Three Primary Social Media Goals

When we look at online marketing, there are three broad categories into which nearly all social media related goals can fall. They are usually either aimed at:

1. Building/Strengthening the Brand
2. Driving Conversions
3. Increasing/Monitoring the Presence

Starting at this broad level and thinking about the goals you have for your business can help you begin to write up a list of realistic ways in which social media might help you reach those goals.

Let's take a closer look at these three areas and how they might apply to your social media efforts.

Goal #1: Build the Brand

When it comes to building and reinforcing your brand, social media is one of the most powerfulmarketing tools available. It gives you the strongest and broadest opportunity to both find your target audience and to engage in conversation with them. 

These days, you have no choice but to differentiate yourself from your competitors unless you have an exclusive product. Otherwise, you're forced into the unwinnable battle of competing for the lowest prices and the fastest shipping.

Think about the things that make your company different from your competitors; your Unique Value Propostion. This is the thing you want to use social media to built awareness of. 

If you're a service professional, target a specific niche and build a blogging and Twitter strategy around that. Demonstrate your expertise in working with a certain type of client and then seek out those types of clients to have conversation with. Look for new ways to connect with them and encourage your current clients to socially share your articles with their networks. 

Goal #2: Drive Conversions

One of smartest reasons to use social media is for the potential boost it can have to your conversion efforts. Whether you're looking to drive sales, increase leads or simply drive people to action, conversions are an easily trackable goal in the realm of social media.

Sit down and write out a list of all the potential actions someone might take while engaging with your company's web site or while interacting online.

Obvious options like buying your products or becoming a lead spring to mind, but don't forget about other valuable actions like subscribing to your newsletter, retweeting a blog post or downloading a white paper. 

Read over your list and think about the different ways you might be able to use social media to increase conversions for each item. Often times, this is the best way to start planning your social media efforts. 

Goal #3: Increase Presence 

Finally, we come to the goal most often associated with social media outreach efforts; increasing the conversation about your brand. After all, social media is all about the conversation. It's about theonly space in the world where consumers talk to each other and to companies in an environment that can be tracked, sorted and followed-up with. This makes social media a prime outlet for PR driven companies who want to know what customers are saying about them. 

Setting up even a baseline of social media monitoring can go a long way toward helping you follow these conversations. Whether you're launching new product and aiming to get people buzzing about it or trying to reach out to a new target audience to share information about one of your best selling services, it's all trackable.

When it comes to the conversation people might be having about you online, ask yourself a few questions. 

• Who do you want to hear talking?
• What do you want them to be saying?
• Who do you want them to say it to? 

These are your starting points for setting up key goals within the realm of increasing your presence.

You've Set the Stage, Now Start Building a Plan

Looking at your business with each of the above goals in mind helps you set the stage for your social media efforts. This post isn't aimed at telling you what to do, I'm simply trying to get you to figure out why you want (and need) to do it. 

If you're small business looking to take your social media efforts up a notch (or maybe even just get started,) take the time to define at least two goals from the categories above. Once you've identified your desired outcome, you'll be a lot more ready to start mapping out the path to get there.

 

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Adam Singer, Paul Isakson, Brad Smith @ IMS Minneapolis

Social Media  advice is cheap and for the most part, you get what you pay for.  Best practices social media marketing based on experience, well, that’s another thing entirely.

The Social Media Best Practices session at IMS Minneapolis earlier this week gave attendees access to first hand insights from the likes of: Brad Smith from Best Buy, Adam Singer from TopRank Online Marketing, Paul Isakson from Thinkers & Makers (formerly of Space150) and Bryan Person, founder of Social Media Breakfast.

Brad Smith, Director, Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media from Best Buy opened things up talking about a “new marketing reality”. Customers are out there, but they’re bombarded with messages. Customers are not listening to us (marketers & advertisers) anymore. Social media is all about communicating.  Customers are listening to each other instead and tuning out marketing messages.

Each company’s journey in social media is different. If your social media consultant starts the meeting with suggestions about starting a Twitter account, leave the room. Treat social media like any other major undertaking with planning, understanding the marketplace, goals and objectives.

Tenents that support Best Buy Social Media Marketing:

• Deliver
• Blow you away
• Never leave you hanging
• Make a difference
• Make sure you know all we know

Brad makes the distinction of social media tools and the behaviors we seek to engage and influence. “I don’t use facebook, I participate. It’s a two way thing.  You’re not half way into social media. When you’re in you’re in.”

Best Buy’s Social Media Marketing Mission:

To connect customers and employees with the Best Buy brand and each other through the right tools platforms and collaboration delivered when, where and how they want.

The focus is on the customer, not the company. “It’s not about what Best Buy wants customers to do, it’s about giving people the tools to connect with each other and employees whenever and however they want.”

Best Buy Social Media Guidelines:

• (Essentially don’t be stupid)
• Listen
• Be findable, think distributed
• It’s about people
• Enable creation
• Make it social
• Listen some more
• Be authentic
• Be transparent
• Keep it simple
• Make a commitment

Best Buy and Twitter – @Twelpforce
The thing that makes it work is that they didn’t start with a “Twitter strategy”. It was born of a customer need. Best Buy simply leveraged an asset they knew they had with a customer need. Customers needed advice and there are 150,000 Best Buy employees world wide that are already being helpful. Twitter proved to be an effective platform for that. 2,500 employees are signed up to work as part of @Twelpforce.

Best Buy is also active with Community Forum, Best Buy IdeaX, a Facebook Fan page and other channels.

When Best Buy started their social journey with Facebook, Brad says they were overzealous and promoted commercial messages to the community. The community responded, “not to do that”. Customers want access to the brand, advice, tips exclusive access that others don’t get.

Best Buy Learnings From Their Social Media Experience:

• Listen first, talk second
• Its OK to fail
• The same social mores apply online as offline
• Customers don’t care about channels
• We have to be ready ro respond
• Customers will tell us and everyone else where our organization is broken. And expect a fix
• People are forgiving

Overall Best Buy is treating their social media experience as a journey and have learned the importance of listening instead of pushing.  It’s an impressive example, not only of a very large brand finding value in a humble and transparent, customer focused social media effort, but one of true Minnesota ingenuity when it comes to new technology and marketplace innovation.

I did miss some of the bulleted items above because the presentation went by very quickly. If access to the PowerPoint presentations is made available, I’ll link to it from this post.

I’ll be adding observations on the presentations from Adam Singer and Paul Isakson separately.

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Here are some really helpful ideas for small businesses to use LinkedIn by Guy Kawasaki.

Ten Ways for Small Businesses to Use LinkedIn

 

April, 2010 -

When I first blogged about ten ways to use LinkedIn, the site had 8.5 million total users worldwide. I’m told that now there are over twelve million small-business people on LinkedIn, which is roughly 20 percent of its total user base.

Many of these small-business people are using the site in ways you’d commonly imagine: finding leads, growing their business globally, or finding the right vendors. My buddies at LinkedIn recently provided me a list of ten additional ways small businesses can use LinkedIn:

1. Acquire new customers through online recommendations and word of mouth. Satisfied customers are the best source of new customers. Increase your word of mouth referrals by asking your happy clients to write you a recommendation, which will be published on your LinkedIn profile and will be broadcast to their entire LinkedIn network.

2. Keep in touch with people who care most about your business. Sites like LinkedIn help keep your business alive in the minds of the people who care most about your business. LinkedIn is effective for two reasons: the business intent of LinkedIn users and fewer status updates, which mean you stay on top of mind. Tip: You can also increase the impact of your status updates by syncing your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

3. Find the right vendors to outsource services you’re not an expert on. Think of the number of times you’ve asked your colleagues if they knew of a great web designer or photographer. LinkedIn makes it easy for you to find and vet vendors through the network of your peers. Additionally, you can also trade services with your vendor connections on LinkedIn; sort of a mutual referral system.

4. Build your industry network—online and in person. Search LinkedIn’s Groups directory to find industry associations and networks to take part in. For example, if you’re in the event planning or wedding industry, there are over 530 groups. In addition, LinkedIn also surfaces popular events in your industry calling out local events that your connections are attending. Imagine being able to find only industry events that your prospective clients are attending.

5. Get answers to tough business questions with a little help from your real friends. Small business owners deal with challenging questions on a slew of topics each day. LinkedIn Answers and Groups let you find answers to those vexing questions quickly by tapping into the wisdom of your network (LinkedIn tells me there are over 200 different categories on Answers including one dedicated just to small business and over 2000 groups on small business related topics). Wondering whether your recent office purchase is tax deductible? Check out hundreds of questions on related topics here.

6. Win new business by answering questions in your area of expertise. Use the many forums on LinkedIn to share the knowledge you’ve gained in your area of expertise. This is a great opportunity to win new business or at least find prospective clients to pitch your business to. Prospective customers will find your answers when they use LinkedIn’s advanced Answers search. And don’t forget, what goes around comes around. Don’t forget, this is a great way to soft pitch your skills and expertise.

7. Raise funding. You can use LinkedIn to find mentors or potential investors for your startup because there are over three million startup professionals and over 12M small business professionals on LinkedIn and it’s always good to stay in touch with folks who’ve been there, done that and willing to mentor you. Once you’re connected, your participation on LinkedIn (answers, status updates or group conversations) may even cause them to consider investing in your small business.

8. Network with peers in your industry for repeat business referrals. LinkedIn Groups is a powerful medium to find peers in your respective industries to network with and to find complimentary businesses to share referrals with. For example, mortgage brokers can find real estate agents to partner with on relevant groups and as most small businesses know, these partners are your best source of referrals that can turn into repeat business. With over 2000 groups dedicated to small business topics, you’re sure to find a relevant group to network.

9. Convince potential customers of your expertise by sharing unique blog content. Small businesses smart enough to create unique content on their expertise (either with a blog or twitter account) should link to it from their LinkedIn profiles. Or take it one step further by promoting featured blog content to LinkedIn members on the site (for e.g. with small text ads). You can specify exactly who will see your ads—Executives or VPs—and include a link to your profile so they know who’s behind this content.

10. Keep your friends close and your competition closer. Over 150,000 companies have a company profile on LinkedIn, the “public profile” for companies. These pages surface key stats on companies; recent hires as well movers and shakers. Not only do company profiles give you unique insight into your competition, they also give you an opportunity to stumble upon potential hires by browsing through company pages.

I hope this helps you take LinkedIn beyond the usual uses and makes your small business even more successful.

 

When only text is available, participants judge trustworthiness based on how quickly others respond. So, for instance, it is better to respond to a long Facebook message “acknowledging” that you received the message, rather than to wait until there’s time to send a more thorough first message. Wait too long and you are likely to be labeled “unhelpful,” along with a host of other expletive-filled attributions the mind will happily construct.

The San Antonio chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators is holding a workshop on Monday, March 1. It will cover three revolutions every business person needs to be aware of. ....Social Media, Visual Communications, and Corporate Creativity(Small business too)   This half-day workshop led by three of the nation's leading communications experts will address the new challenges each of us face each day. The revolution in social media – Ron Shewchuk The revolution in visual communications - Suzanne Salvo The revolution in corporate creativity – Steve Crescenzo Session descriptions: The revolution in social media: join it NOW! - Ron Shewchuk, ABC, MC As blogs, podcasts, and social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube become part of most people’s day to day life, employers are finally starting to take notice. Some are even launching internal social networks, producing online audio and video content and encouraging employees to host their own blogs. For communications professionals, social media offer new ways to engage employees, but they also come with some major new challenges. Communication consultant, blogger and author Ron Shewchuk will describe: • How social networks are revolutionizing the way we communicate • What leading companies are doing to capitalize on social media to support business goals • Why the opportunities outweigh the risks of social media in the workplace • The dos and don'ts of social media use The revolution in visual communications: Words are NOT enough – Suzanne Scardino Salvo Most communicators come from a word background and don’t even know what they don’t know about visual communications. And as the business world becomes less word-centric and more visually oriented, creating and choosing company images based on personal taste and gut feeling is not good enough. Whether you are managing the process, editing or shooting the images, understanding visual ‘grammar’ and knowing current trends will revolutionize your visual communicators. Included: • Visual grammar - The essential elements that make a photo an effective communicator • What’s Hot and What’s Not: Photographic trends and styles that are currently driving the image marketplace • Photo Critique: Is it good or is it just pretty? How to judge a photo portfolio • Techno-geek stuff – tired of not really knowing? Learn enough lingo to talk with confidence to your photographers, web designers, printers, etc. The revolution in corporate creativity: Taking the “Corporate” OUT of Corporate Communications – Steve Crescenzo Are you in a rut? Are you tired of doing the same kinds of stories the same way - Over and over again? Do you find that you’re even boring YOURSELF as you put together content? Here’s the bottom line: Corporate communications doesn’t work anymore. We need to take the “corporate” out of corporate communications, and replace it with “creative.” In this fun, practical session, noted communications expert Steve Crescenzo will revolutionize the way you think about corporate communications and show you: • How to take those tired, old stories and flip them upside down — so that people actually pay attention to them • How to find and tell the kinds of stories that will cut through the information clutter that is so rampant in your organization • How to start using all of your channels together to reach, engage, motivate, and inform your various audiences • How to start using your vehicles to change the culture in your organization from “We’ve always done it this way,” to “Let’s try something different and see if it works.”

When Monday, March 1, 2010  8:00 AM  - 1:00 PM     Where The Crown Room (Above Ruth's Chris Steakhouse) 1170 E. Commerce Street – 3rd floor San Antonio, TX 78205

FEE

Members cost     Members $45.00   Student Member (Valid ID required) $40.00   Non Members     Non Members $50.00

 

View Event Summary

 

	RSVP	Monday, March 1, 2010

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so.
About Seth Godin

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur and blogger who thinks about the marketing of ideas in the digital age. His newest interest: the tribes we lead.