Category Archives: Marketing

HBR: Only 36% of Tweets are worth reading

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Only 36% of Tweets are worth reading

Is anything on Twitter worth paying attention to?

From Harvard Business Review:

To find out, three researchers set up a website and asked 1,443 users to rate the quality of 43,738 tweets. They then ranked a subset (4,220) in eight categories.* Their most striking finding: Only 36% of tweets were “worth reading”—a lower number than you might expect, since Twitter users choose whom to follow.

These results are specific to the tech and news categories, and do not capture the sentiments of the entire Twitter population. However, the ratings provide some useful tips for keeping your followers engaged: Be clear, not cryptic or insidery. Don’t overuse hashtags, and don’t retweet one-on-one conversations.

Want to learn more about how to get retweeted? Checkout the articles below:

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How to make the most of social media marketing

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To make the most of your social media marketing, you need to have a plan. Social media is about having an ongoing conversation with your customers, not droning on about your business while they ignore you. You have to put in the time to cultivate your existing customers and attract new ones. Yes, this will take a little more time and thought, but that’s why it works. If you “set it and forget it,” you are wasting your time. Guaranteed.

So, to get the most of out your time, here are few things to do:

Understand each channel. Should you jump on the Pinterest bandwagon? Should you be on Google+? Are your customers on these channels? You have to know what you want to do on each channel and also understand what that channel lets you do. The only way to know if it will work for you is by doing a short term pilot. You need to be where customers are and where they are talking to each other. And no amount of emarketer, infographic research will tell you if it will work for you. Jump in and test it. That’s the only way to know if you should keep investing your time.

Contribute and add value. Once you get a feel for the channels where your customers are, join them in the conversation. The best thing to do is to act as a person representing your brand, not a logo. People will respect that since they’ll know there’s an actual person behind the logo. But more than anything, add value. If they have questions, participate.

Aim to educate, not spam. Once you’ve started participating and found opportunities to add further value, create content that addresses those opportunities.

Advocate and enroll. You will find that there are people who are passionate advocates about a specific topic. Maybe you already have content that addresses those topics. If you don’t create content to pull those passionate people towards you. Show you are as passionate as they are. This is the beginning of creating advocacy. No one will follow you if you’re not advocating.

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What is the goal of your social media marketing?

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There are many types of goals; for example: traffic, leads, awareness, etc, etc, etc…

But you know what, these are undifferentiated goals; everyone has these goals. What we need to do, then, is look at what social media can let us do, not what others have already done.

Here are a few questions to jumpstart your brain:

  1. How might we change the pricing of our industry through social media?
  2. How might we redefine our service or product through social media?
  3. How might we organize the disorganized through social media?
  4. How might we speak the unspeakable of our industry through social media?
  5. How might we alter the expectations of the market through social media?
  6. How might we change the speed of the industry through social media?
  7. How might we cater to a new group of customers through social media?

This is an unfinished list of questions; so, add your own thoughts.

The goal, then, of your social media marketing efforts should be to reset expectations; to change and redefine the game.

Social media marketing doesn’t work for generic products or services.

Dare to be different.

dare to be differentImage credit: Gapingvoid

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Social media changes the marketing funnel and so must you

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How does changing media affect the way people hear about brands? To answer this question, Facebook commissioned Forrester to study how brands are being built in the connected world.

The result: The connected world has rerouted the customer journey.

This is how Facebook and Forrester interpret this change:

Social media changes the customer journeyIn the analog world, brands take consumers through a funnel all marketers know too well. But in the connected world social media influences every stage of the process. They hear about new brands and investigate said brands via social media. When it comes time to buy something, consumers increasingly consult their friends via social media. Then, they expect to be able to interact with the brands through social media after they buy a product.

This study reflects similar thinking from Google’s ZMOT social media strategy and how marketing is all about winning the Zero Moment of Truth. This is a trend that is affecting retailers, but most notable are electronic retailers like Best Buy.

Consumers have more power because they can try out a product at a physical location, search for the product on Amazon on their smartphone and make a decision. If the price is lower on Amazon, they’ll leave the physical store without making a purchase.

This is what’s changing.

Download the study to read the full report, Mashable has a great write up too.

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To be an authority you have to know what you are talking about

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It sounds obvious doesn’t it? But there are people out there on the web who claim to be authorities, when they are not.

Gurus, Ninjas, Jedi’s or any other moniker you can imagine.

First, let’s make something very clear: Authority is bestowed upon you by those you have served.

In other words, if you don’t have anything to back up your claims then you are not an authority. Your clients/customers give you authority because you’ve got something to show.

How do you become an authority?

Do something that shows your competence. Then, do some more. Then, do twice more. Then, do three times more. Then…

If you want to be perceived as an authority, you have to know your topic inside and out; you have to know your industry cold. In this day and age where knowledge is only a click away, this becomes very difficult. I mean, can you honestly say that you are social media marketing guru when everything is changing so fast?

You become an authority by showing competence. You become an authority if people trust you.

With that said, before claiming that you are an authority you should ask yourself: Do people really trust me?

But, don’t stop there. Go and ask your clients or customers if they trust you. Don’t send them an email, don’t ask them to fill a survey. Ask them face to face. If you can ask them face to face, then you should feel very confident about yourself.

Want something concrete to aim for? Take Apple. Half of people who use Apple devices would trust Apple with their savings. Can your customers or clients say the same thing about you?

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16 Questions to help you write great content

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Content, content, content. It’s all about the content. It is also the number one problem with which businesses have a problem.

Here’s a secret: The path to great content is good questions.

To help you improve your content writing ability, ask yourself the following 13 questions provided by Quicksprout:

  • Is what you wrote original?
  • Can you provide practical advice or relevant research?
  • Did you correct any spelling, grammar or factual errors?
  • Is the topic of interest to a reader or a machine?
  • Is the article well edited?
  • Does your site have authority?
  • Are you providing insightful or interesting information beyond the obvious?
  • Would you bookmark your article?
  • Is your article cluttered with call-to-actions, ads or promotions?
  • Would a magazine or journal print your article?
  • Is your article short, weak and useless?
  • How much time and attention did you give to detail?
  • Would someone complain if they saw this article?

To this list I’ll add a few more questions:

  • Would I share this article with my friends?
  • Will people share it with their friends?
  • Does it focus on a single idea?

There will come a time when creating content won’t be that important; it’ll be just be the norm. If you’re struggling with content creation, ask yourself these 16 questions.

What tactics do you follow to create great content?

Credit: Quicksprout

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Focus on the message, not the medium

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What do people really want?

They don’t want content; they want help. And, if your content (medium) helps them do something, then your message will be well received.

But if you’re just churning out content without focusing on customer value, then you’re just adding to the noise of modern-day marketing.

Content that hits the right notes

Every customer really only wants two things from your content:

  • Help overcoming something negative
  • Help achieving something positive

Focus on the positive. Of course, if you can help people get better and better, that helps your cause. It also helps your chances of your customers telling their friends about how you’ve made their life a whole lot better.

Remember: The reason people share is either because you’ve blown them away with the product or service experience, or because it makes them feel good in some form or fashion.

Focus on helping your customers overcome the negatives and inspire them to achieve something positive. If your message does this, the medium doesn’t matter; it only enables the message.

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Think Strategy before tools

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When setting out thinking about how to use social media for their business, I see a lot of businesses and individuals start thinking of what tools to use, even before thinking about what their strategy is.

Sure, it’s easy to go with whatever tool you see others using. Do you like the vertical bar with the sharing buttons on my blog? A lot of people do. But is it the one you need?

Before you answer that, you need to think about the overall design of your website. And, before thinking about the design of your website, you have to think about your brand message.

This is a more strategic approach than simply adding every plugin you see others using. If you start from tools, the end result is you’ll find yourself overwhelmed because all those tools amounted to nothing. You’ll be following the ‘shiny object’ all the way to irrelevance.

Starting with strategy doesn’t mean you should not experiment with different tools; what it means is that your strategy determines your tools. Once you’ve come up with a strategy and understand your objectives, then experiment with different tools.

Don’t fall into the ‘shiny object’ syndrome; start with strategy. Don’t know how build a social media strategy? Email me, I can help.

 

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Listen. Discuss. Learn. Publish. Repeat.

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I have clients ask me if it’s at all possible to automate the activities done on social media. Yes. There are more than a few activities that can be automated using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.

You can schedule:

  • Blog posts
  • Tweets
  • Fan Page updates
  • Direct Message replies on Twitter (not recommended)

They key to automating content is understanding at what times your fans/readers/followers are most active. There are general times when the most people are online, as I wrote about a few days ago. But that’s not really your target.

For example, if you want to know when your blog posts and other content are most seen, you can use a tool like Su.pr to help you determine that. After you’ve used it for a while, it will start showing you the time when your content was most seen.

The Sprinkle Strategy

What I like to do for my clients is schedule tweets throughout the day, a day before. Having a thorough understanding of who your audience is, what content they (might) like, what time of the day they are on social networks and who they talk to, helps you determine what content (either created or retweeted) to publish.

Scheduling these tweets doesn’t mean you ‘set it and forget it’, it simply means you can monitor your feeds knowing you’ve got content setup. It means you can spend more time engaging in conversations and less time thinking about what to publish. This takes time to learn and do, but once you figure it out; you’ll spend your time more productively on discussions and conversations.

Then from these discussions and conversations you can extract more ideas and turn them into relevant content. Why relevant? Because you know for sure that the people you engaged with will be interested. This point is key.

The point is you should curate information for your followers, be in relevant conversations where you add your input and at the same time, create your own content.

This process is continuous.

My principle is very simple: Listen. Discuss. Learn. Publish. Repeat.

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5 Traits of a Social Media Strategist

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Social Media Strategists? Who are they? What do they do? Why does your organization need one?

Everyone claims to be a Social Media Strategist these days simply because they have a Twitter account and a blog. Well, that doesn’t qualify you as a Social Media Strategist. Ok, so what does?

  • Synthesizer of information. Yes. As you spend endless amounts of time on the web you encounter a lot information. You will need to synthesize this information for others to digest and help them connect the dots. This makes you an invaluable asset.
  • Outcome, not process driven. Many marketers try to come up with a detailed process for their social media plans. While useful, these plans need to be constantly rethought. Yes, you read that correctly. Rethought. This means Social Media Strategists are also Social Strategy Innovators because they understand that coming up with a detailed process for something as unpredictable as social media is not useful. What matters is the outcome, not the process.
  • Customer-Centric Mindset. Companies who are customer-centric, like Zappos, understand that Social Media let’s you have a one-on-one conversation with the customer. Companies that are customer focused are breeding grounds for Social Media Strategists.
  • Entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurs build businesses while wearing many hats. Social Media Strategist also wear many hats. From crafting content, analyzing metrics, training and managing a team, spearheading campaigns, working with agencies and managing a budget.
  • Focused yet able to multi-task. This one is obvious. As stated above, the Social Media Strategist role requires you wear many hats and take on several responsibilities.

The Social Media Strategist has many traits, and of course leadership is very important.This is a new role, and being able to fight for your cause is imperative. As a Social Media Strategist you are not just fighting for the customer, but for the long-term relevance of your business.

Understanding what tools to use is imperative too, and a good deal of your time will be allocated to testing and using these tools.

With that said, Google gave you Social Media Strategists a gift. The video below shows how you can use Google’s Real-Time Insights Finder to support your marketing planning process. Discover how our insights tools can be a window into the attitudes, perceptions and needs of your consumers to inform your next brand positioning, media strategy or just look smart in your next meeting. Available at thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/tools.

If you are a Social Media Strategist, what other traits do you think are important for the job?

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