How to Make Time for Social Media Marketing? 3 Ways to Get Back Time For The Social Web

The Thanksgiving break was a great time of reflection. We have learned a lot the past year in our GenNext Media social media marketing lab. As I sat around with my family and friends digesting my Thanksgiving feast and watching football, I scanned some of my favorite business marketing blogs (tip #2) for an answer to this daunting question , “What is it about social media marketing that makes business owners so scared?”

Internet marketing helps businesses build relationships with customers, generate new leads, and increase profits and visibility of their business. However, the one area that left them asking for more was: time.  

It’s an issue we all face as we get deeper into the execution of our social marketing programs. How do I make time for social media marketing? The Social Media Examiner had a terrific post about this subject about a week ago.

Being a small business owner myself, I can commiserate. There simply is just not enough time in the day to run your business effectively.  However, it is important to remind yourself of your businesses overall goal: to increase customer leads and produce more profits.  Social media marketing is, or will become a key part of running your business and a means to an end goal.

Here are three ways to organize your social media marketing efforts and make the most of your time online:

1.  Time is Money: Social media marketing has the capability to sky-rocket your business, however, it also has the ability to be a immense waste of time.  Many businesses set aside time each day for “marketing and networking.”  By making a structured schedule for marketing efforts, there will be less room for procrastination and wasting time. Set aside 1-3 hours for browsing industry blogs, updating your Facebook page and participating in forums within your niche market.  This will ensure that you remain visible within the distributed web and keep your efforts focused, for a specific amount of time, each day.

2.  Spend Your Time Constructively: Whether you are going on a business trip, sitting in front of the TV, or waiting for a meeting to start, you have time for social media.  Check your messages, send out a “Tweet”, reply to posts, etc.  Any extra effort that you put in will benefit your business, increase your visibility and attract more leads.

3.   Allow Yourself to Have Fun: Social marketing should not be a burden to your life or schedule.  It is there for your convenience and to help your business increase its customer base.  If you forgot to reply to a comment, distribute an article or update your blog today, IT’S OK.  If you treat social media marketing as a helpful and valuable way to market your business and foster relationships, then you will be less stressed and have much more success.

Social media marketing takes time, organization, and dedication, but it almost always pays off in the end.  That being said, embrace the distributed web and put yourself out there for other people to see and communicate with.  So stop reading, and start doing!

What are some of the ways your business finds time for social media? I would love to hear your insights…

Thankful For The New Normal

I am thankful for a ton of things this holiday. Funny thing is in the midst of this great recession I started a business, crazy right?

Think about this.  The media and marketing economy is in the biggest state of disruption since the invention of the radio.  With over 10% unemployment, finding great people is easier than ever.  New technologies like cloud computing and web services make starting a business inexpensive…with powerful tools as good as any large company can afford. Major media does not have a lock on my messaging? I don’t need a sales rep to “buy” advertising! Don’t get me wrong, I like sales reps, I was one in the mid 1980’s.

It has never been a better time to accelerate or build your business. Those of us who stand up and take this opporutnity will be rewarded.

Let’s be thankful for all this change and get ready to take advantage of it!

What do you think?

“Crush It” without Being Crushed By Social Media Marketing

Last night I listened in on a discussion with Gary Vaynerchuck, the author of the social media best seller “Crush It” and Eban Pagan. Eban did a masterful job as usual with the interview and Gary did not disappoint with his energy and enthusiasm for what he does, social media marketing 24/7, 365 days a year.

Gary lives the lifestyle. I have to confess I get tiered just thinking about how much Gary is engaged in his social community. The way I understand it, he personally answers all email, Tweets, Facebook comments, blog posts, creates a daily video show…and then he comments and contributes to other blogs and forums. Phew!

It was interesting when I check out Chris Brogans post this morning about social media needing to be a team sport. Our experience working on several products within the GenNext Social Media Labs, as well as our clients businesses large and small, is consistent with the observations Chris makes in his posts.

CEO and other senior level executives at any size organization will have a very tough time doing their job, and personally implementing the social media marketing processes and tactics Gary outlines in his book and in the interview. That does not mean the are wrong or misguided in any way, so please don’t send hate mail.  In fact, as Gary points out in his book, this creates a terrific opportunity for business owners who are passionate about a market to grow and be very successful by putting both large and small organizations on an equal playing field.

We think the key to social media marketing success over the long term is to implement work flow and tools that makes social marketing a group effort, both within your company and in some cases incorporating outside contractors for things like writing, video production, event planning an other specialties.

I am not saying executives can abdicate this responsibility. Senior management directly involved in social media marketing, like blogging, posting comments and even more importantly, listening, will make the business strong and the team better. But to make social media marketing a strategic cornerstone of your marketing plan (and we think you need to), it should be built into the business work flow in a way that it is sustainable and natural for the organization. Many tools and techniques exist to do this effectively.

What’s your opinion?

5 Powerful Twitter Tools For A Business Marketing Boost

Everyone knows Twitter can be a great business building vehicle…we get reminded every day in email promotions, seminars, webinars and just about every other medium you can think of. We are literally inundated with new products and services for Twitter every day.

The issue with Twitter is it’s a double sided opportunity. You can quickly get into a the “hamster mode” where you are just spinning like crazy and not feel like you are getting anywhere. If you manage your time and relationships right, Twitter really can be a valuable customer building opportunity.  Here are five powerful tools that are simple to use and will make your time spent much more effective:

• Tweet Adder – You need to build a targeted audience quickly to have an impact. Obviously you will do this with other tools like email to your list, promotion on your website and blog etc. Now, you have another way to add very targeted followers to your list with Tweet Adder. You can target followers by keyword and geography. You can also automate the process of following and un-following.
• CoTweet – One of the biggest issues with Twitter is keeping track of what is being discussed about your business and market.  I have tried some of the other products where you can have “stacks” of keyword related tweets flying by to find out what is being tweeted in your market and then try and jump into the conversation. These are effective, but very time consuming. What I like about CoTweet is that if focuses your attention on relationships with your followers.  So you avoid the “boil the ocean” approach to Twitter. In fact, if you work it right, you can develop real relationships with your followers because CoTweet has great tools to help you flag messages directed to you and act on them very easily (even assign them to an assistant on your team).
• Ping.FM – Broadcasting tweets to your other social media pages is a great way to broaden your exposure and engage a larger audience.  Ping.FM is a very easy to set up and use syndication tool that will auto-magically manage your micro blogging and send them to most of the major sites including Facebook (Pages and Profiles), LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Muck Rack – Getting publicity for your business is hard. This Twitter tool makes it easy to find and communicate with the right journalists. Muck Rack is a great tool for locating journalists who cover your market and are on Twitter. You can find them by the type of information they report on or by their news organization. Even better, you can use the site to “tweet” your press releases to them.
• MediaOntwitter – This is a database of media contacts who use Twitter. Sometimes, this site can take some digging: people are arranged by country and then alphabetically by the name of their media outlet. But, it’s a growing list and you will be able to locate the person’s Twitter name through this list.
• WeFollow – This database is made up of anyone (not strictly media) who chooses to add themselves. If you have a blog, you should add yourself to this list. People choose their current location and five “categories” that describe themselves. What’s useful about this is that you may be able to connect with people who are outside of the traditional media realm, such as bloggers.

Go implement some of these over the next few weeks and see if your Twittering becomes more targeted and productive.  Let us know!

What other tools do you use that we should know about?

Is Social Media Marketing Trading Time For Money?

Lot’s of discussions going on around the Internet and in business meetings about how much time should be spent on social media marketing and how should that time be allocated.  A very active discussion is taking place at Chris Brogans blog where he postulates the framework of two hours a day broken down like this:

• 1/4 Listening in forums, blogs, tweets, competitors sites…
• 1/2 Commenting and communicating on and off your sites
• 1/4 Creating content…everything from blogging to video creation

Regardless of your personal view on how much time and how to allocate it, the point is social media marketing requires time, commitment and engagement. The question is…is this effort worth it?  Will I get more customers, more effectively and make more money? Simple question.

Our experience with our own products, and the clients we have worked with, point to these conclusions:

1. Versus a media mix of just PPC and/or traditional media, we are able to lower our average cost per lead significantly when social media marketing is added to the mix.
2. We become better at what we do because we are more in tune with the marketplace.
3. Our average lifetime value of a customer is always going up because we have a system, and multiple touch points, for activating our customer base when we have new products and services to sell.

Media and marketing is in a state of disruption.  If you have not already downloaded our free book on the subject I really encourage you do do it. The key point, if the results we get are real, the economic advantage a business can derive from implementing a social media marketing program is significant.

We believe that is leverage. Not trading time for money. Getting significantly more value for the time put in is what successful business know how to do.

What do you think about the time for value trade off?

Email Marketing Is Going Social

Engaging tartet customers in your content and getting viral traction is one of the tougher aspects of marketing in the social web. As social marketing continues to mature and mainstream, new tools are constantly emerging to help make this task easier.

Share-to-Social is the next generation of the ‘forward-to-a-friend’ forms found on many websites and email campaigns. This will be cool when it becomes mainstream.  Why? Because share-to-social functionality enables an email recipient to share your content with their entire social network.

New Products To Test

Tons of new products are coming to market in the viral sharing space. Here are two that we are looking at that specifically address email marketing.

• Exact Target rolled out a suite called Social Forward in April

• Silverpop also introduced new share to social functionality in the last few months.

Both companies provide a way for marketers to incorporate the icon of a social network such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn in an email. Subscribers can then click the icon and share the contents of the message with their online networks.

These products do two things. First, engage prospects and customers to virally spread content to their social graph. Even better, these tools also can track your “campaign” as it travels virally through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other social networks.  For example, Silverpop’s Share-to-Social feature tracks which social network the email recipient posted the message on, and which achieved the most pick up. So you can tell what content is getting the most play in various social networks. This provides great feedback for understanding your target customers better and targeting messages as well as content.

The net is if building our list is the “holy grail” of our marketing efforts, this becomes a very nice capability to help us maximize the value of our list and activate our customers and prospects to spread our messages.  That’s email ROI…

Case Studies

Studies show these tools can be very effective. One study, by Silverpop (you can get the case study on the website), discovered that the average social sharing rate is 0.5% – compared with the less than 0.1% rate realized by earlier-generation forward-to-a-friend campaigns.

Other findings from the report:

• The life of a shared message is about one week.
• Email messages generate clicks on sharing links for an average of 6.8 days
• Despite inclusion of links, 35% percent of email messages studied generated no social email clicks.
• Facebook dominates among social networks.
• On average, an email will collect an additional 1% of views when shared on networks, a number Silverpop expects will grow as social sharing moves into the mainstream.
• Shared email has a powerful “multiplier effect.” Using conservative numbers, the Silverpop model estimates a posted email message has an average increase in reach of 24.3% (based on original emails delivered), but it also expects this figure to increase exponentially when sharing becomes mainstream.
• There is not any consistently in click through rates based on placement or other variables measured.

Social sharing is still relatively new and not adopted by mainstream (does your Mom or sister use it yet?). Email and instant messaging are still the most popular way to share web conten.  This is going to change quickly and it is one of the places you can get ahead of the game and get and edge on your competition. We will be testing these new tools in the GenNext Social Media Lab over the next few months.  You should too…

Let’s compare notes.

Confessions Of a Reluctant Blogger: 9 Hidden Benefits Of Blogging

I started writing this blog a little over one month ago.  While I was thinking about it for years, honestly, I was hoping to avoid it. I thought, I already have a large network, do I really need more “friends”. I’m too senior for this…I’m too busy for this. Then I discovered something about blogging that nobody really talked about. Blogging makes me a better entrepreneur and business person.  Let me tell you why…

While bloggers have been around since the 1990s, businesses have only started to tap into the power of using a blog as a component of a marketing plan in the past ten years. In this new economy, having a creative marketing strategy that involves social media is critical for businesses. Sonia Simone of Copyblogger has a great post on the 7 deadly sins of blogging that takes this issue from the other side…what not to do.

We all know using a blog as the center of your social media marketing strategy can increase your search engine rankings, build or cement your reputation, and enhance skills that will let those who lead businesses lead Internet communities straight to those businesses.

But there are several hidden benefits to blogging that are outside the expected realm, including the following.

1. At its very core, blogging is a writing tool. This does not mean that you need to be a New York Times bestselling author, but writing a blog regularly will certainly enhance the writing aptitude of every writer from novice on up. Since blogs also tend to get lots of feedback, you can also learn about what works for your writing style from responses you receive from your readers.
2. Listen Up! Blogging encourages you to listen. Once you start blogging you start to hear everything from a blogger’s perspective, and a buyer’s perspective.  By listening and responding to your audience’s comments, and finding out how they respond to your blogs, you learn to adapt your writing tone and style to meet your audience and buyer’s needs.
3. Brain Exercise. As you attempt to captivate your audience by displaying wit and knowledge, in a different way every day, you stretch your self to address new issues. You solve their problems, learn what they want, and you think differently about every day matters, including various aspects of your business.
4. Speak Up! Although blogging is a written expression, it can actually enhance your presentation as a speaker, and your knowledge on your topic. You continue to learn information as you research and write your blog and you also gain insight from readership response. This gives you the ability to more clearly articulate on your topics whether you are presenting a prepared speech to an audience or chatting casually on the social scene.
5. Blogging gives your sales approach a whole new outlook and takes you out of your rehearsed sales pitch. The more knowledge you gain regarding what you are promoting, the better you become at selling that very concept or product.
6. Successful marketing blogs must be fresh, informational, and enjoyable. In order to write this type of content you need to be aware of what is happening and stay abreast of current industry trends. You need to ask yourself two questions: “Who is my target audience?” and “What do they crave?” Don’t just ask what they want, be one step ahead of your competitors and dare to go beyond the surface. The knowledge you gain extends way beyond blogging, enhancing every aspect of your marketing campaign.
7. Blogs give you the unique opportunity to act as a launching ground to assess new concepts or products. There is no crystal ball in determining how successful something will be and paying for consumer analysis can be quite expensive. You can use your blog to see how your readers respond to your ideas and use their feedback to fine-tune and make adjustments as needed. Negative response from your audience can actually save you a lot of money, if you make the decision not to launch a new product or service based on their input.
8. Expansion is a natural result of blogging and it gives you the ability to take your previous topics and develop them further any time the need arises. You can breathe life into a fading topic by relating previous posts and expanding on them. You can also do the same thing to create excitement about something novel and unknown. Keep in mind the idea is to expand on the blogs and not just rehash and repost your “same old, same old”.
9. Networking is the core of social media marketing and blogs are at the heart of this. Social networking is the fastest way to generate “word of Internet” advertising, and RSS feeds allow your fans to receive syndicated updates of your blog automatically. This is a great way to increase your opportunities without requiring any additional effort.

The viral power of social media marketing is like nothing that’s ever been available to business and leaders before. By using a well targeted blog as the foundation, you can take the skills above, and watch the results increase incrementally. Other social networking tools and users will find your business based on the content of your blog. A blog reaches the people you need to reach, you teach them what you have to offer, and they tell you exactly what they want and need. Since your skills are growing based on blogging, your results just get better and better. It’s a perfect mix of win-win for you and your potential buyers.

Writing, listening, thinking, speaking, learning, selling, gauging, expanding, and networking are some of the hidden benefits of a blog that I’ve seen transform potential into strategy. Businesses that take advantage of this simple tool have the power to cast a wider net, on the Internet, than ever before.

How has blogging made you a better business person?

Your Fabulous! So How Does Your Business Get Found So Others Know

Guy Kawasaki had a terrific insight the other day about getting found in the increasingly competitive, distributed web.

Every day internet marketing is getting tougher because consumers of content are getting more and more control over what they see.  Understanding search behavior in the distributed web is the key to success. Getting found by Google, Ping, Yahoo and the other search engines when your top prospects are searching for solutions is critical to your business success.

So how do we make this happen?

1. Be YOU! Don’t blend into what others are doing in your market or niche. You have your own style and personality. Let that shine and you will be differentiated and remarkable. You want people to react. The worst thing that can happen to your business is blending in. Remember, your Fabulous!
2. Create educational, interesting content that your target customers will want. Articles, videos, podcasts, ebooks, whitepapers, blog posts…and distribute them everywhere. Make sure you optimize content distribution by using keywords for titles and descriptions so they are search engine friendly.
3. Promote your content by tweeting, emailing, updating Facebook Fan pages and other Web 2.0 sites. Get business partners to promote your new content. Remember, with content as your “bait” you are not selling.  Your adding great quality information to the discussion in the distributed, social web. Both humans and search engines love that.
4. Measure the results and feedback you get.  It’s easy to find out which articles are getting picked up more than others, what gets retweeted, whitepapers that get downloaded the most. Dial in your distributed content plan to optimize your conversion by doing more of what is working.

The web is getting more competitive every day.  For those of us that are newer at this, it will take us longer to break though than competitors who started last year.  But the good news is if you are persistent and consistent, and have a unique voice and selling proposition, you will get found and can even win over time.

Do you have content distribution tricks that have worked really well?

Social Media Marketing: The Game Where Everyone Gets To Play Publisher!

The game in social media marketing is to build authority in your market or niche.  Why? To differentiate your business and build a defensible mote that can get you more pricing power, special relationships and winner of the coolest business in your market award!

To play this social media marketing game, you will come to the realization that you are now in the content publishing business.  Blogs, articles, whitepapers, ebooks…Phew!  We know this is overwhelming for most businesses and marketing organizations. We can tell by looking at your eyes as we explain the social media strategy and programs that your business should launch…yes, we can see your eyes start to widen and a sudden panic set’s in.

Copyblogger has a terrific post The 7 Realities of Social Media Marketing that characterizes this issue well.

Ok, take a deep breath and follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have a strong Unique Selling Proposition in your market or niche.  A clearly defined positioning will help you think about content strategy and be much more engaging and passionate about your message.

2. Don’t sell, teach! The distributed web is a collection of conversations in social media settings where a hard sell will be out of place.  The way to get attention is to inform and educate.  Should be easy because you are an expert in your market right?

3. Use content that answers the questions and issues your target customers are searching for.  Do some research to find out what these questions are.  Look in the forums they hang out in, Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, conduct surveys, do keyword research. If you get this right, your will have a content strategy that your customers will flock to read.

4. SEO and site design matter! You will need to get your site structure right with landing pages, “link bait” and distributed content all lined up so you get the SEO benefit of this effort and convert target customers to your list.

5. Outsource content development and other tasks.  Don’t abdicate it, just outsource so you can maximize your internal resources on what they do best and benefit from expert writers, content publishers website designers and SEO specialists.

We are not saying this “new normal” of marketing is easy. But if you plan well, do the research upfront and outsource help you will succeed. Even better, you will get there faster, better cheaper than competitors.

What are tricks that you use to produce and publish great content?

Business Marketing: Optimizing For Humans And Machines

Marketing in the “new normal” means optimizing your messaging for both humans and machines.  That’s right, you heard me right.  Before you call out the Terminators let me explain.

Marketing in the distributed web provides a much larger footprint to find and engage  potential customers.  The other big benefit is that every piece of content has the opportunity to be indexed by the search engines. So you need to keep both of these objectives in mind as you write and distribute content.

Here are four tips to keep your distributed web social media campaign looking good to humans and search engine machines so you achieve your business objectives:

1. Your number one objective is to convert your customers, so when in doubt, go with the customer focused copy or headline.

2. Do your research upfront and identify (and answer) the most burning questions your target customers have.  This will keep  communication on target for both search engines and target customers.

3. Focus on a few keywords or phrases that your target customers are searching for, and thread those through your distributed campaign. Everything should line up including headlines, descriptions, Web 2.0 page headings and copy in the body of your articles or other text.

4. Use keywords as anchor text for links out, and also use the same anchor text to cross link your various distributed content.

So, we don’t need John Conner to save us from the machines.  We just need a good keyword strategy and consistency in how we use them.

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