The 10 Commandments of Social Media for Brands

Fleeting as social media exchanges may seem, they can have a pronounced impact on business and their influence can echoe far beyond a simple post or retweet.

While the anonymous, public and often informal nature of Internet dialogue often leads corporations to relax their guard, it’s important to note: Managing a brand’s social media presence is a tricky balancing act. The key to being successful? Keeping things polite and professional, and constantly acknowledging your audience’s voice, while adding value or insight to customer exchanges.

Looking to enhance your corporate social media efforts? Here are 10 simple rules every corporate social networking team should follow to better connect with fans and maximize the value of their online presences.

1. Thou shalt be patient and considerate.
While many campaigns seem to go viral overnight, it’s important to remember that businesses rarely experience instant breakthroughs or meteoric audience growth on social media. More important than chasing huge follower or subscriber counts is to consistently and meaningfully engage an audience by creating helpful and insightful content that addresses key concerns or speaks to consumer needs.

Over time, through constant two-way dialogue with users, this commitment will help your business build a loyal and involved following, the influence of which may far outstrip that of larger, less engaged audiences.

Be relevant, generous and sincere. While doing so may not seem as sexy or instantly gratifying as posting a viral video or infographic, it will help you build trust, empathy and, most importantly, relationships, the currency of the modern social realm.

2. Thou shalt not be indifferent to the voice of thy customer.
When you engage in social media, you commit to playing a role in very public customer conversations. This entails consistently having to acknowledge other parties’ opinions, and embracing both the good and the bad, including harsh or critical feedback.

Instead of looking the other way when someone posts something unflattering, take a moment to objectively assess the feedback. Constructive criticism not only presents opportunities to improve our efforts to serve end-users; it also presents a chance to engage in human exchanges, and apologize and appease the situation.

In other words, the goal is to create conversations, not critiques, and optimize the level of customer support and service provided to your audience. Sometimes, simply taking a moment to acknowledge others’ voices, or answer questions directly can bridge gaps that threaten to build a gulf between you and end-users.

3. Thou shalt be true to thyself.
You've spent ample time crafting your brand’s mission and values across your website, marketing materials and advertising efforts. Now is not the time to abandon the positive image you've worked so hard to cultivate, or forsake professionalism or propriety in the name of popularity.

Given the medium’s more personable nature, social media exchanges should certainly be more human than formal. But all should be respectful of customers, audience needs and the positive image you've worked so hard to cultivate. It’s important not only to respect followers’ time and intelligence, but also to be consistent with your branding and messaging across all platforms. That way, fans and followers know both who you are and the values that your business stands for.

4. Thou shalt think before you post.
Trade secret: Every post or status update you share should add value for your audience, regardless whether that value comes in the form of enlightenment, entertainment or an uplifting exchange.

Therefore, make every share unique, and think about how to ensure it counts – i.e., what can you add to the conversation that others can’t? As a simple example, retweeting posts of note is an excellent way to share information, but adding your own opinion or links to further resources is an even better use of time. Likewise, if you post every single little detail or update about your brand, industry and products, fans may become fatigued. Respect your audience and think about how to make posts superlative, singular and of notable worth before sharing.

The key question to ask yourself: What’s in it for them?

5. Thou shalt be brief.
Remember to keep it short and sweet on social media. You have only a few seconds to catch someone’s attention, and even less time to keep it. Therefore, make sure your posts have an immediate impact and utilize concise language, links, references or (better yet) visual assets, such as photos, videos and inforgraphics. These quickly convey key information at a glance.

Look for ways to distill an idea down to a single statement or elevator pitch that clearly and quickly communicates subject matter, tone and target audience, and provides further points of reference should audiences wish to dive deeper into the topic.

6. Thou shalt not hog the conversation.
In many ways, social networks serve as the world’s largest cocktail party. But no one wants to be stuck with a self-centered conversation hog.

The same rule applies to your social media presence, where it’s important to listen before speaking – doubly so, as the dynamics of conversation and rules of online behavior differ depending on context and parties in attendance. Dedicate the majority of your time proactively engaging your audience, then split the remaining time between content your audience will care about and promoting your brand.

7. Thou shalt do good.
Think of social media as the world’s largest megaphone or amplifier – it can project your online voice louder, farther and faster than ever before.

Always be engaging and upbeat (negativity never reflects well on the poster, especially online, where conversational subtlety and nuance are often lost in translation), and take advantage of the opportunities presented to promote positivity. Material you post online should be less promotional than beneficial in nature, designed to help viewers save time or money, enhance learning and awareness, or offer key opinions and insights. From securing support for charitable ventures to offering deeper looks at evolving trends to helping fans and followers make valuable connections, consistently look for ways to aid, assist and uplift your audience.

8. Thou shalt keep it strictly business.
While color and personality are always welcome online, business and pleasure seldom mix well in social media contexts – personal and corporate accounts are best kept separated. Remember: Users following business accounts do so because they identify with the brand, and expect content in keeping with its core image and focus. Posting anything outside of this realm may prompt confusion, surprise or indifference, and has the potential to reflect poorly on your brand.

Communications should universally be polite, professional and on-topic. Where the risk of misinterpretation or controversy exists, play it safe and skip posting. Keep your tone and voice upbeat and respectful – avoid complaints, negative comments and stabs at the competition at all costs.

9. Thou shalt respect the hashtag.
Twitter hashtags are great vehicles for highlighting topics of relevance, drawing audience’s attention and fostering fan engagement. However, they can also be dangerous when used incorrectly – i.e., too frequently or in inappropriate contexts.

Oftentimes, brands overuse hashtags or place them in unrelated posts to drive added visibility. But doing so may leave viewers feeling cheated, especially if those hashtags add no relevant context to conversations or potentially alienate readers. This can cause a negative reaction to your online voice and ultimately your business, which will not only hinder fan acquisition but potentially detract from your brand.

10. Thou shalt not lie.
Skip the temptation to embellish, fib or inflate the truth online, especially since it can easily backfire or even lead to potential legal repercussions. Likewise, be honest with your audience. If fans and followers have questions about an evolving scenario – e.g., a potential PR crisis -– sometimes, the best answer is simply a prompt: “Apologies, but we don’t know. However, rest assured we’re working on it, and will let you know as soon as possible.”

Trust is the foundation of any relationship – real or online, and its loss can have a marked impact on both your brand and customer perception. As Benjamin Franklin once pointed out, it takes many exchanges to build a positive reputation, but only one mistake to undo it.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, tanukiphoto, IlonaBudzbon and Maravic

Scott Steinberg, a top-ranked international event speaker on the lecture circuit, is a bestselling expert on leadership and innovation, and the head of strategic consultancy TechSavvy Global. 

Social Lip Service vs. Social Customer Service: AT&T Wireless Case Study

Many organizations claim to “be social.”

They claim they have social media integrated with sales, marketing, and even customer service.

They may even tout that their customer service teams are using Twitter to communicate and help customers.

The real question is… are they providing social lip service or social customer service?

Social Lip Service: 

The company assigned tweeter pretends to want to solve my problem. They reply quickly to my tweet. However, they rarely do more than point me back to a customer service department via 1-800 phone number that I probably already spent 2 hours working with.

Social Customer Service:

The key difference is that the assigned tweeter sees my problem through to resolution even if it takes more than one day! They provide relevant value in taking my time to read, respond and act on the suggestions they recommend.

The problem:

A couple weeks ago I attempted to upgrade my iPhone on the AT&T Wireless Premier Business website. It still shocks me how companies as big and powerful as AT&T can still have such a terrible user experience on their own website. However, I digress and that’s not the point of this post, although it is very much a part of it.

I was unable to upgrade my iPhone on the AT&T business website using my account. For some reason the iPhone 4G didn’t appear as an option for upgrade.

Social customer (me) tweets opinion

It was after 10 pm et and I was of course multi-tasking tweeting, watching the news & trying to take care of my dying iPhone 3G.

I sent one tweet to politely vent in 140 characters that I wasn’t having fun on the AT&T premier site. I got a few responses with others stating their same frustration. I didn’t encourage the conversation to go into a bashing of AT&T because that’s not how I roll.

Here’s the fun part…

AT&T customer service responds via Twitter:

The next day I woke up to a friendly tweet from the assigned AT&T customer service tweeter. The tweeter had a real face on the Twitter avatar, though I don’t know if that’s who was really responding. Not sure if they have numerous customer service representatives who tweet from the twitter account and assign to customer service as necessary?

I saw the tweet and replied. The AT&T tweeter asked me to follow her so she could provide me directions.

She immediately sent me a DM offering to help. She asked for my email address and phone number.

Social customer (me) doubts AT&T’s ability & commitment to solve problem

I pretty much laughed it off. I had dealt with Verizon on issues with their FIOS performance and never received more than a push back to their 1-800 line which I had unfortunately had already spent the morning on with no resolution.

However, the AT&T tweeter had such a friendly, smiling face I thought “what the heck, I’ll give this a try.”

AT&T solves my problem!

The AT&T tweeter sent me a couple DMs and an email even though I had not yet responded back to her.  It was a very busy week for me as we were out of town negotiating some major business deals.

Several days passed and she was still following up.

By the end of the week I had an email and a DM stating my problem was solved! Even better she left a voice mail on business phone stating the same thing.

I thought “Yowza! Are you serious, my problem is solved and I didn’t have to call the 1-800 number and be transferred to 3 more people, hung up on twice & still not get a resolution?”

I couldn’t believe it! I logged into the AT&T premier business website and you guessed it… it was fixed. I could now upgrade my iPhone immediately. Problem sovled!

Thank you AT&T!

What did AT&T Wireless do right?

1. They were doing social listening (they knew about my tweet)

2. They had a policy for how to respond.

3. They responded in a timely manner.

4. They were genuine in their communication.

5. They were consistent even though I got busy & didn’t respond back to them in a timely manner.

6. They followed through on what they said they would do.

7. They resolved the issue.

8. They respected my time. I didn’t have to do anything besides reply to a DM with my cell phone number and email address.

9. They provided value to me as a customer during a very hectic and busy week.

10. They inspired me enough to write this post about their excellent social customer service.

11. They kept me as a customer.

Why has the social customer service bar been set so low?

If you really think about this scenario it is quite disappointing.  It is unfortunate that we are accustomed to terrible quality of customer service from most companies. The fact that I am ecstatic about a quick response to a problem stopping me from spending $400 with a company is sad.

There is tremendous opportunties for organizations to raise the bar in their level of customer service and customer satisfaction by properly implementing and integrating social media into their business. Responding via Twitter telling customers to call the 1-800 which takes me to the same broken customer service department that I started with is not a solution. Such a scenario only makes it worse and more frustrating for the customer.

Organizations must take the time to look at the end to end process and how you can leverage communication mediums such as Twitter to drive efficiencies and improve key performance metrics. There are no more excuses. Sending a tweet as a band-aid to a broken customer service department is only going to highlight your core issues. Take the time to do it right and you just might wind up with a blog post written just like this one!

Don’t do social. Be social!

Don’t just do social media. Be a social business!  I am a social customer. If you want to communicate with me on the social turf then you need to behave like a social business! Your chosen method and quality of response on the social networks has immediate and lasting impact to your company reputation, brand and bottom line.

Your Turn:

Do you know a business that is successfully integrating or has integrated social media into the DNA of their customer service? What are they doing right?  Have you had negative experiences as well? What happened? What recommendations do you have for organizations to improve customer relations by leveraging social media?

Author

Pam Moore

Half marketing, half geek, social media addict, CEO & Founder of Marketing Nutz @MktgNutz, entrepreneur, speaker, trainer, coach. Lover of strategy, ROI, Brand, God, Family, Friends, Beach & Life! 15+ years of experience helping small startups to Fortune 100 companies, budgets teeny tiny to big in both B2B and B2C markets build brand awareness, grow new markets, develop communities.

In Social Media, Top of the Funnel is About Lead Introduction – Not Creation

Yesterday I gave a presentation to a field sales team at Pitney Bowes Software about how we can work collaboratively on our Engage Today social media marketing program to support their tactical success.

I focused the discussion on the four high-value sales outcomes we have been able to consistently deliver:

1. Lead introduction
2. Lead nurturing
3. Deal capture
4. Competitive intelligence

This was the first time I swapped out lead generation for lead introduction in a presentation.

Why the change?

As Strategic Communications Group (Strategic) has matured its business-to-business and public sector focused  “social media for sales” programs on behalf of clients like Pitney Bowes, Polycom, British Telecom (BT), Intelsat, Blue Coat Systems, Mandiant and others, we have recognized that a lead generation expectation simply isn’t realistic.

Companies place considerable weight on quantity when evaluating the effectiveness of a tactical approach for lead creation.  It’s understandable because corporate marketers can model top of the funnel leads to an anticipated revenue output.

While our programs have demonstrated the ability to produce new leads through premium content offers, they are not at a level that survives a cost per lead analysis.  It’s because of this that my recent pitch to two exceptionally qualified and interesting prospects fell short.

Lead introduction though is achievable and, in my opinion, of equal (if not greater) value in a business-to-business and public sector context.  That’s because the majority of vendors sell multimillion dollar, enterprise solutions to executive level decision-makers.

Whether a company is pushing product, service or a combination of the two, it is a consultative sell.  Executive buyers have to be educated and, equally critical, a relationship defined by trust must be established.

Education via thought leadership content and customer or prospect intimacy – those are the core tenets of an effective social media initiative.

A wonderfully composed guest post on Marketo’s blog by Andrew Gaffney of DemandGen Report validates my view on lead introduction as a realistic social media for sales outcome.  Gaffney presents three key points:

1. Executives play a prominent role in the buying process;
2. These executive rely heavily upon peer reviews, feedback and content-sharing to inform their buying decisions; and
3. Social media even more popular among executives than it is among their subordinates.

Author

Marc Hausman

Hi! I am the president/CEO of Strategic Communications Group, a social media marketing consultancy based outside of Washington, DC. Read more at: http://www.thestrategicguy.com

Now a Social App that can manage Your Entire Home From a Phone.

A new app aims to reassure absent homeowners by letting them manage and monitor household items, straight from their phone or tablet.

Prizm is a 5-inch touchscreen controller that uses Z-Wave, a wireless system designed to help users communicate with home appliances. Combined with the Prizm Manager mobile app, they can turn light switches on and off, lock and unlock doors, raise and lower shades, and adjust the thermostat. Users are also notified when a door or window is opened, or when someone leaves or enters the house.

The product's creators say they have developed a cloud platform that makes it possible for users to "stay connected to your home from anywhere in the world."

So far, Prizm has raised a little over $6,000 of its $200,000 goal on Kickstarter. Would you use it? Tell us in the comments, below.

Three ideas that can revolutionize your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Social marketing can be hugely powerful: it drives new and repeat business, builds loyalty and engagement, and even inspires the holy grail of word-of-mouth marketing: spontaneous brand advocacy.

But, like any powerful tool, social requires knowledge and skills to effectively harness its might.

Before you rush out to Post and Tweet with reckless abandon, it’s crucial to have the right foundation in place to inform what you’ll say (strategy), how you’ll say it (execution), and how you’ll measure the results (ROI). Here are three fundamentals to set you up for success in social marketing all through 2013:

Get Over IMC

IMC, or integrated marketing communications, has long been the de facto mantra of the modern marketing world. Its main premise is that you should keep brand messaging uniform across all mediums.

For many big brands and old-school agencies, IMC is simply how things are done. But IMC was created with a different world in mind.

When the term was coined back in the 1970s, there weren’t nearly as many mediums in play — and they were all one-way, “broadcast” mediums. TV, radio and print ads were usually the vehicles of choice, backed up with package design and store placement. It was easy to use the same taglines, imagery and branding in a uniform way across all of these marketing efforts.

Today? Not so much. With all of the dynamic new mediums created by the internet revolution, we can’t just shoehorn the same message into all channels, digital and analog alike. For one, most marketing channels today are a two-way street.

Brands can broadcast their messages, but consumers and fans also have the opportunity to respond, remix, retweet and generally change your message. Two-way marketing channels throw a wrench in good, old-fashioned IMC.

Instead of trying to keep the message 100% uniform across all channels, we recommend focusing on the unique “personality” of each brand and on providing consistently great interactions, everywhere from your website to your social media channels to customer service and everything in between.

Think of a brand more like a person, with different facets to its character. It’s still a single, cohesive entity, but it’s a heck of a lot more complex than a label on a shampoo bottle.

Bottom line: IMC had a good run, but the end is near. That doesn’t mean you should give up on integrating your brand’s messaging. It just means you need to think about it more holistically.

Start Using Full-Spectrum Attribution

As budgets continue to rise for social media marketing, executives have increasingly (and rightfully) demanded that marketers prove their efforts are “ringing registers” and delivering return on investment. But some marketers claim social metrics are too “squishy” to align with real business objectives. Others still haven’t summoned the discipline to establish a rigorous measurement framework.

But for those marketers who have fully embraced social media marketing and invested in a rigorous measurement framework, it’s easy to demonstrate the benefits. Success stories like Samsung and Nutella are now outnumbering naysayers like GM, because marketers are using data to prove that they can leverage social to solve complex business challenges and deliver significant returns using social. 

This is only possible through an analytical process called Full-Spectrum Attribution.  In order to attribute positive results (engagement, enhanced loyalty, new sales) to specific efforts (paid advertising, applications, publishing, customer care), marketers need a highly analytical, full-spectrum view of their social media activities. 

Tools can enable this approach (more on that in a moment), but first it requires a commitment to identifying metrics and benchmarks that are specific to social and that recognize the unique qualities that distinguish it from broadcast mediums.

Find the Right Tools For You

In order to begin treating your brand’s messaging more holistically and implementing Full-Spectrum Attribution, you’ll need to find the right tools.

The right tools for you will depend on the size of your company and the nature of your brand(s). Most importantly, you should make sure that the people who are producing social content are directly and constantly connected to the people who are amplifying that content, and that they’re using the same tools.

One way to do that is to create a social media “war room.” Oreo employed this tactic with great success during the Super Bowl, pushing out fun and timely content with speed that made plenty of consumers and brand marketers take notice. How did they do it so fast? In a word, integration.

Everyone who needed to be present to make a decision (and put the creative together) was in the same room at the same time — the right time. Agile social marketing is best enacted in real time, in one room, with one group of people who can easily communicate with each other and who use the same tools to achieve common goals.

Why is this war room so important? Both content producers (for example, the people writing your Facebook posts) and content promoters (the people pushing your ads) have valuable insight into what works. If they’re both measuring correctly, they will start to see patterns.

Perhaps a clever Facebook post is getting tons of likes and shares. Or maybe a certain retargeting strategy is suddenly paying off and needs more media spend immediately. In a war room, real or virtual, these patterns can be quickly identified and used to adjust your strategy and combine owned, earned and paid media effectively without missing a beat.

To make this even easier, we recommend using automated software tools that can aggregate and make sense of data faster than humans can. When a powerful software system is combined with a “war room” full of well-trained people who can put this data to use, what results is a highly scalable approach to maximizing the return on your social marketing efforts.

So there you have it. Three important ways to think about putting social to work for you in the new year.

How will you be approaching social marketing differently in 2013?

About the Author

Jamie Tedford is CEO and founder of Brand Networks, one of twelve companies that comprise Facebook's Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer program, and a leading provider of integrated social software solutions and marketing services for some of the world’s most “Liked” brands.

To be Successful, Social Media has to fail.

A model for success that can help marketers and executives get on the same page for social media investments.

As companies start to invest more heavily into social media, it will quickly bring out the magnifying glass. It’s a big deal. For many companies social media is finally getting its own line in the budget for 2013.  This comes with good and bad news. Executives have been struggling with understanding where social media delivers return since the first time one of their employees came in and begged to test it. Now that it has its own line item in the budget, it’s natural for skeptical executives to approve the budget and pull out their magnifying glass at the same time. Once companies start making real investments in social media, the pressure is on for marketers to quickly demonstrate real ROI. Not those fluffy reports on how many fans and followers were generated.

For all the executives out there, it’s important to take a step back from your magnifying glass for a second because you are about to destroy any chance for social media to be successful in your company. I truly believe it should be measured and it absolutely should be held accountable as any marketing channel would. But right now, social media is still in its infancy in many companies and there is still a lot of fear holding back big investments. If you measure social media only in pure ROI, you will shut down the program before it has the opportunity to show you where it has the most impact. Marketers are begging you to give social media a chance, but it’s equally important that marketers provide a framework for social media investments that make executives feel comfortable. Here’s a model for success that can help marketers and executives get on the same page for social media investments.

SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIRES A STRATEGY

The first step in ensuring that social media is on the path to success is to have a strategy. All this talk of “trying things out” and “testing to see what happens” is bullshit. Executives should absolutely call this out if it is happening in your organization. Sorry marketers, but if you say this, you know it’s because you have no idea what you are trying to accomplish and haven’t taken the time to build a plan. You may have a hundred reasons why you haven’t made the investment to do it, but it doesn't change the fact that social media without a strategy is like giving an employee a corporate credit card without a policy for how it is to be used. That is a surefire way to open the door to unforeseen risks. Understanding where social media has an opportunity to deliver success requires an investment in research and strategy development that is designed to achieve corporate objectives. If you aren't sure if this is happening in your organization, go ask the marketing team what they are trying to achieve with their Facebook page or any social media channel they have been talking about. If you get the “deer in the headlights” look then it’s time to pull back and take the time to develop a strategy. Executives should have confidence that their marketing team is using social media to drive a business objective. Businesses operate to accomplish one thing: drive more sales while reducing costs to drive a higher profit. Therefore, if your social media strategy can’t be measured in terms of sales volume, revenue or costs, it probably doesn't align with what the executive team gets paid to do, deliver higher returns. The disconnect between corporate objectives and social media needs to be resolved as soon as possible.

SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIRES CALCULATED RISKS

Every strategy should be developed to allow for risk-taking that uncovers where social media delivers the highest impact. The reality is that every strategy evolves once it’s being implemented because marketing is an evolutionary practice. We test, we evaluate, we refine. Innovative companies have learned that failure is a critical part in success and it’s important for your marketing team to understand that you encourage them to fail as much as you encourage them to succeed. This is critical because if you don’t, your marketers will put their “marketing spin” on the data you see. That’s not beneficial for anyone. We need full transparency and your marketing team needs to know that they won’t get the verbal beat down in a meeting if their data doesn't show a resounding success every time. Testing is a huge part of driving social media success, which means that each social media failure is in fact a success because it is one step closer to figuring out what will work. The challenge is that, in many risk-averse companies, a single failure can kill an entire program.

Let’s start by agreeing that in order to be successful, social media has to fail.

Did that give you heart palpitations? I know it freaks me out a little too. We can’t have marketers out there just throwing caution to the wind and risking our company’s brand and reputation in a very public forum. It’s important to put some framework around how testing will be accomplished in order to preserve the brand. So let’s control the impact of our failures by applying some rules for acceptable risks. Marketers need to be able to explain how they are taking “calculated risks” to executives with an understanding of the business and the potential fallout. Executives need to be able to determine whether the level of risk is acceptable or not before they can fully support a program that will fail before it succeeds. In essence, we want to build a testing environment that supports and even celebrates failure. Think about it as failure with hand rails.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS A LONG-TERM STRATEGY

There are plenty of marketing channels that are like a light switch. We turn them on and see an immediate impact on the business. Most of those marketing channels are in the advertising space and they are very important in the overall marketing mix. But social media isn't a light switch. To be successful social media requires an engaged audience and an audience takes time to build. There are a lot of things that can be done to help build an audience faster, like integrating some advertising elements for social media content; however at the end of the day you need to give social media a runway. You need to understand that social media is a long-term strategy and the most important thing for your marketing team to understand is that you’ll give it the runway it needs provided there is progress toward the end goal.

I’m going to tell you something that may freak out my marketing counterparts. Social media ROI will be negative for at least the first year. How long will social media ROI be negative? It depends on how closely the strategy is aligned to corporate objectives, how fast the team can test and iterate and how successful the team is at creating killer content and building up the desired audience. This is another one of those calculated risks that can be managed; however, if you think your company is going to dive into social media and you are going to have a flood of cash waiting at the other end within a few months you may be sadly disappointed. And I’ll be the first to say that there are companies that have been able to drive huge sales returns using social media in what appears to be an overnight success. The untold story in those case studies is the time those companies spent before that overnight success testing and iterating before they found something that hit. That isn't the sexy part of the story so it rarely gets told.

SOCIAL MEDIA ISN'T FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

Finally, it’s important to understand that social media is only one part of the marketing mix. Companies should not be staking their success on social media alone. Social media needs integration with other marketing channels to deliver the highest return. And despite popular belief among executives, social media isn't Facebook and Twitter. When done well, social media strategies are designed to align corporate objectives with content that is specifically designed to achieve them and the channels where they can reach the largest audience. Many times through the research stage, we find that the majority of conversations that are happening around a company’s industry are happening on blogs and forums. It isn't sexy. But if 60% of the conversations around your industry are happening on blogs and forums, starting with a Twitter and Facebook strategy is just plain stupid. Social media isn't about the “cool” social media channels. It’s about being where the conversations that can drive business value are happening. That may be Twitter, it may be Facebook, but more often than not it’s happening where you least expect it. And because companies aren't starting with a strategy, they are spinning their wheels on social channels that are “nice to haves” instead of those that are “must haves”.

With all of this, I highly encourage executives to give social media the room it needs to fail so that it can truly deliver success. But don’t do it without a plan, without managing risk, and without understanding where the conversation is happening. Providing a runway that allows for failure is smart. Providing a runway that has a .50 caliber rifle pointed at isn't.

Did your organization give social media a budget for 2013? Do you have a social media strategy? Is your organization prepared for social media failures? Join the conversation! Leave a comment and let’s start a healthy debate on whether marketers and executives have aligned expectations for social media in 2013.

About Author

Nichole Kelly is the President of SME Digital, the digital marketing division of Social Media Explorer. She is also the author of How to Measure Social Media. 

Bad Content Marketing Habits to Kick Before 2013

Image Source: Forbes.com

Content marketing has been all the rage in 2012, and content marketing will continue to wield significant influence next year.  Why not commit yourself and your company to some content marketing New Year’s resolutions?  There are common bad habits practiced by content marketers.  Although they all have solutions, some may take more time and effort to correct than others.  According to Pamela Vaughan of HubSpot, companies that maintain blogs get 55% more website visitors and 97% more inbound links and have 434% more indexed web pages than companies that do not maintain blogs.  High-quality business blogging has real value, so start 2013 off with bang by kicking your bad habits and taking your content marketing to the next level.

6 Content Marketing Bad Habits

1.  Infrequent Blogging

The more often a company blogs, the more traffic and leads it will be able to produce.  Businesses that update their blogs at least 20 times per month generate over five times more traffic than businesses who blog less than four times per month.  Businesses that blog at least 20 times per month also generate 4 times more leads than those that do not blog.  

2.  Poor Planning and Coordination

You need a clear content marketing plan that everyone at your company follows. Your website, social media activity, press releases, newsletters and email marketing should all be coordinated and tailored to each of your various vertical markets and channels around a unified, targeted message.  In all your content marketing, you need to communicate the unique value your company can provide in solving problems and finding solutions for your prospective clients.   

3.  Not Using CTAs

Always include a call to action (CTA) in your blog posts.  Providing high-quality premium offers will increase engagement and help move prospects down the marketing funnel.  Informational offers, such as ebooks, whitepapers and webinars, function well, because people reading your blog are likely to be interested in more free information from you.

4.  A Lack of Variety

Your blog should focus on a wide variety of relevant industry topics.  Variety in content form is important as well.  While traditional blog posts are necessary and important for driving traffic to your website, there are other forms of content you can employ to add some variety and freshness to your content marketing.  It is easy to fall into a content creation rut—producing the same types of content over and over.  Here are some other forms of content that you can feature on your blog to ensure variety and freshness: infographics, webinars, SlideShare presentations, video tutorials and cartoons.  

5.  Poor Engagement

It is important to treat all your content marketing as a communication channel that provides you with the opportunity to reach your target audience.  You should always respond to comments and questions posted to your published content in a timely and friendly manner. 

6.  Not Having a Social Sharing Game Plan

You should have a concrete strategy for sharing and promoting your content.  Avail yourself of all opportunities.  Syndicate your content on sites like Business 2 Community and Social Media Today; share your content on all the major social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.  Leverage your content with social networking.  Who are the top influencers and thought leaders in your industry?  If you do not know, you should figure it out and start communicating with them.  Comment and ask questions across all available channels, including links to your content, when it is appropriate.  This will add to your online credibility and status.  Klout is a good site to explore and identify influencers. 

Resolving not to make the mistakes listed above can increase your reach and incite increased traffic, higher lead generation and more new business.  Get organized, and be strategic about content marketing in 2013.

Author

Monica Romeri

Campaign Trail: "Hello Honey Bunny", What an idea Sirji!

Idea Cellular's "Honey Bunny"
TVC going Viral.

Someone shared a video of the new Idea Cellular TVC on my Facebook timeline warning me it’s going to be addictive and it sure has been. So, if you are still grooving to the Gangnam style, then here’s a much more equivivalent funny song that is sure to make you go, “Feeling something something, Hello Honey Bunny Honey Bunny, You’re my pumpkin pumpkin Hello Honey Bunny”. If that looks cute, the tune makes it even peppier; you just can’t get it off your mind!

The new TVC shows Indians from around the country, with varied cultural backgrounds, connecting as one big happy family of over 120 billion people, all of whom are seen humming one song - ‘Honey Bunny’, albeit with a regional flavor!

Now as an online Marketer I was curious to study this campaign trail and see where this is heading. This new approach by Idea Cellular in their TVC made me think about the means most of the telecom providers are following. Upon studying the common factors I came to see the big picture; all the telecom companies in India are following a particular theme clubbed with their USPs or trending offerings at that particular time.

Look at Airtel’s campaign which focused purely on the buyer sentiment and EQ with their “Har ek friend zaroori hota hai” & “Jo tera hai wo mera hai” campaign; or Vodafone’s with their variety of adds focusing on the cost effectiveness (Irfaan Khan ads) or the network range (Pug ads) to the various VAS (Zoo zoo ads) or Reliance Mobile talking about their cost effective tarrifs. All these TVC had a purpose/theme or a philosophy behind them as a route.

Now let’s get back to our Idea Celluar’s “Honey Bunny” TVC which honestly left me confused. Until now all their ads had their flagship route of “What an idea Sirji!” strongly fulcrumed on some CSR initiative or social message. But with this new TVC the whole campaign seems derailed to me. No doubt the jingle is catchy and simplistically obsessive and Amit Trivedi (composer of ‘English Vinglish’ & ‘Dev D’ fame) has done an exceptionally great work contributing a jingle which is simple yet obsessive after a long time (the last simple jingle to be composed to my knowledge was for ‘Nirma’ in ‘80s).

Looking at this on the positive side I have a strong feeling that this new campaign of Idea Cellular is a well planned attempt by its brand communication and marketing team to strengthen their social media and online presence. What’s interesting to note is that Idea Cellular has been creating a buzz on its Facebook page a few days prior to releasing the TVC. Fans were asked to guess who or what is a Honey Bunny. In addition, there were many updates with teaser videos that helped in building up the suspense.

Below graph shows the viral growth in traffic on the TVC’s YouTube channel:

So to summarize on my campaign trail - initially I was skeptical with my assumption that this TVC was a desperate attempt of company’s brand communication team to get their brand viral, but at the end of it I realized that the Marketing team at Idea Cellular has done an exceptional work in terms of reaching the masses with its unique content strategy centered around ideas in a weekly set pattern, till this severely addictive song promotion, the Idea Facebook strategy seems to be well aligned. The telecom brand’s intention to create exclusive content for its fans is indeed impressive and would definitely help in building a long term community.

I’d like to congratulate the Idea’s creative agency Lowe on this note and sign off in a typical Idea Cellular way, “What an idea Sirji”.

You can’t stop singing ‘Honey Bunny’, can you?

Viral Thaker, Founder & Director | TheSocialPeople
A seasoned HR & Marketing professional, Viral was one of the early adopters of social media. With over a decade of industry experience under his belt, his skills span corporate strategy, delivery management, customer relationship management, business development and operations management. Viral is a voracious reader, a travel enthusiast and enjoys adventure sports. Follow Viral on Twitter @vrlthaker

The New SEO Rules in a Content Marketing World

Shane Snow
Co-Founder
Contently

Shane Snow is a Mashable contributor and co-founder of Contently, which builds tools for journalists and brand publishers.

Five years ago, it seemed nothing was as buzzy and mysterious as SEO. Today, “content marketing” has taken over as reigning buzzphrase in marketing circles, with many SEO practitioners shifting their sales pitches to match the trend.

The difference, essentially, is content marketing aims to create content humans want to read, whereas SEO aims to create content that pleases search engines. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but not long ago creating cheap, machine-friendly garbage for SEO was as effective as putting time and money into quality content.

Not anymore.

Many bloggers and publishers today are seeing traffic from social exceed that from search engines; social sites like Pinterest, for example, are now top traffic sources for some retailers.

Yet, Google still gets 100 billion searches every month, according to Search Engine Watch. Publishers angling for social media traffic would be foolish to ignore search entirely.

How can content marketing organizations remain search-friendly while adhering to best practices in social media?

The New Rules of SEO for Content Marketing

Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, outlines five best practices for content marketers hoping to maximize SEO value in an ethical way.

1. Create content that people will have an incentive to share.
2. Do keyword research, so you don’t waste effort writing about things people don’t care about.
3. Put all your content on the same domain/subdomain. (e.g. don't use blog.mysite.com, use mysite.com/blog)
4. Stand for something, and write about it. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
5. Don't separate your brand from your content. For instance, casino sites that make fascinating infographics about animal rights aren't going to last long.

Successful content marketing publications rely heavily on social traffic for timely impressions. They build search rank for their archives almost as a byproduct of good social content. Well-ranked branded publications like RedBull.com adhere to Fishkin’s advice of producing “large amounts of content people find interesting,” combined with “solid UX” and SEO basics: clean URLs and smart markup.

Machiavellian SEO Doesn’t Work Anymore

Just as in traditional journalism, content marketers should never seek to betray or deceive readers, whether through SEO practices or their content. Anything that borders on sneaky or unethical eventually gets filtered out of search engine results, if history is any indication.

“Manipulative techniques like 301'ing old sites, hordes of anchor text rich links, exact match domains, etc. are gone,” Fishkin says. “SEO today is holistic. It demands that you build signals real brands have that, in years past, could be artificially overwhelmed by large quantities of links or other tactics.”

Search engine algorithms constantly improve to defeat what amounts to cheating — sending false signals of real popularity, like link trading schemes. Today’s algorithms even factor sharing into their search rankings, so users can blissfully skip over crappy content.

Syndication and Influencer Content Works

High-growth blogs tend to focus on content distribution — getting their stories and headlines on other blogs or news sites across the web. Done well, this can build honest links to a site, indicating to Google that brands with authority trust a site’s content enough to publish it on their own. Plus, other blogs tend to riff off of popular posts on authority sites, which can solidify search trust.

Additionally, inviting influential writers and publishers to guest post on your site not only encourages traffic, but also boosts social signals when those influencers share your domain with their social media followers.

At the end of the day, good SEO is baked into good content.

Says Fishkin, “Delivering an exceptional experience and building a true web brand are now essential to long-term SEO success.”

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Ekspansio

Social Media loves Small & Medium Business

As a Founder CEO of a B2B specialist firm on Social Media Strategy and Analytics it did not take me a lot of time to realize that it was not only the investors in facebook’s IPO who were thwarted with the Social Network but also a lot of small and medium businesses who claim to have burnt their hands by spending too much time and money on Facebook for negligible returns.




Now every time I’ve met a small business owner and had this scenario I ask them 3 basic questions:

1. Who was running your Social Media campaign and how skilled they were with Social Network sites?
2. What was the strategy they had adopted to achieve their business objective? Or did they actually put any strategy in place first of all?
3. What was their metrics on ROI?

On detailed investigation it was a learning that most of these businesses’ campaign did not even qualify for social media campaign criteria.

What do most of the businesses get wrong in Social Media Marketing?

It’s a sad state that most of the businesses today are more sales oriented rather than to be Marketing centric. Even the marketers today talk the language of reaping immediate yield, rather than to wait for the time to harvest. Instead of building an ecosystem and a network of customers, prospect customers, employees and stake holders on social media they want immediate lead generation and results.
While Attract, Engage, Convert are the 3 milestones of Social Media Campaigning (let’s call it Interactive Campaigning); Patience is the key to its success!

So what is recommended to the entrepreneurs who want to go social?

It’s simple, go back to the basics and start building the blocks – Who your target audience is? What are they looking for? Does your business have a service/solution they require? If your answers are a definite yes to such questions then start thinking of ways to engage them. I’d like to strongly emphasize here that one does not require insanely large numbers. It’s not about quantity but quality. Remember that Content is the King, but Context is the Emperor.

Also the success of a small business very much depends on creating a personal connection with each customer. Do not mix it with a Facebook paid Ad campaign; you might just end up blowing your marketing budget on a “Friends of Friends” advertising where a message seems to come from a friend but is actually an Ad. People hate this – think about it.

What other tips for Small & Medium Businesses who want to maximize their impact on Social Media?

1. I always like to refer Social Media Marketing as Interactive Marketing. Unlike traditional marketing social media has a two way conversation.
2. Having a million followers / fans does not mean your business would increase exponentially. What really matters is to have that one great follower/fan that can make your brand go viral with a strong “friends of friends” engagement as a brand ambassador.
3. Don’t advertise – Offer information instead. Build a social credibility.
4. Remember the old saying – “Rome was not built in a day”; same stands for your Social Media Ecosystem. If you just keep at it, in the long run you’ll find it will pay off in huge returns and cost savings.

Viral Thaker, Founder & Director | TheSocialPeople
A seasoned HR & Marketing professional, Viral was one of the early adopters of social media. With over a decade of industry experience under his belt, his skills span corporate strategy, delivery management, customer relationship management, business development and operations management. Viral is a voracious reader, a travel enthusiast and enjoys adventure sports. Follow Viral on Twitter @vrlthaker

Founder Speak

You probably should not be on social media. And I will give you my reasons. 

Reason 1

You have nothing to say. By that I mean you have nothing meaningful to add to the conversation. All you have is noise, jargon or a sales pitch. You probably have updates like “Come visit us on this day at so so venue” or “come experience the new product”. So you are adding to the confusion and have nothing new to add. Please stay away from social media.

Reason 2

Your company does not allow you to say anything meaningful. You have an archaic policy which forbids you to even send an exclamation mark on Twitter. Not only you the only person who is allowed to tweet is your CEO and his admin uses his id to send a very safe tweet like “Cloud computing is the future of technology”. It’s better to give social media a miss and spend time on something more useful like cold calling.

Reason 3

You believe in only responding to celebrities and other famous people, your customers don’t mean much to you. You don’t believe in understanding the customer needs. Your focus is firmly on the celebrity and things like baby names for celebrity kids.

Reason 4

You believe in letting the marketing department create your content. What is written on your channels is carefully orchestrated marketing spiel. Not the genuine conversation from your experts.

If these four or any of the four reasons are present in your social media strategy then I think you need to  move on and leave social media to the experts.

- By Dr.Vikram Venkateswaran, Founder & Director | TheSocialPeople

Dr. Vikram Venkateswaran is a marketing professional with almost 10 years of experience. He is passionate about public health, blogging, writing, public speaking and lawn tennis. He can be followed on his twitter handle @drvikram. Visit his blog at Docter Soccer.

Founder Speak is our weekly column by the founders of TheSocialPeople- Viral Thaker & Dr.Vikram Venkateswaran.

Gastro Entices - how social media has managed to woo the food industry

Picture this: you’re at the newest Italian joint in town. You have a camera phone and presumably a Twitter app installed. You’ve ordered lasagna and when it arrives, the first few seconds are as intense for the owner, as it is for you. You take a picture of your scrumptious plate, tag yourself, pin the location and all this while the new kid on the food block is twiddling his thumbs wondering if that was a 140 word appreciation or a stinking review that will be picked up by nearly 500 of your online friends. That’s the power of social media over your local restaurant.

While blogging about recipes, reviews, restaurants etc. has been popular for quite a while, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and a plethora of innovative mobile apps have created a mini storm in the food and beverage industry. In India, sites such as zomato.com have a platform on all iPhone Operating Systems, Windows phones, Android supported devices, Blackberry, and Nokia phones. With more than 20,000 menus to boast of from 10 cities across the country, restaurant guides and user reviews, it has turned into a food lovers’ hub.

And the sharing business gets more creative. Around 2009, when The New York Times discovered that people were tweeting complete recipes in 140 characters, it was posed as a challenge to their readers. And of course, received a thumping response.

However, social media doesn’t restrict itself to sharing recipes and reviewing eateries alone. Take for instance, apps like Cookbook that throws up recipes based on ingredients you have in stock in your kitchen. Or The Photo Cookbook which is a collection of various recipes with high resolution photos, that take less than 30 minutes to prepare.

From locating the nearest restaurant based on your current craving to a selection of recipes based on the occasion; vegetarian specific restaurants and even apps that help you track your calorie intake- the relationship between social media and food is certainly ‘app’etizing.

More and more restaurateurs today prefer to market their business through social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. It’s a wonderful way to build a loyal customer base through fans and a great platform to announce food festivals, promotions and events. Foursquare promotions are a great tool to promote your business too. Check-in to Foursquare from a restaurant that runs the offer a specific number of times, or walk in with a certain number of friends and you can tuck in a free appetizer.

What interesting food related apps or promotions have you come across lately?

Why it’s time to shift your B2B marketing from “traditional transactions” to “Social engagement”?

In my decade long career one thing that I’ve learnt about business and moreover marketing is that they are more or less synonymous to being social. This engagement has been taken to a much stronger levels with the acceptance of Web2.0 and Social Media as the most powerful and efficient communication channel today. My fellow marketers have completely ensured that their brand is visible on every possible social network available today. What possibly worries me is that a majority of them still have the primary use of Social Media as just another channel to push messages to their so called “target market”.

I think that there is a huge gap amongst brands in terms of using the available social media tools and having an effective strategy to monetize their efforts. This was proved by a quick survey where majority of the CMO agreed that they are struggling in context to the below 3 challenges in addressing their social media marketing woes:

1. Lack of skilled resources
2. Lack of defining a proper ROI on their Social Media Marketing efforts
3. Lack of an effective engagement methodology to enable positive sentiment

One marketer I interacted with recently believes that Social Media is only useful for B2C marketing and the gimmicks that B2C marketers use would never work for B2B. In fact this made this person assume that Social Media is not ment for B2B marketing. To some extent I must confess that the first half of the statement is true but would strongly disagree to the latter half of the statement as B2B and B2C marketing is both about people-to-people communications and eliciting emotional responses, which social media is perfect for doing. At the same time I must emphasize the fact that I’m not advocating the “One-Size-fits-all” mindset; every organization is unique in its own ways and has its own dynamics at work. This is where an effective strategy fueled by the right data plays a vital role in monetizing your business goals the social way!

Yet another interesting incidence that I’d like to share was when I was giving a presentation to a marketing team a few days ago and one of the senior member representing the company said that their buyers are too old, too senior and too busy to be on Facebook or any Social Network for that matter, but we were able to show him that their demographic of buyers do use or want to use social media if they are learning about business solutions the company sells. A recent whitepaper by Forrester on B2B initiatives shows that business decision makers use social media for business purposes, and when it comes to creating content and sharing opinions; they do it more for business than personal reasons.

Social Media can be harnessed for generating demand, but you have to recognize how it is different from other marketing channels. One highly distinguishing advantage Social Media has is that it has a two way dialog between the buyers and sellers unlike the other marketing channels which are monolog in nature and have a longer ROI as investment is heavy.

To summarize on how B2B marketing goals can be achieved via social media – Social Media is all about relationships and sentiments, it requires one to engage in two way interaction and engage regularly; it is realtime and so one needs to be monitoring the sentiments and conversation to consequently take necessary action and tactical strategy; it enables to amplify traffic and ROI to other channels – this according to me is the icing on cake advantage of Social Media as a Marketing and Communicating channel.

B2B marketers that take a more systematic approach have a huge opportunity to cast a wider net than ever, and use the fact that people are connected to the things and people they care about to reach people, draw them in, and build brand preference early in the buying cycle. But to do it, one has to be more systematic and strategic.