Be Yourself, Be Authentic, Be Funny

News Limited newspapers in Australia recently ran a tech story headlined “Social Media’s Trendy, But Does it Lead To Sales?”

The author, Nick Gilbert, pushed a simple message for small business: “Keep it real” and gave a few examples of business owners who have made Social Media work for them.

If you have read the earlier news posts on this website, you’ll know that we’ve been saying for a while that Social Media such as Twitter / Facebook etc will work … but so long as you speak in an authentic voice and make sure your posts aren’t boring!

The newspaper story also pushed this line … but listen to some of the results they noted:

• “I get either a client enquiry or an actual client at least twice a week”
• “We spend about 90 per cent of our time and efforts on Facebook. It’s a far more dynamic channel for us to communicate with our client base.”

These are real Aussie businesses making real results from Social Media.

But as the story noted, they have each developed a strategy that means they are selling by “not selling”.

Except for those few extremely funny video ads that “go viral”, no one enjoys reading advertising.

No one will re-post, “like” or re-tweet a blatant ad (unless they’re friends with the business owner!)

However they will repost information they find is interesting, that they haven’t heard before, a joke, a funny story, a handy hint, a quirky photo etc

So to pass Social Media 101, repeat slowly after me … “Don’t Be Boring!”

• Read the full story by Nick Gilbert here

Word Of Mouse Bites Both Ways!

It’s been a marketing truism since Roman times ( remember those scrawled recommendations found on the walls of Pompeii? )… word of mouth pays!

It doesn’t matter how many ads you read, hear or watch, when your best mate says he loves XYZ product, there’s a great chance you’re going to try it, too.

This, of course, is the basis for all social marketing, (see previous stories), especially those which successfully entice real people to endorse your product. This has been dubbed  “word of mouse” (not original, but a great phrase!).

However something that is often overlooked is that gossip can also be extremely negative to your business.

If a friend tells you that she got food poisoning after eating at the ABC Cafe, then there’s an extremely good chance that you’re not going to risk eating there. In the old days (ie pre-Facebook) the owners of the cafe would probably never know why their sales started slipping.

These days, there’s a good chance the alleged food poisoning victim will write about her tribulations online with hundreds – if not thousands – of readers viewing it. There’s even special websites which publish nothing but consumer complaints e.g. www.notgoodenough.org. Others, like the American phenomenon Yelp, publish both positive and negative reviews.

Eventually the business owner will probably find this, too … so what is the next step?

1. The answer is NOT to ignore it in the hope it will go away. Complaints that took less than a minute to post online could still be turning up in search engine results years later.

2. Take a deep breath, gather your facts and then register as member on the website so you can make a reply.

3. You may well be angry but don’t let this show when you post. If you can’t hold back, don’t post anything! It’s better to wait a few days until you are calmer.

4. Don’t insult or threaten the dissatisfied customer. Don’t let your emotions run away … and definitely don’t call them names! Stick to the facts.

5. Try to be gracious. Apologize for what the customer didn’t like and offer to make it right. Offer a refund. Invite them to contact you privately. In other words, deal with it in the same way as you would handle a face-to-face complaint in your shop if there were a hundred other customers standing there watching you.

6. If you think the comments are unfair or malicious (eg posted by a competitor), try contacting the website owner directly and ask that the comments be removed.  However, still ensure that you have posted something conciliatory so that in the meantime readers will leave with a more positive view of your business.

Case Story: How Not to Handle An Online Complaint

1. Create Your Profile

Facebook is all about personal relationships, i.e. “friends”. People probably DON’T want to make friends with your business, but they may like to be friends with you. In any case, you are not allowed to create a profile for your business. What you can do is create a profile for yourself, using your real name (false names are also against Facebook’s Terms of Services and risk instant deletion if detected).

Don’t forget to check your Privacy settings. You may, or may not, wish to share those “cute” family moments with the world and potential customers.

2. Work At It.

Upload your contact database to see if any of your contacts – or customers – are already on Facebook. Send “friend” requests. Then continue working at it! There is no point in starting a social networking marketing strategy unless you are willing to spend time at it, usually every day! Chat and joke with your new “friends” and answer their questions.

3. Create Your Company Page

Once you have created a personal profile, you can create a page for your business (this option is also available from Facebook’s initial log-in page)

This company page looks similar to your personal profile and can also be enhanced with applications that, as Facebook describes it, “capture new audiences virally through friend recommendations, News Feed stories, Facebook events, and beyond”.

Business pages should have your company contact information as well as photos, videos, news about upcoming events, discussion forums and links back to your corporate website. You can also include an RSS feed from your blog, embed videos from YouTube or re-tweet Twitter posts. And the bonus is, these company pages are spidered by search engines so your info will show up in Google!

The Facebook residents who become fans of your company are putting up their hands to tell you they like your product. They are inviting you to stay in touch with them and share information and advice. Do it!

4. What not to do

Don’t privately message too many individuals. You’ll be identified by Facebook as a spammer and you risk having your profile deleted.

Hard-selling doesn’t work!

Remember Facebook – and in fact all social media avenues – aren’t “get-rich-quick” schemes. Social media is about building networks and your reputation slowly over time. People will like your page and absorb your message if you provide content that it interesting and gives them value.

5. Advertising on Social Media

Of course, you can also advertise directly on Facebook in an attempt to drive people to your business page. There are benefits of advertising with a social media network, for example, Facebook ads allow you to target a select demographic.

6. Be Alert & Keep On Your Toes

One of the real problems – and opportunities – with social media outlets are that they are continually evolving.

More likely than not, these changes will be beneficial to marketers but you have to be alert to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

Facebook, for example, seems keen to improve its revenue streams and often tweaks its users’ settings. However, it is important to watch how these changes play out in the marketplace as privacy issues can arise and Facebook can “pull the plug” on a feature almost instantaneously.

For an interesting oversight of some of Facebook’s history of changes, visit CNET

Here’s A Few More Ideas About Social Media

“Social media” marketing has been the buzz internationally for the past few years. In Australia, it has had a slow start but the wave is starting to build up now.

1. What is social media? Social media is simply a conversation between people online. Common social media forums include Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. These allow people to easily chat about what they’re doing, swap jokes, photos, videos and play games together. When marketers join in, the theory is that when someone you know says “Joe’s pizzas are great”, you’re very likely to believe this and try the pizza … more likely, in fact, than when Joe himself says his pizzas are great in a flyer in your letterbox.

2. Social media does not replace other forms of marketing. A social media marketing strategy should be part of an overall promotional package. Social media may be less expensive than other forms of marketing but don’t forget to factor in the cost of your time. It takes a substantial investment in time to build relationships with potential customers online as well as posting regular updates, engaging with followers and responding to comments.

3. Set aside a time in your weekly diary to do your social media work. The whole point of social media is to keep your followers updated regularly. Stale content will reflect badly on your business. If your updates aren’t regular, your followers will quickly lose interest.

4. Link your social media platforms. Here’s some ideas … Create a Facebook group … link this to a blog on your corporate website. Create a Twitter account and link this to your Facebook account so your tweets appear automatically on Facebook, too. Create a Linked In account and link this to your blog, Twitter feed and Facebook account. Upload a video to Youtube. Link your Yourtube account to Twitter and Facebook or post the Youtube video on your blog. Remember: be consistent in your message in each forum, and if appropriate, use your company colours and logo. And don’t be lazy when setting up your accounts. Fill in all the fields and be honest. For these daisy chains to work smoothly, you don’t want website administrators cancelling an account because it looks suspicious to them.

5. Be authentic with your content. Nominate someone in your business to do the updates. Readers can detect when a “different voice” is writing. And your content must be interesting! Only a small amount – less than 20% – should be directly promoting your product or service. Chat with followers, answer comments, promote local events.

Every business exploring the world of social media is probably hoping to hit the promotional bullseye by having a message “go viral” on the Internet.

If this happens, thousands – maybe millions – of people will be watching your video or reading your message, and then re-posting it to their friends, tweeting about it etc etc.

Here’s an example of one of the most successful viral advertisements (this was spread around the world, before it went to TV and the cinema):

But be careful … some messages “go viral” for all the wrong reasons!

A United States hamburger chain created a Facebook application called Sacrifice. The idea was simple: “de-friend” 10 people on Facebook and the player would earn a coupon for a free hamburger. The rejected friends would also get an email letting them know that they had been dropped in exchange for a free burger.

This negative campaign was so unpopular that even Facebook eventually banned it – and the story about the campaign? Well, it has gone viral. Not good publicity for the company involved!

So you’ve decided your business needs a website …

Here are five of the most common mistakes that I have watched small businesses make when they start thinking about the web:

1. Failing to weigh up the true cost of a website.

The “I know nothing about computers”-type of business person … You would think this species would be rare nowadays but it’s surprising how many business owners and middle managers are not “tech savvy” – and almost wear it as a badge of honour. They rely on their younger employees – or their children! – to bring them up to speed.

These decisionmakers usually make one of two fatal errors:

• Spending too little: Would you rely on your young nephew “who’s good with computers” to do your accounts? Well then, don’t trust him to shape your web presence and then expect results
• Spending too much: This can happen if the project parameters are not clearly defined and your web designer is working on an hourly rate. Always sign a contract with your developer that spells out exactly how many hours are going to be spent on a project. Don’t let this become “open-ended”. Clearly define what both parties are responsible for (eg. who is supplying the words and photos? who is signing off on the design?) and watch out for hidden extras like “search engine optimisation” (see below)

2. Domain Name (or URL): What you are actually purchasing is a registration which can last from one year to more than five years. At the end of this time, your ownership will lapse unless you renew it before a deadline passes. Don’t be afraid to “shop around” as domain name costs vary widely, however be aware that cheaper resellers may not remind you when your domain comes due for renewal. Australian (com.au) domains cost more than American (.com) domains but for Australian businesses this investment is worthwhile. Australian consumers expect Australian businesses to be on a .com.au domain!

3. Development Costs. Set a reasonable budget, (see above), and stick to it. And make certain at the end of the project that you own the website and no copyrighted material remains vested in the developer. Make sure the package you have negotiated does not include extra charges for items which should be included as a matter of course, e.g. meta tags. Sometimes web developers will charge an arm and a leg for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Be wary! Shonky operators can charge a large sum to list your site on a link network which may actually devalue your website in the long term – both in the eyes of customers who stumble upon this “link farm” and Search Engines which will eventually identify it as a scam.

4. Hosting. You get what you pay for! The company that is offering the super-cheap $2/month deal probably has a superfast website but don’t let that fool you! Your $2 site won’t be put on this server. You will be sharing bandwidth with a few thousand other sites. Not only could this make your website unbearably slow but the “uptime” of the server could also be unreliable. Flaky servers that come and go off the Internet can give the impression that your business is flaky too!

5. Maintenance costs. This is the one item that most people forget. They budget for the monthly hosting fee but put nothing aside to keep the website up-to-date. The search engine “robots” that visit your website detect when content changes. Human visitors also notice this too! To draw visitors back to your site, provide interesting changing content. Changing content will help your website rank better in Search Engine results.

Written by Juli Robertson
Tuesday, 09 March 2010 04:14

Do you use social media as part of your marketing package? If not, why not?

The top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 certainly do. A recent study found that 79% of them use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or blogs to communicate with customers or other stakeholders.

Two-thirds of the companies operate at least one Twitter account, 54% have at least one Facebook fan page and 50% have at least one YouTube channel.

These platforms are most popular in the US and Europe. In Asia, corporate blogs are more popular.

The most amazing thing is that, unlike traditional advertising channels, consumers actually like to engage with companies via social media.

US social media analyst Ravit Lichtenberg, a keen blogger, has identified 10 ways that social media will change in 2010:

1. Social media will become a single, cohesive experience embedded in our activities, more integrated into all our online and offline experiences via various devices and platforms.
2. Analyzing content is producing a “predictive web”, in which the Internet already knows what you want before you know you want it. Scary isn’t it?
3. Mobile phones will be king. Analysts predict that the number of users linking to the Web via their mobiles will hit one billion this year.
4. Quality and relevance of content (the old web maxim “content is king”) will continue to grow in importance. Companies such as News Limited are already talking about protecting their original content, controlling its location and cost.
5. Enterprises will shape the next generation of social media. Large institutions are increasing their investment in social media by up to 25 per cent.
6. Return on investment on social media marketing will become better measured. Companies able to analyse and predict hard returns on their social media investments will find the most success.
7. Online-offline integration. Customer review websites with geo-tagging such as Yelp already allow mobile phone users in some countries to find relevant information and people depending on their location. Twitter 360 (augmented reality for the iPhone) enables users to visualise their Twitter friends in the nearby environment. Imagine scanning products on shelves, getting product reviews and then processing the sale online.
8. The “old” skills of traditional marketing will be needed again. To make the most of this online-offline integration buisinesses will turn back to marketers who specialise in understanding customer psychology and demographics.
9. Women rule! Surveys in 2009 revealed the growing role women play online. Women make or influence 85 per cent of all consumer purchases and women aged 35-55 make up the fastest-growing population on Facebook.
10. Social media will move into new domains including job training, education and health care.