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Social Media and You:
Building an Effective Social Media Presence.
Gordon Diver
Director, New Business Development
TDG Marketing Inc.
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Why Do I need Social Media
Organizations are increasingly incorporating social
media into their marketing because it has proven to
attract buyer’s attention and customer loyalty. Social
media makes it possible to communicate with a very
large group of people all at once and give your
champions a chance to spread the word about your
company, products and services. In addition, an effective social media
campaign provides the opportunity for immediacy and “viral” sharing of
information to others who may not be aware of you yet.
Even with the immense possibilities of connecting with literally millions,
social media provides a high level of initimacy, while enabling you to
engage one to one with your prospects, clients and others. Compared to
more conventional marketing tools, such as advertising and direct
marketing, social media offers a number of distinct advantages,such as:
 It is free or relatively inexpensive,
 It is interactive, providing the opportunity to connect 1 to 1 or 1 to
many,
 It allows for immediate and direct feedback from your constiuents ,
and
 It is flexible and can be easily adapted to what is working.
One key element that makes social media so effective is that you are using
your personal network (yours and the companys) to carry your message to
a larger audience. As a trusted resource for your network and by being
strategic with your content, your network will find your content worth
reading and more importantly share with others to expand your network
and influence. The challenge for most firms is understanding how to
effectively engage clients and prospects through social media and how to
capitilze on the trust that you’ve already established.
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Canadian Key Statistics1:
More and more consumers are moving online to do research about the
companies they want to do business with. Here are some of the latest
available statistics.
 53% of Canadians see the Internet as an important part of their life
 51% of Canadians have visited an online social network or community
 16% of Canadians spend more time on social media sites than websites
 35% of Canadians visit a social networking site at least once per week
 19% of Canadians visit a social networking site on a daily basis
 90% of Canadian socializers are on Facebook, 10% on Twitter, 9% on Linkedin
 More Canadians than any other nationality frequent YouTube, 4.4hrs a month.
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Source: The Ipsos Canadian inter@ctive Reid Report 2011 Fact Guide
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United States Key Statistics2:
 US Internet users spend 3x more mins on blogs and social media networks than
on email.
 93% of US adult Internet users are on Facebook
 1 out of every 9 minutes online is spent on Facebook
 49% of people use Facebook to share content
 More than ½ of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on
social networks.
 79% of US Twitter users are more likely to recommend brands they follow.
 67% of US Twitter users are more likely to buy brands they follow.
The “Social” of Social Media:
A trusted network is one element that makes social media so valuable.
There is a communial aspect of social media, we “connect” on Linkedin, we
“friend” or become a “fan” on Facebook and we “follow” on Twitter. We
become a part of each others communities. As we interact with each other
we become connected in a meaningful way, we build trust. Research has
proven that we make our buying decisions based on our social
connections. We’re more likely to “call a friend” for a recommendation than
ask a salesperson. Building an effective social media program to elevate
you to a trusted resource is what we will discuss in the following pages.
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Source: The Nielsen Company, 2010, Edison Research, 2010, HubSpot, The Science of Facebook/Twitter, 2011,
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The 4 C’s of Socail Media:
We’ve all heard of the 4 P’s of marketing (product, price, placement and
promotion), however, in today’s world dominated by social media, to be
successful, it is essential to embrace the 4 C’s3 of social media.
Customer:
The key element in your social media plan. You want to use social media
to locate new customers and at the same time, engage with your existing
customers. Develop a following of people who care about you and your
business. You need to find them, feed them with relevant content to foster
interactions and nuture that relationship along.
Content:
By providing relevant and timely information to your community that meets
their needs, you will build the trusted relationship that you are looking for.
Remarkable content comes in all forms, white papers (ebooks), videos,
tweets, blog postings, facebook messages, answering questions on
Linkedin groups, particpating in industry forums, etc.
Context:
Becoming relevant to your customers and prospects within their
requirements. Ensuring that you are meaningful to them.
Channel:
Not everyone belongs on one or the other social media network. It is very
important to be where your community is. Your focus should be on your
customer and their needs.
The result of these efforts, more revenue, greater retention and lower
costs.
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Michael Brenner, “Social Media Today” September 15, 2010 http://bit.ly/cwbziO
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Building your Successful Social Media Campaign
1. Social Media should not be done in isolation
Marketing professionals have embraced social media (relationship
marketing) because of the change in consumer persona’s, their buying
trends and because it is fairly inexpensive to use. In the early days of
social media, it has proven to be highly effective for one to one and one to
many communication and engagement, driving leads and revenues.
However, it is not a be all and end all.
Our experience has been that some companies look at social media as the
centrepeice of their marketing program, mostly because it is in vogue to do
so. However, these companies are missing the point; social media is
another channel, or as we like to say the new word of mouth. You still need
to know how to use the channel, how to communicate with your target
audiences, to make the most of it and deliver compelling messages that
your audience will want to share.
Integrating your social media program with other marketing and customer
service tactics will provide the widest reach. In addition, you should have a
well developed strategy of who your target market is. Connecting your
social media activities to your CRM will provide you with a detailed history
of that prospect or client, including personal and professional milestones.
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Building your Successful Social Media Campaign
2. The MVA – Most Valuable Asset
Today, the vast majority of outbound social communication is between the
brand and the consumer (both Business to Business and Business to
Consumer). However, while 17% of consumers trust a brand, 70% trust
the recommendations given by friends or trusted connections. That makes
it more critical for the individual to connect in order to carry the brand
message.
We are begining to see company’s reporting on line sales through their
social media pages, specifically Facebook. As an example, if you become
a fan of Best Buy (5,700,000+ followers), you can purchase music, movies
and games and never leave Facebook.
Screenshot of Best Buy Facebook Fan page.
The fact that Best Buy is promoted through Facebook makes it more
accessible and trusted by their Facebook fans. It offers convenience and
flexibility and has generated a lot of positive interactions in addition to more
revenues.
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Building your Successful Social Media Campaign
3. Empowering the Social Consumer to Work for You
The opportunity exists within a
successful social media program
to build brand champions. This
is the real payoff in utilizing
social media as a part of your
overall marketing, customer
service and corporate
communication platforms.
As mentioned previously, today
consumers are using the web
and social media to research goods and services, before they make a
buying decision or even interact with a salesperson. There are so many
avenues that can be explored beyond just doing a search on Google, Bing
and Yahoo. To do product reviews, consumers may turn to Yelp,
Amazon.com, news channels and blogs to get a mix of reactions and
feedback. This is in addition to asking their personal network of contacts
for advice about products and services.
Engaging with your network to provide useful information is a key benefit of
social networking. It’s not enough to just connect with people in your target
audience, you need to engage with them in a way that demonstrates your
expertise, provides information (educate) that they can use and rely on
and, gives your network something to share with their network of contacts.
Successfully engaging with the “social” consumer is the best way to enlist
brand champions who will share your materials with their extended
networks. Your social media program will be successful when you get your
network to promote and sell you to their network (referrals).
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Building your Successful Social Media Campaign
4. Content : Use the Personal Approach
We’ve all heard, “Content is King”, and it’s true. To have a faithful following
you need to have compelling content. But what is “compelling content”? A
good way of looking at what makes content compelling is that it is;
educational, entertaining and worth sharing.
The greatest concern we hear from clients when discussing content, is
finding the time to create compelling material. In a recent blog post for the
Content Marketing Institute, Heidi Cohen of Riverside Communications
provided these five (5) tips4:
a. Organize your content marketing function
b. Implement content creation across your organization
c. Reach beyond your organization for content marketing support
d. Use a variety of media to provide content (Print, video, audio,
images)
e. Provide content support (Copy editing, graphic design and
technical assistance).
Content creation and sharing is about personal engagement and
interaction, not just distributing a message from the sponsor. Avoid just
broadcasting messages across your social media channels, by doing so,
you ignore the opportunity for interaction. You want your audience to
particpate with you, to share their feedback, to pass along suggestions for
new offerings, service improvements and what they like best about what
you do. The consumer wants to know that they are being heard and that
their opinions matter.
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Heidi Cohen, Content Marketing Institute Nov.2, 2011 http://bit.ly/uBCpTw
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Building your Successful Social Media Campaign
5. Analytics: Measuring Engagement
Social Media has rewritten
traditional marketing rules, and
because of this, it requires a new
way of measuring successes.
The natural tendency is to measure
social media programs the same
way we measure email marketing
programs; by the number of click
throughs and how many updates we
get. Know that measuring “clicks”
and “likes” is not the same as measuring engagement. If your only
measuring how many people are exposed to your message, you’re
overlooking the engagment piece of social media. Social media
measurements are scalable; comments are more valuable than “likes” and
shares are more valuable than comments. You can see this in Facebook
by the ratio of “likes” vs “talking about” measured on a weekly basis.
The number of followers you have on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and
Google+ is an important measurement, especially if they are the “right” fit
for your organization. If you have the right followers and they are willing to
share your message, 10 followers (influencers) on Linkedin may be more
valuable than hundreds of Facebook fans that are not engaging with you.
To understand the value of your connections, you need to track who is
saying and doing what with your content. The best lesson in social media
is that active listening leads to effective engagement. Listen to what your
community is saying, interact with them and respond appropriately and
then form your next set of actions to correspond with the feedback. Do this
and you will be successful with your social media program.
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About TDG Marketing Inc.
TDG Marketing Inc., is a full service advertising; marketing; digital
marketing and corporate communications firm, located in Brantford Ontario
Canada.
TDG works with B2B and B2C clients throughout North America in varied
industries and are dedicated to building and supporting your brand.
TDG offers a wide array of services such as strategic development, web
development and design, graphic design, social media and integrated
marketing campaigns, copy writing, corporate communications, video,
photography, planning and research and more.
TDG Marketing Inc. Where Design and Strategy Collide.
You can reach us at:
519-753-2240 or 1-866-774-2240
www.tdgmarketing.com
gordon@tdgmarketing.com
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