Staying current with the Social Media scene

Now that you have created a social media policy, a plan of action and have taken the necessary steps in protecting your social media investment, it is time to use helpful tools that will keep your site relevant and you up to date with the latest trends. You need to take advantage of the online resources to stay current with social media. A way to do this is to subscribe to feeds about social marketing from one or more marketing blogs or news services. For instance I subscribe to  Social Media Examiner, SEO Hacker, Guorilla Media, and various marketing and social media groups on Linkedin. I have daily and weekly feeds that come to me that keeps me up to date with the latest in social media. This gives me all the information I need in one place and controls the frequency of delivery.

Other social media resources recommended include:

• Mashable
• FastCompany
• Add This
• Top Rank Blog
• Slashdot
• Social Media Today
• Social Networking Business
• HubSpot
• BigMarketingSmallBusiness

Social media marketing could take a lot of time because of the various places to get information.  Tools like Ping.fm to post your updates to whichever social media service you select. You can group by platform or send the same message to all. You can use your mobile device to even send messages and not have to be at your computer.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Protecting Your Social Media Investment

Almost everything in social media pushes the limit of existing intellectual property law. Be sure not to copy anything if you have doubt. Use quote marks, citations, and links to original source. Remember, you cant legally use extended content from somone else’s web site, social media page or blog on your own site. If you do, make sure you send a permission request form to use their content. This will protect you from future legal trouble if the person/company’s content you used permits you from using it. Trademarks and logos usually require permission to use, though the logos that social media companies provide for Share This or Follow Us On functionality are fine to use without permission. If you find something in the Press or Media section of a company’s website, you can assume that you can reproduce that image. For instance, I use freedigitalphotos.net and always make sure I provide my source for images.

A disclaimer stating that user info is private is very important nowadays. Privacy online has become a critical subject today with the Google’s and Facebook’s of the world scrambling to fully explain and simplify their agreements. Especially if your site connects to third party sites or is a third party site. Respect a person’s space and don’t use public viewable photos of peoples faces on your social media page unless you have their permission. A simple photo waiver will take care of this.

A few legal sites that will help you are:

• http://www.abanet.org/intelprop/home.html
• http://www.copyright.gov
• http://www.eff.org
• http://www.ilrg.com
• http://www.womma.org/ethics/disclosure

Three important aspects come to mind for protecting your brand online. They are copyright, trademark and brand rep.

When it comes to copyright, you work becomes your intellectual property once its created in a fixed form. Protect your own work and dont use other work without permission. If you decide to subcontract your social media work, be sure to know who owns the work being on the site. Your company agreement should also state that anything an employee creates for you is retained by the company. The last thing is to put a copyright sign on your website that clearly states your intentions for people visiting.

Trademarks or service marks give you an exclusive right to use a name or logo within a specific commercial category. Provide a notice of trademark somewhere on your social media site.  For more info on trademarks go to http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks.

Brand reputation starts with registering your name for social media accounts. Use a handle that will work across multiple accounts and sites. Even if you dont attend to use all social media sites for your company or brand, register the name on all so no one could use your brand maliciously later on or if you decide to use that site in the future. There are sites today that measure the quality of your brand online and assess engagement with your brand from various sites. This can be helpful when evaluating your brand presence online.

Till Next Time,

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Randall J

Social Media Policy

Now that we’ve determined that your company needs to be involved in social media, created a plan and made an outline, its now time to create a social media marketing policy. Whether the social media team is just you or a group of people you should write up a few guidelines to follow that can always be expanded later on.

A social media policy is good because it addresses both what employees are allowed to do on behalf of the company and what is forbidden. Things like using personal accounts at work and who can respond to customer inquiries and product information can be addressed.  Make sure the policy is short and easy to read and understand. It should address risk management, respect for audience, individual privacy protection, and intellectual property protection.

Hear are a few things to consider in your policy:

• Your purpose of social media
• Intended auidience
• Responsibilities of your writing
• Practice good judgemet
• Respect copyrights and trademarks
• Install value
• Protect confidential information

Cheers,

Randall

Image: KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Facebook Timeline and You

On Tuesday of this week Facebook announced that it will begin roll out of the new Facebook timeline will be coming to all users in the next few weeks. This means if you dont already have it, you will be converted to it automatically. See the story on Mashable. Some people have had the new timeline page since September when developers got a hold of it. A friend of mine had it then and I thought it was pretty cool when I saw his page back in October. Its incredible how Facebook has remembered just about everything you have ever done its site. Also a little frightening when it comes to privacy but you can opt what to show on your timeline too. It tracks back all the way till when you were born which for most little happened between birth and when you started using Facebook, just a line showing the connection.

I got timeline a couple of weeks ago. So far I like it. It takes getting used to reading your timeline from left to right on the page when your scrolling down but I love how detailed it is and its layout is pretty smooth. People have already started playing with on of its features, the timeline cover photo with cool pictures here.

Right now, timeline is only limited to user profiles. I havent seen any news on it being open to brand pages yet. So what does this mean for marketers? Social Media Examiner gives a great analysis on what to expect. Check it out here.

So what are your thoughts on the timeline?

3 steps for managing your social media schedule

Happy 2012 everyone!! We last left off in 2011 with a Social Media Outline. Now that you have your outline, we can manage your social media campaign. Since you have a plan in order, you now need to handle and manage it. Executing your plan is just as important as establishing a plan to begin with. The most important resource in controlling your social media schedule is time. Commitment is essential in scheduling activities and time to attend to those activities.  Social media marketing is a form of art, treat it that way and you will see great returns on your product. Remember social media is a part of your overall online marketing and online marketing is a part of your overall marketing.

• Step 1 – Schedule days for social media setting up a certain day and time for social media management is a great way to control your plan and content.  Many business people block a certain time out of the day or week, like Friday afternoon, to tackle marketing related activities.
• Step 2 – Put your schedule in a book of events or calendar. This ensures you know what you have coming up and allows for ample planning. Whether you use google calendar, outlook, eventslink etc utilize these project management software tools to schedule your social media activities without giving chance to anything falling through the cracks.
• Step 3 – Create a dashboard for your social media. Social media efforts require many tasks like posting though multiple venues, monitoring visibility on social media outlets, using tools to distribute content, and measuring results using different analytical tools. Instead of jumping back and forth through his all, a dashboard can display all this content at once and save you valuable time. Goojet, iGoogle, Hootsuite, Netvibes, and MarketingProfs offer great free customizable dashboards to help you keep your content in order.

Image: arztsamui / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Putting together a Social Media Marketing Outline

So now that we know what social media marketing is and we have a plan of action in implementing it, I want to show you an outline on what a good social media marketing strategy looks like. This will be a good source to look back on when measuring your plans success and evaluating your goals and success criteria. I put this together based off several outlines and tactical forms. Feel free to edit and share.

You can print and fill out the outline here Social Media Marketing Outline

Randall Jefferson

SEO and Social Media

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves gaining visibility to your site naturally not using paid services. So the more people visit your site, the higher ranked you become and vice versa. The goal of SEO is to get your site at the top of search results. You can do this by picking the right search terms and keywords and then optimizing your site to be more search friendly. You can take SEO a step further and use these techniques in social media but getting your blogs and profiles to show up in search queries. This can be tremendous in exposing your site/s to the world and gaining the notoriety you want.

Dont get cocky just yet. Even though there is 400 million users on Facebook doesnt mean they will all see your social media content in searches.  About 70% of that are active users and not all are using it to search for info that can lead to your company. Also, nothing beats the complex algorithms of the web and search engines but performing the proper steps could get that added push you need to get your content out there and more visible.

Remember that all of your target audience may not be on social media, especially if your a B2B company. Social media still is premature with ecommerce, forms, and other features full fledged websites have. To be found, you have to do well on search engines. The tricks and tools used to find good search terms and optimize pages transfer to social media, relatively tweets and blogs. SEO is essential but not sufficient in your site visibility compared to the friends family fans and followers you have. Remember your chasing income. There are tons of search engines but focus on the main 3; google, yahoo, bing. Hone your ste search engine based on your audience targeted. For example, google has close to 80% of the market share for B2b purchasing. Yahoo users tend to be older then google users and more likely female. Bing attracts more males and people 45 or older.

Your site or social media profile needs to appear within the top 10 positions on page 1 of the search results for good visibility. How many times have you gone past page one when searching for something? Most people go to the top 2 links but do check the top 10 on that page 1. The average length of a search query has increased over the years. The longer the search query, the more likely they are converted to your site. Start off with 25-30 search terms that can be distributed among different paths of your website. Ask customers, friends, fans, and family what they would search for when looking for your products or similar ones. Include all industry-specific jargon you can come up with.  Local companies should integrate location into their search terms. Digital point, google insights and google keyowrd tool can help you with other keywords.

Remember, in order to optimize social media into SEO your content needs to stay relevant, updated and making sure your presence is easy to find in search engines.

Paper, rock, scissors,

Randall

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Target, Acquired

Identifying and understanding your target market is one of the most important things to do in marketing. Once you have described your customers’ and potential customers’ characteristics such as demo, geo and life stages you can focus your social marketing efforts on those people most likely to buy your product and services.

There is a saying, fish where the fish are. If your a band whose fans are mainly on Myspace, it wouldnt make since to gain more popularity on Linkedin or target people there.  Find out where your customer’s are and market to those areas.  Guerilla marketing tactics are perfect for this approach because social media focuses on inexpensive ways to reach niche markets with specific messages. Target your resources one niche at a time. After success, move on to the next one. This will help in understanding your strengths and how analyzing your weaknesses.

Market Segmentation

Using market segmentation, your can narrow multiple niches by where they go online or where they spend their money. Typical segments are

• Geo-graphics
• Demographics
• Lifestyle
• Life stages

Remember the message needs to be specific enough to appease the wants and needs of subgroups you are going after.

Geo-graphics-Marketing by location whether country, region, state, city, zip code or neighborhood. Foursquare and GoWalla would be perfect for this as they are location-based social media outlets. Brick and mortar stores can target a specific area to get customers on twitter, facebook, and google+ by searching for them within a certain radius.

Demographics- Gender, age, social class, marital status, education, occupation, income, etc. Knowing these categories of your target market will help define a plan to attract them and discover their interest. For instance, lately Ive seen ads for Indochino, a custom suit company, pop up on sites such as Gilt, Linkedin, CNN, AskMen, and Menshealth. Indochino is most likely for professional men with white collar jobs who value fashion and custom clothes. These sites are perfect for them. Myspace would probably not be the best site to advertise on. Be sure to look for a match between your target audience and the social media service your thinking about using.

Lifestyle-Shared activities, interest, opinion and perspectives can shape a target market. Linkedin itself is a social media tool but also a segmented market as it is a network for professionals. Lifetsyle segmentation helps you craft your message in addition to finding where to promote your company.

Lifestages-Looks at what people in certain demographics are doing with their lives. For instance, social media use varies by the stage of life the person is in. Teenagers and college students are twice as likely to use the internet then retirees. Single people with no kids tend to purchase more fashionable items and spend on recreation and vacation versus someone married with small children who spend on kid’s items, activities and education. Be sure to find out and know what products your targeted lifestage purchases and their use of the internet.

Tips to help in targeting and acquiring your market

• Check competitor’s sites for inbound links from other sites and their outbound links and see how they communicate with their customers.
• Do a small test to see the results of integrating social media into your marketing plan.
• Understand why people use social media and match the patterns to your goals.

Hasta La Bye Bye,

Randall

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I love it when a plan comes together

Ah, the infamous “A-Team” quote. Delivered by Hannibal repeatedly during the run of that show whenever the team executed their strategy flawlessly. Even in harsh times, there was always a plan B or C. Take the same approach for marketing. As I elaborated on in a previous post HERE social media marketing is an avenue for marketing. A channel to use for relationship selling. So with it, you need a plan. Here are some things to consider when developing a strategic social media marketing plan.

• Business profile- List the type of business you are, the customers your attracting and what you offer
• Campaign goals- what do you want social media marketing to accomplish? Improve traffic? Branding? Relationship building? Sales?
• Finances- What is your budget going to look like? ROI? B/E analysis? Dont forget fixed and variable costs when coming up with finances
• Marketing profile- What is your target market? List specifics like demographics and segmentation. List your competitors and why people should buy from you and not them.

How to track progress of your social media marketing plan:

Return on investment (ROI) is probably the most important measure of your success in social media marketing. Realistic terms need to be set when determining your ROI. Be aware that jumping into social media may not produce as quick results as you think. Plan accordingly for the long term and keep evaluating your strategy throughout the process to tweak and master your plan. Remember, the social media platform you choose has a better chance to produce results if your customers and target market already use that social media. Doesn’t make sense for a music band to only have a linkedin profile and try to attract fans there.

Adios,

Randall Jefferson

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

QUICK, somebody call a locksmith!

As most of you are aware, the NBA is currently in a lockout. Well, those of you that follow professional basketball.  Ive noticed it hasnt gotten as much attention as the NFL lockout during the summer. I feel because football is more of “America’s sport” where the NBA is more of the red headed step child. I think the MLB would have more coverage too being America’s great past time.There is no comparison in my facebook stream to the summer months when people would comment on the NFL lockout and frustrated with it. What got me is a friend of mine wrote a status about the NBA players being “greedy when there are millions of educators, social workers, etc who get paid nothing to do very valuable work.” Now I agree with her comment. We glorify and idolize all athletes and famous people are grossly overpay for their services of entertainment. My concern was where was she and others when the NFL lockout was going on? Most people werent taking sides in that matter, they just wanted them to agree on a deal and play football. Seems like she has taken the side of the owners on this one.The owners pay the players. There are 30 owners in the NBA sharing revenue. There are 400+ NBA players sharing revenue AFTER the owners get their cut. Dont you see a discrepancy here? This was the main concern of the NFLPA as well. The NFL is a billion dollar company with the players bringing in the money with their talents and skill. They fought for equal share of the revenue. They also fought for retirement and healthcare benefits as well.

The latest round of the NBA lockout has the players rejecting the latest proposal and deciding to disband the union. The owners’ latest offer called for a 50-50 split of revenues between the owners and players. The NBA’s latest proposal was supposedly not put to a vote. The NBA commissioner David Stern is concerned because most of the 30 teams didnt make a profit in the last year. Not a lot of companies made a profit last year. The whole economy is going through a tough time now. Doesnt mean they wont be profitable in the future. I think Stern is holding out here.

Where does all this leave me? In the middle. I understand both sides. The owners want protection for when profits do not exceed expectations. The players want equal share of the revenue they bring in year after year. The people that are most hurt by this I think are local business’ who partner with teams and employees of the arenas and teams that will be out of the job during the lockout. You cant blame the players fully on this. As fans, we are the ones that pay ridiculous prices to sporting events, buy crazy amounts of merchandise and anything any of these players endorse. We pad their pockets and they know it  and know they can squeeze more out of us. They have the power and resources to get it done. As we sit and wait they are planning to file an antitrust suit against the NBA. They have hired former NFL lockout and Microsoft lawyer David Boies to represent them. As for now, we play the waiting game.

Respect,

Randall Jefferson