Welcome to the third and final part of Marketing &
Social Media 101 for Business.
So far we have covered marketing in general, including:
Part 1
Part 1
·
Defining what marketing is
·
Looking at the difference between marketing and
selling
·
Identifying the four ways to grow a business
·
Discussed business growth strategies
·
Listed many of the tools of marketing
·
The importance of having an on line presence in
some form
Part
2
·
Ensuring consistency between your traditional
and social media marketing strategies
·
The importance of setting clear objectives
·
Acknowledging that your customers are already on
social media
·
Having a clear social media marketing plan
·
Being patient with social media – not to expect
immediate results
·
Recognising that social media should not be used
to solely sell – that it should be utilised to principally build community and
trust, and to inform and educate
Tool of Social Media
There
are many and a growing number of social media tools available for you to
utilise in your social media strategy.
The
most popular social media tools that utilised by business include:
Facebook Twitter Blogs Youtube LinkedIn Pinterest Google+
Of
course, there are others – and new ones come and others disappear eg the
popularity of Myspace has diminished substantially over the last 3 years.
Your
social media policy may incorporate any combination of these tools.
The
question is – which tool or tools?
The
simple answer to this is – use the tools where your customers (existing or
target) are. There is no “one size fits all” solution.
So
how do we find out where our customers are? Well one simple way to do this is
to ask them – then encourage them to join you! Other means of finding out where
your customers are can be by utilising tools such as Google Alerts or Social
Mention, just to mention a couple. But I still think that asking your customers
and making them aware of what social media platforms you are using will enable
you to grow your presence in these networks.
Let’s
now take a closer look at some of the tools.
Facebook
Facebook
is a social network that helps people communicate more efficiently with
their friends, family and co-workers. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and
interact with the people they know in a trusted environment.
It’s important to understand how big the Facebook phenomenon is – here are some facts:
§ Facebook
is the most visited/trafficked website in the world (now even ahead of Google!)
§ More
than 1 billion active users – if Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd
largest in the world!
§ 50%
of Facebook’s active users log on in any given day
§ 1/3
– The proportion of women aged 18-34 who check
Facebook when they first wake up – even before going to the bathroom
Facebook when they first wake up – even before going to the bathroom
§ Average
user has 234 friends
§ People
spend over 10.5 billion minutes per day on Facebook
§ 481.1
million local businesses are active on Facebook
What are the different types of Facebook presences?
There are three. These are:
1.
Personal profile – used for private individuals
for personal purposes
2.
Group – used for community groups and common
interests
3.
Page – used for businesses
Take note:
§
It is against Facebook rules to set up a
personal profile or group for business purposes.
§
Facebook will delete your group or profile if
they detect that it is being used for the wrong purpose. They could permanently
ban you from Facebook!
§
Many local business have incorrectly set up
personal profiles for their businesses
How
do you know what a particular Facebook presence is?
Simply
be looking at Facebook you can tell what a particular presence is. That is, if
the presence has:
·
Friends – it is a personal profile
·
Members – it is a group
·
Likes – it is a business page
What Can a Business do on Facebook?
A
Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and
products with Facebook users. Pages are similar to personal profiles and brands
accumulate fans (“likes”) instead of friends.
Within
pages you have the option of posting and collecting content, importing Twitter
and blog feeds, collecting user reviews, running promotions, competitions and
hosting discussions.
You
do not see your fan’s newsfeeds or private comments once someone likes your
page. However, if you have incorrectly set up your Facebook presence as a
personal profile, any comments that your “friends” make on their newsfeed will
appear on yours. This may mean that inappropriate comments may be made that
will appear on your business Facebook presence. You will therefore need to be
vigilant in deleting these comments as they may reflect on your reputation.
However, if your Facebook presence was correctly set up as a Page, you would
not have this issue.
Facebook
Insights provide interesting statistics about interactions with your Facebook
Page – this is not available for personal profiles or groups – and is another
reason why setting up as a Page is so critical.
Another
important strategy is to claim your own vanity URL (web address) within
Facebook. When you set up your Facebook page, your Facebook address will be a
list of random letters and numbers. Claiming your own URL means that your
Facebook URL address would look like, for example, www.facebook.com/citypharmacy,
making it easier to search and find.
There
are many applications available that are designed to enhance your Facebook
presentation and functionality. These can range from shop fronts, chat, surveys
to competitions. These can be free or at a cost, depending on the complexity of
your application. Further, there are specialist Facebook developers who can
build a specific application to suit your needs – at, of course, a cost.
There
is also the ability to advertise through Facebook. Facebook Ads offer banner advertising which
can target age, gender, location, relationship status and interest, or music
and lifestyle interests – which can result in very powerful, targeted
promotions. You can set a specific spend budget with Facebook Ads – therefore
the cost can be easily managed.
MY RECOMMENDATION IS THAT YOU HAVE A
FACEBOOK PAGE AS A MINIMUM!
Facebook Tips
§ Post
Photos and Videos
§ Ask
questions
§ Promote
others
§ Use
check-ins
§ Feature
employees/behind the scenes
§ Use
contests
§ Post
often!
§ Have
fun
§ Have
valuable content – use links
§ Change
cover photo regularly
§ Tell
people what’s happening
§ Feature
events
Check
out our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/greentaylorpartners
to see how we have been utilising this tool.
Twitter is the simplest form of blog - but in simplicity there is often great
power.
Twitter
is a microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages
known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters and
delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers.
Some
basic Twitter facts:
·
There are more than 500 million registered users
§ New
users signing up at the rate of 460,000 per day
§ 190
million unique visitors come to the site every month
§ Over
250 million “tweets” are sent in a day
§
37%
of active Twitter users use their phone to tweet
§
Around
600 million search queries per day
§ Tweets have relatively short life.
Typically 24 hours
It has been established that one good
Tweet is equivalent to 10,000 impressions!
In fact you now have a virtual PR and marketing team that works for free.
In fact you now have a virtual PR and marketing team that works for free.
You can attach links to your tweets
back to your website, blog or Facebook page . I have had great success in
driving traffic to my blog as a result of tweeting about my latest blog post.
Some of the things you can use
Twitter for include:
§ Marketing
- branding, promotions etc.
§ News,
Events
§ Monitoring,
Competitive tracking.
§
Innovation,
Research
§
Networking
§
Search
engine optimization.
§ Put out vacancies, job postings .
§ Relationships
§
Customer
Service
Feel free to check out my Twitter
profile – go to www.twitter.com and
search for theastuteaccountant.
Blogging
A blog (a contraction of the term "web log") is a type of website with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order
Some
interesting facts regarding blogging:
·
There are more than 100 million blogs on the
Internet
§ 70%
of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog
§ 38%
of bloggers post brand or product reviews
§
Over
70% of internet users read blogs
A well written Blog is a great
strategy to show expertise, educate readers and ultimately build trust within
your audience. If you link your blog to your website, your website will improve
in any search on the web for your business or type of business – Google loves
blogs and enhances your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
The two most popular blog platforms
are:
These tools are generally free!
Feel free to check out my blog at http://chrisfoster1959.blogspot.com.au
LinkedIn is a social networking website
geared towards companies and industry professionals looking to make new
business contacts or keep in touch with previous co-workers, affiliates, and
clients.
Some facts for Linkedin:
§
LinkedIn
has over 135 million members worldwide
§
India
§ Of all
social networking websites, LinkedIn has the most financially affluent audience
§ 75% of
users on LinkedIn have a college degree. High index of graduates and post
graduates
§ Over 70%
are 35 years and above
What can
businesses do with Linkedin? I have found that Linkedin is a one of the best
social media tools for making professional connections. If you are a
professional, it is imperative that you be on Linkedin. It is an absolutely
brilliant tool for meeting other professional, joining professional interest
groups eg business owners, retailers etc and in general, a great source of
knowledge and learning.
Linkedin
has also become a great recruiting ground for professional employees – in fact,
some commentators have suggested that Linkedin may replace many of the
professional employment websites as a means of sourcing new employees.
I
strongly recommend that if you are not a Linkedin member – join now. And there
is no cost! Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin!
Youtube
YouTube is a video sharing website on which
users can upload and share videos.
Some facts about YouTube:
§
People
are watching 4 billion videos a day on YouTube
§
Every
minute, 72 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube
§ 50% of users visit YouTube at least once a
week
§ An
average user spends 1 hour 41 minutes a month on YouTube
YouTube
can be a great resource for getting in front of your customers for building
that trust that I mentioned earlier in these articles. Many people are better
at “visual” learning rather than reading or listening so YouTube can be a fill
this important gap.
So what
can YouTube be used for? Really, it is up to your imagination, and can include:
§ Training
and support
§ Marketing
and brand enhancement
§ New
employee orientation
§ Product
overviews, demonstration
§
Customer testimonial, customer success stories
I have a passion for restoration of classic
cars and was looking for a particular type of welder. The supplier had a
comprehensive selection of videos on YouTube and this enabled my in my own time
to watch the videos and be convinced that it would suit my needs – ultimately I
purchased the welder!
At Green Taylor Partners, we have
established GTP TV on YouTube and we have uploaded short videos on many topics
including business advisory, taxation, self managed superannuation and using
special features that MYOB and Quickbooks have. We also use Youtube to promote
upcoming seminars – the seminar presenters talk about the seminar and expected
outcomes – a great “soft” way of promoting an event!
Feel free to check out GTP TV – just go to
Youtube and search for Green Taylor Partners TV.
As stated earlier, these are but a few of
the many social media tools out there – your choice really depends on where
your targeted audience is!
Posting
Tips for Social Media
Listed below are some simple tips on posting
into your social media tool
§
Manually
post into each medium
§
Multiple
posting saves time – use tools such as HootSuite or Tweetdeck that can easily
do this for you
§
These
tools will also allow you to schedule your posts – this means that you can
prepare your posts in advance
§
Find
out when your most effective posting time will be e.g. research has shown that:
§ Post tweet in the afternoon as highest %
retweets occur around 5pm
§ Most Facebook sharing occurs on a Saturday
§ Facebook shares tend to peak around noon or after 7.00pm
§ 1 post every 2 days on Facebook will achieve
the most likes
§ Photos and videos are great for increasing
exposure
Question – where is your target audience and what
time zone are they in?
The
Do’s in Social Media
§ Set clear
objectives – decide what you are trying to achieve as it allows you to
establish success or failure of your efforts
§ Be
honest, transparent and authentic
§ Provide
advice and ideas around subjects you are knowledgeable about – its about
education, building trust and community
§ Respond
to interactions promptly – you owe it to your audience to be responsive and
open. Deal with negative comments appropriately. Or simply put, ENGAGE!
§ Monitor
activity and adjust strategy based on results
§ Post
regularly
§ Refer
people to additional information – be helpful!
§ Do attach
photos and videos to posts as much as possible. This will ensure that your
posts have a better chance of appearing in your audience’s newsfeed
The Don’ts in Social Media
·
No hard selling (educate first)
·
Don’t lie, don’t pretend. Be transparent
·
Don’t get caught up in the race for followers.
Forge a strong community with the existing ones instead and the numbers will
follow.
·
Don’t fight your customers and expect to win
·
Don’t lose sight of your objective
·
Don’t expect immediate results – PERSIST!
·
If you don’t have the resources to implement
social media properly DON’T DO IT AT ALL - or pay someone to do it for you!
I trust you have found this series of
articles useful and that you have gained to some ideas out of all the points
raised. It’s important that you now take steps to implement some of those ideas
– an idea is only that until it is implemented.
As stated at the outset, this is a summary
of a workshop presentation delivered in the last month. I have a video
recording of this presentation available – if you would like access to this,
just email me at chris.foster@greentaylor.com.au
and I’ll send you a link.
Once again, if you have any questions
regarding your social media strategy, please feel free to contact me at the
above email address.
In my next article I’ll provide you with
some information on QR Codes and how you can use these in your business.
Happy posting!
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