In a series of blogs started last month I will address four vital aspects of Social Media success:

1) Company and brand positioning using social media.

2) Market research and customer profiling using social media.

3) Utilizing social media for on line promotions.

4) Tying your social media marketing efforts to your traditional advertising and media.

This month’s installment I will discuss above aspect #2 – Market research and customer profiling using social media.

Years ago in marketing, the closest most companies ever got to customers were focus groups (research). You never had to actually talk to them.

Today, social media provides companies the opportunity to get much more up close and personal with their customers. A review of Twitter and Facebook shows the many ways in which companies don’t get it. There are the abandoned accounts where companies have just given up and there are others where companies are plowing on even though they are doing more harm than good.

When setting up social media accounts like Facebook, people fill out a profile which asks many questions like: sex, age, education level, hobbies, income bracket, etc. You can leverage this valuable marketing insight (research is done for you!).

Online survey software exists which allows you to survey those on your email contact list (yet more research). You write the business specific questions you ask your own hand selected focus group!

Customer testimonials (reviews) are another great research tool – a barometer if you will, on how you are perceived. You will see what things you (and your employees) are doing right and areas for improvement.

Here are some common social media tips that will help focus your customer profile and research efforts:

• Be human

When you’re using social media, you are stepping into the room with your customers and you need to engage with them on a personal level.  If you want them to stick around, you need to behave appropriately. That means you need to be concerned, interesting and interested and have a conversation about your brand without bragging, spamming, selling, or talking like you are a press release. In any social media interaction, you should be asking yourself: What would a human do? And do that.

• Don’t overreach

Here are some of the brands that are recognized social media stars – Starbucks, Coke, Zappos. They have passionate fans and have used social media to build yet deeper and stronger relationships with them. But most brands aren’t so lucky and won’t be able to copy what they do and enjoy the same level of success. If you have a relatively weak relationship, your customers are going to quickly tire of you if you are all Chatty Cathy with them. A study by ExactTarget showed that the #1 reason for people to unlike brands on Facebook was that they posted too frequently.

• Add value

Rather than force conversations that your customers don’t want to have, think about how to add some value. Even brands in the most mundane of categories with the weakest of relationships can find ways to add value. For example, they can provide useful information about their products or services and about their categories. If all else fails, a sure-fire way of adding value is to give out coupons (which is what many customers want anyway).

• Listen and respond

According to a study by Socialbakers, brands don’t respond to 95% of questions posted on their Facebook walls. 95%! If you’ve gone to all the trouble of setting up a page, it seems almost perverse not to bother responding to customer questions. This is a two-way medium (yet more research). You get to talk but you also need to listen and respond.

• Use the tools available!

A recent IBM study of 1,700 companies found that 82% planned to increase their use of social media. However, only 26% of them are actually tracking blogs and less than half are tracking customer reviews to help shape their marketing plans. Not good enough! Start using the tools and learn by participation.

By researching friends and followers profiles you can gain insight into who your perfect customer is and get ideas about how to better target your social media and advertising. Powerful information is available at your fingertips – learn to leverage it for increased visitor conversion rates and increased sales.

In a series of blogs I will address the following four important aspects of Social Media engagement:
1) Company and brand positioning using social media
2) Market research and customer profiling using social media
3) Utilizing social media for online promotions
4) Tying your social media marketing efforts to your traditional advertising and media

Here are some thoughts on aspect #1 –

A lot of companies implement their social media without looking at the companies positioning and branding and how the social media platforms support it. Many ‘new’ marketers are not implementing basic and time tested marketing concepts… and then expecting the social media platforms to support them purely based on the technology.

Social media may be considered be ‘new’ tool by many… it is a young tool, whose success is more fully realized when good ol’ marketing concepts are employed with it. Here is a short list of common concepts:

• Consumer behavior
• Direct marketing
• Distribution
• Marketing management
• Marketing research
• Pricing
• Product management
  • Brand management
  • Positioning
• Promotion
  • Advertising
  • Marketing communications
  • Publicity
  • Sales and sales promotion

Planned and organized communication is the key to success in positioning your company and brand. A company needs to clearly communicate three vital things; who they are, what they do, and why they are better than the competition. We frequently see companies whose marketing is missing one or all three of these things.

The business benefits of marketing social media (SMM), also known as Social Media Optimization (SMO), include; an additional channel or means to gain customer insight, recruitment and retention of new customers, and a method of managing reputation online.

Sharing content via social media allows potential customers to inform friends and others of positive experiences, which makes it an ideal channel for companies to gain word-of-web referrals. Additionally, the occasional negative comment can be addressed directly to fix the complaint and encourage users to give the brand another chance.

Studies share that people now spend three times more time on social media than on email. There is much to discuss, so let’s spend quality time in 2012 attracting, connecting with, and converting customers.

Web site SEO or ‘Search Engine Optimization’ can potentially improve a site and its search ranking. SEO is a combination of applied techniques and tactics that vary based on a company’s goals and other defining factors. Responsible web marketers design and build sites that are search engine-friendly from the ground up… and good SEO efforts can help improve existing sites too.

Scammers insert doubt and fear into the SEO process and prey upon innocent business owners. Companies can protect themselves and find reputable SEO sources. For valuable, authoritative SEO insight and direction we merely have to turn to Google, the King-of-Search.

On their web site Google states, “Advertising with Google won’t have any effect on your site’s presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results.”

Google also points out these things to consider:

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.

Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.

Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.

• You should never have to link to an SEO.

Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of “free-for-all” links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don’t affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines — at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

• Choose wisely.

While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course.

• Be sure to understand where the money goes.

While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results.

• What are some other things to look out for?

There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO company:

• owns ‘shadow’ domains
• puts links to their other clients on ‘doorway’ pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google’s index or is not itself listed in Google

A landscape contractor client of ours who has been approached by scammers inquired of us about one scammer in particular… their claims were appealing, but still found them somewhat dubious. We ran the scammers name through the Better Business Bureau and found they had a poor rating and had operated under a number of alias business names in the past. This old axiom applies particularly well to new scammers, ‘if their claims seem too good to be true then the likelihood is… they aren’t true’.

Being aware and informed is the best ‘mosquito’ repellent you can have. Send the scammers fleeing with your insight and knowledge.

Given a choice between more 10% more site traffic and a 0.5% increase in conversion or lead engagement, we will take the 0.5% increase in conversion rate every time. That’s because an increased conversion rate results in real revenue for your business. The fastest way to determine if your customers are engaging with your web site is to review your site analytics looking at your ‘bounce’ rate (visitors that hit a site and don’t stay). The goal is to decrease or limit a site’s bounce rate – which can be achieved by creating compelling content that grabs reader attention so they stay on the website. It has been reported that efforts to reduce bounce rates are especially important when considering marketing to mobile audiences, as 85% of mobile web users leave a site within five seconds! What needs to be done to increase your conversion rate is to thoughtfully, frequently, and consistently make adjustments to your web site to improve it in the following areas:

1)      Describe what you do and your value

2)      Provide call(s) to action that invite your customers to engage with your business

3)      Provide content that engages your visitors and makes them want to find out more

By adjusting those three site aspects and playing with where things are located on each page, you can slowly optimize your engagement and increase your conversion rate. Taking the time to do this is worth every minute because this creates real dollars for your organization!

Today customers determine convenience not in the time to drive, browse, and buy from a store – but it begins in their down time with web-based research from their home or laptop computer, or from mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) in their travels. This research is still followed by the traditional decision-making process, partner approval, and price comparisons – all prior to any store visit, or purchase.

Consider that reports show that 40% of all retail customers have a Facebook page – and its fastest growing audience is people in their 40s and 50s. With its 600 million + users Facebook could be considered the fourth largest nation in the world.

While you are considering whether or not to engage with social marketing chances are your competitors have already engaged with one or more of the social networking tools – and are posting to Facebook and/or Twitter, posting a new blog article, or emailing their latest newsletter.

For social marketing to be successful these three aspects must be considered and addressed:

1. Customers must be exposed to your content (be a fan on Facebook, follow you on Twitter, receive your e-newsletter).
2. Customers must be aware of your content (meaning they actually see it)
3. Customers must be motivated by something in your content to take action (buying product/service or sharing your online info)

You expose, make aware and motivate customers by connecting with them and starting conversations as you grow your online community. Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your web presence (and potential customers) more than either of the other two main SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools – Linking Domains and Key Words. Relevant, original content drives link building (connections) online… and external link building is a very effective SEO strategy.

Engaging social marketing as a related, powerful SEO influencer should be an integral part of your marketing plan. The technology is here, access to it exists and is available to all, and there is no turning back, so engage and enjoy!

Almost 80 percent of that survey’s respondents indicated they believe social media is about more than just financial gains. Although ROI may be an important component of all marketing strategies, businesses also view Social Media as a means of connecting with customers and establishing long-term relationships.

The rise of mobile device usage (smartphones, tablets) was identified in the study report as a benefit to Social Media marketing. The bulk of marketers view smartphones and tablets as important tools for searching for information and driving sales. A businesses Social media and local SEO can be enhanced, when paired with mobile marketing practices, as the combination gives on-the-go consumers constant access to new and nearby offers. Industry experts are welcoming this upsurge where social, local and mobile combine to influence shopping decisions.

Mobile marketing is expected to help increase customer engagement just like social media has proven to do. According to the report, 38 percent of marketers noted they are able to connect with consumers more effectively through mobile.

It has become evident that socially driven mobile content has the potential to increase brand loyalty, thereby driving sales among nearby on-the-go shoppers.

Some mobile performance metrics shared below are a good reminder to us about the power and influence of mobile, and the need to be implementing mobile marketing in your overall Content marketing plan:

• 400% increase in mobile searches in the past year
• 63% of people use mobile search before purchasing
• One in three mobile searches are local
• 59% of mobile users share content with their friends

Mobile marketing is Social Media marketing with wheels… and another valuable tool in your web marketing arsenal. It will help increase your web visibility, reach, and impact. In combination with Social and Local it will give your web marketing a powerful 1-2-3 punch – in 2011 and the future.

When it comes to shopping, customers understand that knowledge is power – and businesses that provide them knowledge in the form of relevant, custom content gain a competitive edge. Businesses that understand that have been shifting their marketing budgets away from traditional marketing methods, and allocating their dollars into Content Marketing.

Most customers appreciate it when brands provide valuable content, and more are good with the fact that content marketers are selling something as long as the information is useful – preferring information from businesses in the form of articles over ads. Customized content can help businesses maintain top-of-mind awareness among existing clients.

The sharing of content is also a means of prompting customer decision-making by delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information – driving profitable customer action. Some additional benefits of Content Marketing are the retaining of customers attention, and improving brand and business loyalty.

In a recent edition of Content magazine data was shared which demonstrates businesses increasing interest and investment in Content Marketing… and in shoppers’ growing interest in branded, custom content.

The Internet demands unique and compelling content be published on your web site and social media – which drives organic search optimization and improves ranking for keywords and phrases in the search engines.

Businesses can boost web site and social media relevancy through dynamic custom content. Content needs to be related to potential customers’ likes and interests. By ensuring content is both fresh and timely, businesses can deliver information that is valuable and insightful – improving the customer relationship.

Much of measuring and managing Content Marketing ROI is seeing that content is consistently updated, which helps increase a business’ overall pages to be indexed by search engines (and those amounts can be tracked through correct analytics). And the more keyword-optimized pages a site and social media generates, the more visible your business becomes to search engines.

But, providing dynamic content proves to be a challenge for many businesses as they share that their lack of time and editorial resources are the barriers to Content Marketing success.

Content Marketing, it’s all about time investment – your time, or staff time, or contracted web marketers time. Time spent creating relevant content consistently and profitably, is time well spent. Time-strapped businesses should consider working with a contract web marketing team offering editorial resources with custom content development capabilities.

Keep in mind that, Content is King… for web success in 2011 and the future!

Although Social Media is an online activity, its true results and impact are felt only over time. Social Media when practiced best is brand building – requiring commitment and endurance. It takes time to build your credibility, influence, and community. No matter what your goal it’s not one that can be realized overnight. While patience is generally a virtue – with Social Media patience is a must.

You start by building your followers (fan base) first, and that requires consistent effort and relevant content. Once you have some fans the next step is to implement a Social Media campaign to increase the number of followers or fans, then once you have a sufficient fan base you will want to foster a greater level of engagement with those fans.

When at this more advanced level you will want to experiment, test and retest content and techniques to help drive deeper engagement – based on some conclusions from successes or failures.

Some find it can initially be rather frustrating as they bring social media to their business. At first you are excited about implementing it, and then you discover that it takes off slowly. Don’t get frustrated, focus on endurance – as success takes time and requires patience.

Social Media Endurance Tips

1. Time Is On Your Side. Some businesses can affect an impact after a several months… others after a year. Different levels of participation and different messages per individual businesses make it impossible to set and predict any certain number. This it is not about time, it is about participation. A good measure for activity should be in terms of “per/500 Tweets” rather than “days since started”.
2. Be Consistently Active. You or your media person/team (internal or outsourced) need to dedicate some time each day (or to a plan) to develop, post, retweet, and respond not only on your pages and feeds, but on other’s as well. Be interactive!
3. Don’t Be Too Pitchy. If you always come across like a TV pitch-man people will not want to follow or communicate with you. Take an interest in what others are sharing before you promote your business. If you grab attention through regular conversation, they’ll follow a link from your profile. It is perfectly okay to talk about yourself occasionally… just not all the time.
4. Make Realistic Goals. Don’t set your initial goal as, ‘Have 50k followers in 6 months’. Make your first goal simpler and obtainable, such as, ‘Send 100 tweets this month” or ‘Reply/retweet 5 new people each day’.
5. Success Is Not Volume. You want to raise awareness in your business and be recognized as a knowledge leader in your industry and of course, drive sales – but you can generate the same amount of sales success with 100 loyal followers as you would with 10K casual followers.

You should enter the social networking sphere mindful that you need to be in it for the long haul – with the knowledge that this is not a sprint, but a long distance event. People will find you, but it will take time. Here at Everbearing we have personally witnessed client web site traffic go up (and down) as a direct result to their social media engagement level.

To be successful in the social world you, or your team, need to put it the time, and then give it time. If you plan to only dedicate a few minutes a week to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., you can’t expect the world at your door in six months. When involved in Social Media, take your time, enjoy the process, build your credibility and community, have great conversations… then sell.

Although Return-On-Ignoring is not a new concept, Jeff gave it a new name and face. He addressed the negative impact (loss of business) that a company incurs by not adopting the new web marketing venues – social media. Reluctance to embrace these methods can lead to lost revenue. I want to further explore such head-in-the-sand policies.

Let’s consider and compare the history and evolution of the telephone. The telephone was initially a social networking tool connecting households in communities. The battery powered devices were leased in pairs to subscribers and linked by a single wire. Users who wanted the ability to speak to several different locations would need to obtain and set up three or four pairs of telephones. Then the invention of switchboards allowed multiple lines to be centrally and conveniently connected and routed to others.

The switchboard broadened the reach of the phone and encouraged and promoted the use of this social media tool in a business application. It is a lead generation and conversion tool for both existing and potential customers. We now know that the phone is one of the most common devices in the world and has long been considered indispensable to businesses, households and governments.

I can just hear some the comments of some business owners who initially ignored putting a phone their shop or store. They might have said, “I don’t use a phone and I don’t think my customers do either” or “I don’t use one at home; why would I put one in my store”.

The telephone was just another tool to communicate with customers. You could still walk next door and talk or mail a letter, or send a telegraph. The Internet (web sites) and social media tools (email newsletters, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) are just new business communication tools which augment the existing various other methods, just as the telephone did in its day.

Some business owners make assumptions regarding which social networking tools they believe their customers are or are not using, based on their own comfort level. For example, there are those who don’t understand or personally use Twitter; if they decide not to use Twitter as one of their business networking tools then they are ignoring an audience of 175 million Twitter users. Connecting with consumers is not about you or the tools you prefer or use; it’s all about which tools your existing and potential customers are using – and then engaging with your customers in a way they want to be engaged.

Until recently, Internet search traditionally guided consumers through the online buying process, but now social media is increasingly a valuable resource for buyers looking to compare businesses, products and brands. In fact, buyers who purchase or convert online are almost as likely to use a combination of search and social resources (48%) as they are to use just search (51%) in deciding to purchase*.

Studies show that buyers researching brands on their product shortlist depend largely on their peers’ opinions – 30% of consumers rely on user reviews to aid in their purchase decision*. And social media is where they turn for those peer business/product/service reviews, endorsements and recommendations.

Mobile phone users are accessing all online media and in March comScore findings identified the top three mobile shopping activities for US smartphone users: finding nearby stores (49%), comparing prices prior to shopping (46%) and researching product details (44%).

Social media has evolved from experimentation into serious web marketing campaigns. To succeed in the new marketplace, it’s best not to have your head-in-the-sand. It is important to adapt and change the way you view your marketing and customer communications – this may mean changing the way you do business to connect with new customers.

Ignoring new media won’t get you the real ROI (Return On Investment) that you are after.

*www.emarketer.com

We really started to notice changes in the way that Google is displaying the last Tweet from particular accounts in their search results as Caffeine was released. As they continue to refine this application Tweets are showing more and more quickly. Recently this new process was tested. In this test Tweets were sent, and then Google search results were immediately refreshed. Tweets were refreshed almost immediately!

No standard indexing technology could work that quickly. To further enhance this technology Google has gone to the source. Google has now tied their search results directly into the Twitter API. An Application Programming Interface (API) put simply is a particular set of rules and specifications that software programs can follow to communicate with each other. It serves as an interface different software programs and facilitates their interaction.

Most tweets are eventually indexed – some within minutes, some within hours or even days. These Tweets are being presented in their raw form prior to being indexed. The Tweets themselves are not being used in search results through this new method – they will be indexed separately and can then appear in searches as their own listings, but this is different.

‘Indexed’ refers to material that has been read, understood, and classified based upon its content, the history of the domain, links coming into the page, and other factors. Once they’re indexed, they can appear in search results as stand-alone listings.

The cool change is that links within Tweets are maintained. Data is being parsed by hundreds of websites that use the Twitter API. This data is manipulated in many different ways. However, there is only one way to search this data, keywords.

We know how important keywords are in content, Twitter is teaching us how important these keywords are in Tweets. Relationships are created via the keywords that are in the Tweets and people are finding Tweets based on those keyword searches.

There are two types of Twitter keywords, those without and those with hash tags. The first is actual keywords as you imagine them, such as “nursery” and then the hash tag version of a keyword, such as “#nursery”.

Although Google is looking for the latest news and statements on Twitter, they are not interested in conversations amongst users.

In 2010 comScore reported the following for worldwide search queries per top engines:

• Google: 88 billion per month
• Twitter: 19 billion per month
• Yahoo: 9.4 billion per month
• Bing: 4.1 billion per month

The figures show Twitter is outpacing both Yahoo and Bing in search queries, and Google’s enhanced process just verifies the impact and importance of Twitter. This drives up the value and increased importance of using Twitter as another tool to further engage with your current and potential customers. The rapid integration of Twitter Tweets into Google real-time news results makes Twitter applicable to any user as well as the companies that serve them.