Social Media 101

Social Meida 101

As with any technology the most important step is to first learn as much as you can about your client and their business before you can fully utilize these Social Media tools.

Most businesses are started because the owner had a passion and a dream. This is what drives Social Media-your passion, your dream. Once you have a full understanding of this passion and/or dream you can then use Social Media as a tool to:

• Tell others about your passion or your dream
• Why you started your business
• Why your business is different from all of your competitors
• Connect with other like minded people
• Provide a real value to consumers or like minded groups
• Learn valuable information about your consumers

Now that you have a passion, what other questions should you consider before jumping into the Social Media world?

What do we do when people post negative comments about us?

The simple answer to this question is yes. This is in my opinion one of the top questions that you must answer before you join the Social Media world. Most companies have always had a fear of negative content online because of the longevity of online comments, not to mention how quickly news now travels on the Internet. So while you may want to have an area where everyone can post comments and feedback most clients are always worried about that one person that will used this area as a soap box for their own purposes.

However, it’s not going to matter if you have an area for these comments or not because if consumers are upset they are more then likely already talking about you. Recent statistics show that 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands and you will most likely never be able to control the conversations that take place. This opens up the question, “If you are going to have people talking about you, why not have them talking on your site?”. This will allow you to monitor the content so that things that shouldn’t be posted are removed. Keep in mind that this is Monitoring and not Censorship. This also allows you to at the very least try and give feedback to the community. Feedback from the company can not only be helpful but it is also met with appreciation from the customers. Other statistics show that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations while only 14% trust advertisements. So you may find that there are those in the community that will come to the defense of your brand when unreasonable or untrue content is posted. While you may worry about negative comments you can ease the tension by empowering those that identify with your brand.

Some will continue to be hung up on the negative comments that could be posted, and for those I ask this, “if your company has things to fear that would keep you from having an online Social Media group, do you have larger issues to deal with internally?” Because the Internet gives users the ability to post comments on any number of Social Media outlets, which are out of your control, we now see more and more users utilizing these outlets to talk about their experiences with a brand. This becomes even more apparent when you see that 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.

Is Social Media really a big deal?

It would be very easy to look at Social Media as nothing more then an evolution of the Internet itself. If we look back at the Internet we would see that it was nothing more then Social Media in it’s early phase. We had BBS boards that evolved into IRC chat channels and New Groups. We had personal websites and Group Rings that moved into Forums. And then we had the Blogs that have spawned RSS feeds and short snippets of news via Twitter. We now have statistics that show that Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Internet. And that 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find new employees. We have seen the decline of 24 of the 25 largest newspapers because we are finding the news online rather than through the newspaper. And to top it all off, YouTube has become the second largest search engine in the world.

Which Social Media service is right for me?

First and foremost you need to know which Social Media outlet your consumers are using most when online. Then you will need to decide on what type and how much involvement you will want or be able to have. Just because these services are free to use does not mean that they are free to maintain. Time is money and you will need to invest time into any service that you decide to go with. In order to find out which ones best suits your needs you may want to try a few of the following:

Join up:

Search for Social Media outlets that are interesting to you and join them. While this can be time consuming it is very important to be actively involved in a community to learn about consumers.

Website Analytics:

Have an ongoing log that shows referral traffic to your website from Social Media websites. Knowing where your website visitors are coming from is vital in choosing the right outlet for your company.

Ask your customers:

Sometimes its just as easy as asking your current customers.

Third party information:

Hitwise and Quantcast can help show demographic information that can not only help in your decision but may also help in getting the attention of upper management.

How do I use Social Media to promote my brand?

One of the biggest No No’s is to post about how good your own brand is. It is much better to ask the community what they think. This not only empowers the community but they are much more likely to repost and talk to others on another network about your brand. This not only helps with your brand exposure but also shows that your are into what the community has to say and that their feedback is important.

So, who in the company gets tasked with this project?

Depending on the size of a company, the amount of time needed can be high. This unfortunately leads many companies to give these tasks to entry level or even a summer intern. Now don’t get me wrong, they entry level employees and even the interns can be very useful and can give insight into Social Media. That being said would you want an entry level employee or an intern being the public face of your company or would you rather utilize someone that had a well rounded understanding of your company. Perhaps someone in the Sales, Marketing and or Public Relation. You may find it best to have several people working on these tasks so no one person is tied down but rather they all work as a team to put the best public appearance of your company out there. So before tasking anyone person with this job, you may want to ask yourself who is the best person to represent your company, your passion, your dream.

When and how do we see a ROI?

The easiest way is to setup goals and a strategy for what you are trying to accomplish and then measure the outcomes in the months to follow.

For instance, if your focus is on driving more traffic to your site then you can easily monitor the Analytic reports for your site to see if referral traffic from the Social Media outlets that you have chosen are actually referring more people.

If you are looking to gain popularity for your brand then you can monitor the amount of people that are following you or the discussions that are taking place about your brand.

If you are looking to raise your Search Engine ranking you can not only measure this by direct searches for your company brand but by checking on how many others are now linking to you. All of which helps your overall SEO.

Keeping in mind that a financial gain is not the only way to measure ROI will help you in setting and reaching your goals.

Are companies really making this work?

For some the answer is yes. This is not just because of their brand but also because of how they utilize these outlets. Those that are really making a showing are listening to the consumer and putting up content not as traditional advertisers but as content providers. The future looks to be full of small aggregated chucks instead of traditional media’s long approach. Remember to post relevant information and that quality outweighs quantity every time.

*Most of the statistics in this article were pulled from quantcast or hitwise