Marybeth Petescia

Via: OnlineMBA.com

There is such value to social media that I am shocked every time one of our customers tells me their company restricts them from using social media sites at work. Especially those in the sales and marketing sections of their job. Besides the obvious networking benefits, it is a fantastic way to seek out new business through search options in all of the sites. If you could filter your searches by location, job title, keywords, age, and even hobbies… wouldn’t you want to use it?

Using these search options you can quickly target new individuals that may not be on your radar. I have used this method to introduce myself to new prospects and present our brand by sending a small non-advert-sounding message. I try to customize each message to the actual person so it is more of a personal message not just a general blast to a list. This may sound cumbersome, and sometimes it is, but because you are able to more specifically target customers, they are more valueable and more likely to respond.

With the power to use all of these search capabilities, there are also ways to abuse them and quickly ruin a connection before it has even begun. I thought I would share some basic tips on how to avoid this:

1. “Know how to address your industry”: This is a “duh” in all areas of marketing but even more so when using social media. If you don’t know how to address your industry, do some background research so you sound credible in your messages. Don’t be afraid to reach out to those already connected in the industry and ask their advice in wording and method of contact, etc. ( I ask our fearless sales team all the time about companies and the existing relationships we have with them before I blindly message them as if they are new to us).

2. “The customer is still always right”: Because you are using yourself as a representation of your company online, it is extra important to stay neutral when provoked by a customer’s feedback. Never have anything but a friendly tone and publically address the conflict in the most professional way possible. If it becomes an issue, take the conversation offline. Once you tarnish your name is will affect the brand you are connected with and we all know how detrimental that can be.

3. “Know what is being said about your company”: It is equally important to find and keep track of all that is being said about your company. The great thing about social media is it allows you to address your customers and gain real insight to what they think about you. This feedback can help you generate new ideas how to improve or know what methods are already working. You can also ask your audience what they would like. I experience this when I post discussions on LinkedIn about controversial topics. People love to voice their opinion especially on a topic they are passionate about. I will post an unbiased question and let my audience run with it. Again, you need to be tracking the conversation and be ready to mediate if necessary.

4. “Try to keep a line between business & personal”: 

This is very difficult to segment because everyone wants their own page on things like Facebook and Twitter for their own relations. There are a few ways to do this though. Either have more than one account with a different name (maiden name or include middle name) or keep messages neutral. Make your decision on how you want to segment them early on so the two don’t intermix. It is of course great to be a little more personal on social media in business relations (the point of getting to know the person behind the title) but there is a line between discussing your hobbies and how heartbroken you are about your recent break-up.

I personally keep my facebook page out of my work life. I have dedicated my LinkedIn & Twitter accounts to my company because that is the best way for us to reach our customers. I use our company facebook when friending other companies and industry individuals. You may also consider creating a separate gmail account where these notifications will be sent and keep them from mixing in with your personal ones.

5. “Keep up-to-date”: If you make a connection stick with it. Don’t let it fall to the wayside so a month later when you pop back up they scratch their heads at who you are. Once you add them to LinkedIn, engage in a conversation with them, suggest groups they should become a part of and find them on other networks like Twitter. Don’t do this all within 5 minutes because you don’t want them to feel completely harassed but over the following week or so it is a good way to continue to be noticed by them. This way when you contact them in the future, they feel more comfortable answering you.

Every day I am learning more and more about social media and the web of connections it can make. I’ve started keeping excel sheets of certain professionals I am connecting with for specific reasons in order to help stay organized. So far this has gone reasonably well and I have been able to contact new individuals who are unfamiliar with my company and get them to become members of our other accounts. I can also then get access to their email address on LinkedIn once I am connected which is great for future correspondence off social media.

Most of social media requires a little trial and error, so don’t be afraid to try a new approach or structure your accounts in a unique way. When figuring out exactly how your audience responds, it is necessary to try and measure numerous methods before you can really hone in on which ones are worthwhile and effective. But at the same time, always remember social media is exactly what it’s defined as…viral communication. So be adventurous and wary at the same time.

-MB

It’s offical, social media is taking over the world.
I had blogged about this back in the fall on my company blog when this article came out in the Harvard Review and caused me to really grasp what is happening to marketing this today. It’s still one of my favorite topics so I thought I should repost it here.

 Social media has opened new marketing and advertising avenues that have companies everywhere scrambling to either become a part of it or figure out how to restructure in order to accommodate it. If that isn’t enough, it is now destroying our clear marketing understanding completely. But this is not a negative thing, in fact if understood, may lead us into an entirely new way of thinking which could be exactly what some of our brands need.

Traditionally, the process of customer product consideration to product purchasing has been often diagrammed in the shape of a funnel. For example, when buying a new computer, a customer would normally start out by thinking of many different kinds and brands of computers they could buy in the awareness stage. That ring then narrows as the customer picks out the ones they like in the interest stage. That is further narrowed as a customer finds the one or two they really want in the desire stage and will then lead to a purchase in the action stage.

But then social media showed up and squashed that diagram completely according to David C. Edelman in “Branding in the Digital Age – “You’re spending your money in all the wrong places” –Harvard Business Review.

Now when a customer considers a brand, they already have ideas and opinions about certain ones based off of what they have heard or read reviews about online. So the traditional funnel becomes oddly misshapen to look a little more like and egg than a funnel…

But the key component is not the shape of the diagram here, but the importance of what happens after a customer buys your product. It is now more than ever EXTREMELY important that your customer has not only bought your product but that you have done everything you can to make sure they are enjoying it, feel a bond to it, and address any areas where there may be discontent.

So normally, marketers will spend their budgets on the top portion of the funnel: i.e. fancy banner ads, window displays, and mailings when they more important piece of the diagram is what happens with the customer relationship once the product is bought. Social media now allows customers to complain about that product if they are not happy or write a bad review. It also lets customers “like” their product and TELL THEIR FRIENDS TO GET ONE. That is the word of mouth that is most important and more than we ever realized it could be.

“In many categories the single most powerful impetus to buy is someone else’s advocacy. Yet marketers focus on media spend (principally advertising) rather than driving on advocacy.” – David C. Edelman

We market and push our brands out to our lists and audiences spending on marketing the concept only. This is 100% important don’t get me wrong, but when it comes to getting new customers I believe it is much more successful to wait on your existing audience’s experience hand and foot so that they (with the direct contacts to the industry) can go back to the office and their colleagues and say “hey, this is a great product, you should try it.” Or refer the product/brand to other acquaintances in the industry.

Setting up your social media accounts to make sure your customers are happy everywhere they are is more than necessary now. Make sure you are tailoring to your customers because they are your biggest advertisers. SO squash your funnel thinking and start socializing! (And read that Harvard Business Review article, its great: http://hbr.org/2010/12/branding-in-the-digital-age/ar/1)

-MB

Im not a Blackberry user so when I would see these I used to just think they were for blackberry users. I would watch my friends capture each other’s pin’s and join a messaging world exclusive to the blackberry user by scanning each other’s barcode like the one above. (Which btw, if you scan, it will send you to my Twitter…follow me!) It wasn’t until my brother added one to his business card that is hit me how viral these little images could potentially become.

Let’s say, for the sake of an example, you were a very widely used brand of face soap. If you put one of these little guys on your bottles (which most do already for tracking purposes) with the scanning information that would send your buyer to your facebook fan page, they could ‘like’ the product immediately. Taking it a step further, what if you created a ‘foursquare’ type site for products. You buyer could check-in whenever you buy the product and accrue credits. You could win badges and become mayor of the brand, accumulating little discounts and coupons through each level of the badge you earn. I think it has the same draw as beating levels in a video game. You want to win the game so you keep trying each level. And if your buyer already has an allegiance to your brand because it works for their skin, why not start a viral campaign through them? Have them show their friends they’re buying your product through social media?

These little tags have the ability to evolve as well. I think in the future you may be able to amend their shape/color to become more creative in advertising and hold different types of information in them. Multiple links depending on what you want to do with them. We all have these smart phones in our hands; let your consumers market for you!

I would be interested to hear if someone has more experience on the evolution of these. Where are they being used? How are companies and advertisers adopting them? I have seen them on print materials in my own company but have not see a company make a viral campaign out of them yet. When will the barcode app become a built in feature to every phone?

-MB

After now spending over a full year diving into the social media world, I am confident in saying, “I get it.” It definitely took dedication and a few mistakes to figure out what really got my audience to respond but I am finally at the stage where I know exactly where my audience is and what tone to speak to them in. When I first began, I had assumed they would be waiting for me to engage them on facebook, twitter, and linkedin…how very wrong I was.  Not only did I have to find them (my industry’s social media of choice is LinkedIn & Twitter) but I had to figure out how to get them to hear my marketing messages. And that is where I feel I am able to now say, “I got it!” If there is one thing I have learned it is: how important it is to build your Reach/influence.

 I consider ‘reach and influence’ two words that go hand in hand in social media. Yes, reaching numbers looks good and yes reaching a mass amount of people with a message is considered a win in most marketing initiatives. But in my opinion, without influence, your reach is futile.

For ages, marketing has pushed for reach in the form of newspapers, television, radio, etc. What social media has that these other mediums never had, is to bring the communication back in full circle. This is where you need influence. If you have not only reached your customer with your message but successfully influenced them, they are likely to give you immediate feedback in the form of comments, re-tweeting, or recommending.  With the format of twitter, you can blast a message out to potentially thousands of users in seconds. One comment from a follower with 1,000 other followers takes that message even further, and so on. The web of possibility is endless.

More often than not, I see a company blasting out marketing message after marketing message…but it’s senseless. Who cares how many people’s newsfeed your message came up on if not one person has stopped to look at it?

Think about it; once you categorize an email as SPAM, your eyes just tend to glaze over those emails every time that company emails you. The same principle works in social media. Once someone sees your name/picture, and they have categorized your messaging as marketing only, the spam goggles go on and they can’t see another thing you write. It’s difficult to change this perception so it’s really important you build your presence accordingly so you avoid this.

Here is where the 5:1 rule really comes in to play. ONLY push out ONE message to every FIVE you create in participation with someone else’s posts. Comment, ask a question, or retweet 5 messages to every 1 that you put out of your own. Participate, participate, participate. By communicating with your audience you are building relationships and inviting them to communicate back with you. The messages you put out not only have a much higher chance of being read & recommended, but they will be apt to do so in future messaging as well.

To help show the way I think reach and influence on social media is best achieved, I put together a cycle to follow below:

Basically this shows the way I found most effective in adding to your reach while achieving the influence you need to build your following. If you notice, participation is in between every step because you need it to lead you through the cycle and to each step.

It’s pretty incredible to watch your audience start responding if you follow the above, especially on twitter. Just following people is not enough. Follow them, tweet with them, voice your opinion and don’t forget about them. Staying consistent will make you reliable and earn you loyalty among your followers. That’s it beauty of social media – the ability to endlessly receive feedback and create connections that will add mounds of value to your marketing.

In the last year and 1/2, I have jumped head first into the world of marketing focusing specifically on New Media Marketing. I was a timid at first to share my discoveries as I thought I was too inexperienced to offer anyone valuable advice. But then I stumbled the “blog button” on my company wiki & couldn’t resist…there the blabbering began.

Not expecting much response I chattered away about what methods were and were not working in our marketing campaigns, the new tools I was using to help manage the cumbersome amount of accounts we were active on, and how our audience was responding to our social media efforts. I was shocked the day I check the number of views on my first couple of posts and found more than 200 people in my company had clicked on my blog and left comments as well. As soon as my CEO and members of the Board of Directors began commenting, that was it - there was no stopping me after that. I have been blogging ever since.

It’s funny to me that I would end up in the digital marketing field when I am such a ‘pen to paper’ type of girl. There is something so nostalgic about holding an old weathered book vs. a sleek new kindle, yet here I am keeping up on the newest and latest trends. It’s that gratified feeling of reaching a mass of consumers with a message through social media that makes me so passionate about what I do. In the past year I have learned and experienced more than I ever thought possible upon first stepping into my role.

So, after much internal debate, I felt it was time to face the world. I plan to mirror the same voice and structure on here as I do on our company wiki and I encourage feedback. There is nothing like a good debate over a topic and since I am opening myself up to such a wider audience of expertise, I hope to learn some new marketing methods here as well.

Thank you for reading anything I have or will post in the future. Do not be afraid to let me know your thoughts as there is always room for further opinions! 

Looking forward to communicating!

Marybeth

@mpetescia