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Building an effective Social Media Program

Rebekah King — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:27:51 +0000

Social Media Policy

Rebekah King — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:50:17 +0000

Many business owners wouldn’t want their employees complaining to 300 million social media users about how much they dislike their job. The trouble is: without a social media policy the employer has very little rights to stop employees from doing just that. Blocking access to social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn is NOT enough to protect your company from employee liability issues. If you don’t want your employee’s talking about you online it is essential for you to create a policy which does more than block access; an effective social media policy should inform your employees while creating a standard of communication for your company.

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3 Rules for Community Marketing Successes

Rebekah King — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:31:09 +0000

When the marketplace becomes more challenging, and business is not so easily come by, community marketing becomes more valuable then ever. Being from a small town community marketing meant walking up and down main street (yes, main street) and knocking on every shop door to say hello. Regardless of whether or not you cared what the shopkeeper had to say about your new business and how well it would do, you still walked up and down and knocked on every door. Why?

Marketing.

Walking up and down main street talking to people whose opinions you may (or when it comes to progress in a small town – you may not) care about spreads the word about your business. Today you’re talking to Sally the hairdresser and Tom the barkeep, tomorrow Sally is chatting with her knitting girlfriends about your new bookstore while Tom is telling everyone buying a beer you: this crazy kid who came in with a new business idea.

These days it may not be Sally the hairdresser. For the family dentist in a larger community it may be participating in a parade, or a local kids fair. For the pizza parlour owner it’s sponsoring the two little league teams closest to his location. For the private school it’s doing kids events in combo with local high-end businesses. Whatever your business, getting involved in your community can make a big difference in your business’ bottom line. Here’s a few of our tried and true tricks for getting the bottom line to move in the right direction:

1. Stay close: whatever group or school or business you are going to team up with should be the closest one of it’s kind to your location. Don’t make your ideal client drive past all your competition on their way to your door unless it’s for a BIG payout. If you count on repeat business you must be easily accessible.

2. Keep it Simple: your logo can be a picture of you. Your flier can be 1/2 a page. Don’t over-explain what you are trying to do or what you want to have happen. Say who you are, what they get, and what they have to do to get it. No more (and no less – this just frustrates people).

3. Don’t be GIMME: if you are doing a program that involves “donating your services” DON”T make people GIMME a lot of information to get the program. People will think it’s a GIMMICK designed to obtain their contact info for Spamming – and you won’t get invited back. Be upfront with your community and they will respect you for respecting their intelligence.

Want to find some good community outreach programs in your area? Just ask your customers: the people who live close enough to come to you for services are the same people you want to market to.

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Twitter Social Networking: Does It Really Work?

Rebekah King — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:26:38 +0000

Being a social media consultant I get asked just about every question you can imagine (and many I never would have imagined) by people I meet at events and speaking gigs. One of the top questions is “does twitter social networking actually work?” which is often followed by a version of “how?”. Of course I have my success stories – how I typically get approached by one new client a week from my facebook/twitter/linkedIn marketing programs, how I now oversee two of the largest organizations for their respective industries in southern california – via LinkedIn… things like this – but what often seals the deal for people is learning what other companies both big and small are doing that works. As you read this, hopefully you can start to see what you might be doing that would work for you and your business…

What Dell’s doing on Twitter is one of my favorite stories, and is explained best by a Stefanie N, a dell employee herself:

I started tweeting for the U.S. Dell Outlet in June of 2007 based on a suggestion from a colleague who learned about Twitter at the SXSW Interactive conference, and the response had been very positive. But I knew we could do more. So I started tweeting more regularly and doing more Twitter-exclusive offers, which created more buzz and helped us to grow our follower base (we’re now over 600,000). Our followers responded by re-tweeting @DellOutlet messages to their followers, and our numbers rose even more. The chart below (click on it to see more options) shows our growth over the last 3 months—right around the time we began introducing more exclusive offers, when we were at about 11,000 followers. … we’ve actually eclipsed $3 million in overall sales.

Did you catch that? $3 million in overall sales since June of 2007… that’s only 2 years!

How do they do this? There seems to be a few basics I find in common for many twitter success stories:

1. Connect with your audience - Import databases, publicize your twitter profile, follow the people who talk about you and/or your product… general stay-in-touch stuff.

2. Listen and Respond to what the community is saying about you – use twitter tracking tools like search.twitter.com to keep track of what the general public is saying about you – not just the people that are following you.

3. Give your followers what they want when they want it – which for companies like Dell is answers to service issues, help finding product, and the deals that apply to them.

Always keep in mind what you are trying to accomplish, and use whatever tool it is to accomplish your goal. For Dell it’s keeping their customers satisfied in the products and making it easier for them to get the service they want. This thoughtfullness has generated over $3million in revenue for them. How could you be more thoughtful for your clients? Would twitter social networking be able to supplement this? These are the questions you need to ask, not just of yourself, but of your clients – conduct a survey, try out the software.. there are a myriad of ways to put your toe in the water and find if it’s right for you

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Training Courses

Rebekah King — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:26:39 +0000

Social Media for Business Development: Using LinkedIN
5:30-7:00pm

This course reviews not only the nuts & bolts of how LinkedIN works, but also how you can effectively work LinkedIN to build your business. In this course you will learn:

* who should be, who is already is, and who shouldn’t be using LinkedIN
* why you should be “linked” & how to build your network
* how to contact potential clients without getting kicked out
* tips and tricks from successful users

The course is an hour and a half long, so please arrive promptly. No need to bring your laptop (we don’t have wireless access for you in the room) but it is suggested you have a LinkedIN profile before you arrive.

$40 at the door
35 attendees maximum

Hosted at the Sandler Sales offices
17701 Cowan #120
Irvine, CA 92614

Register Online for this Event April 1

______________________________________________________________________________

Social Media for Marketing: Using Facebook and Twitter
5:30-7:00pm

Twitter and Facebook have become much more well-known over the last few months as a tool for building business. In this course we’ll cover the following:

-What the heck is it anyway?

-How 140 characters could make an impact for your business

-Standing out from a crowd of 200 million plus

-Creating messaging people will respond to and share with friends

-Prioritizing your time and resources so still have time to run your business

-Who leads in these fields and how you can be like them (or not)

-Etiquette

-Who to turn to if things go awry.

No need to bring a laptop, handouts will be provided.
$40 at the door or via online RSVP
30 attendees maximum

Hosted at the Sandler Sales offices
17701 Cowan #120
Irvine, CA 92614

______________________________________________________________________________

Using Facebook for Business
5:30-7:00pm

This course reviews the following within Facebook:

how it works
who uses it
the structures of profiles, pages, and groups
promoting your events
creating buzz about products
showcasing services to your network
dovetailing your facebook efforts w/ your offline marketing

The course is an hour and a half long, so please arrive promptly. No need to bring your laptop (we don’t have wireless access for you in the room) but it is suggested you have a Facebook profile before you arrive.

$40 at the door or via online RSVP
30 attendees maximum

Hosted at the Sandler Sales offices
17701 Cowan #120
Irvine, CA 92614

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Using New Technologies for Effective Marketing

Rebekah King — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:44:16 +0000

Marketing is a long-held and much-needed practice for business growth and development. Not to be confused with Sales (though always used together with sales) an effective marketing program draws in new customers, engages current customers, and builds a product or service’s reputation throughout the marketplace.

Technology is always advancing, and as it does can either improve the value of marketing, or make it even more difficult to get an effective marketing program across to the target audience.

Are you sending SPAM emailing or a valuable newsletter?

Does anyone read your emails?

Does your brochure actually help people want to hire you, or give too much information (the average person doesn’t even read)?

Are the networking events and luncheons and trade shows you are going to actually generating new business?

Does your website bring you customers? Do you even know who reads your website? Have you ever seen a traffic report on your website?

These are all very important questions that a marketing professional must ask, and that an owner or CEO must always balance against the daily needs of running the business. What we specialize in is using technology to economize these activities – to provide a higher level of accuracy in reporting, adaptability to alter course in days instead of weeks should a program be ineffecient, and the experience to know what usually works better than most practices.

How many times have we sat through a marketing workshop that told us we needed to use some new gizmo to reach a trillion new people, only to go through the implementation process, the learning curve, and the complete headache of creating staff policies – only to find out 3 months later we saw no new business, got no new clients, and all in all wasted our time? If it’s not your ideal client you are talking to then there’s no point in talking at all – save your breath, your energy, and your time for the clients and colleagues that make your business and your profession better for the effort!

At the end of the day no one knows your business as well as you do, you’ve been doing it for years and you know your clients better than anyone. Our job is to bring the best practices from a variety of business climates to your doorstep and make it possible for you to reach new heights with new technology at your feet.

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Marketing ‘Speak’ De-Mystified

Rebekah King — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:10:22 +0000

Some friends and I have a running joke that marketers just make up words & phrases to confuse customers into hiring them. It’s time for some definitions …and before you get upset with the simplicity of the definitions – I’m not trying to be Websters here, just a light FAQ… and hopefully a little dose of reality in this crowded and cloudy marketing verbiage:

Social Media = any kind of media that creates a social or community experience for the audience. Facebook lets people do this by sharing photos and videos and news with their friends.

Social Networking= using media that creates a social or community experience for the audience to network, typically for business use.

Online Community = a site online that allows users to create a personal profile and interact with other users online. The interaction is often meant to simulate real-life interactions – originally for people in different locations to stay in touch. Examples are Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn.

New Media or Emerging Media = The exciting (and confusing) part of technology advancement is we don’t always know what to call it. That’s this stuff. Currently this includes social media, online communities, mobile marketing, and a bunch of new tools and platforms we’re learning how to use.

Twitter = (online community) a tool for posting 140 character conversational tidbits to your community… what’s the point? Twitter users count on each other to provide news and relevant information, blog posts, and other minutiae. It’s more often referred to as the new news feed.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) = a method by which to customize your website’s function and setup to be “optimally” reviewed by search engines. This can be as simple as putting relevant keywords in the ‘background’ of your website’s programming, or as complicated (and expensive) as trying to outsmart the search engines.

PPC (Pay Per Click) or PPM/PPI (Pay Per Impression) = Advertising on search engines, websites, and even social media which you pay for either by the number of people who click on the ad, or the number of people who see your ad. Which one is better? Depends on what you are trying to accomplish and how much you want to spend.

More definitions coming soon

Have your own definition? post it in the comments!

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LinkedIn Spammer? Use LinkedIn without being a jerk

Rebekah King — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:33:39 +0000

People ask me quite often what the etiquette is of using LinkedIn, from connecting to old co-workers, to reaching out to new job openings, or connecting with potential buyers. I have to preface this all by saying that I am a big believer in relationship building vs. connection building. I think a connection means about as much as a name in the phone book, but a relationship is knowing someone on a personal level and having the opportunity to enrich each others lives/businesses. Having 3k plus connections is fine and all, but what good does this do you when you don’t know the people you’re connected to? For many it’s adding names to their database. While there are no hard and fast rules, there are some guidelines I can give you from what I see people doing that you may or may not want to emulate yourself.

1. YOU MIGHT BE A SPAMMER IF: you compulsively send strangers connection requests and not jut the people you met once, but the folks you’ve never ever met…

Yes, LinkedIn is a place to connect with colleagues, references, past co-workers, and prospective clients – but stalking people has never been a pleasant experience for the stalk-ee. If you are reaching out to someone you don’t know for a good reason, then tell it to them. I’ve reached out to many people I didn’t know, for work purposes or client projects, but in the subject line will say “you don’t know me, found you on LinkedIn” and start off the message by saying why I’m emailing. The result? About 4 times more responses.

2. YOU MIGHT BE A SPAMMER IF: you join lots of groups and post your sales pitch in them over and over and over and over and over..

LinkedIn Groups is your destination to find and join communities of professionals based on common interest, experience, affiliation, and goals. Stay in touch with organizations, schools, and companies that you are and were a part of, network with professionals with similar interests and goals, and collaborate in a professional community online.

Groups are typically organized around a company (IBM or Apple), a trade organization (AIGA or APA), or a special interest group (Mac Users, Blackberry Users). You apply for membership and the group owner can either accept or decline your request for membership. Once accepted, you have access to discussion boards, job boards, news feeds, and the ability to submit news articles to the group. Being involved in the community (posting answers to questions, sharing news articles relevant to the community) is a way to increase your visibility, credibility, and esteem within the community. Trouble seems to be – this takes time. Rather than spend this time, many seem to post their sales pitches as discussions over and over again…. my guess they think this visibility makes people think of them – and it’s true… but thinking of you as an intelligent authority or just the pain-in-the-keester newbie?

It’s totally appropriate to get out there and try new things – try the groups, try posting comments, try inviting connections – but if no one posts comments, and your invitations aren’t accepted take the hint that you may be coming on too pitchy and not enough of a human being. People like people, much more than salespeople….

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Social Media Training

Rebekah King — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:30:20 +0000

Many of our clients want more than just a how-to, so we teach workshops on:

Using Facebook for Business
Using LinkedIN for Business
What is Social Media
Setting up Your Profiles: LinkedIN, Facebook, Twitter
Selecting the Social Media Tool that is Right for Your Business
Custom Training Programs for Offices and Teams

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Agency Projects

Rebekah King — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:49:10 +0000

Subcontract or direct consult on using social media as part of the overall marketing plan. Supplement exisiting agency offerings authentically, providing our rich knowledge base in emerging media in addition to that of your agency team.
Focus on tracking, measuring community involvement, and providing deeper relationships with the client company

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