Posts Tagged: Social Media Marketing
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, February 03rd, 2012
We’re long overdue for a dose of cheer. Here are links to some of the online gems we are enjoying and exploring right now.
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks right now. It allows you to pin, organise and share images online. It is very visually stimulating and fun. Watch this space for a more in depth post all about Pinterest and feel free to follow me there.
We’ve been exploring online tools that allowyou to create simple graphics. We like Gimp, Aviary and Pixlr – there’s also “lite” version of Photoshop if you can find it.
Edge Rank Checker is a tool that allows you track the effectiveness of your Facebook pages but beware – it takes ages to generate your reports and pages with low fan counts will be skewed.
Mobile apps we are loving include: Ego (check web stats on the go), Flipboard (Social Magazine) and Evernote (to help you remember everything).
Want to customize yor Facebook page? We’re currently evaluating Shortstack, FaceIt Pages, North Social and Page Modo. If you have used any of these and have a preference we’d love to get your feedback.
And now some social media tools: Echofon (never read a tweet twice), Buffer (add posts and “automagically” post them through the day), CoTweet (manage mutliple Twitter feeds).
Enjoy!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, January 05th, 2011
If your New Year’s resolution is to get your business in order, then putting together and implementing social media plan to help you use the Internet more effectively should be top of your to do list today. If the thought of getting started has you procrastinating, then you’ve come to the right blog post to kick start your New Year online. Here is how to go about creating a social media strategy document that works for you.
Go Easy – Remember that your strategy document doesn’t need to be war and peace. It can be as long or as short as you want/need it to be but it must be documented (even if its just in bullet form) and achievable given your market economics.
Research – All great marketing plans begin with one thing: research. Before you start take time to do some research: find out what your competition is doing online, ask your clients which social networking sites they use, identify peers and luminaries in your industry and find out how they use social media. Doing this will help put social media in perspective and will allow you to set realistic goals.
Your Social Media Plan Should Include
Overview – Your plan should of the current situation so that you have a yardstick for comparisons. How many followers do you have right now? What is your social media presence and what resources you have available? The overview should also include a short statement that encompasses the purpose of your plan.
Audience – Define your target audience: ages, location, sex, education etc. Knowing who you want to target makes hitting the mark much more likely.
Goals – Define your goals in quantitative terms and make sure they are achievable given your resources. 
Applicable social media goals might be to increase website traffic by X%, to increase your Facebook by X, to grow blog subscribers or to build interactions (how many times people interact with your site including replies, comments, clicks etc). Remember that goals should be time sensitive.
Measure – An important part of goal setting is determining how you will measure success. If website traffic traffic is a priority the Google Analytics is a great tool to use. If it is building your network or interaction then follower count and insights should be used.
Tools - Identify and document which social media or digital networks you will use. This decision should be based on the research conducted earlier – the decisions you make here are important. If you have little time and are looking to network then Twitter’s short sharp 140 character bursts might be right for you (especially if moms, Justin Beiber fans and techs are your target audience). If you have a very visual offering then YouTube might be the most appropriate tool. The key here is to use only a few tools and choose the ones that are most likely to give you access to your target community.
Message – What is it that you want to communicate online, what impression do you want to make? Write it down! Encompass this in a few sentences and bear in mind that brand visuals and your communications style online should mirror those offline. Consistency is key and if different people are managing your presence, it is important that they “act” in the company manner online.
Schedule – Social media can be time consuming and distracting if you are not focused. To help you stay on track, schedule social media marketing time into your day and keep to that schedule.
Implementing Your Social Media Plan
Your social media strategy plan should be an organic document that can be tweaked and enhanced as you go. Once you engage and gain experience using social media, you will quickly learn what works and what doesn’t in your community. Use your social media experiences to hone your plan so that it can evolve and become even more effective.
Not Traditional Marketing
It is very important to remember when implementing your plan that this is not a traditional marketing project. It is not all about pushing out information online, it is about building relationships, communities and interacting. Bear that in mind, build an appropriate strategy, get social and you can’t go wrong.
We Can Help
Out-Smarts provides social media and Internet marketing planning services. If your social media strategy is top of the prioirity list for 2011 but your strapped for time, call us – we’d love to assist.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 31st, 2010
There are social networks, professional networks, microblogs, video sites, events sites, blogs, photo sites… the list goes on and one thing is for certain, you can’t be on all of them.
It is best, in fact, to deploy social media marketing strategies that involve using only a select few of these tools in highly targeted ways.
How to decide which social media tools to use?
In order to ascertain which social media tools are best you need to know a few things – some good old market research is needed:
- Customer – if you don’t already know this then you should. Understand who it is you want to do business with and what it is that you do that solves a problem for them. Take some time to listen to what is being said about your company or industry in these forums. Doing so will help understand the online habit of your customers.
- Company – consider your organisation, its products or services and determine which media are most appropriate to showcase these. Consider too, the resources you have at hand (what are you and your staff great at?) and use these strengths to build your social media campaign.
- Convenience – where is the best place to reach your audience online? Which tools you use will depend on knowing this. For example, LinkedIn is great to reach business people, Flickr is a great place to showcase art, photography and design companies – you get the gist.
- Communication – always remember to be consistent with your messaging and branding. Your online brand and message should be consistent with your overall branding as well so as not to confuse. The goal here is to build community, so consider ways to communicate and interact online that will add value, encourage interaction and grow your following.
Take these four C’s into account and your social media marketing is more likely to hit the mark.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 16th, 2010
I regularly contribute blog posts on social media to the
Entreprenuerial Woman Magazine – here is the latest one on using social media to build your personal brand.
Personal Branding
The concept of personal branding has had a lot of coverage in these difficult economic times as people look to market themselves more effectively in order to stimulate their careers. Personal branding is, in essence, a means to package yourself in such a way as to present a particular image for career purposes. It is the way you market yourself to your peers and prospects.
The idea of having a professional image is not a new one – uniforms have been standard for many occupations for centuries. The difference with personal branding is that the concept is not to make you look like one of the crowd, but rather to make you stand out from it.
When considering your personal brand you should look at many factors: the way you speak, the way you look, the car your drive, your education, and your character, but the single most important aspect to consider when building your brand is that it has to be real. It has to reflect the real you. A personal brand that portrays a false image will be apparent to everyone you come into contact with and will do more harm than good.
Identify the unique aspects of your personality, skills and experience and use those to make “you†stand out from the crowd. By building on a personal brand that it true to you, your efforts will be more rewarded and your image will be more realistic and authentic.
Using social media is an ideal way to build your personal brand, to expand and reinforce your network, but there are risks that you should be aware of.
Tips For Building Your Personal Brand Online
Here are some tips that will help you take advantage of social media to build your brand safely:
1. When networking on Facebook or other social forums always use the privacy controls to limit access to your information (usually you can find these by clicking on “accountâ€).
2. Use Facebook, LinkedIn and other networks to make people aware of what you do or want to do. Highlight your unique experiences in these forums
3. Google yourself or use Pipl to see whats being said about you and do the Granny test on the results – if Granny wouldnt approve then perhaps the content isnt appropriate to enhance your business profile.
4. Use your profiles in these forums to present an appropriate professional image. Include a good headshot that is authentic and dont post any photos, videos or images that compromise your image.
5. Portray yourself professionally (as appropriate to your industry) in all forums.
6. Be true to who you are: transparency leads to trust – if you have a good reputation people are more likely to do business with you.
7. Remember that you have a valid and unique opinion. Dont be afraid to voice it.
8. Always be respectful of others. It is okay to disagree but be polite about it.
9. If you are young and looking for a job be aware that a party boy or girl image may seem cool to your peers but it wont help you get a job or grow your professional network.
10. Online networking is a vital tool for anyone trying to build a career but dont get sidetracked or sucked in. Avoid this by scheduling time for online networking and sticking to it.
11. Dont make friends with everyone and anyone. Be selective. It will help you manage the volume of information and will also expose you to less risk.
Personal branding is being used more and more to help people highlight their professional attributes and experience, grow and enhance their networks, build business and to find new careers. In our next post on this subject we will look more closely at which social media tools to use and how to use them to do this effectively.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 13th, 2010
Worried that your good work could be plagiarized or that someone’s going to steal your thunder on the Internet and not reference your writing appropriately? There’s a solution to every problem and this one comes in the form of Creative Commons. An offshoot of a US non profit organization , Creative Commons was founded in 2003 with the help of the University of Ottawa Law and Technology Program and theCanadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
The service allows you to license your work easily and at no cost. With various different license offerings based on how much freedom you want to give people to use your writing and in which forums, Creative Commons steps you through an easy process to find the right license and then you simply download some HTML to your web-site and your covered like so:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License
People using the works are then morally and legally obliged to use them accordingly (or not at all if you so choose). Whether or not people act appropriately remains to be seen and there’s also the issue of the global reach of the Internet with different laws governing different jurisdictions but if this plagiarism is a concern for you then Creative Commons is definitely a step in the right direction to protecting your work.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 21st, 2009
This month we’ve invited some guest bloggers to contribute. The first is by friend and colleague Guacira Naves (Owner, The Online Strategy House):
The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts
Over a decade ago, an online marketing strategy was comprised by separate tactics that had only one concern in mind: to drive traffic to a site. The game was relatively simple: a site would be built, it’d be supported by email newsletters, advertising, maybe some traditional media, and that was all that there was to it.
Then, marketers became aware of the importance of search engine optimization, and added that component to their plan. Today, social media marketing is the new kid on the block. Not only that – its changing how the other online marketing elements interact with each other.
Below is a sample of how this interdependence plays out – and how you can combine each individual channel for the greater good:
Twitter and Google:
- Googles new real time search results mean that tweets with your brand may now appear in search results. So, a strong visibility on Twitter can very well influence your site’s exposure on Google. Thats another reason to maintain an active Twitter profile, and populate it with quality content.
Twitter and Customer Opinion:
- Not only is Twitter the most important micro-blogging network, it is increasingly used as a search tool. It is a channel where people go to find the online equivalent to “word of mouth†about a product, service, etc. On Twitter, frustrated customers often share their gripes, and loyal clients rave about their favourite brands. Heres an example:
Imagine if you were looking for reviews on Virgin Mobile and came across the two tweets above. They may very well sway your decision-making.
However, Virgin Mobile could have stepped in to have their say. Itd potentially have an impact not only on the three individuals involved in that dialogue, but Virgins update wouldve been found in searches made for that brand.
Heres a positive example of how proactive companies observe Twitter conversations, and interact with users: on December 10th, I decided to try Pearltrees. I then tweeted this update:
Minutes later, I received a reply from Pearltrees CEO, Patrice Lamothe, with this message:
That update was not only relevant to me, but to any other individual making a search query for “Pearltrees†around that time.
So, the lesson is: people are going to use Twitter’s search tool to find information on your products or services. You might as well help them find information that is as positive as possible.
YouTube and Search Engine Optimization:
- YouTube videos are prominently represented in Google’s search engine results.You do have a YouTube channel, don’t you? Then, make sure that, among other things, your videos titles and tags are optimized. And guess what – this will help your presence in search engines, too.
YouTube and other Social Networks:
- YouTube also gives viewers the option to share a video via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, orkut and StumbleUpon, directly from the videos YouTube page. You can also embed a video into your blog, and invite readers to share it – either by embedding into their own blogs, by adding it to Facebook, or inviting them to share it through social bookmarking sites like Reddit. Earlier today, I embedded this third-party YouTube video about Hewlett-Packard into my own Facebook profile:
I wasnt the only one. According to the video statistics, it was watched an additional 279 times as a result of links from Facebook. Reddit, a popular content-sharing site, had also generated 1,317 views.
Blogs and Search Engine Optimization:
- By frequently adding fresh, relevant content to your company’s blog, not only will you improve your brand’s presence and clout in the blogosphere, but you will help your site become more appealing in Googles eyes. That is because Google naturally gives more importance to sites that are updated on a regular basis.
Blogs and Twitter:
- Blogs can easily be set up to automatically promote a new post, as soon as it is published. You will be not only be driving traffic to the blog itself, but will also help to keep your Twitter profile active with new, original material.
I could go on and on. This just scratches the surface, but gives you an idea of how, nowadays, online marketing elements are so interdependent. When planned accordingly and executed in an orchestrated manner, these tactics will make the whole stronger than the sum of its parts.
About the author: Guacira Naves is an online marketing strategist who has 18 years of Internet experience. Her company, The Online Strategy House, develops and executes holistic online marketing strategies to help clients achieve their short, medium and long-term goals.
Thanks to Guacira for this. If you are interested in contributing a post – give us a shout!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 09th, 2009
I recently had the opportunity to attend a leadership round table headed up by Judy Bishop of Bishop and Associates. Judy has been a key player on the Vancouver business scene for 20 years and her discussion surrounded building your personal brand.
During the conversation Judy pointed out that “branding” is not a term that should be used in a business context and that it in fact should only relate to cattle or livestock. Its an interesting point and got me thinking about the process we go through as marketers trying to influence our audience. A mistake is often made in focusing on “us” (ie the company, product or service) and not “the audience”.
Taken literally as a verb, using -ing to form the progressive tense: branding, is grammatically correct. However, I think its not the grammar that Judy has a bone of contention with but the implication. Branding implies that we actively seek to make our mark on the audience when in actual fact its not marketers who are in control of our brands but the audience itself. Many marketers fail to recognize this and go about building their brand from the inside out without giving too much thought to the audience who is on the receiving end.
So what has all this got to do with social media I hear you ask. Well, since you asked, I think its vital. You shouldn’t go about using social media as a means “to burn your brand” into the minds of your audience. Social media users are particularly sensitive to manipulation. Rather, look on social media as a great tool for making contact with your audience, to understand them better (what makes them tick)and to allow you to build better products for them. Use it as a tool to build better relationships with them so that they, in turn, build a great perception of your company in their minds and are more likely to turn to you when in need. The best way to do this is to constantly be on the look out for ways that you can help your target audience and add value for them. The key point here is that it is all about them not all about you.
Unlike Judy, I may use the term branding from time to time to categorize the efforts we make as marketers to build awareness but I do see her point. Branding is something that is done to something else – the word implies a lack of respect. Building a brand is all about respect: understanding your audience and catering to their needs. By placing your customer front and centre and catering to their needs not yours, your marketing efforts will be more likely to succeed.
Related posts:
Branding – with Isabelle Mercier
And thanks Michelle for the great Highland Coo image!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, October 28th, 2009
This post is in follow up to our post last week about the risks of social media, this time we are looking at how to avoid them.
1. Litigation – to avoid the threat of litigation put HR processes in place so that your staff knows what can be said and what can’t. Never spout off in social media in the heat of the moment and always stop to ask if what you are posting is professional, fair and representative of your brand.
2. Brand Killer – Avoid diluting your brand by using the same corporate or product name, logo, corporate colours and messaging in all these forums. Ensure that the brand remains consistent across all touch points and that your presence is easily recognizable.
3. Forever and Ever - always remember that what you post is out there forever so refer back to point one.
4. Time Waster - schedule time for social media marketing and stick to it. If you want to play, do it in your own time to avoid the big time suck.
5. Pushy -look for opportunities to add value, to answer questions those in your community ask that are relevent to your area of expertise and always share links, posts and sites that you think might be valuable to your audience. This really helps in building your rapport online and mitigates any risk of looking too pushy. Oh and remember not to blatantly sell – it just puts followers off.
6. Disclosure – again make sure to put in place policies so that staff know what is expected of them in social media, what can and can’t be said.
7. Negativity – if someone says something bad about you in these forums, respond quickly and professionally – state your case or address the concern. This will have the counter effect of showing that you are listening and that your company cares about what people think.
8. Just Because – Don’t build a social media presence just because its the latest buzz technology. Before you start ask, what is in it for me or my company, do I have the time and resources to do this, how are my competitors using it, is my target market on there or is there an opportunity to reach new markets.
9. Spam – you can limit this by being extremely strategic and careful when building your following, by using software like Akismet and Captcha and by making sure you don’t click on links from untrusted sources.
10. Ignore It - A social media presence might not be right for every company but that doesn’t mean you should ignore social media completely. Use these forums to listen and learn and to hear what is being said about your industry to help you stay ahead of the curve.
I did a search for “risk” on Flickr and up came this wonderful photo of a tiger from Ian Michael Thomas’ fabulous photostream. Social media may be risky but thankfully it doesn’t have such sharp teeth! Thanks Ian.
Other related posts:
Is Social Media Losing Its Lustre?
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, October 26th, 2009
1. Be yourself – don’t try to create a persona that doesn’t reflect the real you. It will come back to haunt you.
2. Be selective about who you add. You don’t need to add each and every person who asks.
3. Don’t try to network on every online forum. Instead choose those that fit your audience or goals and work to build those.
4. Build your network online as you grow your real world network. When you meet someone new in the real world add them on social networks.
5. If you do plan to have a presence in as many networks as you can then consider using a tool to mass submit status updates to all.
6. If you interact with others on blogs or forums look for them and add them to your network.
7. You are in control of how much or as little info you want to post. Don’t feel pressured to add stuff that you’re not comfortable with.
8. Do the “Granny Test” before you post – ask yourself if your grandmother would approve, if the answer is yes then get posting.
9. Get to know and use the privacy controls if this is a concern for you.
10. Remember to link back to your site, blog or other profiles at every opportunity to give friends the chance to find you in other forums.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, October 23rd, 2009
This week I was reminded of how important research is when defining your brand. Your brand isn’t just your logo, its your company name, what you stand for, how you are perceived and how you do business.
When considering your brand name you should always look to come up with something unique, something that differentiates your offering. Always check to find out if another company uses the name you have intended for your product or service and this is especially so online. If you come up with something unique it makes search engine marketing easier. When considering you brand name check to see if the name is already taken, if the URL is available and if its unique in social networks.
Make sure that your name represents your brand but not only that, make sure that you can claim the rights to it in the social networks you intend to use to promote it. Check to see if someone is already using the name on Twitter, Facebook etc. If you have a brand name that is the same across all forums then your brand will stand out, if you use different names in these forums it will only serve to dilute your message.
This week I was excited when I saw the Techcrunch article entitled PeopleMaps Helps Graph Personal And Professional Connections. We’ve had the good fortune to work with UK based Peoplemaps (infact they were one of our first customers!) so I was excited to see such coverage. On reading the article I realized this wasn’t Peoplemaps, the psychometric testing company I know but a product from a completely different company. It lead me to wonder why a company would choose to go with a brand name, one whose URL is already taken, ditto for Twitter and Facebook presence and one which will prove more challenging to promote online.
Its already challenging enough to come out on top online, companies shouldn’t make it harder for themselves by using names that are already taken in the markets they tend to do business in.
