Social Media: A Strategy, Not a Tactic

Imagine this. You’re running a business and decide to put some of your budget toward social media marketing. You’ve finally hired someone to setup your social accounts (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and manage possible engagement. All of this effort and you still don’t know if you have a full grip on the effectiveness of social media marketing!

Don’t worry. By setting goals for your company within the social space, you will prevent feelings of frustration and instead, reach objectives and create brand awareness that will eventually lead to sales. But how?

1. Start from the bottom. Set up obtainable social media goals and reflect the main business goals within them.
2. Do your research. Ask the following questions before moving forward:
   • Who is your demographic & where do they congregate?
   • What are your current resources/budget?
   • How much time can you give to this task?
   • What are your competitors doing within the space?
   • What are your strengths?
   • What are the potential issues/problems with this execution?
3. Be honest & realistic with your digital/social media goals.
   • Increase overall brand awareness
   • Increase website traffic and sales
   • Increase SEO for your company
   • Provide information for your fans
   • Decrease various marketing spending
4. Be patient. Social media is an ongoing effort with ROI being difficult to measure and most engagement results being hard to pinpoint. A lot of time, effort and money often go into the most successful social media campaigns in the market. Although it will sometimes feel like a crawl, your social push will eventually yield results over time!
5. Always keep learning. Although you may have already created a Twitter or Facebook account, there are other “big picture” social strategies that could greatly effect your total success. Be willing to learn the details to keep evolving with the current platforms at hand – or hire someone who is knowledgable and can do it for you!
6. Understand that social media is not the answer. Putting your brand on various social media platforms does not replace all of your marketing efforts. Instead, social media should be seen as a large piece of the larger picture.

Overall, social media should be seen as a strategy, not a tactic. No matter what industry you work in, such strategies will differ -- although most companies will need one relating to social to stay relevant. Having said this, it remains true that social media requires a full effort from all parties involved in order to successfully integrate your company goals. So go ahead -- take a deep breath, dive in head first & have fun!

xx Samantha

Facebook Everywhere!

The most recent big news coming from the giant that is Facebook is the release of Facebook Home.  You have most likely seen the commercials by now but still might be wondering what exactly Facebook Home is bringing to the table. Facebook Home is not actually a new OS for your phone, it is simply a new home screen that adds a few new features. We have gone through all the new features and have listed what we love about the new interface and a few things we are not so crazy about. The most obvious change to your phone running Facebook Home is going to be the home and lock screen, called Cover Feed. Your lock screen will be a full screen shot of your cover photo with a smaller bubble of your profile picture, that is used to navigate through your phones options by swiping.

I will admit this is a sleek looking design, but I am not sure how I feel about looking at the same picture of myself every time I want to access my phone.  This Cover Feed will also display all your notifications from Facebook, email, missed calls, etc. The full notification functionality will only work on the HTC First, which is the first phone being released to have Facebook Home stock. Everyone else who decides to download the Facebook Home software onto a different phone will only get their Facebook notifications on the Cover Feed. While the functionality of this notifications system looks great, the fact that everyone without a HTC First will only get their Facebook notifications may create some unhappy iPhone users. I also have a feeling people are going to have to put some serious filters on their notifications or they will be inundated by notifications every time they access their phone.

Perhaps my favorite feature is what they are calling Chat Heads. This allows for messages from your friends to pop-up on your screen over other apps. This means if you are in the middle of an article online, or you are about to break your high score in Angry Birds, you do not have to exit out of that app and navigate to your message app.  It will simply pop up onto your screen with a small "Head" of the person sending the message and the message itself. These Heads can also be moved anywhere on your screen so they do not interfere with more important business.

It will be interesting to see how consumers take Facebook Home. Sure people love Facebook, but is this just too much? Personally, I am not sure 90% of the notifications I get from my Facebook are important enough to have staring at me every time I check my phone. I do, however, really hope the Chat Head idea takes off and we get more versions of this floating message service available.

-Mike

Going Social After the Boston Bombings

As a woman who was born and raised in the great city of Boston, there are no words that can accurately summarize my emotions after hearing and seeing yesterday's bombings at the Boston Marathon. The images and first person accounts that were shared will forever remain in my heart – a horrific incident that hit way too close to home.

But, it's tragic events like these that I find interesting within my own social space. Personally, I saw friends tweeting #prayforboston within the first few minutes after the story broke and as expected, my Facebook wall was slammed with posts expressing extreme sadness and anger toward those responsible. But professionally speaking, how does an event like 9/11, the Newtown shooting or the Boston bombings effect larger brands on social platforms?

For once, they make brands go silent.

Although there is some debate around what a major brand should do on social during/after a large tragedy, a brand’s reasoning for going quiet is done with both good intentions and a bit of selfishness. On one side, we recognize the loss and sadness associated with the life-changing event. Our content simply wouldn’t make sense to share, nor would it resonate with fans, especially during a time when the nation is grieving. On the other hand, some brands believe in posting consistency with a main goal of beating Facebook’s EdgeRank and showing up higher than competitors within newsfeeds -- but, no one really wants to be the one brand actively posting in a newsfeed filled with content surrounding a tragedy. For those brands that saw this as an opportunity – or accidentally had posts pre-scheduled to go live during this time frame – many were met with a negative backlash from fans and non-fans alike for being insensitive.

From a community manager of a few large brands, it’s often the safest decision to cease all social engagement until a 24 hour period of bereavement has been allowed. Unless you have a meaningful and direct connection to the tragedy, this means no posting, no tweeting, no Instagraming and more. Yes, a brand’s messaging will be not top of mind for fans for a day or two, but this overall respect for the emotions of fans will resonate louder than a product-centric post.

Although you may not see every brand following this recommendation, see if you notice those that do. Then, respect them a bit more for giving fans their space during this terrible time.

What do you think is the appropriate move for brands after a national tragedy?

xx Samantha

Who Actually Uses Social Media?

If you were asked who uses social media, most people would probably be OK with the answer: everyone! While it may seem like everyone in the world is on social media right now, it can be interesting to actually break down the statistics and take a look. Besides, who doesn't love a good infographic? Most of this information may not shock you, but one stat that surprised us was the By Household Income. According to this research, the lowest income bracket (30K and less) has the greatest percentage of social media users, 71%. This may be counterintuitive due to the fact that most people would assume the more household income, the more digital devices to use social media with.  However, like we posted recently, more people are reported to have mobile phones that toothbrushes these days, regardless of income.  Does lower income cause greater social media user, or does more social media use cause lower income? The 21st century version of which came first,  the chicken or the egg.

-Mike

Facebook’s Purge of Phony Fans Facilitates Real Measurement

After being a community manager for several years, I know as much as anyone that we measure  growth each week by creating content that gets fans to essentially Like, Share, Comment, RT or Reply. Study after study has shown that the more people engage with a brand, the more likely they are to buy it. But what if some of these fans are “fake”? For years, Facebook has been plagued by a growing number of “dummy” accounts were that were created for one purpose: to inflate the number of “Likes” (aka, fans), a metric that many still value above all. Designed to take advantage of the system, these fake accounts have not only affected engagement numbers and important Facebook statistics, but they’ve created major spam issues – a complete nightmare for any community manager.

Inspired (perhaps) by its IPO, Facebook thankfully made a move to purge its platform of phony profiles in late 2012, deleting all accounts that were duplicates, fraudulent or or spawned from malware. As it cleaned house, fan numbers on many Pages experienced major decreases. Those who had accumulated the most typically lost the most.

According to various contacts at Facebook, a large majority of its brand Pages they host have already been scrubbed. As a community manager, this is a tremendous relief because it means that all of my “Likes” are from genuine fans who can help my brand grow. No longer will companies have to worry about the 'quality' of their fan base in regards to 'fake' Likes, and instead will be able to better focus on programs that will further reach the ones they have.

Now if we could only get them to stop messing with EdgeRank…

xx Samantha

Image from Mashable.com