5 Billion Minutes

Those owning and working for small to medium sized businesses are predisposed to have a lot on their plate. The focus tends to be on keeping up with client work, internal to-dos, etc. and it can be difficult to develop and manage an active social media strategy. Discussed here are a few low key & low maintenance things to think about, and hopefully will spark a few ideas that really make sense for social media.

Does what you do tap into people’s passions? Remember that social media is a vehicle for sharing special interests! Encourage your audience to comment on or contribute to blogs, share photos of events, products in use, etc. People will inevitably converse about their leisurely pursuits… Bonus.

What can you show off? It’s OK to sometimes! If you’ve got a product that you can demonstrate or talk about in a video, do it on YouTube. If your company has a great portfolio (or potential), show that off with a dynamic website or a Flickr account and sit on it. If you specialize in services, get the audience involved and encourage that they share their experiences on the social media sites. There’s a niche somewhere.

With that, are there identifiable niche communities that regular customers or clients tend to naturally congregate? What advice can you offer in your area of expertise?

Small business owners and entrepreneurs have an advantage in that you can establish yourselves online, while listening in. You don’t want to completely overlook traditional ways to expand your business. Meaning, promote social media efforts both online and off – even something so small as putting your twitter handle on your business card can have great impact.

While you’re in the trial and error phase, track and measure – minimally. No need to be nitty-gritty about metrics if you’re starting small. But, keep track of sales. Have they increased? Set-up a Google Alert. Who’s talking? Above all, ask for feedback and have fun!

Image: jjsala

Just yesterday, The Huffington Post reported on the hunger issue in America and the growing number of people participating in the food stamp program. Shockingly, the US Department of Agriculture documented that there are approximately 49 million Americans struggling to put food on the table, including 17 million children.

Share Our Strength released a survey of 740 K-8 public school teachers conducted by Lake Research Partners finding that 62 percent of teachers see kids who are hungry because they do not get enough to eat at home, and an equal percentage of teachers use personal funds from their own teacher salaries to regularly buy food for the kids to eat in class or take home for weekends.

Generally speaking, the holiday season is a time when we – citizens as a whole – recognize the hungry, and try to reach out to them. That’s precisely what we here at Integrated Web Strategy plan to do.  IWS will generously be donating 240 tons of food to the Association of Arizona Food Banks, and Share Our Strength in D.C. through our Tweets of Hope campaign.

We need YOUR help.

For every retweet sent with our message, we will donate $2, totaling up to $10,000 to both of the food banks! Share this message with your friends and family, for we know that in this economy and with everyone being on a tight budget, putting food on the table shouldn’t be a burden. Tweet a little hope this year. We promise it won’t take you more than 5 minutes.

So for anyone who is on Twitter, head over to the Tweets of Hope page and retweet the message. Not on Twitter? We’d appreciate a sign up! It’s easy:

Got to http://twitter.com/signup
Enter your information & pick a username and password
To set up your profile information and enter a bio, click the ‘Settings’ tab to the right
Upload a picture and don’t forget to save your settings!

Thank You to everyone who has already or plans to participate! Happy holidays and happy tweeting!

Want to thrive in social media? Look different than everyone else at the party.

Being on Twitter and Facebook is still relatively new to marketers and brands alike, but more and more companies, businesses and entrepreneurs will have a full-blown social media strategy (or attempt at) sooner than later.  There are other online influential communities, not to be forgotten - maybe your audience’s most prevalent discussions are in forums, or scribd or whatever it may be.

Solution? Learn to create.

You should spend a little over ¼ of your time developing creativity. Your efforts in content creation are just as important (if not more) than connectivity and communication. Creativity can build blogs, viral videos, compelling email newsletters, and promote attractive media or applications. Need some assistance? Think crowdsourcing and co-creating. Two brains are better than one, so make a few friends!

Since we are human, and people get sick of repetitiveness, we seek out new material. A recent post by adAge touches on the “Big Idea” and how sometimes it can come from the exploration of a new technology or method that enhances consumer connection. It says,

Creative ingenuity lies within the idea, the technology, the concept, the innovation and, perhaps most important, the Holy Grail: consumer connection. Word of mouth is more prevalent than ever and interactive communities have an increasingly louder and more influential voice and are stronger (and sometimes the only) sources of breaking news stories.

These webs we now co-exist in weren’t made for Branded Co. XYZ (It had something to do with Al Gore and a big hole in the ozone layer… I forget now). But anyhow, find yourself a developer buddy and get creative.

Kleenex: getmommed

There was a recent post by eMarketer that discussed a growing number of web shoppers this holiday season, turning to social networks for advice, sales and information research.  A bit of news from the mobile sector:

Even more consumers – 19% – are planning on using the mobile channel for their holiday shopping… one-quarter plan to make a holiday purchase over mobile.

Does this information change your holiday marketing and sales plans?  It is an entirely new holiday shopping experience for consumers.  Since they’ll be seeking out brands they trust and interact with, it’s a good thing you’ve been ‘nice’ to them via social sites this past year, yes?

Image: miss karen

You can stay married to your current strategic development plan if you want the last bone. Unless the content in your emails, provided to subscribers is share-worthy, it’s probable that the content won’t leave that inbox.

Why you post information to social sites, the content within, and how frequently you engage in social media participation, all have to do with the motivation behind it. If you can apply those motivations to your audience, and provide material that perks their little ears, you’ve got yourself a social-email strategy.

The ruling motivators for social engagement include self-interest, self-expression or status-achievement. “What’s in it for me?” Include promotions, advice or interesting facts and media sources – no one will post Company XYZ’s mission statement and boring ongoing rates to their Facebook Page. Make me want to “tell 5 friends”.

Give your subscribers a way of self-expression. A brief example of this could be providing a link to a social site (Facebook is best for applications) that would allow for the creation of a personalized profile graphic to show off, and show support.

In the online world, it isn’t the brand of your shoes, or the model of your car that symbolizes your status. It’s numbers. Your audience—and people in general—want to feel like they have authority, reason to brag or just own a feeling of accomplishment. How can your brand capitalize on that motivation? Do something like this, for example… Whenever a subscriber shares the email content with someone in their social network, they get a point… or two. The more people that they share that information with, they more “points” they get. This could in turn, be used for pulling in subscribers for special events, all while raising awareness and creating a social-email strategy.

So get sharing!

Tip: Do your research. Recognizing what exactly motivates your subscriber base will help you develop email content that is share-worthy.

image: Back in the Pack

It seems that everyone keeps raising the question, “Is social media replacing Email? Is it? What is the next step?” Social media may be changing they way we use the medium, but we’ll still be logging into Flickr and Facebook with our work and school email addresses. Plus, Gmail, for instance, is continuously improving the features that are offered. New ways to organize, get unlimited storage, and receive Push email notifications directly to your mobile device. We’ve spoken about the value in Email Marketing before, but just as a reminder to you, it is still the most popular channel for consumers today, according to eMarketer.

The bottom line is that in an industry where new digital communications make it easier to send a variety of messages, it’s imperative that marketers not only send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, but that they use the right channel as well.

For any business people that don’t see the ROI in social media, there are tools like Radian6, that have the ability to take all the information out there that is being said about a company’s brand, and put all of it on a platform that let’s you “listen, share, learn, and engage”. Just as you would test any other marketing tool, test different social media venues and see what works best, and decide what the healthiest community is for your brand identity. Be flexible and hopefully soon you will be “suggesting friends” to your old friends and co-workers who were afraid of a “fad”. You won’t be the one scratching your head.

This YouTube video (originally published by the popular social media site, Mashable) features Virgin America’s Vice President of Marketing, Porter Gale.  She discusses how she finds social media to be a great engagement strategy and brand-builder.  Let us know your own thoughts in the comments.

According to eMarketer, social networking is one of the most important - in addition to popular - activities, both online and off. The only activity that could one-up social media was email, still. Both categories ranked above chatting and just plain web browsing. Email marketing, old and wise, done well means offline dollars for you.

Unsurprisingly, the number one activity on social networking sites was posting photos. People love it – they’re really getting engaged, with 81% of respondents taking part. People link, “like”, watch, share and love to spend their time consuming content– So no, Facebook photos aren’t solely an enabling form of voyeurism.

More over, the second highest ranked activity users take part in, is responding to other content people post. Ah yes, two, three and four-way communication.

As it turns out, Twitter is more like email than we think. According to a recent article published by AdAge, when viewed in context, the leverage that Twitter needs is to study exactly what it was that made email so successful. In turn, these practices will ensure that the little bird stays put…for a while.  Because Twitter groups, like Twibes, are made up of people with a high interest, make note of them, for they are your community with intent.

“Many email-like capabilities would be valuable to Twitter advertisers – the ability to segment audiences, access dynamic reporting, test and optimize campaigns in real time, conduct A/B creative tests and port newly acquired consumers directly into the Twitter engagement stream. “

You may be surprised, however, to find that the more time people spend on social networks, the more time they will also spend on email, according to Nielsen. You’d think the latter but the more time people spend online, allowing push email notifications, receiving email notifications for their many social sites and updates, the more they’ll be married to their email. How novel.

If the public leads marketers, and the public’s eyes wander over to social networking sites, what’s an SMO to do? Follow them (pun intended).

Regardless of how social networks and the millions of users feel about it, the social media environment is increasingly going to be used as a marketing tool. As Internet users gravitate towards this realm and towards each other, online marketing is likely to take a community-based focus. We know that the ultimate goal here is to expose a marketing campaign to as many eyes as possible.

What’s going to happen when The Wall Street Journal starts charging money each week for people to view their news content? It’s happening, according to paidContent. With social media gaining popularity exponentially and the rate at which news content is distributed, sources are going to have to get creative. Sure, there are going to be a select few who will pay for the news, but the rest will join the large number of people flocking to Twitter for engagement, their local news, New York Times or BBC fix.   News (worth paying for) more than likely will have gone viral after the first two hours anyhow.

Personalized communication can be maintained between a brand and its audience or customer base.  More than ever, social media marketing can open up endless opportunities for smaller organizations. Do you own a small business or are you starting up a local non-profit? Keep in mind some simple SMO methods to generate maximum publicity – be social.

How prevalent is the use of social media within companies?  Can it drain employee productivity? According to a study done by Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law, 51 percent of executives have this fear. What about the other 49 percent? Well they think that the use of social media has the ability to damage a company’s reputation.

What about enhancing relationships and interacting with customers for personalized customer service and the ability to build brand reputation? Besides, if it weren’t for the social networking sites, how could senior management read what customers are saying about their brand in the blogosphere (52% admit they do read what’s being said) or monitor competitors’ use of social networking (47% do this, too)?

The most used social media outlets among respondents, starting with majority were Facebook, followed by Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

The national survey also found that fewer than one in three respondents’ organization has set policies on the use of social media, which would most likely explain why many organizations have considered prohibiting the use altogether or have at least restricted the use. Furthermore, 26 percent of companies surveyed had the right idea - that social media should be encouraged to enhance corporate objectives and embrace new opportunities.

We should welcome constructive social media into the workplace considering it’s probable benefits. Connect with the people, learn their business needs, and be able to give a flexible, personified response.

Not saying that employees should be tweeting about everything and anything at any time – some guidelines are a good idea – but the use of social media can be proactive and quite advantageous to any company in a competitive market.  And oh, let’s not forget how social media encourages customer retention.