Here’s a test. You’re told you need to buy a vehicle. What pops into your mind?

Back up a few steps and get a wider perspective. What are the choices? You have thousands upon thousands. How do you determine which is the best choice for you?  It’s a process of elimination based on your objectives, needs and preferences. Here’s something you may not realize. You’ve already eliminated a majority of your alternatives and you don’t even know it. That might be good – yet it could be limiting you at the same time.

For example, The first thing that popped into your head was probably a car or pickup truck. You completely ignored watercraft, aircraft, 2-wheel and 18-wheel vehicles. Not that any of those would be obviously suited to your current needs, however thinking outside the box would create a new line of thought and some possible alternatives in the future you may not have otherwise thought of.

Commuting 2.0

It’s sort of the same thinking about social media. There are the “big-dog” social networks everyone knows – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. When you think about implementing a social media strategy you naturally think Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. While I do believe most organizations should – at the least – have a presence on these sites I didn’t say most organizations should have the same approach nor the same strategy on these sites.

But don’t stop with the big dogs.The social media landscape is vast and that landscape changes often and fast. It’s important to keep informed on new social media developments and how these new developments can help you meet your business objectives.

One of the new developments I’m talking about with organizations is LBS, or location-based services. Last year I joined FourSquare, not totally sure how and how quickly it would evolve into a business application. Now, LBS is a large part of my discussions with organizations about social media. Currently, the LBS groundswell is among retailers and other B2C organizations. It’s just a matter of time until B2B LBS strategies hit a tipping point. I’m convinced of it and am spending time talking with B2B organizations about ways to leverage FourSquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, etc.

Video production should also be a part of most organizations’ social media strategy. (video blog or vlog; product demonstrations, customer testimonial, plant or office tour, message from the manager, etc.) Do you have a You Tube channel? A profile on Blip.tv? Vimeo?

Another important consideration is smart phone marketing & mobile search. Tip: Be sure your web presence comes across on a smart phone (iPhone, Droid, etc.) Expanded 3G penetration and the new lower-rate for lower use plans are bringing a new, previously less mobile savvy audience to the smart phone world. The astronomical increase in mobile search has just begun. According to comscore.com, over 20 million mobile users searched for something on the internet from their phone in June 2008 – a 68% increase from June 2007. Those statistics are over 2 years ago. Imagine what the numbers are today. (I couldn’t find anything more current – but will pass on when I do. Let me know if you find something.)

In the market for a vehicle? Today, you may want to allocate the bulk of your resources to an automobile from Ford or Toyota. But be sure to keep an eye on tomorrow and stay informed about and open to the possibilities a sea plane might offer.  Hey. I live near the water. You never know.

How do you build an online community?

The first, and easiest step is to start with the people you already know. Who among your existing contacts also fit the characteristics of your ideal  community member? Approach them first. Here’s a flytebiz article for taking this first, basic step building your personal followers on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

What if, however, your contact list is limited or if the people in your contact list aren’t the people who you’re targeting in your online community? Then what can you do? In addition to asking your contacts, customers and connections to refer, link, and friend you… you go searching; literally.

Link Me!

LinkedIn - Use the advanced people search feature where you can search for LinkedIn members by geographic location, specific company, school, professional title, etc. You can also search among your connections’ connections, and their connections – so you know you’ll have a likely introduction to the people you find in your results. If you’re doing business in non-English speaking locations, you can even specify Spanish, German, French, etc. profiles.

Keep in mind, this is the search step.  Once you find people you’d like to connect with, reach out and make contact. It’s easy if you already have a common connection or are members of the same LinkedIn group. If not, getting in contact can be more difficult. One option is the premium LinkedIn membership that allows you more access to non-connections.

Like Me!

Facebook - If you want a “business” presence on Facebook, set up a business page. As a general rule, unless you ARE your business – this is the recommendation I give to every organization – large, small, for profit, non-profit; “Set up a separate business page.”

Don’t use the regular profile page for your business. It’s not a good practice for a few reasons, one-of which – well, it’s “not allowed”. Now, far be it from me to complain about not following the rules… I’m the president of the “rules are meant to be broken” club. However, there are security issues and privacy issues involved. Not only that, if the Facebook police catch you they’ll kick you off all together and THEN you’ve really ticked off your “friends” who’ve signed up with you.

With your Facebook page established, “suggest” the page to your personal Facebook contacts. (See Rich’s post to build your personal Facebook contacts.) As people ‘like” the page they, too, can “suggest” your page to their friends – and so on.

A Facebook ad can be a great tool for building your community. The cost is still relatively low and, provided you target the impressions well, have strong ad copy and a good call to action /  landing page, a Facebook ad could be an excellent value for building your Facebook fan base.

Tweet Me!

Twitter - Much like LinkedIn, Twitter has an advanced search (www.search.twitter.com) where you can search for people by geography as well as keywords in what they do or don’t tweet about. Twitter doesn’t store much bio information, but some other search tools that make it a little easier to find people by what’s in their bio description include http://tweepsearch.com/ and http://tweepz.com/
A couple of good directories of Twitter users – sorted by hundreds of categories – are http://www.twellow.com/ and http://wefollow.com/

Link Me, Like Me, Tweet Me! If you haven’t already, add the social media widgets to your website and blog pages, as well as to your email signature, to your online newsletter. Need some icons? Free icons here.

And don’t forget about offline communications! Include your “social” URLs in your print ads and on business cards and brochures.

You’re thinking to yourself, “Wow, this is a lot of work.”

Yep. Yep, It is.

Not only that, building the community is just the beginning. But, done well, a strong and loyal online community can turn into strong and loyal supporters of your offline business.

by the way – Link Me! Like Me! Tweet Me!

Campaign

Community

One of the challenges that can limit your success with social media marketing is that you’re thinking in terms of a social media campaign, and not about creating an online community. A social media campaign can be a critical component of your marketing strategy but it’s the strength and loyalty of your online community, in large part, that will make your social media campaigns a success (or not).

The reason social media has become such an incredibly popular marketing vehicle ISN’T because a company can send their message out to so many people, so easily, so cheaply; it’s because a company’s message can be RECEIVED by so many people, so easily, so cheaply. See the difference?

One reason someone might read – e.g. receive – and then act on a Tweet, a FourSquare post or a Facebook update may be because they happen to be “ready” for the message. More likely, is that person has “a relationship” with or is a member of a common community and cares about what the sender  has to say. Building an online community is building online relationships. Your Tweets, FourSquare posts and Facebook updates are more often #1) received and then #2) acted on by people who care about what you have to say, e.g. people with whom you have a relationship and/or share a community.

I’m using the term “online community” in the general sense. I don’t mean a specific website or custom social network. Your online community might be your Twitter followers, your Facebook friends and/or fans, subscribers to your email newsletter and/or blog, etc. Your community is made up of the individuals who are following what you do and say online – wherever that might be.

How do you build – and then nurture an online community? I know I sound like a broken record, but the first thing to do is to be very clear about:

• Why do you want to be onine?  Is it to increase your brand awareness/perception? To reduce costs? To get closer to your clients/prospective clients?
• Who are the potential members of your community?
• Where do these potential members “hang out” online, and why?

(A previous post, Getting Started, might be of help.)

Now that you’re clear about all that, just go to “Where” (Twitter, Facebook, their blog, LinkedIn group) the “Who” (your potential community members) are.  If you have Twitter followers or Facebook fans you’ve already started.

Make contact. Don’t spam them or try to sell them, but “listen and converse”. If they have a blog, read it and leave thoughtful comments; ask insightful questions. If they’re on Twitter, follow them and comment on a tweet or two, or ask a question or two – get involved in or start a conversation. You’ve heard this a million times. It’s no different than networking IRL. You just have to DO IT.

Don’t worry about how many Twitter followers or Facebook fans you have, especially in the beginning. This isn’t something that only “works” if you have over 100, 1000 or 10,000 followers. Fewer engaged and loyal individuals in your community is better than a slew of uninvolved members any day. And don’t forget – “Followers” are people. These people are the key to your online community success. Make sure you treat them that way. Stay engaged with them, continue to respond to their comments and questions regularly.

Done well, your online community will support and “share” your social media campaigns with their friends and other online communities – and so on, and so on, and so on… Thus is the power of a successful online community.

You don't have to hand over the keys to your life. Just a little guidance - and discipline.

OMG! I’m overwhelmed by social overload …and this is my business! I can imagine how you feel trying to stay on top of your social media efforts as well as your REAL job (not to mention your life).

I did a presentation for the local Chamber of Commerce Tech Expo last month (as well as a recent blog post) and I talked about two approaches to engaging in social media -

1. Join existing communities where your stakeholders already are or
2. Create your own community / communities

There are pros and cons to each and most organizations will actually want to do a bit of both – probably starting with #1 and evolving into #2. That being said – what’s the different in resource requirements between the two? Joining existing communities will clearly take less time and effort than creating your own community. Amber Naslund, the director of communication at Radian6 (social media analytics & monitoring biz), posted a presentation document with her take on how much time various elements of a social media effort warrant. It’s a good reference, but keep in mind there’s not just one answer to this question.

In addition to how much time social media takes, the way you spend that time is important to consider also. For example, not only is how many hours you spend an issue, but how you spend those hours will differ depending on your social strategy also. This is a crude and general outline but the following should give you a starting point.  Depending on your organization, your industry, your objective, your experience level, your ability to outsource, etc., etc… your proverbial mileage will vary.

Join an exiting Community

• 15% Content Creation: blog posts, articles, slide shows, videos, podcasts, etc.
• 70% Listening / Responding to other blogs, articles, videos, podcasts, etc.
• 10% Promotion – broadcasting about your cool “stuff”
• 5% Measuring / Strategy – are you getting closer to your objective(s)… the reason you’re doing this in the first place.

Create and manage your own social media community

• 50% Content Creation: blog posts, articles, slide shows, videos, podcasts, etc.
• 40% Listening / Responding to other blogs, articles, videos, podcasts, etc.
• 5% Promotion – broadcasting about your cool “stuff”
• 5% Measuring / Strategy – are you getting closer to your objective(s)… the reason you’re doing this in the first place.

Use this as a reference and to recognize how different approaches to social media will emphasize different activities —well— differently.  Particularly, it’s important to  recognize the importance of content creation in managing your own community; adding value to your community with content to keep them coming back for more. Also, the importance of engagement – listening & responding to others regardless of your strategy.

Would you outsource your date?

If you want to get your yard work, housework and laundry done  – you invest your time, your expertise and/or your sweat effort or you invest your money and buy someone else’s time, expertise and effort.  Unlike yard work, housework and laundry, however, hiring someone to execute your social media plan can be a bit like hiring someone to date for you. There are some things you may be able to outsource – and others you can’t …or shouldn’t.

A dinner date, for example; making a dinner reservation, stopping by the cleaners to pick up the new outfit you want to wear, getting the car washed before the big date may be easy things to outsource. But how about ordering your meal? Maybe, if your outsourcing partner knows you well – or you study the menu in advance and give them directions of what you want – but then that requires more of your time. How about getting to know your date over the small talk – discussing the movie you saw last week, books you’ve read or the places you’re dying to visit? Does your outsource partner know you well enough and, if so, it wouldn’t really be “you” that was developing the relationship – does that matter to you? What about the good night kiss?  hmmm. There’s a limit to what you would outsource, I’m betting.

The same is true when considering your social media strategy and hiring someone to manage your Twitter, Facebook, blog, etc. We talked about the importance of becoming a trusted and respected part of your social media community in the last post. If you are going to be trusted and respected, YOU are going to have to be involved. What you can / should outsource is determined by how familiar your outsource partner is with you, your brand, your objectives, etc.

Face it; there’s no free lunch. Social media is not free. No matter what you’ve read or what your consultant tells you. Like the rest of life, you get what you pay for. If you want to be successful in the social space it will require an investment of your time, your expertise and your effort or in the time, expertise and effort of others.

In the last post we talked about two social media strategies

1. Becoming part of existing communities
2. Creating a community around your brand and/or cause

The first is less resource intensive yet less long-term growth potential. The latter has more potential to create a significant impact yet requires a longer-term and more significant investment of resources.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. - find out what it means to... your social community.

Your ultimate goal is to become a trusted and respected member of the community(ies) in which you participate. PERIOD. Increased sales $, # of click-throughs, # of referrals are all important benchmarks and indicators of performance / success. Don’t, however, focus your interactions in the social media space on these indicators. Focus on becoming a trusted and respected member of the community. Done correctly, your success in social media will lead to an increase in sales, click-throughs and referrals; not because you are on Twitter or active on Facebook, but because you are trusted and respected.

Surprisingly, this is a difficult concept for some to grasp, but it’s quite similar to most social communities online and offline. Let’s draw an analogy to the offline situation. Consider you join an offline community – organization; perhaps a chamber of commerce or an industry organization. When you first joined you took a while to get to know the organization, the leaders, the members, the way things are done. The first meeting you didn’t walk in, go up to the first person you saw and start pushing your “stuff”, right? I’ll bet most of the times you probably didn’t “push your stuff”, did you. You may mention your “stuff” from time to time, but you didn’t approach the members with,

• “Hey, buy my stuff”
• “I’ve got a great sale on my stuff”
• “Please refer people to me who will buy my stuff”.

You got to know people – as people first and potential clients second. You engaged in conversation. What were their interests? What was THEIR work about? What was important to THEM? You’d try to get to know more about them and listen for ways you could follow up later; for ideas to share that would be helpful; maybe tell a funny story.

Online networking is the same. Think about how you can use social media to get to know people (your community) better and add value to their world. If you have a blog, think about how you can use your blog as a tool to create value for your readers. What is this “value”? It depends, but typically we all need / want to be:

• Informed
• Educated
• Entertained

Developing a relationship in person or though social media, you have to give people a reason to want to interact with you. If you truly engage with your community through relevant, interesting dialogue (relevant & interesting to THEM) then you’ll be successful. Online or offline, make no mistake – social media is business. Marketing, customer service or otherwise – social media in business is also SOCIAL. Social media is not just a marketing channel to “push your stuff”.

A social community’s  raison d‘etre is an online venue for people who share a common interest (the community members) – to engage; to commune. Commune…Community. Get it? The objective of your social media strategy is to commune; engage and become part of the community, whether the platform is Twitter, Facebook,LinkedIn, a blog, a Blip.tv channel or a Slideshare account. Engage and become part of the community, whether it’s your own social online community (#2 above) or a community built around another brand or cause (#1).

Being social and being helpful is the key to being successful in social media. Always think about how you can help (inform, educate, entertain) others. That’s how you build awareness and influence in the communities where you participate. That’s how you become trusted and respected.

]]> http://boldvisionconsulting.com/blog/social-media/respect/feed/ 3 http://boldvisionconsulting.com/blog/social-media/one-two-punch/ http://boldvisionconsulting.com/blog/social-media/one-two-punch/#comments Mon, 24 May 2010 18:32:49 +0000 Lynnelle http://boldvisionconsulting.com/blog/?p=511

The social media one-two punch. Don't be afraid!

Ok, so you ribbed me about my “eating an elephant” analogy in the last post – so much so, I’m changing the social media comparison to boxing. Not that I’m a fighter, but “fighting” with social media (or yourself – or your management – or…) sounds like a better fit, anyway. Besides, the process of getting your head – and business – wrapped around social media can feel like a bit of a street brawl.

Picking up where we left off at the last post, you’re now clear on your business objective and your intended audience / social community (see my last post, complete with sample form you can use). Armed with this intelligence, think about using a one-two punch approach to getting started in social media. How long you take getting from one punch to the other depends on your objectives, your resources and your timeline.

Punch One: Participate in existing communities.  You’ve heard that it costs less to get repeat business from existing customers than new business from new customers. The same concept applies here. Find where your audience is already congregating online. What blogs do they read; what forums do they follow; what FB pages do they “like”; what links do the share? Follow, tweet and share where they are. Comment on blogs and posts. Become ‘known’ in the communities your where your audience is already present. You’ll become known within those communities which will generate awareness, conversation and traffic.

With regular and consistent participation you’ll quickly see feedback & responses.

Pro: Get started faster, see results & feedback faster. Lower resource requirement
Con: Passive social approach – it’s not ‘your’ community, not ‘your’ content – limits long-term ability to leverage successes.

Punch Two: Create and moderate your own community(ies), as well as continuing to participate outside. Creating your own social media communities is a strategic, long-term approach to marketing and communications. Here you are making a sizable investment of valuable resources. You are committing to create content on a regular basis (blog posts, videos, podcasts, webinars, etc) to share and (hopefully) to generate consistent buzz around which your audience will engage …commune. Community. Get it? You’re now the gathering point.

Pro: Active social strategy built around ‘your’ community supports long-term, scalable successes with unlimited upside potential.
Con: Long-term social strategy requires larger resource commitment and longer time to see measurable results.

As you see, each social media strategy has different pros and cons. What is NOT different, however, is the importance of being “regular and consistent.” with either / both strategies.

• Regular and consistent content.
• Regular and consistent engagement.
• Regular and consistent monitoring and measuring.

Regular and consistent require commitment and resources – regularly and consistently.  Whichever way you go:  one-punch -  two-punch or both (would that be a knockout?) you are committing to to being present and engaged on a regular and consistent basis.

Regardless of your organization – B2C, B2B, Non-Profit, Municipality – you should be involved in SOME form of Punch One. Any organization that gives a rip what their stakeholders are thinking and doing needs to be on board with being social onine. To what extent, how many punches, etc. might ‘depend’… but there’s no way any of us can say “social media doesn’t work in my world”.

Social Tools

Just because everything you read talks about the importance of integrating social media into your business – that doesn’t mean you should spend a lot of energy and resources on social media. The fact that social media gives you the ability to connect and engage with your stakeholders in ways you never could before DOES mean you should learn about the medium. And when I say learn about the medium, I mean learn about how the various tools can help you connect and engage. I don’t mean learn how to set up a Facebook page.

Where do you start? Getting started in social media is a bit like eating an elephant; one bite at a time. Even if you’ve already slapped up a Facebook page or a Twitter account, you need to be clear about how Facebook and / or Twitter – or any other social media tactic is going to help you.  In other words, what is the RESULT you want to see from investing your time and efforts online? Is it more meetings? Increased donations? Better customer service? What’s the business goal you want to accomplish?

Here’s a simple form you can use as an easy framework to start clarifying your thoughts. It’s not rocket science – it’s business. What is it you want (business objective)  – from whom? (target market) -  what’s the best way to do this? (strategy) – how will you know if it’s working? (benchmarks)

(To give you an idea, I filled out a little of the form based on a cool, new company I’m working with, The Pocket Referee. If you have young kids or grandkids and need help keeping the peace, you need this. btw, The Pocket Referee people didn’t ask me nor pay me for saying this. If you end up buying one I don’t make a penny. It’s a wicked cool idea – that’s all.)

Coming next: The social media planning form is filled out – now what?

Saying you’re not sure if social media is right for your business is like saying you don’t think the telephone is right for your business. Just as there are tele-marketing strategies that work for some businesses, there are social media, social networking and digital marketing strategies. But, just because a phone bank with telemarketers isn’t part of your business or marketing plan, wouldn’t you agree that will still do and be a better business if a phone is one of the tools you use to connect with people? It’s the same with social media.

Next month there’s an MCED (Maine Center for Enterprise Development) workshop I’ll be attending. I’m normally presenting at Social Media “how-to” workshops, but this one intrigued me for a few reasons:

1. The lead teaser is “Social media is NOT a good idea for all companies.”
2. The agenda outline:
   We will provide a strategic framework for discussing and evaluating the relevance and potential impact of social media for different types of organizations. Specifically…
   • Can Social Media Drive Business Results
   • Will It Enrich Your Customer’s Experiences?
   • Who In Your Organization “Owns” It?
   • Which Social Media Tools Should You Consider?
   • What Are the Steps for Getting Started?
   • How Can You Evaluate and Track Results?
   • How Should You Think About Allocating Resources?
3. Aileen Cahill, the presenter, is one smart cookie.

Lobster phone, from our friends at Blue Blood Brand.

I do, however, hope #1) is just a tease to get people in the room. Aileen and I haven’t spoken in a while, but I’d be surprised if she seriously believes that online engagement doesn’t have a place in virtually every organization. That “place” may be different and vary in importance depending on the organizational goals and objectives, but still there is a place.

Saying you’re not sure if social media is right for your organization is like saying you’re not sure the telephone is right for your organization. There are telemarketing strategies that work for some businesses and not others, but that doesn’t mean all businesses don’t have a good use for a phone. It’s the same with social media.

Social media, new media, digital media… call it what you will; the world is communicating online. Your business needs to communicate online, too.

Another interesting take on the subject:

• Defining the Social Marketing Compass – How Will It Guide Your Marketing? (socialmediatoday.com)

bzzzzzz

Falling into the “duh” catagory, a recent survey (Marketing Executives Network Group, MENG) found marketing executives are frustrated with social media buzz words. Even though this survey is recent, I don’t think this is a  new phenomena. (MENG 2010 Trend Report)
As someone who tries to help businesses understand the changing landscape in marketing, I’ve been frustrated about this for a while.

Here’s my take on it… In an effort to stay ahead of the pack and differentiate themselves in a field that is quickly becoming crowded, some leaders in the social media space are actually making it more confusing and frustrating for people to understand the new ’social’ side of business. Eventually people begin to recognize and understand terms and concepts, which also generates more “experts”. But, if  you create a new term, you can muddy the waters – create a buzz – more interest, as if …you’ve discovered something new when, in-fact, the only new things are the term itself and your spin (er… perspective). When people start jumping on and using that new term, you’ve got a good wave to ride – until the masses begin to get a grasp again, and then the cycle continues.

Social Marketing – Inbound Marketing – Content Marketing, and now …social OBJECTS, of all things. I saw this last week and then  repeated in a Fast Company blog post.  Yesterday it was social content (blog posts, Tweets, Facebook status updates, You Tube videos, bookmarks, podcasts, etc.) Now it’s Social Objects.

Common’ guys. Seriously. Is it because you aren’t pulling as many RSS subscribers or you didn’t have the highest RT count on Twitter last week…? Reinventing the terminology can’t be because you actually think “social objects” is more descriptive than social content.

I disagree with some of my esteemed peers. I do not believe “interacting with social objects created by our audience“is what it’s about. In fact, I don’t believe interacting with social objects is possible, at least not in polite society. We interact with people; our audience – not objects.

Just sayin’