*This is a Guest Post by Greg Digneo*

When you ask someone with a successful social media presence how to build your own audience, the answer most often is, “Write a blog post, Tweet it to your following, and share it on Facebook and LinkedIn.”   But what if you do not have many followers on Twitter or Facebook Fans?

A few weeks ago, my company decided to start a process to answer the question:  “How can a business that does not have many hits on their website, has no followers on Twitter, and no Fans on Facebook, generate sales leads using inbound marketing in only 30 days?”

Here’s our story about how we’re building our own buzz in 30 days.

Create a Story

The web is a crowded space and you are in constant competition to earn your target audience’s attention.  We have come to realize that your competition does not just reside in your industry, but is everywhere.  Think about what you read – whether it pertains to your business or not.  What stories resonate with you the most?  It can be a blog post on how to grow your business, or news relating to your favorite football team, or the heartfelt story of a mother reunited with her child.  All content producers are competing for your time, and no matter how you spend it, you only have 24 hours a day.

Before writing a blog post, and before building your social media plan, you first need a story that will resonate with your ideal customer.  At Cloud Marketing Labs, we want to be known as the firm who can deliver sales leads in 30 days using Social Media.  We feel this is something our audience can wrap their hands around, and will help us stand out from some of our marketing firm competitors.

Focus

You cannot join every network and be successful at all of them in 30 days.  You need to focus all of your time and energy on 2 or 3 platforms.  We chose blogging, public relations, and Pay Per Click (PPC).

Blogging

After writing great content pertaining to your story, you need an audience to read it.  In order to grow our audience, we would share our most helpful posts with friends and customers by emailing them a link to the post and asking them to share it with their friends.

The key here is not to abuse your contacts.   Only send a few posts, otherwise, you risk becoming a bit of a spammer and annoying.    Even if you do not have a large following on Facebook, Twitter, etc., chances are someone who you are in regular contact with does, and will be happy to share helpful information with their network.

Public Relations

We found many blogs, such as Real Time Marketer, looking for guest posters and fresh content.  If your story is compelling and unique, chances are they will allow you to leverage their network and help you grow your audience and expand your reach.

By pitching our “Sales Leads in 30 Days Using Social Media” story to various blogs and friends, we have been able to set up a few guest posts over the course of these 30 days.  We get the benefit of expanded reach, and they get the benefit of new voices.

We are also going to submit a news release announcing a webinar where we will share this story with small and mid-sized business owners.  However, instead of emailing the news release to journalists, we are going to use the online distribution service PRWeb.  This will help with our search rankings and increase the visibility of our story as it gets picked up by various news aggregation sites.

Pay Per Click

Our final focus is on PPC advertising.  However, instead of using Adwords, we decided to use Facebook’s advertising platform.  There are two main reasons for this.  First, it is cheaper.  We are in a competitive space, and Adwords clicks would be well over $1.00 per click to get onto the first page.  Second, Facebook ads will help you develop your buyer persona.  You have visibility on things like age, gender, likes, and job titles that you are unable to see using Google Adwords.  This will help us target our ads more precisely, increasing the efficiency of our campaign.

So far so good, our straregy is currently working.  We’re offering a webinar where we will share this marketing plan in more details and our learning’s from it.

Below is a link you can click on to sign up.

Greg Digneo is founder of Cloud Marketing Labs, a marketing service that helps small and midsized businesses generate sales leads in 30 days using inbound marketing.  He is hosting the webinar “How to generate sales leads in 30 days using social media” and is co-author of the Cloud Marketing Labs blog.

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Is Your Social Media Marketing Working?

Social media marketing is apparently all about engagement, engagement, engagement.  Did you hear that you should be using social media for engagement with your customers or targeted customers.  Just get more engagement on your social networks, and your business dreams will come true.

Great, it’s about engagement…so what the hell does that mean?

I am certainly one to promote more interactions between your business and your audience. It’s vital.  But I try to distinguish myself in this cluttered space just a little bit by pealing back the onion and digging into the meaning behind the activities.

Engagement is worthless if you don’t know what kind of interactions lead to achieving your digital goals and objectives.

What does your WIN look like?

If you’re trying to get more sales, how much traffic leads to a trial of your product.  How many trials lead to a sale?  Which networks lead to the most traffic, why?

Creating engagement for the sake of interaction doesn’t achieve much more than more work.  Dig deeper to establish a list of interaction criteria that you are aiming for.  What types of engagement signal more interest in your business?

Yes, ReTweets on Twitter are important.  It means your network is actually reading your Tweets.  But do those RT’s lead to an increase in traffic?  Do those who ReTweet you on Twitter ever ReTweet anything else?  Are you even measuring for that?

Understand the digital steps and actions it takes for you to be successful…then focus on getting more of them.  The techniques and actions will be different for everyone because all of our goals are different.  But if you don’t understand what your WIN looks like, you’ll never know if any of your activities are really doing anything.

I’m happy to help your business peal back and dig deep to set your WINS up, shoot me an email to scott@realtimemarketer.com and we can dive in.

Happy digging.

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Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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Big Business VS Small Business: Who Wins?

Both big and small businesses are wading through the murky waters of social media, trying to get a handle of how success is achieved. Both wanting to be the other guy.  Do big or small business have a better opportunity to succeed in social media?

Big businesses are desperately trying to act small in the social space and gain a true connection to their customers.

Small businesses wish they were big and had the brand recognition and what seems like unlimited amount of fans or followers.

I posted this question on Twitter, and spoke about it last night at Social Media Club Omaha. The results seem to be about 50 / 50. Here are my quick list of advantages of both sides.

Advantages of Big Business / Brands

Brand Recognition:

Large brands and companies come with the luxury of instant recognition.  I doesn’t take long for a well known company to rack up thousands and sometimes millions of fans and followers quickly.

Resources:

Social media is not free.  Most of the tools may not cost any money to use, but it’s extremely time consuming and requires resource allocation.  Fortunately, large businesses often have big marketing teams or budgets in place to hire or outsource talent to drive social initiatives.

Built in Conversations:

Engagement is the buzz of buzz words in social media.  The nice thing about a big brand is that, conversations are most likely already going on about them.  That makes engagement much easier than trying to create those conversations from scratch or just listening about your industry.

Advantages of Small Business

Low (close to customers)

The connection to a sale for a small business and a customer are often small.  Many customers are literally walking into a business or buying direct.  This puts them at an advantage using social media because they can directly connect with customers quickly.

Flexible

Being small allows for flexibility.  If a business tracks social numbers correctly, they can react and change direction on a dime.  There are no meetings that need to be scheduled.  There are no national television campaigns that need revision.  They can react.

Social media can provide instant feedback on anything from product or feature recommendations to new marketing campaigns.  Small businesses have the ability to listen to that feedback and apply it rapidly.

Lack of corporate b.s.

Nothing drives me more nuts that going through 7 different people and a legal team just to get an ok to send out an email campaign.  Large corporate cultures are the jokes of movies and sitcoms for a reason.  Small businesses can just do.  If you have an idea, implement it.

Easy to Identify a Win:

Small businesses can easily identify if there strategies are working.  It’s easier to track where sales are coming in from and if awareness is truly being built.

It’s Cost Effective

Without large ad budgets, social media may be one of the few options.  It does take time, but if done correctly, the move to social media marketing can return a nice ROI.

Can Appear Bigger:

Transparency in social media is an absurd notion.  We post the content we want people to see and read to help shape our brands.  In a digital space, you can appear to be larger than a 5 man / woman operation with no central office.  We are our own wizards behind the curtains.

I think the real answer is that like all things in social media…it depends.  The point is that regardless if you are big or small, get in the game.  Quit waiting on the sideline and pouting because you’re not the other team.

Regardless of the advantages one has over the over…without focus, objectives, and an execution strategy both big and small businesses alike will most likely fail in the social space.

What are your thoughts / opinions?

Get the Real Time Marketer Directly to Your RSS HERE

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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Does This Pickle Have More Social Media Presence Than You?

Can this pickle get more fans than 90% of Big Brands?

Can a pickle beat big brands at social media marketing?  Yes…I said pickle.  It wasn’t a typo.

I recently posed the question on my blog…”Can A Brand Create a Viral Campaign?“.  I had the same debate on Twitter.  A few folks said that yes, big brands were cabable of creating viral campaigns.  Most, including me, said that they cannot.

Well, here’s the latest viral superstar.  A pickle on Facebook with a page titled Can This Pickle Get More Fans Than Nickleback.

This pickle is kicking the tails of multimillion dollar budgets and the brains of multibillion dollar agencies and corporations.

In 21 days (the Facebook page was created on Feb 02,2010) this Facebook group reached 1.47 million fans.  Yes, I said million.  That my friends is the very definition of “Viral”.

Now let’s compare over 1 million Facebook fans for a pickle to other marketing campaign’s Facebook pages that have television, radio, and print campaigns to boost awareness of their pages.

Hot Tub Time Machine – (Movie) 25,262 fans

This movie has been advertising across movie theaters and on Television.  On their advertisements they are touting their Facebook page.

Sears – 159,037 fans

Television advertisements, including the Super Bowl, have been showcasing their Facebook Page at the end of the ads.

Kenneth Cole – 35,705 fans

Print advertisements have included both their Facebook and Twitter addresses.

Papa Johns – 808,674 fans

This pizza giant has been successful with social media marketing, and even after their campaigns they still fall to the pickle.

So with millions of dollars in these brands marketing budgets and billion dollar PR and marketing agencies creating campaigns, they could still not beat a pickle and the infectious activity and following of what happens when some things go viral.

Brands will continue to try and create a campaign that mimics viral activity…but in most cases a big board room full of marketing veterans can never compete with a random thought that pops into someones head and the web that catapults that thought to the moon.

But the success from silly things like this pickle is the very reason that they’ll keep trying.

This is DAY 23 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

Get the Real Time Marketer Directly to Your RSS HERE

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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Your Customers Are Telling You Something Right Now

The real time web has gotten quite a bit of buzz, but are you actually using the available tools?  There are several areas where you can apply using real-time data to affect your business and your social media marketing.  Use the real time web to gather specific data.  Don’t let the amount of data at your finger tips paralyze your decision making ability or your social media marketing strategy. Have a predetermined list of information you are looking for.  Use these suggestions to boost your business.

Find Targeted Prospects

Do a quick search of Twitter and type in a few keywords that signal a potential interested customer.  If there are a few tweets where it looks like you can jump into a conversation, go for it.  Otherwise just follow the folks who are chatting and perhaps there will be a need down the road.  Even if they don’t buy right away, you’re now following targets you know have an interest in what you do.

Track Industry Trends

Use real time search engines like Sency, Icerocket, and One Riot to look at what the most popular infomation and links that are being shared about your industry, company, or products.  This can instantly offer advice about what your next blog post should be about, what customers are chatting about, and what customers are looking for.  It’s a good way to stay on top of competitors and get a feel for your industry.

Provide Customer Service

There are a good number of topics people chat about out on the web.  Naturally one of those is complaints.  Use monitoring tools available to scan the real time web for any of your current customers having problems and take care of them.  Comcast and their Comcast Cares Unit is probably the most well known company who uses Twitter for customer service purposes.  But I’ve been approached several times when tweeting about particular products.  Diffuse angry customers early.  You don’t know want folks online going nuts over your product without any response from you.

Online Campaign Tracking

I use Clicky every day to track my website analytics.  I use Clicky rather than Google Analytics because Clicky is in real time.  By keeping track of what links are drawing in the most traffic and what time of day, I know when and where to get the best ROI for links I share on the web.  This takes much of the social media marketing guessing game out of the equation.  You can use the service for free and I highly recommend it.

Instant Feedback

Maybe you have an idea for an event or a new product.  Why not bounce some ideas off of your networks and get the pulse before you go into dedicating a lot of time and money.  These obviously aren’t scientific surveys, but if this project is small you can get a feel if you start moving forward.

Information can often determine the difference between success and failure.  Utilize the real time web to give yourself a winning advantage.  I’d rather know things that are going on as the happen than after the fact.  Become a true Real Time Marketer by being smart and utilizing all of the tools in your belt.

This is DAY 18 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

Get the Real Time Marketer Directly to Your RSS HERE

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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Is Your Social Media Strategy On Track?

Before initiating any social media marketing campaign, you need to really focus on a specific strategy.  Without a specific goal and execution path to success, your social media marketing campaign will not run on all cylinders.  Instead you may be moving…but you have no idea what direction.

Before you complete your strategy, make sure you answer these questions

Where Are Your Fish?

You need to know where your customers are most active.  It’s not feasible or smart for your brand to be everywhere.  Do your homework and figure out exactly what social networks your customers are active.  Fish where the fish are to maximize your return on your social media investment.

Why is This Valuable to Your Customers?

Before your brand gets social media activities underway, you need to answer what value this social media marketing is providing.  If you can’t answer without hesitation why your customers or potential customers will find your social media profiles valuable, you aren’t ready to create them.

Without value, you have no engagement.

Does This Create Engagement?

Aside from value, you’ll need to have a set of activities created specifically focused on creating engagement.  If your networks aren’t actively engaging in your activities, you’re posting worthless information that will result in zero benefits to you or your customers.  Make sure you have a path to active engagement.

Without engagement, is without success.

What Do You Want To Accomplish?

You need to have a reason for every activity you do.  Why do you have a Twitter profile? Why are you creating a Facebook page?  Every social media activity needs to be actively reaching a goal.  Know what yours are.

Why Will This Reach Your Goal?

Assuming you’ve already answered what your social media goals are, now you need to answer why your activities will reach them.  If you can’t answer why your social media activities will lead to your specific goal, then you need to drill down further or look at other social media options.

Not every network will lead to your goals, figure out what will give you the best opportunity for success.

How Long Will It Take?

What are your time-lines for your success?  Do you have one?  Most social media strategies either leave this part out, or are unrealistic.  Establish time frames so you can track whether or not you are likely to reach success.  Evaluate how your doing, adjust your timeline over time.

Do You Have Management Buy In?

Does upper management buy in to social media?  This is important because if they don’t…you’re almost guaranteed to fail.  Without the acceptance by management your legs will be cut right from under you.  Unrealistic goals will be wanted in an unrealistic time frame.  Once these goals which are already unrealistic aren’t met, you’ll be directed to engage in other activities.  Make sure they support what you’re doing and if they don’t, use your energy for persuasion.

How Are You Measuring Success?

So you’ve established goals, how are you measuring success?  If you’re purely tracking filling an event or sales that’s pretty straight forward.  But if a goal is something like “Brand Awareness”, you need some specific indicators to track how you’re doing.

How Are You Tracking Execution?

Along with tracking overall social media goals, you need to have a system set up to track activity.  You need to have a set of leading indicators set up and monitored.  Otherwise you’re basically driving blind.  You know that you’re moving but have no idea where on the map you are.  Track how your activities are driving the overall goal and adjust if needed.

Social media strategy is a long and tedious task.  But without the proper strategy and roadmap you’re making success as hard as possible.  You would never engage in any other part of your business without a plan, don’t neglect social media marketing.

Use these questions to test how strong your strategy is.

This is DAY 16 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

Get the Real Time Marketer Directly to Your RSS HERE

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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Are You Showing Off All Of Your Feathers?

The social media marketing scene is completely saturated with companies that most likely do and sell the same things as your business.  Fortunately for you, most of them do not do it well.

While creating your social media marketing strategy, in addition to goals, you’re going to create execution tactics and procedures to achieve these goals.  One of the areas that should be on the top of your mind is “How Do We Become Memorable”.  Like most marketing, within the social media realm you’re biggest competition is not with companies selling similar products.

Your biggest social media competitor is people’s attention

What is going to make you memorable?  Why would someone choose to engage with your brand?  There are several areas to concentrate on that will boost user engagement, but I think one the most overlooked yet highly important is Personality.

Here are 5 quick tips to start inserting some personality into your social media marketing. (If you’re not convinced brand personality is for you, read THIS)

Use Pictures

Bring your social media posts to life by using pictures.  Let your  fans and network see a little behind the curtain of your world.  If you have any unique office decorations show them off.  At an activity or event, take a pic.  Use pictures to allow a behind the scenes look at what your company does.  (My favorite service for Twitter is Twitpic)

Have Opinions

This is going to cause most higher ups at big offices a massive panic attack, but the fact is that real people have opinions.  Real people have dislikes and favorites, some things drive them crazy, some songs make there work day go faster.  You’re a human being, not a robot.  Have opinions.

Obviously you need to be conscious about what you’re projecting to the universe, but this doesn’t mean you need to be walled up behind a boring ball of plain Jane posts.

Personal brands can get away with a lot more flexibility than big corporate brands, but being part of a large corporation is not an excuse to not showcase and share opinions.  If you never say anything of substance, why will anyone care?  I can disagree with someone’s opinion and still support their product.  If I see a brand out there and sharing their real experiences I’m much more likely to follow that brand and engage.

Use Video

There is no better way to show off your personality than using video. Video is a medium that offers an opportunity to bring to life what print cannot, you.  Video offers a chance to be a moving breathing person.  You audience isn’t reading your words, they’re seeing you.  After watching a few video posts, if done correctly, your audience can really feel a sense that they know you.  (I really need to take my own advice, I plan on rolling out some video posts soon).

Engage

I recently had a conversation with a Chicago sports radio personality and blogger about getting more exposure for himself.  In our discussion we researched a few Facebook Pages that would fit his demographic, one of these pages was the Chicago White Sox.  They have about 200,000 fans, and a large amount of fan posts and comments.  Unfortunately, there is no engagement from the actual team…none.  The administrators post and walk away.  Sports fans are loyal.  They’re not likely to leave their favorite team because of lack of Facebook engagement, but the team might have better opportunities to sell merchandise and fill events if they were.

St. Louis has the 3rd biggest Mardi Gras in the world.  The official Facebook page for this event has 7,000 fans.  Again, you’ll see lots of fan engagement with little to NO interaction from the page administration.  I’m willing to bet more than 7,000 people showed up to the more than 30 events that were hosted.  If the page had more interaction perhaps the smaller events would have had better attendance.

As much as I scream about social media Engagement, Engagement, Engagement…it’s still not the rule but unfortunately the exception.  You should feel lucky and honored someone out there actually likes your brand enough to take the time to leave a comment or ask a question.  The least you can do is thank your fans and answer their questions letting them know they’re appreciated.

Think Outside The Box

Get creative!  Or if your creative juices aren’t flowing, then just look and see what others outside your industry are doing that you love, and apply it to your business.  Some successful examples are…

Mascots – Not every brand can get away with an alter ego but Chicago’s Berry Chill does a great job with Yogi Jones.  The lovable character tweets daily and thanks his fans when Berry Chill is mentioned on Twitter.

Contests / Events – Groupon is creating a contest called Live Off Groupon that will give away $100,000 to one person that can live an entire year off of their coupons and not spend a dime.  (don’t bother applying, I’m already going to win it! )  What better way to show off their service than have a fan live there whole life for one year on it.

The battle for attention is going to be your biggest competition when executing your social media marketing strategy.  Succeed by creating some brand personality in your social media marketing.

This is DAY 15 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

Get the Real Time Marketer Directly to Your RSS HERE

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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I want To Be Your Social Media Consultant

Social media strategist, Internet marketer, social media guru, social media ninja / expert / rockstar and the names keep coming and coming.  Is it just me or are more and more social media voices now the equivalent of a digital Amway Salesperson?  It seems as if anyone with an Internet connection is now an “expert”.

Well as we all know…not everyone is an expert and the waters for solid and valuable content are beginning to get cloudy.  It’s a shame too, because so many folks have good information and stories to share…unfortunately it’s the cheeseballs that seem to yell the loudest.  Not because they have good information but because there are so damn many of them.

So how to you know if your social media “expert” is in fact selling you snake oil?  Many have masked themselves quite well.  Kinda like the Terminator where they look human, but when you peel the layers back it’s just an empty robot.

Here’s some things that should be setting off the bull sh*t meter.

They Name Themselves “Experts”

An expert is such a rare bird.  Just because I know more about a subject than you doesn’t make me an expert on it.  I probably know more about the St. Louis Rams and Saved By The Bell Trivia than you, but I don’t walk around claiming to be an expert on those subjects.

According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, it takes at least 10,000 hours before one can master a subject.  Last time I checked none of us have been spending 10,000 hours diving into social media (although sometimes it feels like it).

The only time I want to hear that someone is an expert is when a reputable source is calling them that…not when it’s on their business card.

They Double As A Life-coach

This is really a shame, because I’ve actually met some really talented life coaches who get amazing results with their clients.  But never have these talented life coaches also doubled as social media gurus.  I’m not saying it can’t be done…but many of the rats claim to coach lives.  Be weary.

They Speak About Social Media As A System

Social Media is not a system.  That’s a ridiculous statement to make, much less base consulting and strategy on it.  Social Media is not a  Tae Bo workout.  It’s not a video series that if I put in and follow today I can get the same results if I put it in and follow ten years from now.

Only talk About How’s And Never Why

There are certain social media tools that are pretty standard.  Twitter, Facebook Pages, Blogs, ect and each of these tools have a pretty standard ways to set them up.  But they should be used as an individual process.

I’ve written about How to Get Followers On Twitter because it is important.  But equally as important as getting followers is why you want them in the first place.  I constantly try to focus on the “why”.  The how is easy, anything can be manipulated.  But that never moves the “why” you should want to.

100,000 random twitter followers offer me absolutely nothing.  Focus on goals and strategy.  The “How” always develops from the “Why” first.

Everything Is About Automation

This ties exactly to the social media “system”.  Some aspects of social media or any marketing channel can be automated.  But the biggest advantage of social media is the dialogue and engagement you’re creating.  If you only focus on automating everything you’re doing oline…you’ve completely missed the point of why you’re marketing in this space.

The Numbers Don’t Match

Having 40,000 Followers on Twitter is a lot!  But it can always easily be recreated over time with any of your accounts.  The only reason you should ever want a follower on Twitter is the hope of future engagement.

If your followers aren’t clicking on your links, replying back to questions, and engaging in your content then who cares if you have 1 million followers.  Before you buy an ebook about how to get Twitter Followers, make sure they talk about targeted and engaged followers.

I recently watched a video of an avid video blogger who is selling Twitter ebooks.  I was the 58^th view of that video in over a month.  Don’t buy content from people who can’t convert their own numbers.  If you have 40,000 Twitter followers, I would expect if those followers are interested in you…you should have more than 58 views / month.

They NEVER Actually Say ANYTHING

I’ve sat through countless webinars, Live Ustream feeds, YouTube Videos, because I am always trying to learn.  Not learn a new “system”, but always trying to challenge my thought process and maybe change the way I perceive a topic or think about my approach.  Unfortunately, a good sized chunk of these video conferences never really teach me anything because they won’t stop talking about themselves.

I get that you need to be personable and if that means you yuck it up on YouTube, great.  But at some point you need to actually offer some knowledge.

Affliction or Ed Hardy T-shirts

This is kinda silly, but is it just me or do these people not own a button down shirt without a giant cross or fleurdelis in rhinestones on it?  I know it somehow proves in their mind that they’re rebelling against the traditional system.  But the only thing they’re rebelling against is style.

Trust Your Gut

Within a few minutes of a Webcast or Webinar, if you begin to get a slimey feel to the situation then close it down.  Trust your gut.  The one if any gem of knowledge they’ll share with you can easily be found somewhere else online.

Be careful out there folks.  The social media fort has been overrun by the masses focused on a quick buck from you.  I’m not judging anyone selling content online because I have purchased some valauble stuff.  But try to support the good folks who are honest with their intentions.

As long as you understand that social media is an arm of the bigger marketing picture you’ll be in good shape.  I hope that this blog and others like it become a bomb shelter of knowledge for you.  Because the war for your attention is underway.

This is DAY 11 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

Get the Real Time Marketer Directly to Your RSS HERE

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

Related posts:

1. The Myth of Social Media’s Transparency One of the big cheers for social media is it’s...
2. 9 Questions Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Must Answer Before initiating any social media marketing campaign, you need to...
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Not Everyone Likes Your Feeds

You’re active on Twitter.  You’ve got your Facebook Page rocking with posts.  You’re blog is updated as regularly as you can.  So why…does no one care about your business on social media?

Unfortunately, no matter how necessary and successful some businesses may be, there is just no interest on your social networks.  So if the masses are not attracted to you because you’re not a trendsetting hip company or work in a popular industry…what do you do?

Create Value

Whenever I’m working with a client, it always starts with value.  So how are you creating it?  Focus on what your information your customers want.  Focus on content that will make them shine.  Create information that they are searching for and give it to them.  If you don’t know what this information is…ask.  Maybe your best opportunity is just to answer questions.  Whatever you decide, just make sure you are creating value.

Create Engagement

Most businesses spend their time on social media like it’s a radio commercial.  They spend the whole time telling everyone how great they are and new products, and features, and blah blah blah.  Social media allows you a tremendous opportunity to engage.  Join conversations frequently and always try to help others.

Start Communities Around Topics…Not Your Business

Like it or not, the reality is that not everyone is going to care about joining a Facebook Page or LinkedIn Group for the local plumber or Lawyer or the 1000 other categories of businesses people don’t think about regularly.  So instead of trying to create a community around you, start a community around a subject or an industry.

If you’re a landscaping business, no one may have an interest in your Facebook Page for you, but there may be an interest for “The Best Lawn Ever” page.  This page could Focus on tips to make the best lawn in your neighborhood.  No one cares about joining the Scott Bishop LinkedIn group.  But there is interest about bringing local people active in social media.  So I created the Chicago Twitter & Social Media group.  Does every connection directly help me personally? No, and they’re not supposed to.  But it is a group that has created value to many.

Be Active In Other Communities

Perhaps your business has no luck gaining social network members, but there is an industry group that has a bunch.  Why spend time trying to bring them to you when they’re already housed for you.  Spend your time being active and valued in other communities.  Post  information not about your business, but about the groups needs.  Over time you will become a trusted and valued member.

Make It About You…Kinda

Have a tough business that most people think is a commodity?  Make it about you, or at least your personality.  Chicago deep dish pizza is a favorite in the Windy City, but pizza joints are a dime a dozen in Chicago.  There are probably 500 different pizza businesses.

So imagine if you not only serve pizza, but you serve Domino’s Pizza.  Now don’t get me wrong, I like Domino’s just fine…but other than New York I would imagine Chicago is the second hardest market for a chain franchise pizza business.  Ramon Deleon (twitter) saw an opportunity to shine and decided to get creative.  He took advantage of the tools available and inserted his big and sincere personality.  He’s also masterful at making his campaigns about his customers.  Ramon’s become bigger than life around Chicago, and more importantly, really selling some pies!

Focus On Monitoring

Spend less time trying to acquire numbers, and make contact with the folks who need your help.  Monitor keywords on Twitter Search and other platforms that signal a need, then see if there is room to jump into the conversation and offer advice.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to work in an industry that naturally attracts the social media droves.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t have success.  Spend your time wisely and although you may have smaller numbers, you have attracted the ones that count.

This is DAY 10 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

Get the Real Time Marketer Directly to Your RSS HERE

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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Filter Your Social Network's Noise

The real time web is both a blessing for marketers and a curse.  On the plus side, you’ve got access to an unlimited amount of information, in real time.  On the bad side, you have access to an unlimited amount of information, in real time.

Twitter updates the thousands of folks I follow every minute.  Facebook updates pour in like a flooded river.  And since LinkedIn can now be connected to Twitter (and people don’t understand that you shouldn’t do this) I get repeat updates from Twitter and regular LinkedIn updates all day long too.  Oh, and what about the blogs you like to read?

How do you filter all of the information that is coming into your social networks?

Information is only valuable if you can interpret it.  As part of any successful social media marketing strategy, you must incorporate a way to filter the noise.  But how?

Understand What You’re Looking For

You can’t begin to become more efficient without having an understanding of what’s valuable.  Know what information you’re looking for, and you can begin to set a system to find all relevant information regarding not just your business, but also your industry.

Identify, Follow, & Group Knowledge

Identify who is creating and spreading information you find valuable.  Who or what groups post and offer relevant information for you and your business.  Use Google Reader to store all the blog posts  in one place.  If you find a blog particularly valuable, such as The Real Time Marketer, have it sent your email.

Group valuable folks on Twitter either in a List your create, or a grouped column via a 3^rd Party application.  Follow relevant groups on LinkedIn and have a weekly summary sent to your email. (don’t select daily, just get 1 email per week).

By grouping knowledge together, you now have a few spots where people are providing information you need.  These groups should be expanding, but make sure they’re manageable.  A group should be big enough to allow a substantial amount of information, but make sure you can look through them quickly and identify the nuggets that are useful.

Use Aggregate Tools And Applications to Filter For You

Use third party apps like Tweetdeck, Seesmic, or Hootsuite to give you a entire snapshot of your social networks in one interface.  You can see Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networks all from one screen.  You can also use these platforms to post on each network so you’re not bouncing back and forth.  Don’t waste time jumping from one platform to the other all day long.

Allocate a Time Budget

You can look at information all day if you’d like, but my guess is that you have more important things to do.  If you’ve set up your 3^rd party apps correctly, you don’t need to spend all day online.  Select certain times to log on and reply and comment where appropriate.  If you have your twitter influencers grouped correctly, you can quickly run down their activities for that day and read or spread what’s valuable.  Don’t allow social media to anchor you away from productivity and from accomplishing goals.

Drop What’s Not Useful

Just because a new social network pops up, doesn’t mean that it’s useful and makes sense for you.  Google Buzz came out today, don’t waste your time.  Being the first to a social network doesn’t offer you much value.  Let others, like me, figure out how they can apply to you and your business and wait till you can make sure they’ll be useful.

If the sheer number of networks is bogging you down, either figure out how to make them more efficient or drop them.  You need to figure out what is providing return on your time investment.  Drop the dead weight.  No one cares how many social networks you or your business is on.  I go into more details HERE

Learn to master the art of filtering noise…if you can do this, your impact in the digital world will change dramatically.  Good luck and as always, let me know how I can help.

This is DAY 9 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

Get the Real Time Marketer Directly to Your RSS HERE

Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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