The 9 Cs of social media - which type are you?









(Taken from an original Econsultancy report here.)

Social Media Marketing is still relatively new ("65% of marketers have either just started or have been using social media for only a few months" - a 2010 report by Social Media Examiner), but is rapidly becoming mainstream.

So mainstream in fact that businesses are now actively in the foot-race to incorporate social media into their corporate or business website.

But without doing a complete overhaul or spending fortunes on a website re-design, here are 7 ways to integrate Social Media to turn your existing website into a "Social Hub":

1. Make it easy for your visitors to share your information amongst their own networks.  Add Social Media quick-links and Facebook 'Like' buttons to content pages and blog posts.

2. Add live feeds to your website so users can see your Twitter/Facebook/YouTube/etc information on your website in real time.

3. Create original, engaging content that can be shared.  Share your expertise and provide relevant content to your users, then (using 1 above) encourage your visitors to share the content with their networks.

4. Allow your visitors to have their say and provide opportunities to get their feedback. Make it easy for users to comment on blogs, encourage guest blog posts, get users to upload photos or videos and display it on a page on your site.

5. Get reviews and ratings for products and services. Encourage customers to provide these ratings - Google loves them and they become a source of positive validation of your business.

6. Build a blog on your site.  Wordpress is the king, but there are lots of easy (and cost effective) ways of incoporating a blog on your existing site. Build the blog, have a regular content strategy, and put an RSS feed on your blog to allow users to subscribe and get immediate notification when each new blog is posted.

7. Play the game! Gaming is huge, and gaming strategy is a key feature in social sites such as Foursquare or Facebook games such as Farmville. Whether we're interested in playing the game or not, the fact is that the addictive and competitive nature of gaming is a well known part of building engagement and loyalty.

Social Media Marketing continues to explode, with new social networking sites and Smartphone apps arriving daily.

Making it work for your business doesn't need to be daunting, but it does require you to make a start.

Meet Katherine:

- She's smart.
- She's successful.
- She runs her own business.

...and now she's decided to become her company's Social Media Expert!

Social Media continues to be a vast online space, and its explosive growth shows no apparent signs of slowing.  But how big exactly are some of the major Social Media Marketing sites?  Here's a collection of facts and figures:

640,000,000:                Facebook users worldwide
11 million:                      LinkedIn users in Europe
95,000,000 each day:  Tweets posted on Twitter
91 thousand:                Active contributors on Wikipedia
50%:                             Percentage of Facebook users who log in every day
4,000,000,000:             Images on Flickr
7 billion:                        Facebook posts per week

The sheer volume of participants and content is staggering, and is a clear measure of how engrained Social Media is in our culture. Not so long ago, speculation was rife how Social Media represented the demise of life as we knew it, including TV, websites, text messaging and many other marketing and advertising channels. But interestingly, the recent trends are revealing the integration of social media with, rather than the domination of, conventional marketing avenues.

So now, we see cleverly integrated marketing campaigns where a TV advert may direct its viewers to a Facebook Page, which in turn acts as a lead capture form in order to begin an email marketing campaign.

Or we may see a targeted Facebook advertising campaign which asks its visitors to view a series of videos to pick a winner, which then becomes the next TV advertising campaign.

So whilst Facebook, YouTube and Twitter continue their upward growth, it seems that we're just consuming more media, rather than simply preferring social media and abandoning other (more traditional?) forms.

This is good news for marketers: there are more channels than ever to attempt to access our customers.

It's also great news for businesses: the ability to provide compelling, targeted advertising to specific sub-sets of customer demographic allows for ever-more measurable and effective marketing results.

So, Social Media.  Huge.  And growing.

'Social Search': The last 2 weeks have seen significant changes to the Google search algorithm, as described on the official Google blog. In simple terms, this means they've changed the results on a typical Google search page. So if you haven't already, it's worth checking if and how your business rankings have been affected.

The message from Google is loud and clear: search results are now influenced more heavily than ever by social media. If your business doesn't yet have a social media presence, now is really the time to consider whether you should take that plunge.

When we're looking for information on the web, Google's job is to provide 'relevance'. Relevance can mean many things, but one of the key indicators of relevance is fresh, up to date content. It's no great surprise then Google is incoporating material from blogs, twitter, and other social networking sites into the search results, in an effort to provide its users with a richer, more rewarding search experience.  Google calls it a new emphasis on 'relationships'.

These 'Social Search' results are only available when you're logged into your Google account (i.e. when your browser knows who you are, it can provide content from within your own personal network). This is another step in the relentless process of the personalisation of Google search, where no two users get the same results.

Is your business publishing content on the web, via a blog, regular website updates or social media channels? Given the confirmed importance in Google's eyes, now is certainly a good time to think about it...

As a business owner, you have many ways of promoting your products & services.  Social Media Marketing is an online marketing strategy that is grabbing all the headlines, and the traffic.  Social Media is actually a diverse collection of platforms, and selecting the best ones for your business can give you a highly effective vehicle for communicating with your prospects and customers.

How to Select the Right Social Media Channel

Social Media can be bewildering.  There are literally thousands of Social Media sites, so understanding what they all do and how they work can be a huge undertaking.  And that's before you've even started to use them to post content.  Here are a few of the top Social Media channels that are appopriate for virtually any business type.

Blogging

Creating a blog is simple and fairly painless.  A blog ("weblog") is a place for to keep your visitors & customers updated with the latest news, straight from the heart of your company.  Blogs can be created for free on open access sites such as Wordpress or Blogger, although for SEO value there are certain advantages to having the blog installed directly on your company's website.  The most important thing with blogging is to keep on top of it and to post regular information.  Write a list of topics or try brainstorming a communcations plan with your staff.

Facebook

Facebook is King right now.  It's the biggest Social Media site, and still growing.  Facebook was certainly a "college kids" thing to begin with, but has now undoubtedly passed into the business realm, and companies large and small are exploiting it.  Facebook is a great place to talk to (and listen to) your customers.  It works well as a customer service tool too - get in there quick when you see your products or services being talked about.

Twitter

Twitter is the micro blogging site, allowing users to post updates in no more than 140 characters.  Twitter has an immediacy that other sites don't.  Communication can be fast-paced, so you need to use a variety of tools to keep on top of it, making sure you don't miss anything important. 

YouTube

YouTube is a great place to store your company's videos.  These might be promotional videos about your products or services, but better still might be video testimonials from your satisfied customers.  The advantage with YouTube and videos is the engagement factor - videos are more engaging and more compelling than the written word, plus the search engines (namely Google) love video content, so it will help your search engine rankings in the process!

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the best Social Networking site for professionals and businesses.  LinkedIn is essentially your online CV, available for anyone else to see.  It allows you to maintain an active networking relationship with business colleagues, customers, and new prospects.  You become the subject matter expert by answering questions and participating in group discussions, and over time you build your network and become "sticky" (for others to follow).

Regardless of which Social Media Marketing site your company uses, the real magic of Social Media is the ability to track what's happening and to measure its impact.  No other form of promotion or marketing gives you such an in depth view of who saw your message, how far your reach extends, or the level of engagement you have with your audience.

In part 1 we talked about how to set up your Twitter account and the importance of protecting your company's name (or names).  In part 2 we were discussing the importance of creating a good Twitter profile, and specifically the choice of which picture or logo to use to create the right kind of brand image.

In this post we focus on the importance of writing a good bio for your Twitter profile. 

The Twitter bio is limited to 160 characters.  (Like everything the micro blogging platform does, it is restricted for the sake of simplicity and brevity).  Apart from the profile picture, your bio is the other main source of information for readers to see who you are and what your company does.

Twitter followers understand that the platform is intended to be a "human voice", and somewhere to see the personality behind your corporate brand.  With this in mind, use the bio to provide a compelling (and at the very least useful) insight to your business.  i.e. avoid the "hard sell", it will turn more people off than on.

If you can use this space to mention the typical problems that your company solves, or perhaps define who your typical customer would be and how your business helps them, then you are instantly more relevant and more useful than your competitors.  This all helps to increase engagement and brand growth.

Twitter is a powerful Social Media platform for finding and engaging with your customer base.  Use it regularly and use it wisely, and you will soon being to see the benefits it can bring to your business.

In the previous post we talked about creating your Twitter account.  The key message there was to create an account to protect your business name.  Ideally, you should also create accounts in variations of your name (i.e. other common names or abbreviations by which your business is known).  This helps to protect your brand identity and prevent others from encroaching on your "business space".

In this post we're talking about the importance of creating your profile, and in particular which picture to use.  The decision is an important one, because since Twitter is a minimalist interface, that little picture is one of the only visual cues a visitor might see.

The choices might include:

1. Official company logo
2. Photo of the person creating the account / person responsible for posting the tweets
3. Photo of business premises

Think carefully about what image you want to portray.  A Twitter account based around the corporate logo is very good for brand building, but perhaps not so good at portraying a "human face".  On the other hand, a personal photo is good for that personal touch but less good at building awareness of the company brand.

Part 3 to follow...

Twitter continues to grow and there's no sign of it slowing down.

Businesses have long recognised its value as a marketing and communication tool; a highly effective vehicle for finding and engaging with their target audience.

Whilst many businesses remain skeptical, for those who do want to try it, here's a series of guides to help with the basics.

This is part 1: Setting up the Account.

It's important to register your business name, and also not a bad idea to create accounts in similar or related names.  This is a simple way of protecting your online name and brand, and avoiding opportunists (competitors) from encroaching on your space.

An important consideration is whether to create the account under your business name or your real name.  The whole idea of Social Media is to provide a human face to your organisation.  Unlike with blogs or Facebook, all material (tweets) posted on your Twitter account automatically "come" from you, so a real name is not a bad idea.

Also, when your audience (customers) are communicating with you, they feel they're talking to a real person.

Part 2 to follow...

"Social Media Preston" - does anybody search for such a thing?

SEO and Social are the new bedfellows, so let's find out what their relationship is.

First of all, let's just answer the question to prove that we weren't being completely rhetorical.  According to the Google Keyword Tool, this is the number of Google searches performed in just one month (Feb 2010):

"web design Preston"                                  2400
"SEO Preston"                                                1000
"search engine optimisation Preston"       480
"Social Media Preston"                                       0

So, the answer seems to be no.

According to Google's own data at least, nobody in Preston is searching for Social Media.  But why not?  Especially considering that Social Media is everywhere at the moment.  Many companies are doing their own Social Media "thing", using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and the like.

So at first sight it's surprising that the number of people searching for Social Media is so far behind those looking for web designers or SEO companies.

But what's the reason for this?  Does it make a statement on how (un) tech-savvy Preston businesses are?  Or could it be something to do with the way Google records it data?  (Possibly; the numbers are often rounded and/or extrapolated).  But I think the most likely reason is that while we're all familiar with the tools of the job (Facebook, etc), companies aren't proactively looking for people to build and manage their Social Media strategy.  Usually because most businesses aren't yet thinking of Social Media as something that can actually be formed into a strategy.

It could be nervousness (...but isn't Social Media just a gimmick?)

It could be scepticism (...but how can we measure the return on our investment?)

Or it could just be ignorance (...why would the teenagers on Facebook want to read about our accountancy firm?)

Social Media is a powerful tool for Search Engine Optimisation.  It can drive traffic to a website, create brand awareness and involve the business in a 2-way dialogue with its customers.

But, for the businesses of Preston at least, Social Media still has a long way to go to enter the conscious minds of business owners and marketing directors.  Perhaps if we come back in 6 months we can test this theory again!

If you're interested in discussing your Social Media strategy, contact WSI Internet Marketing Preston.