8 Social Media Marketing Tips for Companies

by Alyssa Gregory

Over the past two days, I explored the top four reasons why companies are scared of social media and how to help them overcome their fear. Once the business owner conquers their fear of social media, it’s time to act. Here are 8 tips for companies beginning their journey in social media.
Start Slow

While you may eventually want to create a presence on more than one social media site, you don’t need to dive into all of them at once. Pick one site that you are most comfortable with or that is the most relevant to your company and/or products, and create an account and a public profile.
Learn the Game

Observe how others, including your competition, are participating on the social media platform you chose above. Write down what seems to work and what does not, and what you like and what you do not. Take special note of how people interact. Is it a one-way conversation or are both parties participating? What’s the tone of the conversations?
Develop a Plan

It’s one thing to participate in social media but to do so without a plan can be frustrating and even damaging to your business. Think through your goals – what are you hoping to gain from your social media interactions? Then work backwards to create a process that will accomplish what you are aiming to do.
Monitor Your Brand

Part of an effective social media campaign is keeping track of who is talking about your company, what is being said, and how others are reacting to it. Using a set of social media monitoring tools will help you stay on top of this…and it may even help you find new business opportunities.
Stay Human

Even though you are representing a business, don’t ignore the importance of the “social” element. Allow your interactions to retain the human side that will facilitate genuine connections. And don’t think you need to be all business, all the time. Giving a personal feel to your presence will make your business more approachable and relatable.
Be Responsive

There is nothing worse than a company attempting to be active across social media, but ignoring the masses. Once you commit to a social media marketing campaign, you should also commit to responding to questions, complaints and other input from your customers.
Ask for Feedback

One powerful use for social media in business is as a customer service tool. Instead of waiting for a customer to air a complaint, use social media as a way to engage and interact with your audience. Ask for feedback, reviews and insight to help you reach your target more effectively. And be sure to thank everyone who chimes in individually.
Be Consistent

Your profiles, comments, posts and conversations should stay true to your company’s overall mission and values. If more than one person is posting on behalf of your company, it’s vital to have a standard tone and guidelines for consistency. Once you expand your reach to more than one social media site, consistency is even more important.

What advice would you add for a company just getting their feet wet in social media?

80 Ways To Use Twitter As A SMB Owner

By Lisa Barone

It’s pretty common. A small business owner comes to us looking for help promoting his or her business. We suggest using Twitter as a way to find new leads, build relationships and as an overall way to cost effectively market their business. The small business owner then turns around, tilts their head and responds, “Twitter? What can Twitter do for me?”

Well, I’ll tell you. Below are 80 ways a small business owner can use Twitter to build and market their business.

Just like last time, hit print.

Build Credibility

1. Answer common customer questions
2. Share insight and opinion
3. Pass on interesting links/posts
4. Tweet links showing your company featured on other Web sites or mainstream media
5. Tweet often to keep your brand in customer’s top of mind
6. Share high quality content that is relevant to your customers needs
7. Share information about your organization that customers, colleagues and others may be interested to know
8. Promote competitors when they deserve it
9. Tweet links to Slideshare presentations or videos of speaking engagements.
10. Promote upcoming speaking engagements
11. Mention awards you’ve won or accreditations you’ve earned
12. Be the one to break the news in your industry
13. Livetweet events

Market Your Business

1. Talk about company culture and values
2. Let people know the events your company will be attending this year
3. Offer discounts, coupons or special offers to customers who find you via social media
4. Offer discounts on conferences for folks who come to hear you speak
5. Show your human face
6. Talk about what you’re doing
7. Talk about who you are
8. Talk about why you do what you do
9. To get blog subscribers
10. Direct traffic to your site
11. Find referrals
12. Offer referrals
13. Connect vendors to one another
14. Hold contests
15. Highlight employees
16. Publish your Twitter handle on all direct mailings, email newsletters, on your Web site and all other marketing channels. Put it everywhere
17. Promote your latest blog posts and newsletters
18. Share reviews people have left about your site that made you laugh. Or smile
19. Tweet when you do something cool
20. Admit and apologize for flubs to help neutralize the impact
21. Be excited about your week
22. Ask for votes on social media sites (use sparingly)

Grow Ears

1. Track conversations about your brand for online reputation management
2. Track your most important keywords and subscribe to an RSS feed
3. Listen in on conversations about your general industry
4. Do free market research to see what people want/don’t want
5. Conduct Twitter polls to quiz consumer opinion
6. Learn about what’s working/not working for your competitors
7. See how your competitors are interacting with customers
8. Find out who your competitors are talking to and do some competitive intelligence
9. Track conversation patterns for your industry to determine when people are most active online
10. Identify Twitter trends or hot topics related to your industry
11. Find ways to connect what you do with what’s already trending on Twitter
12. Ask people for their opinions. Listen to them
13. Notify customers of any holdups, mishaps or things that may affect business

Grow Your Online Network

1. Connect more personally with contacts from other social networks
2. Use relationship building instead of cold calls and cheesy flyers
3. Use Twellow or Listorious to find people with common interests
4. Fill out your Twellow and We Follow profiles to make it easy for people to find you
5. Use Twitter search to find relevant conversations you can jump into
6. Find guestbloggers for your blog
7. Find guestblogging opportunities for yourself
8. Meet influencers and your ‘industry famous’. Talk to them
9. Mend fences with angry tweeters by following the conversation and offering to help when possible
10. Host weekly Twitter chats to bring your community together and meet new folks
11. Connect your Twitter account to LinkedIn. And to your Facebook account. And to your Web site. And anywhere else you can to make your site more social
12. Participate in Follow Friday to meet new people…and to encourage others to recommend you, as well
13. Use services like bit.ly to see how people are interacting with your content
14. Discover what actions cause an increase in followers and are important social metrics

Grow Your Offline Network

1. Hold tweetups and introduce your community members in real life
2. Find new customers by using the Advanced Search to track down local conversations
3. Use Twitter Search to track when potential customers mention a competitor…and then reach out to them
4. Offer coupons to encourage community members to make purchases instore
5. Tweet about products just arriving or hot food coming out of the oven
6. Throw a Valentine’s Day party for your Twitter followers
7. Ask Twitter followers to leave testimonials on your site
8. Find new employees

Have Fun

1. Become a better writer
2. Share content that makes you laugh
3. Find content that inspires and motivates you
4. Learn new things, related to your industry or not.
5. Make friendships, not just professional relationships.
6. Create injokes with community members
7. Find new blog topic ideas
8. Get out of your marketing shell and be yourself
9. Use it as your office watercooler if you work from home
10. Make it your own coworking space

About the Author

Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media, Inc., an Internet marketing company that specializes in providing clients with online reputation management, social media services, and other Internet services. She blogs daily over at the Outspoken Media blog.

What Would Martin Luther King Make of Twitter?

The 5 Faces of Your Customer

By Wendy-Leigh Montes De Oca

One of the most profound business books I ever read was Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.

The ideas in the book were very innovative at the time. The Internet and e-mail marketing were still young, and, like the Wild Wild West, most marketers and business owners were still trying to “wrangle it in” and figure out how to leverage the Web’s possibilities… and, more important, turn those possibilities into profits.

In a nutshell, the book explained “how to turn strangers into friends and friends into customers.” The principle behind this is to first understand the difference between cold (or interruption) marketing – like those annoying phone calls you always seem to get during dinner asking you to subscribe to the local newspaper… and permission marketing – where the prospect is actually giving you permission to contact them by “opting in” to receive your messages.

To help you get the most out of your Internet marketing, I have expanded on Mr. Godin’s “stranger/friend/customer” concept and added two key components: multi-buyer and advocate. And I’ll show you how you can leverage each of these segments to help grow your business.

Leveraging Your Customers Throughout Their Life Cycle

You may think that a customer is someone who buys from you – period. But that’s a very limited view. From the instant you “meet” your customer… until he’s become a VIP buyer who’s spent hundreds or thousands of dollars with your company… you should be interacting with him in different ways. Treating him properly every step of the way will create a true win/win situation. Your customer will continue to enjoy satisfying experiences with your company, and your company will enjoy the positive effect this relationship will have on its bottom line.

Here are the five stages a customer can go through during his life cycle, and how you can make the most of each one…

Stage 1: Stranger

The stranger or “prospect” doesn’t know you. Your job is to get her attention. You have only a few seconds to get her to react – whether it’s by asking her to click on your ad or open your e-mail message. Which means that your copy for the ad headline or e-mail subject line is critical.

Once you’ve captured her attention, your #1 goal is to have this stranger “opt in” to receive your messages, giving you a chance to continue to bond with her. This is also the time to start to build trust. Show your creditability. And explain what you can do for her (fill a desire, answer a need).

Stage 2: Friend

The friend has demonstrated an interest in your initial promotion and has opted in to receive more information from you. This gives you an outstanding opportunity to introduce him to your philosophy, your company, and your mission, and to re-enforce how you can help him.

During this stage, it’s best to send a series of introduction e-mails (anywhere from 5 to 7) and withhold your new friends from your general mailing list. You don’t want them (the newest names on your list) to start receiving promotional messages BEFORE they receive some of your editorial messages.

For example, our compnay sends six introductory e-mails to new subscribers. Each e-mail is a special issue that’s composed of articles that present our core philosophies. This gives our new subscribers a chance to “warm up” to our expert contributors, the format of our newsletter, and the topics we typically address. Only after they are warmed up do we start sending them regular issues – including our promotional e-mails.

Stage 3: Customer/Client

The customer (or client) is someone who has bought into your philosophy and purchased a product (or service) from you.

Many companies make the mistake of ending the customer relationship at this point. But after reading this article, you’ll know better… you’ll know that getting the customer is only the beginning. Keeping him is another story.

You don’t want to put all your eggs into one acquisition basket while having few or no retention efforts. Good retention strategies entail ongoing communication (both promotional and editorial), outstanding customer service, quality products, and fulfilling your promises. Of course there will always be things outside of your control (like losing customers to market conditions). But the idea is to be proactive and not reactive. Keep the “80/20 rule” in mind – which states that 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers.

Stage 4: Multi-Buyer

The multi-buyer is a customer who is tied into your brand and demonstrates product loyalty with your company. Multi-buyers have purchased several products from you, and are not afraid to spend money. These folks are your best list to roll out new products to or test higher price points. If you are thinking about creating a “VIP” or “Lifetime” product, you’re going to want to advertise to this list. Multi-buyers will have a high lifetime value (LTV) for you, and will likely purchase cross-channel. In other words, they will buy from you no matter how you contact them – whether via banner ads, e-mail marketing, direct mail, or telemarketing.

Stage 5: Advocate

This segment of your customer database is your holy grail. Your list of advocates is made up of the most satisfied and loyal of your customers – and contains your best “unpaid” employees. Advocates will do your advertising for you by telling friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances about your products and services. And in today’s Net-based environment, advocates are a major force in getting your name in the blogsphere and social communities… and spreading your marketing message virally.

So how do you create advocates? Well, advocates are not created, they’re cultivated over time. The advocate must, of course, believe in your products and services. But for this special group, the customer experience goes deeper… to an emotional level. The advocate feels personally touched by your service, product, or guru. Because of you, her life is changed – and she’s busting at the seams to help others as she has been helped.

Your advocates are people you want testimonials from. People you can invite to be in BETA test or focus groups. And people to get feedback from to help develop future products. Even better, this group can help you make more money in the future. Some of our best JV (joint venture) partnerships have been with our advocates – people who understand our core values, respect our business, and have a company or product that’s synergistic to our own.

You want to treat these folks like the VIPs they are and invite them to special events or let them be the first to receive discounted offers. You may even consider creating affiliate marketing or referral programs to “formalize” this group’s verbal recommendations.

Always keep in mind that the effort does not stop at the sale. Since it costs more to obtain new leads than to retain existing customers – now, more than ever – you have to know how to optimize the five stages of the customer life cycle.

Ms. Montes de Oca’s is the Vice President of Marketing and Busiess Development for Early to Rise http://www.earlytorise.com She has a diversified background includes over 15 years of experience in marketing, publishing, financial services (institutional and retail), and law.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wendy-Leigh_Montes_De_Oca
http://EzineArticles.com/?The-5-Faces-of-Your-Customer&id=1728755

Twitter without the BS

Why is it so hard to get practical advice on using Internet promotional tools?

Everything in Internet marketing seems to come wrapped in a ton of hype and BS and few appear able or willing to strip things down to their basics. And believe me, it’s no easier for me.

Finding a straight, concise answer about anything in Internet marketing is ridiculously hard whether you’ve been at it for 16 years or 16 minutes.

Twitter is a perfect example of this.

First, the news media made it look ridiculous.

Then, the Internet “gurus” piled on with claims that it’s really the most powerful marketing tool that’s ever been created – but only if you know the “right” way (their way) to use it…which they’ll be glad to teach you for an unreasonable fee.

Everything a serious-minded person needs to know about Twitter

1. Twitter’s popular and it’s been adopted by every major media outlet. A percentage of your customers use it. These facts alone signal that anyone who has anything to promote needs to use it.

2. Twitter is dead easy to use, both for publishers and consumers of information.

3. Twitter’s just another channel with its strengths and weaknesses. It contains no inherent magic. If there is “magic” in it, it comes from using it intelligently.

4. Twitter is not something to build a business on. Yes, it’s easy to “game” the system to generate large numbers of “followers” but, like 99% of the things taught by the Internet marketing fad pimps, this approach is a total waste of time.

5. Twitter is a truly great research tool and a great keeping-in-touch-with-those-who-want-to-hear-from-you-tool.

How to think about Twitter

1. Twitter is a web publishing platform. It’s a free way for people to set up their own easy-to-use web sites. It’s a stripped down version of a blog. (Some people accurately call Twitter a micro-blog.)

2. Twitter limits posts (”tweets”) to 140 characters – about the length of a headline or classified ad. You can say and do a lot in 140 characters. Ask any poet or copywriter. Get over it. Being limited to 140 characters is not an issue.

3. One of the key Twitter skills is to learn how to shrink a long address into a short one so you have more room to get your message across. Here’s the tool I use for that:
http://twtr.us/twtr.html

How to use Twitter

1. As a publisher, the most important thing to keep in mind about Twitter is to have a clear purpose and consistent public face for each of your Twitter channels (assuming you need more than one.)

For example, if your topic is investing in gold or ski resorts in the Alps, stick to the point. Don’t start ranting about completely unrelated issues, personal or global.

A little “personality” from time to time is fine, but too many off-point posts and too many fragmentary (and incomprehensible) posts of half a conversation are going to confuse and put off busy, serious-minded people (the kind of people who buy and get things done.)

2. A lot of people use Twitter for “personality” marketing. In other words, their posts are chock full of off-topic reports and obscure shout outs to god-only-knows-who.

If you think you’re a fabulously fascinating person and the world can’t get enough of the minutia of your everyday life, have at it, but I don’t recommend it.

3. What I do recommend is making sure that every post (or “tweet”) counts.

Somehow the mistaken idea has spread that Twitter is supposed to be a stream-of-consciousness medium, that whatever is on your mind at any given moment is fair game for a Twitter post. This is not communicating, this is a form of verbal diarrhea.

4. Craft your Twitter posts. Think about them.

Ask yourself: “Is what I’m about to post useful, interesting, on-topic, and in character?”

In other words, run your “tweets” through a filter, the same way you connect your mouth to your brain when you’re speaking.

I’m not saying that each and every post has to be a home run or that you have to agonize over every one, but unless someone is wildly in love with you, be aware random, off-topic, minutia gets old really fast.

How to get readers

The purpose of writing is to have readers.

There are two ways to get readers (called “followers” in Twitter):

1) tell everyone you know about your channel and send them to it (do this consistently) and

2) reach out on Twitter.

If you already have a large circle (you’re a celebrity, you have a big mailing list and/or you have a lot of traffic to your web site), it’s easy to build a big Twitter following fast. Just let people know about it (repeatedly) and don’t publish crap.

If you don’t have any of these things, you’ve got to do it the old fashioned way by reaching out to relevant folks.

Note the word “relevant.” One of the scams currently taught by the Internet marketing “gurus” is to randomly follow thousands of Twitter users. The idea being that some of them will reflexively follow you back and thus you will develop a large “following” and appear to be popular. Not a good idea.

Here’s a better idea: Follow people and info sources that you’re genuinely interested in.

How to reach out on Twitter – and how not to

It’s easy to find Twitter users who might like to be readers of your Twitter channel.

Click on the “find people” link on Twitter and enter keywords that are likely to turn up people and organizations that are in sync with what your Twitter channel is about.

For example, as a hobby (which also makes money), I run a jazz video web site.

After I let my list and site visitors know I have a Twitter channel, I went to the “find people” page and entered logical keywords for my niche: jazz, jazz club, jazz fest, jazz fan etc.

Then whenever I have some spare time, I “follow” another 100 channels in this category. Some will follow me, some won’t. I really don’t care. I only follow channels I’m genuinely interested in or people I’m very certain would find what I’m doing interesting.

One point: I don’t suddenly follow 1,000 or 10,000 channels overnight.

Why?

Two reasons: 1) because that’s not how normal people use Twitter and 2) Twitter doesn’t like it.

You may say – as many Internet marketing “gurus” do – who cares what Twitter likes? Well, there are two reasons:

First, you’re a guest on their service. Why not be a good guest instead of a greedy slob?

Second, you’re a guest on their service which means they can throw you off any time they want for violating their terms of service agreement.

Given how much totally bogus crap has been written about Twitter “how to” – much of which has become “common knowledge” – I recommend reading Twitter’s short, clear and very reasonable Terms of Service agreement.

You can read Twitter’s Terms of Service Agreement here

Summing up

Twitter is, in spite of all the hype and misinformation, definitely worth your time and attention.

It’s a great way to keep up with news on a wide variety of topics, to see what people are thinking and talking about, and to serve your readers.

The key is that writing for Twitter is like writing for any other medium.

Is what you are writing about interesting, useful, and/or entertaining? If it is, you can carve it on a rock and it will work. If it’s not, then neither Twitter nor anything else is going to help you.

Is your Twitter channel focused and consistent so people know what they’re going to get when they sign up for it and then get what they expect when they do?

It’s not rocket science and it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s just Twitter and my hats off to the creators for stumbling on this thing and making it available to the world. It’s a net contribution.

- Ken McCarthy

P.S. This year’s System Seminar will be in Chicago, April 9, 10 and 11.

For more info: The System Seminar

P.P.S. If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can do that here: Follow Ken on Twitter