8 Tips To Maximize Your Facebook ROI

Some businesses are social media marketing mavens while others are scrambling to catch up.  Facebook recently put together a list of eight best practices they find most successful local businesses are doing on Facebook.  Although the tips were probably written for B2C social media, almost all of these tips can be used for larger companies and 2-7 even apply to B2B marketing strategies, so take a look at these tips and good luck in your Facebook marketing!

Eight Things Successful Businesses Do on Facebook

How To Use Social Media At A Tradeshow

Scott Monty posted five tips from trade show product supplier Display Wizard to help readers succeed at their next trade show.  Read the entire blog here.

The Five Tips:

1. Use Facebook and Twitter to build anticipation
2. Promote your competition using social media
3. Comment on blog posts and news stories
4. Reach out to bloggers and journalists
5. Contact attendees via Twitter and LinkedIn

The Importance of Google+

Don't take my word for it, check out Mitch Joel's radio clip posted on the Six Pixels of Separation blog on Monday:

Google + Is Still More Important Than Most People Realize

How to Increase Engagement on Twitter in One Easy Step

Twitter has announced that it is adding image previews!

As with all social media platforms, twitter is adding more rich media to it's feed.  Instead of having to expand tweets to see media, Twitter has now announced a new feature where media that can be viewed directly in the stream without clicking to view.

Sometimes we forget that Twitter is more than 140 characters, but it's beneficial to increase our use of rich media on Twitter.

On social media platforms, posts with rich media have significantly higher engagement metrics than text-only posts.  On Twitter, this could equate to more retweets, shares, favorites and mentions.

This is not an excuse to get media happy - you don't need to include graphics and video in every tweet just as you don't need to post photos and videos every time you update your Facebook status.  What it does mean, is that a strategic use of rich media in your Twitter strategy can be very beneficial in amplifying your message and getting your brand more recognition.

Fight Club

Here's a new take on the very popular "Everything I Need To Know About Social Media I Learned In Kindergarten" post.

For your entertainment:

Everything I Know About Social Media, I Learned From Fight Club.

Side Note: I don't actually like Fight Club.

Successful Brands Use Social Media For Discovery Not Transaction

A good portion of my day is spent building brand awareness and loyalty on social media channels.  As businesses market in spaces that consumers use to interact with their friends and families in a very real and honest way, it's important to know what is too much.

I have always approached this task with the utmost respect for the brand's followers and target audience - if you're following a technology company I'm not going to post information about diapers and formula!

Peter Shankman was a guest of Mitch Joel's on Six Pixels of Separation back in June of this year, and Peter makes the astute observation that the most successful brands are those that use social media as a method of discovery rather than conversion.  He makes the claim that in social media, discovery and transaction are further apart and we need to accept that.  We are setting ourselves up for failure if we try to think direct response in social media will be the same as direct response in other channels which leads consumers directly into the sales funnel.

Most people aren't going to find it convenient to shop directly from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn because they aren't using those platforms for commerce.  By contrast, Pinterest does very well directing leads into the sales funnel because Pinterest's platform has embraced e-commerce and the shopping element of social media.

Peter's data shows that very few people come directly from a social activity into a commerce activity, and an even smaller percentage of normal of those folks will engage in commerce when they come through that path.  The interesting outlier is that sometimes, when people do engage in commerce through social media channels, they are more valuable transactions than when they come through other paths.

Mitch goes on to make a very interesting point that I have struggled with in my own career - how do you measure the consumer who interacts with your brand on social networks but purchases in an unrelated web browsing session or buys in person?

The attribution of these sales are lost to social media even though it may have played a large roll in the sales cycle.

Balancing Story and Selling in Social Media

Guest Blog by Marlena Ryan

I got into my job because I’m a writer. Not only do I not have a marketing degree. I kind of loathe marketers. I think of them as phonies. Professionals adept at playing a good mind game. And I like to think that writers are the opposite. Writers are good listeners, honest, and exacting.

However, both of these are generalizations. Marketers are not the devil and writers are not saints. And since I’m a social media community manager for music clients it’s important that I walk the line between providing figurative value and monetary value. (Which is like the most market-y sentence ever. I blame my boss… he likes that line)

But what I mean by that double speak is, I try to make my social pages compelling to a reader but also keep in mind that my company is paid to make fans buy more albums and tour tickets. I keep the balance by creating a social strategy that can balance these sometimes competing interests. The three main tactics I employ are:

1) Develop Narrative Tactics

For every client, my fellow community managers and I develop 20-30 social creative tactics. Creative tactics are tailored to a brand. We think about the audience and what they would engage with on social. For example, for a country music boy band, we include Pinterest inspiration quotes based on the band’s lyrics and acoustic performance series.

2) Geo-Targeting and Smart-Urling

For all our music clients, we use smart urls and geo-targeting to generate ticket and album sales. Geo-Targeting on Facebook is great because you can “guard” posts to hit certain markets you specify without inundating other fans with tour dates that aren’t near them. Smart urls help you see if all that geo-targeting is successful and if an album is making an impact with certain online retailers. We create smart urls for each ticket link and online retailer so we can track the click through rate for our analytics.

It’s not sexy, but like I said, it’s a balance and extremely important to remember we’re getting paid to sell records and tour tickets.

3) Social Graphics

The main differentiation between my company and the competition is our design team. Our in-house designers create gorgeous social skins, cover photos on Facebook and other social channels, and unique social graphics… like lyric cards and fan story graphics, our graphics set our pages apart with a look and feel completely different from other brands and artists.

How Much Social Media Posting Is Too Much?

I came across a blog post by Mitch Joel today that has me a little worried.  Here's the beginning paragraph of the blog, Your Brand Is Tweeting Too Much:

"How much is too much Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest for a brand?

It's getting ugly out there. Brands and fellow agencies will often ask me the same question: how often should we be on _____________ (insert your favorite social media channel here)? In the past, research be damned, my response would typically be: so long as it's quality and your audience cares, shares and keeps on about it, don't listen to the research reports or what any pundit has to tell you. The unique pulse between and a brand and its consumers is highly personal and unique on a case-by-case basis.

I may be wrong."

Not only do I hold Mitch Joel among the most well respected digital marketing and social media marketing experts in the world, I shared his view about how frequently brands should post on their social media platforms.

All the points Mitch makes are very relevant - I certainly can't name one single friend I want to hear from 30 times a week, let alone a brand I want to have that much interaction with.

It's time to reign it in and be more judicious about my posting.  My biggest offense is without a doubt Twitter, and I ascribed to the idea that the rapidly updating feed on Twitter is more forgiving of message overload than some of the other social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Social Media: Where Do I Start?

There's no simple recipe for social media success... well there is, but it's not really a secret and it's definitely not a shortcut.

When people ask me where they should start with their social media marketing plan, I tell them to find out where their audience is and start there.  If your clients are big Twitter users, your first social media platform should be Twitter.  If your target audience is engaged on Facebook, your first social media platform should be, you guessed it, Facebook.

It's not rocket science, but it can take a little leg work.  You can do a social media analysis to see where your competitors are online, what their presence is like, and then make a judgement call as to whether or not you want to go down the same path.  You should also research where your clients are congregating and take that into consideration.

Ultimately, you'll have to tweak your social media marketing mix so that it's always reaching the target audience you define.  You may find that one or more of the social media platforms you launch doesn't fit the needs of your clients, is a waste of your resources or just isn't a good platform for your brand's message.  In that case, it may be time to throw in the social media marketing towel.

Market Yourself using Social Media

Social media marketing isn't just for your business, it can be a great tool to help you market yourself.  Instead of trying to cram all of your accolades and achievements onto one eight and a half by eleven inch piece of paper, embrace a digital resume using LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has come a long way from being the social media platform for jobseekers and headhunters. Savvy professionals are embracing digital marketing for their own personal brand.  

Not only does LinkedIn store the text associated with your resume, it allows you to add rich media to as well.  My LinkedIn profile showcases PDF documents created by vendors to highlight excellent service provided to clients, YouTube video testimonials and recommendations from clients, vendors and coworkers. 

The Secret to Digital Marketing Success

The famous line from Field of Dreams applies to digital marketing success:

If you build it, they will come.

You have to continually create content that is interesting, useful and relevant to your audience.  Sometimes your content can be humorous and sometimes you can do some blatant self-promotion, but for the most part you need to provide your audience with information that's relevant to them and easy for them to digest.

And creating content isn't enough, because if content is king, then context is queen.

There's plenty of content out there in the ether that we never see.  Making the right content available to the right audience at the right time is the context that makes marketing successful.  There are so many platforms in digital marketing - websites, social media platforms, blogs, etc. - and it's important to pick the right context for your message so that it hits with the biggest impact.

Social Media Really Is Like Kindergarten

I wish I knew the original source of Everything I Know About Social Media I Learned In Kindergarten.  This is not a new concept, and I did a lot of digging before I settled on a link to share.

This is the best list I could find:

All I Needed To Know About Social Media I Learned In Kindergarten: 15 Social Media Tips 

Social Media and Customer Service

Social Media opens up a lot of doors for feedback - feedback from clients, competitors, vendors and just about anybody using the same social media platform you are.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't embrace social media as a great marketing tool, but it does mean you need to include customer service in your strategy.  

Most unhappy clients want the same things:

• To feel listened to
• To be acknowledged
• To be responded to in a timely manner

Social media is a great tool for appeasing unhappy customers.  Brands recognize the complaint in a public forum, responses happen in real-time and customer service representatives can move off-channel to address the concerns personally and privately.

There is no way to avoid feedback on your social media channels, so prepare your team to handle responses as quickly and professionally as possible.  Everyone who is involved with your social media plan should be trained in crisis communications so they understand how issues should be handled and what the brand's stance is on various potential situations. 

Throwing in the Social Media Towel

Many brands are hopping on the social media bandwagon.  At first, social media marketing is new and exciting, so teams are likely to generate lots of content and new ideas during the launch phase of social media marketing.

The trouble is that as time goes by, content creation reaches a plateau and the appeal of social media marketing begins to wear off.

Social media marketers often suffer from writers block, building a list of followers and persisting when it feels they aren't making any headway.  The pressure of generating fresh content and staying top of mind with an audience can drain the motivation right out of the social media team.

That said, how do you know whether it's time to take a vacation or throw in the social media towel?

Here are three signs that you might need to throw in the social media towel:

You aren't posting anymore
One of the most important things to consider before starting a social media campaign is whether or not you'll be able to maintain a posting schedule.  Once you establish your following, they'll expect to hear from you on a regular basis.  If you find your social media strategy going stagnant, you either need to put in more effort or throw in the towel.

You're not succeeding 
There are lots of reasons you may not be succeeding - perhaps you're trying to promote your company, but nobody is buying what you're selling.  Obviously, if you've just launched your social media program you may need to give your efforts more time before you write them off.  If you've been at it for a while and you're still not seeing the results you want it's time to either switch up your strategy or throw in the towel.

You're too busy
Whether you're overwhelmed with new business or job creep is reducing the time you can devote to your social media program, you may reach a point where you just aren't able to find the time to sustain a successful social media program.  If your social media marketing strategy has become a chore rather than something you want to do, it's time to seriously evaluate the benefits and costs of your marketing efforts.  You have three choices: find the time yourself, delegate the responsibilities to someone else or abandon your social media program.