Social Media Marketing Institute

When Facebook announced it was not going to allow business pages with less than 10,000 fans (or likers, whatever we call them these days) to have a custom landing page, the small business commmunity went into an uproar on twitter.  The sky seemed to be falling, yet I hardly blinked an eye.  Not because I knew they would reverse the silly policy (which they did), but because Facebook isn’t the hub of my business.  Twitter isn’t either.

People in our classes often ask us why bother having a blog when you can have a Facebook page.  It’s easy and a few people (like 400 million) spend some time there.  I like Facebook.  I recently wrote about the value of a Facebook business page.  Even with privacy violations and an ever changing landscape I like facebook, but guess what?  You don’t own Facebook (unless Mark Zuckerberg is reading this and if so, I would love to interview you).  So if you aren’t Mark, and you aren’t paying for a Facebook plan that dictates the level of service they have to provide to you, you really don’t have much say.  You are using a free platform.  They can change anything they please.

I believe in owning the hub of your business.  This means your own website on your own domain.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t maximize the use of other tools to reach your desired market, but they shouldn’t replace a central place that is the cornerstone for your brand.  Tools like Facebook are a fantastic place to engage with people and share content.  Ultimately, I believe they need to be used to drive trafffic to your own site.

Your online and offline engagements, messaging and actions act as spokes to a master wheel or hub like this:

The wheel holds it all together.  If you own the hub, it is solid and only chanageable by you.  If someone else owns it, you don’t have control of the piece that holds it all together.  What happens to the spokes if the wheel goes away?

Where will people go to find you?  What happens to all the content you created?  How long will it take you to reassemble the wheel?  At the end of the day, if you want to own your brand you have to own your hub.  

Many people come to us looking for what I like to call “the magic pill” or as RE BlogWorld Co-Founder Jason Berman calls it , “the social media secret sauce.”

What is the secret sauce? The magic recipe?  The perfect formula for social media marketing perfection? The secret sauce is not so much about the recipe, as it is about the ingredients or the effort you put into it.

The receipe is two part and looks something like this:

A relationship created over time where you establish trust and demonstrate expertise will yield influence. 

When you add influence and motivation together, you have the opportunity to generate results.

The secret sauce all comes down to the quality of the ingredients.  The magic recipe for social media success is not one size fits all. The relationship required with a consumer to sell a book is far different than the relationship required to sell a boat or a house. 

True success in the social media space requires an in-depth analysis of your target market, their wants, their needs, their desires, their buying capabilities and so on.  My target market is not your target market.  It is rare to find two companies or individuals with identical needs therefore each social media plan needs to be different.  You can follow the same basic recipe, but the quality and how you use the ingredients varies dramatically.

We often think about social media in a framework of numbers.   How many followers?  How many friends?  How many retweets?  How many likes?  Statistical analysis of a social media campaign is extremely important but true social media success really relates to people’s actions, not the number of fans, friends and followers.

How did they feel?  What action did that cause them to take?  What did they buy?  Who did they tell afterwards?  While the results of these questions do need to be carefully monitored, the perfect formula for incenting your customer base to act is based on their specific needs.

This week I have had three different organizations come to me with “get followers fast” claims.  There are lots of ways to get followers fast.  I can do the same.  Size of the audience can be an important ingredient in the equation but in most instances, the number of followers has nothing to do with “the secret sauce”. 

You can have tens of thousands of followers but the only ones who really matter are those you can influence to take the action you want them to take. How are you going to motivate them? Inspire them? Solve their problems?

Influence without action is a like a fallen soufflé. Inspiring action in your target audience is the most important part of the recipe. The magic is what you put into it.

If you thought about using Hootsuite but were turned off by the social toolbar, you may want to take a second look at the Twitter client.  This week Hootsuite rolled out a new URL shortner so users can now choose between the easy sharing toolbar or just a simple trackable link. 

Ow.ly links will still provide clickthrough stats but will no longer be framed in with the social tool bar. Hootsuite introduced new Ht.ly links which will open the social tool bar.

I like using Hootsuite as a twitter client for a variety of features.  I like the built in ability to track statistics on my tweets.  It produces nice charts like clicks by region and referrer and you allows the ability to look at the stats on an individal level or on a summary level.  You can also download data in a CSV file.

 In addition to the tracking tools, I like the ability to not only have mulitiple columns, but to all have multiple tabs (each tab can have up to twelve columns).  I set up tabs for each of the different twitter accounts I am monitoring, tabs for upcoming events I plan to attend and tabs on topics I am monitoring.  You can easily add columns for twitter lists you follow.  The tabs and column set up allow me to easily organize twitter so I can see what is most important to me. 

 There are lots of great twitter clients out there, but if the social toolbar has prevented you from using Hootsuite in the past, you may want to give it another try.

I received this question from a contractor:

I still don’t understand the value of fan pages for a business like mine.  My facebook is made up of about 25% locals, and the balance are scattered across the usa.  Can you please explain?

As a contractor, your business is probably built on referrals from past clients, friends, and neighbors. Staying top of mind when these people hear or think about home renovation projects is likely to be important to your business.  Having a personal profile is helpful, but you may not neccesarily want to be friends on Facebook with all of your clients.  Additionally, promoting your business on a personal page is a violation of the terms of service of Facebook.

By creating a business page, people can opt in to getting your business updates.  Create a facebook business page and let your clients know about!  Include it in your email signature, on your website, other online advertising and even on your print materials. 

According to Edison Research, 48% of Americans over the age of 12 have a profile on a social network and 30% of those people log on multiple times a day.  People in your community are comfortable with Facebook and accessing it multiple times a day in many cases.  Consider these stats from Facebook:

When people “like” your page and/or your posts, their friends will see it in their news feed.  This gives you a great opportunity to get exposure to a wider audience.  Additionally, Facebook search has become quite powerful.  If people in your community are searching for a contractor on Facebook search, your page is likely to come up, enabling you to grow your business page organically as well.

Lastly, many businesses are finding Facebook ads to be an easy and inexpensive way to generate a larger community to engage with on Facebook.  Do a trial run once you have your page up and running to see how they work for your target market.

Important tips as you get started:

• Use a keyword rich name for your page to improve your search engine rankings.
• Develop a regular posting schedule that works for you.  Posting regularly will help you get seen by your followers as well as improve your chances of being found through searches.
• Encourage your Facebook commmunity to post and interact with others on your page.
• Don’t post and run.  Interact with the people who comment on your page.  Respond to their comments!
• Text can get boring.  Use photos and video too!

Why should you use Facebook?  Your customers are using it.  Go to them instead of making them come to you.

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Adam Cohen to the SMMI Advisory Board.  As a recognized social media strategist, Adam joins SMMI’s Advisory Board  to help advance our strategy and support our executive team as we continue to expand to meet the growing demand for quality educational programs in the social marketing space.

Adam brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our board. Adam is a partner at Rosetta, the largest independent digital agency.  He is the lead strategist for Rosetta’s Social Media practice and focuses on designing social media strategies and initiatives for clients across a variety of industries, including Healthcare and Pharma, Financial Services, Consumer Products, Retail and B2B. 

Adam serves on Forrester Research’s Technology Marketing Executive Council and has been published in AdAge, PharmaVoice and other industry journals.

SMMI CEO Bill Lublin says, “SMMI is extremely excited to add an individual with such a deep understanding of social media and its application to marketing and brand building in a variety of verticals. Adam’s exceptional professional history and solid personal values make him an outstanding addition to our advisory board and we look forward to his contributions.”

Bill added, “SMMI demonstrates an amazing diversity with founding members who are Phillies, Sixers, and Eagles fans co-existing with Adam who is a fan of the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots.”

Adam says, “”It is sincere a pleasure to join the advisory board for the Social Media Marketing Institute.  SMMI’s development and delivery of quality social marketing training programs are vital to companies and associations embracing social marketing strategies across all industries. I am excited to work with a talented team, continuing development and strategic growth of the Institute.”

We are thrilled to have an executive with Adam’s expertise join our team of Advisory Board members.  His extensive experience will be instrumental in helping SMMI reach our strategic objectives.  Welcome Adam!