Tuesday, August 21, 2012

The Bandwagon Has Broken




It seems most large and small companies have decided social media is WORTH IT – but don’t exactly know what that means

They’ve jumped on the bandwagon, because they’ve heard “they need it”, “everyone’s doing it” “tell your intern to do it”, without researching and learning about what social media can do. These people infuriate me.  People who assume that just because they started a page and a twitter account, follow zero people, stuck an intern on it to post articles about themselves – or worse – times their store is open or short and irrelevant posts, that all this means you “GET” social media and you’re “in the social space”. It does not. It means that you don’t understand what it can do for your business, nor do you actually care.

Social media is not a fad. It’s changing the way people do business, and it’s bringing power back to the consumers. Consumers are fed up with traditional advertising that is stuffed down their throats, even by brands they do adore.  Everyone has an opinion, so why not start listening to your customers’ opinions?  Social media has opened the floodgates to engagement opportunities, both positive and negative, and it will be detrimental in the long run if you choose to ignore this.  

Many companies have figured this out as well, some are doing a great job at monitoring social media, while others are slowly starting to figure this all out and cave to hiring social media managers, social media interns and such.  The problem is that now everyone’s on there, doing the same thing. They respond to the negative issues with generic tweets, they try to throw a “social media sweepstakes” and give away something small and unsubstantial thinking this will grow fans, and everyone is starting to blend in and act the same online.

I challenge those who care about social media to take it all a step further, because your competition is catching up to you. Start thinking further outside the box, stop watching what others do, look inside your brand and find your company’s core values and start using that to your advantage.

Now that everyone’s caught up to you, how will you continue innovating the social media space? 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Social Prospecting... and why it matters



Everyone around me is always searching for the ROI in social media and asking "How much are we making", " how much is that worth" and "what's the bottom line" while searching for answers online and in white papers. I've been searching for these answers as well, while developing my own perspective on social media ROI at the same time and haven't seen many come up with a good answer just yet.

My take on it is this - while there needs to be focus on the data and the metrics, companies like Facebook and Twitter need to be helping with that, or bigger companies can create some crazy amazing product that tracks everything for us... that's going to take time.

Until they figure that all out, everyone else needs to figure it out on their own, dig a little deeper into their own social media fans to discover who's a fan, who's a spammer, and who are you most loyal activities (who are most likely also spending the MOST money by far) and decide how you want to keep track of what this means to you.

Social prospecting is one of the best ways to do this. Keep track of your most loyal followers, those who scream your name from the rooftops and share every moment of their lives using your product or visiting your store with their followers, and go from there.