Learn. Care. Serve.’ (in that order), and then keep cycling through that process.”

Twitter’s Impact on How Journalists Search for SMEs

In an environment where fewer and fewer journalists are covering more and more stories than ever before, media members are increasingly taking a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” approach to finding sources and stories to cover. Rather than waiting around to be pitched by traditional PR reps, many media members are looking for their own sources—not only Google and HARO, but Twitter as well—to search for and connect with subject matter experts (SMEs). Book authors and other experts who have built digital platforms that showcase their credentials and provide valuable information on their topics have widened their nets to catch such queries on Twitter.

Beth Gwazdosky is the Vice President of Digital Marketing at Shelton Interactive, an Austin-based firm that works with its author clients to create social media and interactive marketing/PR strategies and platforms that generate attention—online and off. “We help our authors understand how best to use Twitter and other social media channels to stand out in this new environment,” said Beth. “Creating strategies to organically pull media hits, speaking opportunities, and client relationships has proven to be much more efficient than trying to pitch our way onto the air.”

So if you’re interested in promoting yourself, your book, your organization, or your clients, why not use Twitter to your advantage? But don’t jump in without a well-thought-out strategy. Pay attention to the real Twitter pros who are actually practicing what they preach, and then emulate their approach.

Posted in Blogs, Branding, Channels, Content, Customers, Demand Generation, Engagement, Google, HARO, Integrated Marketing, Interaction, Journalism, Kent Huffman, Lead Generation, Listening, Marketing, Promotions, Public Relations, Relationship Marketing, Relationships, ROI, Sales, Strategy, Twitter | Comments Off on Using Twitter for Marketing and PR: Do the Pros Practice What They Preach?

Social Media Marketing on a Shoestring

By Kent Huffman, Chief Marketing Officer at BearCom Wireless and Co-Publisher of Social Media Marketing Magazine

If you’re a small business owner or manager—or even a corporate marketing executive with a very limited budget—and you’ve been wondering how you could leverage social media to help grow your business, you’re definitely not alone. Almost every marketer I know is having to deal with limited financial resources in 2011, primarily because of the challenging economic times we’re facing right now. So what do you do?

No Money? No Matter!

In most cases, success in social media marketing doesn’t necessarily require a large financial investment. But depending on your level of involvement, it may demand a significant commitment of time. Jessie Paul, author of the book, No Money Marketing: From Upstart to Big Brand on a Frugal Budget, says, “Unlike media such as TV, radio, print, or even Google Adwords, which are capital intensive (i.e., the more money you have, the more successful you are likely to be), social media in its current form is labor intensive.” But because of the magnitude of the potential opportunities presented by social media marketing, that investment is often a wise one. Jessie goes on to say, “Social media gives marketers a chance to be in direct contact with customers. That is very hard to get in any other media and is worth quite a bit of experimentation to achieve.”

I’ve been active on various social media sites (including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) since early 2009 and have been amazed at the benefits and opportunities that activity has brought to me and my company in a relatively short period of time. As Jessie suggested, I didn’t have to invest very much of my marketing budget to reach my social media marketing goals, but I did spend a lot of time developing strategy, content, and most importantly, relationships. I have to say it has been worth every minute.

Key Social Media Channels and Sites

If you’re just starting down the social media marketing path, an important first step toward making the most of the online social scene for your business is to select the right channels and tools to use. Robbin Block, author of the book, Social Persuasion: Making Sense of Social Media for Small Business, says, “Knowing your own abilities and the impression you’re trying to make can play a big part in the types of sites you choose. There’s a big difference between creating original content and simply participating. For example, posting a response or voting is much different than writing an article. If you’re a creator—that is, you have the time, talent, or inclination to create original material—then content sites are a good choice.”

“Whether you choose to be a creator, a participant, or a blend of both depends on your strategy,” adds Robbin. “Certain types of small businesses are a natural fit with particular social media categories. For example, a speaker might post a video on YouTube, list events in online calendars (like Yahoo! Upcoming), and upload presentations to SlideShare. If you’re short on budget but long on talent, that may help you decide. Writers may choose blogs, videographers may choose content sites, social animals may choose networks, and subject experts may choose Q&As.”

Reaping the Benefits of Conversations

Once you’ve selected the right social media channels and sites for your individual situation, you’re ready to join the discussion, build relationships, and ultimately reap the benefits.

Recently, Network Solutions and the University of Maryland (UM) conducted a compelling study about the use of social media in small businesses. “Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service,” says Janet Wagner, Director of the Center for Excellence at UM’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “Time spent on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete.” Connie Steele, Director at Network Solutions, added, “Tough market conditions mandate small businesses to think and act creatively to sustain themselves. Social media can be the best friend for small business owners who constantly seek new ways to maximize productivity while keeping costs low.”

And those same challenges apply to most every marketer, no matter how small or large his or her organization may be. Eric Fletcher is the Chief Marketing Officer at McGlinchey Stafford (a commercial law firm based in New Orleans) and is one of the most popular CMOs on Twitter. He frequently writes about social media marketing-related issues. Eric says, “The ultimate goal of any social media marketing effort should be to enhance the brand and move forward on a continuum that leads to a new or deeper relationship with the target. Nothing accelerates the establishment and deepening of relationships like the give-and-take of conversations on social media.”

Eric is also acutely aware of the budgetary challenges marketers are facing today. “In an environment where marketing budgets are frozen (if not shrinking), a robust social media strategy is based more on the investment of time than dollars,” he notes. “We have always understood two things: the value of word-of-mouth marketing and the need to ‘fish where the fish swim.’ In social media, those two essentials come together—giving any enterprise, regardless of budget, a way to have a daily conversation with a world of prospective customers.”

Posted in Blogs, Budget, Channels, Content, Conversations, Customers, Facebook, Kent Huffman, LinkedIn, Marketing, Relationships, SlideShare, Small Businesses, Strategy, Tools, Twitter, Word of Mouth, YouTube | Comments Off on Social Media Marketing on a Shoestring

Are We There Yet? Tuning Up Your Metrics

By Marian Burk Wood, Author of The Marketing Plan Handbook

Before you roll out a new social media marketing program, be ready to answer one key question about results: are we there yet? Here’s a roadmap for tuning up your metrics so you’ll know where you’re headed and how to track progress along the way.

Look Ahead, Look Behind

Just as your GPS needs a street address to plot a route, you need three types of specific objectives to serve as destinations for your social media activities:

  1. Marketing objectives for brand building and relationship building (such as targets for brand awareness or customer acquisition). Ford’s campaign for the new Fiesta—initially a social media event reinforced by traditional media—set (and achieved) objectives for brand impressions and awareness as well as pre-launch information requests. In the follow-up to P&G’s super-viral Old Spice Guy campaign, one marketing objective was to attract a million Facebook fans to the brand’s social media “sacred club,” part of the push to increase brand awareness and change consumer attitudes.
  2. Financial objectives for money-related results (such as sales and profitability—by channel, by customer, etc.). QVC can set sales objectives for sales driven from its Facebook page (which has 300,000-plus “likes”) and its Twitter presence (more than 30,000 followers), track repeat business, and calculate profit by product and channel.
  3. Societal objectives that give your social media marketing a larger purpose (such as raising money for a worthy cause). P&G’s Dawn relied on the brand’s Facebook and Twitter interactions to get customers involved in achieving its target of donating $500,000 to wildlife conservation organizations.

And to steer clear of potholes, don’t forget to check the rearview mirror—learn from how and why existing programs hit bumpy roads in the past.

Prepare to Shift into High Gear

With objectives in place, your next step is to set up standards and a timetable for checking these metrics:

  • Compass points. Are you going in the right direction? For marketing objectives related to brand awareness or preference, metrics such as the number of Facebook “likes” and the number of positive blog comments can give you a sense of whether you’re gaining ground, standing still, or going south. QVC, for instance, regularly monitors the number and sentiment of comments on each blog post, promotional tweet, and Facebook post. Bounce rates, referral rates, and engagement duration are other compass points; think of indicators that make sense for your objectives and business.
  • Mile markers. You should be able to estimate how far along you need to be at various points in the journey so you can make interim adjustments as needed. For example, are you attracting and converting enough visitors every day/week/month to reach your long-term targets? Check these metrics early and often to avoid nasty last-minute surprises. QVC drills down into its sales statistics—sometimes minute by minute—to determine whether each product or promotion is on the right track and make mid-course corrections as necessary.
  • Speed. How quickly are you moving toward your destination? Look at viral rates for your communications to analyze how quickly you’re gaining new friends, subscribers, or customers (depending on your objectives), and investigate unusual lags or patterns in response to social media initiatives. If something is working especially well, use it to accelerate your results.

Now you’re all set to hit the road and put the pedal to the metal!

Posted in Awareness, Blogs, Branding, Cause Marketing, Channels, Engagement, Facebook, Ford, Marian Burk Wood, Marketing, Measurement, Metrics, Profitability, Promotions, Relationships, Sales, Twitter | Comments Off on Are We There Yet? Tuning Up Your Metrics

Five Useful Tips on Developing Social Media Conversations with Your Customers

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 | Comments Off on Five Useful Tips on Developing Social Media Conversations with Your Customers

Mobile Marketing: The Most Exciting Channel to Reach Your Audience

By Celene Mesa, Owner of Mesa Mobile Marketing

Does your business need more customers? How about something that is fast, targeted, inexpensive, and elicits immediate response? Then think mobile marketing, the most exciting channel available today to reach your audience.

Mobile marketing is a form of advertising communicated through a cell phone or smartphone that receives SMS (short message service) messages. Each SMS can be up to 160 characters in length and most commonly is referred to as a text (TXT). Text messages are safe and spam free.

Mobile media campaigns are accomplished through a software program that includes a customer database with SMS capabilities. When utilizing mobile media, a short code and keyword are integral parts of the program. The code is a 5- or 6-digit number that is used in lieu of a 10-digit phone number. This makes opting in faster and easier. The keyword is chosen by your business for your campaign and is used in your call to action. SMS are sent to willing participants only because the customer or potential customer must opt in.

Let’s say you own a restaurant named the Sandwich Board, and you want to start a mobile marketing campaign. To get your customers to opt in to your program and join your database, you should place enticing signs everywhere throughout the restaurant: on doors, counters, registers, and receipts; on the floor and hanging from the ceiling; even on employee name tags and buttons. Be creative. Make them eye catching and fun. For example, your sign could say:

“Join our VIP Club and receive timely specials! Text BOARD to 90210 to receive a FREE soda with your order today!”

When your customer sends that text message, the preset mobile media software program immediately sends a bounce back notice to the recipient’s phone, such as this example.

You have now successfully begun to build your opt-in mobile marketing database!

So do mobile marketing campaigns really pay off? They certainly can! For example, the mobile marketing push to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake earlier this year was the most successful SMS campaign to date. Tens of millions of dollars were raised by inviting donors to text HAITI to 90999. Because the request was well advertised, people responded immediately.

A call to action is critical to the success of mobile media. Consider that:

  • 4.1 billion text messages are sent and received every day.
  • 740 billion text messages were sent in the U.S. in the first half of 2009.
  • 97% of all SMS marketing messages are opened; 83% in the first hour.

According to the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), more than 89% of the major brands plan to market their services via mobile phones. Wireless marketing is expected to be one of the fastest-growing market segments for the next two to three years. And Google agrees. Says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “The next big wave in marketing is the mobile Internet. Yes, mobile marketing will be a bigger business than the PC Web.”

Opt-in is key and is the primary reason mobile media is already showing much higher ROI than more traditional forms of marketing. If promoted effectively, your opt-in database will grow each day. Keep campaigns simple, and you will be amazed at your ROI and the loyalty of your brand’s following.

Posted in Celene Mesa, Channels, Marketing, Mobile Marketing, SMS | Comments Off on Mobile Marketing: The Most Exciting Channel to Reach Your Audience

LinkedIn: How to Properly Plant It into Your Social Media Marketing Landscape

By Kent Huffman, Chief Marketing Officer at BearCom Wireless and Co-Publisher of Social Media Marketing Magazine

LinkedIn is just one of a myriad of popular tools available in today’s rapidly growing and evolving social media world. So how do you justify the effort required to sow and nurture your presence on LinkedIn, especially the time and resources that could be invested elsewhere?

Lewis Howes (LinkedIn and Twitter) is a noted social media speaker and entrepreneur and co-author of the book, LinkedIn Working: Generating Success on the World’s Largest Professional Networking Web Site. Lewis thinks there a number of good reasons for putting down some of your social media marketing roots around LinkedIn. “With more than $109,000 as the average household income per user on LinkedIn (a far greater average than Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or the other popular social networking sites) and close to 45% of its members being business decision makers (versus 25-29% on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace), LinkedIn really is the place to be,” says Lewis. “It’s a great tool that can help you generate more leads and sales, drive traffic to your Web site, attract investors, control your personal brand, find your dream job or freelancing gigs, locate the right employees, build your database, get free PR, and position yourself or your company as a thought leader.”

But even if you agree that LinkedIn needs to be a focus for you or your company, how do you create a successful, impactful profile that will attract the right people and help accomplish your social media marketing goals?

Viveka von Rosen (LinkedIn and Twitter) is a successful entrepreneur, nationally renowned IA-certified LinkedIn trainer, and popular social media speaker. She is also the principal at Linked Into Business. Viveka teaches her clients and audiences that success on LinkedIn depends on several key actions. “Treat your LinkedIn profile like a Web site, and make sure it’s formatted, clean, and most importantly, filled with search engine-friendly keywords,” Viveka suggests. “Join strategically selected LinkedIn groups, and then invite members of those groups to join your network. You might even consider creating your own group. Then fill it with interesting and relevant information.”

Social Media Delivered, one of the largest and most respected social media optimization companies worldwide, is led by CEO Eve Orsburn (LinkedIn and Twitter). Eve believes that LinkedIn is a necessary component of any successful social media marketing strategy, especially in the business-to-business realm. “LinkedIn is the largest professional networking Web site in the world, with more than 65 million members,” Eve notes. “It’s also the most affluent social media tool and is ideal for reaching prospects in the B2B world, finding a job, obtaining venture capital, forming business partnerships, and growing your business.”

In the final analysis, it’s all about results. With the right strategy, tactics, and mindset, LinkedIn will quickly become an important part of your social media marketing landscape and will grow stronger and stronger over time, delivering measurable, repeatable results. This is especially true if you keep in mind the primary rules of social media: listen and learn first, share your knowledge, add value, always be authentic, and help others before you ask for help. On a related note, Viveka adds, “Remember to ‘give to’ more than you try and ‘get from’ other LinkedIn members. That’s the most important key to success.”

Posted in B2B, Channels, Eve Orsburn, Facebook, Kent Huffman, Lewis Howes, LinkedIn, Marketing, MySpace, Strategy, Tools, Twitter, Viveka von Rosen | Comments Off on LinkedIn: How to Properly Plant It into Your Social Media Marketing Landscape

In the Trenches: The Reality of Social Media for Business

By Amy Howell, CEO of Howell Marketing Strategies

2009 will be viewed as the year that the social media tidal wave hit, taking most businesses by surprise. But 2010 rings in promising new opportunities, more optimism in the economy, increased advances in technology, and with it, increased focus on digital marketing and social media marketing for most businesses.

In social media, like anything else, practice and learning by doing makes us better. We learn from mistakes and get better as we go—just like surfing. Kudos go out to those individuals and organizations who grabbed their boards, jumped in, and attempted riding this dynamic, changing wave.

According to MediaPost, 2010 will be the year of reckoning for marketers and social media. Forrester Research released a list in December 2009 predicting that companies will create cross-functional teams aimed at sharing ideas about social media and will get serious about budgets, efforts, and policies. The report also suggests that an “increasing number of marketers will adopt listening platforms to monitor social media.” A lot has been published online recently about predictions, trends, and stats, so I won’t repeat it all here, but it’s out there—just Google it!

So here’s the question: Boil all of this down, and what does social media really mean for businesses? As the owner of a PR and marketing firm, I have daily contact with every client of our firm, and many are still asking, “What does social media have to do with our business?” My response: Everything or nothing. We have advanced some clients’ strategies and have been able to point to some revenue generation due to social media engagement. And that is the key: engagement.

Social media itself is not a strategy. Success means using social media strategies to drive traffic to businesses to create opportunities, develop relationships (human interaction), and generate sales that actualize revenue. So from the daily trenches, here are some of my experiences that I share, hoping they are helpful.

  • Expect and anticipate the continued debate over social media ROI, especially for small businesses. We hear a lot about large corporate users, but remember that they have the resources (both human and financial) to use social media. The irony here is that the smaller the organization, the better the results (and speed to market) of the campaign. So if you are a small business, that means you have really big opportunities. Large companies are often too bureaucratic and political to agree, collaborate, and move quickly, and some spend too much time letting lawyers and HR dictate strategy (which is not the right way to do it, in my opinion).
  • View social media as a positive for your business! It’s giving us access like never before. You can ask a question on Twitter, for example, and get great advice and answers from some of the most brilliant people in the world. How cool is that? If you use Twitter correctly, you don’t need a research assistant.
  • Use traditional marketing planning to mirror key social media strategies. Social media is not an alternative to traditional marketing but a vehicle to advance what’s always worked. Get your plan together, focus on creative ways to market your business (generate revenue), and then apply the appropriate social media strategies to the plan. Budget for the time—and the resources—it will take to implement social media strategies. That can be a challenge for small companies, yet the rewards are far too promising.
  • Establish a corporate policy based on the appropriate culture, goals, and objectives of your organization. The best policies are the simple ones, and getting key players in the business together on the same page when it comes to social media is critical. Social media will fail if the stakeholders and/or owners don’t agree. For example, Kodak has one of the best social media tips and policies document I have seen. It’s brief, straightforward, and there is no way you can misinterpret its intent.
  • One of the most important issues to consider when applying social media strategies is the value of communication. Never in the history of business has it been so easy and efficient to communicate with mass amounts of people (customers, potential customers, the media, etc). What price can you put on that?
  • Pick your social media channel. The main channels and tools for businesses will be Web sites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. There are certain strategies appropriate for certain vehicles.
  • If nothing else, listen and learn! Use social media as a way to monitor what is happening and take advantage of information. For example, Twitter is a great way to listen and monitor due to its real-time search feature.

Never in my 25 years in corporate marketing has there been this much excitement, and 2010 will be the year for organizations to realize actual revenue for their social media efforts.

Posted in Amy Howell, Channels, Facebook, Marketing, Twitter, YouTube | Comments Off on In the Trenches: The Reality of Social Media for Business