Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart

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Connection: Social Media’s Special Gift

January 26, 2011

When the Cluetrain Manifesto was published in 1999, it signaled a paradigm shift: markets are conversations. Today, the online space and affordability of web hosting and domain names has helped create billions of conversations about your brand, your industry, and critical key players in your space.

It’s up to you to capitalize this and leverage it effectively.

I asked a big brand on Twitter for help and they gave me a canned response. I miss the days when social media was more personalized.

A big US brand with over 100,000 Twitter followers has run into the problem that I tweeted about above. To this well-known retailer, social media has become just one channel of many where they need to offer customer service without any care in the world for the people they’re engaging with. This thinking unfortunately minimizes the potential of true and far reaching social media strategy, creating the ability to truly connect with people and build bonds with constituents that can help them evangelize your brand and create passionate advocates.

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3 Golden Business Rules for Social Media Engagement

August 25, 2010

If you’re doing social media for your business, there’s nothing better than to do it right. Many companies partake in this “shiny toy syndrome” and do it all without a plan or strategy in place. Worse, many don’t really understand what to do once they start. They hear about tools, put forth a miserable effort, and are either too busy or just lazy.

With social media, an abundance of resources are at your fingertips. However, without a successful plan and any adequate preparation, your social media efforts will fail. Here are three dos and don’ts you should think about before you move forward.

Don’t self promote.

Okay, so this should be obvious, but there are so many businesses that don’t get it. On a particular forum I am active on (yes, I still use them!), I noticed someone asking for advice. A response came from a business owner who had the perfect answer on her website and directed the original poster to the website for a detailed reply. Sadly, this person’s post was pulled by the strict moderators on that forum; the post was purely self-promotional and nothing but. When I reviewed the poster’s account, I understood why. I noticed that she had done the same thing on other discussions on the same forum over a period of several months and all of them were pulled!

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No, You Can’t Automate Social Media!

July 7, 2010

Over the past two years or so, social media’s increased popularity has really done something for those assuming that it’s all a “get rich quick” opportunity. The widespread adoption of social media has caused for hordes of “experts” to suddenly come into town assuming that they can totally own this niche. These new “Internet Marketers” take Twitter by storm, using automated Twitter tools in abundance that give them the true appearance of expertise. They are no-name people who all of the sudden have 22,000 followers while following 23,000, but that doesn’t matter because a newbie trying to market his business sees this 5 digit number and gets excited about the opportunities to reach so many people so quickly.

It’s a Utopian mindset but one that clueless business owners step into after following an “expert” and hiring him for services. Many unsuspecting business owners blindly spot the riches of social media based on the appearance of numbers (even though those are usually deceiving). They think, “This guy must be great; he has 30,000 Twitter followers! What’s better than that?”

It’s unfortunately a situation I’ve been picking up more and more on as I see users building their entire social media marketing empire on the basis of automation.

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6 Things Parenthood Taught Me About Social Media Marketing

June 3, 2010

Just last year, I became a mother for the first time. My son just turned one (time flies, doesn’t it?) and after being a full time mom and performing various social media marketing tasks throughout, I’ve learned that there are many parallels that can be taken from parenthood that also apply to social media marketing. Let’s take a look at the similarities.

You Need to Do it All the Time

True social media marketing — that is, connecting with your customers and prospects — is a consistent and regular task. One-off campaigns can help drive viral success, but social media is not a “set it and forget it” type of initiative. You need to consistently work at building relationships and not let them be. And you need to be consistently monitoring the space. Silence can hurt you. If you’re not following the conversation regularly, your customers might just flock to your competitors instead.

Similarly, as much as it might feel compelling to neglect your child to perhaps play in the virtual space or to do anything else for that matter, you can’t take lengthy breaks from your kid. Parenthood is a full time job for either the parent or a caretaker. You can’t just give birth to a baby and forget her either. She needs your attention just like your audience does.

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10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Killer Social Media Strategy

May 18, 2010

This is a guest post by Beth Hrusch.

Why do businesses need social media? It’s a good question, and one that everyone should ask before they get started. After all, spending time, money, and other precious resources on social media marketing before you have an understanding of what it can do for you is kind of like putting the cart before the horse (not advisable).

What are your goals? Just because you’ve heard that other companies are doing it doesn’t mean that social media will magically work for you. Like any marketing strategy, it takes maintenance and a clear vision of the bigger picture. Your tweets, posts and comments should all be coordinated to meet the ultimate goal, which is to establish trust, build your brand, and increase sales.

Which is why, of course, your business needs a killer social media strategy. In order to tap the potential of this fabulous marketing tool, you’ll want to first determine if social media can meet your goals and objectives. If you’re still figuring out your marketing plan for 2010, consider the following 10 reasons why a social media strategy may be well worth the effort.

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