These things are great, all fine in principal and have a role to play. But for many businesses actually approving any spend on this sort of marketing activity depends on what bottom line this will generate, if any. For me, many of the well known Brands and indeed those smaller businesses using the platform as part of their marketing efforts are missing the key element.. ‘Engagement’. Many of the pages which I visit just don’t engage with me as a consumer. I may go onto the page, have a quick look and then I’m gone without even liking it. Typical of the bounce rate on your website if you will. There are also those Brands who have used Facebook very effectively and run a campaign which has ticked all the boxes, and been engaging, only to let activity dwindle away to nothing once the campaign has finished. It’s one thing to ‘Build it and they will come’ but what about sustainment after the campaign?

To get it right and offer more rich engagement with your target audience, not just on Facebook, but other social platforms, it can’t all be a one way street. Businesses need to adopt a two-way communication process, which allows both the business and the consumer to engage. Way to many businesses are using Social Media as a way to Sell, Sell, Sell.. with very little, if any, listening to their customers.

Engagement is key not just during the campaign but ongoing.

Using social media as a way to communicate your businesses message can prove very effective if you are open to listening to your customer. Have a think about your actual quality of likes and what they mean to the ROI of your business. For me, I would rather have the businesses which has 2500 Likes or Followers (whichever platform your using) of which I am regularly engaging with the users, building relationships, and converting leads into sales than the page with 20,000 Likes with no return to my bottom line. Which category is your business in?

To sum up, as mentioned earlier in the blog, don’t get hung up on pushing out content with a sell, sell, sell approach on it. Nor focusing on increasing your number of Likes. Bottom line is, if you have good, engaging content this will naturally happen, likes or followers will increase organically as well users wanting to share content from your page. The rule of thumb is that ‘Content is still king’ so think about your customer base. Good content on your website and in your social platforms will reward you with stronger search engine rankings and most importantly higher conversation rates adding towards your businesses bottom line.

We like to keep our clients up to date on the latest marketing tips and tricks so if you want to find out more, let’s grab a coffee and discuss. Have a fantastic Christmas & New Year.
Follow on Twitter @waynedenner

Using social media to help market your business, product or brand has opened up a whole new channel of communication for businesses and one which needs to be listened to and tracked.  It has become a great way to increase the market reach of any business both locally and globally and is cost effective way for businesses of all sizes to engage with their target audiences and customers alike.

Social media platforms such as Twitter & Facebook have become an essential for businesses to listen, discover and learn just what their customers are talking about in relation to their products, services or indeed their brands.  It has also given those already monitoring these channels an insight into just what customers are saying about their products and services.  There are of course, other reasons why as a business you would want to monitor communication via social media in relation to your business, brand, products and services.  These include:

• Customer Service – Twitter in particular has become one of the real time platforms for customers to reach you and get answers.  In the past week alone we have used twitter as a way to get quick responses to queries.  We recently contacted a businesses support department via email and four hours later had still no response. We then contacted the same company via Twitter, had a response 3 minutes later and within 5 minutes the issue was resolved.  This example clearly shows that the company are constantly monitoring their social media channels, and were enabled to deal with our query and resolve it, resulting in another happy customer.
• Public Relations – Social Media has become the essential tool to communicate to the mass and quickly.  It has now been proved to be a crucial platform for Crisis Communication in real time situations.  Take the Volcanic Ash incident, which happened earlier this year in Iceland.  Generally this caused major issues for travellers, with flights being grounded and safety concerns.  However for the Airlines using social media to engage with their customers  offering  them real time updates on flight disruptions, this became a powerful pr tool, assisting in minimising disruption, mis-information and ultimately saving them money. Despite the frustrations many travellers were at least kept informed and had access to the most up-to-date information for their airline via twitter.  Social Media served the airlines as a way for them to be the First Responders to questions and inaccurate information, providing much needed damage limitation in a rapidly changing situation.

So tracking your businesses on social media is just as important as tracking other marketing campaigns, not least for ROI.  Many businesses, particularly those small to medium in size may believe monitoring this area is not justified, but it will cost time and effort, (sweat time).  You  need to know it’s working.

According to a survey carried out by Mzinga & Babso, over 80% of professionals do not measure ROI for their company’s social media programs.

Key metrics you need to be aware of when using social media as a marketing tool:

• Measurement of both positive and negative mentions.  So you’re very active on Facebook & Twitter and your business, product or brand is getting a lot of mentions.  This in turn results in users talking about just what you offer or do
• Conversation Cycle.  Lets face it.   As a business your overall goal is to convert your fans or followers into sales.  For this to be successful you need to measure all types of conversations and chart them over time to get a picture of the conversation cycle.
• Virality – Is your content being shared on Twitter or Facebook?  Is the content being shared relevant to your company and how soon afterwards are they resharing the content and who’s doing the sharing?.  Friends of Friends?
• Loyalty/Average time on site.  Being aware of things such as bounce rate and average time on site are important to keep track of, but as a business, are you taking time to narrow this down and look at which social traffic is bringing visitors to your website.  Take the following example are visitors from Twitter spending longer on your site than those from Digg referrals? or are visitors who have come from Facebook spending more time .   Moniter where traffic spikes; have you recently run a campaign? Or perhaps posted a new engaging blog which has resulted in a surge of conversation or traffic to your website.  Having a sound understanding of  which referrals from social sites create more page views per visit and time spent on sites can provide invaluable insights to business owners.

Social media monitoring does not need to be complicated.  We believe in keeping it simple and  focused.  Monitoring activity will help you benchmark and track your efforts and successes over time and will help show you just what ROI you are receiving.    If done correctly it should help you draw comparisons and results from your posts, tweets & blogs.  Monitoring your social media channels will allow you to listen and respond in real time, and protect your brand, product or business from negative word of mouth.   We work with many different brands and businesses in a variety of sectors and can help show you just how to make the most of your social media efforts.

The flip side of this coin is that according to research carried out by direct agency Targetbase Claydon Heeley (TBCH) to build better relationships with the public, 41% of consumer’s state that brands needs to “listen to what customers have to say – and act on it”.

More businesses particular those SMEs need to look at using the new communication channels. This will give them a way of interacting with their customers, and at the same time using these communication channels as a way of actually improving their business. A lot of businesses today still see rewards and loyalty schemes as a way to give a little back to their customers but for many customers, myself included, its more about an experience and actually having a good experience which I have found to be the fundamental principles of good relationship marketing and will far out weigh the short term goals in the long run.

The survey carried out by TBCH identified six key values that consumers appreciate in the brands. They want to feel respected, worry-free, informed, confident, understood and organised. The survey went on to find that on the other side of the scale customers are less interested in brands that try to make them feel clever, loved, stylish, up to the minute, empowered, exclusive and excited.

Within social media many brands are trying to incorporate this into their strategy but just not getting the correct mix for it to work effectively. There are some brands that have embraced this form of communication and used it to their advantage giving them an opportunity to assist and solve problems for their customers and to invite them to respond and share their experiences of a particular brand. One such brand which has excelled and benefited in this form of communication is Jet Blue. The airline uses the social media platform Twitter as a way to interact and engage with its customers while enabling its travellers to post questions and comments about its services and allow Jet Blue to build customer service capability with people on the move.

All businesses no matter how small or large can start to benefit from world of mouth by embracing social media platforms in a proactive way. It gives businesses the chance to engage and interact with their customers on a one to one basis, give their input and also raise any possible concerns or issues which they may be experiencing.

At 10thstep we love helping SMEs interact with their customers and we can help you get to grips with using social media tools more effectively for your business. Why not give us a shout and lets us help you explore the world of mouth.

10thStep’s award winning team of marketing experts will cover hot topics such as : Social Media Marketing, E-marketing, Viral Marketing and more. With over ten years of industry experience working with leading businesses such as Blackberry, Diageo, Stenaline, & Drinkaware, 10thStep will explore the latest ways of how you can quickly and effectively target your online audience, encourage customer engagement and boost sales!

The free event is set to be fundamental for any local business interested in exploring digital marketing. As seats are strictly limited 10thStep urges all businesses to immediately express their interest in attending by visiting : www.10thstep.com/seminar, or emailing info@10thstep.com.

To register for the Seminar please click here

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ENDS

Of course your business should be utilizing the latest digital marketing techniques, which can be incorporated into your current marketing strategy. Digital Marketing, if used correctly, can be a very powerful & effective tool to create awareness for your product or brand to a global audience. Digital Marketing can be a much more cost effective way to market your business as apposed to traditional forms of media i.e. print, radio etc.

However before you move forward with digital marketing it is vital that you do some research into exactly what return you want to achieve from it, make a plan and stay focused.

Is digital marketing a quick fix to marketing my business, products or services?

No. Many people think they will get an immediate response or return from their digital marketing efforts or see it as the cheap route.

This can be true in relation to certain aspects within digital marketing, for example, google search ads to drive traffic to your business or website. In relation to forms of social media marketing tools, such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube require much more time to build relationships and communities online. Many people are put off by this or make an attempt to set up a presence on these sorts of social media sites but give up when the results are not immediate. Social Media marketing is much more of a slow burner in terms of marketing and short term results. However, the reality is that if you want to develop a good base of customers, customers who keep coming back and customers that our going to refer your business product or service onto other people, this social marketing tool is hard to beat.