www.blytheco.com | [email protected] | 1.800.425.9843

www.blytheco.com | [email protected] | 1.800.425.9843
Social Media 102
So much has changed since our last social media guide. Missed it? You can find it at
www.blytheco.com/guides.
Today, there are a gazillion new ways to share content and there have also been
several new updates on mobile devices that offer better social platform integration.
Along with this, we’ve seen an explosion of new social software allowing you to do
things like cultivate customer relationships with social engagement, pin images to
online pinboards, and even target your status updates to a specific group of people.
Something new is happening with social media every week - if not every day.
We get that it’s hard to keep track of everything that’s going on. In light of all this
social frustration, we’ve put together this guide with the hopes that it will make
social media a little bit more comfortable for you. For real-time updates and to
share your real-time thoughts use #blyDEA on Twitter.
Cortez NaPue
Social Media Manager
www.Blytheco.com
@BlythecoLLC
Social CRM
Social media has very quickly evolved from a simple form of communication to a complex
platform for businesses to use to create new ways of working with their customers. Customers
have a new set of expectations for businesses now, including visibility, transparency, and
personalization – these expectations are largely driven by their experience on social media.
As social media continues to evolve, the concept of Social CRM is one way that businesses
are using technology to create a more comprehensive picture of their customer relationships.
CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a combination of processes and tools used
by organizations to manage their interactions with customers and potential customers. One of
the goals of CRM is to maintain and improve customer relationships. Another is to determine
target customers for new marketing campaigns, which should help to develop qualified sales
leads for the sales team.
There is typically a database involved that contains information about a customer, including the
different interactions the organization has had with them from sales, to support, to marketing
activities. It can also include interactions a customer has had with an organization's website
such as filling out a form for a brochure. There is a huge variety of CRM systems available
today, including Sage SalesLogix, SugarCRM, NetSuite and Salesforce.com.
Social CRM is not a replacement for traditional CRM, it simply augments it. Social CRM is where
businesses utilize content posted on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or blogs
to strengthen customer relations. Now that there are so many new ways to communicate with
our customers, the social web has easily become the most accessible.
The key differentiator between traditional CRM and Social CRM is that CRM is more about
operations, and Social CRM refers more to the cultivation of relationships. People no longer
just talk to an organization about their products and services, they talk to other people across
social networks, read blogs, comment on articles, etc. People share their thoughts and opinions
and acquire others’ feedback often long before they ever communicate with an actual vendor.
As an organization, you need to be aware of these conversations and actively participate in
them ‘a la social media.’
Social CRM Do’s
Check your social
media pages multiple
times a day. A business
that is attentive to its
social media followers’
questions and requests
gives a strong first
impression. Show your
current and potential
customers that you
provide excellent
customer service by
responding to social media requests
promptly.
Maintain professionalism. Social media
demands as much professionalism as an
email to a customer would. While social
media can use more casual language
than a sales report, you must ensure that
your interactions with followers are
appropriate. Treat your social media
followers just like you would a potential
customer you meet on a sales call.
Provide helpful information. If a customer
posts a question or complaint on your
social media page, give it prompt
attention. Provide a phone number or
email address where you can discuss the
matter with the customer in more detail.
Link to information about your business
on the social media page. Carefully
select articles or facts that will interest
your followers.
Social CRM Don’ts
Don’t engage in a war of words. Part of
Social CRM requires putting out fires,
whether you have a customer who is
displeased with your product or service or
one who is looking for a refund. Do not
disregard complaints. No matter how
ridiculous they sound, address them
politely and try to resolve the issue quickly.
Don’t be reactive. An effective Social CRM
strategy should be proactive, reaching out
to customers before a problem hits. Don’t
let your social media page become a
venue for customers to complain.
Engaging them in positive discussions
helps reduce negativity and, instead,
positively promote your brand.
Don’t begin a Social CRM campaign
without a plan. What are your goals for
your social media pages? How will you
measure these goals? How will you
manage customer service issues?
Establishing a specific, goal-oriented plan
will make your Social CRM strategy more
effective. Aimless posting will not.
6 Steps to Developing Your Social CRM Strategy for Business
1. Figure out if Social CRM will Support Your Organizational Goals
No matter what your corporate vision is or what stage of an enterprise process you’re involved
in, Social CRM will have to visibly contribute, especially if it’s intended to get the support from
staff and stakeholders that it needs. If you can’t find an organizational goal that Social CRM will
support, now’s the time to think long and hard about whether it makes sense to embark on the
process of getting Social CRM up and running at your organization.
2. Where does Social CRM fit in?
Social CRM touches a lot of areas in an organization. You need to determine what elements of
Social CRM will be required to help meet the desired organizational goals. Some of the broad
choices are:
Internal vs. external audience – customers, suppliers, partners vs. employees and contractors
Stand alone vs. integrated core business systems
Business application – Most people think CRM is only good for marketing or sales, but as times
have changed, many have seen opportunities emerge with using CRM in product development,
customer service and supply chain management.
3. Which People Are Important to My Social CRM Deployment?
Determine which stakeholders at your company (human resources, marketing department,
executives, part time associates, etc.) need to be on board for Social CRM to succeed and get
them involved. Depending on how many and who they are, this can be an informal working
group, a more formal program or even an official department.
4. How are Businesses Using Social CRM Now?
Social technology is changing every day. With that, there will surely come a slew of new
processes, procedures and policies that we’re going to have to be familiar with if we want to
use Social CRM successfully. It’s important to know which of these are currently in place and
which are not.
5. Define How You Want Social CRM to Look in the Future
How do you want Social CRM to improve your company? It’s important to set goals so that you
have something to measure your success against. Be sure to set milestones and to regularly
check the results of your Social CRM efforts.
6. Determine How You Want Those Goals to Happen
Departments often set lofty goals however forget to outline how exactly those goals are to be
achieved. If Social CRM is not tended to properly, like rising bread, it too will falter. Sketch a
roadmap of what needs to be done to move ahead. This can even be as simple as, “we have no
idea and need to hire someone to help us before we can move forward” – the key is to be
completely honest about your team’s capabilities.
Content Generation: Why Blog Just to Blog?
Blogs are everywhere and are written on
just about every topic imaginable. As of
2011, on tumblr and WordPress alone
there were a whopping 110 million blogs
worldwide. So, with this plethora of
opinions, facts and anecdotes, what can
one do to boost their own content’s
visibility and blog activity? What actions
can you avoid in order to strengthen your
content? Here are a few business blogging
no-no’s that’ll help you shine.
13 Business Blogging No-No’s
1. Not Integrating Your Blog With Your Website
By failing to do this, you are losing out on valuable SEO opportunities. If your blog acts as a
subdomain or an extension of your corporate website, you’ll get more indexed pages on
Google. There’s also something to be said about the centralization and branding of having
your blog be a part of your corporate website. People don’t have to go to two different sites
entirely and you won’t be stuck with the work of running separate SEO campaigns for either
domain.
2. Tooting Your Own Horn
Yes, if you’re a business, it can be hard not to indulge in free advertising about yourself if
given the chance. And while posting from time-to-time about product-related news is
acceptable, you don’t want to become self-centered in your posts. If you do this, people will
tend to think that you are disingenuous and only have pleasant things to say about yourself.
Try to create content surrounding current events relevant to your industry or audience.
Be unbiased. In social media, transparency and honesty are key.
3. Publishing Infrequently or Inconsistently
The more you blog, the more traction you get
and the more likely you are to generate a lead.
Pretty simple.
4. Publishing Stuff about the Latest Perfumes…When You’re in Software Development
First, let’s be clear - on your personal blogs you’re pretty much free to post whatever you’d
like. That said, if you’re a software developer and perfumes are your hobby, then post away!
However, if your software development business is posting content on perfumes on its blog,
that can lead to a few issues. If you are publishing off-topic content, it can hurt your chances
of developing a substantive community or a community at all! People like guarantees and
are usually satisfied if the topics are related to what should have enticed them to your blog
in the first place – your business.
5. The Monotony of Content
Someone once said that variety is the spice of life. Clearly they were a blogger. As
mentioned before, it’s important to stay on topic with your posts, but that doesn’t mean
that every article has to be on the same subject. If you’re in enterprise services, try to branch
out from ERP subjects, but also explore the latest innovations in CRM, social selling, and
even social media! Also try adding different images, infographics and feature guest
bloggers from time to time if possible.
6. Writing, but not Enticing
It’s great to write content, however, how will people find it if you do not engage them?
Unless you’re Oprah Winfrey or Justin Bieber, people generally aren’t going out of their way
to find an article that’s nestled in the deep dark crevices of Google space. Lucky for you
there’s several ways to get people’s attention and keep them engaged.
a. Share your posts via various social networking platforms
b. Use the appropriate keywords and tags to grab people’s attentions
c. Keep blog comments section open
d. Regularly monitor and reply to comments
e. Do not moderate comments
f. Ask questions in your blog.
7. Failing to Optimize for Search
The number of terms that a website can rank is directly related to the size of the site. Having
a blog (an integrated one that is) can significantly improve your odds particularly if you’re
posting frequently enough. Blogging is an essential practice for traffic building. To better
optimize your blogs, you should remember to use the right keywords, keeping in mind that
the most important places for keywords are within the body of the URL and article title.
Using the appropriate keywords and phrases in the best way (i.e. using “how to use a blog”
vs. “blogging”) can help improve your search rank.
8. Forgetting to Have Good Blog Structure and Design
Not only should your blog website look nice aesthetically, every article should be laid out in
a fashion that promotes engagement. For starters, the blog homepage should clearly link
back to your corporate site and vice-versa. It would also be a good idea for each blog article
to have a clear call-to-action (CTA) along with a visible subscription CTA. Lastly, it wouldn’t
hurt to have noticeable social sharing options as this would allow for easy promotion of your
content for readers.
9. Rushing Through Blog Titles
Blog titles are important – more important than many of us realize. It’s not exactly the same
as turning in a midterm paper that your instructor had to read no matter how lame the title
was; when it comes to your blog, this is the first thing people will see and in most cases, the
first and only thing that will be shared using social tools. To this end, it is important to have
titles that are concise, not vague, and have the right keywords. When someone looks at your
blog title, they need to have a pretty clear idea of what the article is about. Actionable
keywords are great attention-getters as well. “How-tos” and “Top Tens” are attention gold.
10. Burning Out From the Pressure of Original Content
Contrary to popular belief, all blog posts don’t have to be original, nor do they only have to
come from one source. Many blogs participate in “content curation” which is basically the
selection and aggregation of content from different sources on a specific topic. Many
readers benefit from this as it saves them the time of searching for the content themselves.
It can also be useful to tap into your own network and search for guest bloggers, including
contributions from your employees.
11. Not Preparing for Lead Generation
If there are few (or maybe even zero) calls-to-action (CTAs) on your blog, this can severely
limit its potential to convert visitors into leads for your business. Test the placement success
of your CTAs! You may discover that placing links to your webinars have a higher click-rate
when placed at the top of each blog post.
12. Failing to Use Social Media
As mentioned before, it’s a great, if not necessary idea to share your blog posts across your
social networks. If the right keywords are used and if the blog is set up correctly, you have
the potential to reach a huge audience. Sure, success will not happen overnight, but the
more you begin to share your content, the more people will begin to notice you and in turn
share your posts. With social media you have the potential to establish a presence and can
do so by doing things like sharing to LinkedIn groups, on your Facebook page or other
networks based on your interests.
13. Not Paying Attention To Your Blog Analytics
In business, everything needs to be measured. Your blog analytics are what will tell you
what posts are successful, who clicks on them, and what times you get the most views
among many other things. Basically, your analytics are what you need to see in order to
measure your blog’s performance. It’s pretty much difficult to improve without them.
Remember that you may not see immediate results when implementing
these changes. With blog posting, it will take some time to get into the
groove of things and to fully understand what works best for your
business. Don’t give up though! You can do it and you will!
Tools Update
How to Use
for Your Business
Five years ago, who would have thought there would have been an entire industry devoted to
digitally ‘checking in’ to a place from your smartphone? Foursquare had some 381,576,300
individual user check-ins, 6 million users, and a 3400% growth rate in 2010 alone. So, it's
probably safe to say that location-based services are no longer a fad but a long-term reality.
With this latest boom of social location-based services, many businesses have noticed
opportunities to use these tools to market their companies to the public. It’s a great resource
for businesses with brick-and-mortar locations to promote themselves and costs pennies.
Here’s some help with getting started:
First thing's first: Verify your business
Claim your spot in the world of Foursquare by verifying your business. Doing this will allow you
to promote specials to Foursquare users and view the demographics of people who check in.
Here's how it works:
Create a Foursquare account.
After creating your account, search for your business in the search bar at the top of your screen.
(Chances are someone has created the location on Foursquare by now).
Click the "Claim Venue" link (pictured) to start the verification process. You'll have to provide
your business's email address and phone number so Foursquare can call and verify.
Create a special to reward your valued customers and draw in new traffic
According to John Coe in The Fundamentals
of Business To Business Sales and Marketing,
"68% of long-term customers stop buying
because they just don't feel loved." What if you
had a rewards program that was powered by
Foursquare? What if a customer received 10%
off every fifth visit? Foursquare makes it easy to
keep track of visits and reward your more loyal
patrons with mobile coupons, prizes, discounts,
or other bonuses.
Here's how it works:
After Foursquare gets in touch with you and verifies your business, you have the option to use
the Merchant Platform to set up a special for your venue. This can be as simple as offering a
free drink to anyone who checks in, to offering discounts after someone checks in a certain
number of times.
When a Foursquare user is nearby, the system will mark your business with a "Special" badge
to let them know you have an offer. Foursquare also offers free stickers for your shop's window
to let passersby know you have a special.
Once a customer qualifies for a special, an "unlock" screen will show up on their smartphone.
Train your employees to recognize this so they can give the customer his reward.
Get to know your customers by tracking who checks in
When it comes to analytics, Foursquare makes it easy to
find your male to female ratio, who your regular customers
are, the time of day you get the most check-ins, and how
your customers checking in compares to the customers
who are signed up for your loyalty program. You can also
see which customers are sharing their check-ins on
Facebook or Twitter and spreading the word to their
friends and followers.
If used correctly, it can yield lots of useful data. If women dominate your store, you can change
your marketing to appeal to more men, for example.
To view the stats, visit your venue's page after you have verified it with Foursquare.
Larger brands can create custom badges
Big brands like MTV, The New York Times, and The History Channel have already taken
advantage of Foursquare's brand pages and badges. It allows you to leave tips and award your
followers with a custom badge when they have met certain goals.
Here's a tip: add tips
After Foursquare verifies your brand and creates your brand page, you will be able to leave tips
for your followers. In the world of Foursquare, tips are short comments about places you've
checked into. Brands can leave tips at locations related to their business that will show up when
a Foursquare user checks in to that venue.
To add tips, log in with your verified brand account and search for the venue you would like to
leave a tip at. (You can also do this from Foursquare's smartphone app). You'll see the tip box
(pictured above) at the bottom left of the venue page. Enter your tip and click share.
How to Use Google + for Your Business
Google + is similar to Facebook as you can design your own
business page, but instead of “liking” your fan page, your
audience instead adds your page to a “circle.”
Using Google+ along with your other social media avenues
allows you to cross-promote your content to users that may
not be on the other platforms you are using. If you’re just
getting started, we recommend posting very similar content
on Google+ as you do on Facebook. Google+ is very
search-friendly, so remember to use plenty of keywords,
phrases and links to improve your search position.
Google+ has strong referral traffic to blogs and other content as a result of the “+1” button.
Sites that enable viewers to recommend content using the +1 button have been said to
generate 3.5 times more traffic from Google+ than websites that don’t have the button
installed. This button sits on your webpage and allows users to click when they see something
on your page they would like to share. We recommend using the button on your blogs and key
webpages that are producing a lot of traffic.
One of the most important uses of Google+ for businesses is the use of “hangouts” on the
platform. Hangouts are a versatile collaboration tool where you can video chat, share
documents, broadcast chats, share screens, surf the web or watch video while chatting
alongside, and more. Hangouts can be used for crowdsourcing ideas or delivering information,
hosting Q&As or providing demos, or otherwise leveraging collaboration to connect to your
audience.
Google+ isn’t going to replace other networks yet, so your use of Google+ shouldn’t be at the
expense of Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter which are the three major social avenues.
How to Use
for Your Business
Pinterest, an online “board” of images curated by its users, is
largely about visual content. If your product or service is
highly visual, you should definitely start a Pinterest page. You
can pin items from the web which will then show up on your
page in the categories that you set up. Pinterest is very strong
for B2C companies, especially if your products are design-based.
How should B2B companies use Pinterest? An infographic, a simple representation of significant
data from reports or surveys, was made for consumption on Pinterest, and can link back to your
website or blog. Photos or videos also do well. Pinterest also integrates well into email or social
campaigns on other platforms to help companies authentically connect with customers by
showing people using or recommending products and displaying them in an appealing way.
Snack brand Pretzel Crisps does a good job engaging authentically with its audience on its
Pinterest page, encouraging the pinning of creative uses of the snack, foods that go well with
the snack, and much more, to make an interesting and dynamic page.
Traditional media also tends to be very suited to adapting to Pinterest – magazines like Real
Simple and newspapers – even the Wall Street Journal - are making the most of Pinterest on
their pages and getting strong followings.
Pinterest is also highly mobile, thus expanding the opportunity for your company to reach
additional eyeballs. It’s easily viewed and shared from smartphones as you can see on the
iPhone image below.
Beware of self-promotion on Pinterest. It is a lifestyle site, so show off the lifestyle afforded by
the product you represent. It’s also tough to get found on Pinterest alone – getting activity to
your Pinterest page requires diligent and creative promotion on your other social channels. So
send out an email about your Pinterest page to drive traffic, or post about it on Facebook.
How to Use
for Your Business
There are two basic approaches to LinkedIn: the optimization of your individual profile and the
optimization of your Company’s profile.
On LinkedIn:
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Individual profiles matter
Your Company page is out there – optimize it!
Consider Groups – your own groups, or joining other groups
Answer and ask Questions
Answer and create Polls
LinkedIn, unlike Facebook is more focused on the Business-to-Business (B2B) type of opportunity,
but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a place where you can promote your brand if you are B2C. You
will want to go into it with eyes wide open and with a strategy to understand if this is the right
environment for you.
The goal of individual LinkedIn profiles used to be primarily job hunting. Today, however,
individual profiles have the power to help you create a network and a platform for engaging with
others to build a personal brand, expand sales opportunities, or just meet more interesting
people.
You also have the ability to join Groups to be a part of a conversation with like-minded people.
Participation in Answers and Polls can also help establish you as a person with credibility and
value to offer.
Your LinkedIn company page automatically gathers information based on current and past
employee profiles. It’s a centralized location where millions of LinkedIn members can go to stay
in the loop on company news, products and services, business opportunities and job openings.
You can:
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•
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Tell your company’s story
Highlight your products and services
Engage with followers
Share career opportunities
Explore companies of interest
Get the latest company updates and industry news
You also can and should modify the Company page with the products and services that you
offer. You may also want to set up Groups around a topic that your team members or customers
have a particular interest in or are experts in as this can help you reach out to potential users
that are interested in that particular topic.
LinkedIn has also developed a very strong pay-per-click targeted advertising program. You’re
able to target your ad by:
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•
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Job Title
Job Function
Industry
Geography
Company Size
Company Name
Seniority
Age
Gender
LinkedIn Group
Advertising on LinkedIn might be a good choice for you if your target audience consists of B2B
decision-makers who tend to trust LinkedIn more than consumer-oriented social platforms like
Facebook.