social media and you

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Social Media and You:

Building an Effective Social Media Presence.

Gordon Diver

Director, New Business Development

TDG Marketing Inc.

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Why Do I need Social Media

Organizations are increasingly incorporating social

media into their marketing because it has proven to

attract buyer’s attention and customer loyalty. Social

media makes it possible to communicate with a very

large group of people all at once and give your

champions a chance to spread the word about your

company, products and services. In addition, an effective social media

campaign provides the opportunity for immediacy and “viral” sharing of

information to others who may not be aware of you yet.

Even with the immense possibilities of connecting with literally millions,

social media provides a high level of initimacy, while enabling you to

engage one to one with your prospects, clients and others. Compared to

more conventional marketing tools, such as advertising and direct

marketing, social media offers a number of distinct advantages,such as:

It is free or relatively inexpensive,

It is interactive, providing the opportunity to connect 1 to 1 or 1 to many,

It allows for immediate and direct feedback from your constiuents , and

It is flexible and can be easily adapted to what is working.

One key element that makes social media so effective is that you are using

your personal network (yours and the companys) to carry your message to

a larger audience. As a trusted resource for your network and by being

strategic with your content, your network will find your content worth

reading and more importantly share with others to expand your network

and influence. The challenge for most firms is understanding how to

effectively engage clients and prospects through social media and how to

capitilze on the trust that you’ve already established.

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Canadian Key Statistics1:

More and more consumers are moving online to do research about the

companies they want to do business with. Here are some of the latest

available statistics.

53% of Canadians see the Internet as an important part of their life

51% of Canadians have visited an online social network or community

16% of Canadians spend more time on social media sites than websites

35% of Canadians visit a social networking site at least once per week

19% of Canadians visit a social networking site on a daily basis

90% of Canadian socializers are on Facebook, 10% on Twitter, 9% on Linkedin

More Canadians than any other nationality frequent YouTube, 4.4hrs a month.

1 Source: The Ipsos Canadian inter@ctive Reid Report 2011 Fact Guide

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United States Key Statistics2:

US Internet users spend 3x more mins on blogs and social media networks than on email.

93% of US adult Internet users are on Facebook

1 out of every 9 minutes online is spent on Facebook

49% of people use Facebook to share content

More than ½ of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks.

79% of US Twitter users are more likely to recommend brands they follow.

67% of US Twitter users are more likely to buy brands they follow.

The “Social” of Social Media:

A trusted network is one element that makes social media so valuable.

There is a communial aspect of social media, we “connect” on Linkedin, we

“friend” or become a “fan” on Facebook and we “follow” on Twitter. We

become a part of each others communities. As we interact with each other

we become connected in a meaningful way, we build trust. Research has

proven that we make our buying decisions based on our social

connections. We’re more likely to “call a friend” for a recommendation than

ask a salesperson. Building an effective social media program to elevate

you to a trusted resource is what we will discuss in the following pages.

2 Source: The Nielsen Company, 2010, Edison Research, 2010, HubSpot, The Science of Facebook/Twitter, 2011,

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The 4 C’s of Socail Media:

We’ve all heard of the 4 P’s of marketing (product, price, placement and

promotion), however, in today’s world dominated by social media, to be

successful, it is essential to embrace the 4 C’s3 of social media.

Customer:

The key element in your social media plan. You want to use social media

to locate new customers and at the same time, engage with your existing

customers. Develop a following of people who care about you and your

business. You need to find them, feed them with relevant content to foster

interactions and nuture that relationship along.

Content:

By providing relevant and timely information to your community that meets

their needs, you will build the trusted relationship that you are looking for.

Remarkable content comes in all forms, white papers (ebooks), videos,

tweets, blog postings, facebook messages, answering questions on

Linkedin groups, particpating in industry forums, etc.

Context:

Becoming relevant to your customers and prospects within their

requirements. Ensuring that you are meaningful to them.

Channel:

Not everyone belongs on one or the other social media network. It is very

important to be where your community is. Your focus should be on your

customer and their needs.

The result of these efforts, more revenue, greater retention and lower

costs.

3 Michael Brenner, “Social Media Today” September 15, 2010 http://bit.ly/cwbziO

http://bit.ly/cwbziO

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Building your Successful Social Media Campaign

1. Social Media should not be done in isolation

Marketing professionals have embraced social media (relationship

marketing) because of the change in consumer persona’s, their buying

trends and because it is fairly inexpensive to use. In the early days of

social media, it has proven to be highly effective for one to one and one to

many communication and engagement, driving leads and revenues.

However, it is not a be all and end all.

Our experience has been that some companies look at social media as the

centrepeice of their marketing program, mostly because it is in vogue to do

so. However, these companies are missing the point; social media is

another channel, or as we like to say the new word of mouth. You still need

to know how to use the channel, how to communicate with your target

audiences, to make the most of it and deliver compelling messages that

your audience will want to share.

Integrating your social media program with other marketing and customer

service tactics will provide the widest reach. In addition, you should have a

well developed strategy of who your target market is. Connecting your

social media activities to your CRM will provide you with a detailed history

of that prospect or client, including personal and professional milestones.

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2. The MVA – Most Valuable Asset

Today, the vast majority of outbound social communication is between the

brand and the consumer (both Business to Business and Business to

Consumer). However, while 17% of consumers trust a brand, 70% trust

the recommendations given by friends or trusted connections. That makes

it more critical for the individual to connect in order to carry the brand

message.

We are begining to see company’s reporting on line sales through their

social media pages, specifically Facebook. As an example, if you become

a fan of Best Buy (5,700,000+ followers), you can purchase music, movies

and games and never leave Facebook.

Screenshot of Best Buy Facebook Fan page.

The fact that Best Buy is promoted through Facebook makes it more

accessible and trusted by their Facebook fans. It offers convenience and

flexibility and has generated a lot of positive interactions in addition to more

revenues.

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3. Empowering the Social Consumer to Work for You

The opportunity exists within a

successful social media program

to build brand champions. This

is the real payoff in utilizing

social media as a part of your

overall marketing, customer

service and corporate

communication platforms.

As mentioned previously, today

consumers are using the web

and social media to research goods and services, before they make a

buying decision or even interact with a salesperson. There are so many

avenues that can be explored beyond just doing a search on Google, Bing

and Yahoo. To do product reviews, consumers may turn to Yelp,

Amazon.com, news channels and blogs to get a mix of reactions and

feedback. This is in addition to asking their personal network of contacts

for advice about products and services.

Engaging with your network to provide useful information is a key benefit of

social networking. It’s not enough to just connect with people in your target

audience, you need to engage with them in a way that demonstrates your

expertise, provides information (educate) that they can use and rely on

and, gives your network something to share with their network of contacts.

Successfully engaging with the “social” consumer is the best way to enlist

brand champions who will share your materials with their extended

networks. Your social media program will be successful when you get your

network to promote and sell you to their network (referrals).

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4. Content : Use the Personal Approach

We’ve all heard, “Content is King”, and it’s true. To have a faithful following

you need to have compelling content. But what is “compelling content”? A

good way of looking at what makes content compelling is that it is;

educational, entertaining and worth sharing.

The greatest concern we hear from clients when discussing content, is

finding the time to create compelling material. In a recent blog post for the

Content Marketing Institute, Heidi Cohen of Riverside Communications

provided these five (5) tips4:

a. Organize your content marketing function

b. Implement content creation across your organization

c. Reach beyond your organization for content marketing support

d. Use a variety of media to provide content (Print, video, audio,

images)

e. Provide content support (Copy editing, graphic design and

technical assistance).

Content creation and sharing is about personal engagement and

interaction, not just distributing a message from the sponsor. Avoid just

broadcasting messages across your social media channels, by doing so,

you ignore the opportunity for interaction. You want your audience to

particpate with you, to share their feedback, to pass along suggestions for

new offerings, service improvements and what they like best about what

you do. The consumer wants to know that they are being heard and that

their opinions matter.

4 Heidi Cohen, Content Marketing Institute Nov.2, 2011 http://bit.ly/uBCpTw

http://bit.ly/uBCpTw

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5. Analytics: Measuring Engagement

Social Media has rewritten

traditional marketing rules, and

because of this, it requires a new

way of measuring successes.

The natural tendency is to measure

social media programs the same

way we measure email marketing

programs; by the number of click

throughs and how many updates we

get. Know that measuring “clicks”

and “likes” is not the same as measuring engagement. If your only

measuring how many people are exposed to your message, you’re

overlooking the engagment piece of social media. Social media

measurements are scalable; comments are more valuable than “likes” and

shares are more valuable than comments. You can see this in Facebook

by the ratio of “likes” vs “talking about” measured on a weekly basis.

The number of followers you have on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and

Google+ is an important measurement, especially if they are the “right” fit

for your organization. If you have the right followers and they are willing to

share your message, 10 followers (influencers) on Linkedin may be more

valuable than hundreds of Facebook fans that are not engaging with you.

To understand the value of your connections, you need to track who is

saying and doing what with your content. The best lesson in social media

is that active listening leads to effective engagement. Listen to what your

community is saying, interact with them and respond appropriately and

then form your next set of actions to correspond with the feedback. Do this

and you will be successful with your social media program.

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About TDG Marketing Inc.

TDG Marketing Inc., is a full service advertising; marketing; digital

marketing and corporate communications firm, located in Brantford Ontario

Canada.

TDG works with B2B and B2C clients throughout North America in varied

industries and are dedicated to building and supporting your brand.

TDG offers a wide array of services such as strategic development, web

development and design, graphic design, social media and integrated

marketing campaigns, copy writing, corporate communications, video,

photography, planning and research and more.

TDG Marketing Inc. Where Design and Strategy Collide.

You can reach us at:

519-753-2240 or 1-866-774-2240

www.tdgmarketing.com

[email protected]

http://www.tdgmarketing.com/

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