Social Media Case study – Yin Beauty & Arts Spa

July 13th, 2010

Yin Beauty & Arts Spa came to us two months ago with a need for social media marketing. Having attempted this effort on their own, they already had a Facebook page and Twitter account, but they were not current and not marketing-focused. Tweets and updates were happening sporadically at best and there was no concerted effort to build a base of friends and followers. We got to work adding a business page on Facebook with contact information, specials, hours of operation and contact info. Next, we built a plan to communicate with Yin’s Facebook and Twitter fan base on a regular basis.

In the two months since we’ve taken over, we have multiplied Yin’s followers many times over and most, within their demographic and geographic targets. We contacted a spa blogger to review the spa and got a rave review which continues to generate clicks to Yin’s website. Our plan to update Yin’s friends and followers 2-3 times per week is going smoothly. The content we are publishing achieves three goals: 1) establishes Yin as an authority on the subject of Spa treatments, 2) builds the Yin brand and keeps the brand top of mind and 3) increases sales through redemption of specials and referrals. We keep the Facebook page interesting and fresh by posting pictures and inviting comment. We also invite Facebook friends and fans to events and promotions utilizing Facebook’s event feature.

Not all of the action is owned by Facebook and Twitter. Among others, we have also set up Yin on Foursquare, a new social network where consumers can check-in to find specials and promotions. We are seeing a lot of unsolicited interest on Yin’s Foursquare page and additional activity to Yin’s site from this source.

Yin’s strategic use of social media marketing generates awareness, builds their brand, increases loyalty from current and potential clients and ultimately, builds sales. Yin shows appreciation to prospects and customers who follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare by offering special promotions to these fans and in doing so, stays top of mind and builds loyalty.

Whatever your business, social media offers an unprecedented opportunity for you to build new relationships with prospects and improve relationships with existing customers, communicate to them, interact with them, learn from them and show them your appreciation for their interest and patronage. Social media makes the job of customer relationship management not only easier and more affordable, but better, more personal, and more one-to-one than many existing marketing channels.

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Social Media Marketing: 5 things you need to keep in mind

June 29th, 2010

Social media has seen a rapid increase in the influence it is having in people’s lives including how they communicate, who they communicate with, the amount of information that is now at their fingertips and how all of this contributes to their pool of knowledge. Some people use social media to communicate with people they know, some use it to gather current information and others use it as a way to network and meet new people. Businesses use it as a way to broaden their customer base and make themselves present and available to consumers. For businesses that are just starting to use and build a social media presence, there are five things to consider.

1) Identify your target market and figure out which social networks your audience uses. There are too many social networks, with new ones popping up weekly, to get involved in all of them, especially for a small to medium sized business with limited resources. For example, if most of your customers are using Facebook or Twitter, that is where you want to be. If your customers aren’t using Foursquare, you don’t want to put your time and effort into it. Develop a clear plan for which networks you will target including the growth and communication strategy. Before you launch, make sure you have the time, budget and talented resources to implement and manage according to plan.

2) Get involved in conversations going on around you. While listening to conversations on your social networks, negatives about your company may come up. Engage in these negative conversations (within reason) and look for ways to turn the negatives into positives. Never be defensive – always engage in a positive way. Empathize, appreciate the feedback and post what you are doing to correct the issue. The more you engage with your customers, whether they are happy or unhappy, the more positive impression you will leave with the community.

3) Post frequent content to your social networks. Be an active member of the community. Post a blog, comment on other blogs, Tweet, post a Facebook update, upload videos and anything else that gives something back to the network and to those who connect with you. Communicating with your prospects keeps you top of mind. Also, more content on social sites equals more traffic to your website. Implement strategies to convert this traffic into leads and sales.

4) After planning and beginning to implement steps 1 through 3 you want to make sure your social media strategy works well with your business strategy. To do this you need to be aware of what social networking sites allow you to do. Then you want to learn how each site can help you to interact with customers so that you can be sure to get the most out of your effort. It is very important that your business knows how to use each site, so that you can be sure to use the best outlet to deliver your content to current and prospective customers.

5) Track the results of your social media efforts with website analytics software. Track visits to your site from social media networks and how many turn into leads and/or sales. With this in place, you can see the results of your social media activities and specifically, which networks are producing the best results for the least amount of effort.

If done right, social media can grow your business and give you access to a base of captive prospects larger than almost any other. Social media allows you to connect and interact with current and prospective customers where you can listen and be heard. Follow the five steps above when implementing your social media strategy and improve your chances for success!

What strategies are you using for social media? Join the discussion and post to comments.

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Not to Preach, but here are some important rules to keep in mind when tweeting

June 22nd, 2010

Social Media Marketing being the rage that it is has prompted a few early adapting businesses to build a healthy fan base of friends and followers. That’s the fun part, the easy part. Coming up with interesting, relevant and useful content on a regular basis within the 140 character limit can also is done without too much effort. But with this new and seemingly casual marketing channel, don’t throw your marketing communications rules out the door.

Like all marketing communications your business shares, your tweets need to be reflect your business “voice” …your brand. As tweets may be the first connection prospects have with your business, first impressions count, so don’t take lightly the importance of correct grammar and spelling. Errors could make you look like a typical spammer who either can’t write or spell, or doesn’t take the time to do so. Tweets need to be clear and concise, but they also need to be interesting, compelling and relevant to your audience. Remember, an interesting tweet is far more likely to be read and re-tweeted.

Always double check your links to make sure they work. Whether you are connecting to your website, your blog, or a cool video you have developed for YouTube, if your link doesn’t work, it doesn’t make you look good, and you will certainly lose visitors who are potential customers.

For a tweeter, nothing is more rewarding than having others recognize a tweet as worthy of being re-tweeted. A great tweet that gets re-tweeted can “go viral”, the holy grail of tweeting. A tweet that goes viral can grow a fan base exponentially overnight. Many inexperienced tweeters make full use of the 140 characters available, unwittingly making it hard for others to re-tweet. If one of your goals is to have your tweets re-tweeted, keep them shorter, to 120 characters max so that there is room for others to re-tweet with a short comment.

Always re-read your tweets before sending! This gives you one last chance to make sure your tweet makes sense and to catch any errors. First impressions mean everything – put your best foot forward. With a well written, interesting and relevant tweet, fellow tweeters are much more likely to pay attention to what you are saying, click on your link and re-tweet your message.

What techniques do you use to write and proof tweets? Join the discussion and let us know what works for you.

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Facebook… “There’s an App For That!”

June 8th, 2010

Facebook started as a great place to catch up with old friends, but in case you haven’t been paying attention, it has become so much more. As the largest and fastest growing social media network, there are growing opportunities for business to get exposure and connect with new prospects and nurture relationships with existing customers. To facilitate this, Facebook and third party developers have been quietly developing apps for business that offer various tools to market and communicate to prospects and customers. These applications help you to connect with what has become a huge and largely untapped market.

Evaluating a number of these new apps, four have bubbled up as our top picks:

Promotions App Promotions is an app that allows businesses to create and implement marketing campaigns to run on their business page …for those early adapting businesses who have developed one. This app offers options for businesses to engage customers and prospects such as entering contests, offering coupons, giveaways and other ways of engaging an audience.

Signup App Signup Form provides a way for businesses to gather information about and interact with consumers outside of Facebook. With this app, consumers can sign up for a variety of marketing communication mechanisms offered, such as sign up for a service, a newsletter, product update notifications, or other news or information that the business may offer. The draw is that consumers can take these actions within Facebook, eliminating the need for them to leave and visit the company website. Being so easy, this app improves signup rates over signups done by a more traditional link.

Networked Blogs App Networked Blogs is a tool that enables businesses to promote their blog on Facebook and find and follow other blogs. The import utility puts blog feeds to any profile or fan (Like) page. Networked Blogs is the largest blogging and news community on Facebook and contains a directory of blogs that users can search by topic or geographic location. For businesses that promote themselves or host blogs, this app is a must.

Tag Biz App Tag Biz Business Network is great for business networking. It is designed to do the networking for you. Tag Biz automatically lists businesses using the app in the Tag Biz directory which contains over 7000 entries. Business can also design a customized business card and signature for Facebook messages and wall postings. This is a great app for creating and expanding a business network.

If you’ve thought about marketing your business on Facebook, the time has come to take this great idea and turn it into a plan. Unlike Facebook from a year ago, new apps are making this easier and more effective to make an impact and see results. With these apps, it’s easier than ever to reach the huge number of Facebook members, get your brand out, entice prospects and develop strong relationships with existing customers.

Have you had success using these apps or others on Facebook? What Facebook marketing strategies have worked for you? Share your story and join the discussion!

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Foursquare…Is This What Small Businesses Have Been Waiting For?

June 1st, 2010

Foursquare is growing by some 15,000 people every day and receiving some 10+ check-ins every second. If consumers are joining Foursquare, checking in and talking about the places they are going, isn’t this something that business should take advantage of? Foursquare seems to have opened up an area in the social networking realm allowing consumers to communicate about where they are and giving small businesses an opportunity to go viral and create the same buzz as large companies who have spent big dollars on social media marketing. This could be the social networking opportunity small businesses have been waiting for.

Foursquare gives small businesses a venue to offer promotions to loyal customers and those who “check-in”. Consumers can check-in via mobile website or text messaging and earn points and “badges”. Foursquare allows users to connect their Twitter and Facebook accounts and their statuses can be updated when they check-in at a venue. Consumers can add tips to venues that others can read as well as the ability to create “To Do” lists for their private use. Account owners can track those who check-in with their site most frequently with an account dashboard too. This dashboard will evolve into a type of “Google Analytics but for local merchants” says Dennis Crowley CEO of Foursquare. As of today there is no fee to use this service, but fees are a possibility for the future.

So what does this exactly mean for your small business? Simply, Foursquare is a new social media site that gives you a new channel to reach potential customers and communicate with existing customers to build loyalty. Foursquare can also be used to encourage customer advocates to reach out to their networks on Facebook and Twitter by linking these accounts to Foursquare and checking in at locations. This is word of mouth marketing at its best. But is Foursquare for you?

Small and medium sized local consumer-based business stand to benefit the most from Foursquare because, the social networking site allows for users to explore their city and see where their friends are and what they are doing. Foursquare may not be appropriate for ecommerce websites (Internet-based businesses) as there is no simple way to build a presence on Foursquare as you do on Facebook or Twitter. However, if you are a brick-and-mortar business, Foursquare offers an opportunity for you to communicate with current customers, reward them for their loyalty, put them to work networking for you and possibly generate new prospects for your business. With a new social media site for small business that is growing so quickly, it could be the new rage.

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Search Engine Marketing…What’s in it for me?

May 26th, 2010

As we all know, the Internet has become a big part of consumer’s lives all around the world. People are using the Internet to find, research, and buy every conceivable product and service. Indeed, some products and services are available only on the Internet. Where else do you find a polka-dotted bow tie for your cat? We’ve all heard of Amazon, Ebay, buy.com and a myriad of other sites, but large ecommerce sites are not the only ones who are benefitting. Many small and medium sized businesses that previously served a local market are able to expand nationally and even internationally, thanks to the Internet and Internet Marketing. It’s an enormous market out there and for businesses that reach out and grab a piece, there is nearly no limit to the growth potential. So you have a product or service that people want…how do they find you?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) allows businesses to show up on page one of the search engines (like Google) anytime someone searches for the things they sell or the things they do. Using a tool like Google AdWords, you can create campaigns based on a list of keywords that consumers use to find you. When consumers type one of your keywords, your text ad (or one of your ads) will show up in Google (or any number of other search engines) and you pay a small fee only when someone clicks on it. Although there are many benefits to this form of advertising, one of the main benefits is cost control. You decide how much you are willing to pay per click and how much budget you want to spend on advertising on a daily basis. You can turn the campaign off at any time, such as during holidays or even certain times of the day when your clicks are less productive. Alternatively, if you are trying to build brand awareness, views of your ad are more important rather than clicks, and you may want to pay per impression. With this type of campaign, your ad can utilize graphics for better visual impact. Whether you choose to pay per impression (CPM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) SEM gives you total control over spend and can be very effective in driving relevant, interested prospects to your website.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) gives your business the opportunity to reach out and promote your products, services and website in a way that you control, by selecting keywords and setting a budget for your campaign. With Google AdWords, your business can run text or banner ads, and you choose whether to show these ads on the search network or on other websites that are members of Google’s Content Network. With SEM, you can evaluate performance on a real time basis, looking at the number of impressions and clicks your ads are getting. Analytical tools like Google Analytics, give you additional information about what happens beyond the click. For those people who clicked on your ad, did they visit your contact page, did they become a lead or did they buy something? Tools like these combined with daily reporting enables you to optimize your campaign on an ongoing basis and present your best ad to the best audience at the best time for the right price which with any luck, will exceed your goals. Why not give it a try?

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Internet Advertising vs Print Advertising

May 17th, 2010

As everyone knows, the Internet has become a huge part of most people’s everyday life. Consumers use it to research and buy products, services and everything in between. With the Internet providing a proactive, instant, rich media experience, print advertising and in some cases print in general, is having less impact. Rather than waiting for the newspaper to land on the door, many people simply go online with laptops, PDAs or Kindles to get up-to-the-minute information; in most cases, for free. Rather than digging through the Yellow Pages to find service providers, consumers can go online not only to find businesses, but to evaluate them based on their website and customer reviews. When you consider the effectiveness of the Internet experience, you have to wonder if print advertising is still worth doing.

Advertising in print can be very expensive and limited in its ability to target or track results. While subscription numbers may still be hanging on, fewer people are reading and they are spending less time reading. Consumers who see print ads are presented with a static experience. In contrast, Internet advertising is able to reach a large, highly targeted population of consumers, including the growing number of people who avoid paper. With Internet advertising, business owners can target consumers visiting sites that are relevant to his or her line of work. For example, chiropractors can present an interactive, rich media ad on medical health sites. What’s more, a good Internet service provider will be able to tell them how many times per month the ad was viewed and clicked and among those clicks what further actions the consumer took after visiting the chiropractor’s website. With this type of advertising, business owners can choose to pay per impression, if the goal of the campaign is for branding, or if the goal of the campaign is lead generation or sales, they may choose to pay per click. With all of the targeting possibilities and intelligent reporting that Internet advertising provides it often results in better results at a fraction of the price.

Internet advertising can help your business by allowing a relevant audience to easily find you and you to find them at lower cost than print. As a business owner, you decide exactly when, where, and how long you want your Internet ad to appear and exactly how much you want to spend. You can test ads against each other and get results instantly. While print advertising still gets eyeballs, the numbers are dwindling and the possibilities are limited. Internet Advertising vs. Print Advertising. Which would you rather do?

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Can Blogging Really Help Grow Your Business?

May 11th, 2010

You can find a blog about virtually anything on the Internet. Here’s one about dung beetle with a video of a trio fighting over a ball of dung: http://umhambi.blogspot.com/2010/03/dung-beetle-is-worlds-strongest.html. People use blogs as a way to express themselves, talk about their experiences, give people information, and share their expertise. Businesses use blogs as a way to share information and expertise about the products and services they sell. With so many blogs out there written by so many people (qualified or not), is blogging really something that can help your business? Many bloggers write whatever comes to mind and don’t base much of what they say on facts. Some use it as a way to gossip and others use it as a way to vent. How can you separate the bloggers who are really knowledgeable from the ones who write whatever pops into their head? In the broad area between fact and opinion, where would you position this blog?

The fact is, blogging really CAN help your business. A good blog starts with a plan and a system to blog relevant topics on a regular basis that convey useful, compelling and interesting information about the subject of your business. You can’t just blog …to blog. Potential customers need to be able to find your blog which can be done by making it search engine friendly, advertising it where your prospective customers are likely to be, connecting it to your website and pages on your social media networks including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Blogging can be an asset to your business if you do it right and stick to the goals. Think of an interesting or entertaining angle that sets your blog apart from the millions of others out there without being gimmicky. Give valuable, relevant information on a regular basis and people will begin to enjoy reading it, look forward to getting it and eventually, will rely on it for information in your area of expertise. With this, one goal you have will be achieved: to gain credibility and become a recognized expert and leader in your field. Blogs are an important component of a successful Internet marketing plan and integrated marketing campaign. An excellent website, the use of social media, search engine optimization, internet advertising and a relevant and interesting blog all work together to build your brand, establish you as a trusted leader, and eventually, lead to new business from a very fast growing channel: Internet Marketing.

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Facebook vs. Google: Will Facebook Win?

April 27th, 2010

Last week, at Facebook’s annual F8 conference in California, Facebook released a new model for Open Graph, new functionality which hopes to open more of its user activity to other sites, and may offer the ability to put recommendation or “buttons” on pieces of content across the web. With Facebook creating a “smarter Internet” and a more personalized web experience, there has been a lot of buzz about how Facebook could overtake Google. Indeed last month, Facebook took a larger share of total US Internet visits than Google for the first time. How does this bode for Google?

Facebook is making the web a more personal experience in ways that allow them to continue growing subscribers up to an incredible 400 million in 2009 from just 200 million in 2008. Being more closely tied-in to users in a personal way that Google is not gives Facebook much more information about users. Information is a powerful thing. With it, expands Facebook’s opportunities for target marketing – it’s already on their radar. The information available to Google for targeting ads through AdSense pales in comparison to the information Facebook has and will have …and the Facebook audience is bigger. If Open Graph moves forward, Facebook will be able to collect information from their users from partner websites like CNN.com and IMDb – a win-win for everyone …except Google.

Google has competed successfully with Facebook in many areas, excluding social media. Google Buzz has not been as successful as Facebook which has left the door open for Facebook to gain more users and loyalty. Could Facebook eventually take over? While both companies are innovative, Facebook has been the leader in rethinking the web experience. Can Google be the true innovator that they once were or is this the end of Google and the beginning of Facebook? One thing is for certain, it’s going to be an interesting battle that either way, the user is likely to win.

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TV vs. Internet Advertising: Is TV Advertising Becoming Insignificant?

April 20th, 2010

Internet advertising has been claiming a larger share of the total budget spent on advertising year after year. TV advertising spend has been dwindling in the past few years. With more rich media content available on the Internet including movies, videos and TV show episodes, as well as the increasing use of DVRs and Tivo, fewer people are spending their time in front of the TV, in favor of cruising the Internet on their computers. Not being blind to this, large advertisers are shifting budget away from TV to where more eyeballs will catch their ads: The Internet.

With this change in how consumers spend their time and get their information it begs the question, “Is TV advertising becoming insignificant?” People are spending less time watching TV and when they do, more are watching recorded shows, enabling them to fast forward through commercials, or movies on demand with no commercials. In contrast, Internet advertising, such as banner ads and search engine marketing allows advertisers to place ads in front of consumers who are in an active and attentive condition, vs. the more passive condition of TV viewers. Further, advertisers can place their ads more precisely on the Internet than TV, seeking out only those specifically relevant sites to place banner ads. For example, a doctor’s allergy practice can place ads on allergy and medical sites. Advertisers can also choose a search campaign where ads are presented only when consumers search for key terms and only pay when those consumers click on the ads. In the same example above, the allergy practice may choose to present their ad only when consumers search for “allergy relief”, “allergy doctors” or “allergy shots”. TV can’t do any of that and if the lower spend on TV advertising is any indication, smart advertisers are starting to pick up on this.

With a well thought-out and executed campaign, Internet marketing can be very effective. With analytics in place, Internet marketing can deliver proven return on investment, a metric unavailable with TV advertising. Internet advertising allows consumers to take action immediately. From any type of Internet ad, consumers are one click away from an advertiser’s website to learn more, become a lead or make a purchase. TV advertising may not be completely insignificant but with more people spending more time on the Internet, it has certainly become less effective. While TV commercials may never go away completely, if the trend continues, we will all be enjoying more TV time with fewer commercials. It will be a better experience for all …as long as we don’t lose the super bowl commercials!

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