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Social Media Tips
Social Media Tips
Exercise Your Authority – Who is the Expert in Your Marketplace?
Jul 30th
The answer to this question is almost rhetorical, largely because the answer is obvious. If YOU aren’t the expert in your marketplace, then you’re nowhere. It’s YOU that needs to be the one potential customers come to, and the only way to do this is to position yourself as the authority on the subject.
So how do we do that?
When we talk about the marketplace, we’re largely referring to the online landscape, however, the more you are dominant online, the more you can become dominant offline.
More and more we are looking online when we want to research the credibility of a business. For instance, your car is in need of a service – how easy is it now to logon to the internet, and read 3 or 4 user reviews of local garages? The Yellow Pages has never offered this level of detail – you assumed that whoever had the largest advert on the page was the best. Now we no longer have to settle for those half-hearted assumptions.
So the key for our small business is to ensure we are represented accurately and positively online. A lot of this we can have some control over, however the majority we do not. The main areas we refer to here are social media and review sites i.e. any site that allows a user to set up their own account and basically write what they like (as long as it’s not slanderous of course).
Twitter is a great example of this, and given it’s real-time nature, it’s crucial that you are a part of what’s going on on the site, and you know what’s being said about your brand. A simple search on http://search.twitter.com will help here, and enable you to nail the local landscape. With some creativity using a notification service such as Google Alerts, you can be the first at the scene anytime your brand or market is mentioned.
Small Business Owners – Create a Social Media Policy For Your Company Using These Guidelines
Jul 30th
Do you have a social media policy for your business? There have been many cases of employees getting fired because of social media. This could have been avoided if the business owner had a clear cut social networking policy in place and communicated that policy to the staff. While you might not have a large staff now, it is a good idea to put an online networking policy in place as soon as possible. Make sure that everyone is aware of the social networking policy when they are first hired. Here are some things to consider when you are coming up with the social media policy for your company.
What your employees are allowed to say about the company.
I am not suggesting that you totally censor your employees. However, you do have a certain public image to uphold. You have to decide early on what you are going to allow your employees to say about the company on social networking sites. This is definitely something that needs to be outlined in the handbook you create about your company’s social media policy.
Is there a particular point person to send media requests to?
Your employees may run into members of the media while they are networking. The journalist may want to ask them some questions about your company. You have to decide if you want your employees to be able to answer those types of questions themselves or if you want one employee to be the designated spokesperson for the company. Whatever you decide, make sure to communicate this to all staff so there is no confusion.
What employees are allowed to post on online networking sites.
Once again this is a matter of protecting your company image. Your employees are a representative of you. You need to figure out what kind of information you want your employees to post on social media. Are they allowed to reveal your company name on their personal profiles? Can they post pictures of themselves at work? Is it okay for them to post pictures of themselves drinking alcohol? These might seem trivial, but it is important to let your employees know beforehand what they can post rather than trying to discipline them when they cause bad publicity for the company.
Having a social media policy is important for you and your employees. It helps your employees to know exactly what they can and can’t do with their social media profiles. It could also protect you from future lawsuits since the policy will be spelled out in black and white. Now stop reading this article and create a social media policy for your company.
Measure Your Money – Calculate Return of Investment on Social Media Marketing
Jul 29th
Many companies and executives are finally starting to all join the social media network frenzy because of the effective reach that it has on consumers and the ability to touch thousands of people at one moment. However, in order for the social branding tools to really work for everyone, brands need to evaluate the impact that it is having on their company, and customers, in a tangible way. To accomplish this, the social media ROI (return on investment) needs to be measured, which can be somewhat difficult and confusing to do. As long as you can remember the steps and pointers that researchers have discovered, then you should be able to see exactly how effective the turn out of your investments in social media are.
ROI is defined as (gain on investment-cost of investment/cost of investment), with the expectation of investing less than you will actually get in return. ROI is a business metric, not a media metric, so it will prove legitimate results. Oliver Blanchard, a BrandBuilder Marketing principal and senior strategist has done extensive research into Social Media ROI and reveals some clarification into how this is possible to measure. Something important to remember that he points out is that social media is not free; it takes time, energy, people, and technology to be carried out. There are two large and fairly simple reasons why it is necessary to allocate money for spending on social networking within the company. First, it will result in cost reduction in customer service, business intelligence, and market research, just to name a few. On the other hand it will simultaneously generate greater revenue by yielding more transactions, more net new customers, enhanced customer loyalty, and brand awareness.
At first the generation of revenue from the allocated resources used on social media may not be visible from a business perspective, even with an increase of hits on the website, more Facebook fans, or twitter followers. The financial benefits may not appear overnight because there is a process that it must go through in order to reach this point. In order to measure ROI with social media you must first make the investment, then take action by utilising it, observe a reaction from consumers, experience the nonfinancial impact where there is potential (including website visitors, social mention, impressions, Facebook friends, YouTube videos, positive and negative press…) and then finally comes the financial impact where the ROI is measured and has actualised potential. It is important to not solely rely on numbers, but what they end up leading to. Finding trends and tracking them back to their point of origin is the key to measuring ROI.
According to Blanchard, it is necessary that you start with a proof of concept by showing growth in the company’s awareness, sales revenue, and number of transactions and net new customers since the implementation of social media. This can be accomplished with charts and time lines that show a before and after concept. Transaction data should be specific by showing the frequency, reach, and yield of the customers. By looking for patterns in the different fields that have changed since the execution of social media tools, it will be easy to see the impact. By stacking these time lines on top of one another, your company can create a picture of which efforts are working, and which ones aren’t. Watch for correlations between events, such as certain blog articles equalling more customer calls, or positive online mentions and a jump in site visitors By using what you know, you will be able to make it affect all aspects of your business, even traffic in your actual building.
