Social media marketing is distinctively different from traditional marketing. Unlike billboards, print ads and infomercials, social media marketing is anchored in engagement, dialogue, and exchange. It provides an endless landscape for businesses and consumers to connect, in a very personal way. In order to navigate this new marketing environment, marketers must develop a keen understanding of how to craft and establish a professional social media presence.
Think you’re ready to get started?
Wait! Before you make your first Facebook post or send out the first company tweet, take the time to develop a plan of execution. This guide will show you how to create a solid foundation for integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy.
6 Essential Steps to Social Media Success
1. Determine Your Primary Goals and Objectives
This may seem like an obvious step, but assessing the motive behind your social media launch is the best way to understand why you’re doing it in the first place. Get to the core of it all, by asking the important questions: Are you seeking greater sales conversions? …increased traffic to your website? …or greater brand awareness? Each of these questions uncovers a unique set of behaviors necessary to achieve your goal.
2. Identify Which Platforms Are Right For You
First, be clear on your target market. Breaking down the demographic makeup of your potential customer base, will allow you to identify the appropriate channels for your social media campaign. How? Well for example, if your primary focus is business-to-consumer interactions, you may focus more on integrating Facebook and Twitter into your strategy. However, if you service other businesses, LinkedIn will likely be your primary tool of choice.
3. Ensure Brand Awareness
Don’t overlook the power of branding. Before you launch, create a strong brand-presence strategy.
Optimize your logo for online use – some profiles require certain image specifications. Seek help with this if you have difficulty with design or visual concepts.
Create a customized Twitter background – include contact information and your website URL.
For newsletters, embed your social media profile links into the template and be sure that the design of the newsletter compliments your website and over-all social media branding.
Create a dynamic Facebook landing page – that encourages interaction and sharing.
Secure Your Online Real Estate - There may be social media platforms or communities that you don’t currently plan to use, secure your professional/company name anyway. Here’s an example of why this is so important. Recently, Netflix relaunched its DVD mailing service under the name: Quickster. In the process, they failed to secure the Twitter handle @Qwikster. If they had done a bit of research (prior to their major announcement), they would have discovered that the name was already taken. The negative press they received for this faux pas could have easily been avoided. Don’t let this happen to you! Do your due diligence, before you launch.
4. Develop a Social Media Process Plan
This document will serve as your standard operating procedure for social media engagement; helping to eliminate the burden of micro-managing. Sounds important? Well, it is. So much so, that we’ve dedicated this entire section to helping you to create a solid (and useful) plan.
Be flexible. This guide will evolve over time, but initially it should include the following:
Procedure – An outline of the appropriate steps that will be taken for identifying, engaging, responding, and servicing customers or prospects. For example: how will your team uniformly handle a prospect inquiry or customer complaint.
Delegation – When selecting which member of your social media team will be the essential online voice for your company, you need to consider each candidate(s): personality, writing style, and product/service knowledge; by doing so you have the ability to establish a cohesive and consistent social media presence that clearly represents your brand.
Training – Educating everyone involved is essential to success. Because social media integration is much more detailed than sending out scheduled tweets, it’s important to have a thorough understanding of the platforms being used, and how to use them effectively to achieve the desired result.
Routine – Establishing response protocol and time-blocking for strategic online engagement is extremely important. Social media users are accustomed to quick – often instantaneous – communication; without routine monitoring of social media platforms, customers may become disgruntled or dissatisfied.
5. Understand SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Whatever you do, don’t launch your social media campaign without obtaining at least a basic understanding of SEO. Knowing how to increase your chances of being found on the internet is essential for increased online traffic and target market conversion!
6. Create a Social Media Policy
Though it may be cumbersome, drafting a detailed set of social media guidelines for your business is something that you don’t want to put off. You will want this document to be easy to understand (so that there is little room for misinterpretation). It should clearly define do’s and don’ts that represent acceptable – work related – social media behaviors. For example:
Are employees allowed to post to their personal social media accounts during work hours? Who is responsible for monitoring the communications of the social media team? Or, if an employee encounters an unhappy customer, is there a protocol for offline follow-up?
Hindsight is 20/20. So, it’s best to be ahead of the curve while you are still strategizing your social media plan. A well written policy will minimize unsavory and unprofessional employee conduct online.
Look Before You Launch!
Taking the time to develop a strategic and progressive plan of execution, will not only increase your potential for success, it will also establish the guidelines necessary to maintain focus and consistency. The truth is that branding your business, service, or profession takes time and creative effort. On the other hand, attempting to grow brand awareness with social media also requires personality, likeability and a knack for easy conversation.
Understanding the many facets of social media is no easy feat. Don’t schedule your lift-off without a plan and a solid strategy for long-term success. The right fuel, a clear sky, and a capable team in mission control, will always make for the best chance to take it to the moon; take it to the stars….to take this whole thing to Mars.
Do you have additional tips for social media marketing planning? Have you launched a successful social media campaign? Share your tips and thoughts with us in the comment section!
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Nov 11th, 2011. 
Google unveiled Google Wallet yesterday, and it’s already gotten the company a lawsuit. It comes from PayPal, and names two Google executives – Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, both of which used to work at eBay, and worked on extensively on PayPal.
The suit has actually been in the works for some time, and alleges that Bedier stole confidential information from PayPal and that Tilenius violated contractual obligations. Bloomberg reports:
PayPal also alleges that Bedier, who left the company in January, discussed a job with Google while simultaneously leading negotiations to make PayPal a payment option on Google’s Android Market. He didn’t disclose the job-related talks, a breach of his fiduciary duty, the company said.
Tilenius, who left EBay in 2009, was under contract not to recruit employees, PayPal said. She messaged Bedier on Facebook Inc.’s social-networking Web site, telling him she had a “HUGE” opportunity for him, and sent him e-mails and text messages offering advice while he interviewed for a position, according to the complaint.
The suit itself says Bedier “is now leading Google’s efforts to bring point of sale technologies and services to retailers on its behalf,” and that “Bedier and Google have misappropriated PayPal trade secrets by disclosing them within Google and to major retailers.”
Google Wallet lets users store credit cards, coupons, loyalty, and gift cards on a smartphone, and uses near field communication technology, enabling tap to pay functionality. Google has partnership with Citi and MasterCard in place.
It has been well established that competition in the mobile payments space is going to continue to get fiercer, and with Google officially in the game, things are already getting much more interesting. Wait until Apple and Facebook make their marks in physical world payments. And let’s not forget Square, which just launched Card Case, which allow consumers to use tabs for payments.
PayPal, a leader in the payments space, needs to break out every line of defense it can as the industry in which it’s been pretty comfortable in for quite some time is becoming greatly disrupted at a rapid pace. Tricia Duryee at All Things Digital brings up an interesting point, saying that PayPal is on track to become bigger than its parent company eBay.
Google has yet to comment on the suit.
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Filed under Internet Marketing by on May 27th, 2011.
Today, CNN reports that plans may be in the works for popular app makers UberMedia to form their own social network rival to Twitter that “could compete with that popular microblogging platform.”
CNN cites three people who have been briefed on the plans as its source. From CNN:
The service would seek to attract users by addressing common complaints about Twitter, such as its restriction on the length of a message and how it can be confusing to newcomers, according to these sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the plans.
If you aren’t familiar with UberMedia, they are a California based company that develops third-party applications for Twitter and other social media. Their apps, which include UberSocial, Echofon and Twidroyd, allow users to interact with Twitter without using the official Twitter applications or the Twitter website. Many people prefer UberMedia’s interface and features to the official Twitter products.
UberMedia has a healthy share in the Twitterverse, according to a report issued by Sysomos last month. They analyzed over 25 million tweets in one day and reported that non-official Twitter clients were responsible for 42% off all tweets. Of that chunk, UberMedia’s UberSocial, Echofon and Twidroyd were responsible for 27.4% of the tweet volume.
There have been issues between Twitter and UberMedia in the past, as Twitter suspended UberTwitter and Twidroyd in February. The apps were later reinstated, and UberTwitter became UberSocial. In March, Twitter’s Ryan Sarver posted a message to third-party developers that warned them to steer clear of developing apps that “mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” This message was issued in conjunction with an update to Twitter’s terms of service regarding their API access.
It’s not likely that a new social network similar to Twitter could realistically compete with its dominance anytime soon. Twitter just reported that they were up to 155 million tweets a day.
UberMedia does however have plenty of users who enjoy their apps, and loyal clients could move over to a new network, especially if they have problems with basic Twitter constructs like the 140 character limit.
“Our foremost desire is to continue to innovate on the Twitter platform and bring more users and usage to Twitter,” UberMedia CMO Steve Chadima said in a statement to CNN
Is it possible that UberMedia could build a successful social network to rival Twitter? Would you use it? Let us know what you think.
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Filed under Internet Marketing by on Apr 13th, 2011.
