Social Media Marketing

A statement that we have pondered over and over throughout 2009...

Does your business need to be on twitter?  Should you be spending time on Facebook and other Social Media?

Marketers always seem to think so, but at what cost? Just like any marketing initiative, you cant just approach your social media strategy without a plan.  Social Media is the new kid on the block when it comes to online marketing. And yes there are opportunities, especially for niche industries (hospitality?). But many businesses approach it because they feel they "have to" or they can "do it themselves" or "it's free".

First off, Social Media, whether twitter, facebook, youtube or any of the other hundreds of sites and tools available is not free for business. Unless your personal time has no value whatsoever, then the cost of this marketing is the cost of your own time (if you are doing it yourself). And Social Media takes time! By its nature, Social Media is time consuming in that it is social. You cant speed through your social interactions and you wont be able to successfully automate your social media tasks either.

Posting to twitter is a great way to get your message out. It lets people who are following you or, more likely, following a key phrase or word, know that you have something to say of value. However, more important than your single is the ability for users to re-tweet (RT) your message. This makes it possible for your tweet to actually go viral and gain a significant amount of viewers. Thus getting your message out to a wider audience.

If your tweet uses all 140 allowed characters (thats all you can post folks) then when some one attempts to retweet, they will have to edit or truncate your post in order to fit the extra re-tweet tag. Some people may not retweet because of this, or your message may get lost because it has been deleted (for instance, the last characters of an important link).

This means that it is best practice is to leave extra space at the end of your tweet so that people can easily retweet your message without any hesitation. But how many spaces should you leave? Twittercism has a great formula to calculate your twitter number.

Your Number = length of username + 8 characters

That makes my number 16.

At recent Internet & Technology Summit, Keynote speaker Mike Volpe, VP of Inbound Marketing @ hubspot.com, presented "The Future of Marketing".

Mike wrapped up his presentation with the following two points:

1. Stop thinking like an advertiser or marketer
2. Start thinking like a publisher or a socializer

After hearing this, I thought of a recent email I had received from Perry Ellis. I am subscribed to the Perry Ellis newsletter, because I shop at their store and I like the fact that they honor mobile coupons. Their emails generally contain a deal of some sort and when I bring in my Iphone with the email, I get the credit. I don't have to print anything (saving paper and the environment) and I don't have to remember to do anything (since I always have my phone with me).

Forget paying for a seminar on social media. Twitter has released a definitive "how-to" guide to help get your business on board the social media bandwagon. Twitter 101 for business is chock full of good information for those companies, especially small business, who have yet to exploit the benefits of this new marketing channel. If you have some time to do some reading, (it is quite lengthy and comprehensive) I would suggest to take a look at the guide. You will have to spend some time with it, but no one ever said that a social media strategy was quick. (except maybe those salesman in an infomercial or 1 hour seminar)

Yes! [caption id="attachment_235" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Social Media is evolving, your company should too."][/caption] When blogging first became mainstream, I remember seeing major companies such as IBM release employee blogging guidelines. With good reason, IBM wanted to ensure that their employees weren't bashing, slamming, or misguiding readers on their blogs. Despite making a great business move, many major companies never followed IBMs blogging guidelines. And with only a small percentage of a company's employee's blogging, there are obvious reasons why. I often debated, was it important to establish guidelines? Now I think, sure. Was it crucial? No, probably not. Now times have changed. Your company may not have someone who blogs, but you can count on having socially networked employees. Between Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, a company is bound to have internet sociable workers. With all these forms of media, can your company really afford not to implement a social media policy?

With the emergence of Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and all of the hype that accompanies these forms of social media, there have been some rumblings that corporations no longer need their websites. While that is a pretty bold statement, there are some truths to it. Social media marketing allows for business to reach their consumers freely and frequently. Constant contact with your consumer as well as response and feedback from them can be very lucrative for business. Venues such as Facebook and Twitter allow companies to post brief, "soft-selling" techniques that slyly inform consumers of their newest product or their hottest line. Companies such as Volkswagen are evening running T.V. commercials with their Facebook URL instead of their corporate website (not that VW.com is that hard to remember). But does this mean that social media sites such as Facebook are replacing corporate websites?

Despite what the naysayers may lead you to believe, Twitter does have real potential as a marketing tool. And one that can be used today (and well into the future). For a local Pizza joint, a simple, low-cost test yields a direct 15% to overall sales. Advertising Age reports that by giving out twitter promotions to their followers, Naked Pizza was able to track the promotions and attribute 15% of the day's sales directly to the efforts they had expended on twitter. Couldn't we all use more followers? ... :)

With the proliferation of bloggers dominating the news media as of late (so much so that we now refer to the term "the blogosphere") there is an interesting shift in how we obtain our news and what we actually consider "news" and journalism. There has been much discussion on the topics of Blogger vs. Journalist but this whole concept has actually shed light on the idea of the credibility of the source. Just because the article was published by, what we may consider a credible source, doesn't mean that the actual writer is a credible source or a well written journalist. Just as much as an independent blogger is not a credible source or well written journalist. We seem to be moving away from our traditional news channels (at least the traditional media channels) and as the technology escalates, we are consuming our news from many more independent sources. Maybe this will shed light on that fact that just because we thought we were getting credible journalism all along, maybe we were not. We had nothing else to compare it to. At least now we can obtain our news by "consensus". If everyone is talking about it... It must be news.

Some have said that there is so much "noise" on twitter that anything of value is so diminished because it is difficult to find. Now it is arguable to say that this "noise" is caused by the way someone has configured their account, how they access their account (via PC or mobile device) or just the people that they are following. However regardless of my concerns with the usefulness (or the business model, or lack of, that everyone seems so interested in) of twitter.com, I did find one particular item very uplifting and helpful... If anything just a boost to my ego. After adding and removing so many dead beat followers (spammers and non-existent twitter accounts) I decided to follow a particular celebrity ("The Real One" so I was informed). My uplifting and defining twitter moment came several days later when I received an email.  Even if it only lasted a few moments it was special and put a smile on my face when I read the email subject: " Britney Spears is now following you on Twitter! "

A recent article by Chris Crum of smallbusinessnewz.com compared some of the good and bad of twitter marketing. While it can always be improved upon, the reality is that twitter is another marketing channel to use. The reasons to use it are valid:

• People "opt in" to follow you, so your audience is targeted
• Social networks are taking over email in terms of popularity. Twitter is a very popular one.
• Twitter is growing rapidly.
• Can be a great channel for customer service if you maintain it.
• Make news announcements on one channel
• Lets you interact directly with the public and increases brand awareness
• Real-time search is going to rise to demand