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Dec 21 2014

Social Strategy SOS

SocialStrategy

In the third post in this series, I discussed why you need to consider your customers as “users” and how you go about creating a User Persona to help you target your Content Strategy to your ideal users. Over the next 3 weeks of this series, we’ll finish fleshing out the remaining pieces of the content strategy puzzle, and this week we’ll tackle what is possibly the most perplexing and time consuming part of your digital business: your Social Media Strategy.

Do I really HAVE to have a social media strategy?

Social strategy is complex: there are so many social networks, and sometimes it feels like there is a new one every day.  How does a business owner know which ones to pay attention to, and which ones to ignore?  Engaging in Social Media can be extremely time consuming with little visible return on investment: It can be difficult to clearly see how a social media strategy can help your business.

But social media can also be a virtual goldmine of new customers.  It can be a way that you can develop a relationship of trust with your customers, engage in customer service activities, and even recruit new employees. Social media is here to stay and it is an essential part of every business owner’s sales, marketing, and business development toolkit.   A smart, targeted social strategy can deliver brand awareness, new customers, and even conversions, but it is important to understand why you’re doing it and what exactly you should do, and this is unique to each and every business.

Conversion has changed – forever.

Think about how your customers convert nowadays.  It used to be that customers would become aware of your brand or product through a limited number of expensive and highly controlled channels: perhaps through a television, radio, or newspaper ad, or perhaps through word of mouth.  Their decision to buy was made primarily at point of purchase, that is, when they saw your product on the shelf in the store: the “first moment of truth”, as it was called in the traditional marketing model.

Google has recently described a new model that very accurately captures the new way consumers become aware of, and make decisions to purchase, products and services today, and they call it the Zero Moment of Truth.  The Zero Moment of Truth is all about digital discovery: the extensive searching, recommendation reading, and consulting with Facebook friends that we now engage in before making a purchasing decision.  For products and services big and small, we rarely convert until we have had at least 7 and sometimes as many as 17 digital “impressions” or touch points with a brand.

ZMOTequation

This Zero Moment of Truth is perhaps the most compelling reason that each and every brand, every business selling every product or service, needs to ensure that when the consumer is engaging in this foraging behaviour, that they are there, building trust and clocking impressions that may lead to conversion.  These impressions come from your business website and your social media activities, especially what people are saying with you and about you in social media.

There may be a small segment of the population that doesn’t use social media, but this is a rapidly shrinking segment.  The fastest growing segment of social users is adults 45-54, and more and more seniors come online every day.  In many ways, Social Media IS the Internet, and the Internet IS Social Media.  It’s difficult today to grow your business without a strategy that covers how, for whom, and how often you will engage your customers in the two-way conversation that Social media has to offer as a marketing tool.

So Many Platforms, So Little Time.

Scheduling tools like Hootsuite make it easy to track and control the frequency of your social media communications, and they make it easy to post the same content simultaneously to multiple social platforms.  But while it may be tempting to try and broadcast your messages to multiple platforms at once, it is rarely a good idea.  In his book “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook”, Gary Vaynerchuck makes a strong argument that business owners should heed: not all social platforms are created equal.  The kind of storytelling that works really well on Facebook for a particular user will not work on Twitter, or Linked, In, or Pinterest, or….

Knowing which platforms to prioritise is perhaps the most difficult part of your social strategy but also the most critical.  You stand to lose a lot of precious time if you prioritise a platform that really doesn’t work for your business, and you can even erode or undermine your brand if you post something clearly inappropriate for that platform: so how does a savvy business owner choose?

There are three factors to consider:

1) What are the various social platforms “good at”?

2) Which of the social platforms do your users tend towards?

2) What is the nature of your business conversion funnel?

1) A Brief Primer on Social Media

There is much crossover between the various major social media platforms: all of them are, of course, social, meaning they are about engaging in a dialogue with others.  But because each one operates in a slightly different way with different rules of engagement, they require different kinds of Storytelling.

Twitter

  • Has over 230 million monthly active users
  • Twitter followers are 60% more likely to recommend you than a Facebook Liker
  • The average age of a Twitter user is much higher than Facebook, at 39 years
  • 70% of Twitter users expect to hear back from a brand, and 53% want that response within the hour
  • Twitter is good for establishing thought leadership, expertise, for sharing news, and for customer service and customer relationship management

Facebook

  • Facebook is the largest social platform in the world: if it were a country it would the third most populated, after only China and India
  • Facebook does have an influence on purchasing behaviour, even if not a direct one. Your Facebook fans are more likely to convert than non-fans.
  • Facebook is great for visibility in social search
  • Facebook is getting into the retail game with Facebook shops if you are selling a product
  • The new killer app on Facebook is the short video

YouTube

  • Has moved from being primarily a video search engine to a powerful social platform where many brands have been born and built. Khan academy, for example, and Justin Bieber.
  • Web videos are a great way to reach out to new and current customers and generate inbound links to your website
  • Because it is owned by Google, embedding YouTube videos on your website gives those pages a double-boost in Search Engine Optimisation

Google Plus

  • Great for local businesses, reviews, and Google search “juice”
  • Ties your business address into a Google Map and ties into other Google services

Linked In

  • The largest professional network, you must have a personal page on LinkedIn; it is far more common to connect with business contacts on LinkedIn than to keep a Rolodex or stack of business cards or emails.
  • Linked in generates 200% more leads than the other social networks

Pinterest

  • The fastest growing as of December 2012
  • Pinterest is very visual, about ‘things’, items they find interesting, but it works even for small businesses that aren’t visually stimulating.
  • Pinterest is good for referral traffic because the source of the pin is a link to your site, especially images you might be posting in your blogs. Even if you don’t maintain a page or presence on Pinterest, installing a “pin it” button on your website pages is a good idea

2) Where Are Your Users Hanging Out?

The short answer is, everywhere.  But you have to narrow that down a little to come up with a feasible strategy.  It’s important to note here that there are multiple social platforms not listed above, many of them attracting niche audiences where you might find a treasure trove of users interested in exactly what you have to offer.  This article outlines 60 niche social networks and it is worth doing a bit of digging to see if any of them resonate with your business goals.  Another tool that you can use is socialmention.com; social mention searches blogs and social networks for topics or brand mentions and can be a good way of finding out where conversations are taking place that align with the kinds of conversations you want to be having with your customers.  And social crawlytics at socialcrawlytics.com can be very insightful, generating a report that will tell you which pages of your website have been shared in social media, where they have been shared, and even by who.

3) What is the Nature of Your Conversion Funnel?

Typically, the more expensive the product or service, the more touch points the consumer will require before purchasing.  What are you selling, and how many touch point’s do you think your customers need before they buy?

Is your product or service more suited to an active discovery process or a passive discovery process?  For example, if I need an emergency plumbing repair I tend to engage in some very active discovery to find one.  I search Google and will probably call the first few service providers I see.  Social Media is better at passive discovery, at marketing products, services, and ideas that consumers don’t need right away or in an emergency.

Do you have a lot of competitors, so will need more touch points or more visibility in the market, or very few competitors?  Are you in the B2B or B2C market?

How much customer service does your product or service require?  And how much brand awareness do you already have in the market?
SocialStrategySOSWorksheetImage

Document the answers to these questions on this worksheet; by indicating on the sliders in the worksheet where your business lands on these various conversion factors will give you some pointers towards which platforms you might want to prioritise as well as the frequency of posting you might want to consider.  Note that the worksheet is more art than science and is intended only as a starting point: they only way to really get good at social media is by doing it, so start small, perhaps with your LinkedIn page, and build slowly using the worksheet as a guide.

The biggest question the Content Strategist has to answer is “Do I need a website AND a Social Strategy”?  The answer is yes, for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is the findability of your content in Search.  Next month, we’ll cover Search Engine Optimisation and Influencer Marketing, the two biggest ways you can make your website work for your business.

For more resources and information on Content Strategy and to download a detailed description of what content strategy entails, go to analyticalengine.ca/resources or download a Content Strategy Info graphic at http://bit.ly/1qY9tYp.

Christine McGlade is a Business Analyst, Content Strategist, and Usability Consultant.  With over 25 years experience in the media business, Christine helps small business, social enterprise, and Not for Profits how to leverage the power of the Internet to grow their business.  Learn more about Christine at analyticalengine.ca

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Written by Dwania Peele · Categorized: Christine McGlade · Tagged: Analytical Engine, b2b, b2c, business owner, Christine McGlade, Content strategy, conversion, conversion funnel, customers, digital impressions, document, engage, Facebook, faebook, first moment of truth, gary vaynerchuck, goldmine, google, Google Map, impressions, interest, jab, Justin Bieber, Khan, Linkedin, newspaper ad, platforms, product, puzzle, radio, relationship, right hook, Rolodex, SEO, series, service, social media, social media strategy, social network, social networks, Social strategy, sos, television, time-consuming, Twitter, user persona, virtual, website, word of mouth, worksheet, YouTube, zero moment of truth

Nov 01 2013

Gabriella Mammone – Canadian Small Business Woman of the Month of October 2013

gabriella-mammone-gaby-divirgilio-motivational-speaker

“One of the greatest goals I ever achieved was learning how to make myself cry of laughter”, says Gabriella Mammone.  Gabriella has faced that awkward moment of laughing hysterically and unable to control her authentic sobbing.

Gabriella is a devoted wife, a loving mother, a serial event planner, a public speaker, a motivational ambassador and an active volunteer.  She has a zest for life and appreciates the small things that life has to offer – hot apple cider, an orange gerbera daisy and a warm blanket.

Gabriella lives daily with multiple sclerosis.  She experiences extreme lethargy, cognitive issues, numbness, loss of balance, weakness and extensive itching/tingling.  She has over 16 lesions in her brain and 2 in her spinal cord.  Despite her innumerable daily challenges, she attacks each day with a smile and successfully reached her goal of inspiring others.

As an active volunteer with the MS Society, Gabriella helps with the MS Walks, golf tournaments and other fundraising initiatives.  She is also an Ambassador with the MS Society of Canada, advocating on behalf of people living with MS.  Annually she visits Queen’s Park to raise awareness with decision makers about select priority issues for people living with chronic conditions and disabilities.

Gabriella is a serial philanthropist and event planner.  She is the Event Director of Family Jingle & Mingle, a shared Christmas celebration for companies and families in support of The Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada.  www.jingleandmingle.ca

An entrepreneur, Gabriella is the Passionate Owner and Gift Guru of Occasion Giftware, www.occasiongiftware.com, an online gift store catering to weddings, showers, and religious events including baptisms, first holy communions and confirmations.

Gabriella is also the Managing Partner at Senso 3C, www.senso3c.com, an organization that helps companies source, develop and retain their people.  Gabriella actively develops their business resources division assisting companies with training, development and the planning of their corporate events.  She also provides operational support to the talent division that assists companies find staff for their organizations.

She was featured on CBC’s hit TV show, Dragons’ Den and although she didn’t expect the unfavourable outcome, she quickly bounced back and has become an excellent guest speaker.

Talk about an inspiring woman!  Gabriella continues to motivate people and is truly an inspirational presenter and keynote speaker.  She believes that volunteering adds to her life.   In 2013, she earned a Community Civic Award, presented by Mayor Hazel McCallion and members of council for her positive contributions to the City of Mississauga, ON.

Is she a busy gal?  Yes she is.  Gabriella’s passion is built on her personal experience of living with MS and finding the humour in her ‘interesting’ life.  She is enthusiastic and relentless in her message that success if available to anyone, even for those that have an illness or disease.   We will encounter many defeats in our lives, but Gabriella strives to never be defeated.  She encourages you to find the humour in your situations and sends you this message:  “make yourself cry of laughter”.

Our Q & A with Gabriella Mammone

What inspires you?

There is nothing like positive thinking to get me psyched!  I am inspired by my son’s mind – he’s only 5 and yet he is completely logical in his own passions and interests.  I am inspired by the progression of people – I very much enjoy spending time with colleagues and seeing them grow as their confidence increases.  I am inspired by driven and passionate people – seeing others achieve their goals empowers me.  I am inspired by people that have strong ethics and go out of their way to make a positive impact in the lives of others.  I am inspired by volunteers that selflessly donate their time and exemplify the spirit of giving back.  I respect and honour my inspiration for I am grateful that I am able to make changes, not excuses.  Here’s to inspiration!

As a small business owner, what achievements make you most proud?

I remain strong in the face of adversity.  I am not afraid of a challenge and have an uncanny ability to bounce back after a setback.  I was on the television show Dragon’s Den, for example, and truly felt humiliated by one of the Dragons.  Looking back at the video, I felt that I handled the situation with grace and professionalism and didn’t let the comments bring me down.  I was grateful for the opportunity and thankful that it opened new doors for me…new doors that I created.  I am most proud of the leadership that I provide to the MS Society of Canada and those affected by illnesses.

What advice would you give to other aspiring small business owners?

Make an action plan to achieve your goals.  In business, we make action plans for marketing campaigns and projects.  Why not create a detailed step-by-step plan for achieving your own personal goals?  The steps that you take will help you keep focused on achieving your goals.  ‘Action planning’ your goals will help you focus on your ideas and decide what steps you need to take to achieve your milestones.   Each step you take is a journey and will create new priorities and keep you organized.  As you achieve your personal goals, the passion and success will translate into your business and objectives.

What new things can we look forward to from your business in the upcoming year?

Family Jingle & Mingle 2013 will have an awesome silent auction and fun surprises in store.  Next year we will work with another charity to help them raise valuable funds.  I personally plan to do more public speaking and motivate those faced with adversity.   I am working on a book and am excited to learn more about the publishing process.

Contact Gabriella (aka Gaby) at:

 

www.gabriellamammone.com

www.jingleandmingle.ca

www.senso3c.com

www.occasiongiftware.com

twitter.com/gabymammone

YouTube: Gabriella Mammone 

LinkedIn:  Gabriella Mammone 

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Written by Dwania Peele · Categorized: Small Business Woman of the Month · Tagged: A&W, Action Plan, adversity, advocate, ambassador, aspergers syndrome, autism, Canadian Small Business Women, Carassauga, Children’s Wish, christmas, civic award winner, corporate events, Costco, CSBW, debilitating disease, dragon's den, em09 Media Group, emcee, entrepreneur, event planner, events manager, Family Jingle & Mingle, Female Author, festivals, FJAM, Gabriella Mammone, Gaby DiVirgilio, inspiration, Italian, keynote speaker, Mayor Hazel McCallion, motivational speaker, Mr. Lube, MS Society, MS Walk, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, Occasion Giftware, public speaker, Queen’s Park, Rogers TV, selective mutism, Senso 3C, Sheridan College, small business woman of the month, small business women of the month, television, The Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada, volunteer

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