Archive for Mar, 2012

2012 Social Media Spring Cleaning Tip #5
Dispel the myth that social media marketing ROI cannot be measured.

Measure results and incorporate all that you’ve learned into your next set of goals, strategies and tactics. Early business efforts on social media were often incongruous and highly experimental. But if you approach social media from the perspective of how it relates to your corporate goals and strategies and how it harmonizes with and supports the brand of your business, you are much more likely to receive the return on this marketing investment that you desire.

In addition to sales directly attributable to social media efforts or leads, here are some other measurements you should review on a monthly or at least on a quarterly basis:

Elizabeth Kraus – small business marketing consultant and author of 365 Days of Marketing.

2012 Social Media Spring Cleaning Tip #4
Engage people.

Social media are comprised of communities – virtual neighborhoods linked by common interests, passions and life events – rather than geography.

• Make it your goal to connect with your customers and those individuals who represent your ideal client types on social media. Make it your strategy to bring them into your world based on what is going on in their lives –as it relates to the people, products, places and interests that are important to them.
• Make emotional connection part of your social media strategy. People want to share things (opinions, stories, photos, etc.) about themselves and giving them opportunities to do so through social media channels is the means by which your social media communities will be created.

A prime example of this is Party Pail’s late 2011 effort to increase engagement on the Partypail Facebook page. Using third party applications and some new customer engagement strategies, PartyPail was able to create emotional connections with customers, which tripled their Facebook fan base in just one month. Not only is the fan base much larger now, but the implementation of new applications allows for more engaging fan activities that keep their customers more active, entertained, and happy to share information and ideas with PartyPail as a brand.

Elizabeth Kraus – small business marketing consultant and author of 365 Days of Marketing.

2012 Social Media Spring Cleaning Tip #3
Write for your customers, not for yourselves or your SEO. Be visual. Be valuable. Be relevant.

Social media posts essentially evaporate from timelines and feeds within a matter of just a few hours, so you will want to map out a formula and timeline for posting on various platforms, and you will probably post more frequently on some (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.,) than others (like your blog).

In addition to incorporating the advice of social media experts when it comes to posting frequency, find out what your competitors are or are not doing on social media that could give you a competitive edge.

Take time to learn what other businesses that serve your customers or the same types of clients are doing on social media. Find out which of their posts are effective when it comes to triggering engagement and reach.

It’s never been more important to make customer-centric, relevant, real time and valuable content creation part of your marketing strategy; and if that weren’t enough, your content must actually matter to your constituents. Plus, in our information-overload culture, you must do so in ways that grab the attention of viewers visually, within seconds, if you want them to actually review your content.

It’s the point at which your corporate messages and customer interests and passions align that you will reap the richest returns on social media (or any other marketing).

Along these same lines, use these tools not only to communicate information from your business, but also to listen to your customers and ideal client types. Find out more about their real needs, wants and interests. Ask questions. Solicit comments. Ask people to share photos, advice and how-to in some way that relates to the products or services you provide.

Elizabeth Kraus – small business marketing consultant and author of 365 Days of Marketing.

2012 Social MediaSpring Cleaning Tip #2
Social media is more than Facebook and Twitter: Leverage Content Rich Social Media Platforms

SocialMediaExaminer.com released a 2011 Social Media Marketing study that listed Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging as the top 4 social media marketing tools for business. Not only were they the top 4 social media applications in use for business, they beat out the rest by a wide margin, so it’s likely that your social media strategy for 2012 needs to include them. The jury is still out on whether Google+ is going to develop the same type of reach as Facebook, but you can’t afford not to participate with the likelihood that it is going to affect search results and rankings.

But that is not to say that they are the only four social media tools you should be using.

• Find out which social media tools are right for your business, and prioritize them. An infographic like Brian Solis’ conversation prism illustrates that there are hundreds of tools which qualify as social media; however, not all tools are created equal.
• Choosing which social media networks to participate in will require that you know which ones your customers and ideal client types are using for networking and which they turn to for news, information and expert advice. These might not be the same; for instance, your customers may network socially on Facebook, professionally on Google+ and use LinkedIn or multi-author content-rich blogs like Open Forum, Hubpages or Squidoo to author industry or topic-specific learning resources.
  One of the ways PartyPail is leveraging content-rich networks is to use their Squidoo account to provide party planning resources and expert decorating tips. Also, visual and design-related social media platforms are on the rise at the moment, and PartyPail has found that leveraging these platforms gets them right in front of their perfect customer base. Not all businesses will find the same success on such design-oriented social networks, but PartyPail’s Pinterest account has started gaining followers, generating interactions with customers, and even led to sales.
• Your customers and prospects may also be active in online communities which are industry or specialty-specific (such as a forum for professional tax or finance professionals, marketing professionals, etc.) where you could interact by asking questions or providing expert answers.
• Work less, but achieve more. By focusing your social media efforts strategically and utilizing the platforms most likely to reach your customers and ideal client types, you can spend less time on social media but receive a higher ROI.

Elizabeth Kraus – small business marketing consultant and author of 365 Days of Marketing.

Guest blogger Elizabeth Kraus, author of 365 Days of Marketing, is a small business marketing consultant who has been working with a Solid Cactus customer, PartyPail, Inc., to enhance their social media marketing strategy into 2012.

Spring is right around the corner so make sure to add these five Spring Cleaning tips to maximize your Social Media Marketing results in 2012:

I recently read an article about social media which stated (and quite accurately so, I might add) that social media is not new. Nor was it new last year, or the year before that. Like many other innovations, social media’s popularity soared well before corporate America realized its potential.

It took a while for people to adapt the concept of social media platforms for business purposes, find out which their customers and prospects actually use and to develop an approach to social media community management in order to make it effective relative to supporting corporate goals. But now, with scores of social media experts blogging and writing books on the topic and a decade of development behind it, there is no reason to be afraid of using social media for your business – especially if you understand which social media platforms are right for your business, how best to use them, and how to gauge whether they are producing a real return on your marketing investment.

PartyPail, a baby shower and birthday party decorations supplier, is one of many businesses that is using the New Year to re-evaluate their current social media efforts, and resolving to improve them throughout the year. Read on for information about PartyPail’s primary social media resolutions for 2012.

2012 Social Media Spring Cleaning Tip #1
Stop dipping your toes in to test the social media waters; it’s time to jump in.

If you’re still sitting on the edge of the pool just dipping your toes in when it comes to social media, the time has come for you to take the plunge. Social media is a bona fide marketing tool, use it like one!

• The voice, tone, look and “feel” of your social media profiles, status updates and posts should reflect the brand of your business, no less than if it were any other corporate brochure or presentation, because that’s precisely what it ‘is.’
• Social media platforms give you the ability to customize various visual elements and corporate profile information. Take the time to fill these out completely. Use web links where appropriate to drive traffic back to your website. And make it a part of your annual marketing inventory process to review these areas, which are often pushed to the background and may need to be updated to reflect changes in and the growth of your business.
• Think of your social media updates as though you are holding a 24×7 press conference. What type of spokesperson would you want your business to have? What types of information are interesting enough to garner press attention? Not everything is press worthy, and even information which is may need to be ‘spun’ in such a way that is becomes of public interest.
• Your social media should be built around your short and long term goals. Fully integrate social media marketing strategies as a seamless, branded part of your overall marketing efforts in pursuit of specific corporate branding, marketing and sales goals. Do you know what you want to get out of your social media efforts? Determine what type of payoff will make you feel like you’re getting your social media marketing investment dollars’ worth. This might be an increase in sales, but it might also be lead generation, brand awareness, customer goodwill, customer education, referrals, public engagement or other less tangible achievements.

Elizabeth Kraus – small business marketing consultant and author of 365 Days of Marketing.