Earlier today I looked over one of my clients’ (a local trade show) analytics and felt fairly good about what I saw. After about 8 months of working with them, there are about 1,300 Twitter followers, 500 Facebook fans and thousands of blog views every month. Because this client receives a good amount of interaction on every medium and has been proven to gain new customers from their Social Media program, I didn’t think there was any cause for alarm… Boy was I wrong!?!
I learned they were not at all impressed with what their social network was doing for them. Despite the new business, positive buzz and relationships built with new and existing customers, they felt they should have “thousands of fans” by now! Needless to say, this way a complete departure from the social media goals we’d set months ago. Somehow, amidst a change in leadership, the goals had been changed without consideration for the business they were in, their competitors, their promotional budgets, etc. As a result, there is an almost rabid desire to grow fans and followers just as quickly as a national manufacturer. The problem is large quantities of followers on Twitter, fans on Facebook, and Connections on LinkedIn do not necessarily equate to higher sales conversion rates.
However many business owners who engage in social media spend time striving ONLY for high connection numbers only to feel cheated when the sales do not follow. Especially when organizations like Syncapse and CMB say that 51% and 67% of Facebook and Twitter users respectively were more likely to purchase from a company since becoming a fan/follower. These statistics are accurate, but readers miss one key component — quality.
A quality network is better than one with just a large quantity. They’re connections who:
Have purchased your company products/services in the past.
Have purchased a competitors products/services in the past.
Have never purchased your products/services, but has acknowledged a need for them.
Having connections that fall into on of these categories enables businesses to send targeted messages to their followers. Those same targeted messages are delivered to people actually interested in your products or services. That’s how the lead to conversion process begins!
By investing time to develop campaigns and messages to attract and convert quality connections, you can harness the power of social media.To re-evaluate your social strategy, find out if your company is:
Creating campaigns that give incentives for recommending the site to others who subsequently become customers.
Gaining insights from individuals who are not customers to understand why and/or what can be done to gain them as a customer.
Of course there will be some who will follow you to compare prices or because they like graphics on your Facebook Fan Page or Twitter skin. Take the time to listen to them so that you can provide better products and services to your existing customers. Quality connections will spread the word about your products and services providing your business with more leads. That is the heart of word-of-mouth marketing!
As I sat on the edge of my bed last night, I turned on the tv for the first time in hours. Why? Habit, I guess.
Imagine my surprise when I saw the news about Osama Bin Laden being killed by U.S. special forces. As with any other news, I took to Twitter to validate whether or not this was true.
Just imagine that. Here I am sitting in front of one of the most recognizable news sources on the planet, and I wanted to know if this was trending on Twitter.
I think that says something about this time in our lives and in our country.
Twitter said it recorded the “highest sustained rate of Tweets ever” on Sunday evening, when an average of 3,440 tweets per second were sent between 10:45PM EST and 12:30 AM EST.
The tweets sent per second reached a peak of 5,106 at 11PM EST on Sunday evening. It’s an impressive figure, but one that falls short of the rate recorded during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami (5,530 tweets per second) and New Year’s Eve (6,939 tweets per second).
The Internet traffic spike prompted by Obama’s announcement increased global web traffic by 24 percent, though bin Laden’s death not make Akamai’s list of the top news events, as measured by page views per minute. Sporting events, including the World Cup qualifying match played during a record-setting Wimbledon match, as well as the “Royal Wedding” ranked higher in terms of total page views per minute.
What does it say to you when people flock to Twitter to validate news? To me it says my advertisers should be there too.
Facebook is constantly creating new apps and features to help business owners. Many business owners are not using these tools to their full potential even though it would help them to increase their bottom line. The latest feature is called “Questions” the feature now shows up as an option in your status update. It allows you to ask questions/polls and get answers in real time. This can be utilized in so many different ways for various types of business. For Example, a restaurant can use it to find out what the special of the month should be; a car dealership could use it to find out where people go to get their cars serviced and why. This tool allows you to not only create real-time interaction with consumers, but enables you to pin-point what area of your business you should be focused on based on what the people want!
Grossman:Oxford Communications decided to test out the functionality and float this question out to our fans:
Within 15 hours, we had engaged 13% of our fanbase and had not only gained votes on answers we had given to the question; we also had fans suggesting (and voting for) new answers, including local couponing sites, LiveTVChat and more. For us, it was an opportunity to enjoy a high level of engagement with our followers, emerge as a thought leader and learn a little all at the same time. VIA{Mashable}
As of right now this is a free feature for all to users whether it is for personal use or for business. So don’t want to see what everyone else is doing. Take advantage of this new engaging tool and come back to let us know what your results were. If you looked on your page and still don’t see the icon just click here to grab it and try it out!
Last year, when Facebook purchased its defunct competitor Friendster, some questioned the wisdom of such a seemingly frivolous purchase. After all Facebook has 500 million active users around the world and Friendster, couldn’t buy 500 likes if they tried. However, the ever clever and forward thinking Mark Zuckerberg has chosen now to show his hand to Google and the world.
A patent granted last month to Facebook describes an approach to search that combines any type of search engine results with the popularity of each result among members of a user’s social network. Although some social media gurus thought the patent was on photo tags, it isn’t. The implications are much broader and could affect searches for special interest topics like travel, publishing, online selling and more!
Search results, including sponsored links and algorithmic search results, are generated in response to a query, and are marked based on frequency of clicks on the search results by members of social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation from the member who submitted the query. The markers are visual tags and comprise either a text string or an image.
In other words, Facebook knows that recommendations are key tools in marketing. This is the automated version of word of mouth that is supposed to sit atop search engines.
Much like LinkedIn shows potential connections, Facebook would combine search results for a user with how others connected to the user in a social network responded to the same search results. If most people clicked on a handful of results, the user could see those links with some visual indication of their relative popularity. The system would work either fielding requests from third parties or for with the social network creating or obtaining the search results and delivering them to users.
Powerful, I think so! What do you think? Could this be the game changer Microsoft and Google have been afraid of?
I am in no way saying that only Facebook can help. There are many different social programs out there. Facebook is just one of the many that your business should be involved in. Facebook is one of the #1 social sites in the world. It is undoubtedly #1 in the USA. Check out these reasons why I believe you can not afford to not have a presence on Facebook.
Popularity:
With 100 million US users Facebook leads the pack. That’s 100 million different people that you can reach. Did you know that 50% of your market is on Facebook? You need to be engaging with and building relationships with not only your previous customers but with a piece of that 100 million people pie!
Activity:
It’s one thing to have a lot of users, but it’s another to have active users. Facebook boasts some of the highest usage statistics of the net. In fact, any given day 50% of Facebook users are on. Most users are on at least once per day. – Darren Olander
Time:
Not only are Facebook users logging in each day, but they are spending lots of time there. As a whole, Facebook users spend over 500 billion minutes per month – or 8.33 billion “free” hours. This means that your audience will have all of this time to be exposed to your advertising. - Darren Olander
Influential Friends:
Let’s think about this…. I have 896 friends. I check into Pour House and post it on Facebook letting my 896 friends know where I am and that I am watching a baseball game and got a sweet deal on a beer. 896 friends just saw that, know where I am, know that the Pour House has great beer specials. I become a fan of Classic Chevrolet in Grapevine. It shows up on my wall to 896 people that I became a fan. They share it with their friends, they join the page. The number of impressions is outstanding.
Integration with the web:
During the last year, Facebook has become even more integral to the way people use the Internet as a whole. Facebook Connect has allowed the Facebook experience to become integrated with nearly 80,000 sites. This means Facebook is a central hub for online content. - Darren Olander
Sharing Multimedia:
I have this thing about taking pictures of cars in compromising positions. For instance car wrecks, or bad parking. Facebook allows me to upload that multimedia message in a split second from my phone and share it with my friends. Now, maybe my friends don’t car about the crazy cars that I see but think of all the other things that I could share if I wanted to.
Instant Access to Your Market:
When someone visits your website, you’re not sure who they are – but Facebook gives you an edge. With just a few minutes of searching through Facebook profiles, you can get a good sense of who your followers are and what they are interested in. This can help you plan your future marketing. - Darren Olander
Targeted Advertising:
Beyond starting a group and encouraging fans, you can also use Facebook’s advertising platform to display ads to interested users. Unlike other paid advertising systems, Facebook allows you to target your advertising to people with specific hobbies and interests. This can make your advertising a lot more effective and drive a lot more traffic to your website. - Darren Olander
This has worked great for our clients when it comes to contest time. Just think I am able to target people in Pittsburgh PA that are 18 and up, are not currently fans of Clem’s RV and Trailer Sales, that are male or female, the list is endless of things I can enter. Facebook ads are the quickest and easiest way to get your name out there.
So, as you can see there is no reason why you shouldn’t give it a try. Just a piece of advice though…. Post at least 1 thing to your Facebook everyday so that you remain relevant. Don’t over post though…. You will get hidden in your fans feeds because you have officially annoyed them. Try to stay as non retail as you can. No one cares that you just got a new car on your used lot and it’s dirt cheap. You need to provide your Facebook fans with interesting, engaging, fun information. That’s what they want and that’s what will keep them around.
This, in a nutshell, is the reason why social media is so important in this tough economic climate. You want to make sure you are getting the best deal, so you buy from those you trust. By now you are well aware of the existence of social media and marketing. That being said, if you’ve been avoiding adding social to your marketing plan, you are basically a spectator in the ever changing marketing game. Without a well thought out and consistently maintained program, you are essentially fishing in the same old cove…while the fish are moving into different waters.
So, what does social REALLY do? It gives the ability for you to reach your customers on a personal level and share information, education and entertainment with them. It’s not about online selling…it’s about building relationships. The selling comes later.
Here, check out this video if you are uncertain about the power of social media:
Further, a well maintained social program gives your customers a voice and the ability to directly contact you, share a story, to give praise or even lodge a complaint. All of which you have instant access to and either thank them or do some damage control. Make no mistake, if you get a less than thrilling Facebook post by a fan, you know that you have a problem that needs to be addressed and the rest of your fans can witness your customer service first hand. This drives home the feeling of, “I’ve got someone in the business I know and can trust”. This is the bottom line. The sales and connections you make that are a direct result of social media and marketing prove the belief that “people buy from people, not companies”. Oh sure there is such thing as dealer/distributor loyalty, but I’m willing to bet in almost all of those cases they aren’t buying from the establishment as much as they are buying from a trusted salesman.
In the past, building consumer trust was earned over a longer period of time, through multiple customer meetings/purchases, over the phone, via email, you name it. With a good social media program, you are looking at thousands of daily impressions, the ability to communicate in real time and even advertise for very limited money to a mind boggling number of impressions.
Why anyone who is truly concerned about growing their business and continues to avoid social media is beyond me…but then again, I may as well assume that they are still communicating with smoke signals and carrier pigeons.
“Social Network”, a movie about the founding of Facebook, has won the Golden Globe for best drama. Not only did it win for Best Drama, but it also won for David Fincher’s direction, Aaron Sorkin’s script and the score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. After receiving top honors from critics groups coast to coast, this resounding victory positions the film as the front-runner at the Academy Awards.
It makes an untellable story clear and fascinating. It is said to be impossible to make a movie about a writer, because how can you show him only writing? It must also be impossible to make a movie about a computer programmer, because what is programming but writing in a language few people in the audience know? Yet Fincher and his writer, Aaron Sorkin, are able to explain the Facebook phenomenon in terms we can immediately understand, which is the reason 500 million of us have signed up! Watch the trailer below:
As you can see, you don’t get to 500 million fans without making a few enemies. Mark Zuckerberg’s incredible story of how he became the world’s youngest billionaire is quite compelling. As Roger Ebert descriptively states:
To conceive of Facebook, Zuckerberg needed to know almost nothing about relationships or human nature – and apparently he didn’t. What he needed was the ability to intuit a way to involve the human race in the “Kevin Bacon” game. Remember that Kevin Bacon himself need not know more than a fraction of the people linking through him. Same on Facebook. I probably know 40 of my Facebook friends well, 100 glancingly, 200 by reputation. All the others are friends of friends. I can’t remember the last time I received a Friend Request from anyone I didn’t share at least one “Mutual Friend” with.
Social media uses web-based technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogues. It is a group of Internet-based applications that build on ideological and technological foundations, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content – (per Wikipedia).
This modern revolution in communication is a “Fluid” interaction between private friends, as well as the largest corporations to the most common of retail clients. If you personally or your company are not part of this revolution, then you are getting left behind at a never before seen pace. Corporations are now putting a more “personal” and friendly face to their marketing strategies: Blog writing, Twitter followers, Facebook updates and events and traditional web-site marketing.
Keeping up with all of this fast paced change and technology can be impossibly taxing on a small to medium sized business. Here at Social Motive and Wheeler Advertising, we integrate ALL of these practices for our clients by incorporating “traditional” marketing practices with the necessity of modern “social” marketing strategies.
In closing, I would like to recommend “Social Network”, especially if you are not a part of everyday Social Media concepts. Not only is it entertaining and well written, but it also sheds some light on today’s most popular Social Media outlet – Facebook.
- Lance Thorley
Social Media Director
SocialMotive and Wheeler Advertising
Social.Motive is a collaboration of 3 national advertising agencies. Our sole purpose is to provide the very best social media solutions to companies needing assistance in the vast Social Media world.
Here you can read blogs from our Social Media Directors David O'Hearn, Kate Carroll, Michelle Gamradt, and Shalanna Clark.
If you have any questions or suggestions on how we can improve this site feel free to email us at TheSocialMotive@Gmail.com
Earlier today I looked over one of my clients’ (a local trade show) analytics and felt fairly good about what I saw. After about 8 months of working with them, there are about 1,300 Twitter followers, 500 Facebook fans and thousands of blog views every month. Because this client receives a good amount of interaction on every medium and has been proven to gain new customers from their Social Media program, I didn’t think there was any cause for alarm… Boy was I wrong!?!
