This is a pretty straight forward question that seems to pull in a vast difference in answers and opinions, once  it even elicited a “dunno”.  But typically the answers revolve around something like “engagement” or “like building” or  ”increasing exposure.” It is also typical that these responses reflect how the person answering the question has been groomed by their own media consumption; their business savvy (or lack thereof) and who their latest guru du jour is. Sadly, the “generation of revenue” is rarely an answer to the above question. In fact, we even had one corporate reponder state: “Not for revenue, a place to connect to our customers and peers!” (I can only hope this was an intern  referring to all 27 of the fans they had listed on their Facebook page.)

Maybe we should reshape the question: Why are you in business? 

The response here is nearly unanimous: To make money!

That being said, how does your engagement strategy, increased exposure, like building and similar campaigns  move your business toward that goal?  Do you have business goals set up and tied into your marketing and vice-versa? Are you measuring the effect of these campaigns over both long and short term?

This isn’t a list of all the things you should/could be doing (there’s enough of that cookie cutter crap out there), because each business should be doing what uniquely sets their business apart from their competitors.  If anything is to be taken from this it should be that there is a difference between simply popping out Facebook posts in the hope that fans will react and/or notice, and designing a campaign that will entice them into your business.

And yes, we know we don’t necessarily practice what we preach. We are remiss in creating regular blog posts, building our Facebook page to thousands of followers, interacting on Twitter enough to satisfy what the Twitterati defines as essential. But then, we are blessed enough to have a full client roster, and when a client recently pointed this out we simply asked if they would rather us focus on building our client base or theirs.  Despite the fact that the answer seemed a bit snarky, it also made them realize that social media is a mutually beneficial medium which helps them reach their business goals when they help their clients reach their own. This is what adds revenue in the short and long terms.

Photo credit:  Louis Gubitosi

1. Every action needs to be tied to and interwoven with a specific business goal in mind.
2. The world changes every second and your marketing show have no static lines other than the specific goals they are tied to. Make everything fluid and mobile.
3. Keep 80% focused on current repeat clients and their needs. One repeat client is worth 20 “new” clients; and, in a socially driven business atmosphere they tend to drive more new clients your way than you can spend in advertising/marketing to get.
4. Detach yourself from the noise of online marketing and stay focused on your goals and objectives.
5. Learn the mind of your customers; think like them; be the buyer and not the seller. By picking up on the conscious and unconscious signals of clients (and competitors) you are better able to match your objectives to their intentions and desires (and counter competitive strategies). [Refer back to #2]
6. Stay in control without grasping it. This isn’t war, you’re building relationships with customers, save the warrior tactics for competitors. [Refer to #3]
7. Create your overall strategy with small, measurable objectives that build toward a larger objective. It’s easier to manage and allows immediate fluidity.
8. Think beyond the immediate objectives even as you design and execute them. One setback does not invalidate the whole plan.
9. Upset expectations. Stand yourself apart from competitors.
10. Light the fire. Goals and objectives are  great, but actions gets results. Plan and act. Online marketing does nothing if nothing is done.

When Facebook switched to  iFrames for their business pages there was a mad rush to find tools, services and plugins that could help entrepreneurs build on the many options that iFrames offer.

Hence our search began for a service/plugin that could be easily used by the average non-tech business, at little to no cost,  and which still delivered the ability to positively effect  to enhance a business’ Facebook  ”like” rate.

The Facebook Tab Manager is such a tool. It is a WordPress plugin that works directly from, and can be easily designed within, the familiarity or your WordPress website. Inbound Zombie, who works with small nonprofits,  created the video you see below. It offers a simple and easy solution to basic landing pages and tabs within Facebook.

Generating Revenue with Facebook

For those looking for a a landing page that creates  actual revenue and repeat customers (not just fans and likes), we suggest that you take a look at our sister site’s new  integrated SMS Facebook tool , which offers small businesses the immediacy and reach of revenue growth with SMS and compliments it with the complete social integration of Facebook. Since 40% of consumers “like” a Facebook page to get deals, and since text messaging IS the number one form of social communication on the planet, the integration of the two and the simplicity of the text messaging system behind it, add value to the business owner by making Facebook a measurable revenue platform instead of just a customer communication hub. You can see a live demo of this feature by visiting Practical Text on Facebook and clicking on the FB DEMO Page tab on the left side of your screen.

Here’s why this won’t work, and we’re going to explore a bit of the internet underbelly in doing so.

1. Targeting to the proper audience in any marketing campaign is necessary for any level of success. As of yet, no word on if this program will target any particular audience at all (besides gamers). If I am now paying my supposed target to watch the ad verses actually capturing his/her interest will  real interest even ensue. If there is no real interest then marketing dollars are wasted.
2. Tried Before. This has been tried before and failed miserably. People who are paid to watch advertisements are unlikely to make a purchase. One can only assume that Facebook’s idea here is to allow the users to purchase items that actually interest them with the credits they would earn. But that doesn’t do much for the advertiser who spent the money to create the ads no one wants to see.
3. Fake accounts. Just like Twitter, but less known is the problem of fake accounts on Facebook.  They are massive in number, account for much of the spam and malware that attacks Facebook each day, and a person can literally have a thousand or more accounts set up in a matter of hours. Or, you can contract someone to do it for you on any one of the freelance sites. There are also  programs you can purchase to do the same thing. With the amount of malware seen each day on Facebook, how hard do they really think it would be for a scammer to turn his accounts on pay per view ads?
4. Small Business Lockout. Small businesses together spend a vast amount of money on advertising across all mediums, and in fact most mediums depend on the volume of small business dollars more than they do on the larger single expenditures of corporations. It’s a numbers game, there are simply more small businesses spending than there are large companies, even though they have vastly different budgets.  Small businesses generally cannot afford to create ”branded entertainment ” and this sompletely locks out  99% of the small businesses who pour money into Facebook advertising.
5. Online Literacy. Sorry, but this idea seems to simply disregard the online literacy of the average Facebook user. Granted the 60+ crowd might not understand that they can earn their credit by simply skipping to the end of the video, or by opening another tab and moving on to what they really want, but most of Facebook’s users are a bit more tech savvy than that. Again, wasted marketing dollars and inflated click through rates.
6. Consumer Reaction. So far the sentiment online has not appeared to be too keen on the idea, and while Mark Zuckerberg talks about being social and open, he does now run a business and not some college project. A business needs revenue, and Facebook has jumped into the advertising business full force and will (and must) continue do move forward with revenue producing metrics. However, in the end, it will be Facebook users that will decide his ultimate success. 500+ million participants doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t pay back your investors, and he has a lot of investors.

I wish them much success with this, I just don’t see it working very well. Your thoughts?

Whether the platform is an effective for advertising is another matter that consumers will ultimately decide.  And while performance of the ads continues to be in doubt, it can’t be denied the growing amount money that flows into social advertising.

Does that mean we’ve lost the “social” aspect of social? No, it just means that if we want to play, then we got to pay, and that means advertisements. They are all around the games we attend, on the buses we ride, on the highways we drive down, yet somehow we expect that they shouldn’t be in our Facebook stream.  ?!

I don’t care for them either, especially if they are intrusive or tracking, or just some junk I will never use; but it is the price of playing in someone else’s house. You have to play by their rules and listen to what their parents put on the radio, or have you forgotten those road trips already?

Often you will see social media posts and commentaries that wax on about the things you need to do in order for your social media to be effective. It’s usually a laundry list of  strategies, insights and tips to help you push your social efforts over the edge of a marketing ROI.  The list might look something like this:

• Create Great Content
• Think like a reporter
• Think like a digital publisher
• Think like a rock star
• You need to crowdsource
• Provide “value”
• Provide discounts, coupons, incentives, bogos and giveaways
• You need to blog/tweet/post/ask questions/give answers
• You need to engage!

And there’s so much more, but what most often seems to be lacking from these lists is effort.

Plain, simple effort.

The Lack of Effort

It may seem odd that effort is the most basic thing missing, what with all the experts out there and all the information freely available (including the laundry lists of “should be doing”), but when we see a business struggling with social (or not involved at all), the list more often than not looks more like this:

“I don’t understand/am afraid of  the technology.” = Hasn’t taken the time to research and figure it out and the business is run based on avoidance of “new/unknown” and stuck with “known” (even when the “known” isn’t working).

Social media isn’t all that complicated but, like anything else, takes time to understand, implement and work. The more technical needs can be outsourced if necessary. A tweet/ facebook/linkedin post isn’t technical.

“I don’t have the time.” = Zero in equals zero out, much like running the rest of the business. If you can’t do it yourself look into outsourcing the more time consuming tasks.

“Didn’t work so I quit.”= Didn’t take the effort to create a plan; this is usually reflected in the business model.

“I got stuck” = No effort to research a solution or find a resource person to solve the issue. Stuck is short for “Didn’t work, so I quit.”

“It’s easier to do offline advertising.” I have yet to see any business that doesn’t take immense effort to succeed, if you’re looking for the “easy solution,”  well…., go back to “easier” it’s another short for  ”Didn’t work so I quit.” If it’s an ROI factor that is something different, but “easier” should never be mistaken for “effective.”

“Not my job… I’m an entertainer, accountant, executive, etc; that’s for those ‘other’ people” = Not interested in investing in themselves, did not have the inclination, or put in the effort to realize that the game has changed and that personal branding is a growing requirement in career progression.

“It’s not real people…” = Might be a couple million people that disagree with that, but put in the effort to see if that is the case. One of the first things we teach clients is that social networking is just like networking in a room, if your an entertainer, an executive or in sales and someone says something to you, you don’t just walk on by without at least acknowledging them. In fact, if your in growth mode then you should be trying to talk with as many people as possible without being intrusive and rude, just like you would in a room.

The Effect of Effort

There’s a simple tactic at work in all of the above. You can read every one of the 5 million ‘how to’ lists, every one of the 2 million “should be doing” lists, and all of the blogs posts from the 1/2 million new social media experts that sprout up each day, but you won’t succeed with any of their advice, plans, formulas and  strategies without a your own effort.

Failing because of someone else’s lack of effort is one thing, but failing because of your own lack of effort is something completely different.

In the words of Master Yoda,” Do, or do not do.”  It’s pretty simple, but solid, advice.

photo credit: Sam LeVan

It’s more than just “marketing”.

And, as you’ll see in this video, it’s more than just the music.

Facebook Comment System

Facebook’s new comments feature should not be added into your business blog. There is a good reason behind this. Comments on blogs add search engine juice to your website, give it depth and exposure and add a significant bump to your overall search rankings. Sending all that juice to Facebook so Mark can add another dollar in his pocket at your expense just doesn’t make sense. What most social marketers either don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, is that social media is a short term, time intensive marketing mechanism. SEO  is just the opposite; it has long term marketing reach well beyond the trending fads and daily vagueries of social media and helps your company position itself for both local and international rankings. For those social marketers that claim that search is dead, I suggest that you take a serious look at how difficult it is to find anything on Facebook without searching for it. One more thought: Bing, last I checked they were still in the money making business too and they are a major partner of Facebook for a reason.

For more on this see Geoff Livingston’s excellent article on Facebook commenting.

Newsfeed Changes

This is probably more significant to small businesses and entrepreneurs than they might yet realize. As Alex Smith points out in his excellent post about the implementation of EdgeRank, businesses will now be forced to purchase advertising from Facebook in order to recapture fans who are not active participants on your business page. Here’s the rub, most people aren’t “active” participants at all, ever; they watch the news feed and may comment on something if it really tickles their fancy or catches their ire. And because they are not “active” they never even see your updates with the new system unless they go looking for them. The likelihood of that….?

Sorry, but this pay for view model has been done before. Newspapers and print magazines have been selling advertising space in this same manner for a century, so even if you capture them once, you must pay over and over again to recapture them again. Your biggest fans are not your worry, it’s the conversionary potential fans that will never see your feed because they clicked “like” once and, like most people, will holler at the TV but aren’t going to jump in front of the camera. I can hear the social crowd screaming now, “You have to engage properly, create that desire, blah, blah, blah.”

Sorry, but I’m calling bullshit here. Most small business don’t have the time or the means to create an “engagement strategy” and all the blog posts and social media books in the world aren’t going to give them that creative ability. Prop that up with the growing corporate presence and the massive budgets they can plow into social media, content creation and full time social media workers,  and the small business, once again, comes out on the short end of the stick.

Facebook Growth

Yes, this is good for Facebook and possibly for your small business,  but when combined with the above, I foresee businesses, particularly small business, losing valuable customer data and their impact becoming significantly weaker as more and more corporations jump on the social bandwagon. The idea that businesses would hand customer data to Facebook so they could sell it to competitors to make a buck seems to have missed many of the proponents of these above changes. Of course it shouldn’t be missed that most of these proponents are in the business of selling Facebook instead of what is good for their clients in the long term. This can also be said of the major coupon craze sites that are growing in popularity but that is for another blog rant.

Privacy

Social media was being touted as a game changer, but is the game changing or the players? We are already starting to see significant interest in “blocking” technology as social becomes more intrusive, and more ‘disconnect’ as consumers simply become overloaded with the shear volume of info and junk thrown at them and how it now follows them from place to place. Coupled with Zuckerberg’s insistence that no one wants privacy and the number of private networks suddenly popping up, it will interesting to see if social becomes another bump in the road of ineffective marketing for small – medium businesses, or if it can start to generate real returns for the businesses that use it. As I saw one comment state yesterday,”I don’t want to read about 5 restaurants that get social media. I want to read about 5 restaurants that get guests and profits.” (Jeffrey Summers) And that IS the core issue for all businesses.

The cycle

There is a cycle to business,  marketing and to consumers interests. The easiest way to see this in real-time action is to take a look at Google trends or at Twitter Trends and watch how quickly interest shifts. Already we are seeing that, as Facebook moves more mainstream, the crowd that was its original base is moving on to the next edgy corner of the internet; a place where mom, grandma and the government don’t hang out. Despite what its proponents like to think, Facebook is not immune to this cycle. Ask Myspace about that, and more importantly, ask yourself if your business is so immersed in trying to play catchup to Facebook’s changes that you’ve lost the ability to see that edge.

What you can do

1. Don’t put all your eggs in one marketing basket.
2. Focus on excellence in product/service and consumer satisfaction, this will go farther than any marketing initiative.
3. If it’s not working, or becomes a marketing money pit, dump it and focus on what does work for your business.
4. Do what you love.

This is probably the biggest hang up of entrepreneurs. They are either afraid of  technology they don’t understand, or afraid of  ”messing things up.” Marketing is what you do every single day you go to work, whether you’re in the car or on the phone with a client, you are always marketing. The technical side of things has more to do with the channels of communication than with the message you put out. With social media, think of it less as “marketing” and more as chatting with clients. (It should also be well understood that if you hung around all day “chatting” you would get nothing done and have no clients. There’s a balance that is found when goals are created for your online marketing efforts and a plan is implemented to help you attain them.)

2. Research ~Market to the right people

Research your customer base using social media; and your product, your competitors and then figure out how you fit into the sales mix. What do you do better and what makes you the “go to” place? Build around your strengths. If you’re not the go to place, find out why and fix it. Using social media as a  research mechanism before you jump in is going to give you a greater understanding of the potential of each forum/site you enter, what your customers are talking about, and if that particular site/forum is worth the time investment it will take to curate it into a sales/lead funnel.

3. Social Media Tools

You don’t need about 99% of them. They look pretty and offer a lot of graphical info, but is that info relevant?  Focus on making solid connections that lead to potential clients and worry less about metrical analysis and other non-essential items. Time is money, and the more time you spend messing around wth useless toys, the less time you are actually using to connect with people that could make a difference to your company’s bottom line.  As you grow and become more familiar with the online communities and what they can offer, then start looking at how the toys can enhance your brand.

4. Think beyond Facebook and Twitter

I get a lot of argument from clients on this one, mostly because the social media hype machine is into selling Facebook and Twitter. But the simple fact of the matter is that as more of your competitors climb onto these two mediums, the less likely your message is going to be heard amongst all the chatter.  We don’t say that you shouldn’t have profiles on these two mediums, or that you should disregard their significance. We do say that your entire online strategy should not be focused around them. Look for, develop and cultivate niche sites that are attuned to your business.

5. Passion ~ Follow it

You are much more likely to succeed in business (and in social media) if you are focused on your passion and NOT on the dollar signs it might generate. The difference in this focus, from an end point perspective, is that people who focus on their passion are more (and maybe, unwittingly) focused on the value they add to the client’s life/business, which is at the core of a satisfised  client and is the solid base of a conscious business growth model.

6. Ask for advice

There are many, many free resources available and many people willing and able to answer questions you might have about social media or online advertising. But rather than using Facebook or Twitter for seeking answers, I would suggest using LinkedIn Answers, particularly if you haven’t developed an audience yet, or are not quite sure about the responder’s expertise or are just tired of the social hype. The level of answers within LinkedIn seems to be more developed, professional and a bit less sales oriented, though that will likely change soon.

Where do I start?

Let’s assume I have a strawberry product and I am interested in jumping into social media.  It should be understood that ultimately almost everything we do is based around conversation, and this is why social media has had such a huge impact on society; because it directly impacts the way we communicate.

But back to our strawberries. There are many useful search services and tools that can be used to find out what your potential consumers are talking about, and I’m sure you’ve seen the basics like Google Alerts and Twitter Search, etc. But we have found a few that have proven to be exceptionally useful for our clients, and when used in conjunction with other tools, yield solid results and growth.

• Market Samurai This is a premium keyword tool for SEO that provides a wealth of information that can be used well beyond search engine optimization.  In fact, we purchased it for just that purpose and then began utilizing it as one of our first marketing research tools for new clients, and it has proven invaluable. When I plug “strawberry” into Market Samurai I come back with 699 different keyword variations that I could potentially use to  find my consumer. This is a lot of valuable information, in fact it’s too much.

So with the press of a button I have Market Samurai analyze the keywords and it comes back with 114 active keywords that fall within parameters I have set (also see their video in the link about the 4 Golden Rules). All of these 114 keywords are also given to me with inclusive info like: how many sites use them, what the trending data is, how many clicks per day a site should expect from a #1 ranking position, etc. This info is pertinent to website SEO, but if I take this data and build an engagement plan around what people are searching for and talking about, and then apply that information into my posts, tweets, blog titles, etc…. Well, you can probably guess the results. That is why this tool has proven so valuable.

I have my 114 keywords to play with, so let’s see what I can do. Two free services which give the average social media entrepreneur a wealth of information with the data from Market Samurai are

• Kurrently.com and
• Social Mention.

Simply plugging in the word “strawberry” into either of these two gives me a lot of potential. When I look at my data from Samurai I’ve noted that one of the largest current search terms is “strawberry festival” and this shows up in Social Mention as well.

I have a strawberry product, so who is going to love my product more than strawberry festival goers?

Kurrently.com gives me an immediate real-time streaming update of data to mine and consumers to connect with when I plug in “strawberry festival.”  Social Mention gives me a wealth of similar information to utilize, but also supports a broader spectrum of platforms to search; which, quite honestly, can be more valuable in the long run than simple Twitter and Facebook searches.  Both services provide a useful RSS tool, and Social Mention offers a alert notification that comes in very handy. Note that much of this info can also be found using Google, but these tools are specifically designed for social platforms and require much less advanced search knowledge to use effectively.

What am I listening for?

One of the first things to note in any conversation is context. What does the conversation sound like? What are the emotions involved? Who are the players? Luckily for us the conversation around the strawberry fest is mostly positive, people are going to eat strawberries, they’re looking for the fun associated with it, they want to bring their friends, tell their neighbors, drag you away from Facebook for a real life adventure.

How is this  relevant to me, the strawberry man?

Well for a start, this is real conversation happening live that you can tap into. This isn’t page views and analytics, or brand mentions, competitor analysis, etc (all that has it’s own research space) these are real people and real conversations. The same real people that buy your products. No matter what your product is. This cannot be over stressed.

The data you can glean from simply watching the stream and listening in on the conversation can provide a wealth of real time marketing information that you can use immediately and further down the road. It does NOT mean that you should start spamming all the people you find in utilizing this search technique with intrusive messages and lame friending techniques. Nothing turns a consumer off faster than mentioning “strawberry” and having some clown start following them on Twitter (or trying to friend them on Facebook) with the latest strawberry diet program, or some other kind of BS.

More immediately I can:

• Find opportunities to begin/strengthen/realign my marketing initiatives
• Watch for potential problems for which I may be able to provide the solution
• Better define my consumer demographic and their interests as they relate to my product
• Identify potential fans and brand advocates
• See who potential competitors are and what they are doing
• And the list goes on… It all depends on my goals, my strategy and my ability to implement that strategy, but that comes after just listening.

The single point here: Listen first. It’s pretty simple, but what many entrepreneurs fail to do when they jump into social media.