Social Media Training: The 5 Most Common Excuses for Not Using Social Media
I do a lot of social media training and strategic consulting to businesses of all sizes. The funny thing is that most business have the same barriers as to why they are not using social media. From fortune 500 countries all the way to small business owner, the excuses and barriers are the same.
The reality is that most of these barriers are only in their minds. They don’t want to use social media because they don’t understand it, so they make excuses. Deep down, they know that they need to use social media (or they wouldn’t be talking to me), but something in their mindset is holding them back.
The reality is that businesses that invest in learning how to properly harness social media see dramatic results. All signs show that social media is here to stay. You can’t afford to ignore it.
Excuse #1 – Social media is a fad
Social media is here to stay. Social media has mass adoption and continues to grow in popularity.
- More people check Facebook every day than read the newspaper or listen to the radio.
- Facebook has over 500 million users.
- There are over 30 million blogs in the US (that is about 1 for every 10 people)
- Twitter has millions of users including most celebrities and politicians.
- Social Media was listed as a key factor in winning the last US presidency.
Excuse #2 – Social Media is a shiny new object
Social Media isn’t really new when you think about it. People have been social since forever. We live in communities. We talk about things that matter. We give advice to our friends. This has all been going on for centuries.
The media part is new. Technology has allowed us to make social connections in a more powerful and scalable way. Rather than keeping up with a few people in person we can keep up with many people by checking out their tweets or Facebook updates.
So really, social media is an age old concept that is transformed by technology.
Excuse #3 – I can’t afford to hire someone to help me
Small business owners who hear me speak approach me afterward and ask me how they can get support to start growing their business with social media marketing. They often then say that they can’t afford to invest. That is a losing mindset, because if they are already struggling, they really, they can’t afford not to.
Businesses waste all sorts of money on things that don’t work any more. Yellow pages ads, newspaper ads, direct mail and coupons. Social media works better than any of these things. If you want to be successful make the choice to invest in something that will actually grow your business and get you results.
Excuse #4 – I don’t have the time
This is one of the most common barriers. I don’t have the time. Do you have about an hour a week? That is all it takes. 10 minutes, 5 times a week. If you are disciplined in your social media marketing approach you can manage social media without a lot of time.
Our clients that use the social marketing action program see results with just an hour a week (after setting everything up). The key is to use efficiency tools and be strategic in how you spend your time.
Excuse #5 – Social media doesn’t deliver business results
This one is just plain not true. Businesses of all sizes have seen dramatic results from social media across multiple areas of their business. Here are just a few examples:
- Lenovo reduced customer service calls by 20% with social media.
- Vista Prints sold $25,000 from twitter alone
- Golden Tee saved development costs with a free Facebook application.
- Naked pizza had their best ever sales day from twitter.
These are just a few. If you make the smart choice to invest in social media you will be on one of these lists one day.
Are there any other myths that you hear?
Small Business Social Media Speaker: 10 Ways Small Businesses can use Social Media
I know that a lot of small businesses are interested in social media marketing to grow their business. I speak with thousands of small business owners a year (probably just like you) who hear about social media but don’t know exactly how they can get value from social media.
I have worked with many of these business owners to help them find success in social media, and I know that small businesses can get results using social media marketing. I know first hand that social media can provide a better ROI than traditional marketing methods. Social Media marketing can deliver results when used strategically and with the right plan.
Here are 10 of the most common ways that small businesses can use social media to grow their business. In no particular order, here are 10 ways that small businesses can use social media:
1) Share Deals and Promotions on Twitter
Twitter is a powerful way to share deals and promotions with your customers (and future customers)! Big companies like Dell Outlet have sold millions of dollars through twitter, but it works for small companies too. Naked Pizza, a small pizza store in New Orleans had their highest ever sales day from a twitter promotion. Vista Prints sold $25,000 directly through twitter in their first year. Find and connect with your target audience and give them irresistable offers on Twitter.
2) Share news and Updates on Facebook
Don’t have a fan page yet? If you have fans or customers who are passionate about your business you should have a fan page. Use it to connect with customers and keep them up to date on your new products or services. I was recently getting my car fixed and found that the mechanic frequents the same neighborhood bar as I do. He told me that he checks out their Facebook page every day to see what food and drink specials they have. This bar has a creative new drink special for Happy Hour every day and a different free food item available.
Whether is it food and drink specials, new items in your store, new industry news or regulations a facebook fan page can be a powerful resource to keep your customers up to date. Over 1/3 of people who are fans of companies on Facebook are fans for this reason – to stay up to date.
3) Network on LinkedIn Groups
Lots of small businesses and professionals grow their businesses by networking with people. Meeting people and sharing helpful knowledge drives business over time. People do business with people they know, like and trust.
LinkedIn groups allow you connect with others based on a shared interest. You can join a group and contribute to discussions or share interesting news. By using LinkedIn to build relationships you can earn new customers over time.
4) Connect with Prospects with a Webinar
Webinars are becoming increasingly popular ways to connect with prospects adn provide value to customers. Webinars are virtual and web-based. A webinar is typically hosted around a specific topic and people sign up, call in and log-in on their computer and they can watch and listen to a live session on a specific topic.
Webinars are very popular in categories that are high-information. Most B-to-B business fall in to this categoy, but it also works for consumer products. If people are looking for knowledge or information on your subject area, a webinar can be a powerful tool to share information with them and position yourself as a leader.
5) Be a Thought Leader with a Blog
Blogs are very popular for a variety of reasons (we’ll discuss one more of them later in this post). One of the reasons is that a blog can establish you as an expert and thought leader in your industry. If people trust you and see you as knowledgeable they are more likely to do business with you.
Run a gym? Share workout tips. Real Estate Agent? Share posts highlighting the people and events in your neighborhood. Restaurant? Show how you make signature drinks or menu items.
6) Connect with Customers and Prospects with an email newsletter
So maybe *technically* this isn’t social media, but it is relatively simple and cheap for most businesses to create a newsletter. Constant Contact and MailChimp offer services for under $25 a month and are easy to use.
An email newsletter can keep your customers and prospects up to speed on news, deals and promotions. Email remains the preferred communication method of most people (1:10 preference over social media) to stay up to date.
7) Join an online community
There are online communities for almost everything these days. Seek out a discussion forum or community that is specific to your business and participate!
You can connect with customers (or potential customers) and really learn about them. What are they interested in? What do they talk about? What do they want and need in products? Participating and listening to communinities that are comprised of your business target can improve your product but also lead to sales as you build relationships.
Monitor and Respond to your Reviews
There are many business review sites – from product reviews on amazon to restaurant and store reviews on yelp to complaints on The Ripoff Report. Whatever your business line, chances are there are review sites that are relevant. Even Facebook has included reviews on fan pages. Google has reviews in their listings.
Look for and respond to reviews (both good and bad). Saying thanks to a good review can build an evangelist and encourage word-of-mouth. Responding to a negative review can help clarify the situation. Showing that you care about negative reviews and plan to take action shows your side of the situation to the hundreds of people who view the review.
9) Get Found on Search Engines with a Blog
Another great reason to start a blog is to get traffic from search engines. Because blogs are content rich (you typically create content for them on a regular basis) search engines give traffic to sites with blogs.
In almost anything that you search for you’ll find a number of blogs show up in search results. If people find you business through search a blog can increase the probability that you will show up in results. This leads to traffic and (hopefully) sales.
10) Generate Awareness with a Video
Videos can be great ways to connect with your audience. A picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a million! Video is a great way to share information – whether it is a video showing how you make a dish, customers talking about their satisfaction or a video demo of your product – videos are powerful tools.
Create a video for your business to make a deeper connection with your audience. Whatever your business there are many different creative ways to use and share videos.
This list isn’t exhaustive – it is simply a handful of the tactics and tools that are included in the Social Media Action Pack.
How are you using social media for your small business?
Twitter Ads
Twitter Launches Promoted Trends
I read an article recently about Twitter selling ad space, back in April Twitter introduced Promoted Tweets, a platform to allow businesses to promote themselves within the Twitter stream. Now it seems Twitter has launched Promoted Trends, a feature that will allow advertisers to insert their own trends into Twitter’s trending topics.
Twitter’s Value
Twitter’s value was released the other day at one billion dollars, impressive, but only one tenth of Facebook’s reported value. At some point Twitter will need to find a way to monetize their site, without
making it a pay service. I don’t have a problem with the paid placement of tweets and trends; I think it would be an excellent addition to any Internet or Social Media Marketing Plan.
How Twitter Needs to Handle Placed Trends
Here is what I want to see Twitter do with the paid placements. If they are allowing a company to pay to place an ad within the stream, call it out; make sure everyone understands someone paid to put that ad in their stream. As far as the Promoted Trends, I want to be able to ignore this feature, because the whole point of Twitter’s trending topics it to see in real time what is happening in the “twitterverse”. You can already choose between worldwide, by country even by city. I don’t want to see the trending topics “polluted” with a paid placement.
By creating a competition for the top trending spot, with a Google AdWords type auction, it would created a nice competition and help Twitter make money from selling the ads. As Twitter continues to grow they have got to find a non-intrusive way to bring in advertising dollars while still being able to create enough awareness of the ads.
Mobile Application
More people are logging on to Social Media; Twitter specifically, using their mobile devices. If you use an iPhone and a free Twitter app you most likely have to deal with some sort of ad placement now, so by adding ads to the main Twitter page should be too much of a problem.
| Number of Mobile Subscribers Accessing Twitter via Mobile Browser | 3 – month average ending Jan. 2010 vs. Jan. 2009 | Total U.S. Age 13+ | |
| Total Audience | |||
| Jan-09 | Jan-10 | % of Change | |
| Twitter.com | 1,051,000 | 4,700,000 | 347 |
| Source: comScore MobiLens | |||
– brian tudor
follow @briantudor on twitter
8 Tips for Setting up Social Media Profiles to Build Your Personal Brand
Whether you are a social media enthusiast or a newbie starting out, setting up a strong profile is extremely important in how you represent yourself online.
Here are some tips for setting up strong profiles on the web:
1) Think KeyWords for Search - The point of social sites is to connect with people – in order to connect they have to be able to find you. Recruiters search LinkedIn for keywords. People search keywords in twitter profiles to find similar people to connect with. Companies search the web for suppliers and business partners. When setting up your profile on social sites, think about some of the keywords that someone looking for you may search for and be sure to include them in your profile.
2) Pick a Consistent UserName - Try to use the same user name across all sites – I use kristaneher or bootcampdigital across all sites on the web. This will help people find you across multiple websites.
3) Set up a Personal URL – Most social sites like Facebook, LInkedin and Flickr allow you to set up your own URL. For example on Facebook I am at www.facebook.com/kristaneher and on LinkedIn I’m www.linkedin.com/in/kristaneher. Setting up these URLs helps build your brand positioning and also makes it easy to link to these sites.
4) Use a Picture that Looks Like You - Many connections that start online eventually lead to a face to face meeting. Build a consistent image for yourself by using a photo that looks like you. This will help you establish yourself as a brand and people will recognize you when they see you in person. Also, if you have a common name people may not be sure that they are really connecting with you – your photo will help them identify that you are the correct person.
5) Complete all of the Fields – Complete as many fields as possibly when you set up your profile on a social site. This will help you with search, but also provides a full picture of you. If a business contact or recruiter searches for you online it is likely that your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts will show up on the first page. Complete the profile information to make a strong first impression.
6) Manage Privacy Settings - Be sure to manage your privacy settings. Facebook often shows up on first page search results for most people. Make sure that your Facebook page is protected if the content might not be appropriate for all audiences.
7) Assume Everything is Public - Manage privacy settings as best as possible but remember that there is the potential for information you share to become public. Be sure that you are comfortable with the information you share on social sites and make sure that it isn’t inappropriate for multiple audiences.
Reserve Your UserName Everywhere - If a site starts to gain traction be sure to reserve your username on it. This will help you with #2 – using a consistent username. In the profile mention that you aren’t active (if it isn’t a site that you are using) and provide alternate ways for people to get in touch with you.
As you can see in the image below, social media profiles are very predominant in search results, so be sure that your social media profiles are a strong reflection of you – employers, business partners, friends and even random stalkers may be looking for you online. Be sure that your profiles are appropriate for all audiences.
Does anyone else have tips?
From BlogWell: Graco: Communicating with Social Media in a Time of Crisis
This is the last of my posts from the BlogWell conference (a conference covering big brands and how they use social media, held in Cincinnati last week). Kelly Voelker, Brand Manager, PR & Social Media at Graco shared their strategies for dealing with a PR Crisis during a recall (side note – what can Toyota learn from this?).
The Situation
On Jan 20, 2010, at 7:00am the news of the recall went out over the newswire. Graco announced a recall of 1.5 million strollers worldwide after 7 injuries were reported. The recall was only for a few specific models (not for the entire line-up). The story was posted immediately on a large number of national news sites.
How Graco Responded
Being Pro-Active
Graco pro-actively shared their message with specific communication on their blog, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and a dedicated Web Page. They created a landing page with specific information since they knew that consumers might have trouble getting through to customer care.
Reaching out to Influencers
They also reached out to top influencers to help share information. They sent an email prior to the news release to a variety of brand ambassadors who also have blogs. The bloggers appreciated getting the news first and helped to share information.
Dealing with Negativity
There was a lot of negative feedback. Here are some of the tips to deal with negativity:
- First, get ahead of the news and pro-actively search for and respond to conversations.
- Second, work closely with customer service; prepare them in advance and loop them in with a senior person who can approve appropriate real time responses.
- Deal with responses on a case-by-case basis and get permission to act.
- Start building the relationships before the problem exists. Nurture a community of positive advocates who will help in a crisis situation.
- Finally, if there is something that the community can benefit from then keep it online, otherwise move it offline.
One specific example was a woman named “Michelle” – she tweeted to the Chicago Sun Times, was responding to other consumers on the Graco Facebook page and actively shared negativity. Graco had a senior person respond to her personally and it turned her around. She then shared positive experiences across all of the same channels. She was happy that Graco wanted to help and reached out to her.
This is consistent with what we hear time and again. Often those who complain the loudest can become your biggest advocates with a little time and attention.
Key Learnings
- Legal collaboration – Become a legal go-to inside your organization as the communications team. Prepare messages in advance. Make sure that your legal team understands social media.
- Executive Communication – Graco held twice a day calls with leadership leading up to and during the announcement. They sent a daily email with the coverage and red-flags. This helped build consensus.
- Global Integration – Clarify the meaning of a recall outside of the US and treat all customers the same.
The way that the social media team is structured at Graco helps. There is a social media team that is made up of multi-functional people who are passionate about the brand (they don’t have communications backgrounds). They were all briefed in advance and were told how to respond to issues.
How did you work with your social media agency during this recall?
Graco really used their agency as a tool to listen. They were keeping an eye on the conversation to help us comb through the conversation and respond when needed. They don’t respond directly – they provide council and listening. Graco owned the communications.
What do you do about the crazies, nutjobs and wackos and people in that category?
Set expectations with your executives that this will happen. Reach out and let them know that you are there to talk to them. Ask them what they want — be there to talk to them about their issues and deal with it on a case by case basis.
Ways to use Twitter to Build your Business
Twitter is one of the social networking sites with a ton of interest and excitement, but a lot of people struggle with how to use it. Having clear marketing goals and objectives is KEY to success in twitter. Knowing what your marketing goals are and who you are trying to reach is vital to successfully using twitter. As you start to explore twitter as a business building tool here are some different marketing objectives that twitter can help you achieve:
Customer Service - Connect with customers who have issues or concerns and provide immediate support for your customers. JetBlue does a great job of responding to travel issues and questions – and you don’t have to call and wait on hold.
Company News – Use your twitter account to let customers know about changes to your product or news pertaining to your company. If you do share news through twitter be prepared to answer questions and discuss the changes with your audience – it isn’t a one way street.
Feedback – Twitter can be a great tool to get honest feedback from your customers. Ask them about upcoming product changes or new services that you are considering. Be sure to provide them with an honest explanation of why you choose to take or not take their advice.
Build Equity – You can build equity for your brand by using twitter to talk about things that are of interest to your audience. Provide them with valuable information about something they are interested in or passionate about related to your brand. For example, if you sell laundry detergent you can tweet about stain removal tips (just make sure that your detergent isn’t always the answer – people want honest and useful advice).
Be a Thought Leader – Especially if you are a BtoB brand you can use twitter to showcase your thought leadership and expertise. Share trends, data and perspective on the industry to position your organziation as a leader in your field.
Syndicate Your Blog – For many bloggers twitter is one of the top ways that they drive traffic to their blogs. Post your blog post (you can set this up to happen automatically) on twitter and use twitter as a way to share your latest bog posts.
Get Help – Twitter can be a powerful tool to get help with something. Earlier this week I asked for a google voice invite and I got 10 offers in a matter of minutes. When I need a new service provider I will often solicit my twitter friends for recommendations. You have to build trust and relationships for this to work (don’t come out of the gate asking for things) but once you have cultivated relationships twitter can be a powerful resource.
Humanize Your Brand – It is easy to trash a brand. It is harder to trash a real live person. By being human on twitter you can connect with people on a deeper level. This means that you will have an army of advocates if you run in to trouble. You’ll also have credibility when you talk to people who have a problem with your business.
Selling Stuff – You can use twitter as a direct sales mechanism as long as you are upfront about it. The Dell Outlet has sold over $3 million on twitter. They don’t pretend to build relationships – they are clear – this is a feed of GREAT deals from Dell. They built a following by providing great offers. If you are using twitter to sell be upfront about it.
How are you using twitter to build your business? What other uses have we missed in this post?
Where do you Share? 44% do it on Facebook.
Last week, Tech Crunch reported that new data released by Gigya shows that 44% of sharing online happens through Facebook, with an additional 29% coming through Twitter. (note – this data does not include email as a sharing source. Almost half of all sharing happens on Facebook and almost three quarters of sharing takes place on twitter and Facebook combined.
What are the implications of this for your business?
If you want your content to travel – make it Shareable.
- Include Facebook Connect (since it is the most popular place to share)
- Have a “tweet this” button
- Share video on sites that publish across social networks
- Use Services like ShareThis to enable sharing across social networks.
Don’t Forget Email
While email wasn’t included in this survey, according to EMarketer, email remains one of the top ways that people share content. Be sure to include email as a way for readers to share your content. Email has also been shown to have higher engagement rates; meaning that people who receive content via email tend to spend more time on that content and be more interested.
Read More:
Also see articles by Marketing Pilgrim and DM Confidential.
Interview with Krista Neher: Successful Approaches to Using Twitter
While at PubCon in Las Vegas, I had the pleasure of moderating a number of panels on twitter. In the video below Vanessa Zamora of PubCon interviews me about how companies can use twitter.
One of the things that I like the most about pubcon is the diversity of panelists. In our conversations about twitter, some of the panelists like Dan Zarella focus on the science of what works – how to drive retweets. Other panelists like Warren Whitlock focus on the brand building side – how to be nice and behave socially on twitter.
There is definitely a time and place for both strategies, depending on your marketing objectives and strategies.
I’ll be speaking again at PubCon south in Dallas, which promises to be another great conference.
2009 is The Year of Twitter – Yes, Twitter is Officially the Top Word of 2009
It is official. Twitter is popular.
According to the Global Language Monitor “twitter” was the most popular word of 2009.
That is right. Twitter beat out major international news events like H1N1 (3rd place) and the election of President Obama (second place).
Shocked? I was (and I’m a social media junkie). Is Twitter (in the context of the website) even acknowledged in the dictionary?
Also amusing, twitter is defined as “the ability to encapsulate human thought into 140 characters”.
Also surprising was that 2.0 was rated #6 (and defined as “The 2.0 suffix is attached to the next generation of everything”).
Interestingly only 1 web word made the top 10 phrases – “Cloud Computing”.
This information really highlights the significance of the web in the mainstream.
You can see the whole list here. You can also see previous years highlights here.
Industry News: Twitter Trends Data
Twitter is all the rage these days, and a few individuals and organizations have done some great research on twitter trends and how twitter is being used.
2% of Tweets Match Google Trending Topics
First, Techcrunch recently reported that only 2% of all tweets match trending topics on google. So what? Why does this matter? What does this mean?
Well at a base level it means that people don’t tweet about the same things that they search for. I just pulled twitter trends and google trends. As you can see there is some overlap, but not much.
What people are searching for and what they are talking about are not necessarily the same thing. Twitter trending topics tend to be more focused on popular culture (MusicMonday/MM, New Moon), technology (google wave) and general things going on (Christmas and Thanksgiving).
As Twitter Search continues to attract attention from major search engines it will be interesting to see more data on how search and conversation overlap.
Vik Singh’s Twitter Analysis
Vik Singh (the engineer behind Yahoo Boss) conducted an analysis of 10 million tweets and shared some trends and findings.
