Is Email More Important than Social Networks?

The business debate rages on about email marketing and social networks (social media). Should businesses focus more attention on their social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook…or email interactions? I tend to land right in the middle. Frankly, I’m pretty tired of people just arguing for the sake of arguing. What does the customer want? How does the customer want to receive YOUR information? Sometimes businesses fall short and forget the simple age old rule: Customers First. I don’t care if you don’t want to spend time on Twitter or you think it is stupid. I don’t care if email takes way tooooo long. If a customer has subscribed to your email, follows your tweets and has liked your fan page… they must want to be contacted through these channels (maybe).  The debate continues on… which one to use… when and for what?

When deciding how to share information with your customers you must first  understand how customers view each and every channel.

According to MediaPost Publications, the majority of costumers view email as the least intrusive way for companies to engage . Customers trust email more than social networks. Period. They believe they know how to avoid being scammed in email but do not fully understand the risks in social networks. Email is also viewed as being a good source for detailed information or when looking for exclusive deals.

Facebook engagement is more for entertainment purposes. Although customers can still get information and access to deals it offers a fun, different experience with the company.

Twitter is simple and to the point. It also fosters a relationship between the brand and the customer… which can generate brand loyalty and trust.  Like the people, like the brand.

So, which reigns as king? There really is no channel that surpasses the other. However, there are channels that are more appropriately suited  for delivering different messages to the consumer.  If we can agree that Facebook is more for entertainment then let loose a little (have fun with your fans on Facebook). Email your customers when you need to share some updates or detailed information.  An email is private. Twitter is perfect for engaging in a conversation with your customers. Get to know them and let them get to know the company on a more personal level.

Customers (for the most part) haven’t changed but there communication expectations have… thanks to social media and the Internet.

Corporate Communication on a Non-Profit Budget

My day job is to manage communications for a tiny program in a tiny non-profit. For those of you familiar with the non-profit world, you read into that exactly what I meant to imply—small budget. In my experience with corporate and private sector communications, it’s not unrealistic to expect a budget of several thousands of dollars per project. If you work for a non-profit, you’re lucky to get that much for all of your communications projects for an entire year.
If I was being honest, I like the challenge. Every day I am tasked with effectively communicating important messages both internally and to the masses in a way that is engaging, exciting, and essentially, well, free.

This is why I am shocked at how few non-profits are utilizing social media. When it comes to my organization, I’m not updating Twitter and Facebook daily—but hourly. We also have a blog and are putting time and a portion of our budget into redeveloping a website. Has it been effective for us? Absolutely. And better yet—it completely fits my budget.

Since beefing up our project’s web presence, there has been an increase in clients, public awareness, and media interaction. In an organization that grows by reputation, typically an increase in one or more of those categories yields something: A BIGGER increase in clients, public awareness, and media interaction.
Even though non-profits are organizations not all of them are always organized. Utilizing the web has also helped me streamline messaging and collateral. Because my project is so tied into Colorado’s non-profit network, it’s important that I can easily send messages and materials to other partners, sponsors, funders, etc.
And let’s face it: Not only are non-profits not organized, they can also be living in the dark ages. Still, current and potential funders love to see new, innovative systems in place that will effectively maximize the dollars they’re granting. I’m pretty sure we all want happy funders.

Here’s the other thing that all those groups are seeing: the same thing. Regardless of the medium, an online presence allows you to create a voice, or a brand, that can be communicated consistently to a broader group through different resources. Constituents reading our blog might not follow us on Twitter, but they’re receiving the same messages overall. And I bet they like choosing how they receive those messages.

So, to recap, I have found a way to effectively streamline messaging, brand the project, and communicate to the public, the media, internal groups, statewide partners, and current and potential funders for free.

Did you get that?

Therefore, non-profit or not, my question to you is, “Are you utilizing social media to further your company’s mission?” If the answer to that question is no, I have to ask, “WHY NOT?”

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Don’t Sleep Around on Me. I Want a Relationship

Matt Rhodes over at Freshnetworks sparked my post today with a quote from the article: Love Your Customers. Use Social Media.

“A brand should be thinking of themselves as part of a consumer’s personal brand rather than the other way around…”

So many times we find ourselves spending money on external marketing, advertising, and branding. How do we get noticed? How do we get the average consumer to remember our brand name? It is all about ME. ME. ME. How do we get them to spend money? Acquisition. Acquisition.

While I think internal branding and design is important to success… social media has created a space where you can become part of the LIFE of a consumer. Talk about a good way to spark viral marketing! If you are molded into a client or consumers life… the potential of being spread to friends, family, and co-workers is exponential!

We can talk about internal marketing, external promotion, advertising, marketing, branding, and design… but if you want true results…

Use the tools in front of you to create relationships… to start conversations… to monitor your brand. It is going back to your brand being lovable and NOT a dirty flirt.

Don’t sleep around and screw up your relationships.

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Where is Your Customer Conversation?

Amy Lemen is the President of ALL In One Marketing, a strategic brand and marketing consulting business in Indianapolis. She specializes in helping companies leverage customer insights to build better brands, develop new products, and create marketing strategies.

If your brand were a celebrity, who would it be and why?
This is a question typically used to define a brand’s character, which is a critical component of the overall identity of a brand.

Up until recently, many brands were able to grow without having a well defined and compelling brand character. As long as a brand provided a consistent set of meaningful, differentiated benefits to a target group of customers, it had a chance of being successful. This was because the brand could control its messaging, as it consistently talked to its target customer.

The communication framework between brands and customers is now very different. A brand now must engage in a conversation with its customers. A conversation means that a brand can’t just keep stating its key messages. It has to respond to what customers are saying and asking, and sometimes the key messages just aren’t appropriate responses.So in these cases, what is a brand supposed to say? This is where the brand’s character plays a critical role.

The brand’s character enables the brand to talk with its customers without the key messages while still staying true to what it stands for. The character is truly the brand’s personality, defining its temperament, attitude and behaviors. It is now the critical component that supports conversations between a brand and its customers. Without it, who are the customers really conversing with?

Can you identify the celebrity that personifies your brand? If this doesn’t come easily to you, perhaps you should take some time to more fully develop your brand’s character. It will make the conversations between your brand and your customers far richer and more meaningful.

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Do Tight Corporate Social Media Policies Help or Hinder?

Linda Skrocki is the Senior Engineering Program Manager/Owner for Sun’s primary, external-facing community sites (blogs, forums, wikis, etc.). In addition to being a corporate social networking evangelist, she has managed many of Sun Microsystems highest profile web programs over the last 9 years.

What is your risk & transparency tolerance?

That’s a question every company must ask before embarking on their officially branded new media journey, but let’s be honest, tightly controlled content is nothing more than traditional website content and/or press releases. If that’s the most risk your culture/policy allows when it comes to marketplace conversations via social media platforms, don’t waste time and money implementing an external-facing officially branded collaboration site — it simply won’t be an environment conducive to meaningful, authentic marketplace conversations and certainly won’t foster healthy business relationship building that ultimately affects your bottom line.

If a tightly controlled or no approach is the chosen path, it’s important to note that conversations about your company, good and bad, won’t cease to exist. They’ll just have to happen elsewhere — most likely in places far less findable by you; thereby, giving you less opportunity to:

• amplify positive company & product feedback from the marketplace
• strengthen your company & products by listening and acting upon negative feedback
• rally interest and extend awareness by being able to easily participate in the conversations

(Re)evaluation of our fears

Still reading? Thinking your company’s social media policy might need a laxative? Not sure how to get started? Try this: Each overly rigid policy term is based on fear of a specific situation. Examine each term & it’s fear-based situation & ask:

1. Aren’t these legal bases already covered in our company’s employment terms and/or site Terms of Use?
2. Why are we trying to control conversations employees & the marketplace may have on social sites any differently than conversations they have at a bus stop, dinner party, etc.? Don’t we want them to drive awareness of our company and products?
3. Why are we scaring our employees to a degree that they don’t want to engage in cool and interesting marketplace conversations about the company and our products?
4. In the statistically* unlikely event that an employee goes hostile and says bad things about us,
   a) do we really think policy will stop them?
   b) wouldn’t we want the likely inaccurate rant to happen in our own backyard where it’s more easy to find and respond to?
5. Is it really worth sacrificing hundreds of thousands of fruitful conversations because we’re afraid of a possible nasty conversation?
6. What if the nasty conversation happens? Why can’t we just counter by publicly correcting the inaccurate points with facts and own-up to the accurate points by making our product stronger and gaining bonus points for driving this awareness?

Relax, Trust & See Goodness Unfold

I’m not saying let go entirely. Employees appreciate guidelines. They want to remain gainfully employed and don’t want to get themselves or the company in trouble. They may not clearly be aware of the company’s stance on topics to avoid if they are buried in pages of legalese. To augment existing employment terms, a set of brief, comprehensive social media guidelines will not only stand a better chance of actually being read by your employees, but will set everyone’s minds at ease by knowing how to effectively engage in the social media space.

If you need a solid example of an effective set of guidelines, Sun’s Guidelines on Public Discourse has stood the test of time and has proven to be amazingly effective not only for Sun but for other companies who have used it as a model.

* Example: http://blogs.sun.com, along with the Guidelines on Public Discourse, deployed in 2004. No approval is required prior to employees blogging. The original tag line “This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything” remains in place. As of this post, there are more than 140,000 blog posts and only a handful of possible policy violations have been raised.

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Social Media is NOT Another Way to Scream

Frankly I am getting tired of seeing the “Grow Your Twitter Followers 10x Faster” crap that is rolling across my dashboard every thirty seconds. When are we going to reach the point when marketers realize that screaming to the masses is not going to yield the same return that it did 20, 30, or 40 years ago? Many marketers view social media as another way to scream at people with a message… albeit a more niche mass… but it is still the same process. And it is going to kill you in the long run.

Design a message and broadcast it as much as possible. You know… Repetition, Repetition, Repetition…it is the best form of marketing!

Give me a break.

The the last thing you should be doing as a communication professional is trying to figure out how to scream… louder, faster, and stronger… by using social media. This does not show any type of intelligence on the part of your company. This does not show any type of evolution in strategy or marketing concepts. There is a reason why businesses evolve, adapt, and change.

When is the last time you acted friendly towards somebody screaming at you… unless it was Bono at his concert? And even then… it is kind of annoying.

Put down the megaphone and use social media as a communication tool and not a screaming tool.

But most of all… listen… and then talk.

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5 Steps to Using Social Media for Lead Generation

Why is it advantageous to use social media as a lead generation tool?

Yesterday we talked about a new way of thinking for the marketing professional… thinking of your customers as people first. So why does this matter? Why is it beneficial to start communicating directly to your consumer base in a peer-to-peer environment instead of mass marketing?

In my opinion… the sell can be made easier.

We (business professionals) are all searching for ways to better market to our consumer base. How can you be creative and produce advertising that will catch the attention of a passerby? How can you create a brochure that will pull people into the folds and sell them on a product? Using social media can help bring the guard down of a consumer. We all exist in walled gardens… holding our purse strings tight to our chest. It is very rare that anyone or anything will ever get into our mind to sell us on a process. We tend to listen to our peers more than anything else.

Social media (especially blogs) can help in building trust between an individual and a brand. Let’s use social media to build that trust.

1. Tell customer and personal stories on your blog. If you currently have a blog for your company be very sure that you are telling stories and not regurgitating industry information. How are you setting yourself apart from your competition? You are more likely to garner leads (in the long term) if you are telling stories with personality and flair. People will latch on and relate with stories about other customers.

2. Utilize LinkedIN now and forever. LinkedIN is a powerful tool. If used correctly it can open up huge potential for networking with like minded individuals. Your current customers and likely to be connect to other individuals that could be powerful referral sources for you. Do not underestimate the power of your current customers.

For more tips on using LinkedIN: 10 Ways to Use LinkedIN,

3. Connect to a Local Social Network. In Indiana we are extremely blessed to have the local networking site of Smaller Indiana. Smaller Indiana has over 7000 professionals across the state who are willing to talk, debate, and share information among each other. We have used SI to connect to hundreds of individuals and business owners. By sharing in experience and then connecting offline you have a great opportunity to build trust.

4. Track local users on Twitter. If you are currently using Twitter to share information it is extremely important to connect with potential customers in your area of influence (Do you see a trend forming here?) You have the ability to search over different keywords while using Twitter. If a user is talking about a topic that is central to your business… communicate with them!

5. Encourage Your Peers to Share. One of the more powerful parts of social media is the ability to share content over a wide-spread group of people. Encourage your connections, customers, and friends to spread your story out across the masses.

You should always keep traditional marketing in the mix whenever possible. Social media is not the end all of the marketing kingdom. However, the tool will give you the ability to connect with individuals on a completely different level… building trust… and eventually the sale… in the process.

Digital is Killing Traditional

If you are familiar with the Did You Know 3.0 video… you can appreciate the importance of videos that portray the fundamental belief that social media/online communication is taking the forefront in the business mind.  Okay that was a wordy sentence.. I apologize. The creators of the excellent Did You Know 3.0 video have now released a new video that details the growth and expansion of digital distribution compared to traditional media.

You will enjoy it. Believe me.

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When To Fire Your PR Firm Part 2

I was just finishing up this post when a status update came to my attention on my Facebook wall. The much acclaimed marketing technology blogger, Douglas Karr, had just written a post entitled Brody PR: When to Fire Your PR Firm. It was absolutely hilarious and expected that we were thinking in the same world.. because well… Doug is one of my social media mentors. This is officially the first not-planned tag team post by myself and Doug Karr.. enjoy.

Doug’s post talks about the misuse of an email campaign by Brody PR in order to sell a social media book that was written by a client. Doug gives a good argument on why the PR firm should be fired because of spamming individuals about a book that frankly… no one cared about. This all comes down to communication and strategy which Brody apparently didn’t do very well. Now, let’s see if they are doing their own brand reputation management. I am looking for a comment from the firm.

The same concept applies to your PR firm discussing the concept of a social media strategy. It is pretty simple. If your public relations company is NOT talking to you about social media you should fire them. Better yet… check to see if they are talking about it at all. A social media onslaught may not necessarily apply to your communications strategy but wouldn’t you prefer the PR firm in which you hired to be up to date on communication tools?

If your public relations firm is not writing, speaking, and educating their clients on how to use social media for brand management or communication… fire them on the spot. Find someone who actually cares about the changes in communication and technology.

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Screw Stats. It is about Portability and Experiences

I am co-hosting a webinar tomorrow with Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware entitled Getting a Grip on Social Media. The first slide of my presentation simples says: Screw Stats. The whole concept behind the slide is the idea that we can run around statistics and figures all we want but the most important thing to understand is the future of portability and experiences in social media.

Portability

Portability is mobility. The mobile phone domination is going to grow even larger in the next couple of years and social media will be right behind it. There is no better way (other than text messaging) to utilize the iPhone or Palm Pre than securing applications that can be used to strengthen a users social media experiences. I don’t think the concept of social media is going to die because of the power of being mobile. Customer service is going to be dependent on securing social media because of a users ability to automatically tweet or post an experience the moment it happens… that is powerful.

Experiences

Selling is now almost completely dependent on the experiences of the customers. Peer recommendations have always been a staple to sell your services… referral and word of mouth marketing are inherently connected to success. Social media has made experiential marketing and referral marketing extremely powerful because of the ease of sharing a message. Social media is strengthen by the experiences customers share online. It is extremely important for a business to understand the ability and the important of using social media to empower your customers to share your message.

There are other reasons to join, research, and implement social media but the future of tool is in the ability to leverage portability and customer experiences.

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