Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ CategoryI was taught that way back when I was in sales, to ask for a report card from clients ESPECIALLY when you think it’s going to be a bad one. Many companies that are reluctant to dive into social media tell me that they are afraid of their brand being “out there” for public criticism — whether it is deserved or not. Reputation management is one of the key objectives for which SMM (social media marketing) can be used, and that same “report card” lesson applies. No one can debate the benefits that a good review or customer comment can provide to any business. But a bad review, or blog/Twitter comment, can be just as useful if it is addressed correctly and in a timely manner. Below are some tips on how to make lemonade out of that potential lemon of a review. Assess the damage –
Decide how you are going to respond, but whatever it is, respond quickly.
When NOT to react –
Even a bad review can be good. Remember that mantra of social media connect/create/engage. The secret sauce is transparency. A bad review addressed is a very good thing. Don’t be afraid to have your brand out there, it’s all good.
1. Direct Mail is back – have I said this enough yet? Yes, I know postage is going up, yes I know this seems old school. But mail boxes are pretty light these days, so there is not much competition for your prospects’ attention. Mail a piece that has your company’s Twitter handle on it. Invite viewers to follow you, and set up an autoresponder to their follow that includes a special offer with a quick timeline to drive that call to action (example: 20% off on your next order if you place the order by Friday). 2. Send a postcard (snail mail) and include a QR (Quick Response) code that can be scanned by your smart phone to send the reader to mobile enabled page of your website with a special offer, or to a training video that tells a better story or demo of a product, or even a free donut if they come into your store or place of business. (Keep donuts on hand, then!) QR Code generators are simple apps and easy to use. Do a Google search on QR Code generators and find the top rated suppliers, and jump in. 3. Or on that same postcard, send them to a squeeze page on your website with a specific white paper or eBook in return for registering for your newsletter. Now you have proved your value with some educational material for your prospect, and you have gleaned their email address as well for ongoing marketing. Not a bad quid pro quo. I’m a big believer in the give-to-get mentality. 4. With that same email registration (see #3), set up an autoresponder email to thank visitors for their registration to your newsletter, and link to your Facebook page, inviting them to “like” your page (FB, please change that concept — such an awkward verb), and set up a special tab with a timed offer. Now you have a postal address and their email address and have gained more traffic on your FB page — all for future marketing. Sound gimmicky? Not at all, certainly not these days and very easy to do.
Most business professionals are on LinkedIn at this point. LI tells us that: •LinkedIn has over 65 million members in over 200 countries. To me that says clearly that if you have almost ANY kind of business and are prospecting, LI will be a good resource for you. But just setting up a profile and dabbling once a week or so is not going to do much for your prospecting efforts. Below are a few tips that not many folks know about, but are powerful techniques for increasing your visibility and maximizing that “inbound marketing” that Social Media is known for. 1. Using LI to research potential prospects? You can create 3 saved searches. If you are doing a search on a person, save your searches. Once you have done a search from the search box in the upper right of your home page, you will see your results. At the top where you see the number of records in your search you’ll see a “save this search” button. LI will give you the option of sending you a weekly email, to get updates to your search. Great ongoing tool! 2. Recommendations are important, so ask for them. Companies, people and brands are evaluated by who else like them. But make it easy. First call or email your contact and ask if they will recommend you. If so, write the recommendation yourself. Not only will you be sure that you are positioning yourself in the best light, but you will make it much easier for your contact to provide the referral. All they need to do is cut and paste. Easy. 3. Use the Question and Answer area to gain more visibility on the Internet. On the question that you answer you will see a “share this” with a drop down menu. You can email your network, Digg it, Bookmark the question on Delicious, or use the link provided in your answer and link to your one of your blog posts, or somewhere else on your site to pull in traffic. Great for online visibility, gaining credibility and helping people find you. 4. Join groups that are in-line with your business, your objectives or a desired job. Fish where the fish are. The more “on target” the group, the more valuable the content they provide, and the greater the networking opportunities (and ultimately leads) will be. 5. Use groups to expand your network, but be selective. In the groups tabs, you will see one called “other” with a drop down menu. Select members and you will see a list of all of the members in that group. Offer to connect with the ones that make sense. You might evaluate based on the size of their network, the type of company or industry they are in or how much interaction they have had with the group. 6. Did you know you can export your connections? Go to “Contacts.” then “Connections.” At the bottom of your Connections box is “Export Connections.” Export the connections and import them into your preferred address book. Do this frequently so you are consolidating all of your contacts in one spot (might be Outlook, Act, Salesforce)
I’m doing another free teleclass on using Social Media to generate leads and build sales on Wed, May 12 at 1 pm Pacific Time, 4 pm Eastern. Register here to join me. I’ll send you dial-in information the day before the event. I started this class because, after conducting a monthly breakfast meeting on Social Media for the SVAMA, it became clear to me that the small business was not getting the kind of strategic direction that they really needed. Everyone will say that they are using Social Media. They are on Twitter, or have a Facebook profile, but few really understand how to use Social Media strategically. It’s a marketing powerhouse if used effectively and I want to give all businesses the tools to do just that. So please join me. If you can’t make the class live, sign up anyway! I’ll be recording the class and will send everyone who signs up an audio file the following day. Hope to see you there!
Customer Service problems can be daunting for any company. But the last thing you want to do is pretend that they don’t exist or will never exist. The best thing to do is meet them head on, resolve issues, make the customer as happy as possible, and move on. The last thing you want to even consider is ignoring an unhappy customer or client. Customer Service and Twitter.com were made for each other. The immediacy of Twitter, coupled with the accessibility of the customer-service “fixer” creates a terrific tool for staying in close and concerned contact with customers. And they feel the love. Below are a few tips to make this successful:
Twitter aside, one of the best things you can do to build and reinforce your brand is to take customer service very seriously. A problem will only get worse, and a customer will only get increasingly unhappy if the issue is not acknowledged. Companies will get far more “points” for being proactive in their efforts to resolve even horrendous problems to the best of their ability. The resolution may not be perfect in the customer’s or the public’s eye, but a true and strong effort to resolve will go far towards saving the loyalty of that person. Hopefully, they will spread the word and Tweet about the positive outcome, not the bad experience.
I’m thrilled to be the guest speaker at renown business coach Kellie D’Andrea’s weekly “Marketing Mondays” tele-class on April 12th. Here is Kellie’s write-up:  Business Coach Kellie D'Andrea Q: Are you curious about social media? A: Well, you don’t want to miss this call! “Generate Leads and Increase Sales with Social Media” during Marketing Mondays with Kellie D’Andrea. WHEN: MONDAY, April 12, 2010, 6 pm Eastern (NY) time (That’s 5 pm Central, 4 pm Mountain, 3 pm Pacific.) WHERE: Virtual Sign up to get call in information TIME: 6 pm Eastern (NY) time (That’s 5 pm Central, 4 pm Mountain, 3 pm Pacific.) Today the owner of a small business is struggling with a bad economy, declining sales and not enough resources to get the job done. Marketing for small business usually takes a back seat – just when it’s needed most! Social media adoption by small businesses doubled during the last year, from 12% to 24%. And among those, nearly half anticipate it will be profitable within the next 12 months, according to the Small Business Success Index. During this call, you will learn:
About our Guest Speaker: - – - – - - Thanks Kellie! Hope to see lots of you on the call!
Social Media is about 3 things — connecting, creating, and engaging. Sounds easy enough, but the value of everything you do using social media will all go back to who you are engaging with. This is a real case of “garbage-in, garbage-out.” If you “friend” or connect with anyone and everyone without any concern about who or why, you won’t get much out of all the time you may invest in your social media strategy. To make your social media strategy productive, efficient and successful, here are tips on creating a strong network.
My own Point of View: beware of the applications that promise to connect you to hundreds and thousands of people. They will. But so what? Quality and relevance trumps quantity. It’s important to keep expanding your connections in social media. But always be sure there is a well-thought-out strategy every time you go through the exercise. The quality of your network, and the payback it will give you, will be worth the extra time.
I’m delighted to announce the agenda for the March meeting of the Morning Forum on Emerging Media. SVAMA Presents: Twitter for Marketers: Lessons from the Enterprise
Learn about the best practices of how big brands use Twitter to engage in real life conversations with customers. You will be presented with real case studies from the social media managers who are responsible for driving customer engagement at Cisco and HP. They will present case study examples of how they drive consumer engagement on the social web. We will discuss:
Moderator: Tatyana Kanzaveli
Panelists: LaSandra Brill, Sr. Manager – Digital and Social Media Marketing, Cisco; Tony Welch, Lead Social Media Strategist and Community Manager for HP PSG, HP WHEN: March 30 , 2010, 8:30 – 10 AM WHERE: [NOTE NEW LOCATION] COST: Currently $5 SVAMA members, $15 for non-members RSVP: info@elymedia.com Speaker bios: Tatyana Kanzaveli, CEO of Social CRM World, has broad experience in sales, marketing and business development, technology and professional services. She held executive roles in number of start-ups and large multinationals. She was an early adopter of social media and social networking channels, using them to build successful online and face-to-face communities. Tatyana runs strategic Social CRM and social media marketing consultancy – http://scrmworld.com. She can be reached on Twitter: @glfceo LaSandra Brill, Sr. Mgr, Digital & Social Media Marketing, at Cisco Systems, is a social media enthusiast, avid blogger and marketing innovator. As Senior Manager of the Service Provider Digital & Social Media Marketing group, LaSandra Brill shapes Cisco’s marketing strategy to include a mix of social media marketing techniques leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. At Cisco she is known for building and executing the social media strategy of one of the top five product launches in company history. LaSandra holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Management from San Jose State University. Tony “Frosty” Welch is the Lead Social Media Strategist for HP PSG, and the Community Manager for The Next Bench – http://www.thenextbench.com. His Twitter handle is @frostola Hope to see you there!
If you are a small business with a retail or at least street-facing presence you are probably already taking good advantage of Yelp, YahooLocal, Citysearch and others. But even businesses like professional services (lawyers, architects, CPA firms, ad agencies, doctors) should be sure to include these sites in their marketing mix. And now is the time to revisit them. As Social Media continues to explode, they are all introducing more SM features that will allow you to create current and fresh content and be even more “findable”.
Google Local Business Place Pages has just added a status block so you can update your page with immediate messages, links to specials, and other interest generating content in a short-form. Unfortunately, there is no way yet to link that update to Twitter or Facebook or anything else – more work for the poster, but still a great new feature. Another addition: businesses that have been “claimed” by their owners will now feature a badge indicated the credibility of the posting.
Up and comer business directory MerchantCircle has We are doing more and more marketing and media plans for local businesses using a heavy emphasis on social media where appropriate. If we can help your business, give us a holler. I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the very smart Zoya Fallah at Cisco for their service provider blog called SP360, on the topic of the use of Social Media. Cisco continues to lead the charge in using Social Media to reach out to their customers and has multiple blogs, YouTube channels, promotional campaigns and on and on for connecting to their very diverse audiences. Hats off to Cisco — one of the earliest adopters of Social Media.
“Two of the biggest challenges for new users have been finding accounts to follow that appeal to their interests, and finding their friends and colleagues who tweet. Over time, we’ve learned that by making suggestions of who to follow, we can help users get going more easily on Twitter. In our new design, we’re taking some steps to continue to improve this process. Once a user signs up and selects what they’re interested in, we show them some accounts that relate to that interest. Next, we help them find their friends and colleagues by checking their address books, and third we give them a chance to search for anyone we or they missed in this process.” I’m all for that. Anything that helps a newbie use Twitter in a strategic and useful way is all good. But why only the new user? I’d love the benefit of their algorythmic magic to make good suggestions for me. But I’m not the only one with that thought. (love John Battelle) Twitter promised more changes to come. As a true evangelist, I can’t wait. The new year has brought a number of inquiries from smaller companies asking for help with social media marketing and marketing in general. For those of us in the marketing field, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that not all businesses see things from a marketing perspective. Example: we had an end-of-year meeting with our CPA firm and will be doing some marketing consultation for them, I’m happy to say. This is a women-owned firm, brilliant in the world of finance, tax prep and financial planning, but not big enough to warrant an in-house marketing expert. We mapped out some initial strategy, to capitalize on the lowest hanging fruit, and I thought I’d recap our discussion for the benefit of other small companies. Know who your customers are so you can find more like them. Conduct a survey to find out what industry they are in, how many employees they have, general geography (how close or far away do you want to service a customer?) Establish some initial objectives. Are you prospecting and looking for new leads? Introducing new products or services to current customers, asking for feedback on current performance? Start an ongoing conversation with your current customers. Start a monthly e-newsletter, and before that, start gathering email addresses from everyone you do business with to that end. Assuming they have a website, start a blog to post updated information about the company more frequently and to start that dialog with your customers. Social Media Marketing. If your customers and prospects are participating in social media networks, pick an objective for your social media presence, and get started with a well-thought-through SM plan and schedule. We talked a bit about using Social Media for local marketing in an earlier post. Establish the initial strategy — but make it simple. Small companies don’t have marketing departments, so be sure the objectives are manageable. Decide on tactics, the person or people who will be actually doing the work, and set a schedule. Then keep it.
We have been working on a large lead-generation campaign for a new consumer-biz client, and we were delighted that they allowed us to incorporate social media into the plan. I know, it seems counter-intuitive to use social media for a mainly commercial objective, but if it is handled delicately and with respect for both the brand and the SM audience, it can be done very well. Below are a few pointers that should be taken into consideration: – Social Media is all about creating and joining community and adding value. Keep this ahead of everything else. – First join the community – join many groups and participate, linking back to your offer every now and again. Build your network with keyword or category searches to find good prospects and interested followers. – Be strategic – your messages should vary by target audience, the landing page should echo the content of the original message or post, and the ultimate call-to-action wording should support both. – Content – Decide what issues and topics are interesting for your target audience. Invest some time to become a member of the community. First listen in, then ask questions, and only then define whatever your target group is excited about and what topics you should be addressing. Your content is about establishing a relationship with your community, not about re-purposing your sales presentation. – Be sure your posts are a combination of conversation and links to your offer. We aim for at least 50% posts providing info on relevant topics, asking questions, responding to followers, and 50% talking about our offer and providing a link to our landing page. – Standard lead-gen practices hold for Social Media – convert with the landing page. As is true with any lead-gen strategy, the landing page does the heavy lifting. It should be clear and simple, with a crystal-clear call to action. Don’t offer options or links taking the reader off the page. The registration form should appear above the fold. Assume your reader will not be scrolling down, so keep all the salient points up top. – SM offers wonderful opportunites for viral content to happen. You can’t control it, but here’s some clues on what gets shared and what doesn’t…. Rarely shared: product info, free trials, hard offers, selling posts. Often shared: New Data, trends, funny videos, reference to top-notch blog posts. We will continue this topic in future posts with more specifics on how to use Twitter, Facebook. and LinkedIn for lead-generation with specific tactics for each. The key is to be a participant in a community, and provide value to create enough interest so that your followers and readers will want to find out more about your offer. It CAN be done.
My BFF Daisy Whitney will be presenting to the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association (SVAMA) Morning Forum in September 2009. SVAMA Presents: “The Seven Secrets to Success with Online Video” Who’s watching video online? What are they watching? Where are they going to see videos? Do they watch alone or with friends and family? And, most important, do they pay attention to the ads? Learn about the new consumer behavior online, how viewers are shifting to the Web and to see what, and which kinds of ads are following consumers online. This presentation will also detail new initiatives by brands to market themselves through the Web, either in developing their own Web shows or by sponsoring existing online-video projects and TV shows. SPEAKER: DAISY WHITNEY, writer, producer, on-air correspondent WHEN: Tuesday, Sept 22, 2009; 8:30 – 10:00 am WHERE: Scott’s Seafood Restaurant and Grill, 855 El Camino Real (Town and Country Shopping Center, at Embarcadero and El Camino Real), Palo Alto, CA 94301; Tel. (650) 323-1555 COST: Currently $5 for SVAMA members, $15 for non-members NOTE: Venue requires breakfast be purchased RSVP: info@elymedia.com Don’t miss this! Daisy is a whirlwind of information — and tons of fun. — Elyse Tager
Another wonderful example of Social Media blending with hard copy is the evolution of Food52, a crowd-sourced social-media recipe/food site started by Amanda Hesser (of NY Times fame) and Merrill Stubbs freelance food-writer and recipe-tester. This site invites viewers to submit recipes — themed each week, for a contest. Amanda and Merrill test each recipe, come up with 2 finalists, and the readers will decide the winner. At the end of 52 weeks, the winning entries will be entered into a cookbook (hard copy — ink and paper!) that will be published by The HarperStudio. In the meantime, the cooks, readers, and contributors get to share recipes, chat with each other, add additional content on related issues (ingredients, cooking tools, cookbooks etc) in an ongoing collaboration. I was lucky enough to get an interview with Amanda and Merrill in between their frantic bouts of cooking. Click below and find out why Merrill’s mother is NOT, NOT, NOT allowed to submit recipes….
So at the end, there is a hard-copy cookbook that will have had a full year’s worth of preliminary buzz. The Food52 team is busily tweeting, uploading videos to Vimeo, linking to other food blogs. It’s a win-win for the publisher, the reader/contributor, and the Food52 team of Merrill and Amanda. Food 52 Intro from Food52 on Vimeo.
All print media are struggling these days, from the New York Times to the local newspaper. As the readers are moving online, print might seem more and more irrelevant, and publishers are struggling with ways to keep their readers. I came across a wonderful example of how to do it right. 7×7 Magazine, a San Francisco-based, glossy lifestyle pub invited their readers to submit all of the photos and much of the copy for a neighborhood review (August 2009 issue) of our beautiful city. The 7×7.com website provides far more content — videos, more pix, more reviews of each neighborhood’s strengths, and on and on. But the print magazine stands alone for its visual beauty and is definitely worth the cover (or subscription) price. The integration of the magazine with its social-media and online versions only magnifies that content and doesn’t detract from it. Job well done! Major take-aways from this? Not all brands or pubishers are so content-rich or gorgeous (I know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. and all brand managers love their children). Where can you extend your brand or publication into social media, and then involve the reader or customer with the content that is most easy to create and receive from them? If you are a publisher, initiate the dialogue in print, then move it online. Sell cat food, walking shoes, lead-gen services? On your product labels, in your print ads, on your boxes and packages, invite your customers to participate in a contest related to the topic. Have them send in videos or photos, reward the winner with something related to the brand. And then publish (well-tagged) vids and pix on your Facebook Fanpage, Tweet to direct people back to your website and/or the fan page, upload videos to video sites, along with publishing them on your site. The more you involve the reader/customer, the more engaged they become with the brand — the true definition of “dialogue”.
Elymedia is starting to work on social-media strategies to create buzz for more local companies, brands, and venues. It’s quite gratifying to plug into the local community and make a difference — not just for the client, but to share great info within the community. Brand recognition is high, and loyalty strong. It’s a good thing. Below are 7 quick tips that might help small businesses, local retailers, and restaurants and those crafty and creative food-carts:
Want more detail or help on how to build a plan, using some or all of the above? We would love to help. Social media has taught us that it starts with the customer — engaging, listening, sharing. Done well, all marketing should start with the customer — their needs, wants, and priorities the driving force for all marketing efforts. Thorough exploration and knowledge of the customer base is where we start when working with a new client. If there isn’t solid, current information about the customer, we will propose one or all of the following techniques: - Utilize outside services to gain intelligence about the current customer base. We will source database overlays to find additional key pieces of information about each customer. For B2B companies, that might mean title, size of company, functions, installed hardware and so on. For consumer companies, having demographic profiling done will flesh out their understanding of thir customers. Hard empirical data may conflict with what a company thinks is the definition of their customer — and it’s important to get a reality check as early as possible. - Survey the customer base — we enlist one of several excellent telemarketing groups whose specialty is finding decisionmakers and probing (with a well-crafted script) for additional information about each company or contact. Or we will use an online survey tool that can go directly to the customers, and ask for their input. - Talk to your sales force or customer service people who are face-to-face (or ear-to-ear?) on a daily basis to get “behind the numbers” to find out more or corroborate what you’ve learned from the analyses. If you have multiple types of customer, careful attention must be paid to defining each one. These customer segments may be per product line (do they only have Mac hardware and software on site?); types or frequency of interaction (do they only buy sale items, or plus sizes?). Segment your customer base and marketing activities accordingly. You can’t use social media intelligently or strategically unless you know who you are addressing. Then provide prospects with resources, information, tips, ideas, and links back to landing-pages in your website that are in line with their needs.
I keep searching for new/more/different methods of measuring activity in Web social media. I just starting using Bit.ly to shorten all of the links that I include in posts that don’t feed back to Elymedia so I can track results.
Twitter itself now uses bit.ly and it has taken a lead in the url shortening market over Tinyrul and others. It’s still a bit wonky — some stats are inaccurate, but their blog clearly states that they are hammering out bugs. The analytics are the fun part — if you put a simple “+” on the end of any bit.ly link, you will see, in real time, the pace at which that link is getting shared and clicked on as it moves around social-media networks. Bit.ly has growth plans and will provide more features rapidly. Techcrunch did a great post on the future plans for the company and details the sophistication and intelligence it will bring to the user regarding overall use of links, their popularity, and distribution. For now, I’m just happy to watch how much traction my links are getting and knowing that people are enjoying my content. Good stuff. This past week, two ethics issues caught my attention in the media. The Washington Post apologized to the paper’s readers for their plans to organize sponsored “salons” that would be attended by Washington-DC lobbyists, governent officials, and the paper’s own journalists. In short — anyone who might be influential in our nation’s capitol. The sponsorships, with fees ranging from $25,000 for one session to $250,000 for an entire series, seemed to imply that attendees would get paid access to these elite movers and shakers. The controversy erupted last Thursday after the website Politico.com disclosed the contents of a promotional brochure from the Post that solicited corporate sponsorships for the dinners, with fees ranging from $25,000 for one session to $250,000 for an entire series. Writing on his blog last week, the paper’s ombudsman Andrew Alexander called the disclosure “pretty close to a public relations disaster.” The first salon dinner, focusing on health care, was scheduled for July 21. The Post publisher Katharine Weymouth stated that it was all a misunderstanding but has called for an external review. The Post has said a marketing employee, Charles Pelton, sent out the brochure without vetting from either Ms. Weymouth or Marcus Brauchli, the paper’s executive editor. The brochure suggested that a single corporation could sponsor the dinners. Ms. Weymouth, in her letter to readers, said the brochure “was not approved by me or newsroom editors, and it did not reflect what we had in mind.” If a paper as revered as the Washington Post can behave with dubious ethics, what’s a reader to think? And where do readers go these days for credible, unbiased news and reporting? Who do you read/listen/watch for accurate reporting? Where does Social Media fit in? Do you still read “treeware” (print newspapers and magazines)? Have you given up on CBS, ABC, NBC, even PBS TV news? Do you sip a blend of Internet news-blogs and user-generated videos and completely ignore TV? Do we trust any major news organizations any longer? |
This gives you a chance to address the issues with the client, let them know you are listening and concerned, and turn those issues around. Plus you get extra points for being proactive.
How do you stand out amidst the millions of emails in our inbox, Tweets, Facebook posts, LinkedIn status, blog mentions, direct mail offers et al? It’s a challenge. It’s always been a challenge but now more so than ever. And more than ever, creativity is the solution — and multi-channel/cross-channel activities or old media-new media combos will win. Below are several ideas for creating multi-channel efforts that will shine:
