Posts tagged ‘audience research’

Social Media Marketing is an Investment, Not a “Free” Marketing Channel

Written May 14th, 2012 by

Free Marketing Tools Are Great! Who Doesn’t Love “Free”?

Social Media is a free marketing tool, isn’t it? In the very basic sense of examining it, yes “social media” can be seen as a free marketing tool because there’s very little to no outlay of monetary funds.  Participating in social media, if you are a community member, 9 times out of 10, is at no cost to you from the perspective of joining and engaging.  The only time these social media communities charge a fee is if you are upgrading to some sort of premium or pro account.  Think about Flickr in this case, if you don’t want to be limited on your daily uploads or want the analytics, you have to upgrade to the professional account.

From the community participant’s end, this is wonderful!  I get to share and connect with people who have the same interests as me without having to pay a fee, who doesn’t like that concept?  That’s why social media communities have been around long before the term “social media” had ever been coined.

Companies stepping into the idea of marketing in these social media communities with the mistaken idea that marketing within social media communities is “free” are a lot of times sadly mistaken at the end of their campaign’s run.  They find it’s failed, or rather they are under the impression that their marketing attempt failed and they also find there’s a lot more involved than they ever realized.  At the end of the day it isn’t free.  There’s a whole lot of investment that needs to go on in both resources and technology.

It really makes me curious why companies think they can just put up a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page and think “this is going to work” immediately.  A “Field of Dreams” Social Media is not, unfortunately if you build it, most likely they won’t come.  Companies spend millions developing new logos, planning public relations (PR) Events, doing keyword research for SEO and PPC, why should the concepts around social media marketing be any different?  The “free” barrier to entry is a huge misnomer and misleads a lot of marketing departments down the wrong path.

So what should a company plan to invest in when looking at a social media strategy?  Well that really depends a lot on what the company hopes to establish in the medium.  Is it increased buzz or brand lift?  How about increased sales or traffic to the site?  Could you want people to sign up for your email list, blog RSS or coupon distribution?  Become part of your own community?  Different goals require different strategies in social media, and they all require different levels and types of resource investment.

Here’s a quick list to keep in mind of what you’ll be investing in when you decide that social media is the next medium your company should become actively involved in.

  • Investing in Understanding:   “Where Are We Now” in the Whole Social Media Sphere

    Do people even know who you are?  Is there any buzz about you?  Do they know the products you sell or the services you offer?

  • Invest in Finding Your Audience

    Where are the conversations happening?  Who’s doing the talking about you?

  • Invest in the Approach

    How do I interact with the social media communities that are talking about me, my industry, products or services?  How do I add value to their lives and not just be another “noise channel”

  • Goals & Measurement Need Investment

    Free tools verses Paid Tools?  Free buzz monitoring tools give you limited data, can your strategy work with that limited data, or do you need more robust information?  What about your analytics, are the free tools going to give you enough information to connect the dots of traffic to buzz & engagement to conversions?  Have you even taken the time to plan what goals will make you successful?

  • Employees are as Social Media Investment in their own right

    You pay your employees a salary or an hourly wage to preform tasks for you.  If one of their tasks has to do with social media, that’s definitely an investment that isn’t free by any means.  However, it isn’t just their time engaging you should be planning for, it’s their time researching, setting goals, training, developing and ultimately fortifying relationships with your audience that you really need to plan for investing in.

 

With investment in research, strategy and measurement companies can see return, or at least if there isn’t a return they can figure out why.  The investment of time and resources from the onset is likely the biggest factor of whether a company is going to succeed or fail.  Don’t you want the money and time you’ve invested to grow your social media strategy into a success rather than just having spaghetti being thrown at the wall?

Scrabble Letters Photo Credit:  Flickr User WonderWebby

Tree & Coins Photo Credit:  Flickr User Pfala

Research Tools For Making Great Social Media Strategies

Written September 9th, 2011 by

*  This is a partial reprint of Liana Li Evans’ previously published ClickZ article

Research ToolsBefore you decide to implement any tactic in social media, the first question you should ask is “Why?” Why should I have a Facebook page? Why should I have a Twitter account? Too many times I’ve run into companies asking why their social media strategy failed and when I ask these companies why they implemented a particular tactic, inevitably one of the answers I hear is “Because our agency said they could do that.” I then ask the person seeking advice if the agency explained why they should implement the tactic and very rarely do I hear “Because they found our audience was there.”

Research is the foundation to any social media or integrated marketing strategy. You have to understand and know where the conversations are going on, what are the trends, who are the influencers, and who are the evangelists before you start engaging in social media. If you set off engaging, it is a lot like walking blindly into a burning building. Businesses can encounter a lot of “dangers” that they might not be prepared for.

Research however goes beyond just “keyword research” using the Google AdWords tool and discovering seasonal trends. People in social media communities share and speak differently than how they search. More jargon and slang is used in these communities because they are more comfortable. You must understand that keyword research with your SEO or PPC set of words is just the beginning. There’s a lot more to be done if you’re going to discover key insights to make your social media strategy successful.

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Social Media Marketing & The Fallacy of Going Viral

Written August 26th, 2011 by

Last week I was a speaker at SES San Francisco on the audience choice “Like Me” panel.  The panel discussed the intricacies of viral marketing and the fallacies around it.  Viral Marketing is not really something that is cookie cutter in nature.  Most of the time the nature of a video, game or even fanpage or twitter account that has “gone viral” is completely by accident.

Instead creating a social media strategy through audience analysis and figuring out how to become not only a valuable asset to your audience, but solving some sort of problem or issue for them is the better target to hit rather than that ever illusive “Viral” moniker.  Viral is short lived and usually not the quality audience you are working to engage with.  Becoming an asset to your audience not only creates a loyal following but a highly engaged community as well.

So with that in mind, we wanted to share our deck from the session at SES San Francisco.

 

10 Ways to Reward Your Audience

Written July 27th, 2011 by

One of the major influences on how solidly, far reaching and influentially you build your social network, whether it’s your own personal network of friends or a business account, is making sure you take the time to stop and reward your audience. Figuring out how to reward them in ways they will appreciate and feel your sincerity is essential. Just saying thank you with a generic coupon won’t get you anywhere. That type of gesture comes off as insincere and pandering.

Rewarding Your Audience Keeps Them Coming Back

Reward Your Audience

Time and time again, when you are being real, transparent and genuine with showing your appreciation, your audience will reward you in kind. You’ll see your recommendations increase, your content being shared and the number of people who want to connect with you because of that genuineness grows.

The problem comes, however, when you continually utilize the same measures over and over again. You have to really understand you audience and what they appreciate to be able to reward them in a manner that’s going to impress them personally. Touching them in a personal manner is what social media engagement is all about. With that in mind, here are 10 different ideas that can help you come up with ways to reward your audience.

Like or Favorite Their Recommendations of You:

When someone recommends you, whether it’s via a “follow Friday” on Twitter, a recommendation via a  Fan Page or posting, make sure to let them know in some way that you like their actions. Give it a thumbs up, favorite the tweet, and of course saying thank you lets the person know you recognize the time they took to do that action.

Include Them in Exclusive Lists:

Groups on Facebook, Lists on Twitter or even a list of “Top XX Influencers” in a blog post is definitely a way to reward your audience members. It lets them know that not only are you listening, but you find them important enough and appreciate them enough to include them in something that singles them out to say, “Hey these people are important to me”.

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I am a Writer, Can I Blog?

Written May 9th, 2011 by

For those of us who like to write, one would think that blogging would be a snap. Well, I can tell you from experience the only skill that translates from a good writer to a good blogger is the speed in which you type. That’s it. For all other things,  the skills are different. I, for example, am considered by those who know me as someone who can spin a yarn and tell a good story. That skill, though helpful in getting out of bloggers block, does not translate as well as I thought it would.

So much more goes into blogging than mere storytelling. Sure, there is an aspect of storytelling in every blog regarding flow but there is no blogging in storytelling. For example, in order to have great content and page rank, a blog should contain keywords in the titles and in the article itself. A good story just flows.  There is no real thought to structure at first but rather on the re-write. A good blog needs a re-write or editing to add organic SEO and keywords to the content.  With a story we assume the story will attract the reader but in a blog, keywords for search queries draws in readers. A good blog also requires an audience and tools to attract that audience.  Facebook, Twitter Update, forums or even other blogs help with delivering your blog posts to the audience you’re hoping to attract.

As someone who’s written personally and for businesses large and small, in print and online, I’d like to take the time now to tell you some things I have noticed over the past few years about bloggers and blogging.

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Integrated Marketing and Rapid Change

Written March 9th, 2011 by

It used to be that you could divide change into three groups: what I can change now or easily, what I can change later, or what is out of my control.  Now that so much is virtual, entire landscapes can change with a single Google update. Does that mean everything is out of our control?

Everything is an awfully big word.

Social Media Marketing Moves at the Speed of Like

working online

Google Me!

Consider the massive numbers of people accessing Social Media and sharing different items all the time. Compared to Search, Social Media is pure quicksilver. In Search, we can optimize medium-to-high volume keywords for a target market and feel we’ve done the basics. Social Media demands pre-emptive preparation. When there can be a new trend every few days, optimizing those target market keywords is not enough. SEO has to anticipate trends stirred up by Social, optimizing terms to guide possible future traffic. The audience for tomorrow’s keywords may not exist yet. That’s the thing about humans – we move around at will. A couple years ago there were no web sites about Justin Bieber, but google him now! One minute there was Justin Bieber and his mom, putting a few videos on YouTube. The next, he was being courted by the agencies of big names like Read the rest of this entry »

How to Tell if an “Expert” Sucks at Social Media Marketing

Written January 31st, 2011 by

Last week I compiled a big list of Social Media marketing mistakes. I asked each of our staff to contribute five or more, thinking there would be enough overlap to choose a top ten. Not so! Out of over 30 contributions, there were no exact matches, and, even when they were close, our approaches were a little different.

measuring results

Which measurements are meaningful?

For instance, our Analytics Manager Erik Ricassa wrote that “experts” who don’t know what they’re doing think that “the only measure of success is the number of followers they have.” Da Li Social’s Search Marketing / Usability Manager Kim Berg shared this related take on follower numbers, “Some ‘experts’ think the number of people who ‘follow’ them is what counts, despite not knowing who those people are. Social is not a popularity contest.” Taken together, these two present a broader picture.

In this example, to say that having lots of followers is not “the only measure of success” brings in the importance of analytics – knowing what to measure and what denotes success. Saying “knowing who these people are” suggests in whole set of possible measurements and behaviors, and I’m not just talking clicks and Read the rest of this entry »

6 Ogilvy Quotes That Online Marketers Should Live By

Written January 26th, 2011 by

David Ogilvy revolutionized the advertising age in the 1950’s and 1960’s in a lot of different ways.  From smashing the pricing models that agencies used to charge their clients to be more transparent and fair, to using the concept of audience research to inform the creation of ads and marketing messages, this iconic man taught an industry how to be more respectable.

At the time that Ogilvy started making waves in his industry, advertising was wrought with outlandish claims, unbelievable taglines and outright lies in ads.  Respectable was not a word used to describe marketers or advertising agencies.  Ogilvy believed the industry needed a change rooted in audience research to create credible ads that audiences found valuable.

David Ogilvy's "The Guinness Guide to Oysters"

Having worked for Gallup, polling the American public about what drew them to movies and TV Shows, the native Brit learned a lot about the our culture both pre- World War II and during it.  That foundation in audience research lent well to creating advertising that was found valuable by the audience it targeted, such as “The Guinness Guide to Oysters”.

Today’s online marketing industry might not be on as bad a footing as Madison Avenue was in Ogilvy’s day, but the impression of online marketers isn’t the most angelic.  With companies who “guarantee” first place rankings in search engines (no one can) and TV shows depicting Search Engine Optmizers (SEO’s) as spammers, you can understand how Read the rest of this entry »

“Integrated Marketing” is Not Just another Buzz Word

Written January 19th, 2011 by

Face-to-face business owners can gain a lot of insight from eye contact. Does the customer look happy, bored, confused or interested? Do they wander? Do they look the longest in any specific areas? Do they perk up after seeing the pattern on that scarf, or is it the way it offsets the coat?

If 80 people walk through and 20 buy, that’s not a bad day. If 100 walk through and nobody buys, the watchful owner doesn’t come away with nothing. The owner is continually gathering observations of user need and behavior.

Integration Relates Face-to-face Traffic to Online Behavior

Online, some of this can be inferred from server logs, if the logs are analyzed. Do users come in from a search term for which the site is not appropriate, or for which it is poorly prepared? Without looking at the data, the owner is in the dark. 1000 a visits and no purchases can seem like a waste of time, and it is, unless the data is examined.

The site itself may need an analytical once-over from unbiased eyes. Do links go to unexpected places? Is the text Read the rest of this entry »

Audience Research: 5 Tips for Gaining Insight From Your Data

Written January 14th, 2011 by

Use Your Audience Research Data WiselyBefore launching into and implementing any online marketing tactic, your company should be investing in doing some audience research. Understanding your demographic and how they are engaging, sharing, searching and interacting online, not just in social media communities or on search engines, is important for understanding how to balance and integrate all of your online marketing channels.  Understanding that helps your company implement their strategies much more efficiently and successfully.

There are a lot of tools that marketers and data analyzers can utilize to help them gain powerful insights.  From enterprise level tools like Alterian’s SM2 and Radian Six, to tools that are affordable to smaller businesses like Read the rest of this entry »

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