By Matt M.

Around the time that the topic of social media arises in a business marketing discussion, comes the ever-present question of what businesses or brands can expect from their efforts focused within the social territory of the Internet. Though continuously reported financial success is simply found most anywhere social media marketing is case studied on the web, there seems to remain an outspoken, superfluous stigma regarding social media as an unproven, unpredictable dark horse of untraditional marketing media.

There is one thing for sure. If social media died today and was labeled with a legacy, I am sure that it would be nothing short of revolutionary.

It would most likely speak of a communication revolution; a revolution that has begun to build momentum toward a seeming destiny of corporate transparency. The world of brand image and controlled communication is changing. Today’s quickly evolving, content generated and viral spiraling communication cycle has accelerated through and beyond traditional communication’s capabilities. Consumers find themselves empowered with the ability to influence peers over all facets of contemporary business/consumer interaction. Businesses have never seen a market whose consumer feedback holds such high authority and been so readily available.

Seemingly, it is only through embracing social media that companies can merely hold on as the communication bull rips them out of the gate. However, through developing strategic social media marketing goals and objectives, new brands will learn that there is much to gain; and evolving old business practices may be the key to success.

You’ve heard the warm and fuzzy concepts of establishing a happy and helpful community of brand advocates. You also know that through social media, you provide a space for them to speak freely about your products and your company. What you’re really concerned about is your bottom line and where you can expect increased productivity. One measureable example of this exists through the use of social media marketing in customer service.

Energizing Customer Service

Begin to count the average amount of customer complaint calls your business receives on a daily basis. Also, keep track of the average amount of customer calls one representative can handle each hour. Over time, as your social presence builds, do you begin to see a decrease in the average call amount your business receives? Do you see an influx of customer complaints via social media? This can mean that customers have taken to the web to voice their complaints rather than call your representatives (It doesn’t mean they’ve stopped complaining).

Most often, it’s easier and quicker for representatives to address customer issues online than over the phone. For example, if in one hour a customer service representative averages 6 customer calls, and a representative online can average 8 customer complaints, you have increased the productivity of your customer service immensely. This statistic is easily measurable and will continue to grow throughout your social media marketing efforts.

Continue to measure the total amount of calls your customer center processes as well as the amount of online issues you begin to address. Understandably, this number will grow as a result of incorporating social media customer service. This means that you’ve begun to resolve preexisting customer issues that were now found via your social platform. It does require processing more issues in total, but that leads to increasing overall customer satisfaction and retention.

Creating happy customers is only bested by retaining current ones. These new found “brand advocates” are the burning heart of your brand’s social community and all social marketing initiatives you begin will see greater success. It all begins with embracing social media marketing. Remember to take measurable, strategized actions towards each objective. Social media is not about business marketing unless it can be strategized and measured.

Sources:

1. Falls, Jason, and Erik Deckers. No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. Indianapolis, IN: Que, 2012. Print.

by Cheryl Tieken

So I read this interesting article today by Peter Shankman, founder of Help A Reporter Out. In it, he pretty much bashes social media experts, saying that “if you have a social media expert on your payroll, you’re wasting your money.” And while I didn’t quite agree with the tone of his message, he did hit some valuable points.

As it seems that hiring a social media expert is a now subject of much debate, let’s go over Shankman’s points – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Shankman starts out by saying that “being an expert in social media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.”

It’s a cute analogy and I get it. Yes, there are a ton of people out there who assume that just because they use Facebook and Twitter all the time they can now call themselves experts. And maybe this is who Shankman is referring to. He goes on to say that “we’re making the same mistakes that we made during the DotCom era, where everyone thought that just adding the term .com to your corporate logo made you instantly credible.” Yes, social media is trendy and when something is trendy, everyone wants to get on board. And there will always be people and companies that try to make a pretty penny on the next great trend by selling it themselves. Unfortunately, many of these people care more about making money and less about providing a good service for their customer. And as a customer, it may be easy to fall into their hypnotizing clutches. However, not all social media marketing companies are full of it.

Shankman goes on to say that social media is just a new trick in the hat of marketing. And, I couldn’t agree more. Social media is just another avenue to spread your marketing efforts. It just happens to be an avenue that allows messages to be spread at rates no other avenues can ever compete with. His point here is completely true – Social media marketing is “about generating revenue through solid marketing and stellar customer service, just like it’s been since the beginning of time.” If your target market is active on Facebook and Twitter, why wouldn’t you use this to your advantage?

He says next that social media marketing is “about transparency. It’s not about lying to your customers…” I couldn’t agree more. Set up a Facebook page merely to sell to your customers and you’ll lose them. Trust me – IT WON’T WORK. And social media experts who are worth your time and money know this and will tell you this. Be genuine. Show your target audience that you care about them and they will care about you.

Shankman’s next important point is about relevance. Anyone with marketing savvy knows that you have to understand your target audience – who they are, where they are, and what they want to talk about. If your target audience isn’t into social media, you are not going to see the same results as a business whose target audience is constantly tweeting away.

Unfortunately, Shankman jumps to the conclusion that all social media experts just try to push the sale of a Facebook and Twitter page, without ever trying to strategize the best methods for online and social media marketing. A good social media marketer will understand that they must invest time into researching a target audience and planning an effective strategy.

So that’s it in a nutshell. His argument that social media experts have simply jumped on the newest trend and will soon be deemed a waste of time and money is in my opinion, very narrow-minded. If you hire a talented and savvy social media marketer, you will never feel that way. Social media is here to stay. Marketing will always and has always been here. There are people out there who understand both concepts better than others. Social media marketing is too powerful a tool to ignore.

So don’t bash social media marketers. Find one who is a multi-faceted and savvy businessperson that understands the power of social media. Trust me, it will definitely be worth your time and money.

By Nicole Fletcher

With the insane explosion of the social sphere over the last year, football and marketing fans alike woke up Sunday morning with lofty expectations for Super Bowl XLV. Like little kids on Christmas morning, many wondered what social wonder would reveal itself during the biggest televised event of the year, or ever as was the case. The hype, I must say, was not worth the wait..not that there was a wait…

Brands including Volvo, Doritos and a few others released their ads days before the Super Bowl and while I understand why, they killed the fun anticipation of the unveil. I’m all for hype, fan interaction, video views etc, but instead of just spilling the marbles all at once, couldn’t they have figured out another way to build the excitement? A campaign or a plan perhaps? Apparently not.

As consumers, socially savvy professionals and beer drinking Americans we still expected a creative and colorful call to action, thereby driving traffic to social networks, increasing consumer interaction and basically boggling our minds. Needless to say, this Social Super Bowl included nothing more than the banal facebook url, twitter icon and social buying commercials from sites like Groupon and Living Social. What was most surprising to me  though is that people were actually impressed by this lackluster icon inclusion. I was not. I think the corporate brands copped out and frankly, it just seemed lazy, haphazard and not well planned out.

Here are some fun stats to illustrate my point. According to Nielsen, a record breaking 111 million Americans sat down Sunday night to take in the game. The second spot goes to last year’s Super Bowl with 106.5 million viewers while M*A*S*H rocked the number one spot before then with 160 million. 30 second time slots top off at $3 million, or $100,000 per second. Yea. Digest that for a moment.

Now, onto more stats. Fan numbers were recorded at 3pm on Sunday before the big game. Then, 29 hours later, to give people enough time to digest, contemplate, interact, etc, fan counts were taken again. As a whole for all Super Bowl advertisers, the number of ‘likes’ went up by a whisper of .19%. Granted, for brands like Coca Cola with their ~22 million fans, .19% can be a sizable increase, but their community went up by less that .1%. Not super solid considering the price tag, the audience and the sizable potential they held in their hands, not to mention that I don’t have stats on Coca Cola’s daily fan increase.

I’m not saying that some of the ads weren’t clever, nor that they were ineffective. I giggled at a few and was entertained in the general sense of the word. I’ll say this though, I have not sought any of them out on youtube to relive the hilarity, nor have I visited any of the brand websites since. I mean if you, cough, GoDaddy want to spend $3 million to get 892 new fans, Party On. I’ll just do what you did for free.

In sum, I wholeheartedly believe that the definition of modern communication, consumer interaction and marketing have changed and as such, classic clever commercials are no longer an option. Be creative people. It’s 2011 and trust me, at $100,000/second, 27 new fans just ain’t worth it (sorry Kia).

Here’s to next year where with any luck, my #(hashtag) will be #awesome.

By Nicole Fletcher

According to Wikipedia, I am a member of Generation Y, otherwise known as the Millenial Generation. I’ve always been fairly fond of this categorization but in doing more research I found that my co gen-y-ers range in birth date from the mid 70s to the early 2000s. I was shocked. How could someone pushing 40 and someone who has yet to hit double digits share the same generational categorization? The Spice Girls sang ‘Generation X’ in the 90s, my 30 year old cousin doesn’t have a Facebook account and my 10 year old cousin blogs regularly. No matter what way the cookie crumbles – there’s just no way to categorize nearly a half century of people into one kitschy word.

In a recent Mashable article, author Nick Parish discussed three things brands must do to appeal to millenials online. Millenials want what they want, when they want it. Whether that’s the latest deal on Groupon, cell reception. a new song or reliable 3g, we are the instant gratification generation. In the article, Nick talks about how brands have to be on this because, simply put, if one store isn’t, there are 1000s+more that are ready and willing to snatch that business. The focus has clearly changed from the convenience and location (think the 24 hour 7-11 store) value of yesteryear, to getting what you want exactly when you want it.

Glen Parker, research director at Universal McCann, performed a study on over 350,000 consumers. They found that, “Most (brands) inherently aren’t social, but users are expecting to see them in the same places [the users] are in. For all customers, the one thing they all want is good service, but in all other aspects they are completely different.”

This boys and girls puts us in a bit of a pickle doesn’t it? What they’re saying is this: consumers supersede generational boundaries when it comes to brand presence being where they are, but since they is everyone, then they are everywhere. What that means for us dear brands, marketers, etc, is that we have to be everywhere.

What I recommend is this: really and truly analyze your target market. Where/who does your ROI come from? Are they Baby Boomers, Millenials or are they somewhere in between? Then find out where those people congregate. Is it online? If so, where? Facebook, blogs, forums, Twitter? Find them and reach out, or seek the assistance of a brand communications agency if you aren’t sure how. Ask your community what they want from you, engage with them and eventually, after this relationship builds and grows, they’ll be there waiting as loyal brand advocates. If your market is offline (ie: an older clientele), be wary that the young people of today will eventually be your market that both digital branding and social media will surely be part of your company’s future, whether you’re willing to accept it or not.

As for me and the rest of the marketers out there, a simple lesson lies at the root of this complicated message: complacency killed the cat. So refuse comfort, never settle and don’t give up on being creative, innovative and fresh in this ever evolving, wide world of web we’ve woven.