Tag

Social Media

Nov 16
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How Social Media Has Actually Made Marketing Easier, Not Harder

By Communications, Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Social Media

There are a LOT of articles and blog posts out there warning the business world that social marketing is the One True Way. CMOs that are not using Big Data acquired through myriad, massively integrated social platforms might be out of a job soon. Social has replaced advertising. Etc. Etc. Etc. It can be very intimidating if you’re used to marketing your products in more traditional ways. The ROI of a social program can be hard to calculate. There are many companies making a nice living just trying to help marketers compute it!

But I’d like to argue that the era of social marketing has actually made your job easier.

Social tools add complexity, it’s true. They can fragment the marketing budgets and team. Hooking all these social listening and sharing platforms up so you can make sense of your customers’ online habits and predilections can add a lot of work, both in the short and long term.

But the transparency of messaging that social marketing requires actually takes a lot off the table. Since spin and backpedaling are really not effective anymore, it’s actually easier to decide what to do. The kind of content you create, the strategy you develop, and the systems you use to communicate can all be much simpler because they are designed to do one thing–explain what you’re going to do and how. You’re not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince someone to buy something of questionable value anymore. Their peers are going to provide the validating information about you and your offering that they need, not you.

It all comes down to doing what you promise and then enabling the satisfied to amplify their satisfaction via social channels. No more lying, covering, shaping, hiding, reacting. All you have to do is explain, clarify, and deliver.

Isn’t that why you’re in business to begin with?

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Oct 31
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Can you be Dr. Jekyll AND Mr. Hyde on Facebook?

By Social Media

It’s a challenge many of us face — straddling the chasm between our personal and professional lives or the personality we have among friends and the personality we have with, say, our grandmothers.

It’s not that we’re necessarily two different people altogether, it’s just that some content we want to share with friends, and some we really don’t want our grandma to see.

So who to be on Facebook, Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? And can you successfully manage being two different people on that social network? 

My first piece of advice is this: DO NOT HAVE TWO DIFFERENT PROFILES. First of all, it’s weird. Second, it makes it really hard for people to figure out which one of you they should be friends with.

Instead, manage who sees what by developing lists. For some, that list may be “Grandma and Mom,” or “Colleagues,” or “Exes from Texas.” The other list, the one you share ALL your crazy stuff with, may be simply “Friends.”

For me, I have lists like “Besties” and “Charlottesville” — the town where I live. I have “Business Contacts” and “Family.” Separating my friends into categories serves another purpose; it keeps me from boring the pants off of the people who just don’t really care about my Pinterest pins, my social activities or my cousin’s wedding.

This means, of course, that I have to manage my posting more carefully — I have to actually select to whom any given post is visible. It takes work!

Is it worth it? Well, for those of you struggling to maintain some kind of illusion with your grandmother, I suppose it is.

To get started, click on Friends in the sidebar and Create List. Give your list a name you’ll remember so you can, at a glance, know who’s included in that distribution.

Now, when I post an update, I can select from my list to decide who gets to see that update. For example, if I want to post something relevant to my St. Louis friends, I would select only that list.

It’s a bit cumbersome, sure, but can save a few embarrassing conversations with Grandma over the Thanksgiving turkey.

Facebook has also built in a setting that defaults to the LAST LIST TO WHICH YOU POSTED. So be careful to select the right audience before you post.

Editor’s note: Seriously — go see Jekyll and Hyde at Play On Theatre in Charlottesville this week — it’s spooktacular!

Oct 29
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Four Ways to Use Social Platforms to Drive E-commerce Sales

By Communications, Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Social Media

With all the blogging, sharing, news articles and conferences that tout and exploit the uses of social media, you’d think the idea of using it to drive e-commerce sales would be a no-brainer. I mean everyone’s doing that, right? Anyone with an online storefront MUST be using their Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and Pinterest boards to drive traffic to product landing pages, right?

Turns out, not everyone understands that, especially in B2C. I was at a training session yesterday with one of our favorite retail clients, teaching them the amazing benefits of Sprout Social. This is a pretty great social media dashboard tool that allows you to manage all your social media presences from one location. As I was helping them hook it all up, I was also asking how these platforms were being used so far. Were they promoting items in the store? Sharing design ideas from their own people? Promoting designers and products outside of the store? Driving traffic to their online web store?

Turns out they were really only using their social platforms to promote things outside their store–designers, other Pinterest boards, other blogs. They weren’t really using the social tools to drive everyone back to their OWN store, either online or bricks and mortar.

I was very surprised, to say the least. But it made me think that maybe they weren’t alone, especially if they were a small business with limited time and resources. So here are some things you can do right now to help drive more sales using social tools.

  1. Set up a Facebook page and update it regularly. MOST people who buy things online have a Facebook presence of some sort. 67 percent of B2C companies and 42 percent of B2B companies have acquired a customer through Facebook (Hubspot, 2011). Use it to drive traffic to your blog, your Pinterest page, or better yet, specific product landing pages on your site. Facebook is a great way to stay in front of customers generally.
  2. Set up a Pinterest page to showcase your products. According to a recent BizRate Insights study, “sixty-nine percent of consumers who visit Pinterest have found an item they’ve purchased or wanted to purchase.” In some studies, it’s even outpacing Facebook as a product purchase influencer. While both sites are used to connect with people who share common interests, “Pinterest is more of a product finder and decision influencer.”
  3. Set up a Twitter account for sharing thought leadership. Post content from your blog, and ideas from others, along with deals and ides on your OWN site. Twitter is less effective as a sales tool for consumer products, but it’s great for business solutions and products.
  4. YouTube is still one of the largest search engines, so you have to have a channel. This can really enhance SEO as well. Post weekly video tours of section of the store, specials, or events you might be hosting in your brick and mortar store, but link to corresponding product or category pages in the online store!
  5. Make sure to set up Google Analytics on your web store so you can see what links drive the best results. It’s pretty easy and Google already tracks the major social platforms. You’ll quickly get an idea of what each platform brings to the table in terms of traffic and sales. The key here is to be everywhere, targeting each platform to do what it’s good at. But don’t be afraid to drive traffic to your store, rather than just your blog.

Need help? Call us!

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Sep 26
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Three Ways The New MySpace Could Challenge Facebook

By Communications, Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Social Media

Here is a demo of the new MySpace, which was tweeted about by Justin Timberlake a few days ago. It’s pretty compelling. According to Chris and Tim Vanderhook, who bought the company in July 2011, MySpace’s new design now focuses on emerging artists who hope to be discovered. The Vanderhooks bought MySpace from News Corp. for just $35 million, after News Corp. paid more than ten times that for it in 2005.

I think it has the potential to do an end-run around Facebook for a few big reasons:

It’s clear that the designers and developers have been paying very close attention to what social networks are good at and what people use them for–sharing their life in pictures, connections and music.

First thing you notice is the prominent role music plays in the site. The musician in me loves this. It’s like you can create a soundtrack of events that can be tied to the images and posts you create. Very cool. The timeline is horizontal and everything in is a visual mash that ties posts, video, audio, connections and photos together around those events. It’s loose, slick, and sexy, and seems to borrow a lot from Path and Pinterest. If nothing else, it mimics how we act as expressive people and provides a refreshing antidote to the stodgy Facebook vanilla. It even lets you log in using competing network profiles.

It Appears to Be Anti-Grownup.

This demo looks like my daughter acts. She will sit in her room with music going while she texts friends, adds photos, connects music to pages, teases her Facebook friends, and does homework. The new Myspace seems designed to be immersive for teens. Good call, since their parents (and grandparents) have taken over Facebook. According to Will Oremus over at Slate.com,  “it’s going to focus more narrowly on becoming a social home for musicians, artists, celebrities—and their fans.”

Privacy Will be Paramount

Myspace got in a lot of hot water for their privacy violations a few years back and as a result they are on a pretty tight leash. That actually plays to their advantage right now, as Facebook users start to rebel against the shameless exploitation of their data by Zuck’s public company needs. It also maps closely to teens’ desire to get away from their parents in the digital spaces they are forced to share.

I have yet to see any mobile demo or vision, which they absolutely MUST deliver to have a chance to really succeed. But they are presenting a pretty impressive alternative to a suddenly tired Facebook, especially for the younger and more artistic set.

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Sep 10
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Three Ways Social Media Really CAN Help.

By Communications, Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Social Media

I just finished a really terrific interview with Ted Hissey, SVP and Director of Innovation, Consumer Planning and Global Marketing Services for Brown-Forman Co., marketer of brands such as Jack Daniel’s, Southern Comfort, Korbel, Chambord and Finlandia. Yum. Read it here.

In this interview Ted discusses how social media has really enhanced the way they both learn from and then re-target customers across a wide range of demographics. It’s really worth the read. I took three really good things from it that I think we can all agree are pretty excellent ways to justify and empower social media use in our own companies.

Social media brings some scale to word-of-mouth. If your brand is one that relies on recommendations and satisfied customers sharing your products with others, social tools can really help you empower those customers to do it. Hissey says “Word-of-mouth has always been critical in driving awareness of new and existing brands,” and social tools allow customers to reach many more influencers with a single post.

Most social media vehicles are very targetable. When marketing alcohol (like many other CPGs), marketers can encounter a broad range of customer demographics that respond to different marketing triggers. Social media platforms can allow messages to be targeted by location, age, interests, networks, job, anything. This makes each marketing effort that much more efficient.

You can’t be boring or typical. If you’re going to bother tapping into  a social network of consumers, you have to make your messages worth their effort.  As Hissey says, “if it’s just something boring that people can get anywhere, you’re wasting your time.” If you get someone’s attention and wow them, they will spread that word.

So what’s stopping you from realizing these benefits and addressing these opportunities?

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