Jessica L. Owens

You’ve chosen to begin using social media as a solution to solve your marketing gaps, or to build your personal brand online. Now, how do you decide which channels to begin sharing content on?

Whatever you do, do not just sync up the same content in 5 different areas. Just because you have a Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn account and a HootSuite account that can publish to them all in one swift click doesn’t mean you actually should use that power for every single message. People follow or friend you in different channels for a reason. Understanding how your audience (or potential) audience uses their social channels is critical to being successful in the digital world.

With that said, each channel may be an appropriate home for the exact same story, yet, just told differently based on capabilities of the technology and the allowance of the type of media considered acceptable on that channel.

When I was just a freshman in my first advertising class in college, I learned things about mass marketing and advertising and how my favorite thing since sliced bread – DVR – was going to take away our jobs forever. This hit something in me, and not because I thought we should take away DVRs or something ridiculous like that. I decided that I wanted to be a marketer that reached people how they wanted to be reached.
I started reading books about Google and their conscious effort to “not be evil” and understood that to the core. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com and another hero of mine said,
“Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.”

My calling was easily what we now call social media and what we could one day call inbound marketing or something depending on the next platform of where this will exist.
Since then, I’ve read books such as The Thank You Economy. Gary Vaynerchuk instills this concept of customer service and a great product. It wasn’t until today’s “aha” moment when I realized that people don’t actually think this way by default!

This is understandable, though, for some. You could come up with dozens of excuses, and that’s good, because at least you’ve just created a list of places to start! Mine?

Excuse: My company is too large and segmented, I’m public relations and have no clear communication paths to sales or customer service.
Solution: I will start with the personal connections I have in each area as well as reaching out to a digital manager in each business to see if there are other connections to bridge.

Excuse: My company makes tons of weird things and I don’t know what people will be looking for and talking about online aside from the exact business name.
Solution: I will start with the businesses with the most potential for growth by reaching out to digital marketers and sales departments to try to bridge online and offline departments and will focus on energy, sustainability and innovation topics

How will you address your excuses for not properly engaging?

What to post?

When designing your social media strategy, a lot of companies find themselves stumped in what to post. Granted, you can promote sales, perhaps your bestselling products, or continue to talk about how awesome your company and employees are, but lets be real… nobody really cares.

Instead- post information that people want to read and that they can relate to by telling success stories of your companies or employees. Make it interesting and something that the reader could relate to or wish to share with a friend. It’s important to ask “what’s in it for the reader?” each time you post something.

How to post it

Also, it’s important to post in an easy to read format. Include charts and pictures and summarize by using lists.

However you write and present it on your site, make sure that the text that gets placed in social media is intriguing enough that the reader at least just wants to finish the sentence he or she is reading- but what the hell, they’ve already clicked through so lets keep them there for the whole article– better yet, complete a sale before they leave. Because that’s what the whole point is right? Well, that’s up to you and that’s what your strategy will determine.

Where to post it

Sync your accounts using tools like perhaps HootSuite or using the options that the social media service provides.

Make it available on all types of services such as Facebook and Twitter. Also be sure it’s available on multiple devices and utilize RSS so that no matter what the reader is utilizing (mobile, tablet, Google Reader, etc) they have the chance to find it, read it, and share it.

I was so intrigued from this article by MarketingCharts that I had to share all of the details and add my comments. It is truly a to-do list for you and I- so print, share, and bookmark this article. Even better, add this to your company’s marketing strategy and do whatever it takes to make these a reality. This is a list from your upcoming consumers.

What they want from their phone:

Guarantee secured data access to the user only (80%)

Provide accessibility to personal health records (66%)

Present opportunities to be educated anywhere in the world (66%)

Bring users closer to global issues impacting teens’ world (63%)

Are shockproof and waterproof (81%)

Have endless power (80%)

Feature a privacy screen (58%)

Are made of flexible material and fold into different shapes and sizes (39%)

Have artificial intelligence – ask it questions and it gives answers (38%)

My takeaways:

• despite the trend of posting what you do online, our future users are extremely private and will continue to be that way. They want to share only what they want to share.
• As a corporation, if you are not mobile, to them you don’t exist. Nearly half (47%) of US teens say their social life would end or be worsened without their cell phone, and nearly six in 10 (57%) credit their mobile device with improving their life.

A lot of people tend to struggle with the value of social media for businesses, especially if they’re not really social marketers, they’re business people. I saw a great example today of exactly what business want to see as they begin to interact with consumers through social media. I’ve removed the names to protect privacy.

Two years ago, nobody would have ever posted on the internet their mid-afternoon snack choice. Today we do and we’re sharing with hundreds and maybe thousands of friends and followers. Tomorrow we will tag that image and post not only to our followers and people who we know, but we’ll share with our brand’s followers and those that we don’t know.

The influence users have over purchasing choices while using social media has been documented many times over. If this doesn’t convince you, I’m not sure what will work… and in that case, you probably will struggle to compete in a complicated market place.

I was reading Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin yesturday and I started to think about the future of marketing and how we interact in a time when there is more content available than ever before. Seth talks a lot about how there are more and more competitors and the need to infest the “hives” with “ideavirus” in order to be successful.
As the world comes together on the internet, content grows drastically. We’ve only been in this era for a short period of time but we are already bombarded with more information than any of our previous generations could fathom.
Many see a future where the internet connects the world and the people all become a unified “hive” as Seth would put it. But after reading about Seth’s “ideavirus” and the need to infect specific “hives,” I beg to differ. He clearly states that there is no way to infect everybody even if your product could impact everybody.
So as we enter an era with unlimited content, we have learned to aggregate content in a way that is focused to only our needs. As marketers, it is unbelievably essential to understand this. As our world starts to evolve electronically, everyone will be segmented into hives. Marketers will have more success by focusing on hives and understanding the targeted hive instead of the traditional mass media.

I’ve read articles over the past year concerning why Twitter has been more popular with adults rather than teens. If the chart above showed ages below 18, we are sure to guess the bar would be much lower. I was reading some posts by my friends who have either recently joined Twitter or who have been on Twitter for some time, all of whom don’t have any formal marketing background. I realized how differently we “tweet” and how useless I find my friends’ tweets. I scan them in just a few seconds where other “Twitter friends” or people of whom I met on Twitter, who usually have a marketing background, are much more informative about whatever it is that they’re writing.

Believe it or not, nobody really cares what you’re doing right this second, or even later tonight, especially if that activity is routine for you.

Many of my friends post on Facebook personal things like what they’re doing tonight. On Facebook, comments are allowed to be posted right to the original text. Even something that is useless could be posted and might be interesting after a few comments. It’s not easy to follow comments between users on Twitter, therefore, nobody really cares what you’re doing unless it’s something really out of the ordinary.. and in that case, you should probably include a link for more information!

To be useful/informative on Twitter, include a link.

My non-marketing friends on Twitter almost NEVER share a link. This is the #2 reason why their posts are useless. If what they say is interesting, where did they find it? Usually there is not enough characters left to say “I found this on…” but a Tinyurl would be great. A quick blurb, and here is some more information.

This is exactly why young people don’t Tweet.

Young people were raised on AIM, Facebook, then Twitter. We evolved into a different type of web user, where older Net users probably learned each application by reading articles on why this is good to use for personal (and business).  Girls on AIM posted quotes or song lyrics to their profile or away messages. Some still do this on Facebook. I’ve recently seen this on Twitter and it just doesn’t work.

Guys liked to post sports scores or funny jokes to AIM. This has evolved into Facebook in the form of different blog applications and groups like FML and Texts From Last Night. On Twitter, it sometimes works but there is no easy way to add the link. Good marketers know this. But the average Twitter user isn’t a marketer. Oh wait. Yes it is, that’s why #Twitterfail continues and non-marketers and young people have stayed away.

I’m reading the book, The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman and I’m learning a lot about different tools that individuals can use to start leveraging services that prior to this “flattened” world, only large corporations could afford. Since I’ve started the book, I’ve realized this to be so true- especially in advertising– and even more in digital marketing.

One person can do what a whole corporation used to do.

I met with a new colleague last week, Todd Terwillegar, and he briefly explained his company, how he started, and the people who have been the most influential and helpful people to him while he got to where he is. He’s in his mid-twenties, a 1-man company with a couple of clients, and working towards making his career with his own company. Ten years ago, that would have been impossible.

New online business services such as 1DayLater allow 1 person to do everything.

If you really wanted to, you don’t need a secretary, or a team of employees that manage different aspects of the business processes. There is technology and the internet for that. One can just track it easily and save the hassle.

Full service agencies might, one day, contract all the work out and a small handful of people are permanent.

I’ve been offered many jobs in the past 6 months in advertising for my services of a social media marketer. Every single offer has been as a contractor. This economy has been forcing companies to cut back in ways they never have before. The work still needs to be done, but the money isn’t there to make it happen. Perhaps these jobs will still continue to be contracted out and many in advertising will be their own boss working for a dozen different agencies. There’s good and bad to that, I guess. That is just a part of the world going “flat.”

I always look forward to my Six Pixels of Separation newsletters! And for many reasons- but they’re all irrelevant to this blog… and no, unfortunately, I’m not getting paid by them to say these things. It’s just true! This week their newsletter/blog featured companies that are “missing the mark with Twitter.” It’s great, I suggest you read the article…

The article focused a great deal on the fact that many companies are not using Twitter to maximize the potential for the company. They are simply trying to push their product. That irks me. It is unfortunate… but nobody asked why?

Except for me.

“Why?” you ask.

Because, in many cases (not all) there isn’t just 1 single person in a corporation that knows exactly what is going on, nor has the time to do so. This could be someone in PR that is very knowledgable on the company’s policies and knows how carefully deliver the proper information to the public…

But the article I’m so fond of mentions HR, customer service, and many other functions that could be leveraged by Twitter… and the author is right. Very right. (Look at Comcast!). So the question is why? Because many times, it is very difficult for a massive company collaborate  to communicate the proper information to use social media technology to start integrating internal functions with direct customer satisfaction. Companies need an individual in select functions such as HR, customer service, public relations… and more… who are able to give input- and regularly. It doesn’t do any good to have a company account if nobody is including useful updates! Take the time to learn and leverage the tools that are available used. Heck- Hire someone solely for that purpose!! If you need any suggestions on who to hire, I’ve got some ideas for you… just saying…