Posts Tagged ‘social media’

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Social media predicts stuff

Thursday, April 26th, 2012
Grasping at possible future options

Which option will be our future?

I have just read a great article* by Amy Birchall about social media being used to predict the future.

A researcher at Illinois University, Kalev Leetaru, was able to ‘predict’ events such as the Libyan revolution, Osama bin Laden’s location and the Arab spring revolts by monitoring conversations and trends on Twitter. (This made me think of the TV show Person of Interest which is based on a machine predicting the future!)

Extrapolating from that and other observations, the article discusses how social media can be used in many fields to predict things – giving warning to health authorities about epidemics for instance could be very important. Obviously, marketers and advertisers are interested by this as they can predict trends and position themselves accordingly.

It has also pointed out how valuable it can be to target the right (read influential) people can be. The example given was to immunise 96% of people for community immunity – or immunise the most connected 30% for similar results. In business terms, work at promoting yourself to 96% of your market, or to the 30% that influences the rest of the market.

With has tags and various data monitoring and mining platforms available, it is possible to use social media to research your market and tailor marketing to suit. Have you used social media to decide on a strategy or campaign? Do you think it helped you make good decisions?

 

* I would love to link to the article for you but I can not find it online – Management Today does have a website and lists a number of articles but not this one unfortunately. I could upload a photocopy of the article but that would breach copyright so I won’t!

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Posted in Business Communications, business tools & events | 6 Comments »

Social media choice

Monday, February 27th, 2012

Which social media platform(s) do you find useful for your business?

Twitter or Facebook?

I have seen a number of discussions on this topic recently, in blogs and forums, and most people have answered in favour of Twitter or Facebook, with some being against the other. Other sites get little mention or are listed as additional channels.

It intrigues me that people still consider Twitter to be about what someone had for breakfast and won’t look at it while swearing by Facebook as a business tool. Both sites can be used seriously or frivolously – you can choose to not like/follow anything you think is nonsense.

My personal experience is that business people share a lot of information and resources on Twitter while Facebook is great for products and consumer services that people can relate to in ‘their time’ rather than in ‘work time’.

I heard it summed up nicely by Tom Webster (of Brand Savant) recently when he said (paraphrased) “Facebook is for sharing with people you know while the other platforms are for sharing with people you don’t know.”

Benefits to business

As a B2B business, having my information shared widely is valuable so Twitter suits  that need. I also like reading what other B2B people share as I can learn from it. Reading what friends share on Facebook may be interesting or fun, but generally doesn’t teach me business skills or knowledge.

One set of  statistics* I found interesting is:

Comparison of social media platforms for B2B and B2C results

B2B 39% & B2C 53% have acquired a customer via Twitter
B2B 41% & B2C 67% have acquired a customer via Facebook
B2B 61% & B2C 39% have acquired a customer via LinkedIn
B2B 55% & B2C 63% have acquired a customer via their business blog

It clearly shows that LinkedIn is more about professional links rather than leading to consumers. But more relevant for now is that Facebook works much better for B2C than B2B, and Twitter and Facebook have produced similar results for B2B users.

Those figures also make it obvious that a blog is still a very useful tool for both B2B and B2C – with the advantage of complete control of the blog and content (social media platforms can and do change).

Your social media experiences

How do you use social media as a consumer/client? Where would you look for a business in social media?

What results have you seen from social media for your business?

*From HubSpot State of Inbound  Marketing Report 2011 (2012 version due out soon)

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Posted in business tools & events, marketing, social media | 5 Comments »

Learning social media rules

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011

I have been using a lot more social media (specifically twitter) recently as part of my Love Santa project. It because abundantly clear that some people have no idea (or don’t care) about how to effectively use Twitter.

Top most is having an understanding that twitter is for communicating and building relationships – not for blatant ads like old-fashioned media (e.g. a newspaper ad was a one way message). I saw a few businesses tweet their ad at least every couple of hours with no other messages in between. For one business, they had 3 variants of it and ran them in succession once every hour or so during their business hours. I wasn’t their audience anyway but seeing it so often bored and annoyed me, and gave me an uncomfortable feeling about them as a business.

Next is to have one honest profile. It because obvious when 3 twitter users repeatedly sent the same tweet straight after each other – a number of times. It came across as trying to trick and con people, plus it seemed they were desperate for business rather than offering quality or showing a genuine interest in people watching their tweets.

The other behaviour that was annoying while I was on twitter a lot (I haven’t really seen it when just keeping up with people I follow on twitter) was an excessive use of hash tags*. To me it was like reading a blog post or webpage written to show off keywords rather than actually communicate something – boring, annoying and an insult if they think I am impressed by such actions. Adding # to key words within a message is fine, adding a keyword or two after the message is also fine, but the following wasn’t so fine:

  • adding five or more hashtags after a brief message
  • adding hashtags that were about advertising not the message (e.g. adding #santa after a message about a computer breaking down to get noticed for Christmas or adding #webdesign to a message about dreading a visit to the dentist)
  • making the entire message hashtags with a link

Tweets are like any other content you write – make it about the message and people reading it, not about SEO and getting noticed by more people, as that is what will genuinely get your message heard and distributed.

I can’t say what results those people get from their tweets, but I know I would never retweet or follow them (and I’m sure I’m not alone). I can say that most of the retweeted Love Santa tweets were those based on replying to someone else – in other words, ‘talking’ to people was appreciated and earned greater exposure to other tweeters.

Twitter can be a great marketing tool but it needs to be thought of as a relationship tool with marketing bonuses to have the best impact on your business.

Or maybe you are happy to read tweets with some of the above characteristics? Or have found them effective for viral marketing?

* A hashtag is simply adding # at the start of a word (or group of words without a space in between) that can be used to highlight a topic and make searching for relevant information on twitter easier.

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Posted in business info, marketing, writing | No Comments »

Understanding is important

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

Do you think there is a significant difference between understanding a task and being able to do it with skill?

I would never pretend to be able to write and design a PDS for example – I hire a professional designer for the design aspects of the job – but I understand many aspects of making it effective (such as using white space and images to make it appealing, avoiding ‘orphans and widows’, being consistent in fonts and headings, and adjusting things to work with page breaks and spreads).

Likewise, when dealing with an architect, I can state functional uses of a space and know that they will match function, materials, space, appearance and reality (i.e. not every idea is really feasible!) I understand the project and outcomes but leave the expert to draw up the plans.

A recent IBM study about marketing professionals showed that only 12% consider social media expertise as critical to their personal success in the next 3 to 5 years. Ross Dawson points out the concern with this figure – how can marketers maximise social media for the business they market if they don’t understand it?

I know I understand social media and its power much better since I started using it. I even remember wondering about the value of blogs and making time to read blogs – until I started this blog and realised it’s potential and how useful other blogs can be.

I think it is ok to get someone else to write your blog posts or monitor your mentions on social media. But understanding these media yourself is important. Why?

  1. if you understand, you can check the people you hire are doing their job
  2. if you understand, you can fill in if your expert is absent for a little while
  3. if you truly understand, you can find ideas and inspiration to maximise use of these media (for example, instead of just tweeting and reading tweets of those you follow, have you searched for leads on Twitter?)
  4. if you understand, you can integrate your brand and message throughout your business – including running campaigns across multiple media
What do you think – do you have to understand something before bringing in an expert to do the task for you? Should marketing people, in particular, understand social media?

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Posted in business info, social media | No Comments »

Care for your brand

Friday, October 14th, 2011

Your brand is the sum of every interaction your business has with someone – it’s not just having a nice logo and a pretty website.

With social media, I think  many people forget this connection between brand and every interaction.

I just saw a tweet offering tips on building a ‘complete business empire’ which I would only trust from a professional with business experience and knowledge. However, the picture associated with that Twitter account was not part of a professional brand – the rear view of an almost naked woman is perhaps more suited to a different profession…

So is the tweeter not business savvy at all, and perhaps even a con selling nonsense, or is someone mixing their personal and business profiles online?

In general, I think separate personal and business social media profiles is the best way to keep your brand on track. Or be very careful that anything you put online works with your brand – for example, I have only one Twitter account so it is always appropriate for my business persona and I never tweet anything I wouldn’t say to a stranger or prospective client. In comparison, I use a personal page on Facebook for friends and a business page for connecting with clients and people interested in clear communications.

So what does your twitter or Facebook picture say about your business?

Do you agree that the choice of social media images has an impact on how your business is perceived? I don’t think it’s just me who doesn’t find a woman’s legs a symbol for business knowledge…

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Posted in business info, marketing, social media | No Comments »

Making your website interactive

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

While I don’t think making your website interactive is necessary for a successful website, it can be very effective for a number of reasons (and I guess that will be the next post in this series!)

If you are not familiar with the online world, making an interactive website may sound a bit overwhelming and very technical – but hopefully you’re brave enough to have kept reading anyway!

Making your website more interactive can be done in a number of ways and most of them are actually quite easy to add and run.

What is harder is maintaining the interactivity – people will only interact with you if you are seen to be willing to interact regularly and if you give something interesting enough to interact with.

So if you are adding interactive features to your site, I would suggest adding one feature at a time so you can establish it before learning the next one – spreading yourself too thin won’t help your business in the long run.

Making your site interactive can be done by:

  1. adding a blog and allowing comments – software is easy to use but it takes time to think of topics and prepare the content
  2. adding a Twitter feed – there are a few ways to do this but it effectively means people can read your tweets on your website. There is no work to run the feed but managing your Twitter account can take time
  3. adding a Facebook feed – again, your Facebook updates can be read live on your site for little effort other than keeping your Facebook page up-to-date
  4. other social media feeds can also be placed on your site
  5. adding a ticket system so people can not only tell you about issues but track progress simply. This is most commonly used for IT suppliers such as web hosts and software providers
  6. introducing a discussion forum can generate a lot of interest but also requires a lot of time and effort to get enough people involved to make it work, and then maintain it in an appropriate fashion
  7. add some live chat features so people can ask questions immediately
  8. feedback forms and rating systems allow people to give you input and are probably has one of the lowest time requirements in this list
  9. various places offer the means of adding surveys, poll and quizzes that can be purely for fun, to educate or to gain information for your planning. Remember to make the content and the wording appropriate, relevant and clear
  10. if you take appointments or run events, consider adding an online booking system – this will probably save you time as well as making it easier for people to book and change appointments. If the system updates a viewable calendar and can confirm times (rather than just accepting requests), it does make your site interactive.
  11. add a wiki or other shared documents to your site if you are doing research or gathering community input
Do you have any other suggestions for making a website interactive? What have you enjoyed on other sites?
This post is part of Word Constructions’ Setting up a website series
1. having a website helps more than you
2. what’s involved in setting up a website?
3. Learn about web hosting
4. Preparing your initial website content
5. Managing website design 101
6. Choosing a web designer
7. Basic web pages
8. Navigating your site
9. Making web content attractive
10. Understanding keywords
11. Must your website be interactive?

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Posted in marketing, web content | No Comments »

Social media is not all good

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Like it or not, social media is here and is a major part of our society.

I think it is important that we all have some understanding of social media so we can make informed choices about participating or not.

Unlike some, I don’t think every business MUST be on social media to survive or thrive. Although it is becoming more important as more people expect it.

Mark Schaefer recently posted about social media sewage… and hope. He lists a number of the negatives social media (including blogging) has brought with it – I totally agree that deleting spam comments from my blog, disreputable SEO approaches and practices, and stealing people’s content are unacceptable behaviours and I don’t understand how people can live with such actions.

I haven’t had Marks ‘hope’ experience but I still believe in sharing information and believe social media has a part to play in my business.

It got me thinking that perhaps some business people need to hear that it’s ok to not be on social media, that it isn’t the cure to all business woes nor is it perfect.

So here are some reasons against using social media which you can weigh up against the advantages when making your decision.

  1. it takes time and patience. You’re unlikely to see more sales or leads in the short term, and it takes time to put up some content (especially if you put thought into it and try adding value to your community)
  2. you open yourself up to more spam, malware and virus exposure, scam invitations and other undesirable people
  3. if your audience isn’t interested in social media, your efforts will go to waste – be sure to only use media your audience uses
  4. if you just want to advertise, rather than share information and build relationships, your presence on social media is probably a waste of everyone’s time
  5. social media gives you the opportunity to speak your mind and get on your soapbox. Great for people wanting to exercise their freedom of speech, not always so good for a business spokesperson – if you can’t moderate your words to suit your business brand, social media may be a little risky
  6. social media is about communication – if you aren’t interested in having a two-way conversation, a static website may be more your style
  7. the message you write is critical to your social media success so if writing and communicating your thoughts is a challenge, consider your social media strategy carefully – short tweets may work better than long blog posts, a ghost writer could help with blogging and videos for You Tube may be your best option
If you are already using social media, have you thought about how it is benefiting you compared to what it is costing you? Is it doing the job you ‘hired’ it for, another job or is it just costing you?

               

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Posted in business info, business tools & events, social media | 3 Comments »

Shifting demographics

Friday, August 19th, 2011

Recently I read that traditional marketing demographics are narrowing.

Traditionally, TV, radio etc needed broad categories to work with and it suited marketers to keep us sorted according to such categories (eg male or female, age 18 – 35 or 35 – 60).

However,  social media is more interactive so can target people according to interests and tastes rather than assuming majority of x group has those tastes. For instance, instead of targeting all women aged 18 – 35 you can specifically target people who like cooking for friends.

It is an interesting thought and makes marketing both easier and harder, I think. For one thing, you can get very specific about your audience and approach that smaller group – in this case, a smaller group will have a higher response rate as they are already interested. However, it may take more effort to know who your demographic is (it is easier to assume men over the age of 30 than to categorise men over 30 with trade qualifications who like fishing for example!)

How well defined is your target demographic? Do you specifically target that group every time your business communicates with the public?

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Posted in business info, marketing | 1 Comment »

Discussing automating social media updates

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

I admit there’s a lot about social media I don’t yet know, although I am getting a grasp of the basics now.

There’s one topic I have noticed floating around that I’m not sure I agree with, although I see the argument presented. So I want to ask what others think…

Should you use software to automate your posts on social media such as facebook and twitter?

The argument against it is that it looks impersonal and like you haven’t bothered to log into the specific platform to post something. Some make an exception for automatically sending a message about a new blog post if (and only if) you post other things around the blog post messages.

Here is my thinking on that argument…

  • I may not have logged into the platform but I did still take the time to write whatever the message is
  • if I didn’t use automated software, I’d have less time to post on social media so would do less – surely someone who values my input cares more about getting the messages than how I post them?
  • personally, I take little (if any) notice of the icon showing how someone submitted their comment – it is the comment I am interested in (or not!) Am I the only one who doesn’t notice the icons?
  • I think I might actually respect or at least understand someone’s use of automating software as they are sensible enough to manage their time

I am busy and while I do sometimes log in directly, the reality is that without tools like Tweetdeck and leenk.me, I just wouldn’t be able to manage a social media presence along with everything else. I certainly don’t want to give a bad impression by using such tools, but I need them and can’t see me logging into each platform multiple times each day (multiple because I manage more than one account on some platforms).

How do you feel when you see a link showing I posted without logging into the platform?

      Word Constructions on LinkedIn    

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Posted in business tools & events, social media | 1 Comment »

Telling people is a key step

Monday, June 6th, 2011

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, if I don’t tell you something how can I expect you to know about it let alone share the information?

image source: 123rf

Have you heard the expression ‘build the website and people will come to you’? It isn’t the entire story as no matter how great your website is, if no one knows it exists you will not get many visitors to the site.

There are many ways to increase your business profile, and various people will tell you that you MUST do certain things to further your business. Having a blog, joining Twitter and Facebook, putting videos on YouTube and having a LinkedIn profile can help a business, although to varying degrees for each business.

However, what is often not mentioned is that you have to promote those things in order to get the benefit of them. It’s great to tweet about new products and share valuable information but if no one follow you and your clients don’t know you are on Twitter, it’s pretty much a waste of time. Likewise for all those other social media options.

So remember to let people know about your blog, website, twitter account, Facebook profile and so on if you want them to build your business profile and website traffic.

How have you told people about your social media presence? What has been the most effective for you?

PS If you don’t already know, my twitter name is TashWord and Word Constructions is on Facebook.

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Posted in blogging, business info | No Comments »

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