It’s almost 4 years since I started blogging, using social media and other “technology” apps and tools to further my business. I’ve been thinking about it as Sam asked me to write a blog about my experiences with social media and I pondered about a variety of things.

It’s not just at New Year that one should revise their strategy, update their thoughts and perhaps even change their game plan – business wise. I do it on a regular basis – and with the help of social media and all the applications I have come to use, rather quickly. I guess that’s the beauty of all of this – as a small business I can change my marketing, change my strategy or update my website in the blink of an eye! Or can I?

Well yes, it means I am more in charge than ever before, instead of relying on people to do something for me, pay them and hope to god they do it right, I can now just get on with it myself. But of course this all takes time – nothing ever gets done with NO effort – people seem to forget that! And I have had to spend time learning about the technological ins and outs – and as time goes on brain cells do struggle! But I do enjoy it and I feel very good that at the ripe old age of 45 I was an “early adopter”!

I do think that people do think this takes no effort – and when they find out this does work they still think it’s a waste of time.

On one side you have the “twitter scorners” as I call them. They know nothing about it or might have just tried it for a few weeks and just don’t get it. On the other side you have the “new evangelists” – the ones that have tried it, stuck with it and now feel it’s their confessor and best friend rolled into one.

I went through both those stages – I think we all do. I thought I was way too old to mess with the kids on Twitter until someone explained the business strategy behind it and gave me a case study. The same with Facebook and LinkedIn – didn’t know how to really use them although had been on them for years and years, but I was sceptical and thought them a waste of time. But I have always prided myself on being open minded, so the case studies gave me a light bulb moment. That’s how I function, I need examples. Many people aren’t shown examples, so they become “Twitter scorners” forever. Some people of course use social media purely for fun and that’s ok.

I did not quite get into being an evangelist – I always thought telling the world your troubles and being negative was never a good thing for anyone, least of all me. But I did wax lyrical about social media because I did have some rather early wins with it – I was introduced to famous people in my industry, I even blog for one now. And I got £37,350 (T/O) worth of business in my first 6 months. Rather exact right? That’s because even though these are “newish” technologies, applications and business tools, it doesn’t mean you should not apply old world style business processes – like measuring ROI.

So almost four years into it and I have made some strategic changes to how I put myself out there.

For me, social media is part of my business toolbox – it’s marketing, PR and strategy rolled into a bundle that gives me direction to develop my business. It takes time, it takes effort and it takes dedication. But then if you want your business to succeed – doesn’t everything? I still don’t know it all, no-one ever does. The best part though and the one thing that makes me chuckle, is that I get approached by “Twitter Gurus”, “Social Media Supremos” and people that I met 6 months ago who knew nothing about it then and all of a sudden are giving social media workshops for £500/day and would I like to come along?! These people want to help me develop my social media – but first things first – check me out and see what work I do and how active I am before you start promising a myriad of wonders for me. And can I just say that most of these people did not even start out as marketing professionals. You can tell I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about this!

Well I do, because it’s a learning process that takes time, and to begin with you really need to understand business and business development, marketing and brand development. Old fashioned business adages, but they do apply – they are the foundation to your business. It’s not about just sending out a few tweets and a few blogs out into the ether. I come from a business background and so feel very comfortable with all that stuff and having nearly 4 years of active non-stop social media work behind me, I feel rather confident about the things I have learnt. The good and the bad.

So a few tips and they’re FREE by the way!

Do not broadcast non-stop about what you do. It’s boring, it’s arrogant. Who wants to listen to anyone drone on about how good they are or about their products and services.

You want to be seen as THE voice of honest good reputation on your speciality – so share industry information you have found with others, showcase other people’s work. This makes you look like an authority – people start to trust you.

Meet the people (for real!) you have formed a good relationship with – collaboration is exponential, it feels good, it brings money in and gets your name out there.

Do show off your work or share your blog, but not every 5 minutes. For every one of your own work share 5 others. It’s a good balance.

Do create a strategy – what do you want to achieve in social media? Brand recognition? Get more clients? Meet other industry professionals? Whatever the goal is – develop it as you would offline.

Never ever comment on a client’s work – as sure as night follows day, they will read it and they may not like it! So keep negative comments to yourself.

Enjoy yourself – stay focused – stay positive – because oddly, online chats give people a very good idea of what you are like!

Lastly, remember – think twice about what you put out there – if you hesitate, don’t post it. A thoughtless or nasty comment will get out there and stay there!

Françoise Murat is a degree qualified Architectural Interior Designer and Garden Designer. Eco but not Loco! She specialises in: Architectural interior design for domestic clients, bars and restaurants and a garden design service for the domestic market, property developments and urban landscapes. Visit Françoise’s blog, Rendez-Vous Deco & Jardin. 

It’s no wonder many small business owners hesitate to get started with social media marketing

Social Media Marketing is not a replacement for traditional ‘offline’ marketing – but it is an excellent addition. Here’s why:

Connect

Social Media helps you to reach out to and connect with many more interesting & influential people than if you don’t take part. At a time when the majority of phone calls end up in the voicemail zone, using the social networks can be a more successful way to make that initial contact.

It’s surprising to find that quite senior decision makers and buyers are personally involved. You will find big business thought leaders, early adopters and big brands on Twitter or with Facebook Pages. OK, so they probably don’t send out every tweet themselves, but they will be kept informed of trending topics and notice people of interest.

Communicate

An important factor to remember with Social Media marketing is that it replaces the one-way message of the old, static, brochure-type website and enables you to communicate two-way and even multi-ways with your clients and prospective clients. You can find out what they really want, instead of merely guessing. Many large brands are discovering a whole new box of customer service tools in the social networks (those who get it are anyway).

You can send out your message to reach hundreds or thousands of people in an instant at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising or direct mail, and receive a response just as quickly. Your customers and prospective customers are getting used to having their say.

Consistent

With traditional marketing activities, you wouldn’t expect to do something only once or twice for it to bring you good results, would you? That would be like going to one networking meeting or mailing out one letter, and then sitting back waiting for the phone to ring. Instead you’d plan out a campaign of activities to take place over a few months or more. You would visit the networking groups regularly and send out a series of mailings – and follow them up too.

With Social Media marketing you need to commit to doing it consistently & correctly for it to work for your business. If you’re going to be on Twitter or any of the other online networks, you have to show up often to see any return. And if you have a blog, you need to post something at least once a week, every week.

Whether your prospective clients are parents, students, young mums, the retired or redundant or they are sole-traders or business tycoons, there is a way to connect and communicate with them using social media marketing.

What would you add? Please share in the comments below.

We’re definitely in favour of making life easier by using some of the great automation tools available online

Twitterfeed is great for automatically tweeting the RSS feeds of your and other peoples’ blogs and articles and it isn’t hard to do. Once you’ve set up your account you type in the blog feed URL including the http://www.blogname.com/feed (you can find the feed URL by hovering over the orange RSS button on the site). Each time a new post is published by that blogger, Twitterfeed sends out a tweet from your Twitter account. You can personalise tweets by prefacing with, for example: ‘Latest post: …’.

Social Oomph (formerly Tweet Later) has many useful features. We use it to ‘vet’ or check out latest followers on Twitter, decide if we want to follow them back (or sometimes block any undesirables!), and then assign them to a list. Another great use for this tool is to write & store draft tweets and preschedule them to go out at specified times and dates in the future.

Unlike many people we think an automated welcome message to new followers can be OK, provided it is just a welcome – and doesn’t include a pitch, or even a link to a free report (that’s just tacky!).

Twitter clients TweetDeck and Hootsuite both allow you to manage your twitter accounts, lists and followers as well as to connect with other social networks. This means you can update your Facebook and LinkedIn status with just a single tweet. One of the main differences between the two clients is that TweetDeck requires you to download software onto your computer (this can slow things down a bit for older PCs), whereas Hootsuite has a web-based option so just needs an internet connection to run.

Setting up and personalising an iGoogle page with some of the many available ‘gadgets’ lets you each of your social media networks, preview your Google Mail, Google Calendar and Google Docs – all on the same page . This makes it easy to quickly glance and catch up with what’s going on in your online world whenever you have a few moments, without the need to log into each individual account.

It’s tempting to get carried away with all this available automation, but if you set up every tweet to also automatically update your status on LinkedIn and Facebook, it will get very irritating for your connections on those sites. Do you really want everyone to see every tweet you send? Twitter is the best place to contain the chatter, so we recommend you use the appropriate tools and be selective.

As a final thought for today, while these automated tools are great at saving time it’s a good idea to occasionally check they’re still doing what you intended when you set them up. If you plan to use social media marketing regularly to help promote your business, it’s well worth automating some broadcasts to save time and effort. But people will notice if you try to automate too much, so make sure you stop and ‘chat’ with your connections, even if only for a few minutes a day – and be ‘sociable’!

What’s your favourite social media marketing automation tool? We’d love you to share it here!

We hear a lot of people say

This question assumes that social media is something you can do once and not have to return to. Sorry to disappoint but Social Media marketing is a bit like a huge jigsaw puzzle and, because social media keeps on changing and growing, the jigsaw is never completely finished.

As an eternal ‘tweaker’ I can honestly say that there are so many little pieces, it takes forever to put them all in the right place on the picture that is social media.

What we find is that it’s often the little pieces of the puzzle that can make the biggest difference and have the most impact on business.

Here are just 15 little pieces that you may want to use for your own social media marketing puzzle:

Twitter

• Check that you have included a up to date live link back to your website in your bio.
• If you’re using automation tools, make sure the scheduled tweets are still relevant.
• Have you cleared out inactive or spammy followers lately?

Facebook

• On your Personal Profile, check you have included links to your Facebook Business Page, Twitter account and website(s) in the Contact Information section of the Info tab.
• Engage with friends and family on your Personal profile, but gradually move business acquaintances over to the Business Page.
• On your Facebook Business Page, set up a routine to add interesting content every day (auto-linking Twitter doesn’t count ).

LinkedIn

• Check that your profile is up to date – current employer & summary
• Have you selected your specialist areas yet?
• Create a Company page for your business and start promoting your products & services.

Blog

• Is your Sign-up box to collect visitor details and build your list prominently displayed?
• Check that the RSS feed link works (clicking on it should open a selection of readers, not a page of code)
• Give readers plenty of opportunities to share your articles around the internet.

Google+

• Create and complete your profile (with photograph) and include relevant links to your other online homes
• Create a Google+ Business Page and add your information to the About Page.
• Add a Google+ Profile Badge to your website and blog. (If you’re on WordPress here’s a plugin: http://plusdevs.com/google-wordpress-plugin/)

As with all marketing activities you will need to try, test and monitor to find out which social media pieces work best for your business.

Over to you – what jigsaw pieces would you include?

Inspired by yet another great post from Debra Collins at Pennsylvania based B2B and professional services marketing specialists, Marketri, I am encouraged to give my own view on the plethora of social media that now competes for our attention every day of the week. What works and what doesn’t work? What should we invest our time in and what should we leave alone? What is social and what is for business?….And where do we stand on the greatest challenge of all for marketers, ROI?

In her post (and I really do encourage you to read it for yourself), Debra classifies each of the main platforms as either a necessity or a luxury. In summary, Debra concludes:

• LinkedIn: Necessity
• Twitter: Luxury
• Google+: Necessity
• Facebook: Luxury

My experience and perspective from this side of the pond is slightly different.

LinkedIn: Necessity

A LinkedIn profile is, I agree, essential. Finding and maintaining contact with former colleagues is LinkedIn’s most useful purpose, swiftly followed by the ability to find a contact in a target organisation and identify any common connections.

One should also not fail to note that a potential client is likely to look at one’s profile in advance of a meeting or first contact. A profile that does not adequately communicate one’s skills and experience could be the difference between success and failure.

To date, however, I have found little benefit in contributing to LinkedIn discussions, or updating my status (other than via an autofeed from Twitter) or having a company profile or group. People’s time to contribute and engage in these discussions seems to be too limited. My personal view is that time dedicated to these activities should be allocated sparingly.

Twitter: Necessity

I find Twitter essential as a source of information. Many times I’ve used it for insight on industry news that I’ve then shared with clients and prospects to impress them with how ‘in touch’ I am! My colleagues have spotted PR opportunities for clients by following journalists and The Marketing Eye has clients who have created leads for themselves by spotting buying signals in the tweets of prospects who they strategically follow.

Can one be a user of Twitter and not a contributor? Possibly, at the conscious expense of forsaking brand profile with a like-minded audience. The indiscriminate pursuit of followers for the sake of status is, however, clearly misplaced. There is little more mindless than users who are following, and being followed by, thousands.

Facebook: Necessity

I am a late, but now enthusiastic, adopter of Facebook for business- it is the 3rd most important source of leads to our website and generates 7 times more visitors than LinkedIn.

I don’t believe any marketer can afford to ignore a platform that has 600m users and rising. There are some who say that businesses won’t bother with traditional websites in five year’s time, instead they will rely entirely on Facebook. I am not sure if I subscribe to this view entirely, but I can see their point.

Facebook is very searchable, allows for quick and informal updates and allows marketers to communicate with a target audience when it is at its most relaxed and therefore most amenable to suggestion. The demographic targeting capabilities of Facebook advertising are another significant advantage for the savvy operator.

Google+: Luxury (for now)

I will no doubt be as late an adopter of Google+ as I was of Facebook. I have taken a look at Google+ out of professional interest and created a personal profile (Google is discouraging the creation of business profiles at the time of writing (edit: Google has now introduced business pages on Google+)), but in common with many, I am daunted by thought of monitoring and maintaining yet another presence. Google’s dominance in search will, no doubt, make it compulsory at some point.

The great ROI debate

So, when push comes to shove, is it all worth it? Is social media a critical part of any business’s marketing activity or is it the greatest confidence trick since the King’s New Clothes?

The whole premise of the debate is flawed in my view. To view social media in ROI terms is misplaced. Social media platforms are tools and not campaigns – they should be learned and used for the benefits they bring, be they as marketing communications or as sources of information. To paraphrase another favourite commentator of mine, Ian Brodie: “In the social media age, it is no more necessary to measure the ROI of social media than it is to measure the ROI of the computer or telephone”.

What do you think?

Neil is a Chartered Marketer and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing with many years’ experience in marketing, brand and communications. His experience includes being a Director of Marketing in The Royal Bank of Scotland Group where he was responsible for brands in the UK, Ireland and US. Those brands include: Lombard, Jamjarcars.com, Angel Trains and Dixon Motors. Entrepreneurial, creative and energetic, Neil’s success has come from a pragmatic and intelligent approach to combining marketing with business needs. You can find out more about Neil on The Marketing Eye’s website.  

I was chatting with a fellow business owner over coffee the other day

We went through the need and purpose of having a blog and setting up accounts with the various social networks where his target market were most likely to be, and then I asked him: ‘How big is your list?’

His answer was pretty much what I’d expected: that he had a lot of contacts but they weren’t organized in any way or stored in a central place, for example on an Excel spreadsheet.

The traditional way of collecting business cards at networking events and trade shows often results in a drawer full of cards and very little else. Even if these cards are put into a display folder of some kind, they still won’t be of any use for email marketing until they at least find their way onto a computer.

As I explained to my downcast colleague, in order to make the best use of email marketing, he really needed to have enough people to send his emails to!

We agreed that his best starting point was to create an Excel spreadsheet and manually enter the contact details. From there it will be easy for him to upload the data to an email service provider (such as MailChimp, AWeber or Constant Contact – and there are many others). When it comes to those drawers full of business cards, his options include various scanning machines & software packages, and he would do well to consider the newer technology Apps for smartphones, such as ScanBizCards.

A common list building mistake 

One of the problems I’ve seen recently with enthusiastic social networking business owners is that they’re so focused on building a following on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on, that they seem to have lost sight of the importance of building an email marketing list.

Just think about how quickly those online newstreams, updates and Twitter feeds move down the screen. You have no guarantee that your followers are actually going to see your message, amongst all the other messages vying for their attention, let alone click on a link.

On the other hand, an email is a targeted marketing message arriving in each individual’s inbox. They will have given permission for you to send them such emails and, providing proper opt-in procedures are followed, the recipient has to consciously decide what to do with each message they get from you. While some people may choose to delete without reading, if the campaign has been well put together, your email stands a much better chance of being opened.

By the time we’d finished our coffees, my fellow business owner had written down clear steps to get his email marketing list off the ground and had an understanding why it was urgent and important to keep taking action and build on it.

What would you have recommended he do to build his email marketing list? Please leave your suggestion in the comments below.

It’s also a useful tool for monitoring and following conversations on Twitter, as well as for keeping up to date with latest happenings and trends.

How do you follow the conversations on Twitter? Do share what works best for you in the comments below

I’ve just received another automated Twitter Direct Message inviting me to join yet another new social network.

Sometimes the sheer volume of invitations and notifications from networks you belong to can become overwhelming, especially when added to all the usual emails and other messages demanding your attention.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on how off-putting it is to receive invitations to connect that make no attempt to personalise the initial message and you can see in the comments that Sam feels the same!

We’re much more likely to accept invitations from people who have taken a few seconds to introduce themselves. It makes a huge difference when an invitation says: ‘Hi, we met at such & such networking meeting recently’ or ‘I subscribe to your newsletter & would love to connect here’ or ‘We have a mutual contact/interest in x’.

The trouble is, we don’t want to refuse an invitation from someone who could potentially be an interesting connection just because they don’t use the right words!

Setting up a connection policy or process can help

1. Is there a photograph of the person?

I like to see who I’m connecting with, so a logo, grey avatar or pet photo isn’t helpful (or professional). It’s a bit like going to a local networking meeting wearing a mask isn’t it?

2. What does their profile say about them?

It’s often difficult to know what to put in these boxes. I look for clues about what the person does and also what they’re like as an individual, so blank boxes or sales copy are a turn-off.

3. Do they have a website and/or blog?

This is their online home and I often decide whether to connect based on what I read in their ‘About’ page. If there isn’t a link to click on, this gives me the message that they aren’t very serious about their business online. The same applies if the only link takes me to a Facebook Page.

4. What connections or interests do we have in common?

If we have nothing and no-one in common then why should we connect? Another reason why 2 & 3 above are so important.

5. What do they tweet about?

For Twitter connections, I always have a look at their timeline or stream of recent tweets to see if they chat with their other connections and share other people’s stuff. If all that’s there is a list of self-promotional tweets, then they obviously don’t ‘get’ Twitter and I don’t connect with them

I hope this doesn’t come across as too ruthless, but realistically I can only engage with a limited number of people in a day, week or month. While I freely admit to making regular use of automation tools, I try hard to personally connect with as many people as I can every day too. It is called social networking after all!

Related posts:

Connecting with Social Media

Friends and Acquaintances

Getting to Know You

What have we missed? Do you agree with this post? Please let us know in the comments below.

Fast forward about 10 years and ‘social media’ is the new darling. Want to be on Twitter and Facebook? Want to learn how to use these sites, learn what message to send and how to interact? You can find plenty of help and lots of tips here on Savvy Marketers.

Let’s face it, SEO has never been the sexiest form of online marketing, having connotations with geeks and technical things that people don’t really want to know about. But however sexy social media has become, SEO still plays a very important part in the online marketing toolbox.

Whatever the message you want to spread through the social media channels, ultimately your audience will come back to a web page, whether it be a blog post (the most popular type of link distributed), a sales page, static web page, report or Facebook page (and no, Facebook pages aren’t a replacement for having a website!).

Once your visitors land on the link you’ve distributed, chances are it will be a page on your website. That’s where the visitor experience of your brand will start and where SEO plays an important part. SEO isn’t just about gaining rankings in the search engines, but making websites ‘search engine friendly’ which goes hand in hand with web usability, the visitor experience. After arriving on your site, your visitors should easily be able to navigate around it. Relevancy is also key. A visitor clicks on a link and expects to land on a page relating to that link. The design of a site is often (at least should be) influenced by SEO. In fact, going one step further, your social media activity should also be ‘optimised’ for relevancy and of course, getting found on the social networks themselves. (You can read my post from last week Have you optimised your Facebook page?)

Sending visitors to a poorly designed or optimised site, or to an irrelevant page from your social media activity isn’t really going to do you any favours and can have a negative impact on the success of your social media marketing. If your site isn’t up to scratch then that should really be addressed before you even begin distributing your message on the social networks. Bear in mind that all your online marketing activity works together, none can be done in isolation, and generally a large part of the interest you gain will go back to your site. Therefore, the better the optimisation of the site, the more successful your online marketing campaigns will be!

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this – perhaps I’m missing something! Even so, I believe that SEO still plays a major part in online marketing and the more popular social media becomes, the closer the ties it has with SEO. Comments below please!

Image: Free Rainbow Sprinkle Ice Cream Cone Creative Commons by Pink Sherbet Photography, on Flickr

Using social sharing buttons has become a great way of letting our connections know

Facebook often confuses me

I do not profess to be an expert in Facebook (despite what Sam might say ) nor on social media marketing in general – it changes far too quickly for that to be possible (and I do occasionally have to do other work!). But I try my best to keep up with the major social network developments and love trying out new widgets and buttons – sometimes just to see what happens when I click!

For quite a while now, I’ve been confused by the different Facebook buttons popping up both on websites, blogs and on Facebook’s own pages and have taken the easy way out by mostly sharing via Twitter. So I decided for today’s post to do a little research and find out what Facebook’s ‘Like’ ‘Send’ ‘Share’ and ‘Recommend’ buttons mean so as to be able to use each of them in the most appropriate way. I think I’ve untangled them in my mind now, so here goes:

Like

This is the first button Facebook introduced, initially on its own website and then made available across the internet (in April 2010) and it must be the most clicked on and recognisable icon on the internet! Installing a ‘like’ button so that it shows at the end of each of your blog posts is straightforward – with the option to provide a counter showing how many people have clicked on it. The results of clicking will show up in the timeline of your Facebook profile & newsfeed of your FB friends.

Recommend

I don’t see this button often and was puzzled not to find many references to it. All became clear when I read this blog post:

Like Button Full Story

The ‘Recommend’ button is just an alternative to the ‘Like’ button but it serves the same function. So which word you use on the buttons installed on your website or blog, will depend on context and personal preference.

Share

Launched in October 2009, what used to differentiate Facebook’s Share button from the Like button was that your update would include the link to the web page where you clicked on the button, also showing a visually pleasing thumbnail (little extract) of the blog post or article.

While I was putting together this post, I discovered that one of the many incremental and continual changes by Facebook is that the ‘Like/Recommend’ Button now has the same functionality as the ‘Share’ button in that it now automatically includes a link, and enables you to add your own comment too.

Send

It was a relief that I easily understood this latest button, launched by Facebook in April 2011! When I find a blog post or web page I think is of interest to people I know, clicking the ‘Send’ button will enable me to choose who to send a link to, and add an optional personal message. The drop-down menu allows me to select individual Facebook friends by name; whole Groups that I belong to; and even to type in the email address and send the link to someone who doesn’t belong to Facebook. This promises to be a very powerful and popular social sharing button.

Here’s a good explanation on the Send button from Mashable

My conclusions

If I understand correctly, Facebook will begin to phase out their ‘Share’ button as its functions have been incorporated into the ‘Like/Recommend’ button. Liking sends an update which is visible to all your Facebook connections, whereas the ‘Send’ button allows for selective sharing both inside Facebook and outside via Email.

In the video below, Facebook expert Mari Smith (she really is an expert!) explains how you might want to use the Like and Recommend buttons in different locations on your blog for best results. She also recommends other social sharing buttons you might want to consider.

I realise I’m probably one of the last people to get to grips with Facebook’s social sharing buttons, so please can you help me out: Which button do you click on most often, and why?  Oh, and if you enjoyed reading this post – perhaps you’d be kind enough to click one of the buttons below?