Social Marketing

How to Integrate Social Media into Your B2B Marketing Without Looking Like a Self-Serving Pig

Feb 28th

Posted by Gina Danner in Social Marketing

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Variable data printing, VDP, Social mediaThough 80% of people have adopted social media, only 60% of small businesses are on board. This gap isn’t huge in itself, but when you see the stats of the businesses engaging in social media, the majority are using it for promotional reasons rather than priming the pump by building relationships first. Businesses using social media for self-serving reasons shouldn’t be surprised if conversions aren’t happening.

Rushing social media relationships is similar to trying to rush through a vinyasa flow yoga class. Your instructor is going to urge you to slow down otherwise you’re not going to reap the benefit of the practice. The same is true with social media, if you rush to the sale; you’re defeating process and purpose.

And please don’t rush onto social media channels if you haven’t got your traditional marketing such as direct mail, cross marketing, variable dating printing down to a science. It would be marketing ADD to try to master another channel when haven’t achieved mastery of the ones bringing home the bacon to your business.

According to CrowdAnalytix, community analytics experts, social media is an opportunity to listen to the conversation about your business not just broadcasting updates like many small to mid-size business do. According to a study done of a segment of its customers, CompTIA, found that 68% of small businesses are using social media to blast out offers when in reality they should be marketing 20% of the time and engaging in customer conversation the other 80%.

Social media expert Laura Roeder urges businesses not to rush their number of followers and likes. Roeder says her tipping point came after achieving 1,000 real, live, interested Twitter followers that then grew into 16,000 over the course of four years. No one is an overnight sensation if they’re truly building relationships with people.  Remember social media is about being – well, social.

Michael Brenner, author of B2B Marketing Insider, offers these guidelines to keep your etiquette in check and not look like a self-serving pig on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, or You Tube.

  • Tell your customers stories about what you can do for them. Warning:  Don’t try to be too slick because it could backfire on your like it did with McDonald’s when they created a Twitter hashtag for #McDStories.
  • Translate your content into something meaningful and emotional to create conversations that connect with people.
  • The goal of social media is still to support your business by getting and keeping customers.
  • Social media is a platform for change. You have to change your approach to marketing along with it.

Now let’s end with some basic dos and don’ts from J. Mattern of Search and Social Blog. We wouldn’t want you getting a bad rap in 2012 for sticking your mouse in your mouth.

  1. Don’t spam, period.
  2. Don’t keep everything private. If that’s your game stick to email or IM.
  3. Don’t create multiple handles to sling your weight. Multiple identities are fine for multiple businesses, but using many handles to pull weight is a no no.
  4. Think before you speak. Not everything that pops into your head should be shared.
  5. Personalize your messages when you meet someone new. Explain how you found them. It makes it less creepy.
  6. Expand your circles. If the people and customers you’re talking with are only the happy, agreeable ones, you’re working in a box.
  7. Don’t send automated messages to new followers. It’s annoying.
  8. Use your real name. It holds you accountable.
  9. Don’t excessively link to your own site. You’ll be eventually looked upon as a sleazy link spammer.
  10. Give back. It’s a two-way street. Give as much as you get, if not more.

Remember it is never more important in social media to remember – you get what you give.  Create value for your followers and in the world of social media that value is not just dollars off promotions.

 

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From Bartering, to Blabbering, to the Little Bluebird that Revived Conversation

Dec 20th

Posted by Gina Danner in Social Marketing

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Meaningful Customer Conversation is What It’s All About

Conversation 250x201 From Bartering, to Blabbering, to the Little Bluebird that Revived ConversationIn the beginning, there were corner grocery stores where proprietors talked face to face with their customers about their goods. Then individual stores became national chains and managed by far away corporate offices where marketing messages were scripted and passed down to be passed on unaltered.

The result. Conversations dried up. Communication became one-way, controlled, and void of all authenticity. Remote marketing officers fell into the illusion that they were managing and maintaining customer relationships. Far from it.

Then social media shifted everything back to one great big small town. A new generation of communicators stepped in insisting their companies engage customers in real-time conversations on Twitter, Facebook, Four Square, Live Chat, and more.

Thanks to social media, customer-driven relationships are back, according to Gary Vaynerchuk, author of the Thank You Economy. Good marketers talk to their customers about life and how their passions or needs are impacted by their products. Less enlightened marketers continue to try to shove products down their customers’ throats with as little to no conversation.

Social media corporate stars such as V8, NY Jets, Martell Home Builders, Zappos, Southwest Airlines are succeeding despite the economy. Lagging companies such as AT&T, Zagat, Nestle that are not adapting to Web 2.0 fast enough or are screwing up their social media as evidenced by their shrinking marketshare.

To win at social media, Print 2.0 Vaynerchuck suggests:

  • Commit to social media
  • Set the tone by being real and throwing away the scripts
  • Invest in employees
  • Empower your people by opening a “Give a Crap” Department
  • Get back to the basics using today’s technology to maintain one-on-one customer touch points (email, Twitter, white papers, Facebook, electronic coupons)
  • Speak with passion and be truly interested. Customers can sniff out companies who try to fake it
  • Talk to your customers as people vs. trying to pick their pockets
  • Make your customers feel like royalty by responding to their every email

To humanize your company when using social media, use these five tips:

  1. Use Your Name. Putting a name (that’s a real, human name) on your blog posts, tweets or status updates shows your audience that you’re not a robot or an automated stream of sales pitches and company news.
  2. Add a Face. By putting a blogger’s photo or the picture of the communication team on your accounts you give followers an idea about whom they’re working with and who is behind the keyboard.  If you prefer to use the company or product logo, you can still add real photos elsewhere under the meet the team or about us page.
  3. Connect with People Through Your Writing Voice.  Now that they know your name and what you look like, let them get a sense of who you really are by your personality through your writing, posts, or tweets.
  4. Listen. Interact with your audience in the right way by really listening to what they have to say and how they say it. How do they interact with you? How do they interact with each other? Listening, as opposed to talking (or selling), allows you to connect with your customers.
  5. Remember Why You’re There.  Participating in social media is a must, but have a clear objective as to why you’re doing it. Otherwise you’re just adding to the noise.

You’re on social media to listen, monitor, respond, fix problems, and build relationships with your customers. Don’t let the channel confuse you. Social media channels are just tools to get us back in pleasant conversation with our customers even though we may be continents away.

 

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