I’m looking forward to our upcoming meeting and excited to hear about your business and its goals. I’m glad to hear that you are anxious to get into Social Media and that you are willing to try a new approaches. However, before we meet I would like to be sure we’re all on the same page and not going into this meeting with unlikely, implausible or even impossible expectations. I’d like to talk to you about …
5 Things Social Media Can’t Be
1. A magic bullet. While there are many wonderful tools in Social Media that will help you understand and reach out to customers, employees and/or the community none of them individually or collectively will solve ALL of your business problems.
2. A one- or two-string violin. No matter how many Social Media platforms we agree will help you they will still only be a part of your plans moving forward. We will be looking at integrating tactics in Social Media with some of your existing and traditional customer- and employee-relation, sales and marketing methods. Be assured though, this “multi-string” approach WILL make beautiful music.
3. Left to an intern. To get the best results from Social Media someone in your organization (and depending on its size it may be two or more someones) will need to dedicate time to managing Social Media. While a young intern may understand the tools they likely will need a lot of GUIDANCE on their correct use and the strategy you will be using in Social Media.
4. Cheap. It is true that Social Media tools are usually very cheap or free. However to use them effectively will require a commitment of your organization’s TIME (and other resources) … and well know: Time = Money.
5. Rushed. Setting up shop in Social Media is just the beginning. It should take quite some time for you to work through the steps of Listening, Engaging and then, and only then, Contributing. A small dose of PATIENCE early on can pay big dividends.
Thank you for your interest and I very much look forward to our future successful collaboration.
The Social Media Release – also called the Social Media Press Release and Social Media News Release – has rapidly become the way for anyone trying to “get the word out” to provide all the resources necessary for anyone from citizen-customer to journalist to find the information they want (in the format they like it).
So, what is a Social Media Release? In a nutshell it is a page, usually a Web page, that collects words, images, audio, video, links, social bookmarks and more around the topic you care about. And by “you” we mean both the person spreading the word and the person looking for information. Background: In a 2006 post titled Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die! blogger Tom Foremski tapped into a broad media sentiment that the days of the standard old-school press release needed to end. His main points: Cut out the spin and provide information in many different formats
It was then that Todd Defren of Boston’s Shift Communications suggested a better way: the Social Media Press Release – a more conversational and useful collection of information and supporting materials. He offered up a Social Media Press Release template
Contacts: Information – front and center – on how to reach the author of the release, the key person quoted in the release and the online newsroom of the releasing organization.
Words: A brief description of the point you are trying to make (with no spin) and why any reader might care to check out all of your wonderful, related content. Aim for 250 to 750 words – no more. Be sure to optimize for the search engines by including one or more of your keyword phrases.
Images:That are linked to from Flickr or some other online resource where the entire album is available.
Audio: Saved as a podcast on iTunes or saved on your server/Web site as a common-format audio file that is linked to from the release.
Video: Which is hosted at YouTube allowing consumers to watch it directly and journalists to grab the embed code for possible inclusion on their own web sites.
Print It/Email It buttons: These are no longer “nice touches,” but are absolutely expected.
”Share This Page” buttons: These invite visitors to share your content with others through social bookmarking and social media sites … and makes it very easy to do. For example clicking on the Twitter button opens a Twitter window asking the user to sign in to their account and pre-fills the Status Box with a short message about your content and shortened URL leading right to it. Other buttons should cover the major Social Media information sharing sites likely to be used by your target audiences.
Links: Be sure to include links everywhere. The more links you have to targeted and relevant information, the company’s principals and the company home page the more interaction you encourage. This also doesn’t hurt your Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, efforts either.
Comments box: Make it easy for anyone to talk back to you. No-registration-needed comments fields are best as even a simple registration process will deter many from taking the time to leave a comment. And you do want to hear from everybody and anybody. A name and an email address is all you need ask for.
Invitation to sign up for notifications: Invite anyone to share their email to be alerted to future Social Media Releases.
Some examples of good Social Media Releases (SMR):
Social Media has can appear to be a one-size-fits-all solution for businesses or organizations – a way to fold sales, marketing, customer care and public relations into one do-it-all tool.
While there may be occasions where this is true it is clearly not in the best interests of the brand, business or organization to make Social Media THE answer.
Which brings me to thinking about Public Relations and how Social Media has taken the once one way talking-head-to-media-head conversation and made it more universal.
Here are Five Ways Social Media can help in the new Public Relations world:
1. Relationship building: By connecting with key influencers on Social Media PR professionals now have a chance to truly understand what it is those people care about. Knowing this they can then target their messages more effectively.
It can also help with your transparency and trust factors. In their informative book Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand Shel Holtz and John C Havens and say: “The flood of Social Media has brought in an age of digital transparency that is putting the power to create or destroy a reputation into the hands of consumers.” They argue that being transparent and trustworthy upfront mitigates much of the danger lurking in Social Media for brands and businesses.
2. Message delivery: This seems obvious, but there are PR professionals who still see Social Media as a “fad.” But, really it is a highly efficient and effective way to engage important channels from the small media audience to the mass community you wish to be a part of.
David Meerman Scott in his excellent book The New Rules of Marketing & PR says the old PR meant trying to impress a few media types in hopes of having the media tell your story, but the new PR means tremendous opportunity to tell your own story directly to customers and the community.
3. Branding: This has always been about getting g the word out on what makes you, your brand or business different from anything else. How better to do it than directly to the customer/community?
But there is also another aspect of branding that too many PR professionals do not understand – SEO or search engine optimization. This is the ability to ensure that all messaging around what you are promoting contains the words and phrases you want to “own” and can assure your brand is top of the search engine rankings. In today’s world that usually means top of mind too.
4. Listening: Just paying attention to what is being said generally and what is being said in Social Media specifically about your brand, business or organization gives you insights previously unavailable to you without a lot of (expensive) research.
You can go low-tech and, for example, set up free Google Alerts notifications or you can go high-tech using services such as Techrigy and Radian 6. The important thing is to do it so that you can know what is being said and where, and also acknowledge your promoters and reach out to your detractors.
5. Crisis management: So all the relationship building and monitoring has still not avoided a crisis? Social Media can help. Brands and businesses can use their presences to offer an apology, offer reassurance, to be seen making amends, to apologize again and then to monitor the response.
In the new media reality the same consumers or community members who were outraged by the YouTube video or the shared blog post are unlikely to be reassured by the company or organization’s official statement as related on broadcast news or in a newspaper. What is far more likely is that they will learn of your timely and effective response through a shared tweet on Twitter or a link to a social bookmarking site.
What is true of all five ways Social Media can help Public Relations is that they take place where many, if not most of the people you want to reach already hang out. Isn’t it time for PR to fully embrace Social Media?
Or: When I find potential customers how do I handle them?
In Social Media it’s extremely important to remember that the first word is “Social.”
This means it’s not a place to overtly sell anything … really, it’s not. But there is a way for businesses to engage in Social Media to benefit from their time an effort on the Social Web.
Three Steps to Engagement
1. Start by being a good listener: The more you listen the more you will learn and the more you will understand your customers and potential customers. Heck, you might even hear things you had not thought of that will help your business.
2. Talk with (and to) the social web: Start sharing yourself and your knowledge. Answer others’ questions. Help others find answers. Share really good things you find. Or just share an interesting take on something that is on your mind. Be genuine and people will get to know you and over time will come to trust you.
3. Listen for specific opportunities: Opportunities for you meet a need or make a suggestion that involves a service you provide or something you sell. But BE CAREFUL. If your offer of help sounds disingenuous or self-serving you will alienate a customer or potential customer.
A Sales Funnel for Social Media?
Can a traditional sales funnel be applied to Social Media? I would argue that, yes, it can.
Working down a Social Media sales funnel:
1. Audience: The largest number of people you are engaged with on the Web. Many of whom may not want to, or may not yet know that want to, do business with you.
2. Prospects: The next smallest group of people with whom you are engaged. The ones who have expressed some form of interest in you, your company or something you do.
3. Leads: The next smallest group contains people who have signed up to be contacted or have asked for your help. These are the folks who are interested in what you are selling. 4. Conversions: The group who have money on your goods or services and who reached that point because they saw value in you and/or your business.
5. Evangelists: These are the pure gold in Social Media. These are people so excited about their dealings with you and your product that they go out of their way to tell others.
At each stage of the funnel you need to have a Social Media and Inbound Marketing strategies to maximize the chances that your efforts will not go unrewarded. (For more on inbound marketing, I recommend Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing Resources, including the excellent – and free – Inbound Marketing University program) A Social Media strategy, for example, would be having a way to acknowledge your Evangelists publicly and also, perhaps, to reward them privately.
An Inbound Marketing strategy, for example, would be having a plan in place to reach out to Prospects once they are identified on the social web.
Whatever you do, it is extremely important to remember that it’s called Social Media for a reason – don’t do anything that can be seen as “anti-social”!
It really is buyer beware out there – even on free webinars Social Media’s reputation for being a bit like the Wild West of old is not helped by the current proliferation of people “selling” their Twitter “expertise.”
Just today I came across this pitch (selected quotes here) for a free Webinar that you just know is really a sales pitch:
“What is Twitter? Is Twitter for me? Can I increase sales? Can I increase brand awareness? Learn the ‘Secrets’ of Twitter and why you NEED to be there.” It goes on to say that “During this one hour event you will discover best practices” which it says includes “How to be on the fast track for your business” and “Results-driven sales strategies you can use in your marketing plan.”
This is an odd thing, really, because this sounds like old school “push” selling not at all like New School “customer engagement” for which Social Media such as Twitter is better suited.
But there are other clues that this particular person (whom I should, but will not name) is selling themselves as an expert in Twitter when really they may have little to offer on that platform. For example, this person:
- Does not list their Twitter handle in their promotional materials, which might lead you to suspect he/she does not want to be checked up on.
- Joined Twitter in October last year and in nine months has tweeted a total of 180 times – or an average of 20 times a month. But almost 40 of those tweets came in the past week as the date for the webinar drew close.
- Ranks poorly across numerous Twitter grading sites. For example, Twitalyzer ranks their Twitter use as “very, very low” or “very low” across three of five categories and “slowly emerging” in another.
Tips for detecting a “Twit”
1. Find their Twitter name and look at their profile. Pay attention to number Following vs. Followers and the number of Updates. If there is a Web link check out the site the Twitter profile is linked to. What you find there will often reveal a lot about the person behind the Twitter account.
2. Use Twitter Search to plug in their user name and see how much activity shows up and, perhaps more importantly, when it shows up. A savvy Twitter user will not have clusters of tweets at a given time ona given day and then long gaps of inactivity.
3. Use Twitter grading tools to see if this “expert” ranks well among other Twitter users. Two quick ones:
Twitter Grader: Here you enter the “expert’s” Twitter name and see how they score. Do not be overly impressed by a score in the low- to mid-90s (on a scale of 100). An actively engaged Twitter user will score 97, 98, 99 or even 100 out of 100. This tool also tells you how long the user has been on Twitter.
Twitalyzer: This tool measures a Twitter user in five areas: Influence, Signal, Generosity, Velocity and Clout. It also tells you the trends for this user from “unchanged” to “improving.” A user with generally low scores and trends that are “unchanged” in all five areas is likely less than fully engaged in Twitter.
In summary, anyone seeking expertise in any Social Media such as Twitter would be well advised to do a little research – and the social web makes this easier than ever.
to Social Media and that you are willing to try a new approaches.
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