Social Media Strategy in 2015

A recent piece in the Sunday Times Style Magazine made me roll my eyes in a silently ironic "No! Really?" sort of way...

On the subject of social media strategy, it said "If 2014 saw us all building our own personal brands via Instagram and Social Media, 2015 sees us pulling back.  Forget collecting thousands of followers: the power is in who, not how many"



So has peer pressure/ "expert advice"  seen you turning into some sort of social network tart?  That way lies madness, if social media success relies on good quality engagement - which it does - you cannot possibly keep that up with thousands of people.

If you're not engaging aren't you simply "mass marketing"? Why drag bad old practices into bright shiny mediums?  Shouldn't you be looking at what I've seen described as "personalised targeted interactions" - or PTI's?

I was recently described by a local business as a Thought Leader - which was all very nice but felt a bit overly complimentary.  However perhaps they're right after all!  Sorry Sunday Times, I've been talking about building quality lists on social media since I first delivered a Twitter Workshop in 2012. 

This was based on me reading about something called "Dunbar's Number" after British Anthropologist Robin Dunbar who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size.

Dunbar's number is 150 - if you'd like to look at the research to find out why - pop onto wikipedia

Let's look at the practicalities, even if you have a network of 1,000's how many are you actually interacting with on any given day?  I'm betting it's no more than 20 - you have got a business to run right?   At that level you'll  manage to get through all 150 every 7.5 working days which means regular contact is do-able.

If you still think you can manage more than 150 contacts ask yourself when you last found the time to actually speak at length to your closest friends...

I'm not suggesting a mad cull, but given that it's not possible to please all the people all the time I'm suggesting a judicious prune from time to time to make sure your generic messages are at least consistently relevant. 

You might even consider creating a Twitter List/Google+ circle of your "Golden 150" 
If you're not sure how to make a Twitter list - this post will help 

So what do you think?  Are you going to be a collector or an engager during 2015?

By the way, do follow my blog to read my next post about what marketing professionals are predicting in 2015...

Measuring Social Media Success: Which KPI's should I look at?

The key performance indicators of successful social media are generally recognised as being:

• Reach: 

• Demographics

• Number of Active Followers 

• Interaction 

Want to know more? For an updated and complete version of this post please click here 

Hashtags - 7 ways to use them in your marketing

When hashtags were finally recognised by Facebook in the summer of 2013,  and by Google Plus in the Autumn of that same year,  they had effecively achieved across the board recognition in terms of social media. 

So you might be surprised that the original idea of hashtags had actually been muted in 2007 when Chris Messina posted a blog in which he explained “I’m more interested in simply having a better eavesdropping experience on Twitter. To that end, I focused my thinking on contextualisation, content filtering and exploratory serendipity within the Twittosphere”

(I love that phrase “exploratory serendipity”!)

Now, the first hashtag  was used during the San Diego fire on October 23^rd 2007 - #sandiegofire – but it was not officially adopted by Twitter until August 2009.

So why use hashtags? Well effectively as a filter to help you find users/content grouped under one hashtag setting and -  where appropriate - join in on the conversation.

For example during the Olympics you could join in on the commentary of hundreds of strangers sharing their excitement through the inclusion of  #Olympics in their posts. Isn't that brilliant? It’s easy to use hashtags and, if you never have, here are some simple rules:

• The words that follow a hashtag are run together without a space
• Make them focused – everyday words won’t make the grade so #worldcup but not #football
• Test your hashtags to find out which work best for you.  Apparently the White House team tested 26 different versions for a State of the Union Address before settling on the most successful 7.
• Don’t use more than two hashtags in one post, one is better. Remember it’s a label for your content – there’s a reason why jars only have one label – more than that confuses! 
• Be careful your hashtag cannot be misconstrued. UK tweeters talking about the death of Margaret Thatcher used #nowthatchersdead – in the States this caused some consternation who read this as “Now that Cher’s dead…”

So how might hashtags be used to help you market your business?

1. Did you know that up and down the land you'll see local businesses talking together on Twitter at agreed times?  For example #fleethour brings together businesses around Fleet in Hampshire between the hours of 8pm and 9pm on a Tuesday. Definitely check out if your local area is doing that if you‘ve not already done so!
2. Are you working with third parties to help you promote your products or services? Using a hashtag will allow you to track how effective this is even when they have forgotten to include your @name
3. Take a look at hashtag searches around your own expertise.  Why not solve problems whilst including one of those hashtags?  For example #marketingtips are often looked for - why not be a regular provider of great ones?
4. Hashtags are a great way of putting humour across – always good to build relationships with your target market.  For example, here in the UK we might say “Heard its going to be hot and sunny next week #justseenaflyingpig
5. Is your product or service complementary to a niche topic?  Why not piggy back on a popular hashtag that has appeal to your likely target market for example you might be producing great soups from only #organicvegetables
6. You can see trending hashtags on the sidebar of Twitter making it easy to join in the conversation. But - cardinal rule – join in only if your product/service is relevant to that hashtag not just to jump on a bandwagon.  That would make you very unpopular.
7. On Facebook using a hashtag in front of a word turns that word into a clickable link - what a great way to drive traffic to a certain place.

When I recently ran a Twitter workshop I was amused to hear about one of my attendee’s daughters who, on hearing where her Mother was going, made the sign of a hashtag with her fingers and said “cool”.  So hashtags have even moved into speech.

Now whilst I love to hear how language evolves in that way you have to be careful about overdoing it. Here’s a great video showing what might otherwise become of us all...

 

Thanks to Ken Varnum on Flickr for the great pic

Social Media for Counsellors and Psychotherapists

When running workshops on social media various Associations of Counsellors and Psychotherapists my main concern was about squaring the likely concern about social media conflicting with the therapy dynamic. 







Fortunately there are some Pyschotherapists  who are already active on social media and they have obviously wrestled with this challenge and solved it.  Find out more on this updated post just here 

The Marketing Savvy of Cadbury Creme Eggs

One must, of course, do Easter-themed posts at this time of year so I thought I'd share with you the marketing savvy of Cadbury Creme Eggs...

The Cadbury Creme Egg first appeared in 1971 and now dominates the market with approximately 500 million being made each year. Apparently Birmingham’s Bournville factory turns these out at the rate of 1.5 million per day!

According to Wikipedia they are the best-selling confectionery item between New Year’s Day and Easter in the UK. Several advertising campaigns have certainly assisted with this.

Marketing Campaigns

 In the 1970’s the “shopkeeper” campaign saw a boy asking for 6,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs.

This was followed in the mid 1980’s with “How do you eat yours”  of which there were various versions including one between 1994 and 1996 which used the popular Spitting Image characters. 

After that came Matt Lucas with the catchphrase “I’ve seen the future and it’s egg shaped” You might like to check out his TV ad here. 

After 2008 the world saw variations on a “Goo” theme –starting with “Here Today, Goo Tomorrow”, “Goo dares wins” and, of course, “Gooing for Gold” during the year of the Olympics. However, despite that Olympic effort the brand was struggling to get its voice heard in a crowded confectionery market and sales dropped by 20% in 2011 and 19% in 2012

Stemming the tide

According to the Telegraph this is how they tackled the marketing “to fix the problem, Creme Egg went on a Facebook offensive at the start of the year” 

Using a previously unprecedented collaboration between the Brand, Agency and Facebook teams "They uploaded saucy pictures of Creme Eggs in various stages of unwrapping. They created fake dating sites with eggs looking for love. They sexily dripped goo all over the face of TOWIE stars, and posted provocative pictures of people who were Made in Chelsea. They threw money at the Facebook campaign, and it worked. Sales immediately jumped nine per cent”

In fact they threw one third of their usual TV investment at the Facebook campaign and according to campaignlive.co.uk  it reached 15 million people (6 million on mobile) - 21% of whom had not been exposed to TV activity.

econsultancy.com says “To achieve this Cadbury had to develop a new art of storytelling, creating a long series of one-off posts that fed into an overall narrative across the three months.”

The agency’s social media team started with some ideas, but over the course of those three months they actually let customer engagement guide them as to what type of content proved to be most effective.

 Always be listening

One of the best promotions came about purely by being reactive to a fan who'd come up with the idea of creating Creme Egg brownies, the fan posted pictures of these on Facebook and got about a dozen shares.  The Agency’s social media manager, Jerry Daykin, noticed the photo and re-posted it receiving an amazing 85,000 shares.  He said

“We then got hundreds of posts per day from other people baking their own brownies. The team could never have come up with this idea on our own, it happened naturally but we were quick to react and reaped the rewards”

The 2014 campaign is on course to continue the upward growth. “Have a fling with a Crème Egg” has been heavily promoted through social media where it creates egg versions of social networking sites like “Eggstagram” :-)

It also continues last year’s popular use of #CremeEggBake which had been spawned from that original Facebook post and which encourages people to suggest new ways to bake with Creme Eggs. If you're a fan of Creme Eggs this will be heaven for you to check out!

Ok, so as a small business you may not have a whole pile of money to throw at YOUR marketing but there are still some key marketing lessons to be learned from this case study:

1. To maintain market share you can’t keep doing the same old same old
2. Although you must start with promotional ideas, successful social media engagement is about being flexible and fast on your toes

I hope this has been helpful to you? If you like learning marketing lessons from the "big boys" you might also enjoy these posts from Ocado, Costa Coffee, The British Heart Foundation, The Cat's Protection Organisation and Compare the Market

Sorry? Oh yes the photo...OK I admit it, it is me wearing my happy Creme Egg Face :-)

Apart from the websites I mentioned above I’d like to nod to a factsheet from cadburyworld.co.uk, and to you.gov as further sources for this post.

Pinterest for Coaches, Mentors and Trainers

I recently talked to a client about using Pinterest for her Life Coaching business.  

She was completely new to this form of social media and wasn't entirely convinced until I told her that some life coaches use Pinterest to create Vision Boards. She loved THAT idea.

The updated version of this blog post is now here

The Changing Face of Marketing

I have recently done two local presentations on the changing face of marketing and there's been a lot of lightbulbs going off in the audience - so I thought I'd share some insights with you.

One upon a time marketing was relatively straightforward, you held all the cards.  You had some flyers or brochures probably a simple website and maybe a mailing list. But for today’s more savvy and cynical buyers that old style marketing of brochures, mailings and website no longer works so effectively.  According to recent surveys:

• We bin 44% of Direct Mail entirely unopened
• 86% of us skip through television ads
• 84% of 25 to 34 year olds click out of a website because of an irrelevant or intrusive ad 
• As of February 2012, 17 million of us in the UK had registered with the Telephone Preference Service so that we don’t get unsolicited calls

      And….if you’re behaving like that… why wouldn’t your potential customers be doing 

      the same.

      If as purchasers, we don’t like the old methods what are we doing? 

     Imagine that Fred needs some marketing help:

He ask his personal contacts and gets the following responses– “There’s a really helpful blog I’m following”  There’s this great video I saw recently” ”One of my contacts on LinkedIn has lots of recommendations”

He asks his social media contacts:"My accountant’s marketing company is brilliant”

He looks on the internet: – one company has a video and a blog which has raised their SEO so that they come up on page 1.  On their website he finds helpful case studies and advice.  He signs up for their newsletter…

Now, I’m pretty sure that some of you will be a bit cynical about the amount of online references in those scenarios so, if you wouldn’t mind indulging me I’d like to share some more stats with you.

                   In 2013  73% of UK Adults accessed the internet every day

In 2013, 72% of all adults bought goods or services online, up from 53% in 2008

By the way those stats have not come from anyone with a vested interest but from the Office of National Statistics.

So WHY have we changed the way we look before we buy.  There are three main reasons:

1. The Internet has changed the game - there are now alternate methods for finding, researching and buying
2. We live in an increasingly cynical world where we think "people who sell things will do anything for a sale"
3. Social media has transformed our ability to communicate and connect and its now online that validations and recommendations are happening every day.

On top of this, in a fast paced world, if you’re looking for information you want it NOW – so you are probably looking at your mobile phones to access the internet.What’s more you don’t want sales spiel - the information that you seek needs to be relevant so that it informs and assists you. 

If YOU are doing that, why wouldn’t your prospective customers be doing the same?

So my advice is this:

• Make sure your website is responsive – i.e. works on people’s mobile phones
• Create good helpful content for your target market
• Share your expertise in places where your target market is looking

Just like the companies you are buying from

If this has been of interest you might also want to check out: 

What is Content Marketing and How to do Content Marketing which works




Thanks to Ed Yourdon on Flickr for the pic

How to do business on social media

Some people get it wrong when networking face to face,  so I guess it’s worth pointing out that – when doing business via social media - people are NOT there to be sold to.

This means, just like networking, your communication should be light, friendly and conversational.

And that communication should mostly NOT be about your own product or service but about regularly sharing something that's relevant and interesting to your target market. 

What you're trying to do is persuade fans or followers to become leads;  those leads to become prospects and the prospects to finally become customers. 

This requires relationship building not selling.

Along the way - in terms of “birds of a feather stick together” – you’re trying to get those initial followers to share your posts with other like-minded individuals so that they too  start their way through the process fans to followers to prospects to customers.

This won’t happen if you’re paying lip service to the content in a desperate attempt to put something – ANYTHING - out on social media. It’s absolutely vital to remember that you’re only as good as your last post. 

This has become even more critical on Facebook where your post will be pulled out of the News feed of those who once liked you and shared your content but who have since stopped doing so…

This is because  “the goal of News feed is to show people the right content at the right time.” 

So what makes high quality content? Facebook has actually answered this for you in their most helpful blog post. And indeed, this is relevant across ALL content marketing activities.

This can be read in full here, but to summarise, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your target market who will be thinking: 

• Is this timely and relevant content?
• Is this content from a source I can trust?
• Would I share it with friends or recommend it to others?
• Is the content genuinely interesting to me or is it simply trying to gain News Feed        distribution? (e.g., asking for people to like the content)
• Would I call this a low quality post?
• Would I complain about seeing this content in my News Feed?

In summary, it's better to do a few well thought through posts than a high number of irrelevant one. 

For those tearing their hair out trying to find the time to churn out an increasing number of posts it might be helpful to remember that less is more. Perhaps an elegant sufficiency should be your goal...

If you need help with social media campaigns or content just get in touch via janebuswell@businessfulcrum.co.uk 

Thanks to cloudy thoughts on Flickr for the pic

What's your social media policy for customer complaints?

If you’re worried about putting your head above the parapet in terms of social media because of possible criticisms or complaints that are aired in public let’s get one thing straight - they’ll be happening anyway whether or not you are actually seeing them

So rather than avoid what could be a most helpful marketing activity let’s think about a social media policy for customer complaints

The full and updated version of this post is now here 

Do pop across this popular post has already drawn  over 1000 visits...

Why social media?

Whilst at a recent Business Networking Meeting I had two separate discussions with some over 50’s business owners about why social media should be part of their marketing.

One said – “Yes, but I haven’t got time for all of that between sourcing and buying and manning the shop” 

Another said “Yes my son does all that in his business, it seems to work very well for him but I can’t get my head round it” 

A third said “The trouble is that if we went on there we we’d open ourselves up to comments by disgruntled staff and disgruntled clients…"

OK, sigh. Let’s start by admitting I’m possibly around that age-ish (sort of, on a bad day…) and if one thing drives me mad it’s any comments on any subject indicating that it’s a young person’s thing and not for us.  But in all honesty that’s probably the subject of a separate rant post…

To remind you I do NOT believe that social media is the be all and end all but I DO think it’s a crucial part of marketing so let’s look at each objection:

Lack of Time

Yes, this will take up time - but it might be the making of your business - so isn’t it worth a shot? According to your business model, you might find that time spent on social media brings you more income than your present activities.

On debating the pros and cons of pop up shops at the same event, one entrepreneur said she could earn more money sitting on her sofa proactively using social media than she could sitting passively on a high street location.  And wouldn’t it be nice to have a little bit of control over your business fate?

Learning

My father used to say “There is no such word as can’t”

Sometimes you have to get out of your own way and check out new stuff. There’s plenty of free advice out there on the Internet but if you work better in a teaching environment there are bound to be excellent local workshops which can shortcut the process.

I often train in social media for Hampshire organisation www.southernentrepreneurs.com  which charges £35 for a half day’s training where you get informed  knowledge, examples and handouts around social media subjects that took me (and my fellow trainers) weeks of research and considerable practical implementation.

I was recently told that people "of a certain age" probably feel better being trained in social media by someone of my age.  If that rings any bells I'm available for one to one training within 25 miles of North Hampshire and promise to act my age not my shoe size.

Complaints

The couple I talked to had a real light bulb moment when I pointed out that those complaints would be happening anyway – whether or not they were seeing them…and by not seeing them they couldn’t manage them…

I trotted out one of my favourite analogies in this respect – NOT interacting with your target market on social media as like being an air stewardess saying  “Oh no,  I don’t talk to passengers, they might want to make a complaint!”

What I do believe is that business owners should be armed with information as to how best to manage such complaints. If you’d like to know how click here 

Thanks for the pic to thenoodleator on Flickr