Audiences

A few Facts

In 2010, Forrester Consulting published ran a survey that showed:

• Facebook: 57% of subscribers in Germany, and 48% in the USA, use the site every day.
• Facebook: 21% of Australian and 39% of UK subscribers, use the site every day.
• Video Chat: 72% of Brits, 63% of Australians, and 55% of Germans who use video chat, use it daily.
• Face to face meetings: 51% of Americans have F2F meetings every day — OW! 65% pay attention in meetings and 37% think it’s time well spent.
• 28% of Germans have daily meetings and 57% pay attention

A few more facts:

• 52% of Americans use some kind of social media. Yes, more than half.
• 8% use Twitter, but they use it a lot!
• 1/3 of people using social media access their accounts several times each day. There are people who use Facebook for everything. You can get excited by the fact that 46 million people are frequent users, but don’t forget that this is only 1 in 130 people on the planet or 0.75% of our population.
• Only 1/3 of Americans have a smartphone.
• Only 1/4 of social media users follow companies, usually on Facebook. . Most of us prefer conversations with people. 72% of users believe that social media has not influenced their buying decisions. Unfortunately, the available information is slim. Many people make recommendations; most people trust recommendations from friends. It rather suggests that many of the people we follow or friend are not really our friends.

Which Social Media?

Social media can be overwhelming since there are so many venues and each one has its own personality. Unless you have hours to kill or an employee you can devote to it full time, trying to make your company available on all the networks is too much to handle.

Instead, think of the various social media as similar to business networks. There are probably dozens in your town and you may have tried out each of them in turn, but only one or two felt right for you. They matched your personality; they met at a convenient time; they asked for help that you could give.  The rules for joining social networks online are pretty similar: if you are going to drop in, don’t make a fuss. Listen and be polite until you get a feel for the group. If the vibes are good, find out the rules for being a member and join. Once you are a subscriber, support the network.  Contribute on a regular basis. Answer questions when you can but don’t try to overwhelm the rest of the gang by hogging the floor.

Winning vs. Retaining Customers

In autumn 2010 surveys suggested that most companies use social media to improve brand recognition and trust. Less than 1/5 of the companies got on-board with the intention of gaining new customers or making sales. Instead they were responding to customer questions and complaints, spreading PR, and getting cost-effective feedback on the products and services they offer.

This is the smart approach to social media. Don’t wait until you need something then try to butt into the conversation hoping someone will respond.  Before you ask favours, you need to build friendships; and here is a key element to success: YOU need to build the network. Interns, students, the nice girl next door with the lovely manners, are all potentially great at socializing, but they don’t know your company, vision or mission. They haven’t got your passion which means that if they write your content, it will focus on events, press releases and other obvious conversations.

If YOU write the content, you’ll see connections to all sorts of topics.

Interns are likely to be either too conservative or far too enthusiastic: sticking to the subject or bubbling over with promises.

There are also an increasing number of specialist companies that can automate some of the monitoring and respond with Tweets and blog articles in the markets that attract your audiences. This new field is attracting a number of relatively new companies so if this is your choice, read the online reviews and get referrals before hiring. It is easy to drive traffic to a website; whether or not they are true leads only shows in the number of conversions you see.

A huge part of any business marketing and sales strategy needs to focus on customer retention because, as we’ve all heard so often, it is cheaper to keep a customer than it is to acquire them. From that point of view, social media can be an effective means of keeping in touch and listening to your client base. It allows customers to tell you what they want from your business and it allows you to inform them about new products, services and directions; to let them contribute their ideas and respond to demos and trials.

• To help people find you online, add icons to your website and emails that link to your social media sites. Add the URLs to print media as well.

Building Loyalty

Whether you are looking to retain customers or build new connections, social media can help by providing you with the opportunity to show what a great company you have.  You can use social media to provide support, make suggestions, give free but informed advice, listen, and speak out. While that may not lead to new clients directly, people are more inclined to buy from organizations they know and trust.

• Remember: humour sells but underhanded tactics will get outed.

Getting Started

Creating a social media campaign is a 4 part initiative that requires:

• research
• setting objectives
• defining actions
• production

Research

At the core you need to understand the culture of your target audience. What are they interested in? What are they talking about across social media? Where does your preferred client “hang out” and what do they discuss there?
There’s little point barging into a Facebook conversation about astrological signs to bleat about your new galvanized tubing. Instead, you want to look for places where your clients are talking about things you know about; where you can add significantly to the discussion in a friendly way.

While you are at it, do some research on your knowledge base. What topics can you discuss intelligently and do you have the time to spend?

Objectives

Think about the people you are going to “meet”. What do you want from them? Ultimately, as a business person, you want sales, but from this crowd, you may be looking for leads. You may be looking to connect with one influential person who will speak for you.

In other words, before you begin, you should lay out how you will define success from this campaign.

You may need to set a series of objectives. At the get-go, you want to meet people who might like you. Later you might ask them to give you an opportunity to speak about your company. Sometime down the road, you may ask them to try your product or send you a lead. Set the timetable for the various stages of success. While the bean-counters in your organization will reject the first level of “awareness-building”, they will come around if you have measurable longer-term objectives like 10 leads a day from our fan-base by September.

Actions

Put the plan into action. Where are you going to spend your resources to meet the short and long term goals. What will you offer: video, commentary, knowledge, camraderie, faqs, customer service support, coupons, rewards….

There are many doors into the online community, and you must choose the ones you will open based on their potential.

At each step along the path you will need to re-evaluate your decisions based on the responses. Just like you would at a neighbourhood barbeque, you may have to leave some discussions after a huge gaffe and come back with apologies. You may find the group with whom you are talking aren’t likely to become friends or that you are so inundated with friendship that you will never meet anyone else if you stay.

Remember, your goal is to meet everyone, strike up a few friendships and develop some long-lasting relationships.

Some ideas you might consider:

• Offer exclusive offers to your Twitter followers or Facebook fans
• Post videos on YouTube
• Encourage comments and respond to them
• Add a Live chat to your website

Facebook

Facebook Fan Pages

Overwhelming Numbers

At 6 million page views per minute Facebook gets 37.4 Trillion page views per year. That is more traffic than Google gets and explains why Google looks for you on Facebook. In fact, Google and Facebook seem to have become rivals since the beginning of 2011. Facebook hired a PR team to track Google’s activities and spread rumours. Social media tacticians need to track how they and other companies choose to resolve competition since it affects how you are found on both sites.

With over 600 Million subscribers by June 2011, only China and India form larger communities. The difference between an online community and a country are manifold. Facebook is far more diverse and politically independent. It is highly segmented and the people who live here choose to be part of the community. If you are looking for your target audience here, you’ll need to recognize where they live physically and why they are part of this behemoth. The fastest growing segment is women aged 55 to 65 and 1/3 of the community is over the age of 35. Many of these subscribers are online to keep in touch with family.

Video, links, stories, blog posts, and photos are among the most popular information people share on Facebook. In fact only YouTube gets more hits for video. The tone is cozy, trusting and somewhat exhibitionist. In fact privacy advocates frequently voice concern that users post intimate information despite inadequate protection. People expand their network of friends to include people they barely know and friends of friends they have never met. Shared posts are disseminated through this network.

But What Do the Numbers Mean?

There are 70 million Facebook “status” updates per day. If every subscriber was equally active, 1 in 8 would update their page each day; over the course of a week, everyone would have visited their page and made an update. Meanwhile 30 billion pieces of content are shared every month.

It all suggests a very active and committed community. However, the statistics don’t reflect how active individuals are. Some members use Facebook as their chief means of communicating online. They upload dozens of photos, share links and comment on each others comments on an on-going basis.

Only 1.6 million pages are “active” and of these 800,000 are business pages.

Subject to Change

If this looks like the place you want to be, keep in mind that this venue is subject to frequent changes in response to perceived needs, government demands, and those of their subscribers.

The fall 2011 incarnation of Facebook affects how and when subscribers see ads from the brands they follow. Advertising Age quotes Jeff Widman of PageLever which did a brief survey: “Facebook is showing you to more people but less often per person.” The overall results were fewer views in total, but more unique views, so wider distribution.

The results in terms of fan-brand interaction seems mixed but the point to highlight here is that whatever your Facebook Fan page strategy, you need to keep on top of it because the frequent changes affect who sees your posts and in what contexts.

For now, Advertising Age  highlight other changes in F8:

• constantly updated news ticker
• the “Top Stories” feed has a new layout
• a time-based “Recent Stories” runs below Top Stories.
• users can influence what they see by marking / unmarking Top Stories
• the Timeline replaces the current Facebook profile.

Creating a Fan Page

There is no way to dismiss the fact that Facebook is huge and growing and that any social media campaign must consider it as a forum for keeping in touch with customers. The average Facebook user is connected to 60-80 community pages, groups, events, companies, etc.

Even if you decide against a fan page, you should monitor the site since 46% of Facebook users say they would discuss products ad companies on Facebook.

If you think this forum is right for your business, you should consider creating a fan page. What are the steps?

First: The Fan page connects to a normal Facebook account, and the owner of that account is automatically the super-administrator. Think carefully about who you want in charge of this project and how these initial pages will be set up. Your company needs to own and control these accounts. I have worked with 2 companies in the last year whose Facebook fan pages were technically owned by staff members who may leave or worse, may not leave gracefully.

Second: Login the the Facebook account, then go to www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages and click the button “Create a Page”. Don’t do like me and forget that you did this months ago and forgot about it. If you even think you already created a fan page, double check by clicking “Manage your page” first. Choose between a Community Page designed to promote a cause and an Official Page, designed to create a communications channel between you and your fans. Name your page.

Third: Fill in the details. Upload a picture, add the basic information. There are 3 tabs and you should jubilantly fill up each one with everything that makes you an exciting company to know.

Four: Start adding content, inviting fans in and offering them the type of content they want to read. Use the Wall to let people know what’s on your mind and encourage positive people to write something there. Expect to spend about an hour a week minimum updating and adding to your page and contributing elsewhere. The point of social media is to be social: to share your thoughts and experiences. Build trust and friendship and in time, you may also gain clients and customers. But remember this is about building your brand and your network, NOT about selling.

Five: Create a badge and post it on your website, blog, or elsewhere to let people know they can find you on Facebook and interact with you there. Create a Facebook ad.

Six: Upgrade your pages. Facebook markup language (FBML) was disabled in March 2011 and replaced with 4 other options:

• Static HTML iFrame Tabs: a free app that allows you to load in slideshows and video. Go to Edit Page > Apps > Static HTML iFrame Tabs > Edit Settings and follow the instructions
• Static HTML for Pages: n involver.com app that allows you to create 2 custom tabs but doesn’t allow for video
• TabPress: an app from Hyperarts limits you to one tab and you must have less than 2500 fans.
• custom tabs made using the Facebook API.

Each approach allows you to create a branded fan page. Since things at Facebook keep changing, I won’t go into detail here.

Seven: Add some special offers to the site that exist only for your fans. Give your fans back room insights into your business. Share interests. Ask for their input.

Who’s Blogging What will give you a quick over view of how to make a start at becoming a star, but beware: Facebook frequently changes it’s policies and rules. You will need to dedicate someone to the task of keeping your fan page up-to-date not only in terms of the content, but in terms of Facebook’s interface. For example, in 2009 a fan page could be customized using a technology that has now been superceded, requiring changes to how pages were coded.

Facebook Ads

Facebook has made it easy to place ads on their website. The costs are in line with other online media such as Google. The ads run only on Facebook showing up on pages where subscribers have indicated a potential interest in your product based on their activities. As with all online advertising, try to create a niche for your product that differentiates you from the thousands of companies competing in your niche.

Twitter

Why Twitter is Important

Another online forum for frequent bursts of communication is Twitter.

• There are over 106 million users, 80% of whom use a mobile device to connect to the network. Since they carry Twitter in their pocket, they are extremely responsive to situations. No matter what the event, from a conference to a political demonstration, you can expect to see at least a handful of participants tweeting about their impressions.
• Twitter users send over 640 tweets per second or 55 million per day
• 58% say that if they are complaining about a product, they expect a response from the company. In other words, Twitter users expect a conversation to develop.
• 56% of Twitter users use the network  to achieve business related goals

BUT, in 2009 Emarketing noted:

• 65% of marketers tweet daily
• 75% of all Twitter activity came from only 5% of users.  Only 15% posted very day. Only 1% posted more than 10 times a day.
• 94% of Twitter users had less than 100 followers.
• People with more followers are also more active. 92% of subscribers follow fewer than 100 people.

Tweets are short and often point to more detailed information posted elsewhere.  20% of tweets are about products and frequently originate with a brand representative. 44% of users have tweeted about a product.

How to Tweet

It is always tough to get a lot across with few words but that is the essence of Twitter. If you haven’t set up an account and you want to get started, at the bottom of this post you will find some relevent links to websites.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER.

So here, in short, are the highlights of a medium that invites immediacy.

1. You have 140 characters
2. If you stay under 80, it is easier for others to spread your message by retweeting.
3. Don’t try to say too much.
4. Focus on socializing, not on your business.
5. It’s okay to be a bit obsessive about your passion, but don’t be a bore.
6. Tell people about things that matter to you right now.
7. Tell people about cool things you find: a great post, a hot deal in town.
8. Use your 80 characters to drive people to your blog where they can read more.
9. Let people in on the context by adding hash marks # to conversations and keywords.
10. Shorten URLs with bit.ly. Copy the full URL (Ctrl+C), go to bit.ly and paste it in the url field. They will provide a shortened URL that is easier for Twitter.
11. Use abbreviations, but only as long as it doesn’t cloud meaning. Remember some of your followers are not text messaging fiends and are unfamiliar with some of the common abbreviations.
12. Talk to people. Add the @ sign before their handle as in: @cdegruchy
13. Don’t be disappointed when others don’t write back or follow. Your message just went out alongside 1000s of others and the people who follow you probably won’t see your tweet in stream unless they are online right now.
14. Tweet often.
15. Rewrite important messages and send them out repeatedly to reach more people.
16. Follow people if you want to be followed. Use the search feature to find conversations on topics that interest you and join in.
17. Use a program like TweetDeck to organize your conversations. Some will let you put together a rack of tweets that are sent out individually on a timed basis.

Resource

Twitter experts has 2 short movies that give you an overview of how to get started and build your following.

Blogs

Tips for Bloggers

You may have heard that blogging is dead. No-one is interested. It’s simply not true. There are millions of blogs online. The problem is that most of them go unread. These tips should help you get started.

Define Your Focus

• Use a relevant name.
• URL. I use my blog to rant, so I don’t care. But if your blog is your website, give it a domain name of its own.
  Tagline description that says what you are/do/believe in 7 words or less.

Branding

Companies that use design are more successful according to the Design Council . Design encompasses many things but should include basic accessibility and readability. Your brand also includes the emotional tone or voice of your blog: chippy, sarcastic, distant but wise. Once you start, your audience will expect you to maintain the style of your blog from post to post.

Your content is going to develop around a limited number of topics. Your name, URL, tagline, and brand should amplify your ideas.

Structure Your Content

Choose the theme and utilities that will structure your content:

• Theme. More than a brand, it provides the templates and styling for your pages.
• Plug-ins. Take advantage of the 1000s of plugins that are available to add calendars, events, SEO and other utilities to your site. There are even more available if you use the full blogging tool, not just the freebie version.
• Pages are intended to contain static information like the About page, contact, author bios, terms of use, privacy statements, etc. They can actually be used more creatively than this, but this was the initial blogging concept.
• Posts and Archives show your blogs, usually beginning with the most recent at the top. Posts are categorized and the categories are one means of creating a menu system.

Content

• Control/administration panel. use this to control who can create content and update the theme.
• Spam filter. Even if no living person visits your site, spam monsters will. Filters kill them dead.
• Comments. At the least, check them daily and delete the rancid ones. This is your online home and you set the norms of behaviour.
• Sidebar content (including widgets) usually take advantage of utilities or widgets to add features that are not core to your content, such as related topics, search features, author bios.
• Content. The subject of your posts. Try to add something new every week and don’t forget to tweet your latest blog posting.

• Categories define the sub-topics on your site.
• Keywords declare some of the topics that feed into your content. If you write short posts, 1-2 keywords per post focuses the article.
• Tags are like keywords. People use them to search your site so the tag should be in the article to play fair.
• Titles should be less than 7 words and summarize the topic so people can tell at a glance if they are interested.

Depending on your goals, your content should be targeted to an audience interested in your topics. You should be providing them with wisdom because why else would they visit? Wisdom arises from knowledge and is not to be confused with opinion.

Credit Your Sources.

• The idea for these tips began with Heidi Cohen

Navigation helps readers get around your site

• Search is key.
• Menu systems, tag clouds and internal links are also practical. Related links help people find other posts you wrote related to your topic.

Help People Find Your Blog

• Add buttons so visitors can easily tweet or like your content.
• Tweet your blogs.
• Distribute your articles through ezines.
• Comment on others’ websites if they are related to yours and link back to yours through your bio only.

Get Help.

• Donations, Amazon books, Google ads, subscriptions and product sales are easy to offer online.

Track your Success

• Install third pary metrics. Some, like Google analytics, are free. Metrics. It’s important to track your results back to your blog goals.

YouTube

Online video can be an effective way of attracting attention. People like to do business with people they feel they know and a video is revealing. It encourages trust.

Many smart phones and digital cameras provide a video setting that allows you to create some quick and cheap video footage. A little editing can clean it up sufficiently for your website or to post on YouTube.

YouTube is the second most popular search engine online. It has over 2 billion views every day. You have a big audience and lots of competition so here are a few things you can do to make your video popular.

As with any social media, optimizing your files for search is critical and there are many things you can do that are under-handed. Only you can decide if you are willing to take the risk of getting caught and chastised by the easily incensed online community.

1. Create a video. Visitors spend on average 15 minutes a day watching videos online. Don’t hog the time though. Short videos go viral more frequently than long ones.
• Make the video modular so you can remix it.
• As with all social media, don’t be blatantly self-promoting.
• Do make it interesting from the titles right through to the end
• Make it suspenseful
• Cute works. Gorgeous. Uncommon. Surprising. (Exceptionally) informative.
2. Do some research on your keywords and when you have 2 or 3 in mind, visit YouTube and find out what has already been posted under those terms. Are they similar? Are you hitting the right words?
3. Get ready to let all your friends know that you posted a video. YouTube loves new video so you want your friends to start linking to it right away to catch YouTube’s attention.
4. Use the keywords in the title when you upload your video and in the file name.
5. Look at the other files that come up with your keywords. Can you create a relationship between your file and theirs by referring to them directly in the title or descriptive paragraphs? “Another way to cook ‘Green Eggs and Naan’ “
6. Add 2 or 3 pages of keyword rich (but not excessive) text. YouTube uses this information to feed your video to an appreciative audience so be descriptive. Imagine the viewer has bad eyesight and needs help understanding what they are seeing or think like a professional speaker: tell them what they are going to hear/see before they play the file.
7. Fill in the tags section using keywords and phrases and any alternates.
8. Add an enticing thumbnail. YouTube grabs them from the start, end or exact middle, so make sure the middle frame is clear and interesting. If you aren’t doing a cute animation, then this frame should show a nice person’s face.
9. Share your video with your friends and networks. Ask the people in your LinkedIn groups to view and comment; tweet the URL. Send the link in your emails.
10. Stream the link to your webpage and to your Facebook Fan page.
11. Respond to other videos with yours.
12. Look for blogs with related topics and comment with a link to your video.
13. Encourage others to respond to your video and to add comments.
14. Ask your best friend to comment on your video to get the conversation going.
15. Monitor the comments and engage in conversations.
16. Make it possible for others to embed your video on their webpage. It will contain features to show ownership.
17. Direct people from the video to your website to follow up with them by providing more information or entertainment.
18. Follow up your own video with others. In fact, if you don’t have any online, or if they are part of a series, then post multiple videos now, then start posting on a regular basis. The first time someone sees your video, they will look for others you made. And make sure they can see that they lead to a great website.
19. Don’t delete all the negative comments, but do delete anything nasty, derogatory, or mean. Respond to negative comments conversationally. A heated thread can generate more comments and more views.
20. After a week, update your tags, change your titles, refresh the content.

Stats

Soon Almost 40% of the World Will be Online

• There are over 1 billion internet users worldwide and that is predicted to double over the next year as more people take advantage of wireless connectivity.
• There are over 133 million blogs currently online so don’t expect people to read yours unless you promote it.
• 96% of people under the age of 35 have joined a social network. 1/3 of people over 35 are also using social media. The number of seniors going online doubled in 2010; over 1/4 are online.
• Visiting a social media website is the 4th most popular online activity. In some segments, it is more popular than spam laden email. 60% of all people online use social media.
• 10% of all internet time is spent on a social media site and this is the fastest growing segment. However, this statistic should be taken with caution. It is likely that people keep their favorite social media site open on a tab of their browser. New browsers like RockMelt keep all your social media sites open in a sidebar. Is this scewing our results?
• YouTube gets over 2 billion hits per day

Users Expect Businesses to be Online

• 93% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media. 85% of which believe that the company should interact with their customers
• 25% of search results for the world’s 20 largest brands link to user generated content
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations.  14% of people trust advertisements. If your ad appears on a page where you are being blasted, who will they trust?
• 28% of American shoppers said Social Media influenced their holiday purchases
• 68% of small businesses intend to increase their Social Media marketing efforts in the next year

Business

• There are 2-1/2 million small businesses in Canada. Only 2% of Canadian businesses are “big”. The big companies contribute 70% of our GDP and 80% of exports.
• Less than half of  the SMEs have employees but collectively they employ over 5 million people or 48% of the labour force.
• 37% of all jobs created in the 21st century were among SMEs.
• There are almost 1 million self-employed women in Canada

Consumers

• 1/3  of households have less than $7,000 to spend on non-essential goods.
• 1/2 have less than $10,000 to spend on entertainment, education, personal care, clothing, furniture and more.

(The 2011 Discretionary Spend Report)