April 9, 2013 1 Comment

Small business marketing basics: Social Media

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InterestOver the past week, I’ve had a chance to listen to various business owners’ impressions of what constitutes digital marketing these days. The conversations have been interesting and revelatory, so over the next few posts, I want to review the very basics of these channels for folks who aren’t marketers. If you are a digital marketer by trade, I’ll tell you up front that you can probably skip this series and go read another blog; I won’t be telling you anything you shouldn’t already know. If you have bosses, clients, or friends who are not marketers, however, this series might be helpful. Today, we’re going to tackle the state of social media in 2013.

Most folks who are not digital marketers want their businesses to succeed and understand that social media is one of the driving forces in digital marketing today. Why? Because it’s relatively low cost to start (though that ramps fast) and results of some kind generally happen very quickly. So what matters in social media?

  • Context: Knowing what goals you intend to achieve is most important. Are you trying to generate more leads for your business? Are you trying to retain customers? Defining the context will let you know if you’re succeeding or not, and how to measure it.
  • Content: Having something worth sharing is the new table stakes in social media. Here’s how to know whether you’ve got something worth sharing.
  • Conversation: Be ready, willing, and eager to have conversations in social media – even if they’re conversations that aren’t pleasant.
  • Community: The people that make up your social media audience are going to help you achieve your results if you build the right audience, the audience that wants to talk about your topics and what you can do for them (and rarely, if ever, what they can do for you).

Rather than rewrite the same words over again, I’m going to give you two resources that should be of help in making a general starting social media strategy for a small business. First, this simple (but not easy) one page slide that you should have in your office and reference when you’re doing social:

Social Media Strategy

Want to download this as a printable PDF? Click here and it’s yours.

In terms of how to publish content on a schedule, I’ll refer you to this video (free, registration required) I did for my employer, SHIFT Communications:

Content Strategy 2.mov
Basic Content Distribution Strategy for Social Media

If you can make these two sets of basics work for you, your social media program will be off to a good start.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Marketing, Social media
March 26, 2013 2 Comments

2 Exercises To Strengthen and Grow Your Social Networks

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We spend a lot of time in the world of social media talking about content. Content marketing, content is king, content rules, and rightfully so, since content is a vital part of many people’s work. It’s effective, it scales well with the resources you give it, and if done well, helps you and your community. That said, content is only half the equation. Remember that this is social media – content is the media. There’s still the social part, and that’s a part we pay very little attention to. In fact, if you believe some of the content marketing resources out there, the general idea is “build it and they will come”, which hasn’t really worked… well, ever.

So what’s the other half of social media? The social part. Your network, and the people in them. You can still make social media work well for you without generating much content. How? By focusing your efforts on your network. Recently, I shared a simple networking tip, saying hello to people who visit your profile on LinkedIn. That’s the tip of the iceberg. If you want to make the social part work for you, or your content marketing skills have proven to not be your strength, then look into networking. Here are two simple networking exercises for you to try.

Be a Broker

Of the people you know, try to connect two of them every week (or even every day if your network is large enough) who might benefit each other. Say you know someone who’s in the vacuum business and someone who’s in the pizza delivery business in your local town. Connect them, introduce them to each other, and maybe even make the suggestion that the pizza guy work with the vacuum guy on commission so as to get into more households.

Signal | LinkedIn

Listen on networks like LinkedIn Signal or Twitter for people asking their friends to recommend new hires or new business partners, and then make the connections. It’s really easy – just go to Signal, search for the word hiring, restrict to your first degree connections, and see what’s out there that you can make happen for someone in your network. No, there’s nothing in it directly for you, but by doing so, you strengthen your network by increasing your value to the people in it.

Make Some Greatest Hits

Are you subscribed to Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO)? If you’re not, you’re missing out on golden opportunities for earned press – but not for you. If you’re still not familiar with this free service, it’s a thrice-daily email of inquiries from press and media sources asking for sources to contact who are experts. Here’s an example query:

6) Summary: Financial Experts’ Tips
Name: S.Z. Berg High-traffic print/websites
Category: Business and Finance
Media Outlet: High-traffic print/websites
Deadline: 7:00 PM PST – 30 March

Query: I am looking for financial and investment experts to provide little-known strategies (and client anecdotes) on digging out of debt, buying a car, paying for college, and other big buys or investing in stocks or mutual funds for a book/Huffington Post blog. Requirements: Prefer experts who are socially networked.

Here’s the exercise: subscribe to HARO, and commit to finding one query per week for someone in your network. Read through the backgrounds of a dozen or so folks who are connected to you on LinkedIn or Twitter and then read HARO. Find someone in that group a single press inquiry, copy and paste it to them, and see if it can land them some ink. If you want to make an impression on someone, getting them free press is certainly one way of doing so.

Hint for job seekers: this is a KILLER way to make a pre- or post-interview impression.

Conclusion

These two exercises, if you do them diligently once a week, every week, will strengthen and grow your network. People will begin to seek you out because you’re constantly providing them with value, and as is human nature, they’ll do their best to return the favor and find you opportunities as well. Want the world to beat a path to your door? Do the hard work of beating a path to their doors first.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Marketing, Social media, Strategy
March 25, 2013 Leave a Comment

How to create content for the junkweb

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As much as I don’t like it, the junkweb (as termed by Chris Brogan) is supremely powerful. It’s one of those concepts that’s like pop-ups – you hate it, yet you cannot deny its effectiveness. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it’s the phenomenon of slapping words on top of images and sharing them on social networks.

In a recent look at some of my stats and some client stats on Facebook alone, junkweb posts accounted for 8 of the top 10 most shared, most engaged items on Facebook pages. If things like EdgeRank are of concern or interest to you, then you have to consider the junkweb as one of your content generation tactics.

Here’s a simple way to get started with creating for the junkweb. First, find yourself a list of quotes or sayings about your field, about your industry, or anything else that’s on-brand. Next, go to the Commons on Flickr or the Creative Commons By Attribution, for Commercial Use section. Find an image for each quote that’s appropriate and has relatively empty or neutral space in it that can accommodate the quote. Using a program like Over on a mobile device or Skitch on a desktop, slap the quote on top of the image, and you’ve got a piece of content for the junkweb.

Here’s an example. We start with this quote:

“Obedience keeps the rules. Love knows when to break them.” – Anthony de Mello

And now we find a picture on the Commons, in this case from the State Library of New South Wales:

Artist and dog arrive by Melbourne Express (taken for J.C. Williamson), 10/12/1937 / byTed hood

We use Skitch to put up the words, and here’s our junkweb piece.

All sizes | Artist and dog arrive by Melbourne Express (taken for J.C. Williamson), 10/12/1937 / byTed hood | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

If you don’t believe in the power of the junkweb, I’d challenge you to try it for two weeks. Create a piece of interesting junkweb content every day that is relevant, targeted, and on-brand, and see how it performs in terms of engagement and sharing on networks like Facebook and Google+. Remember that these are not memes per se, and certainly don’t create anything that is inappropriate for your brand’s tone. Try it out for two weeks and see if it makes an impact on your audience.

If you enjoyed this, please share it with your network!

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Marketing White Belt

Basics for Digital Marketers
is now on Amazon & B&N

I recommend & use:
SEOMoz SEO Software
SEOMoz SEO software. 		I recommend:

for small business incorporation.
Filed Under: Advertising, Marketing, Social media, Strategy
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