top strategies on how you can make social media work for your business

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

I have been socially active online for over five years now and been on email for closer to ten. I remember the learning process I went through just to understand email, let alone each social site. When I first started to become social online, I spent months digging into the layers of the online social world because I knew that it had to be done. I had to learn not only because I was curious about these shiny new objects (yes, I have Shiny Object Syndrome) but also because I knew that communication (also known as marketing) was moving online—and fast. Because I was in the communication industry, if I wasn’t involved in this movement or at least informed, I would surely be left behind. As much as I wanted to fight it in the beginning by ignoring invites on LinkedIn and throwing my pen at the computer trying to understand exactly what in the heck Twitter was for, I knew in my gut that I eventually would have to embrace it like I embraced the computer so many years ago. (I will leave out the painful computer memories to spare you an extra 40 pages of reading.)

As I made the move online, it all started to make sense and it was feeling really, really good. Why was it feeling so good you might be thinking? No, it wasn’t because I gained thousands of new friends overnight; it was because the result I was getting—finding high-level contacts, making sales, and getting media coverage—was blowing my mind. I could hear angels singing as new emails and requests for consulting, speaking engagements, and more information came in. I started to speak to clients, encouraging them, even begging some, to make the move as well.

I found an unusual resistance to social media as a valuable tool in the communication industry for the first few years; looking back now I realize it was mainly because it was unfamiliar territory. There was a feeling this was an unchartered marketing approach with a bunch of hype, and fears based mainly on the dotcom crash in the ’90s seemed to justify the widely-held belief that it was only a matter of time before these social, time-wasting chatter sites would follow. As these fears subsided, a new one somehow has crept in. As businesses begin to move forward and become more involved online, there seems to be a common misunderstanding of social media across the board. Social media is actually not really marketing, it is more like a vehicle to get your message out there, whether it be to the masses or a specifically catered to group or public. I’ll explain further. But first, let’s talk about “the shift.” Over the years I have seen a shift in how we market and how we interact. Social media continues to evolve and become a powerful force and way to reach new and existing customers, clients, and markets. One of the biggest problems with this power vehicle is that businesses do not take the time to understand what happened with this shift. Communication changed, and along with it, our consumers. Because there is a lack of understanding on the brand’s side, there is a complete disconnect when a brand attempts to go online and “market” socially.

How social media fits into marketing

To explain where social media fits in, there is an old story that illustrates the differences between advertising, promotion, public relations, marketing, sales, and now social media:

If the circus comes to town and you paint a sign that says “Circus Coming to Fairground Saturday,” that’s advertising.

If you put a sign on the back of an elephant and walk him into town, that’s promotion.

If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flowerbed, that’s publicity.

If you can get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations.

And if you planned the elephant’s walk, that’s marketing.

If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions, and ultimately, have them spend a lot of money at the circus, now, that’s sales!

Where does social media fit into this illustration? Social media is the vehicle to get your message out there. But, it’s no elephant; it’s your shiny speedboat! How could you have met the mayor and asked him to either participate in the marketing or give permission to use photos? Why he is on LinkedIn, of course. Where were the pictures posted of the elephant walking through the mayor’s flowerbed? On Flickr, Facebook, and, yes, even Twitter, my reader friends. You might even do a blog post on the incident.

Furthermore, you can advertise in specific regions and to specific demographics through Facebook advertising and add some keywords into your blog post for better search engine optimization results. (Don’t worry, SEO is covered in Chapter 15. No, don’t skip ahead just yet; we need to cover a few other things first.) Many other social sites such as Skype (Skype launched a new advertising platform as of March 2011. http://mashable.com/2011/03/07/skype-ads-this-week/) and LinkedIn are testing and launching new advertising models. These site vehicles are becoming way more niched just for you, so you can have a better target focus when advertising and reaching out to new prospects. They not only have it narrowed down to demographics, they now have psychographics, as well as spending habits and an individual’s center of influence.

center of influence: circle of most influential friends. They are the ones that post and interact with you the most, online or off. They might also be considered “connectors” and influential in their community, again both online and off.

An ongoing problem with social media as a vehicle is that most people only test drive it a few times. They then leave it parked at the dock. They might visit the bay a few times to look at it here and there, but they do nothing else with it. They don’t even really buy it. They just visit it occasionally to ponder whether they should buy it or not. They might even get in and sit, look around for a few minutes, and then go back to what they were doing. To that add the saying, “If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got.” made famous by Anthony Robbins, world-renowned motivational guy. You can’t just cruise around the bay, either. You need to go into new areas out there in the ocean to find new fish, go explore new territories, because you can’t meet new fish in the same circle of friends or in the same area of the ocean ( apologies for referring to us as fish, but hey, for the purpose of illustration in this book, we are running with the wave metaphor).

Although we are learning about social media in this book, a main focus is to teach you how to create waves (aka “buzz”) using these social vehicles online to build your brand exposure and show you how you can get powerful publicity by jumping into that speedy boat, riding it up and down the blue coastal waters, and getting a ton of people to post and write about your brand journey and message. This in turn will increase your brand exposure and get people back to your site. You will also learn you what you need to do to build mutually beneficial relationships with site visitors and social connections. So in a nutshell, you will be learning how to get more publicity and exposure online by building quality relationships and utilizing some pretty amazing tools to make marketing magic happen.

You see, publicity builds credibility. As marketing author Al Ries says, “Advertising maintains a brand. Once they are at top of mind, publicity builds them.” A great story in his and Laura Ries must-read book, The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, is the explanation of Red Bull vs. Coca Cola. It demonstrates how Red Bull built its brand to top of mind and created a new category—the energy drink—all through publicity. Coca Cola decided to go up against Red Bull and launch its own energy drink by investing $31 million in advertising. Hmmm . . . do you know what Coca Cola’s original energy drink was? Can’t remember it, can you? Red Bull still owns the market. Pick up Reis’s book to get the details of that story. It clearly demonstrates the power of publicity vs. advertising. One of the main disconnects that I see in brands online is that they try to be Coca Cola, going online and advertising to launch a brand’s presence, which totally defeats the purpose. There is no credibility in advertising. It is just a brand talking about itself and tooting its own horn. Publicity gets other people talking about you and tooting that dang horn for you, which is the key to brand building. (Yep, it’s the dang horn thing. That is the key!)

There are dozens of amazing social media-focused experts online that have a large following. Who knows how they get any sleep with all of the posting and engaging that they do? Some people apparently don’t need much sleep. Some true experts include Gary Vaynerchuk, Scott Stratten, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, and Mari Smith.

Using social vehicles as a listening channel

What is even more mind blowing to me about social media is that businesses continue to ignore it hoping that it will go away. Wetpaint/ Altimeter, which specializes in online research, released a 2010 study that found companies deeply and widely engaged in social media significantly surpass their peers in both revenue and profit. The study also found the companies with the highest levels of social media activity had sales that grew on average by 18 percent, while those with the least amount of social activity saw their sales decline by 6 percent.

In addition to becoming a part of our marketing musts to increase exposure and profits, social media vehicles have also changed our everyday language, from “Tweet me” and “Tag me,” to some more interesting lingo such as “Bump me,” or “Send me a wiki.” Five years ago, who would have thought we would be asking to bump or tweet each other? No matter what way you choose to look at it, the online world has become the age of information, and because we are all hungry for information and constantly craving more, the information world (IW) is here to stay. This information age is now evolving through fancy new ways of delivery known as “technology.” New technologies such as iPads, iPhones, and text and video messaging allow us to have a voice and share it with whomever the heck we want. Because we all want to be heard, whether it is sharing a great experience at a restaurant or hotel, or a not-so-pleasant interaction with your mobile company, people are talking online about you or to you. Are you listening? Furthermore and even more important, are you there to answer?

So many companies, large and small, are not even online yet. They are still struggling with their 1990s brochure of a website instead of taking time to utilize these social vehicles as a listening tool to help grow their brand presence and consumer loyalty. If you Google or Bing search your company’s product or service, you will most likely find that somewhere, someone has been talking about you or trying to find you. If for some off-the-wall reason you do not find any conversation about you, then that is another problem in itself.

Fortune Inc., an online news outlet, studied ten major brands online from Zappos to Bank of America to find out which brands had better online customer service. What it reported was very surprising. While Zappos is referred to as one of Twitter’s brightest corporate stars, the old-fashioned telephone still won the day when it came to Zappos’s most effective customer service problem-solving method, and this was also true at Delta, Rubbermaid, and the Hyatt. The brand with the most effective customer service portal online and the highest level of support was yet again another surprise—Comcast. Fortune reported, “They seem to have nailed the telephone and live chat, but Twitter solved the customer service problem.” For the full study, visit http://bit.ly/gGHTIv.

Your business growth and exposure online are dependent on your level of presence and interaction. It is time for you to choose a vehicle and set up a listening center online. A few excellent sites for implementing a monitoring outlet are Hootsuite.com or Tweetdeck.com. Both have free as well as trial and paid-for options. ObjectiveMarketer.com, mainly focused on the monitoring aspect of your online brand exposure, is definitely the Ferrari of these tools, so check it out, ask for a demo, and be ready to implement it once you have an online presence that requires a more sophisticated tool. ObjectiveMarketer.com offers what are called “Engagement Reports” so you can see who is engaging online using your brand name, product, or service and their level of engagement. It is also a great site for planning and executing, dare we say it, an online “campaign.”

Why do we call it a “campaign”? In the dictionary, a campaign means an “attempt to win; attack.” But we are not “attempting to win” or setting out to “attack.” So right here and now in this very book, let’s change it to “a journey.” Yep, a social media journey or a marketing journey. Ralph Waldo Emerson once famously said, “Life is a journey, not a destination,” and this rings true with marketing. The opportunities that we come across along the way, the people we meet, the more exposure that we get, the more media coverage—these are all a part of a journey, not necessarily a destination and certainly not a flipping campaign.

List hours that you are available to chat online, or have live interactive video broadcasts on set days at set times through sites such as Ustream. tv or TalkFusion.com. Then your customers, clients, and prospects can jump on live to ask you questions about your industry, product, or service and interact/ see you on camera, live in person.

Consistency with your online approach

Lack of consistency with a brand message online is something that I must address here. Some brands fail before they really even get started online due to the fact that they are not consistent with when and how they post and interact online. Thus they might post or comment once a week, or what I call “WTFLI” (pronounced wit-fly), meaning when they feel like it, which might even be less than once a week. When you do this as a brand, you are basically saying, “I am not listening to what you have to say, nor am I here for you.” How would that feel on the prospect or customer’s end? It would be like walking into a chamber mixer event for ten minutes with your hands over your ears. You might be able to see people, but you can’t hear what they are saying to you, about you, or with you.

There is one very simple way to solve this problem. You need to set a certain time every day when you will go online to answer questions and post. This way there is a consistency as to when you are online, and your connections will begin to communicate with you during those times. Even if they post to you when you are not online, they will at least be informed and know what to expect about when you will be online to answer. I suggest that you have outlets available on sites such as Twitter or Facebook, but that you also create a customer service portal on your website as well.

I will cover more about setting up a customer service portal in a later chapter, but for now just a few basics:

• Incorporate your Twitter and Facebook feeds into a customer service section on your site so they are all in one place. One of the main focuses of your online journey should be to get people back to your site so ultimately they will read more about you and take their relationship with you to a deeper level. You need to make sure that there is an auto-trust component to your site once they land. (I will cover this in a later chapter.) For now, start by being more consistent when you go online and when you answer and interact.

• If you do not want to set a certain time each day, then at least communicate that to your connections and prospects by telling them how you work online and what your availability is.

Another online social offense occurs when brands focus on something completely different every time they post, something that has nothing to do with their core brand message or personality. This can confuse prospects and can be even more upsetting with current customers and clients who already thought they understood your brand message. I am not saying that you need to post the same message all of the time, every day, on the same topic. I am referring to staying in line with your brand personality and what your core brand values and message are all about.

For example, if your brand is humorous and playful, then it would make sense for you to post a funny cartoon about your industry or something funny about one of your team members. Of course, get the team member’s permission before you start poking fun at him or around him. If you are this playful brand, posting serious studies and analytics on your industry gives a mixed message. You can certainly post serious statistics about your industry, don’t get me wrong. Just make sure that you are playful with it. You could use wording such as “Are they serious about this?” or “Our take is that these numbers suck. How can we improve them?” Again, just add playful to your posts if that is your brand personality and within your core message. In Chapter 3, you will find a brand personality assessment questionnaire that you can fill out to help you better determine what this should be online for your brand.

You can set posts online for a later date and time using auto-posting features on social media dashboards such as Hootsuite.com. If you do this, make sure that you are transparent. Let people know that you set the post. For example: I am traveling this week so I set this post on auto because I just wanted you to see this amazing resource, tool, etc. This keeps you active on the newsfeed, communicating with your connections, and the transparency is golden.

Leave out the sales bitching

Every time I train or present anywhere around the globe and ask the audience members how many of them like to be sales pitched, it never fails that not one person raises her hand. Well, actually one time someone did. I told everyone in the room to go sit by her and sales pitch her their products. She very quickly changed her position. People do not like to be sales pitched (aka “sales bitching”). So why would you do it online? Really, when you look at successful branding online, 99 percent of those companies built their brand without sales bitching, or pushing products. They built relationships and used social vehicles as listening channels and customer service outlets.

Social media is just not as powerful when you are constantly posting product specials or product and service promotions. That would be called advertising. Pushing products online or off is not being social, and it is not a relationship-building approach. You can always have product information and sales pages on your site, but I suggest that you leave the bitching out of your posting on social sites. It takes power away from your brand presence. It has been proven time and again in study after study that building credibility and relationships are the foundational activities needed to create a top-of-mind brand. Trust and credibility must be built first. People will only buy from you at the level they trust you. Period.

It is not about the numbers

At least several times every month, I come across potential clients that are only focused on the numbers. Because the bottom line has to do with numbers, right? Well, my reader friends (I am assuming that we are friends now, because you are still reading this book and I just know that you have already reached out to connect with me online at www.socialwavebook.com, right?), people are not just a number, nor should they be treated like one. The truth is that the more people you know, the less you really know them. How would you manage quality relationships with 100,000 people? I chose not to have a massive outreach on my social sites because I really want to take the time to answer, get to know people, and engage on a sincere level. When you just focus on the numbers, you often lose sight of standards as well as what quality really means to your business in regard to your ideal customer or client. It is all about quality, not quantity.

I could easily have kept my Twitter numbers at 35,000. Years ago when I first starting using Twitter, I used an auto-follow program, which is how I got my numbers up so high. Yes, they were just numbers. However it hit me one day like a ton of bricks (a cheesy saying that my parents use and passed on to their kids, thanks Mom and Dad!) that bigger does not always mean better, especially when it comes to social media connections. Furthermore, when I realized that half of the people following me where either in the porn industry or they were an online coupon outlet, I knew that was not the way I wanted my online presence to be, let alone my connections. So, I deleted them and started to rebuild. Today, as I write this book, I have 3,500 followers. To some, it’s nothing, but to me it is everything because I know or have Tweeted to at least 95 percent of my followers, consistently.

While we are on Twitter, let me share another amazing outcome regarding number of followers. There have often been Tweets for a cause or with a sales focus from celebrity Tweeters resulting in next to nothing in results. Celebrity Tweets (or those of any user with a large follower count) might not help increase awareness or sales on social networking sites. It is more important that the interests of the person with the following are in line with those of the person asking for the ReTweet (RT) or forward, or promotion support.

Analyzing a database of over 500 million Tweets, a Stanford study looked at the relation of Twitter follower count to the ability to spread hashtags. Users with large follower counts did not spread as well as those with smaller follower counts (less than 1000 followers). In another study of influence circulation that looks at high influentials and low influentials in 90 million Twitter posts, the authors found “under a wide range of plausible assumptions the most cost-effective performance can be realized using ‘ordinary influencers’—individuals who exert average or even less-than-average influence.” (For the study, see . http://misc.si.umich.edu/media/papers/wsdm333w-bakshy.pdf.)

A Harvard study in 2009, “Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network?,” found it was the moderately connected people, not the highly connected, that were the most likely to be influenced by friends’ purchases. (For the complete study, see hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-123.pdf.) There are dozens of other studies available online that show it is not about the numbers, it is about the influence and the messaging, as well as the level of connection. The bottom line is you need to achieve tighter engagement with your followers, not just obtain more.

Your image and branding

Before you dive into this book feet first, let’s do a quick image and branding check to make sure that your social ship looks like a yacht, not a sinking fishing boat. It never ceases to amaze me how many brands fail before they even start online because their image is completely off. Rather than looking at their brand image as an investment for the long-term growth of their financial well-being, they use clip art to throw their logo together because they want to save a few hundred dollars, and so they short themselves from day one. With that said, first thing is first. Get rid of the clipart logo. There are way too many online brand image specialists that can create powerful award-winning logos. You can name your budget on sites such as guru.com and elance.com. Make sure you clearly communicate that, per Starr Hall, clipart is not to be used!

Aside from your logo, how is your brand name? What is going on there? There are a few things I would ask you to consider when setting your brand name. If you already have an established name, this might prompt you to change it (warning inserted here). Ask yourself: Do I plan on having this company until I say goodbye to this planet? Or would I like to have an exit strategy and sell it? If you plan on eventually getting out of the business you are in and maybe enjoying some leisure family and vacation time, you might want to consider leaving your personal name out of the company name. Why? Because if you go to sell your company, even if it is worth millions, you are taking away from its salability because the image is based on you. Unless you come with the company (which kind of defeats most of the purpose, don’t you think?), you need to get your name off the brand. Now, don’t get me wrong. You can use your name to build a brand. I do this with my own company as well as with clients. Build your personal reputation and then branch off mini yous under a different name. For example, my company name for my consulting and training is Starr Hall LLC, and I have and continue to build my recognition and exposure in different markets online and off. I have recently decided to open Cuvée, a champagne bar I plan on franchising. It is a division under my Starr Hall LLC. It has a completely different name, one not based on my name. However, I am using my connections and presence to build the fans, followers, and exposure.

As much as I love to encourage creativity when it comes to brand names, do a name explanation check online to see if other people get it. When I launched Cuvée, I asked people if they knew what it meant. Over 100 people responded with yes, 4 with a no. That is a pretty good brand name understanding, so I went with it. In addition, it was simple—one word so the consumer doesn’t have to think to much about it. When I first thought of the name it was Cuvée Champagne and Delights Bar, but that was too long. I knew my consumer target would instantly want to shorten it, so I did it for them. Cuvée.

Consumers did the same thing with Oprah. Her show started years ago as The Oprah Winfrey Show. Consumers changed it to The Oprah Show, then to Oprah, finally to O. Pretty soon she will just be a symbol. Same rings true with ATT. Do you even know what ATT stands for? Well, consumers didn’t want to work hard to remember American Telephone and Telegraph, so they shortened it. Make sense? Keep it short, memorable, and to the point.

Do not be afraid to ask your connections online about your brand name and image and do not stress out over the four people who don’t like it. Definitely listen to their reasons, but if you get 100 people that do like it, you are most likely headed in the right direction. I have found a reasonable rate of return in regard to feedback is between 5 to 7 percent. If you are connected to 1,000 people then you should be getting close to 50 to 70 responses. If you are not, then you need to find out why. There could be several reasons why you are getting a low feedback response.

1. You have not kept your brand or you in front of your contacts on a consistent basis,

2. You are making the survey all about you and your brand and not offering them something in exchange for their time, or

3. The people you are connected to are not as active online and you need to reach out to more people that are active online.

LinkedIn groups are an excellent outlet for this type of discussion and research. Just be careful when asking family and friends because they love you and do not want to cause any upset in their relationship with you for the most part (hey, everyone has a pot-stirrer in their family). Always go to people you know will give you honest and worthy feedback. Usually you will find these are people to whom you are not as deeply connected.

One-way vs. two-way messaging

Amazingly, many marketers and entrepreneurs do not understand how they are communicating to their market vs. how they should be. There is a science behind marketing, not just the emotional piece. The psychology of it all is just awesome, but let me simplify it so you can get on to learning some really super cool, results-oriented social, online, and publicity marketing. First, let’s look at talking to your market one way. An example of this would be putting up a billboard or a print ad with your advertising or marketing message for people to read. This ad only reaches or talks one way with the consumer; it does not have an outlet or way for the consumer to talk back to or with the brand. Therefore a relationship does not grow. The consumer does not feel heard, and he moves on. These types of marketing approaches used to work back in the day—the ’60s and even through the ’90s—because messaging was not as crowded, technology wasn’t taking over our planet, and, I have to say it, consumers just weren’t as outgoing in wanting to stand up and be heard. Technology has allowed them to have a voice, be heard, and demand attention.

Now, let’s look at two-way marketing; some examples are posting a question, or even a marketing message, on a social site and having a comment box or way of entry for your focus audience to reply back and be heard. This type of conversation helps to start a connection and can help nurture it as long as the brand listens and engages back so the reader and audience sincerely feel heard. You see, when a brand posts back to one reader, other people are going to pick up on that and feel encouraged to join in. Then they might like your fan page or visit your website. You can only go up from there—that is, of course, if you follow the juicy stuff in this book

Some other forms of two-way marketing using media vehicles are text messaging, email, videos—all of which I cover in this book. But before we jump in here head first, stop and ponder how you have been communicating with your customers or clients. How often do you talk with them, let alone your prospects? Do you have someone on staff that can be your two-way message ambassador or can you hire an intern or even a trusted neighbor? Someone trustworthy has got to be the ears for your brand. If you are not, who will be? You need to commit to this, my business friend, or your social marketing efforts are going to be dead in the water. A few things I suggest you do to help move you from one-way to two-way messaging are:

1. Check all print and one-way ads. Find an opportunity to add two-way messaging, such as “For the answer to this go to our fan page at . . .” or “For the coupon code, go to our weblog at . . .”

WIPEOUT

I can’t seem to convert my connections to actual sales, what can I do to improve this?

WAVE TIP

Besides starting with relationship building, do what is called at-tagging people on social profiles such as Facebook to get their attention and get them back to your site. You put the “@” sign before their name, find them in the drop down menu, then hit enter, type a quick post to them with more information pointing back to your website URL, remembering to leave out the sales bitch. This will go directly on their wall. See the image below.

figure 1.1–“At-tagging” customers targeted for your message

2. Assign someone to be the daily two-way ambassador for your brand. Set a goal for her to listen to a minimum of 100 people per day, and have her send you a brief every Friday on how many people she listened to, how many she engaged, and what resulted from the conversations.

3. On every email you send, video you post, ad you place, appearance you make, and business card or marketing piece you print, you need to add in your social presence. I am not just talking about adding in the social site’s logo icon to show you are online. You need to give them the darn URL. Try to match your social site URL (called vanity URL and covered in this book) as close to your brand/or product name as possible. If you are the brand/or product, then the vanity URL would be your name.