Social Media – is that Facebook?

Sure. Social Media is “just” Facebook. It can also include Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest and even restaurant reviews. Social media, in my opinion, is a two-way conversation between your customers and your customers-to-be, edited and directed by YOU. (You, the business owner, are the Social Media Manager, right?). The problem is, that as fun as Social Media can be, if it isn’t constant, the conversation loses steam. Without compelling content and a reason to keep visiting, the one-time visit ends and a potential new customer goes away….. we don’t want that, do we? So, you don’t have time, you could give another hat to wear to a kid who knows all about Facebook, right? But that “kid” will be less consistent than you and withOUT your business’s success forefront of mind.

If you are still reading, perhaps you are ready to think about a Certified Social Media Expert, Social Media Manager, or Social Media Marketer. This type of marketing isn’t tried, true, or even old enough to measure. How does a business budget for this service? How much is it worth? Well, how did your business measure success rates of any other marketing campaign? Advertising has always been one way communication. Businesses hoped that would-be customers looked at the commercial, didn’t throw the flyer out, or used the coupon (note: the coupon was at least measurable: businesses  could count the number of coupons that got used). Given the fact that measurement was a guess, at best, in the past, with this new fangled marketing, Social Media Marketing must be very hard to measure, right? Well, it isn’t. Reports aren’t even complicated. Measurement is actually very easy. You can watch the activity, through monthly reports, giving real information: how many times an email got opened, where a visitor left your website, or see where a visitor searched before they found your website. You can literally watch public awareness happen. Yeah! The public is aware of your business. Great!

Good Social Media keeps them at your website, or at your Fan Page or a Follower on Twitter. As we’ve discussed, YOU can be your Social Media Manager – supplying and editing content, replying to posts in a timely manner, and making sure that customer-service requests don’t get left out to dry. But you need to do this every day – EVERY day.  Social Media Marketing shouldn’t be a “if-I-have-the-time” task.

Back to budget: Perhaps it was “O” or perhaps it was “how much do I have to pay?”, but you’ve always had a marketing budget. Your Social Media Manager has client success stories to share. She has hourly rates and monthly rates. You can start slow, build momentum, and gather speed as you watch more and more new faces pop by to say hello. You cannot afford to miss this emerging marketing.

You cannot afford for the expertise of a Social Media Expert to be dismissed. They DO have your business’s success at the forefront of their concerns. They “listen” to your customers and your would-be-customers. They spy on your competition. They stay on top of old conversations and create new ones. They have fresh ideas about growing your business. That is what they do: grow your business. Isn’t that what marketing is supposed to do?

Is Advertising on the Internet Social Media Marketing?

No. Social media is two way, engaged conversation. Advertising is typically ONE way, on the internet they would be such things as Pop-Up ads or Social Media campaigns. So, why not just use them? You can target your audience and get it in front of millions of potential customers. Well, consumers are savvy and very blind to ads, at this point, because of 1) General lack of interest 2) Poor timing vs search engine optimization and 3) Lack of trust – number three because of questionable content accessed once.

So, if your goal is to create or edit an existing presence, what now? Social Media Management can streamline your strategy. For instance, the main goal of your internet presence should be to convince visitors to become customers, engage with your business, or recommend your organization. As marketing specialists, we “listen” to your fans, to your competitor’s fans, to the replies and comments, and watch what makes them TICK. And by tick, we mean SHARE, and Re-Tweet, and create a buzz about you. Sure, you’ll want to keep fans in the loop about news, events, gather insight into customer needs and desires, or inform prospects about an upcoming sale or offer and obviously, you won’t stay in business long if your goal isn’t to SELL, but Social Media Marketing isn’t for selling, it is for warming up the prospect, creating community, and building trust. Those are our goals for your internet strategy. Give us a chance to show you how all that works for you and your bottom line, at Social Media Simplifier

Can Social Media REALLY Make a Difference to your Business?

Contrary to popular assumption, the economic downturn is actually good for the internet… and your business. More people are shopping online to find better deals and looking to thier “friends” to show them the way. More merchants are moving their advertising dollars from offline media to online venues.

Just imagine….

Gym One has a great website, beautiful facility, some great aerobic teachers, and some really great Zumba dance classes. They have a Facebook fan page, and even a Youtube Channel, but nothing is updated with current schedules and they’re not actively doing social media.

Then there’s you…

Gym Two (YOU!) also has a great website, with links to your Facebook fan page, Twitter, flickr, and Youtube accounts. You have a really great welcome/video commercial on your website’s home page. Plus, you have a blog where you offer great tips, and post helpful articles for kids, parents, families, etc. You update your Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube accounts on a regular basis, and as a result, you seem relevant, knowledgeable, and approachable.  Any opportunity that you have to highlight your level of knowledge and expertise, will help you to distinguish your gym from your competitors. You have to get people in the door to see that you have a great facility – and social media sharing is really one of the best ways to do that.

 

Sole Proprietor Social Media – Waste of Time?

If you are in business, as a sole proprietor, you spend most of your time satisfying customer needs, fulfilling contracts and finding new clients. With that being said, Social Media may seem a luxury, as an expense on your time and effort; do you invest in this passing fad that you don’t quite understand?

Well, obviously, you don’t want to be spending more than necessary on marketing, therefore investing time on building relationships with people is far preferable to spending money on one-way advertising. With any Social Media Campaign, the more you give, the more you get. And as you increase your following, traffic back to your website (the “mother ship”) will grow. Some of this traffic will turn into clients. You can’t expect overnight success, but if you keep going you will see your results improve month-over-month. Your site will be put in front of a much wider audience, so that if they weren’t searching specifically for what you had to offer at that time, they have still been introduced to your site and as a result know what you do for in the future when they do want that service.

One of my favorite reasons to dabble in Social Media, is that once your content is shared via Social Media, those links are there to stay. Even better, if people do visit your site and share that information with their friends, you’ll then have more links coming back into your site. Search Engines love those shared links, and he higher up the Search Rankings you go. Social Media users are vocal about what they like, and what they don’t like. As you build more of a presence and post more content, you’ll get to know what content people like and what produces the best reaction so you can do more of that kind of content. Monitoring your brand and reputation should be easy, if your are watching, responding, and re-posting.

Social Media won’t be going away any time soon. Formats may change, but commenting, reviewing, and sharing opinions is here to stay. Jump aboard this very fun ride and call us, today!

Pitfalls of Small Businesses

More small businesses would succeed, even in this narrow market, if they would trust and rely on experts and a support system.

Below are a few important steps:

1. Make a plan, a detailed plan with what you are willing to lose and a timeframe for certain accomplishments
2. As the market changes, be nimble.
3. Contact the experts or use some sort of support system – this can help avoid land mines (and can also become part of your network for marketing).
4. Don’t be afraid that the experts or supporter will steal your idea; that happens rarely.
5. Using pricing similar to similar businesses in the market; small businesses fail for competing on price.
6. The biggest mistake in this marketer’s mind, is that most entrepreneurs focus on their product forgetting the necessary task of connecting with their customers.

Talk to your new customers, listen to them, seek their advice, research what makes them tick – remember, they will make you or break you.

Do you need a website? Do you need Facebook? Why? When?

I have had a few conversations recently with prospective clients. Social Media is new to them. They want to see where it it going? They want to watch and see how their competition uses it. They want to continue doing what is/isn’t working. They already have a website, a reservation system, an email campaign system.

Bottom line, should you, Struggling Small Business Owner, wait to incorporate Social Media into your marketing plan?

• Let’s just consider that you have a website. Unless you put constant money into Search Engine Optimization, your website is your website. It, likely, isn’t updated. It continues to have the same reach the day that it was created. Unless someone is searching for your exact keywords, other websites will pop up first.

• Let’s just consider you start writing a blog or you create and maintain Facebook Fan Page. If your content is interesting or enough people “like” it – comments start trickling in. Then, many people comment on a couple of threads. They start forwarding your blog and your affirmations. They “share” your photos or your subject-matter knowledge. They “recommend” you. Now, not only are you found on your website, but your brand (your name, your website, your Facebook fan page, your blog) is found 180 times because of shares and comments. In my opinion, as a marketer, that is enough reason to say “Don’t wait!” But it isn’t all that happens, because what happens next is  that you, now, have an audience looking and listening to your daily prattle – and they may have NEVER searched for your keywords. They just got hooked on your content or decided to follow you because someone that they respected was following you.

Next week, they decide they are in need of the service or product you sell. They already have a relationship with you. Do you think they’ll buy from you ?  One would hope so….

Does your Nonprofits and/or Religious Organizations Need a Social Media Plan?

Of course, I am going to say that you need a plan and to hire me, but that is my opinion and likely won’t sway you. So…what do others say?

Facebook now boasts over 901 million active users, making it the world’s third largest country. But how exactly can nonprofits use it and other platforms to raise money, grow their base of supporters, change policy, and recruit volunteers and board members? There are a lot of community leaders still wrestling with this question. On last years’ ordination exams for The Episcopal Church, for those heading to the priesthood, there was a question on  social media policy. Each person had to outline their recommendations for a church’s social media policy. Nonprofits and religious organizations have long sought actionable feedback from constituents, peers, volunteers, and donors. Now that the internet has made it much easier and cheaper to receive that feedback, the bar is being raised for decision-makers to make better use of this data to inform their strategies.

I was reading statistics, last night, and one of the most surprising findings of the survey that I was researching (http://buzzplant.com/) was that churches believe social media is the most effective form of outreach available. Over 46% of those surveyed say that they prefer social to other forms of outreach, such as newspapers (14%), knocking on doors (25%) and TV (6%). Of those surveyed, 45% say they update their Facebook Page once a day, and an additional 25% say they update once a week.

Yes, Social Media should be part of your growth strategy, simply because Social Media builds better feedback loops in order to improve your work and create social change.

OMG – More about Time Managment?

Yes – I have 2 small children, two businesses, and a workaholic husband. I will always struggle, juggle, and stress. It may be part of the Millennium. We have multiple emails, multiple voice mails, we record Voice Notes to ourselves, we have 26 speed dials, we constantly multi-task, and the To-Do list still gets longer. In fact, if you search Google for “time management” you’ll get over 700,000,000 hits!

A magazine for entrepreneurs, Sole Proprietor Magazine, says what if we switched our thinking from managing time to define our time, by three definitions? 1) Value Management 2) Priority Management and 3) Decision Management. Do you think this would create more time for us?

I say “yes” –

• Value Management: Name your “top 5″ values and then look where you spend most of your time. Your time spent likely does not truly reflect your heart.
• Priority Management: What you choose, who you choose, and what kind of attitude you have during the choice; hmmmmm. What does that choice reflect about you, your values, and your legacy?
• Decision Management: Are your decisions, about time, based on your values and priorities?

I guess this sums it up for me: systems are not the answer – priorities are. If your choices reflect your values, your life makes more sense! Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

Do you want new customers lining up at your door?

Wouldn’t you love to have folks lining up for your service?

Don’t you want to know WHY they would line up? That is what social media does for you. It gives you insight into your customer’s thoughts, why they react like they do or don’t. It is a social, but almost anonymous way of giving feedback. If you ask the question, they will tell. If a lot of customers are discussing something on your reviews or on your blog or your Fan Page, it helps them add to the frenzy. It is safe. but….. it is SO effective. You can make change, add services, stop wasting time/energy/effort/money – on something that just isn’t working.

Social media can help your business be nimble. And get them to line up and buy more.

Social Media Goals

Social Media Goals

• Content that is enjoyed and teaches
• New fans
• Boost of repeat business
• New customers
• More transactions
• Larger transactions
• Boost in viral engagements of Fans – Check Ins, Photo Shares, Content Shares

 

Obviously, our Social Media Strategy is making more money – and measuring if the increase in sales outweigh marketing costs. Although we are creating a social-media presence, your business (and brand) needs to be able to evaluate the impact our social media is having. Measuring social media ROI isn’t impossible, but it can be difficult because many of the pieces that need to be evaluated are difficult to track. To define Return On Investment, as a standard formula, ROI = (X – Y) / Y, where X is your final value and Y is your starting value.

Having goals and a baseline (of sales/number of transactions) is crucial to calculating our return on investment. So before we set out to measure and monitor our returns, we need to know what we want to accomplish, as a team.

For example, if our goal is to increase social media mentions on the local university’s Facebook Fan Page, we need to know where you stand now. We can’t evaluate the ROI accurately without a baseline. We’ll start with Google Analytics (you’ll need to add that to your Webpage) and Fan Page Analytics. But, we cannot rely solely on the numbers, but on what the numbers end up leading to. For instance, does your increase in website visitors correlate with higher sales? Are people that find your website from Facebook then clicking on your product pages or going to the booking engine?

Google Analytics — It’s free and will alllow us to track incoming links and then the activities of the users they send, which will be helpful. We’ll also use the analytics tools to see how they correlate to higher sales or better customer retention. Most of us use analytics software to track website traffic, visitors, pages per visitor, and traffic sources. We’ll export data into MS Excel and analyze by looking for trends. Then, we’ll use this data to engage your audience (You can figure out what they’re searching for). If our ultimate measurement is sales, which is what I think it should be, we need to look at the sales levels (more detail, below), month over month, for the past two years. If it has increased, we’ll look at the number of coupons used from a Facebook campaign or contest participants, to start calculating which sales stemmed from your social media campaigns. We’ll look for trends: Is traffic up to your store after coupon, contest, or posting location on Facebook?

 

 

Finding trends and tracking them back to their point of origin is the key to measuring ROI.  These are the steps that we need to put into place in order to measure ROI from my services.

• The first step of this process is putting Google Analytics in place.
• Then we need to have sales figures, number of orders, the average transaction, and the number of rooms booked, or private functions booked, per month, for the entire year (if possible, two years).
  • Action – setting up Fan Page. Putting Google Analytics into place.
  • Reaction – watch for feedback, shares, and comments to posts for the first 30 days.
  • Non-Financial Impact –Research competition’s pages and comments. Watch competition’s Fan Base grow. Copy content, ideas, if appropriate. Watch feedback and growth.
  • Financial Impact– most of this is tracked from bottom line gross sales and website traffic.
    • Track traffic from Fan Page to website.
    • Track sales.
    • Compare website’s unique visitors from last month’s traffic.
    • Compare sales from last year’s same month to this month’s sales.
    • Track coupons used.
    • Track social mentions

Return On Investment isn’t impossible to track, but you have to trust your team, give them real information, and continually evaluate goals and trends.