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4 Things To Consider Before Starting Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Janna — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:42:09 +0000

Before you jump in and add your business to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and all those other cool social media tools for marketing, four important things should be considered so you don’t end up like a dork….

What’s your pitch?
Instead of using the old elevator pitch – one minute or less, consider your social media pitch: What is your company about in 120 characters or less? Figuring your pitch out beforehand will help you be consistent in your social media message and you’ll know exactly what to say when it’s time to introduce your business.
What are your goals?
Instead of implementing an overall social media marketing strategy first and then adding your goals, it is much more effective to develop your goals first. Then your goals and ideal outcomes can inform your strategy, not the other way around.
How are you going to be measuring social media marketing?
Many people say marketing on social media is a more effective way of marketing and advertising. Well, you’re never going to know unless you measure your results. You can follow as many case studies and experienced social media advisers as you like – in social media marketing every case is different and you’re insane if you’re not measuring your social media marketing results.
I recommend clients follow a set structure to measure their social media marketing results effectively: Goal-Structure-Measurement (more about that in a future post).
How are you going to engage others?
The reason that many businesses jump on to the social media marketing bandwagon is because “that’s where all the people are”. It’s true, a lot of people participate in social media, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be interested in your business or brand.
If you’re going to be effective at marketing on social media, you need to work out how to engage customers before hand. Whether you incentives by giving away discounts or freebies, whether you create a loyalty program or rewards for friend-to-friend referrals. Whatever you think will engage customers, I recommend developing a plan beforehand. The last thing you want to happen is for your social media marketing to flop because no one wants to talk to you.

Is there anything you wish you had considered before you jumped into marketing on social media? Leave your comments below.

Facebook changes Facebook Groups functionality

Janna — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:45:36 +0000

The Facebook Groups vs Facebook Pages debate continues to another level as Facebook changes the Facebook Groups functionality to align with the functionality of pages.

Facebook has now officially updated it’s groups to have similar features to pages. However, Facebook maintains that they are still designed to serve different purposes “Groups are for fostering member-to-member collaboration, while Pages remain the best way to broadcast messages to your fans if you are a business, organization, public figure or other entity” (Source: Official Facebook Blog).

For my clients, I maintain the recommendation to use Facebook Pages for businesses and brands. One of the main contributing factors in this recommendation is that Groups have a limit if 5,000 members.

If you have any questions on the use of Facebook for business, the difference between Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages, or simply want to share your own experience, please leave a comment below.

5 Simple Tips How To Use Facebook For Business

Janna — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:30:07 +0000

If you think facebook is only for teeny boppers and college kids, you need to open your eyes. Using facebook for business is the hottest way to build longer lasting relationships with your customers and generate heaps of traffic to your website and blog. If you’re wondering how to use facebook for business, follow these 5 facebook tips for business use:

Model your competition

If you’re not sure whether using facebook is appropriate for your business, I would advise you to see what other businesses are doing online that you could model. Does your competition have a facebook page or a facebook group? Are they using facebook for business, to generate traffic, to pre-sell their customers?

Determine what your outcome is, then look at businesses who are similar to yours and want to achieve the same outcome. Model them.

Build relationships

One of the major advantages of using facebook for business (or other social media for that matter) is the way you can interact with potential (and current) customers. Build relationships by engaging in the dialogue. Ask your customers what they like and expect before selling to them. Remember, one of the most important facebook tips for business use is to build trust. Once customers trust you, they will be likely to engage with the products in the top of your marketing funnel, especially if they’re free.

Be consistent

Like Blogging, being consistent in your interaction and presentation on facebook is one of the most important considerations when determining how to use facebook for business. There’s no point posting 25 notes this week, if you won’t be posting anything else in the next 2 months. The consistency of your engagement is one of the key facebook tips for business use.

If you’re already consistently chewing out content elsewhere online, consider connecting your blog to facebook to create an RSS feeds through your notes, or connect your Twitter account to facebook to syndicate status updates.

Make an offer

Many businesses wonder why the friends, fans and group members aren’t flooding in, as soon as they register on facebook. The answer is simple – you need to make an offer for users to engage with you.

Whether the offer is an association with your cool brand or business, a free report or eBook download, valuable interaction and tips from other group members or fans. The bottom line is – it has to be to someone else’s advantage to engage with your business on facebook.

Measure ROE

The most fundamental rule in using facebook for business is to measure the return on engagement. If you’re spending 5 hours a week on facebook and getting two new leads for your business, it’s not worth it. You’d probably be better of making 5 hours worth of cold calls.

So be sure to measure how much time, money and other resources you spend using facebook for business, and analyse whether you’re getting a good return. That said, give your trial on how to use facebook for business a little time to work – just because you only got 10 new fans the first week (and one of them was your Mom), it doesn’t mean you should stop trying to figure it out.

The fact is, facebook has over 150 million users and is continuing to grow, so it’s well worth your time figuring out how to use facebook for business. After all, you want to be where your customers already are, right?

What are your best facebook tips for business use? And was this post helpful? Please leave your comment below.