Blog: Mike Brown

If you use Facebook, Twitter or other social media channels for business, you probably consider yours to be a social business. But is it?

When you post a status update to Facebook, tweet or publish a blog post, you are simply using social media tools. This is only the first step in becoming a social business, which is really what you want to be, right?
Think about it this way – when you attend a party, you are being social, correct? Well, it depends on what you do at the party. If you simply stand in the corner, drink some punch and eat some cookies, you're being wallflower, not a social butterfly. There's a big difference. The same goes for social media tools – how you participate determines your level of sociability, and utlimately, your success.

Let's use Facebook as an example. If you're a local automobile dealership posting your latest financing deals, this isn't social, it's sales. It's using a social media tool in a very unsocial way. On the other hand, if you post photos of some of your staff attending and judging automobiles at the local car show, this is what social media is all about. People enjoy a peek behind the curtain to learn more about the who, not just the what of your business.

Think of your website as your business – the homepage is the front door that welcomes new and returning customers into the storefront, warehouse or garage. It's a place where you display products, offer services and conduct business.
Now consider your Facebook page. This is the company cocktail party. This is where ties are loosened and your customers become fans of you and what you're all about. It's a place where you talk with them about what's going on in your world, ask them questions about theirs and most importantly, listen and respond. Sure, it's ok to talk a bit about your business; you do want friends and customers to know about that too! Again, simply consider how you're talking about it and know that people on Facebook are looking for relevant and interesting content, not a sales pitch.

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Launching your Facebook and Twitter campaigns can be very exciting. You are now out there talking with fans, posting photos, tweeting and retweeting. Maybe you're even becoming a pro – using a platform to strategically schedule posts, calculating your social media ROI, or learning how to improve your EdgeRank score.

Even with all of this, you may still be ignoring the most important part of a successful social media campaign - listening. With people using social media tools more than ever, consumers are shaping how companies are viewed, discussed, and rated. In order to have a hand in the tone of these discussions, you must learn how to listen.

The first step is to decide on what types of conversations are relevant to your company or its products. This means coming up with keywords to monitor, outside of your brand name. For example, if your company sells electric guitars, you may want to monitor conversations about Fender, Gibson and Ibanez brands. Perhaps one of your categories of guitars is targeted to beginners. In that case, you may want to listen in on conversations about guitar lessons or beginner tips.

How do I listen in on these conversations, you ask? First, find where these conversations are taking place. "Like" your competitor's Facebook pages. Watch their walls. Search by keyword on Twitter and scroll through the comments and discussions between users. Find the top blogs and forums in your industry and keep an eye on these.

It's a continual process. But an important one. You can use these conversations as a way to learn more about your customers needs, engage with them directly, and perform a general level of competitor analysis.

Happy listening!

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When a business uses Facebook, it hopes that 1) people will Like the page, and 2) those people will pay attention to, share, and comment on the posts. But what if fans never see the posts in the first place?

How can that be you ask? Well, it all depends on Facebook's algorithm, called EdgeRank.

First, an "Edge" is the creation or sharing of a post. Facebook then uses its algorithm to determine which posts people will be interested in. So, not all of your fans will see all of your posts. In fact, a post is generally seen by less than 10 percent of your pages' fans! Post appearance is dictated by the EdgeRank Formula:

Affinity x Weight x Time Decay

Here, Affinity takes into account the relationship/engagement activity between a user and your brand - frequency of contact, likes, comments, shares, etc. Basically, the more interaction that fan has with your brand's posts or your page, the higher your affinity score.

Weight is a measurement of two variables. The first is the significance of the post itself - photos, links, status updates, etc., where photo > link > status. The second is the ensuing action on that post, where comments > likes > clicks.

Time decay takes into account the timing of the post - newer items appear in a more prominent position naturally, than old posts.

So as you can see, the key to marketing to your fans on Facebook is posting quality content that promotes interaction and engagement.

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Online marketing spend grows every year. In fact, some analysts predict that this is the year that online ads budgets will surpass traditional print. So while search, social media and banner ads can all be effective and worth adding to your marketing repetoire, don't forget about the medium growing as fast or faster than all of them - video.

Why is the importance of video marketing increasing so quickly? First, some statistics:

• According to Marketingprofs.com, the average user of online video watches more than 16 hours of video a month and videos on YouTube are watched over 3 billion times a day.

• According to Socialtimes.com, in the third quarter of 2011, online video ad growth surpassed online video view growth and online video revenues were set to triple by the end of 2011.

• YouTube is the web's second largest search engine.

• More video was uploaded to YouTube in the past month than the three big TV networks produced in the past 60 years.

Pretty impressive. Another reason to incorporate video into your marketing plan - Google loves video. More and more searches are producing video results on page one (where you want your site to be).

And don't avoid video because of cost factors. You don't need Steven Spielberg to direct your video for it to be effective. If you have an iPhone, you can shoot a video.

So if people love them, Google loves them, and they aren't difficult or expensive to create, why wouldn't video be at the top of your marketing list in 2012?

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One of the key steps in managing a successful social media marketing campaign is monitoring. This might mean listenting to what's being said (good and bad) about your company, monitoring what the competition is up to, or keeping an eye on news-worthy updates within your industry.

Whatever you want to monitor, there's a tool for it. In fact, there are hundreds of solutions to help you keep an eye on conversations, blog posts, mentions, and tweets that may include your company's name. Some are free, others cost thousands of dollars a month. So how do you pick the right one?

If you own a small business or target a local audience, the truth is that there probably is not a great deal of chatter specifically tied to your company name or its employees. Although, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be listening. It simply means that your monitoring tools needn't be complex or expensive.

In fact, some of the best tools out there are not only easy to use, but also free. The first is our old pal, Google. If you perform a search there, you'll notice that on the left side of the page, there are a number of ways to narrow the results. You can choose to see results from specific sources like blogs or videos, or by specific date ranges. And as we've discussed in a previous blog post, you can also set up Google Alerts for any number of keywords, and Google will email you daily results. If you use targeted, relevant keywords in your searches and alerts, Google will deliver much of what you're looking for.

Another powerful monitoring tool is Twitter Search. There's a reason we named it one of our ten favorite websites. There are hundreds of thousands of conversations taking place everyday on Twitter. Its search engine provides up-to-the-second access to these interactions, so you can answer questions or join conversations in real time.

Social Mention is a "social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information." It's another excellent (and free!) tool that offers Google-esque alerts, a buzz widget for your site and a browser search plugin.

Social media monitoring for a small business does not require complex dashboards or loads of money. It's about taking the time to monitor, seeing your opportunities, and acting upon them.

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