Disappointed With Your Company’s Blog, Linkedin, Face Book, And Twitter Reach?

When you attend a business conference these days you’ll find the sessions on Blogging, LinkedIn, Face book, and Twitter jammed and most anything else close to empty.  We now exist in a society that jumps on the next big thing, but that impulse can limit our company’s top and bottom line performance.  As a consequence, we never achieve the high levels of returns we were expecting from this new buzz; hence we are seriously disappointed in the results. Some relevant questions to ask before you walk away from Social Media in search of the next best thing:

Why did your company begin to use Social Media sites?

Are your Social Media sites consistent with your company’s brand, message, and customer base?

What is your Social Media plan for 2011? (Are you measuring?)

Who is the project manager of your social media work flow? Are they knowledgeable or just have a knack for these things?

Does the senior executive group champion this project? Why or why not?

While many companies are driven by the desire to improve their growth, frustrated executives may just be keeping up with the Joneses.  Social Media is a buzz that is red hot, and they didn’t want to appear “behind the competition”.

Yes, it’s important to stay “cutting edge” in one’s field.  But doing so shouldn’t prevent us from doing it well, aggressively, and competently. Companies should be managing these campaigns to be the top one or two in your competitive market.

What are important solutions, old and new, to boost your Social Media ROI productivity? 

• Blogs on a consistent schedule.
• Permission Email and direct marketing “high touch paper” campaigns back to the website.
• “Pay for click” targeted marketing.
• Data base capture.
• Customer and prospect data base testing and cleaning on a regular basis.
• Email auto signatures back to the official website on all employee pages.
• Website addresses on all product, collateral materials, and catalogs.
• Cross linked images on the company website to send to your Social Media sites.
• Use video on your sites via YouTube channeling (The 2^nd largest search engine in use).
• Professional Social Media networking forums on “What is Working, What is Not.”
• Intranets and CRM systems for employee, supplier, and customer data views linked to your Social Media.
• Search Engine Optimization, hand held (i.e. Blackberry) formatting.
• Job posting on both job boards and relevant social media sites linked to your website, ATS capabilities for new talent sourcing.

Go for it, jump in with two feet.  Your internet brand presence is how your company is initially evaluated from the outside world. Your switchboard operator and your cyber presence are your company’s first contact, are you happy with it? 2011 is the time to focus on a positive, meaningful, Social Media campaign for your company. If you are going to do it, do it right.

5 Reasons Your Social Media Strategy Isn’t Working:

This topic seems to have come out of the woodwork this week, what’s up?  My discussions have been spawned by the Friday release of the new movie on Face Book; “The Social Network.” Frustrations abound with the folks I’m talking too as their expectations are “If you build it they should come by the thousands... Not so fast! 

 

Like anything website related in the last ten years the expectations may be overstated as to how easy it is to launch the next entrepreneur billionaire. 5 selected questions of reflection are:

*It’s not smart marketing to “jump the shark” and do “in your face” selling of products via your social media sites. Remember the dot com bust?  You certainly can sell stuff, but try to do it without ticking people off! Engage folks with relevant, original content, not copied and pasted links to news articles that they have already read the abstract of. If they like and trust you they may approach you about any services your company offers, start there.

*You are measuring the wrong analytics. It’s not merely a Hollywood popularity contest of how many followers you can get, rather how many relevant, targeted followers that come back and connect with what you are doing.

*Your content is great, but it doesn’t get distributed and dies on the vine. Can you broadcast across Twitter, Face Book, Linkedin, YouTube, Flickr, and your blog  etc with one click?, why not?  Do you utilize video on other hosts i.e. YouTube? Why not? Do you Podcast your content? Why Not?

*We still live in a high touch society!  Do you leverage your email signature to your social media via a link? Also, don’t forget any other “touch points” to your client’s friends, etc i.e.  URL addresses to your blog or website on your paper catalogues. Printing your web or blog link on hand held collateral materials is still very powerful marketing and should not be left to chance; get all your employees to have an auto signature on company emails linking back to your “official” site.

*You don’t understand what social media is supposed to do when it’s working. Your “Brand” needs to be consistent and when folks find you via any social media channel (Twitter, Blog, Website, Face Book, Linkedin, YouTube, etc) who you are needs to be clear and understood in 3 seconds! Be patient and keep writing…………………….. They will come!

Explaining Social Media to Legacy Thinkers:

I often get curious emails, like I just received, asking me to explain how I reinvented myself in the brave new world of Social Media. Many questions come from folks that are old business associates I’ve known for over 25 years. Seems Social Media is popping up everywhere and inquiring minds are want to know, problem is they are viewing it from old world rules. 

For me it was a lot like leaning a new language i.e. each  breakthrough came when I stopped trying to translate every word in my head and started to actually “think” in that language! 

Some selected reflections for those adventurous legacy souls who are new to the Social Media game:

*The human condition has not changed for thousands of years. Social Media is “networking” merely in a rapid electronic medium. Human networking has been a normal means of getting things sold, bought, done, changed, etc for thousands of years in all cultures.

*After the dot com bust- EBay emerged as a huge winner. Try to think of EBay as a yard sale on steroids, not an internet site and you will start to get your arms around why people use it so much.

*Business is many times an extension of who you like and trust, any salesperson worth their salt will tell you that!  Top sites that are frequently visited (On YouTube, Blogs, Linkedin, Face book, Twitter, Websites, etc) share humor, approachability, ease of navigation, and clear/original  content as common ground. If you build it, they will come!

*I’m in my 50’s and many folks senior to me are much more active than I. It’s a myth to think Social Media demographics are the younger generations.

* Social Media is here to stay. Embrace it, share it, coddle it, protect it, and use it! Don’t look back………………..