Search Engine Marketing

When it comes to social media – everyone wants one thing: metrics.

I hear from clients all the time, “I know I should be using social media – but I have a hard time investing money in something I can’t measure.” Fair enough. That’s why I’ve worked on developing a list of metrics and measurement considerations for social media.

Social Media Measurement is Similar to Measuring Public Relations

Before listing out some tools and ideas for measuring your ROI; I want to note one thing about social media marketing and its impact. It is slightly erroneous to compare social media to traditional media in terms of analyzing return-on-investment. While some of the impacts of SMM will resemble those of more tradition media buying efforts (increased sales, increased brand awareness, etc…) other impacts are more analogous to another traditional business investment: public relations. In public relations, the impact is often hard to measure. Nonetheless, no self-respecting company would ignore (or dispute) the value of public relations. Whether it’s improved image or a sense of community “connection” – public relations provides it. So too does social media. It is especially that connection that social media creates. It is hard to put a dollar value on the relationship a consumer develops with a brand because of social media efforts.

Social Media Metrics:

Ideally; you’ll know how you’re going to measure your social media campaign before you launch it. What I mean by this is that you should have clear objectives before starting any internet marketing campaign, whether it be: search engine optimization; SEM; or social media marketing. Having a clear objective and determining how you will measure success should be the first step of any social media marketing campaign. It should also be noted that it’s important to make sure that social media is the best tool for reaching you objective.

Here are some common objectives that social media is a great tool for:

• · Increasing brand awareness
• · Increasing consumer and visitor interaction
• · Advertising to a targeted audience
• · Generating traffic for your main site
• · Customer relations via real-time service and “fire-stomping”

Creating metrics for each of these objectives is fairly straightforward. For instance: measuring whether your social media campaign is generating website hits is as simple as using Google analytics to see if Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter is driving your traffic.

In this instance, you would be sure to assign a specific value to the objective. What particular page or pages do you want to drive traffic to and what percentage do you want to increase your current traffic.

One campaign is likely to have multiple objectives. A Facebook Advertising campaign might be geared at increasing web traffic and increasing product sales. There are also unique tools to measure certain harder to judge objectives like: increasing brand awareness. Various real-time and composite search results allow you to see not only who and where people are talking about you – but whether the overall context of their conversations is positive or negative.

The tools are out there – the specific metrics that you’ll use will depend on your campaign. The trick is to define what you are trying to measure before beginning any social media marketing project. Asking “is this effective” after creating and managing a Facebook page for several months is going to be more difficult to answer.

Contact a Social Media Marketing company in Houston to learn more about finding the best tools and measuring their effectiveness.

Questions or comments? Find me on Twitter @smmjenn or email me at jenn@newnectar.com.

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Social Media Marketing: Facebook Marketing

Social Media Marketing: Follow the Money

One of the most difficult obstacles for businesses wading into the social media waters is the ever-shifting nature of the platforms. Whether it’s an entirely new ( and suddenly popular) platform that you must adapt to — or a major change to an existing platform — it seems like nothing is ever static for long in the world of social networks.

Case-in-point is Facebook’s  announcement that it will be changing how its “Group” feature functions. Facebook groups used to be incredibly useful tools for businesses to promote upcoming events or even themselves. With the advent of the Facebook Business Page (or Fan Page;)  it appeared the social network wanted to shift groups to the background in order to monetize and maximize the use of Facebook pages for business.  As the news feed evolved — Groups were kept off of the real-time feed. This handicapped their ability to spread rapidly.

Now Facebook is putting Groups on the newsfeed — though word is they will limit a group’s appearance on the feeds to only those comments or postings that are made by an individual’s friends. This is still a potentially big development. Facebook Fan Pages are great tools — but one thing that always made groups better for getting the word out quickly was the ability of an admin to invite large groups of people to a group. The spread of pages is unfortunately limited to a slower style of virtual-word-of-mouth.  If groups retain this feature while also joining pages and profiles on the newsfeed — it might be well worth the effort to create a group page as well for your business. Actually — it might make sense to create multiple groups to cater to multiple campaigns.

To learn more about the use of Groups vs. Pages and Profiles on Facebook; contact a Houston social media marketing company today. You can also contact me at @SMMJenn on Twitter or by emailing me at jenn@newnectar.com.

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Social Media Creates Opportunities & Efficiencies for Small Business

In previous blogs, we’ve talked about ways to use Social Media to interact directly with potential clients. I’ve shared how Facebook Advertising can get your message in front of potential customers for very little cost ; and how a Facebook Business page can grow your business – but today I’d like to talk about some ‘alternative’ uses for social media. Many of these examples are platforms (such as YouTube) that can be used for more traditional social media marketing uses — but I’ll also introduce you to several unique platforms that allow you to collaborate with business partners and work more efficiently.

Social Media Tools for Collaboration

Social media creates great possibilities for real-time collaboration. You are likely already familiar with Google Docs – which allow you to share documents with your colleagues for instant revision, editing, and general collaboration. You may not be aware of other tools that allow you to collaborate via wikis. You’ve probably heard the term “wiki” before in reference to “wikipedia.”  Imagine a private “wikipedia” of information on your clients, services, ideas, etc… pretty neat, eh?

A wiki can be part of your internal site, but that requires you work with your website developer or IT guy. This may be a solution for you , but you might want to experiment with external wikis first to see if they are a good fit for your collaborative needs.  Online, hosted wiki sites allow you to create and edit multiple wikis on so-called “wiki-farms.” These external wikis, like an internal wiki platform, can be as private as you like.

Why is this helpful for small business?

Wikis allow you to centralize and grow information related to a specific topic. Say you have a new business idea – you can create a wiki and allow your partner to edit it. On the other hand, perhaps you’d like to create a wiki about your competition. You can share information and knowledge within the wiki – and attach links and files as well. Wikis can either be public or private (even if they exist on a wiki-farm) so you can keep some information close-to-your-chest and share other types of information with potential clients, customers, or partners.

Example sites include Wikispaces & Wikia

Social Media Allows You to Manage Your Clients and Your Time

Several social sites have sprung up to allow you to manage your clients. A new one that is garnering a lot of attention is BookFresh. Bookfresh allows you to manage your client appointments online – and to access that information via a smart phone when you’re away from your computer. More than just a calendar, BookFresh allows your clients to actually schedule appoints (and be reminded of them,) online.

Another time management tool is Remember the Milk, a site which allows you to not only create tasks online for yourself – but to share them with other people on your team.

Why is this helpful for small business?

The interactive nature of these tools makes them superior to say, a calendar application on your iphone. In addition, these products are either free (Remember the Milk) or low-cost alternatives to expensive software solutions.

Example Sites: BookFresh, Remember the Milk, Ta-Da List

Social Media Can Help You Train Employees & Clients

Media sharing sites can be great for marketing – but they can also be a great way to share training information or to make a pitch to your client. This can be done either in video form (and then post to a video sharing site)— or you can use powerpoint to create a slideshow (and then upload it online for viewing and embedding.)

Why is this helpful for small business?

Product demonstration or detailed instructions can often best be conveyed via video or a Powerpoint with animation or additional text. While these products can certainly be emailed – posting them online creates ease of access and it creates opportunities for comments, feedback, and even SEO.

Example sites: YouTube is the preeminent video sharing site. Videos from YouTube can also easily be embedded in websites and blogs and shared on other social media platforms. Slideshare is a great platform that allows you to upload Powerpoints and other documents – and as an added bonus, it is integrated well with Facebook via a special application.

Simple social media solutions can help your business become more effective and efficient. For more information on how to utilize social media to help your business grow, contact a Houston social media marketing company today.

Questions about this or other social media marketing topics? Use the comment section below, email me at jenn@directory.com , or go all SMM on me and contact me @SMMjenn on Twitter ; and I’ll do my best to address your question in an upcoming blog. You can also consult Directory One today at 713.465.0051

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Social Media Marketing: Follow the Money

Social Media Marketing: It Starts at Home

When it comes to demographics, not all social networks are created equal. This is important to consider when you’re allocating your social media marketing resources – you want to focus on quality vs. quantity here. Let’s breakdown the facts and figures to give you a better idea of where you need to be.

Facebook vs. MySpace

As Facebook has grown and become the dominant force in social networking over the past two years (in 2007, MySpace held that title,) not only have more and more individuals logged on to the site – but older and older users are getting connected. Perhaps this is the reason that Facebook users are more likely to be affluent than their MySpace counterparts.

According to a recent Nielsen study: if we were to imagine the financial strata as being divided equally into thirds ; then the top third would be much more likely to utilize Facebook over MySpace, while the reverse would be true for the bottom third.

What about Twitter?

Twitter is sort of the odd-man out — still important, but with a much smaller and more diverse audience. Twitter users are more likely to live in urban areas. Also, because of Twitter’s role on the periphery of the social network solar system – many of the people actively using it are early adapters who can also be found on Facebook and LinkedIn.

What does this mean for your company’s social media marketing strategy?

Facebook is the big dog when it comes to a demographic with disposable income. However, you should still consider the product you are marketing. If you are trying to connect your product with youth – then you will still need to have a MySpace presence. Just because a 39 year old affluent stay-at-home mom has a Facebook account – that doesn’t mean her 15 year old daughter isn’t active on MySpace. The key here is to have a focused social media strategy and stick with it. A Houston social media marketing company can help you with that.

Oh, and Twitter? Don’t give up on it altogether just because most of the users are active on Facebook as well. Twitter interactions are different (and in some instances, more powerful,) than those on Facebook. Twitter should be a part of your campaign, but you should utilize it to reach a certain audience in a certain way. To understand how to optimize your Twitter presence – it’s a good idea to understand the culture of Twitter. Once again, a social media marketing agency in Houston can help you understand both the landscape and the best path for your social media success.

Questions about this or other social media marketing topics? Use the comment section below, email me at jenn@directory.com , or go all SMM on me and contact me @SMMjenn on Twitter ; and I’ll do my best to address your question in an upcoming blog. You can also consult Directory One today at 713.465.0051

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Social Media Marketing: Facebook Business Pages

Social Media Marketing: It Starts at Home

Social Media Marketing :Facebook Business Pages

Whether you’ve been on Facebook two weeks or two years – chances are you are most familiar with the personal “profile” element of the social networking site. Your profile is your personal portal to the Facebook world. Status updates, wall comments, photos, applications, messages – all are connected to your personal profile. A personal profile tells a lot, or a little about you – depending on how much you are willing to share with your online community of friends. For many people, their Facebook account and their personal profile is their online “home.”

Great as all this is — should a business have a personal profile? The straightforward answer is no. Almost every business can benefit from a Facebook presence – but most won’t benefit much from having a personal profile. A business should utilize the business version of the personal profile: the fan page. A fan page (despite the misleading name,) is a business profile for your company. Obviously, Facebook wants businesses to utilize this tool rather than the personal profile tool – but why is it beneficial to do so? Below I outline the top three differences between the types of profiles.

Facebook Business Pages Can be Customized

While customizing a Facebook business page is not a simple affair – it can be done. Facebook allows business pages to create customized HTML pages and customized applications. This is not available on personal profiles. Personal profiles will always look cookie-cutter. The only way to stand-out from the crowd on Facebook is via a customized business page. In addition, the page’s administrator can redirect non-fans and fans to separate “tabs” on the page. This means that first-time visitors can be wowed with a sort of “landing page” while regular visitors can be directed to the areas they most wish to utilize.

Facebook Business Pages Allow Advertising

You can’t advertise a personal profile – but you can (and of course, Facebook finds a myriad of ways to encourage you to,) advertise a business page. Facebook advertising is similar to Google AdWords; but it’s more targetable than the latter (a full description of Facebook Advertisting can be found here.)

Why is the ability to advertise your page so important? Research shows that the most effective advertising on the social networking site are ads that direct the user to another page within Facebook. Advertising that attempts to pull the user from the social network out to another site online are less effective. Why? Users become comfortable with the walled-garden of Facebook and are more likely to check out a page within that walled-garden than something external to it. In addition, an advertisement for a Facebook page includes “social” information about friends that may also be a fan of this page. This can add an element of credibility to your product/advertisement that isn’t available elsewhere online (at the moment anyway.)

Facebook Business Pages Allow You to Track Visitors

Page administrators are granted access to analytics about the types of users visiting their pages. In addition to simply being informative, this can help in the targeting of advertising campaigns. Personal profiles have no such access to analytics.

These are not the only differences between Facebook “profiles” and “fan pages” for businesses – but they demonstrate the need for companies wishing to make the most of their social media presence to choose a business page. If you need help setting up a business page; contact a Houston social media marketing company.

Questions about this or other social media marketing topics? Use the comment section below, email me at jenn@directory.com , or go all SMM on me and contact me @SMMjenn on Twitter ; and I’ll do my best to address your question in an upcoming blog. You can also consult Directory One today at 713.465.0051

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Social Media Starts at Home — Analyzing Your Social Media Strategy

Putting the Social Back in Social Media

By “Home” I am referring to your business’s “homepage.” While external social media sites are a crucial part of any social media marketing campaign, savvy business owners know that you can’t neglect the homefront / homepage. Here are three tips for identifying opportunities for interaction that may already exist on your website.

Tip #1 Create a site that invites conversation

You have likely heard that “content is king” and “conversation is queen.”  How about ensuring your content invites conversation. What do I mean?Review your site to ensure it isn’t speaking “at” your customers, but rather “to” them. Yes, there is information you need to impart; but you’ll encourage more interaction by crafting your message as if was part of a dialogue instead of a monologue. In addition to making your site more readable and engaging to users – using a conversational tone in your content also makes your subsequent invitations to interact more natural.

Once you’ve tweaked your content pages – consider adding an internal blog. An internet marketing company in Houston can help you add an internal blog (like this one!) if you don’t have one already. A blog serves many purposes – not the least of which is introducing you to your customers on a personal level. The comment section under your blog can also be a great place to encourage dialogue and interaction.

Tip #2 Encourage Feedback

There are many ways to encourage feedback, and the options you choose will likely have everything to do with what sort of business you’re in. Companies that sell products or services might encourage feedback with reviews and testimonials. A website for a railroad company on the other hand might not have any use for a customer review – but they might want to gain credibility in their endeavors to “go green” by asking visitors to supply “sustainable suggestions” in a virtual suggestion box.

Warning: many companies have the desire to censor customer comments and feedback. Don’t be tempted. You may occasionally find that a customer wasn’t 100% pleased with your product and service. Allowing them to communicate with you via your website allows you to respond and take action, developing credibility in the process. Also, keep in mind that one bad comment amongst dozens of great ones won’t damage your reputation – if anything, this too adds credibility by demonstrating the reviews are honest and real.

Tip #3 Create incentives for participation

Give your visitors a reason to participate in your website. Contests are a great way to do this. Think: a product-naming contest; or a contest for the best photo of your product being used. You might also create a rewards program for customers who become members on your site. The discounts don’t have to be huge – but it will keep the conversation going as they’ve now invited you to send them information about promotional events and discounts.

Prizes and promotional programs are options – but the main point here remains the fostering of a dialogue. In that sense, the incentive can be as minimal as recognizing they’ve made the effort to communicate with you. Did they leave a comment on your internal blog? Respond to it. Did they make a suggestion in your virtual suggestion box? Send an email thanking them for their thoughts. Think of it as part of the act of listening – you are nodding your head slightly, saying “I hear you – I appreciate your input.” You’ll be surprised (and inspired) by how far this small act can take you and your business in this new world of word-of-mouth marketing.

Questions about this or other social media marketing topics? Use the comment section below or eEmail me at jenn@directory.com and I’ll do my best to address your question in an upcoming blog. You can also consult a Houston social media marketing company today at 713.465.0051

Learn More:

Social Media Marketing: Getting Your Message Across “Socially”

Social Media Marketing: Why Just “Being There” Isn’t Enough