Social Media - New Age Marketing

In the good old days customers would communicate with you via letter, phone or in person. Today things are very different. Now they can send you a tweet, post a comment on your blog or leave you a message on Facebook.

In the past if someone was unhappy with your service the 'bad press' was usually limited to a few of their friends and family (unless it was seriously bad service and the wrote to the Editor of your local paper). Now a single tweet or Facebook message could potentially be seen by millions.

Now, more than ever, you must have procedures in place to deal with social media communications. You have to think about how you will monitor them, how you will respond to both positive and negative comments and how you'll interact with your audience.

Enhancing your online reputation is essential in todays transparent culture. Here are 3 easy things you can do to make sure your company holds its head up high and shines.

1. Thank you

Manners cost nothing and a simple 'thank you' can be a very powerful tool.

When a follower retweets you, leaves a comment on your blog or sends a referral to you, thank them. It doesn't take a lot of effort and shows that you are listening and that you care about your customers. And in the eyes of your customers, that translates into the image of a company they want to do business with.

But you don't just have to keep an eye on your social media platforms. There are many other ways you can be talked about online so it's important to monitor the internet to find out what's being said. There are a number of tools out there such as Google Alerts which will email Google results based on your query or topic:




Using these tools will help you keep track of what people are saying about you online so you can see how your brand is perceived and, as a customer service tool, enables you to solve issues quickly before they get out of hand.

2. Blogging

Loads of people blog so that should tell you its a valuable tool to use within your business.

Not only does it allow you to own more of the web, it also is a great way to add value to your customer relationships because you can offer them tips and advice that will make their lives easier. Plus it will help position you as an expert in your field which is always good.

But the trick is to ensure you write stuff your readers want to learn about. If you are a building firm and blog about holidays, you're not going to be adding value. But if you wrote about important issues in your trade, design ideas etc., you would create a connection with your readers and inspire them to make the most of their homes.

Take this blog for example, as an online marketing manager I not only write about marketing but also general marketing issues, social media, seo etc., which are all topics business owners find useful. Therefore not only do I get traffic to my website, the people that come also find the experience useful.

3. Focus on benefits

Whenever you write about your products or services, always focus on your customer; why they will benefit from it. By writing for them you are showing that you understand what's important to them and want to help them achieve that.

Showing that kind of connection will identify you as a company that cares about its customers and not just its profits. And let's face it, you tend to buy from people you like and trust. So if you come across as arrogant people aren't going to buy from you.

When marketing your business it's all too easy to get wrapped up in it and lose sight of what's really important – your customers.

Make sure they are at the forefront of everything you do because without them you don't have a business.

Interact with them, thank them and go out of your way to make sure they are happy. Use social media to your advantage.

Social Media and SEO

SEO experts have spent the last decade preaching a gospel of optimized page-level elements and inbound links. Those things are still important today,but getting real SEO results these days requires not only a technically optimized website and relevant inbound links but also a strong, vibrant Web presence that supports your overall brand. Which is where social media comes in.

Promote your content at sites like Facebook and Twitter. Search engines use shares and tweets as a factor when ranking content—so be sure to publish your most recent how-to articles and blog posts where readers can express their approval.
Interact with your fans and followers. You can't just dump content in social networks and expect it to go anywhere. If you don't have many engaged followers on these social media sites,there won't be anyone to help promote your content via shares and re-tweets.
He also suggests driving engagement with tactics like these:
Use keyword research to drive content development. The keywords that visitors use to find your site provide a good indication of the content they want to read. "Look for areas of high search volume, and develop content around those subjects,"
Use historical keyword data to exploit seasonal trends. For example a client's traffic spiked on the term "motorcycle safety" in May. After discovering May was Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month, we prepared content ahead of time so it would rank well during that period.

The Po!nt: Socialize to optimize. Social media matters to search engines—and that means it matters to you.

Facebook Pay Per Click - Set up tips...

Getting started advertising on Facebook
 Set up a simple Facebook ad to promote it. Low campaign budget is recommended $10 – 20 per day and a low cost per click. Put the click budget way lower than what Facebook recommend (ignore the warning that the bid is too low). If you do not get any clicks then bump up the clicks to the next bracket.

CPC versus CPM?
Initially CPC (cost per click) is better to test the campaign and then roll out to CPM (cost per thousand impressions) as you know your metrics.

High CTR
The goal is to get at least  .30 CTR (click through rate).  Whilst the average  CTR is .03 Jen thinks a high CTR will lead to success for distribution.  Use images every time. Eye contact is important.

Use pictures
Get a picture of a happy smiling women (from the waist up) who is looking you in the eye. If that happy smiling is doing something that relates to the product that can be great for CTR.  Amateur photos showing the thing that you are selling work really well.

Add text to images
Get photoshop, Gimp or snagit to add text to the photo. You can put text in images to extend the headline. This really helps when you advertise a fan page. Use a matching font to the headline to give it the appearance of being  a longer headline.

Drive Traffic internally a fan Page or externally?
If you have a custom fan page you can send them there. If the fan page is bland or auto-posted then you should send traffic offsite. Engage people or lose them. If you are going to send them to a website you can squeeze emails and you can also do that on Facebook now.

Targeting
Google and Facebook are very different. Before you create your ad you should have a great list of all you competitors and targeted people who your customer will be following. Pay particular attention to the demographics of your market. Ads should target your ideal client is massive detail according to country, state, gender, marital status, school, suburb, fans and job. The insights section of your fan page will tell you who is visiting.

Ninja Targeting Secret
You can bid on competitors names as an interest (if they are there) in the like section and it will show when people visit there. This is seriously like a stalker ad with social proof mice in. Under Jens guidance I tested this for my latest SilverCircle mastermind round and my ad followed people who were interested in me for about 35,000 impressions.

Managing other peoples accounts
We at Scream Media manage other peoples accounts because it is much easier for them than setting up Facebook aid advertising from scratch. Putting through many thousands of dollar a day takes a risk tolerance and watchful eye.  Some clients use a paid service on a start stop basis so that the market can ramp up promotions.

Pausing Ads versus stopping them
Facebook is a fully manually approved ‘self serve’ pay per click engine. You will get different results for the same ad. The ad inventory draws from different ‘buckets’ and this means that you may get good or bad impressions. You have to test it.
Conversion tracking

If the only traffic is Facebook – you can easily see the results you are getting from Facebook. It is ideal to use a service like Tracking 202 to see which group of people are buying from you. Invest the time to setup a proper tracking campaign and you will get the results. We prefer statcounter for this

Time of day tips
The vast majority of traffic for most campaigns is prior to lunch. It seems not every worker is working! Get your campaigns running early in the day for the best results. Remember to test.

Social Media makes up 22% of time spent online

The onslaught of new social media sites has fundamentally changed the role of any marketing or communications professional. Every day millions of users are spending significant periods of time on social networks. In 2010, social media use represented 22 percent of the time spent online by users. The impact of social media on business cannot be ignored but how much is too much? For many organizations, hiring a social media specialist isn’t a viable option due to budget constraints or the responsibility for managing the social media programs falls on the shoulders of the communications department. It’s a role often already filled with deadlines and juggling of priorities between internal and external efforts, media relations, content creation, meetings and more.
The bottom line: Don’t chase every shiny object in the marketplace. A quick search on “social networking websites” and a visit to Wikipedia gave me 201 options. Now sure, some of these are very small and specific to a niche but it’s interesting to look back at all the ideas that someone thought were brilliant and revolutionary for their time.
The sad fact is that for every useful site like Caring Bridge or big hit like Facebook, there’s a Bolt or a Google Buzz that came and went or never took off at all. Set goals on what your company needs to achieve and create a set of key questions that you use in reviewing any new tool you want to explore. Think about using those filter questions as a screen to evaluate opportunities in front of you.
The questions will vary but take some time now (after a few more paragraphs at least) to think about and talk with the key stakeholders in your organization about the right questions. Filters should be specific enough to give you real, measurable information that can inform you about the potential success of your investment (time or money) in a social platform.

• Does this generate enough direct revenue to offset the staff time required?
• Will this expand our opportunities into a new market of interest to us?
• Is this tool effective enough to get customers to take a specific action whether its click to buy or visit a store?
• What level of speculative time investment are we willing to make?
• Could this lead to collaboration or co-promotion opportunities that will benefit the company?
• Does this effort align logically with our existing initiatives?

These are of course just samples and there isn’t a single way to do it. Perhaps 20 percent of a full-time employee’s time  to execute a program with unknown success is worth it in your model or the opportunity to create an entry to a new market.
Even once you create filters, there are times when you should try new efforts that don’t fit or take a chance. But by slowing down to evaluate the opportunities you at least make sure you’re not adding yet another task to your role without thoughtful purpose and a good chance at success.
How much of your time do you estimate goes into social media on a daily basis? And what has worked for you in balancing the requirements of social with other essential roles? If you are looking to outsource Social Media Marketing, look now further the Scream Media. Contact our marketing team today for a free no obligation quote. 021 5590800 or sue@scream-media.co.za

Social Media

When discussing social media with business executives, I'm frequently reminded of the fable of the elephant and the blind men. In the story, six blind men, hearing that an elephant has been brought to their village (and having no idea what an elephant is), go to the village square to investigate. One feels the elephant's side and proclaims that an elephant is like a wall. A second, feeling one of the elephant's legs, says it is like a pillar. A third, touching the tusk, describes the animal as being like a solid pipe.
Although each man's description was accurate, each perceived only part of the elephant; none had a perspective of the entire beast.
It's the same with many business executives and their views of social media:

• "Social media? Twitter isn't appropriate for our market."
  
• "Our company already has a Facebook page!"
  
• "We don't have time to maintain a blog."
  
• "Several of our people use LinkedIn."

Such statements reflect perceptions of "parts of the beast"—components (tools) of social media. But using one or more of those tools, with no clear objectives for benefiting the company, doesn't constitute a strategy.

Phase I: Observation
"You can observe a lot just by watching." A bit of research and observation up front will make your participation later much more productive and prevent false starts and missteps.
Some of the questions to answer in this phase:

• Where are people talking about our company, industry, and competitors? Which social media platforms do they congregate on?
  
• What are they saying? What are the hot topics?
  
• Who's doing the talking? Which voices seem to have the most influence?
  
• What opportunities do we have to respond and participate? What kind of content seems to be most popular?
  
• What questions are people asking that we can answer?

Phase II: Preparation
Every company with more than a handful of employees is already involved in social media—whether those running the company know it or not. That's because nearly half of all South African are now active on at least one social network. And though employees may be using these networks primarily to share pictures of the kids or to plan which clubs to hit next weekend, most will bring up the workplace at some point:

• "Our new CEO, John Doe, is an incompetent jerk."
  
• "I sure hope our new product works because we've really skimped on the testing."
  
• "If I owned any stock in this company, I'd dump it now"

Though employees may share positive thoughts about your company with their friends, family, and followers, they may also post comments like those above, leading to bad PR, reduced sales.
One common objection voiced by executives about social media is that it can't be controlled. That's true, but when it comes to what a company's employees are saying, it can, at least, be guided. Developing a social media policy is a crucial first step toward making social media a constructive, rather than dangerous, communication channel. If you would like a copy of our Employee Guidelines drop me a mail on sue@scream-media.co.za
In short your guidelines should include

• The company's approach to social media. What are the goals, limits, and rules? A small restaurant will use social media much differently than a heavily regulated financial services company.
  
• Guidelines. What's acceptable and what's not? Don't rely on "common sense." Spell it out.
  
• Consequences and questions. Let employees know what will happen if guidelines are violated, and point them to someone who can answer questions for any "grey area" issues.

Once the decision is made to embrace social media, companies need to establish plans. Based on the research conducted in the Observation phase, the plan should address issues such as these:

• What are the objectives?
  
• Who will be involved?
  
• Which social media platforms will be used?
  
• How will results be measured?
  
• What types of content will be produced?
  
• Who will create the content?
  
• How will content be optimized across platforms? (e.g., executive profiles on LinkedIn link to the company blog; blog posts are tweeted and posted to LinkedIn Groups)

Phase III: Participation
With the groundwork laid, monitoring in place, and plans developed and approved, the company can begin "officially" participating in social media—or, more likely, reassessing initiatives already in place, as many firms have already jumped into the social media fray without proper planning.
Participation can take a variety of forms, from simple monitoring of and responding to brand mentions to actively creating thought-leadership, informative or entertaining content, and promoting across social media venues.
For companies that produce content, a blog is often at the center of the effort. More than half of B2C firms and nearly three-quarters of B2B vendors maintain company blogs.

The key to successful social media participation is engagement. Sharing content shouldn't be viewed as broadcasting to the market but rather as seeking to start conversations. The point is to draw in interested parties, key influencers, and ultimately sales prospects by engaging them in discussions and building business relationships.

Phase IV: Integration
Most companies think of social media first in terms of marketing and PR activities, and they begin their social media efforts in those areas. But those at the highest level of social media maturity and integration are using social media for a variety of purposes across the organization.
Just as it would make no sense to provide telephones only for the sales force, or email access only to accounting, there's no need to limit social media interaction to the marketing department.
At this advanced stage, companies may be using social media not only in marketing and PR but also in a variety of other areas, including the following:

• Human Resources. HR departments use social media to recruit and prescreen candidates, improving new hire quality while reducing recruitment time and cost.
• Customer Service. While no organization should overly rely on social media to resolve customer-service issues, it can shorten the "time to answer" some customer queries and reduce costs. Large enterprises that have incorporated social media into their customer service options include Woolworths (check their Facebook page)
• Sales. Social media has changed the buying cycle. Prospects are now much more informed before they even begin a dialogue with sales; they've researched alternatives, developed a short list of vendors, and know what key features they're after. The ability of buyers to do all of this before ever contacting a vendor has increased their expectations of salespeople as well; they expect sales pros to know what their company does and what challenges their industry confronts. Social media is valuable to the sales force not only for prospect research but also for generating leads and building credibility.
  
• Product Development. Whose input could be more valuable to product development efforts than your customers' and prospects'? The Wall Street Journal has described social networks as the new focus groups because of the high value and relatively low cost of use. Because of potential legal issues involved in using someone else's ideas, firms often use public networks for basic research and rely on their own branded online networks, with clear rules spelled out, for more direct suggestions.

I hope this article has sparked you interest in using Social Media to your benefit. If the above all sounds a little too much to handle then consider outsourcing your Social Media. At Scream Media we have over 7 years experience promoting our clients online, contact us today for a free no obligation Social Media health check.

How to promote new content on your website

You now have a finished piece of content on your website. How can one go about getting the most visitors to the new piece? Having faith that users will magically gravitate to your new page is extremely optimistic. The following contains 5 actionable tips for marketing your website content.
Pretend it’s for Print
It all starts with the quality of your content. Treat the piece that your writing as if it’s not easily changed after you’ve put it out there. Publishing content on the web has made us all a bit lazy with this. Knowing that we can just go back to fix or tidy up after the fact puts a little less pressure on us to produce perfect content. Remember that people are taking time out of their lives to focus their attention on you. Make it worthwhile.
A Dash of SEO with that Please
After you’re happy with the content take a once over for the search engines. Don’t bastardize it. But if you want to get the most long term exposure for your content try to align your web page’s message with your website’s search engine optimization strategy.
You could adjust:
-Your page title and meta description. Remember that these are the only two elements that search engine users see on search results pages. Try to have it read like a newspaper headline.
-The name of your post. If you can have good keywords here by all means do so.
-The permalink. Adjust your URL to be relevant to your content, keep it void of unnecessary words like “and, the, or” and include keywords.
-Your on-page headlines and actual copy. Skim through all of this for keyword opportunities that will ADD to the quality of your piece.
Just make sure that you are covering your bases seo-wise. If you set up your page properly you will give your writing every chance possible to be picked up by search engines down the road.
Remember Email Marketing?
If you’ve built an email list over the years then send out a quick campaign about the article. I wouldn’t suggest that you copy all of your post content into the email. I would use the email as a teaser. Give the email recipients reason to visit your website and read it there. My reasoning for this is that there are many more viral opportunities if the content is digested on your website vs in the email itself. Be sure to give enough useful information in the email itself though. This way if they don’t click through they wont feel their time has been wasted.
Feed the Birds
After you’ve done this go share your post on your favorite Social Media Channels like Facebook and Twitter. Be careful not to sound too sales-like here. People can get easily turned off by this. Ask for reciprocal links in a non demanding way. Saying things like “The most brilliant post on widgets EVER!” will get you no-where fast. If a comment is left make it a priority to respond.
Make it Easy to Share
Be sure that you give your readers every chance possible to share your content with their tribe. This is where the real potential of Social Media Marketing begins to shine. Someone sharing your post with all of their community has just exponentially increased your articles reach. It’s free marketing! Most content management systems have ways to add this functionality to your posts and if you aren’t using a CMS it’s not hard to hand code.

Why Local is Lekker.

Local search has become one of the most affordable and important ways for small businesses to be found by their customers. In a recent .Com Score study, they found that 42% of local searchers wanted to find a business within 6-15 km of their home or place of work. Searchers are looking for more relevance than ever before. With statistics like this, it’s more imperative you are giving those local users every opportunity to find your business.

The reality is that there are many factors that can contribute to a successful local, online presence. In today’s market, it takes being available at different times and in varied formats to reach the right audience. One of the main ways prospects can find you is through a local business listing. With prime placement right at the top of the search results page, these listings give a previously unheard of visibility to small and local businesses.

So what can you do reach that coveted prime placement, a.k.a. the Google “7-pack”?

   1. Submit your listing- Seems pretty simple, right? Well, it’s a crucial step. Just submitting and verifying your listing can sometimes be enough in less competitive markets. Google takes the verified information as the most trusted, so make sure your listing is claimed.
   2. Have only one, optimized listing for your business – When you submit your information to Google, you could have the option to choose existing business information, if it exists for your company. You don’t want to have competing listings out there, so always claim the existing information and optimize it- so there is only one active listing. I have seen claiming another listing significantly help a business rank better.
   3. Choose correct categories for your business – Google provides different industry options for you to choose from. These are one of the main factors that determine which searches your listing could show for. Make sure these accurately describe your products and services.
   4. Put your industry and target area in the title of your listing- This information helps Google, but it also improves your visibility for those keywords.
   5. Be sure to use a local phone number in your listing- Using a local number lets both the user and the search engine know that you are in fact located where you say you are.
   6. Create a description that’s informative- This descriptive area provides you the chance to give the most information about your company. Use your keywords and provide the details that would be valuable for your customer base.
   7. Reviews are important! Positive reviews are a huge factor on whether or not someone will choose you business over another. Not only that, but the presence of reviews (both negative and positive) can increase the ranking of your listing. In some industries, I have seen listings perform better by simply having more reviews than their competitors.
   8. Keep your listing up to date- Updating the information tells the search engines that it’s relevant. It can be as simple as updating a coupon, or other details.
   9. Make sure your listing is 100% complete! Don’t underestimate the value of having a completed listing. Google is all about the user experience, and a complete listing shows that your business is providing the most information.
  10. Submit your info to other directories as well. Google actually pulls your business info from other sites, so it would behoove you to have accurate, standard information about your business from as many sources as possible, any good directory will offer FREE listings. Think twice before paying for listing on so called directories who drive no traffic.

Ranking your website can be hard work and very confusing, and if done incorrectly can hurt your website rather then benefit it, if you would like the experts to perform your SEO for you, look no further then Scream Media. Contact us today on 021 5590800 for a free no obligation chat about your website needs.

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