Todd Wilkins, executive vice-president of Orren Pickell Designers & Builders, uses a digital camera and an iPad to communicate with clients and fans on Facebook

You've heard it all before: If you're not using social-media tools to reach new customers, you should. So you're making friends on Facebook, you're trading Tweets on Twitter. It's fun—but are you building new business?

Social-media marketing is probably here to stay, but it's turning out to be a time-consuming game that doesn't yield instant results.

Social media can give your business more marketing mileage if you're willing to truly engage with the people you encounter along the way. It's a slow process. And your intentions are more transparent to your audience than you might think: People can smell a sales come-on from a mile away.

The key, it turns out, is to listen, add value and be responsive. So says Sima Dahl, president of Parlay Communications Ltd. in Chicago, who boasts more than 10,000 Twitter followers. Her advice: Make frequent “digital deposits” by replying to other people's Facebook updates and Tweets and passing on useful information, like job leads. In addition, she recommends responding to all direct messages and blog comments. “Then it really does become one to one,” she says.

Are you ready to put in that kind of time? Chances are, your competitors are doing it already. More tips on how to be a better social-media marketer:

Choose the right platform. “Twitter and Facebook may not be for every business,” says Shannon Smith, president of Chicago marketing firm Always Be Social. “Really think about who your target demographic is and do your homework to understand where they are.”

Free tools such as Google alerts and trending topics on Twitter (search.twitter.com) will show where people are discussing a business or matters related to it, and Facebook and LinkedIn provide abundant demographics information.

Todd Wilkins, executive vice-president of Orren Pickell Designers & Builders, a housing construction company in Lake Bluff, focuses his social-media efforts mainly on Facebook, which allows him to post photos of the architectural details of the company's projects. He's also found that Facebook users include a significant number of his target demographic, 32- to 58-year-old women, who are heavily involved in making decisions about home design.

Use social-media monitoring tools to see what people are saying about your business. “The minute you see someone was dissatisfied, you can respond to that person and try to fix it,” Ms. Smith says.

In April of last year, Ramon DeLeon, the operating partner of six local Domino's Pizza franchises, began using Monitter, a Twitter tool, to identify and respond to people commenting on a scandalous YouTube video that showed employees of a North Carolina Domino's misbehaving with pizza ingredients. As a result, he also discovered that one of his customers had complained about her pizza on Twitter. Mr. DeLeon responded to the complaint with an online video apology that became an Internet sensation.

Avoid making your content promotional. “Don't constantly say, 'We have a special going on.' Talking about topics around your business is more intriguing and may spark conversations elsewhere,” Ms. Smith says.

The consensus of social-media consultants is that a blog is the best vehicle for this kind of content, in part because a business's ranking in Google search results will increase the more people link to a post. A blog is “the most effective social-media tool you can use,” says Gini Dietrich, CEO of digital communications consultancy Arment Dietrich Inc. in Chicago and a regular contributor to “Enterprise City,” Crain's small-business blog. Links to blog posts also can be included on a company's Facebook wall and in its Tweets.

To create content quickly, businesses can repurpose white papers and marketing materials, hire freelance writers or make short videos of a company representative discussing business matters. Just make sure to add new blog posts at least two or three times a week. “Consistency is key,” Ms. Dietrich says. “If it's been a week since you posted something, people aren't going to come back.”

Don't try to respond to everybody and everything. “It is helpful to develop unique relationships by reading what people have to say and responding, but you aren't expected to have a unique relationship with every one of your fans or followers,” says Diane Rayfield, head of Harp Social, an Oakbrook Terrace-based social-media marketing agency, who has 14,000 followers on Twitter. It's OK, for example, to thank people en masse for re-Tweeting or posting comments on a company's Facebook wall.

She uses NutshellMail, a social network aggregation service, to organize and filter the messages she receives through Facebook and Twitter. Ms. Rayfield also recommends tools like Hootsuite and Ping.fm to schedule messages to be posted automatically to multiple social-media accounts.

Be prepared to spend time. “It's not something you can do just a little,” says Ms. Rayfield, who recommends committing at least a half-hour a day to social media.

Ms. Smith of Always Be Social believes that the more successful you are, the more time the whole thing will take. “If people are responding and engaging, you're doing it right,” she says. “It's what you want, and I don't know that there's any way around it.”

By: Kevin McKeough
© 2010 by Crain Communications Inc.

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Jeff Bullas link to Original story

• You’ll be able to work out mutually beneficial collaborations with that user.
• You’ll make them feel special.

This sounds facetious but is actually an invaluable method of recruiting people to your cause.

Imagine that you are a fifteen year old music fan. Your favourite singer sends you a direct, private email. How special does that make you feel? Not to mention well-disposed towards that person. Use the fan effect.

You’ll also want to attract popular users, who may well ignore direct messages as they’ll be receiving a lot of spam.

Instead follow their digital trail; find their URL from their Twitter page, follow that to their blog and leave a comment there. If there’s an email available then use it.

Make individuals realize that you’ve gone to the effort of researching their background before you contacted them and they’ll be far more likely to listen to you and respond positively.
Study popular sections and past successful campaigns launched on the digital network.

Take time out as often as possible to check items like Twitter’s trending topics. Install an Alexa toolbar or similar so you can keep an eye on hot web topics on a daily basis and start your day by reading the Digg and reddit frontpages.

Study the most popular items and see if you can create or adapt your content to fit those criteria.

Study popular group interests and see what kind of promotions have been popular with those groups in the past. Use aspects of those campaigns as a basis for your own promotions.

Combine these with steps one and two to inform your nascent audience of your campaign.

Laid out this way, you can see that the theory behind creating a community is fairly straightforward.

Study the rules of engagement for each separate network you utilize and engage existing user groups accordingly, and you can develop your own community and give your campaign a massive, lasting boost.

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San Jose, CA and Dartmouth (PRWEB) July 27, 2010 -- The nation’s largest nonprofit organizations are using social media more than any other sector. Ninety-three percent of the top US charities now have a Facebook profile, 87% have a Twitter presence, and 65% have a blog. These were among the top findings of the latest study led by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Research Chair of the Society for New Communications Research and Chancellor Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Eric Mattson, CEO of Financial Insite Inc., a Seattle-based research firm.

The new report is the outcome of a study of the nation’s 200 largest charities in the United States based on a list compiled annually by Forbes magazine. The study examined these institutions to quantify their adoption of social media tools and technologies. This is the third year that Barnes and Mattson have tracked social media adoption by the nonprofit sector, and theirs is the only statistically sound valid longitudinal study of its kind.

In 2007, the first study of this group’s use of social media was released. It revealed that these large nonprofits were leading large and small businesses as well as universities in their familiarity with, usage of, monitoring and attitude toward social media. One year later, in 2008, the second study showed that they led in knowledge, adoption and positive attitude about the importance of social media. This new research shows that these charitable organizations are still outpacing the business world and academia in their use of social media. The latest study (conducted with the 2009 Forbes list) reveals that 97% of charitable organizations are using some form of social media, including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging, wikis and Twitter.

The study’s other key findings include:

“The largest US nonprofit organizations continue to outpace businesses and even academic institutions in their familiarity, use, and monitoring activity. These top organizations have found a new and exciting way to engage employees, volunteers and donors,” stated Barnes.

“The nonprofit sector is connected and prepared to use social media to react quickly, as evidenced by responses to recent disasters. They have truly embraced social media tools in a way no other sector has. It will be exciting to see where the most innovative among them lead us to next,” added Mattson.

A full copy of the new research report can be downloaded at: http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/. Additionally, Barnes and Mattson will publish a paper based on the findings in an upcoming issue of the Society for New Communications Research’s Journal of New Communications Research and will present the findings at the Society for New Communications Research’s Annual Research Symposium, which will be held November 4-5 at Stanford University.

About the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth

To facilitate the economic development of the region by providing an affordable, high-quality economic alternative to meeting business needs for research, training, and consulting in any and all aspects of Marketing. The Center for Marketing Research is associated with and maintains a close relationship with the Chambers of Commerce within southeastern Massachusetts. This unique relationship provides the Center with an effective business networking capability. For more information, visit http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/.

About the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR)

The Society for New Communications Research is a global nonprofit 501(c)(3) research and education foundation and think tank focused on the advanced study of the latest developments in new media and communications, and their effect on traditional media and business models, communications, culture and society. For more information, visit http://sncr.org.

Just as more of us are turning to sites like Facebook and Twitter for the news of the day, we're also looking to social networks for guidance on what to buy. That's manna to marketing folks, who no doubt will be encouraged by findings released today by Gartner research firm.

"The majority of consumers rely to some extent on social networks to guide them in their purchase decisions," said the research firm, which surveyed nearly 4,000 consumers in the last quarter of 2009.

The growing importance of such sites as information influencers was noted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism earlier this year.

"People use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess and react to news," the nonprofit group said in a report, "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer."

And with more of us spending time away from television and newspapers and on the computer or cell phone with sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, Tumblr and Flickr, it's our friends and contacts who are getting our attention, and not necessarily splashy advertisers or big-time media companies.

Social networks have become "a critical, but underutilized, aspect of the marketing process," according to the Gartner report.

Gartner research director Nick Ingelbrecht said that 20 percent "of the consumer population is composed of 'salesmen,' 'connectors' and 'mavens,'" people who are persuading others about what to buy, bringing contacts together or who are considered know-it-alls about products.

by Suzanne Choney link to original story

With everyone struggling to figure out how to use social media for marketing and advertising, it's obviously helpful to look at examples where a big company gets its right, demonstrating what can be done with an appropriate investment of time and money (and planning). Today, Ford hit the nail on the head with its "2011 Ford Explorer Reveal" on the Ford Explorer Facebook page. Let's take a quick tour of the multifaceted project.

First of all, Ford isn't treating the Facebook push as a mere adjunct to an official unveiling elsewhere -- this is the big "reveal," which usually takes place at the Detroit auto shows. Of course most people don't attend the Detroit auto shows, and press reports about the unveilings always tend to be a bit humdrum, at least in my opinion. They also don't do justice to individual models, lumping all the new vehicles together with scarcely a paragraph each.

While clearly unsatisfactory from the carmakers' perspective, in the days of broadcast media that was about all they could hope for. But Ford is using social media to give users an interactive, multimedia tour with videos, text and images on the Explorer's Facebook page, all anchored by live video of the "reveal" in New York City (taking place on an elaborate set recreating some wilderness getaway in the middle of the urban landscape -- very weird). These include celebratory mini-events with live music, etc. At the top of the page is a timeline, showing all the different real and virtual events taking place over the course of the day as part of the unveiling. Users can click on any of the previous times to see events that already happened.

Below that are a series of videos, some filmed ahead of time, some filmed live at unveiling events. The live events are hosted by Mike Rowe, the host of Discovery's "Dirty Jobs," who pokes around the new 2011 Ford Explorer with Ford CEO Alan Mulally. Mulally also appears in a pre-filmed Q&A. That's a gold star for Ford: recognizing that social media is supposed to feel "real," there are no anonymous actors or B-list celebrities taking a prominent role in the launch, but rather the guy who is responsible for the new model (facilitated by Rowe as the rugged media personality).

Meanwhile the pre-filmed video also includes a tour of the new Explorer with Mark Fields, president of Ford Americas, and Julie Levine, the Ford Explorer product manager, and a Q&A about the Explorer's "green" aspects with Sue Cischke, vice-president for sustainability environment and safety engineering (more gold stars for hitting hot-button issues, again with the actual executive in charge leading the discussion).

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According to a report by eMarketer, a recent survey by US-based e-tailing Group found that nine out of ten companies plan to have a profile on Facebook by the end of the year.

And while research suggests actual spending on social media remains low compared to more traditional forms of marketing, that looks set to change.  Sage Pay’s research released at the end of June provides a strong reason why.

The payment services provider found that people who visit an online store after reading about it on a social media site are 10 times more likely to go through to the transaction section of the site than other users.

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According to a report by eMarketer, a recent survey by US-based e-tailing Group found that nine out of ten companies plan to have a profile on Facebook by the end of the year.

And while research suggests actual spending on social media remains low compared to more traditional forms of marketing, that looks set to change.  Sage Pay’s research released at the end of June provides a strong reason why.

The payment services provider found that people who visit an online store after reading about it on a social media site are 10 times more likely to go through to the transaction section of the site than other users.

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Our research shows that increasingly customers are demanding that business talk to them in the language of their choosing – whether it be Twitter, Facebook, blogging – or the next thing

Chris Hummel, Siemens Enterprise Communications In addition, 70 per cent of consumers want access to company experts and support via social media channels and trust company information provided to them via their social networks, as 50 per cent of respondents use social media daily or several times a day

Nearly 60 per cent of customers feel company outreach via social media would improve their loyalty to that company and most customers feel that companies should be monitoring social media for customer feedback.

"Social media is changing the way businesses, customers and employees interact, and this creates significant opportunities for contact centres and the enterprise as a whole to leverage the integration of these tools into business processes," said Zeus Kerravala, research fellow at Yankee Group. "As integration of social media improves within the contact centre and with unified communications and collaboration, businesses can improve customer interactions and positively impact employee productivity and collaboration."

"Businesses simply must improve their ability to serve consumers using all manner of social media," said Chris Hummel, chief marketing officer at Siemens Enterprise Communications. "Our research shows that increasingly customers are demanding that business talk to them in the language of their choosing – whether it be Twitter, Facebook, blogging – or the next new thing.”

This research follows a study by Maginus, which discovered that only 33 per cent of businesses have a social media strategy in place.

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The iPad? Hot. Social media? Hot. Magazines? Not so hot.

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