By Nicole Fletcher

As a follow up to yesterday’s post, I thought I’d go into a bit more detail as to why your social media might not be up to snuff and what you must do to see success in this area of your marketing plan.

1. First and most obviously, you created accounts and didn’t do anything with them. Sorry guys, unlike your website, you can’t expect social media success without consistent, fresh content. Remember, complacency killed the cat.

2. You’re updating frequently but you’re not seeing results. You might be talking at your fans, instead of talking to them. In order to execute a successful social media strategy, you must engage engage engage. Social media is a two way street. Treat your target market as it deserves to be treated. Certainly self promote and inform your community of what’s going on with you, but also talk to them. Find out what they want from you and finally, include interesting, pertinent, free information they might like to hear about.

3. Similarly, make sure your profiles have a voice and a personality. Determine what that voice sounds like and make sure that sings through your posts and updates. Don’t speak as the brand – speak as the person behind the brand. Making a personal connection between your customers and your company gives your clientele a sense of comfort and, subsequently, an increased sense of brand loyalty.

4. You have a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel but they don’t have a presence on your website. I like to think of social media as a cloud of networks through which your customers can reach and interact with you. If they’re not connected, you’ve got a number of disjointed clouds and what good does that do you? None. Place these icons in a prominent location on your website. I recommend the top right corner as that tends to be the norm.

5. You think of social media as a quick fix, get frustrated and give up. Social media is an integral part of your long term marketing plan – stick with it, have fun and success will follow.

For those still wondering if Social Media implementation can help your business, inquire no further. The kind folks at Socialnomics created a followup to their “Social Media ROI” video that we blogged back in February. Once again, we felt compelled to point this video out, not only because of the wealth of information they make available in this presentation, but also because we even can’t believe how much the statistics have changed from the first video we posted only 2 months ago! Are you still worried that implementing a Social Media Strategy could be too expensive?

by Jonathan Marshall

This video came out a year ago, but we missed it, so we’re bringing it back. It’s a fake TV spot done by British animatronics master John Nolan (the man who worked on Where the Wild Things Are, among other films).

It shows a mouse having a predictably nasty run-in with a trap – but that’s just the beginning of the story. It’s worth pushing through to the end, even for the squeamish. Nolan used a live mouse for the opening shots and animatronics for the rest.

Even though this commercial never made it to production, it turned into an extremely popular viral video. With almost 1,000,000 views, the creative agency that re-purposed the Nolan’s Cheese video into their social media strategy would consider this a viral success. The YouTube sensation spread quickly through 1000s of social media outlets, and most Social Media professionals would say this fake spot just goes to show – sometimes a questionable/risky TV spot can become a successful viral video…