See A Need, Fill A Need – The Simplicity Of Social Media Marketing

This weekend I was watching the movie Robots, with my four year old. If you have kids, you have no doubt seen this comedy filled movie with a great story about overcoming social status, wanting to do something great and believing in yourself. Beside the film being quite entertaining and a lot of fun, there is a great thread of business and social media wisdom throughout the movie, in the form of a quote.

“See A Need Fill A Need” is something Bigweld says that inspires the main character “Rodney” to invent new technology as well as help fellow robots that can no longer obtain spare parts.

Here is a quick trailer for the movie.

If you don’t have kids or have never seen this classic animated film, you’re probably asking yourself , so how does all this kids stuff connect to social media? What’s worse you’re may even be ready to close the post and move on, but I challenge you to stay with me on this one.

Social media marketing must have a strategy for delivering value to your audience to be effective. The strategy should be designed around the topics and interests of that audience that may have nothing to do with what your company actually does. So it is your job in social media to determine the needs of your target audience (their interests) and fill that need with content.

For example: If your target audience is stay at home mom’s and you are sharing posts about your cleaning products without also sharing content about parenting, kid friendly events and funny kid stuff, you aren’t effectively seeing the needs of your audience, nor are you filling the needs they have.

Here are some tips for identifying your target audiences social media content needs:

1) Clearly define your social media audience. 

Be very specific here. Knowing what your target audience really looks like demographically and even geographically is important. Everyone is NOT your target market.

2) Investigate the websites and social media accounts they frequent.

Knowing the brands and social media accounts that likely have communities of your target audience will provide you details about your audience very easily.

3) Observe what content topics they tend to share, comment and like the most. (usually it’s 3-5 topics)

Put yourself in your target audiences shoes. If you were them, what would drive your interests when you logged into social media everyday? Watch your customers and prospects on other social media sites and with other brands to determine the topical drivers.

4) Stay clear of the larger brands for social media marketing and content topics.

Most major brands don’t do social media correctly, and they don’t really care to. They simply leverage the billions in branding and marketing they have already done over the years into the social space as an additional channel to pitch themselves. Everyone else has to do social media properly if they intend on getting any real results.

So, properly seeing and then filling the interest needs of your social media audience is the best and proven way to increase conversations and build relationships with them. The value derived from doing this effectively is that the relationships that result will be your best opportunities to realize increased revenue and ROI through social media marketing.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Social Media Purpose and Tactics – The Truth About Content and Engagement

Recently eMarketer released a new report that purported to cover Social Media Tactics and which work best. Though the report has a lot of valuable information, most is based on a highly misguided view of social media to begin with. In this post I am going to outline two of the points in the report and attempt to give you some straight talk about them that is intended to help you adjust strategy and be more effective.

Engagement:

Early in the report there was a statement that stood out to me as a huge red flag:

“the greatest percentage of respondents from both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies considered customer engagement to be the primary purpose of their social media marketing.”

With so many marketers seeing engagement as the primary purpose for their social media marketing, it is no wonder why the respondents answered the way they did on other segments in the report. Engagement should simply be a part of the process within social media marketing, not the goal or purpose for it. The goal or purpose should be a clearly defined objective that is different for every business, but that should include things like increased sales, revenue, customers, traffic, etc. Real results and measurable metrics that make the time-consuming activities in social media worth while.

Content Creation:

A huge misnomer in the report is the repeated theme of the content creation requirement. Yes creating content is required. Photo’s, graphics, articles, blog posts, etc are optimum drivers when focused on the interests of your audience and delivers real value to them. However, there are two issues that need need to be dissected about this segment:

1) Average Small/Medium Businesses – Content creation can be an effective tool for driving social media marketing results, but the hard facts are that most SMB’s do not have the staff, resources or budget required to constantly create fresh creative content. In fact in most cases establishing a budget for this purpose for most SMB’s would not result in anything close to a return on investment. Larger companies and bigger brands are able to leverage their previous branding, resources and huge budgets without the need for real measured results and this is highly skewed in this report.

Most Difficult Social Media Marketing Tactics

2) Content Sharing – Since the overwhelming majority of marketing professionals that responded, reported that the top tactics of “content creation” were also the most difficult to execute, this leaves many scratching their head for what to do in their social media marketing. Not once in this report was a reference to content curation, aggregation or sharing, let alone a strategy around sharing. The average business must have a content strategy that involves posting content that others have written; content that is interesting and relevant to their target audience, provides value to that audience and starts conversations.

Reports like these can be incredibly insightful for the largest brands out there, or those that work with large brands, the fact is that small and medium businesses just don’t have the resources to execute social media this way. Furthermore, many of the larger brands do social media marketing in direct contrast to how it should be done, therefore spending most of their efforts pitching their products, not responding to their audience and producing content that are more liken to commercials than content that adds value to their audience.

If you are not a large brand, don’t let this report discourage you. Use the information to establish an effective strategy of content sharing and do what level of content creation you are able to, focusing on delivering value to your audience and building real relationships. THESE are the tactics that actually get real results.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Social Media Requires Some Comedy

Do yourself a favor. Take a look at your social media marketing and ask yourself a few questions…

1) Am I funny/fun?

2) Am I able to laugh and make fun of myself/your brand?

3) Do I actually do it?

4) Do I occasionally share funny/fun content?

5) Do others get a laugh from my content strategy from time to time?

Some of the most effective content in the social graph is funny. Think about the content that is most shared on Facebook. It’s funny videos and graphics that connects with the audience. It makes the day better and becomes memorable and is shared.

This blog post (and video) is a result of a back injury Sunday and over exhausted from working 24/7 for 2 straight years.  This forced me to realize that I am not invincible and put me on my back for nearly the entire day. The good news is that the following video is the ultimate result. I hope you laugh as hard as we did… ;-)  

If your social media marketing isn’t incorporating fun, funny and tasteful hilarity every week, you are missing opportunity to connect in a great way with your audience and extend your reach through the shares that result. Be a bit silly, laugh a bit and invite your target audience to laugh with, or even at you too!

Remember to keep the content audience appropriate and refrain from obscenities and other content that may be considered offensive to anyone in your target audience.

Have some fun with it!

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Reality Check: Daily Required Social Media Marketing Activity

I am frequently seeing articles explaining how to do social media marketing in 30 minutes or an hour each day and decided it was time to deliver a reality check. Unless you are a social media “guru”, “author”, “celebrity” or #fauxpert that has never done social media marketing outside of self promotion and has a huge social following, it’s time for a reality check. Any expectation that real results, revenue and return on investment for any SMB or marketer will be achieved by following such advice is foolish thinking.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but effective social media marketing is a detailed combination of technology integration, creativity and a whole lot of activity 24/7. It’s not working when you want, getting weekends off and forgetting to check your feeds, mentions and conversations for days at a time. We call that kind of activity and dedication social networking, not social media.

That’s great if you are an enthusiast that is not using social media channels for marketing, but then again I don’t write for enthusiasts. My articles are always focused on the average brand, SMB, individual marketer and social media agencies. It’s what I know and do, not a hobby or a subject matter I have become known for and use to generate book sales, speaking gigs or ad revenue from blog traffic.

Our goal is to change the message of the industry that is dominated by the folks outlined in the above paragraph into that of real effective use of social media by people who have and actually do it. It’s one thing to consult Starbucks or most other major brands on social media because you sold a ton of books about the subject. It’s another thing to actually create and execute a strategy for the majority that make up social media marketers like small and medium brands or individual marketers and get results. Heck, my 14-year-old daughter could consult Starbucks or most other major brands on their social media marketing. They do it wrong and don’t have to do it right. They have billions in media and marketing dollars that drive their brand on and offline.

While articles that tell you that you can get results with minimal time and effort in social media are incredibly appealing to the masses, I am hear to tell you that it takes work.

*Note – Social media agencies, consultants and coaches – keep reading. There are some reality checks for you as well. :-)

In an effort to both deliver a reality check as well as a real guide of activity, following is a list of SOME daily activities that are required to get results with any social media marketing program.

1) Content Posting: Every day you need to have relevant valuable content for your audience in your stream. Content that gets them to engage, like, comment and share. Not just posts about you or what you do, but information, news and articles your audience will find relevant.

How much content? Here is a basic list of posts per day on a few of the networks you are likely working with:

Twitter – 15-20
Facebook Personal – 4-8
Facebook Page – 3-6
LinkedIn Personal – 5-10
Groups – 1-4
G+ Personal – 10-15
G+ Brand Page – 2-5

Every industry, audience and brand is different, but this will give you a sense of some minimum levels that are required.

2) Content Creation: Like it or not, you have to not only share content relevant to your audience, you also have to create your own content. Blog posts, videos, images, infographics, etc. You can’t lead in an industry where you are not contributing to its message in new ways. This is not an occasional required activity, it’s every single week.

3) YOUR Content Posting: Once you have created content, you need to post it. The good news is that the more content you have created the more content you have available to post daily. I believe content you have created and posts that are about you and what you do should make up about 20% of what you post every day.

4) Content Sharing: Part of social media marketing is sharing other people’s social posts that you and your audience may find interesting and valuable. This serves two purposes;

1. It delivers additional value to your audience beyond what you found and posted.
2. It lets others know that you appreciate what they post and wanted to pass it along.

5) Real and Real-Time Posting: These posts are above posting and sharing content and are just about being real, human and approachable. These are often just text and consist of what you are thinking, the weather, where you are and what you are doing. Don’t forget that people connect with people in social media. Don’t be a logo or a robot. Nobody can like or build a relationship with either of those.

6) Community Growth: Every day you need to be growing your community of fans, followers and friends that are your target audience. If you build it they will come doesn’t work in social media. Though doing the above 5 activities every day will help you consistently grow your community, if you are using social media for marketing, that community size needs to increase. Therefore every day you need to be searching and finding your target audience on all of the social networks and connecting with them. Don’t wait for them to find you.

7) Community Outreach: Within your community you need to continually reach out and engage. That is no different from being at a live networking event. You start conversations and get to know them. You share their content and information with others and build a relationship. This must be done daily to be effective with social media marketing.

8) Response/Engage: The opposite of outreach is responding. When someone likes, shares, comments on your posts, acknowledge them, thank them and star a conversation. If someone mentions you in social media, respond.

I have a lot to say about this section, but in order to keep it a blog post and not an article I will say that timing matters. When someone mentions you or comments, they are there, online, right now. Waiting hours or days is missed opportunity and will never see any real results.

9) Follow Backs: When someone follows you on Twitter, Circles you on Google Plus or Friends you on Facebook or Linkedin, you need determine whether you want to reciprocate or accept. I recommend that this is done every single day. We do it twice per day ourselves.

*Tip – if you’re using social media for marketing, follow, friend and connect with those that are your target audience. If you are a restaurant in Tennessee, friending or following someone in the UK doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

10) Data/Statistics: You need to know what is working and what isn’t. Paying attention to your statistics, results, analytics and data on a daily basis is required. Knowing this information enables you to adjust the what’s and when’s of what you are doing and set realistic goals and targets. Not knowing means you are not getting anywhere.

11) Planning/Strategy: Every day you need to be planning and adjusting your strategy. Using what you learn to improve results in social media marketing is no different from anything else in business. Test, measure and adjust… DAILY.

More Reality Checks for Marketers:

So if you think that real, effective social media marketing can actually be accomplished in 30 minutes or an hour per day, I invite you to think again. This is why there are so many social media agencies out there and more popping up every single day. Not too many people have the time, knowledge and ability to execute all of these thins on a daily basis. If you can’t either or are not getting results, I suggest you speak with a qualified social media professional agency as well.

*If you are paying $99/mo for “social media” from some online company, you’re being robbed. It takes far too much time, tools and activities to really do social media marketing right that results in real business.

More Reality Checks for Social Media Agencies:

If your agency is teaching social media marketing instead of doing it, before taking some unsuspecting persons money, be sure they understand what it really takes. Stop taking money from people to teach them things they will never have the time, skill or experience to execute well. Anyway you slice it, it’s stealing…

*As a consultant or agency that teaches social media, the person you teach is rarely the CEO that paid for you. Be aware that the admin, intern or junior employee you train, will soon be in love with social media marketing just like you and will be starting their own agency when their employer pulls the plug. Stop creating competitors for yourself every six months, while making pennies for doing it. Do the hard work for clients and get them real results by delivering effective social media management that has value and recurring revenue.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more required in social media marketing like strategy, targeting, social selling, conversations and more. But true to form, I am not here to condemn or be hurtful. My only goal here is to increase the effectiveness of social media marketing in general and change the message to real results, not scores, followers, likes or speakers. Go do this!

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Blogging For Social Media Marketing – My Top 12 Tips

I am frequently asked about blogging and how to use it effectively for marketing within social media. I decided to put together a list of my top ten tips that is specifically designed for the individual marketer or small to medium business.

This list is not at all for the large brand, affiliate marketer, the social media author or speaker. Those specific groups are typically about numbers, driving less than targeted traffic, ego inflation and/or putting out volume over substance. Exactly what you should NOT be doing if you are serious about being effective with your blog within social media. If you want to measure REAL results that is –  You know things like sales, revenue and new customers. But I digress…

In no particular order, here are my top ten tips for using your blog effectively within your social media marketing strategy. I have broken them up into two sections – Strategy and Execution.

Blog Strategy:

1) Write for your audience – Too often brands and marketers forget who their target audience is. Write for your target audience, not for traffic. Deliver value and relevance in your content, just like a proper content strategy within your social marketing strategy. Write content that solves their biggest problems, answers their questions and/or helps them improve.

2) Stay away from time sensitive writing – New is great and often shiny, but does it attract your target audience? Writing content about something new in your industry or an event that is happening can destroy the long-term validity of the content. It’s ok to include some time/event based posts, but try to write content that has value for your audience, that can be found via search and/or shared via your social media efforts over a long period of time – i.e. relevant, Legacy content.

3) Be concise – Remember that a blog post is NOT a magazine article. People have very short attention spans and keeping your blog posts short, to the point and without all the fluff is important. Give your readers clear points to absorb along with a title that states exactly what they can expect from your piece.

4) Have personality – Be real and approachable with your posts. Don’t be afraid to put your personality into your articles or even be a little controversial at times.

5) Write yourself – For MOST marketers or SMB’s doing your own writing is going to get the best results. Having the benefit of your voice consistently across your content is extremely helpful for your readers.

For some that lack writing skills or the time and resources necessary to blog, outsourcing the function to a professional may be required. Be sure that the professional you select to write for your blog can follow your strategy  and capture your voice (tone and personality) accurately.

Blog Execution:

6) Consistency – Just as with your regular social media marketing content posting, consistency with blog posts matters. You must have a consistent flow of relevant, valuable blog posts on your blog to build and retain an audience. Occasional posts will not be effective, so be consistent every week. I try to write two new blog posts per week.

7) Comments – Also like your social media marketing, responding to comments on your blog is important. Respond always and do it quickly after a comment is posted.

8) Use drafts – Whenever I think of a new blog post idea, I start a new posts in WordPress and save it as a draft. I add notes and bullet points for what I want to do with the post and save it. This way I always have some 30 blog posts started and only need to select one to finish whenever I need to write.

9) Stay ahead – Keep ahead with completed posts in the queue

10 SEO – When writing a blog post, you want to not only follow the strategy items we have listed above, but you also want to consider the long-term search engine optimization of your posts. Including images, tags and keywords in your posts is highly important for being found on search engines.

For the average brand and marketer, there are three main points to consider here:

a) Always include a graphic that depicts the content. This is important when readers share the content on social networks, but also for SEO. Be sure the name the image file with words contained in the title and body of your post and also complete a description that does the same.

b) Always include tags of the keywords and phrases appropriate for the post.

c) Be sure the main keywords of your post are included in the title, the body of the post as well as in tags.

11) Be realistic – Be realistic about what you can really do. Don’t set editorial calendar expectations too high for yourself so that you can’t complete them. Don’t expect that you will get 20,000 hits a day when you are just starting out. Be consistent, even if that is only one or two blog posts per week. Commit to the realistic expectation and stick to it.

12) Be Social – Without integrating your blog into an effective social media marketing strategy, it is highly unlikely you will ever get much traction with your blog. You need to have a targeted social community established that is highly engaged in order to best take advantage of a blog. Here are two things to consider:

a) When you post a new blog, share it multiple times that day in the social graph.

b) Keep a list of your blog posts and share them at lest once a week/month.

A blog is an extension of your brand, your website, your overall web presence and more importantly your social media marketing. Understanding the best way to leverage and integrate it properly across all of them will help you begin see increased results.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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How Social Media Actions Within Relationships Build Trust

There seems to be a new round of social scoring and now “trust” based sites that purport to either determine a persons social influence or business trustworthiness. As if we did not have enough of these sites already, it seems every geek that can code is trying to jump into social media software to try to get a piece of the pie in this ever-growing industry.

Seeming to coincide with this new rush of social media influence and trust score platforms are some bloggers telling people to shut up about them. Not to stop talking about them because they are tired of it, but telling people like me that are highly skeptical of such services ability to accurately measure social and e-commerce influence and trust into a score to shut up. Really?

“Actions Within Relationships Build Trust, not easily manipulated false scores.” #quote @fondalo

• Actions that result in trust with your online community are what is important.
• Real results, actions and revenue are the measurement of trust and value you deliver to your community.
• Relationships that go beyond conversations with your peers is what truly measures your successful social media marketing.
• The right social relationships that are earned through proper actions will result in something well beyond an inaccurate score, something that imparts monetary value to both you AND your community.

I was approached a couple of times recently regarding a newer social scoring site. One conversation went something like “I think u would want to because #TrustCloud is like your online credit score. They evaluate profiles & give u a score.” To which I replied, ”No algorithm can do that. A credit score is based on your payment history. These social scores can easily be manipulated.”

So let me be very clear. I will not shut up about easily manipulated social media influence scoring sites like Klout, Kred and the like. I will continue to preach real results and help guide my audience to things that will help them achieve those results in their social media marketing efforts. I will continue to battle against all efforts by those people in this industry that have high scores, but no real results to show for it.

Dare I say that ROI matters? You need a return on your investment of time and resources from your social media management that goes beyond your ego and the perception others have of you because of your score!

If your social media marketing success story is about your book, seminars and speaking revenue covering the social media industry, that does not qualify you to preach the validity of scores to a restaurant, entrepreneur or brand. Having done social media marketing successfully for one does. I can and have “gamed” these scoring platforms to get my score to increase. Doing so has always resulted in a reduction in “real” effectiveness and results.

Focus on your actions within your social relationships, so your social media marketing achieves a clearly defined goal, not a high Klout score that doesn’t buy groceries!

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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That’s Not YOUR Content Strategy, It’s Someone Else’s

Before I dig fairly deep into this subject, I want to be very clear about a couple of things:

1) There are no steadfast rules about social media marketing, with the exception of: DO NOT spam.

2) My intent is to guide my readers toward improved effectiveness and real net results based on my results, not a theory that generates blog traffic to sell my book about something I have never really done.

3) I largely write for a specific audience that consists of the social media marketer, the small to medium brand or the social media agency, not particularly for the enthusiast. Please recognize that this post is directly focusing on those using social media for marketing.

Literally hundreds of times per day, I view the feeds, walls and pages of people I am connected with. I am looking to RT (Retweet), share and otherwise promote them. The unfortunate truth is that a large percentage of the time even with several scrolls of the page, I am unable to find anything they have posted themselves. I don’t mean blog posts they have written, but content that THEY find and post. No blog post of their own, no news, articles or relevant information that is valuable and deserving of a share. Just an incredible amount of RT’s of other people’s social media content posts.

Let me say something very clearly here; If you largely RT and Share other people’s social media posts and/or Triberr content from others to fill your feeds with content, you are deploying THOSE people’s content strategy, not your own.

A few things I suggest:

1) Carefully select the posts you Share/RT from others.

Ensure there is a reason for the share that further’s YOUR content strategy.

2) Make RT’s and Shares around 10-20% max of the posts in your feed. 

If you are going to be effective with the social media content you post, you need to have a strategy and that strategy needs to be yours. Limit the RT’s and Shares in your feed and ramp up the content you find yourself that is inline with the topics that drive your audience.

3) You must have a content strategy.

If you don’t know what a social media strategy is, are struggling with it or need to make changes to your existing strategy, here is a simple Infographic that may help. Coupled with a social content strategy, you need to have an effective way to aggregate social content and manage, schedule and post that content.

Related Example:

I used to be in several “tribes” on Triberr with many big name social media people who had huge audiences. After sometime, I left those 10+ tribes with a 20+ million reach down to only 6 with around a 3.9 million reach. The interesting thing I have found is that our blog traffic has maintained the same traffic levels, our software user acquisition rates have steadily increased, and I spend WAY less time in Triberr, even though we are in smaller tribes with a smaller reach.

The right content is very important and where you spend your time obtaining content for your feeds is also. Many of the people who have large followings are not as influencial as you might think. In fact, my experience tells me that many of those described above that share your posts have followers that don’t even consider stuff they share as important or relevant, hence the same results with a much smaller tribe reach.

Don’t misunderstand, I am not a Triberr hater. I think it is excellent when used in conjunction with a clearly defined strategy.

The moral of the story here is that you must have your OWN content strategy that includes posting content YOU find, content YOU create, as well as shares and RT’s. These things work together to deliver value to your community and establish credibility and thought leadership in your space. Doing so will result in increased, meaningful conversations, deeper relationships and ultimately a return on investment for your social media marketing efforts.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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How To Determine Topics For Your Social Media Content Strategy

Content is not the king of social media marketing, but it certainly is the starting point that drives conversations, action and results. Having and executing an effective social media content strategy is the difference between your brand being in social media and getting results in social media.

I have discovered that there are typically three to five main topics of interest that social network users are most attracted to. Those topics are typically different for everyone, so knowing what they are for your specific market is tremendously important.

I have also found that there are three basic steps that can help you determine the topics your social audience is most interested in.  Follow these steps and combine it with an appropriate volume of posted, curated, shared and your created content to get the best results.

Three steps to determine topics for your social media content strategy:

1) Know Your Audience – Knowing your audience is the most important step in the content strategy process. You need to clearly define who you are trying to reach, very specifically. Define them demographically (statistical characteristics), geographically (location or locations) and psychograhically (personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles).

*Don’t forget things like gender, age, income levels, etc.

2) Research - Once you have defined your clear target audience and know a few specifics about who they are, do your research. Here are some things to consider:

• Current Customers – Ask your current customers this question… When you are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc., what content topics interest you the most?
• Competition – Investigate your competitors pages and social accounts. What topics that they post about get the most comments, likes, shares and conversations. Be sure the followers of those accounts are your target prospects also, or the information you obtain will lead you on a wild goose chase with your own strategy. Many brands social media marketing and content strategies are often focused on their peers, not their prospects. Don’t make the same mistake!
• Search Engines – Use your favorite search engine to find statistics and information about your target audience. The internet has a ton of information, government and private studies, as well as news reports that will easily point you to topics your audience favors.

3) Test/Measure – After you have narrowed potential topics down to 5-10, start sharing news, blog posts and other content surrounding these topics to your streams. Aggregate content around then topics and post them in your newsfeeds consistently everyday. Measure the engagement, clicks, likes and comment rates around the topics. This will narrow you down to the top three to five that your audience most responds to.

Once you have determined your target markets three to five driving topics, you will want to slowly and steadily increase the volume of posts you are doing across the social networks you are focusing on. If you have properly identified the right topics of content to share, this will rapidly increase the amount of conversations, clicks and relationships you have in your community and more importantly get you on a path to improved results.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Social Media Content And The Social Selling Process [INFOGRAPHIC]

Content is so incredibly important in social media marketing. Many marketers and sad to say social media agencies don’t realize the true impact it has on getting to the all important return on investment results that are often missed. Social media content is a crucial part of the “social selling” process as well, so I decided to put together a little infographic on a process we use to show how content starts everything!

Of course every business and industry is different and some of the steps and details will need to be adjusted for your specific brand. The important thing to note is that content drives the social selling process. Content is what starts conversations with your target audience.

There are few important steps I want to point out:

1) Content – Where it all starts. You need to know the topics your audience are interested in, then find and post articles, news and information that is valuable to them. You need to have enough of that content posted throughout the entire day, so that whenever your audience is online, one of your posts is seen.

*the quantity of posts per day varies from social network to social network. For example you would post much more frequently on Twitter than your personal Facebook page. You would post much less frequently to your company Facebook page than your personal Facebook page. Then of course there is LinkedIn, Google Plus etc…

2) Conversations – These are what build relationships. No matter whether you are a BtoB (Business to Business) service company, or a local restaurant, people tend to do business with people they feel they know and like. Since conversations build relationships, this is key to the social selling process. The content you are sharing should be so relevant, interesting and valuable to your audience that they like, comment and/or share it. That opens the door to a thank you and a personal or business question or conversation.

*be sure to focus the bulk of your conversations with those that are prospects for your product and service. Spending time in conversations with a dad in Ohio, when you are a local beauty shop in Texas doesn’t further your sales efforts. That doesn’t mean ignore those that are not prospects, just use common sense and your time wisely.

3) Explain – When a follower asks about you or what you do, you are now in selling mode. This looks very different from one business type to another. Give a short answer and always include a link to your brief video, marketing piece or webpage that you have previously designed for this specific purpose.

Be sure to only do this with someone you know is a prospect for your product/service.

*be prepared with posts that are already written to cover the various questions you might get and edit them specifically for the person you are speaking to at that moment.

4) Next Step – Do you know ahead of time what the next step is or should be in the social selling process? If you are a restaurant, do you have a special to hand off to someone to get them to come in? Does your BtoB service company have a demo procedure you can immediately plug into with the person? Do you schedule time on your calendar for soft invites for “Let’s talk” or “we should talk” options right at that moment?

Know exactly what your options are and what works, then drive down the appropriate path with each relationship as the conversation lends itself.

5) Ongoing – Whether or not the person/company becomes a customer after going through the social selling process, you will always want to go back to monitor and engage. If you have established a relationship and know they are a prospect for you, monitor their activity for opportunities to share their content and/or engage in additional conversation. This goes for those that become customers and those that do not. I can’t stress this enough.

As you review the social selling process inforgraphic and the details I have outlined here, you should be asking yourself a few questions.

• Is the content we are sharing interesting to our audience?
• Are we getting frequent comments, likes and shares from our community every day, all day?
• Is the engagement we are getting from prospects for our product or service?
• Do we know which followers/fans in our community are our prospective customers?

If the answer is no to any of these four questions, your content strategy, topics, frequency and targeting is most likely off and needs considerable adjustment. Additionally, appropriate social CRM solutions should be immediately employed to enable you to better focus time and efforts on the right conversations with the right people.

P.S. – Don’t SPAM!  That is all… :-)

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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10 Points For Launching Your New Startup Using Social Media

As I speak with many new startup companies about social media, there are some big misconceptions about the what’s and when’s. Probably the biggest misconception I come across is the feeling that they should wait to start their social media marketing efforts until their product, website and/or business is actually completed or launched. This is a very bad idea and I will tell you why.

Imagine entering a marathon that is about to start in three months. During those three months you did not train at all. In addition to not training, you did not acquire sponsors to cover your massive entry fees, gear or travel expenses. How well do you think you will do once race day comes? That’s why implementing a strategy, building your social community and establishing relationships early is important!

I have put together a list of five Do’s and five Don’ts that should be helpful. These are by no means an exhaustive list, but a few of the tops things to keep you on track.

Do’s

1) Start Early – Develop a clear strategy that includes:

• Have a clearly defined short and long term goal/objective for your social media marketing.
• Know the social networks you need to be on and why.
• Have a clear definition of your target audience.
• Have a content topic strategy based on the interests of your target audience.
• Have a community growth strategy.

2) Be Proactive - Establish a sizable, targeted community way before launch. Find your target audience and follow/connect with them. Have a large enough audience built before you need to announce your new product/service.

A good rule of thumb is to have 3-5k followers on Twitter and 500-1000 on your Facebook page as a start before you launch.

3) Be Known for your topics – Establish a content strategy early that creates a reputation for you about your industry. Be known for creating and sharing the content that is of interest to your audience.

4) Scale the hype - Plan to slowly ramp up the hype about your product/service launch over 60-90 days. Use text posts, blog posts, images and video to create interest in what you are doing, without divulging it fully.

5) Relationships – Establish relationships and conversations with your target audience now, so when you launch you have EARNED the right to discuss your new product/service with them.

Don’ts

1) Spam/Pitch/Sell – Don’t mention your followers in spam posts or pitch your company and what you are doing. You must earn the right, through relationships to sell in social media.

2) Hello’s with Links – Don’t mention new followers saying hello and telling them what you do and linking them to your site, blog or page. Cold relationship hello links do not work! More importantly you end up being ignored moving forward.

3) Not following back – Don’t forget to follow your target audience back with they connect with you on Twitter. Not following back basically says “We are too cool to follow you”. This is a big mistake! You can’t engage your audience/prospects if you never see anything THEY post! Don’t try to be cool, be effective.

To be clear, I am not suggesting you follow or friend everyone. I am saying follow, friend and follow back those that are your target audience, and do it immediately (within 24 hours).

4) Not Responding – The biggest don’t I could list is ignoring your audience. When someone in your community shares or comments on something you posted, mentions you, etc., you need to respond right away. Thank them and engage them in conversation, which will build a relationship.

5) Wait – Don’t wait!!

When a new startup waits to long to get their social media marketing efforts on track, they are setting their social media up for failure. Being proactive with a strategy and executing it early, gives you the traction you need to make it effective, but more importantly help your eventual launch gain steam!

Regardless of whether you are a tech startup, becoming a real estate agent, or beginning a new restaurant. Plan, then execute that plan now…

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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