It’s interesting how many people think they can write, produce, tape and distribute a TV commercial these days. You wouldn’t dream of it right? Why? Because it takes expertise and time to do it well. Honestly, Social Media Marketing is like that too, it simply appears easy form the outside looking in.

In reality many agencies struggle to do it well. So rest assured that even the pros are learning – I know I do every day.

At Seybold Scientific we have helped companies from large and small effectively deploy social media campaigns. We offer managed social media services for those who haven’t the time or expertise in house, or simply don’t want to domain knowledge in house and would rather leave it to an outside partner.

The bottom line is we’d like to help you succeed in social media. For as low as $99 / month with no contracts we can get you going and do the button pushing for you.

Thanks for lending an ear. If you’d like direction and leadership please give me a call.

George Seybold

(208) 639-0781

Networking with other platforms

Building a large following requires a network of other platforms, working in conjunction to drive visitors to your fan page. One brand that does that well is Victoria’s Secret with their PINK line. On their PINK landing page they have a link to their Facebook fan page and their MySpace profile. Victoria’s Secret leverages the traffic their home page gets and pushes them to their Facebook fan page.

Many companies lack this level of dedication, expecting their consumers on Facebook to find them automatically. However, that’s not usually the case.

When is the last time you went looking for a brand’s Facebook fan page? More often than not, a consumer will stumble upon the page, either through a friend or from a hub, similar to Victoria’s Secret’s PINK page.

Understandably, the fact that the demographic targeted by Victoria’s Secret PINK, aligns exactly with the demographic that is most active on Facebook, has helped grow the group as well.

Key Takeaway: Connecting multiple social platforms and a hub from the brand website, can help funnel consumers throughout the network.

Read more on Mashable >

Or, if you need personal help call us at (208) 639-0781.

For sake of context here I am going to provide some definition around Twitter. Many think Twitter is a one-to-many chat session; it simply isn’t. Twitter is a life stream, a right-now stream of social consciousness. So what do you do with that? Consider this:

• A promotion that is time sensitive
• Reporting successes
• Addressing customer inquiries, complaints and accolades
• Encouraging brand engagement
• and many more I’ll leave off for brevity sake.

Using Twitter as the entry point for commerce will largely be a let down for small business. The SMB segment continually works to measure the “return on investment” in marketing as a line item in their budget. The reality is that most are not sophisticated enough in their business plan to determine and measure the value of the “return on engagement”.

I’m intentionally vague here, so bear with me:

A company recently felt accosted by a prolific Twitterer. The person stated her feeling about the product and service and the company swiftly and openly proclaimed that it was false. There was an exchange, hurt feelings, etc. and the company was placed at the mercy of the Twitterverse as the group retaliated. In short, the engagement was bad. You wouldn’t do this in your business, why would you do it in person?

We’ll play opposite world here:

The company is accused on Twitter and they immediately follow up with concern and caring. They seek the details, accept that there may be fault and arrange a meet offline. The Twitter feels heard and the situation is diffused. In short, the return on engagement is huge because the customer is heard and the business is validated as caring about it’s customers.

How do you use Twitter for success? Use it like you would any other communication tool, and remember that humans are on the other side of the screen and generally they are good people simply wanting to be heard.

The new feature integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Windows Live, looking to be a part of Microsoft’s Social Connector initiative, released with the latest Office 2010. Only those Facebook contacts with Outlook email addresses are synced, to avoid any privacy concerns such as those Google faced with its Buzz integration. Your Facebook contacts’ profile pictures are also synced. From Microsoft,

Read More >

Getting Started

First, work out which social media sites you want to engage with. There are a lot of them, even if you only count the bigger names, and you almost certainly don’t have the time or resources to be active on all of them. You need to cherry-pick a handful (or even just one), and really focus your energy on that select group.

The most important question to ask yourself is whether a given site already has an active community around your business area or product. It’s far easier to engage with an existing community than trying to start from scratch.

Read more >

One of the most sought after answers in Social Media is whether or not engagement in social networks such as Twitter or Facebook directly correlates to customer acquisition, retention, and advocacy. Before we can earn customers however, we have to recognize that at any given time, they are also prospects. And, prospects require information and confidence in order to make decisions, in your favor of course. The answer to our question lies in social engagement.

Read more

Facebook offers several tools for business promotion, and there are also a number of apps available that give Facebook marketers even more options. Facebook can create buzz and help you stay in touch with customers. If you’re interested in getting started, here’s a basic tutorial:

Profile Page
This is where you create your business profile. Enter information that will help people find you, based on what you want to promote. This is a good place to tag your page so that both consumers and the search engines can find you, so make sure you choose the correct category. Profile pages can generate a lot of page views, so make yours interesting!

Facebook Pages
Your Facebook Page is where you’ll post everything you want people to see- photos, news, videos, messages and any other information. Establish your brand presence on your page, and customize it with Flash, apps and relevant content. Anything you do here is broadcast to your fans, so they can get updates in real time.

Facebook Groups
Once you create your profile, you can build groups centered around people who share your interests. This creates awareness of your business and brand through conversations and interactions. Users can’t become fans with this feature, but you can communicate in a more personal way with members by sending messages to their inboxes.

Facebook Events
Facebook Events is a free application that you can use to promote events, such as parties, contests, upcoming sales and product launches. Each event gets its own page where fans can request invitations and sign up for notifications. Facebook marketers use Events to build a community of interested people who want to become involved.

Notes and Photos
These are applications that allow you to share blog posts and pictures. They offer a way to create branded content that helps your Facebook pages rank. Just be sure to stay away from salesy verbiage, and don’t spam people with a lot of company information or logos. You’ll maintain your credibility if you just stick with text and photos that are more educational in nature.

Another nice feature for marketers is the ability to tag photos and notes. If you want to bring them to the attention of certain people, you can tag them to be sent to those people.

Messages
Facebook Messages help you target your marketing efforts. You can look at it as an alternative to email. While it doesn’t have all of the functions and features of email, it does prevent spam by monitoring the volume of message sent to users.

Marketplace
The Facebook Marketplace is like a classified, or ad section. If you’re looking for goods or services or want to offer yours to fans and members, you can post your ads here. This has the potential to generate leads and sales by targeting people who are likely to be interested. All Marketplaces are tied to actual Facebook accounts, so you can see the profiles of all respondents.

News Feed
The Facebook News Feed gives your posts wide exposure by syndicating it, like an RSS feed. When a user joins your group, responds to an invitation, or engages you in any way, Facebook automatically adds that transaction to each user’s “mini feed” in the form of a “recent news” stream. This stream unifies all actions so that everyone can see what’s been going on with your business.

As you can see, there are many ways to market your business using Facebook. There are also a lot of useful apps available to anyone who wants to take advantage of Facebook to promote a product or service.

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Seybold Scientific provides managed social media marketing and consulting services. To learn more contact us at (208) 639-0781.

This process is general enough to guide development of specific initiatives. It does not recommend blogging or video, per say. Rather the process allows content creation to move towards the market’s needs, and within the company’s resources. There are 14 steps in all:

1) Clearly articulate who your stakeholders are before you begin.

2) Clearly articulate the key issues these stakeholders care about as it relates to your offering. Use a bulleted list with no more than three or four words per item.

3) Begin by researching which, if any, top bloggers are discussing these issues. Use your bulleted list to search. The following are good places to start:

* Technorati
* Del.icio.us
* Google Blogsearch
* Ask.com Blogsearch

4) Inevitably, any substantial subject matter area has a back channel where top bloggers and influencers chat. For example, PR and marketing bloggers and tend to connect on Facebook, Twitter, and to some extent, LinkedIn. This back channel can yield powerful connections to highly influential minds who may not have blogs with top statistical ranking.

Marketers looking to find their subject area’s back channel should start with a basic search. Once your initial search yields important blogs, please visit them and note which social networks the bloggers use to connect. Join their communities. And learn what your stakeholders really care about.

5) Don’t just observe, participate. Comment on blogs and social networks in a non-promotional way. Become part of the community.

6) Note several things in your research:

1. Top industry issues
2. Top bloggers/thought leaders that write about your issues (you will need these for marketing purposes after your content creation process is done)
3. Preferred content forms (video, white papers, blogs, podcasts)
4. Ideal places to connect with the larger industry (social networks, etc.)
5. Other companies playing in the space: Who’s successful, who isn’t? Why?
6. Behavioral norms.

Write this information down in a formal analysis.

7) Using the analysis of your social media marketplace, identify the outcomes the organization would like to achieve. These outcomes will determine the measurement benchmarks once the company decides on its preferred communication tools. Possibilities include:

* Influence
* Awareness/changed perception on a particular issue
* Third party credibility through Word of mouth
* Brand awareness
* Return on investment (sales)

8 ) Identify the company’s value for the marketplace; specifically, the organization’s subject matter expertise as it relates to the top industry issues currently being discussed amongst bloggers and thought leaders.

* Can the company provide enough information to add to the conversation?
* If so, is it enough to consistently be a part of the conversation, or is it limited in nature? Will it only be valuable for a short time?
* Can the organization afford to give away this information or does the information comprise trade secrets?

9) Based on the company/organization’s value offering and the marketplace’s issues and needs, draft an editorial mission to serve the community/stakeholders. For example, here is the Now Is Gone blog editorial mission:

Continue serving as a primer for those business executives new to social media or considering engaging with these new communications tools. The conversation should be educational, pragmatic and weigh the pros and cons of social media to provide an authentic, genuine viewpoint of social media marketing. We believe in social media’s potential to better communications, but do not think it will replace traditional tactics. Instead we believe social media will be integrated into the larger marketing mix and may influence change in other disciplines.

10) Now examine the company’s resources:

* Time
* Thought leaders
* Technical capability and savoir faire: Blog, audio, video, social networking
* Financial resources for some of the above, plus graphic design, SEO, web hosting, application development

11) Select the outreach mechanism(s) that best fits the industry’s preferred content needs (#6), can achieve outcomes (#7) the ability to convey the company’s ability to deliver value through its editorial mission (#8 and 9), and that the company can afford to invest in (#10).

There are many, many mechanisms. Each has its assets and detriments. And blogging is not a cure all silver bullet solution. Consider these more popular initiatives:

* Launch a blog
* Execute a blogger relations program
* Podcast
* Create video(s)
* Develop social network community
* Create social network application
* Build your own social network
* Build a widget

12) Determine who will create the content. Group efforts can help distribute load as well as protect the company from an individual departure. Assign a schedule and make the person responsible. Participation in larger networks should be part of your content development plan and resource allocations.

13) Select general content categories to provide guidance on a weekly basis (if the effort is ongoing). Remain flexible to allow for larger industry and community events.

14) Determine measurement based on outcomes, social media communication vehicle(s), and dedicated effort the company intends to commit to the effort. Select tools to attain measurement. Tools and measurement can vary greatly. Research what is right for you and your effort. Some are free, some are not.

Lastly, if you stil have questions or need help executing the plan, please contact us.

(1) Age Restrictions for Pages: You can restrict your Page to users over age 13, 17, 18, 19, or 21, or the legal drinking age where they live. On your Page’s edit page, scroll down to “Settings” at the bottom.

(2) Targeted Messaging: When you send a message to fans, you can target it by geography, gender, and age. For example, a musician can promote a concert to fans in the area. When sending an update, check the “Target this update” box.

(3) New FBML Tags: If you use FBML (http://new.new.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4949752878), you can restrict content by country and age. For example, if you have licensed content for U.S. and Canada users only, you can to restrict it to those countries, and show alternative content to other users. More details are on the Facebook Developers Blog: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=150.