social media Archives | waveSpawn Marketing

April 24, 2012

Social selling with social media

Increasingly, small businesses want to understand how to leverage social media to increase sales. In previous topics, we’ve discussed methods for creating a social media marketing strategy and using metrics to measure the return on your social media investment. Having a plan or roadmap should always be the first step in any marketing initiative including social media.

Can social media be an efficient, cost-effective channel for finding new customers and selling to business clients?

By now, you’ve probably heard the term social selling (or Sales 2.0). Social selling is about engaging prospects on their terms. It involves learning their marketing, communication, and buying preferences and then positioning yourself to be of value. Social selling (and social media) is not about blasting offers in your tweets and posts. With social selling, you need to recognize that the buying process is controlled by a better informed and more connected customer. Keep in mind, sales still remains a relationship-driven business. The concept of prospect networking through social media enables sales professionals to learn about and connect with potential customers. More importantly, they can tailor sales information and product specs to accommodate the needs and concerns of each individual rather than the mass – enabling relevance throughout the sales cycle.

The amount of prospect information available has increased the need for comprehensive sales intelligence. This generally brings together both traditional data and social media. It can be very beneficial for sales professionals to leverage the social web to simply listen, engage, and add value to the customer conversation. Being in the right place at the right time can create the top of mind status needed when the prospect is ready to buy.

Social media outlets are great places for starting conversations, but they’re not the only place to have them. When the time is right, take the conversation offline. With all of the modern conveniences and technical advances, still nothing can replicate the power of a face-to-face meeting.

The challenge with prospect networking and social selling is that it requires a lot of time and daily commitment. It’s impossible to automate messaging and conversations through social media. While many sales professionals don’t have interest in adding another “to do” item to their daily routine, finding the right balance is key. Each individual needs to assess their industry, audience, product, positioning, and price to form a strategy that fits their business and equally as important – their schedule.

If you have comments or questions, we’d love to hear from you. If you’d like more information on developing effective strategies for social selling, please contact us.

September 29, 2011

Facebook Timeline

FB Timeline As Facebook continues to roll out new features and functionality, it’s important to be aware of what these changes are and how they may affect your use. While many people have been buzzing about the Facebook Timeline, it is scheduled to roll out over the next several weeks. For those who can’t wait, this article walks you through the 8 steps to activate the Facebook Timeline right now.

So, what is Timeline? Facebook is making sharing even easier by automatically sharing what you’re doing on Facebook-connected apps. Instead of having to “Like” something to share it, you’ll just need to click “Add to Timeline” on any website or app, and that app will have permission to share your activity with your Facebook friends.

For example, you may be listening to a great tune on Pandora; by simply clicking a button, you can let everyone in your network know which artist and song. Facebook calls this auto-sharing “Gestures.”

Caution: if you allow Facebook to access these apps automatically, you may be surprised when unwanted information is exposed.

As Pete Cashmore (Mashable) summed it up:

So right now I can see that someone I know professionally read “Scarlett Johansson Nude Photos” and a male colleague, who will remain anonymous, recently read the following:

“Conan O’Brien Stares At Nicole Scherzinger’s Cleavage”
“Heather Morris On Breast Implants”
“Perrey Reeves Shows Off Bikini Body (PHOTO)”

Yikes, probably not the type of articles that some would care to willingly share.

There appear to be some useful strategies to the personal Timeline. As you reconnect with lost friends, you can quickly fill in the missing pieces chronologically. While it’s not a complete biography, it does add some slick interaction.

Timeline may be a positive addition for brands. In fact, the brand benefits of Timeline could be huge, and will let companies tell a more engaging and authentic story.

As always, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming weeks. I imagine there’ll be some initial resistance before widespread acceptance. Any thoughts?

April 20, 2011

Respecting privacy with social media

Online privacy Facebook and social media are great outlets for people to vent with friends. People go online to complain about the weather (especially here in Western New York), sports teams, a bad day, boredom, etc… but what are the rules of the discussion? Are there any topics that are off limits – politics, religion, or personal matters?

A doctor from Rhode Island just found out the hard way that patient privacy is definitely not a topic that should be shared publicly through social media. “Dr. Alexandra Thran, 48, was fired from the hospital last year and reprimanded by the state medical board last week. The hospital took away her privileges to work in the emergency room for posting information online about a trauma patient.” While Dr Thran’s post did not actually include the patient’s name, apparently enough facts were included for others in the community to properly identify the individual.

While this may seem obvious to some, to others discussing their daily grind is a normal routine. There can be a lot of gray area for appropriate content. There comes a time when common sense should prevail. If you are not sure about something you are about to post, you probably shouldn’t be clicking submit. I’ve often thought about launching the social media hall of shame – to showcase social media bloopers and blunders. They are everyday occurrences. Just a few years ago the biggest concern was clicking “reply all” to an email. Now a simple post or tweet has trumped the old school email.

There is a lot to be learned from this Rhode Island case. I’m sure much of the healthcare industry is taking note and working to implement training programs and education for appropriate use of social media. With liability concerns, health privacy issues (HIPAA), and reputation there is a lot at stake for health facilities. It’ll be interesting to see how other healthcare institutions react to this occurrence.

March 15, 2011

Creating your social media strategy

Create your roadmap Is it wise to start a business endeavor without a plan? Most people wouldn’t build an office before they determined what their business would actually do. Without a strategy there is simply no structure, no clear objectives and no real way of determining its success.

The same principles apply to social media. Establishing a roadmap with clear objectives can help you determine the success or failure of your program. For example, what is your business trying to achieve through social media? Is it to:

Interact with customers and prospects
Increase visibility and strengthen your brand
Reach new audiences
Create loyalty
Deal with customer service and support issues
Boost revenue

Regardless of what you decide, you should plan to create measurable metrics for your social media program. These types of statistics, if tracked properly, can help to measure and monetize the results of your social media campaigns. Let’s say, for example, you have a small business and your goal is to interact with customers and prospects. In this case, you’ll want to define what would constitute success. For instance, the number of:

Completed customer satisfaction surveys per month
New features suggested by users (that are implemented)
People who post something about us
Blogs that link to us

There are a variety of criteria which you can use to measure progress. The idea is to define relevant success metrics that translate into meaningful business context for you. For example quantitative metrics may include number of sales, new leads, new qualified subscribers, while qualitative could track satisfaction levels, loyalty, visibility, amount of interaction, feedback. For qualitative goals, don’t get too complex, use simple rules as metrics.

Set your social media campaign goals based on these metrics. Monitor often and course correct as necessary. Don’t expect to get it right the first time, but by establishing benchmarks you can filter out channels and strategies that don’t return good results. Trial and error can be your best ally in discovering where to focus the most energy.

November 2, 2010

Ok, you’ve signed up for social media now what?

A little while ago, we discussed the implications of signing up for social media platforms only to neglect them. Is this due to the fact that most people simply don’t know what to say or how to say it? With the array of options available today – particularly for small businesses, it’s more important than ever that they understand and leverage these tools. I thought this article by Jeffrey Gitomer was very timely and relevant: What should I tweet, what should I post, how should I link?

In the article, Gitomer points out that “Most people don’t know what to say on, what to do on, or what to do with social media. And it’s a club with more than 700 million members.” He goes on to outline some helpful suggestions including:

Stop thinking of it as social media, and begin thinking of it as BUSINESS social media.
What will help your customers produce more, profit more, understand what’s brand new in the market, improve morale, improve attitude, and/or improve their life. Then write about it, tweet about it, and post on Facebook about it.
Why not create daily/weekly/monthly value messages that your customers would find so interesting and informative that they would save them, print them, put them into action, and forward them to others?
All business social media is interconnected. You have to do ALL of them consistently to gain effective results. And you have to do all of them well if you expect to monetize your efforts.

I think Gitomer provides a very rational approach to utilizing social media. While consistency, messaging, and value proposition are all important, there is also a strategy in connecting with the appropriate audience. You could have the best tweets, comments, and suggestions to offer, but if nobody is listening, how effective are they?

As a precursor to this article is the topic how to network with the appropriate business audience using social media. For many people this is fundamentally more critical than the messages being sent. The first step is determining which social media platforms are right for your business or personal use. Select the combination of outlets which you can maintain. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. While some of these tools are easy to integrate with services such as Twitterfeed, the proper time should be taken to set these communication channels up properly.

Next is identifying and connecting with your unique business audience. Don’t just stalk and link to prospects with whom you are trying to close business opportunities. Connect with people who share similar interests or view points. Connect with partners and customers who can also share experiences. Connect with and/or follow competitors. What better way to monitor intelligence and stay competitive.

In closing, don’t use social media as simply a vehicle to announce your specials or flavor of the day. People see right through that and will lose interest quickly. Be genuine, and as Gitomer stated in his article, add value and be consistent.

August 19, 2010

Facebook Places positioned to replace foursquare and Yelp

Facebook has officially joined the GPS, location-based, “check-in” game. With the announcement of Facebook Places yesterday, users can now share information of their whereabouts as well as connect with nearby friends. It’ll be interesting to see how this impacts both foursquare and Yelp who are also competing for customers in this location game.

Since Facebook recently surpassed 500,000 users, they clearly have the advantage over competing services. It would seem natural that social media enthusiasts are looking for a convergence of all these features – and not have to jump from one platform to another. Perhaps Facebook should look to acquire foursquare and simply aggregate the existing data and comments into their system?

Location features can create tremendous value for small businesses. With just a few favorable reviews and recommendations, viral marketing can generate a wave of new customers. It helps new prospects discover places that they would otherwise never know.

On the other hand, are GPS signals revealing too much information about people? Is this big brother zooming in on us? Are we compromising our privacy?

I’ve downloaded the latest Facebook app for the iPhone. While the Places icon is visible, it doesn’t appear the service is available yet in Buffalo, NY. We’ll be watching closely!

What are your thoughts? Will these location features help advance Facebook and small businesses or will this create new privacy and security concerns? Is Facebook Places sensible?

August 3, 2010

Market your regional product or service with foursquare

foursquare marketing If you haven’t familiarized yourself with foursquare yet, it may be worth your while. Foursquare is gaining popularity quickly. Many businesses are leveraging it to create customer loyalty programs. It’s GPS integrated features allow people to “check-in” when they are at or near your business. This allows you to track frequent visitors. You can structure incentives for your targeted community. For example, if you run a pizza shop, you can offer a free pizza to the member who “checks-in” the most within a given timeframe (month or week). If you have a hair salon, you can give a product away for every 10 check-ins. You can be creative in your offers, but it’s an ideal way to entice potential prospects and reward existing customers.

A powerful feature of foursquare, like most social media platforms, is that it shares information with all of a user’s friends. This creates instant viral marketing. If someone checks-into your establishment, everyone in that person’s network will get updates. It’s like a free plug for your business. As frequent users strive to collect prizes or discounts, this creates competition between various patrons. The better the prize, the bigger the interest. It’s almost like a virtual scavenger hunt.

When you have time, “check-in” to foursquare and see for yourself. If you have questions or not sure where to start, waveSpawn can help…

June 11, 2010

How are you establishing brand preference?

Brand preference Branding, for many companies, is low on their priority list – or perhaps even off the radar screen. Many businesses simply do not give sufficient focus to their brand initiatives. How many times have you heard – branding is too intangible or “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”? Since branding isn’t directly reflected on a company’s balance sheet or financial statements, it’ often overlooked.

The reality is, branding, while difficult to accurately quantify, is a powerful marketing tool that can enable tremendous returns on investment. Branding is the primary reason consumers are willing to pay triple the price for one product over another.

Executed properly, corporate or product branding creates a perception that targeted prospects and customers gravitate towards. Perhaps the brand symbolizes an active lifestyle, innovation, caring, luxury, reliability, a company’s policy on environmental issues, etc. An effective brand evokes a feeling which creates long-term customer loyalty. It is the result of a clear vision that fits with the overall corporate strategy.

Branding is directly related to the perceived value of a product or company. While brand awareness is essential for name recognition, strategic awareness occurs when you have differentiated your brand in the mind of your market. This is often referred to as your unique selling proposition. This tells the market what you do, and more importantly, how you do it differently or better than your competitors.

To go one step further, establishing brand preference should be the desired outcome of a company’s branding initiatives. This allows the market to understand what is unique about a particular brand, allows them to emotionally connect to the brand, and creates a bias for selecting that brand over competing brands.

Fortunately, there are many effective marketing and branding strategies to help companies improve their brand visibility. Social media has opened a vast number of opportunities for businesses of all sizes to rapidly disseminate information, generate buzz, and establish brand recognition. Social media enables companies to get immediate customer feedback. Truly listening to your customers and responding to each of them can have a significant impact on the credibility of your brand.

Social media also facilitates an effective means for companies to monitor their brand image. There are a number of analytical tools which generate valuable reports and statistics. This is beneficial for a number of reasons – it can create an objective profile of the current landscape. It also allows you to set benchmarks and measure specific metrics. These could include the number of times your brand is mentioned, the number of links to your product or site, the number of retweets, etc.

Social media is gaining momentum every day; it is a powerful form of communication that is not going away. Companies can either watch on the sidelines or actively participate to help establish the communication channels that will drive brand preference.

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May 26, 2010

Facebook aims to simplify privacy settings

Facebook announced it will simplify their privacy settings for users. After feeling the pressure from large groups of protestors, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said “We needed to simplify controls… We want people to be able to share information in the way that they want.”

The newly configured privacy page is intended to be a central dashboard for adjusting all content and privacy settings. There are streamlined capabilities to monitor and adjust global settings. In the past, settings for new applications would not adhere to the preset options. In other words, a user would need to realize that they need to go back to the settings page each time an application was added or information was modified, etc.

Having default settings should be sufficient for the majority of users. Advanced settings will still be available for those looking for total control over their shared data. “We’ve focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications,” said Zuckerberg.

While heightened privacy control is good news for many avid users, Facebook is battling an interesting dilemma. Their prime revenue source is from content driven, targeted advertising. By restricting access to 3^rd parties, they may be directly limiting their ad revenue growth potential. This will be curious to see how Facebook is able to work around this hurdle. Are they able to compromise personal information in any way? Can they arrange a deal where personal information is exposed to high paying media research agencies?

May 20, 2010

Twitter is over capacity – again!

I find it peculiar that every morning this week as I logged into Twitter, I was greeted with this same image – a whale being hoisted out of the water by a bunch of tweety birds. I’ve certainly encountered this image before, but not with the same frequency as this week. I can only assume that this is a good problem for Twitter.

I must confess, I am not a “power-tweeter”, but I do peck around daily to see what’s happening. I just found it unusual to get the same “over capacity” message every day this week. I’m sure avid users have become accustomed to this issue and have a work-around in place.

I can only imagine that Twitter is in the process of beefing up their computing power to meet the growing demands of micro-blogging. They must be so inundated with tweets that servers are simply melting. Is anyone else getting this message frequently? Come on, let it out….

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