Archive for July, 2010

If BP can’t get anything done in the Gulf of Mexico, social media sure can.

Google “twitter oil spill” and up comes a TechCrunch article, “Central Command Turns to Twitter to Solve the Gulf Oil Spill” (followed by the words “Uh Oh,” relating to the fact that BP is looking for people with tech expertise via social media for ideas to stop the spill).

The article explains how a group of a dozen or so organizations including BP, the EPA, the U.S. Department of Interior, the Department of Defense, and OSHA have set up Deepwater Horizon Response to manage response operations. “In addition to a Web site for this effort,” the article notes, “there’s a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Flickr account and a YouTube account.” All of these combined efforts are giving people worldwide a ton of information about the spill. The Twitter page alone has 7,843 followers.

How does this relate to your business? Realizing that the chance is nill that you’ll have to pull a PR/social media blitz the scope of BP’s within the lifetime of your business, the incident nevertheless highlights the power of the Internet and social media to get information out to large groups of people. You can, in essence, move mountains, whether you need to inform about a disruption in your business, a problem you’ve encountered with a product or service or another notable breach that affects you and your customers.

Say something does happen to your company that demands a bit of finesse; what if a figurative “oil spill” occurred and you suddenly found that you had to rely on social media marketing to clean up the mess?

Your company and what it stands for are emblazoned into a brand name; if your brand becomes tarnished there’s no better way to blunt the PR damage than through a social media marketing campaign. Use these Internet tools to explain, to inform and to mitigate, if not on a global basis, then on a local level. Customers are customers, whether they span the globe or take out their garbage on the next street.

Social media is fast becoming synonymous with information resource. Used effectively it can help you pave the way to better relations with customers.

In this new world of networking you need to ask yourself an important question: Are you being anti-social?

Funny, that hyphenated word used to carry a whole different meaning, as in people who engaged in behavior that was outside the norm. Shunning social media doesn’t place you outside the boundaries of generally accepted behavior but it does place you outside in the cold and away from an effective form of business marketing.

Embracing social media marketing is like giving your business a facelift. Dropping fifty pounds and buying a new wardrobe. Painting the living room. It’s all the same – it gives you a new perspective and once that’s understood, the sky’s the limit when it comes to how far you can take your marketing plan.

Changing from an old to new mindset is not always easy. In the 1920s the automobile blew past the horse and buggy; in the 1950s, TV edged out radio and in the 1990s the Internet flexed its muscle and overpowered everything and with each rumble of thunder there came a resistance that consistently sought to harken back to the “good old days.”

But by the early 2000s, the old method of advertising and marketing became the leisure suit of the industry – a hackneyed and tired piece of clothing best left to old disco movies.

So in establishing the new you and, in essence, establishing a new format for your marketing campaign and embracing social media, you might find that you’re having trouble adapting to a new world order. You might, in effect, find that you’re anti-social. If you do keep these points in mind:

1. It’s not as painful as you might think. Social media marketing is a few clicks into a world of interconnected relationships that can bring power and prestige to your business.
2. Social media marketing, via Facebook and Twitter, enables you to target your audience. Thus, you can bring additional leverage to your business, something that old forms of advertising and marketing could never deliver.
3. Marketing via the internet allows you to connect daily, hourly, minute by minute, in real time with consumers. An instantaneous flow of possibilities is at your fingertips.

So throw off the old tweeds and loafers and get a new look via social media marketing. Wear it well and see how your business grows.

As with everything else in business, successful social media marketing entails building a strategy. Aligned with your core business principles such a platform should provide information on monthly, seasonal and annual occurrences that affect your business and, as such, affect your customers. Planning such a strategy will help to drive traffic to your Web site and your blog but it’s important to remember some key points in order to get the most out of it:

• Develop a planned strategy: three- six or 12-month. Know what blog topics you’ll be posting on what dates. By doing this you’re letting your subscribers know when to expect your next blog post and they’ll anticipate it on the same date every time. If your postings are all over the map – different times, different days every month or every other month – you might not get the feedback you want. You might not get any feedback.
• Don’t be aimless. In other words, don’t rattle on about the weather if you really want to discuss information on what your business offers consumers during a particular season. Likewise, don’t rant on a particular issue that’s bothering you. People drawn to your blog site don’t want your opinion; they want information on a solution.
• Entertain. While the name of the game is to supply information, at the same time, have some fun with it. Even the driest of subject matters can be presented in a format that’s enjoyable to read.
• Learn the art of creating the perfect subject line. If you’re introducing a new blog topic via mass email, make the subject line intriguing enough so that people will want to click through. Use action words and present tense to give a sense of urgency.
• Be engaged on social media network sites. Use Twitter and Facebook not just as a place to dump information on your business. Interact with people; share information and be interested in what they’re telling you. That sort of give and take helps to build a network and a following.

Social media marketing is, indeed, a multi-level strategy to engage, to capture interest and to build continuing relationships. Doing it correctly can make you and your business stand out in the crowd.