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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Is Your Business SmartPhone Ready?

Does your business have a mobile marketing strategy?  If you’re not interested in creating opportunities to market via mobile devices, you at least need to be prepared for them.  Nielsen expects smartphones to account for more than half of the US mobile phone market by 2011, is your business ready?

SmartPhone Quick Statistics

• Only 3% of smartphone users only use their phone for voice communications only
• 50% of smartphone users have Wi-Fi
• Slightly more males (53%) than females (47%) use smartphones
• 2/3 of smartphone users are personal users and 1/3 are business users

Get Your SmartPhone Game Tight (i.e. business ready)

Create A Mobile Version of Your Website & Blog

50% of Smartphone users have Wi-Fi, and that number is only going to increase.  As users utilize their cell phone for internet access, it’s imperative that your website and blog is mobile friendly.  If your site or blog is run on WordPress , there’s a plugin that does it for you. HERE

Get your site and blog easy to use via cell phones.  I recommend drawing back on Flash applications and any other format that cannot be viewed on most smart phones.

Is It Time For An App?

It’s time to  take a serious look at creating a mobile app for your business.  The IDC (International Data Corporation) is predicting this to be a banner year for mobile apps.  They’re predicting that iPhone apps will triple, Android apps will quintuple, and the Apple “iPad” arrives.  Obviously the mobile app business is big.

However, this does not mean that you 100% need an app.  ONLY CREATE AN APP IF YOU CREATE VALUE.  Simply creating an app that distributes content or blog posts is a waste of your time and you’ll find little adoption from users.  As app users grow, so does competition.  Without a compelling app, your will most certainly be lost in the vast void of noise.

Look Into Location Based Opportunities

Last week at SXSW, FourSquare added 100,000 users in 10 days.  If there was any doubt in your head before…get over it.  FourSquare is a player and here to stay.  If your company can take advantage of utilizing FourSquare for marketing purposes, do it.  Here’s a quick post how.

More tools will be coming down the pipe regrading Location Based, get your creative juices flowing for opportunities to take advantage of them.

Make It Easy To Buy Your Stuff

Make it easy to do business with you.  Offer a variety of options for customers to give you money.  Look into smartphone payment systems like Square or TabbedOut, and PayPal’s mobile App.

So even if a mobile marketing strategy isn’t a top priority for your business, you need to be prepared to meet users where they’re at…and they’re using smartphone platforms.  Get your business ready.

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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Where is Your Social Media Strategy Taking You?

Yes, your social media strategy sucks.

That seems a little harsh…True.  But here at the RTM there is no dilly dally.  Denying the truth doesn’t make it better.  But just pointing out flaws doesn’t make you better…and I want you to succeed.

So, how do we fix it?

Tie Your Social Media Strategy to REAL Business Goals

I’m not sure why you’ve decided to pawn off social media to the college intern but stop.  Yes, I know they’re on Facebook but that doesn’t mean they understand how Facebook ties to business goals.  If you’re a clothing brand, you wouldn’t hand over sales or marketing to the intern because they own a shirt.

Social media is an extension of marketing.  Do not treat it differently.  You have a business plan, a marketing plan, sales plans…you need a social media strategy and plan.  If you’re serious about social media, give it the respect it deserves to drive real results.

Tie your strategy to real business goals.  Social media, although technically pretty inexpensive…takes a tremendous amount of time.  If you’re going to spending that much time on a project or tasks…it better drive some real business results.  Know what those are.

Get Specific Goals…Kill Fluff!

Creating “Brand Awareness” is a half-ass goal that doesn’t mean anything.  If your only goal is brand awareness, then as soon as someone becomes a follower on Twitter…you’re done.  Right?  Well, one person now knows about you…technically that’s awareness.

Probably not the final result you had in mind.

Dig down deep and dive into specifics.  If you want to increase sales via social media…by how much?  If you want to increase brand awareness, how much web-traffic do you want?  Define exactly what you want.  Kill fluff, it’s the arch nemesis of specific goals.

Commit To The Strategy

You need to be committed to your social media strategy.  You wouldn’t abandon your sales strategy after a month.  Be committed to really diving into social media.  If your strategy is researched well, it will work.  If you’re not going to be committed, stop now.  You’re guaranteed to fail.

Revolve Around Engagement

To maximize social media, you need to engage.  A push only strategy does not work.  People are bombarded enough on television, radio, print, billboards, and everywhere in between.  If you’re just sending out more ads over social networks, your response is going to be small.  Engage with your audience.  Create and respond to dialogue.  Spark opinions.  Get involved.

Assign A Time Aspect

You need a time table attached to your social media strategy.  You can always adjust over time, but you need an End in Mind.  Are you assigning monthly goals?  Quarterly goals?  If you have no time table attached then technically you can never fail…because the game is never over.  You never have a bar to judge if you’re winning or losing so you can adjust and fix areas that need it.

Allow For Flexible Execution

Your strategy should be solid, but the tools and networks you use needs to be flexible.  The “Why” is always more important than the “How”.  The “How” will change over time.  New tools will come out. Find out what is working best and attack that.  Drop what’s not returning high value.

Know What A Win Looks Like

How do you know if you’re succeeding in your social media strategy if you don’t know what a “win” is.  Is is sale?  Is it a ReTweet?  Is it more social mentions?  Figure out what your wins are, then you can focus on getting more of them.

Create Value

Your strategy needs to create value for your audience.  Everything you do should be with the customers or targets in mind.  Does this blog post create value to my readers (You don’t need to answer that question about this post, I already know it’s amazing).  Does my Twitter account distribute valuable content?  Does my Facebook Page spark valuable engagement.  Always be thinking value.

So even if your social media strategy doesn’t completely suck…incorporate these aspects to take your game to the level it and you deserve.

This is DAY 26 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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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

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How To Get Followers On Twitter

How to get followers on Twitter is a mad science.  Like it or not, if you’ve chosen Twitter to market yourself or your brand, you’re going to need to learn how to get followers.

Is there an exact science how to get followers on Twitter?  Yes.  And No.

There are certainly steps you can take to get followers on Twitter, but understand that knowing how to get followers on Twitter and actually achieving that goal are two different things.  It takes some time and energy to achieve your goals.  Twitter is not a quick fix and success does not happen overnight.

Your focus should be on Targeted followers, not numbers.  Buying an ebook or “system” to get thousands of followers on Twitter is a complete waste of your money.  Even if they work, the only followers you’re attracting are others who bought the same ebook or “system” and now you’ve got thousands of followers who have zero interest in you, zero interest in your company, and offer you absolutely nothing.

Your top focus for getting followers on Twitter should be attracting targeted folks who value your content, and engage with you.  If you don’t have that…there is no reason to be on Twitter and you should spend your time elsewhere.

Have a Consistent Voice

Having a consistent voice is the most basic and  best advice I can offer any brand or individual about Twitter.  Decide what your voice is going to be, and stay on target.  If you’re a brand on Twitter, this is pretty easy.  You’re going to be tweeting about your products, business, and industry.  But if you’re on Twitter as you, a personal brand, it’s not so cut and dry.  Decide what goals you want to accomplish.

For example, I was active on Twitter long before I had this blog as a platform for my voice.  My goal on Twitter was clear…I was going to be someone known for offering great marketing and social media content.  So each day I tweeted the articles I felt were solid and was currently reading.  After a while, you begin to be trusted as a source for information and a go-to for which ever particular niche you decide to focus on.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t tweet information about other interests or add some personality.  Absolutely tweet what you find interesting, but you need an overall arching theme to your profile.  It can be anything you choose, just make sure you’re consistent.

Be Active

If you’re going to be on Twitter, your profile must be active.  This means you are tweeting everyday.  If you’re scared about being tethered to a computer all day long, don’t be.  You can send a Tweet from any cell phone by using the SMS text function.  Twitter is about communication and engagement.  If you’re not active, you don’t offer any value.  If you make the decision to be on Twitter, commit to being an active valuable member.

Be Local

Being local on Twitter is important.  Have your city on your profile as where you are tweeting from.  Don’t have geo-location numbers, have an actual physical place.  When I look to see who is following me, I’m more likely to follow back those from my location.  If you live in a suburb, select the larger city for your profile.  Being local also gives you a sense of community.  Tweet about what’s happening in your city, and follow others that are local.

Some cities tweet more than others, here’s a list of the top Twitter cities.

Engage With Others

Give people a reason to follow you.  If you’re only pushing content and not engaging and creating a dialogue, you’re not creating value.  Engage, connect, discuss.

Submit Yourself to Directories

It’s a quick and easy way to have your profile become associated with specific locations or topics.  It doesn’t take long and it certainly can’t hurt to be listed.

• Twellow
• We Follow
• Geo Follow
• Just Tweet It
• Twitterhollic

Follow Others with Similar Interests

Use #hashtags to find others that are tweeting similar content, but use them sparingly.  You can also look at lists you or others are on to find folks that may be tweeting valuable content you’ll find interesting.  Follow some of these folks, and if you’re adding value, many will follow you back.  Again, use common sense when following people.    Twitter has rules about how many folks you can follow at one time…and it just looks bad when if you’re following 2000 people and 145 and following you back.  Choose targeted folks to follow.

Work With Me

I hate to slip in the self promotion, but the reality is that many business owners simply don’t have the time to be active and focused on Twitter.  I’ve helped get new brands up and running on Twitter with targeted followers.  If you simply don’t have the time to do it yourself…let’s chat.  And of course, if you’re not currently following me on Twitter…lets connect.

This is DAY 6 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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What Tools Are You Using?

One of the great benefits of social media, is it’s ability to be able to analyze results in real time.  No longer do you have to submit an ad…and wait for sales…and wait…and wait.  The setback with many of the traditional marketing mediums like print, radio, television, and even market surveys…is that by the time you realize how well you did, it’s already too late to change anything.

The only thing that analyzing something that has already happened will tell you, is if you’ve wasted a tremendous amount of time and energy or not.  Social media tools offer full capabilities to post, analyze results, and tweak where necessary.

I strongly advise spending some dough on robust tools, but for many business owners or especially individuals, the pricing model of these robust systems is not realistic.

So here are 5 FREE tools to help you master some of the most popular platforms of the real-time web.

Clicky Web Analytics

Clicky – Real Time Web Analytics

Google Analytics is fine, but the problem is that it’s not in real-time.  In comes Clicky to the rescue.  Clicky is an amazing tool that tracks your website data to the minute, literally.

Why is this helpful?

With Clicky, I know when the tweets I post are most effective and driving traffic to my site.  It helps me analyze what time of day the most traffic comes in and from where.  If I see that the majority of my traffic comes from Facebook from 2-4pm, I know exactly when to post updates with links attached.  I can also judge when I am not getting any traffic and if my current campaign is a flop.  This helps me readjust and change wording and rearrange the structure of post content until I can get a winning combination.  It’s an invaluable tool…and it’s FREE.     SIGN UP HERE

Tubemogul video Analytics

Tube Mogul – In-Depth Tracking, Analytics for Online Video

If you’re not using video for your social media marketing, start.  Video is proven to sell your products, even if no one is watching it!!  Seriously, read this…HERE (Thanks to Tim Jahn for the link)

TubeMogul is a fantastic and free tool to track all of your video content.

Why is this helpful?

• One upload to TubeMogul distributes your video to the most popular platforms like YouTube and Blip.tv
• It tracks viewing time of every viewer (Great measure to see the attention span of your audience)
• Syndication Tracking:  Track detailed viewing behavior that occurs outside of your website
• Location Based Tracking:  Track your viewed minutes by region (Look for patterns, if one develops cater your content to that location)
• Player Tracking Analysis:  Compare multiple video players

It’s a winner.  If you create videos, use this tool.

Facebook Page – Analytics

If you haven’t changed the way you use your Facebook Fan page, you might as well shut it down.  The new Facebook algorithm was a punch in the face to marketers, because in most cases your post updates are never seen by the high majority of your fans.  What’s nice about some of the new Page features for admins is that you can see exactly how many folks are viewing it.

Why is this helpful?

Because right now you have no idea if your Facebook Page is actually accomplishing anything.  These new tools will give you that info.  You’ll be able to see how many impressions you get per post, how many people “like” your posts, as well as how many people leave comments.  The Facebook algorithm is based on engagement, so use these new features to analyze what posts are creating the most engagement. (NOTE:these features are in Beta right now and not available for every page)

Twitter Analytics – Hoot Suite

So how do you know if your Twitter account is working? Is it measured by followers?  Is it measured by Retweets?  You don’t know.  Use the third party application Hootsuite to give your Twitter analytics the boost it so desperately needs.

Why is this helpful?

So you can monitor how, when, and why your marketing on Twitter is working.

• Monitor the number of clicks in the last 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days or by date range
• Locate click hits by Geographic location
• Analyze and locate who the top referrers are, and what the most popular tweets were by clicks
• For each individual tweet, you can see the individual number of clicks

If you aren’t tracking how your activities are doing online, you never truly know if your time, money, and energy are actually creating any ROI.  Start with these five tools to take your social media marketing to the next level.

This is DAY 4 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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Social Media is certainly the hottest thing in marketing since well, a few years ago when “Web 2.0” was.  But with all of this buzz, comes a tsunami of information.  So much information that not only is it hard to tell good from bad, but so much information that many untruths become the rules.

There are an awful lot of myths roaming about in the vast endless void of cyberspace.  Here’s a quick list of some of the biggest you should avoid.  If you or your company are going along with these myths as truths, it’s time to change your paradigm around how your company is seeing Social Media’s marketing ability.

It’s Fast

Given the real-time nature of social media, one would think that it’s fast.  But it’s not.  The way that news and information travels is now at light speed, but social media marketing is slow.  Social media, is obviously a social tool, but businesses and brands need to tread those waters lightly.  It takes a tremendous amount of time to build up the trust of your networks to become a valued member.  Make a commitment for the long haul.  Take the time and energy needed to develop trust with those in your networks. It takes time to create value.  That’s the most valuable thing a brand on social media can do.

It will Replace Marketing / Advertising

Despite what Internet marketers and even most social media marketers or “gurus” will advise, social media is not designed to take over your marketing or advertising.  Social media and marketing do not and cannot exist as separate business  pieces.  Social media is one piece of the bigger marketing picture.  It’s role is to complement what you are already doing in your business.  Use online channels to show the best of what you and your company does offline, online.

Social media may replace a section of your marketing that you have determined as low on ROI, like how Pepsi dropped their Super Bowl ads this year and replacing it with a  social media campaign.  But Pepsi is not dedicating their entire marketing to social media.  Complement and expand marketing efforts with social media, don’t replace them.

It Will Solve Our Sales Problems

Social Media is not a miracle worker.  It’s not the Mother Theresa for your sales.  If you sell a crappy low value product, no amount of YouTube videos or Twitter followers, or strategy will fix that.  Social media can get you in front of a larger audience and new targets, but the people behind all those profile pics are not robots…they’re still people and it still takes the same ole good product at a good value to sell to them.

It Will Expose Our Problems

I used to work for an extremely large company that is a dominant player in an “old” and low-tech industry.  Management was terrified of social media tools because in their view it would be used for nothing more than a sounding board for all of our unhappy customers and everyone that hated our products.

And they were right.

But if you have droves of customers who are angry and unhappy…I have news for you…Those people are talking anyway.  They’re talking to their friends and many are probably talking about it online on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums.  So staying out of social media doesn’t keep you safe from bad exposure, it prevents you from fixing it.  What better opportunity to monitor and seek out unhappy customers, and then solve their issues.  Not only are you helping a customer, you’re now broadcasting to anyone else that you address issues.

The broadcasting  of product or company problems on social media are going to happen with or without your involvement.  If you are not monitoring and staying out of the fight, you’ve left a tremendous opportunity for a competitor to take care of your customer’s issues for you.

It Works

Not everyone is a Gary V, or Zappos.  You can’t expect windfall profits and super amazing things to begin to rain from the sky…all from Social Media.  I will argue that almost every business can benefit from some level of social media activities, but you need to be realistic.

Set goals that apply to your business and your demographic.  I recently chatted with a business owner who was disappointed that 1,000 members haven’t flocked to a new network she created.  I asked where this 1,000 number came from?  How was this determined as the goal?  Was it based on local demographics, similar companies have seen those results, how was this goal selected?

Don’t expect great things from social media if your goals are set up so you’re guaranteed to fail.  You wouldn’t set first month sales forecasts to reach $1 million dollars if you’ve never seen those numbers before.  Treat social media with the same thought and strategy as other parts of your business.

Social Media marketing can produce some powerful stuff…but do your homework, build a strategy, execute, analyze.

Let me know how I can help.

This is DAY 2 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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