Social Media Failure: Get Up and Dust Off Your…

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On occasion I will write a post regarding something Seth Godin has written on his blog (this is an understatement). A couple of days ago Seth wrote a post entitled Failure As An Event. In the post he talks about some of the big failures in his life and the lessons he learned from them.

After reading the post, I started thinking about the concept of getting back up after you have been knocked down. The concept of never-ending strength in driving toward specific goals in life is extremely important to long term success. This is especially true for all of the “social media junkies” or “soon to be junkies” out there.

There will be times when you fail in the blogging arena. You may write a bad post. You may miss your personal or company deadline for a post. Heck, you may even forget to write for a couple of days! Or experience a huge decline in readership despite your best writing (or so you thought).

This also applies to taking the time and being persistent in social media. Everything you do online should be mapped out and organized. Do you want to post 10 times a week? Do it and try to do it consistently. When you miss a date…keep going forward.

It takes time to see any type of return in the social media world. Set out ambitious goals for yourself in regards to your social media use. Mix it in with some traditional marketing. Figure out how it fits in your overall strategy for world domination!

And if you fail…

Get up. Reevaluate. Try again.

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The Best ROI Explanation for Social Media and Some Additions

As an owner of a social media marketing and design company, it can be hard to explain the return on investment in accordance with social media use. I think many of us (marketers) try to find a return on investment because:

A. It can be easier to sell the marketing because of an ROI explanation.

B. We believe so much in social media. We want to use it… every chance we get.

Jason Falls has one of the best explanation (and personal views) of ROI in Social Media in his post: What is the ROI for Social Media?

In the post he starts out by stating a quote I have posted in my office on the wall:

The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.

He goes on to say that it is hard to convince business owners that the point of social media is the conversation and relationships. If they are mainly in it for money “they will fail.”

Your ROI is what you got out of the conversation, not what you got out of their checkbook.

I have always been a believer in social media to help grow your business. You can use it as a delivery tool to send a message to many users in a short time span and build relationships. The problem with the business environment and social media is the mindset many business owners are under… the “i need my return now” mindset. “I’m investing $2000 a month in marketing.” I need to see return every month.

Social Media takes time to develop. Amy Nowacoski has a comment on Jason’s blog post has a great comparison for Social Media and ROI:

ROI on human interactions is always very tricky. I’ve worked in fundraising and development for years, and have always held that fundraising events cannot always be about the bottom line. It can’t be about just the dollar figure you amassed that night. Events are also about cultivation and engagement. I would spend time making sure everyone, not just the big donors, feel like VIPs because that guy who only bought a $20 ticket today, could be the guy who gives you $20K in 10 years.

There are always methods of combining social media marketing with traditional marketing. This will give you something of substance (ie direct mail) with something intangible (social media).

Social Media is growing in popularity and growing in validity as a powerful marketing tool. Start getting involved. Set some goals and achieve trusted relationships in your community!

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Part 3: Social Media Marketing for Small Business: Attention to Action

We spend a lot of time talking about increased exposure for your company or personal brand in social media. We spend countless hours reading on how to gain attention to our content or service offerings. Personally. I spend quite a bit on Google Reader trying to stay ahead of the curve and consume the next big idea.

Many small business owners concentrate on one aspect of social media: the attention of the users. It is mainly the increased exposure to potential clients that starts the interest wheel turning in many owner’s heads. This is the old marketing strategy of the more you do the more eyes you will hit. We need to take it a bit further than just building brand recognition. It is hard to measure brand recognition in terms of return on investment.

Initially when entering into a social media marketing strategy companies need to think about the attention gaining concepts for the plan. Whether you are doing a contest, spending time in the networks, or launching a new platform it is important to initially focus on the attention aspect of social media.

What is truly important (in a business sense) is the action the user takes to buy and/or become interested in your product. You have all the attention you can muster! How do you turn the user’s attention into action.

4 Ways to Change Attention to Action

1. Free eBook:

Write a short book about your expertise. Are you an accountant? A business coach? Maybe you are a plumber who is just getting involved online? Write a quick page turner on some topics that will be beneficial to your readers. Offer it for a free download and capture their email address. This will allow you to build your database while already zeroing in on interested prospects. Chris Brogan has done an excellent job at this.

2. Blog or Email Subscription

In everything you do in social media it is extremely important to always have a subscription box for users to subscribe to your thoughts and offerings.

A great email tool for wordpress is Subscribe2 or the FeedBurner Email Subscription.

3. Promotional Banners or Links for your Profile

Always have a link present (image or text) that offers a discount on your services. You can also have a link directed to your company website that allows users to invest more time in learning about your services. This is a huge example of way to drive your attention users to your website and sell them on your services.

4. Gain Their Trust

You need to become involved in the communities that potentially may be a revenue source for your company. Take the time to respond to questions, ask questions, invest in writing great content, and helping people out. This is a huge aspect of changeing attention to action. The steps towards the buying pattern of a user has a lot to do with trust in the social media environment. Gain their trust and offer them something to hard to put down.

Gaining the trust of a user is the more important of the four steps listed above. User’s attention is not a bad thing but in order to measure your  ROI  you must take some of them to the action steps.

Always measure and document what you are doing. Time management is key.

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Part 2: Social Media Marketing for Small Business: The Circle of Life

Thanks to Lorraine Ball at Roundpeg for turning me on to Jay Ehret’s blog, the Marketing Spot.

I wanted to talk about some of the concepts Jay uses pertaining to the marketing circle of life. I wanted to relate his four pillars to social media marketing for small business.

Jay has a post entitled The Marketing Circle of Life. In the post Jay talks about the “four primary spots of the marketing circle of life: Branding, Experience, Conversation, and Promotion.”

Copyright Jay Ehret

According to Jay the first step of any marketing plan should be the Branding of your company. You cannot focus on any type of promotion until you have established your brand.

Experience is related to how your customers feels through every touchpoint your customer offers. To quote Jay from his post, “You cannot give people something to talk about unless they first have something to talk about. “ Makes sense to me!

Conversation is what happens after the customer experience. What is the message your customer is spreading? You need to figure it out!

“You should be using your Promotion to attract, not seduce customers.” Promotion should be used to advertise the top three choices. AND THEN we come full circle.

This is a simple and amazing model from Jay to help small business owners understand their marketing plan. I know… I know… How does social media marketing fit into this marketing model? I decided to take Jay’s model and readjust it to show visually how social media supports this model.

The four social media marketing support structures for the circle of life are productive planning, design/content, community involvement, and investment.

Productive Planning

When you are adding social media into the mix of brand building you need to make sure you are planning, setting goals, and mapping out time management.

Planning is essential to building your brand online. Before and after you develop your brand identity you should be constantly revamping your brand strategy. Social Media should be a part of that brand strategy.

Design/Content

Design: You should try and use the same user name, a personal picture, data (both business and personal), and your logo/colors. Users should experience you (and your company) the same way over many different platforms.

Content: Content is key if you are wanting to enhance the user experience to your social media marketing. This is most important if a blog is a part of your SMM. Create meaningful content and add personality into what you write. Authentic communication is key when using social media. Keywords and linking are both extremely important.

Community Involvement

This is where the time management aspect comes into play. It is extremely important that you become involved in the social media communities. The same concept applies to offline social business networking. If you don’t show up all the time… People are going to forget you. Believe me, it is even faster on the web. Get involved. Add some comments. Join in the conversation. Start building some name recognition.

You will also learn some stuff along the way.

Investment

First off, investment is different than involvement. By becoming involved in a social media community your are enterting into a conversation with potential clients or referrals to the potentials. Investment means you are constantly reinventing how to keep readers to your blog, spicen up your profile pages, creating new meaning content, building your brand, and re-designing your blog. It should be a combination of the three previous steps.

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Part 1: Social Media Marketing For Small Business: Prioritize, Plan and Execute

We are constantly selling.

Whether a sole proprietor or a multi-employee company, small business owners are constantly selling themselves and their service/product. Most of the time the two go hand in hand.

From traditional marketing to email marketing, there are a multitude of ways to go about marketing your products and services. Social Media has just recently come to the limelight in the small business circle. There has been a recent push to utilize the world of social media to

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take advantage of the multitude of eyes and ears in this space.

At Brandswag we talk a lot about using social media for your small business marketing strategy. The biggest hurdle in explaining social media is the issue of weighing the benefits against the time spent on social media platforms. If you are thinking of social media in terms of a sales cycle you should stop. Let me say that again…. Just stop!

By looking at social media as a sales cycle it keeps you from seeing the absolute value and benefits of using platforms like Facebook, Myspace,  Twitter, and LinkedIN (to name a few). If you view your use of social media as an instant ROTI (return on time investment) you are going to become frustrated and give up before the magic happens.

Social media takes time. There needs to be sense of importance and goal setting when using social media for your small business. You need to be able to set aside the time every day to check your social media sites and update your blog.

If you have goals set and a plan laid in place to utilize social media you will succeed with creating brand awareness, organic search engine optimization, and becoming a trusted adviser in your local industry.

It is extremely important for you to prioritize, plan, and execute. Execute. Execute. Execute.

Prioritize

Take some time to travel in and out of the different social media platforms. Figure out which sites make sense for you to spend some time. Check out a previous post of mine (in collaboration with Brogan, Rowse, and Sanders) on how to be productive and choose the right social networks.

Find four to five social media platforms that cater to what you are wanting to accomplish.

Plan

Figure out how much time you can committ to using social media. If you want to set aside 30 mins a day to take care of your sites.. DO IT! By all means, the time involvement is important but frequency is just as important. Community users want to know you care and are active in the site.

Execute

Follow Nike when they scream JUST DO IT through all of their advertising. Execute your plan with perfection, create meaningful content, and communicate with your friends online. You can prioritize, dream, and plan all you want but if you do not execute…. well, I wont have anything to say to you.

By executing and joining in the conversation you are developing your brand every single day you spend on social media.

This is part 1 of a 5 part series on how to help small business owners understand, utilize and become successful using social media.

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Brogan, Rowse, Lacy, Sanders: A Collaborative Effort, Version 2

There has been quite a bit of collaboration lately on the idea of social media described in terms of Home Bases, Frontiers, Outposts, and Communities. If you have not gotten into the discussion and thrown in your two cents I would encourage you to read the following posts and discuss:

1.The Founding Father: Chris Brogan: Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

2. Darren Rowse of Pro-Blogger: Home Bases and Outposts, How I Use Social Media

3. Steven Sanders: Home Bases, Outposts, Frontiers and Communities

4. My Post on the matter: Home Bases, Outposts and Frontiers Using Social Media

Steven talks about adding on the concept of communities to the mix of home bases, outposts, and frontiers. In his post he talks about the concept of communities:

If you look at Kyle’s picture of his social media model, you’ll start to notice that it resembles what could possibly be a persons house or lifestyle.  The different areas are the different things a person runs through everyday.

So If you look at this chart belonging to an individual person, then it makes sense that there are similar charts being used by others that help to build your “Communities“.

I like where Steven is going with the concept of communities. Below you will find his version of the concept of communities:

I decided to take it a step further and call the communities concept Borders. To be honest with you it is the same concept at communities but I wanted to keep with the wilderness theme.  Here is my reasoning:

According to Wordsmyth.net borders can be defined as:

The area close to or the dividing line between two countries or political regions.

To me the border defines the outlying area where we still influence and coexist among our neighboring communities. We have out home base, our outposts, the frontiers, and then the border where we wander out and coexist with other communities in the form of communication and collaboration. The only downside to the definition of border is that it means a dividing line. In no way are the borders of our social media “bases” a dividing line but more of place for the facilitation of online relationships and information sharing.

My concept in visual form:

The purple area represents the borders we define in our social media experience. It is an open territory where we cross into other users boundaries and share information. It could be defined as an open border.

Any thoughts?  If there has been any more thoughts shared in the matter please let me know. I would love to add it into the mix.

Social Media and Traditional Advertising Are Similar and Different

Lorraine Ball has an excellent post today talking about consistency in advertising, blogging, and social media.  She talks about the similarities between social media and blogging compared to corporate advertising. She cites Mitch Joel when talking about the best practices in social media.

1. “Repetition, repetition, repetition”.  His point was simple, if we wanted to get noticed, we could not take a one shot approach to our marketing.  Multiple ads, multiple pieces of direct mail would be required to break through the clutter. And the same is true today!  Using blogging and social media as an integral part of your marketing mix.

2. He also makes a great point about creating a consistent online image.  Just as you wouldn’t consider changing your brand color or font every time you print a new brochure, don’t change your identity when you blog.

It made me think about my own paradigm when it comes to push marketing, bomber marketing strategy, and traditional advertising. I have come to despise the constant bombardment of direct mail and email blasts. There is something to be said of a company who can connect with a niche group of people of an emotional level. It is true that repetition and consistency is key in traditional advertising, as well as social media. I wanted to take it a bit further and explain why social media is an upgrade to the traditional advertising platform.

There always needs to be repetition and consistency in social media but not necessarily in terms of “repetition” in the advertising world. In my opinion, repetition in advertising means creating a marketing strategy for a large demographic base and then trying to hit that base as many times as possible with that message (bombing). Social Media has a way (wether you like it or not) to create an extremely niche listener base in your community outlets.

Friendfeed is a great example of this. When you “like” something on Friendfeed you are paired and grouped with people who tended to “like” the same thing. If you are subscribed to a person and he/she likes another post, you will see it in your timeline. This creates a network of niche individuals who share a certain connection in terms of information.

It is hard to pinpoint a specific niche market in your daily social media meanderings because you truthfully have little to no control on how your listerner base in built. That is the difference between social media marketing and traditional advertising.

We choose what we want to read. We choose what we want to see and experience. There has never been such a powerful consumer centric platform in the history!

Yes, you need to be repetitive and consistent in your social media use but if you don’t tack on the content your clientbase wants to read… you might as well be dropping bombs on yourself.

Home Bases, Outposts, and Frontiers: Using Social Media

Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse have been discussing the concept of  home bases and outposts to describe the use of Social Media in their daily routines. Darren talked about the concepts of homebases and outposts in his post: Home Bases and Outposts: How I Use Social Media in My Blogging. From the post:

A home base is a place online that you own, that is your online ‘home’. For me my home bases are blogs but for others they will be other types of websites.

Outposts are places that you have an online presence out in other parts of the web that you might not ‘own’.

Chris Brogan also talks about the concept of Outposts in his post, Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy. Chris explains that an outpost is another way to define a social media service that brings awareness to the homebase, much like an outpost in mulitary terms.

I decided to go a step further and add in the frontier. Dictionary.com describes frontier as:

A: the part of a country that borders another country; boundary; border.

B: the land or territory that forms the furthest extent of a country’s settled or inhabited regions.

My social media definition of frontier: a website or service you have a presence on but rarely go. This is a site where you may have an RSS feed plugging your most-used social networks (Twitter) or your blog. The concept of frontier can be compared to Chris Brogan’s idea of a passport but shed in a little different light.

Above you will see an illustrated example of my use in Social Media. This is a mesh between Chris and Darren’s ideas, as well as my previous idea of the 4 Touch Points Model for productivity in social media.

In order to stay productive in Social Media I try to use four sites that cater to four different aspects of my life: education, social development, business interaction, and business productivity. You can read more about what these four sites mean in my being productive post. The four social media sites where you spend the most time would be categorized as outposts. I use the “home base” to center my four outposts and vice versa.

The frontier sites sit on a completely different level. Examples could range anywhere from Digg to Technorati or even Twitter. The frontier is a place where you have a presense (RSS FEED) but you have not cultivated the actually site in regards to your time. They also represent different combinations (overlaps) of the outpost sites.

This is a work in progress and I would love your thoughts. What should be added? How do you use social media? I am open for ideas! What is your outposts and frontiers?

Going From Wallflower to Butterfly in Social Media

I have recently subscribed to a local blogger in Indiana named Brad Ruggles. Brad has some interesting points and opinions on social media and I have really enjoyed reading through his recent thoughts. He posted on Thursday some tips to becoming a social media butterfly. I wanted to list two of the five that I found valuable and add a few of my own.

From Brad’s post:

1. Make Yourself Easier To Find

…one of the biggest mistakes I see people making on their blogs is failing to provide easy links to all their social network profiles. If you’re going to capitalize on networked relationships then make it easy for visitors to your blog to find where else you are online…

2. Go Deeper With Key Relationships

Don’t just limit yourself to “comment relationships” though. If you’re clicking with someone then shoot them an email, forward them a link you think they would enjoy reading. You may even chat with Skype or AIM.

There are three more amazing points on Brad’s blog which I encourage you to check out. I wanted to add a few of my own. It is extremely important to get the most out of social media if you decide to take the dive and utilize the tool.

1. Start A Blog About Something You Love and Be Authentic

I know the concept of authentic content has been thrown around here and there between social media experts. It is a common practice to write about the concept of authentic content and communication. Many people ask the same question when debating on starting a blog: “What should I write about?” Write about something you enjoy! Write about something you do on a daily routine. Do you enjoy collecting stamps? Do you enjoy watching soccer and following sports?

I write about social media because I love it. It is easier for me to write because of the joy I find in learning about all things social media.

Write about something you love and find other people who are writing about the same thing. Utilize google alerts to find the people who share the same interest. Brad has points on that, find it here.

2. Start Small. Join a Regional Social Network and Dive In.

We have talked about regional (geographically based) social networks before in earlier posts. I am a member of a regional social media community called Smaller Indiana. I have found that my visibility as a business owner and social advocate has greatly increased because of my use of Smaller Indiana. If you are trying to build a personal brand identity through using social media a local social network will give you amazing exposure to local people.

It is getting harder and harder to make a name for yourself on the Internet when you are competing on a global scale with millions of individuals. If you focus on a niche geographic community you will find that it is slightly easier to be recognized. In order to get the most out of a geographic community don’t leave your relationships on the web, go out and meet the individuals you are collaborating with. A cup of coffee will go a long way at facilitating the building of a personal brand between two individuals.

3 Ways To Help Face the FEAR of Social Media

Thank you to Brad Ward at SquaredPeg for his post entitled, Resistance. In his post, Brad quotes Seth Godin:

“It’s easy to be against something that you are afraid of.

And it’s easy to be afraid of something that you don’t understand.”

As social media evangelists, many of us run into road blocks when it comes to usage of social media with coworkers or clients. Honestly, I can tell you that the majority of the push back has been from the church sector where we have been marketing social networks for membership building and community development.

Fear has kept many people away from this wonderful tool because of a misunderstanding, or better yet, a lack of understanding. Every person on the planet has had to deal with fear in at least one point of their lives.  Maybe minus my FriendFeed acquaintance Duncan Riley, who seems to have no fear. Period.

Kyle. We get the point. People have fear of something they don’t understand. This fear keeps them from opening up and becoming involved in something that could help them in the long run. So what? Why do we care? Should we care?

Absolutely we should care! It is our job as social media users convince the fearful among us to embrace this medium. Shouldn’t we tout and spread the word on something we love so much?

How do we help the non-believers face their fear of Social Media? I have 3 points to help you along your way. Please Pass GO and give me your $200.

1. Put It Into Their Context

An employee of our company, Brady Wood,  was recently on a conference call with 60-70 pastors from the Church Multiplication Association. He was trying to explain to them the concept of a NING Network to help with the facilitation of training for new and current pastors. Needless to say, there was some push back. No one was at fault for this. It was new territory and it was our job to explain it to them.

Brady decided to explain the community network in terms of the conference call the pastors were currently on. He proceeded to liken an online community dialogue with that of the conference call. The sharing of ideas between people to create one solid idea that care be shared by a community of “believers.” Needless to say… they got it.

2. Throw Them Into The Water

There is no better way to experience something than to throw yourself into it head first and learn on the way down. It may not be the easiest way to face fears and shift paradigms but it will work all the same. There are times when I am consulting with a client and I will tell them, “Maybe you should take a couple of weeks and just try your hand at LinkedIN and Plaxo? I want you to write 5 blog posts and link them. When you are done with that… email me.”

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. You have to judge the personality of the person you are helping and plan accordingly.

3. Hold Their Hand (In Public)

Sometimes the only thing a person needs is to be taught how to use a platform. I’m not talking a word document that has the necessary step by step actions to add a picture to Facebook. I’m talking about sitting down with someone and physically walking them through the steps of a social network.

I have found that once you teach someone one network it doesn’t take long for them to grasp the other networks. It only takes one network to get rid of the fear and headtrash. After that one thing, you have created another evangelist.