1. Consistency

Are you guilty of not planning what you’re going to post and when?

The result: adhoc, irregular updates/blog posts that doesn’t build trust with your followers, the likelihood is it will start to annoy them (if it doesn’t already).

The recommendation: Space your content out, rather than 6 Facebook updates in the space of a few hours (I see it a lot!) then nothing for a week, schedule 6 updates one a day for 6 days, either the same time (if your audience is online at the same time every day) or at different times (if your audience is wide enough that they use Facebook at differing times).

2. Content

You’ve heard it screamed from the social media industry rooftops “CONTENT IS KING”. It’s still true, without good, compelling content (look, another C!) you’re going to find it hard to keep your audience entertained, there are other brands out there paying a lot of money for such content.

So, what can you create about your business/industry/personality that’s going to grab the attention of your audience on a consistent basis?

3. Context

The other ‘king’ is Context. Interesting content is one thing, tailoring it to be relevant to your audience is another.

So first things first, do you know who your audiences are? Are they male, female, what are their interests, age, location – all have a massive impact on the context you can give to your content.

Most businesses I see churn out every press release they do on every social media channel with a ‘let’s just chuck it out everywhere and hope it sticks somewhere’ approach.

The result: lower engagement, more disengaged followers as you create more noise and less tailored, relevant content.

The recommendation: pretty obvious, you need to get to know and understand your audience better. Look at e.g. Facebook insights, their hobbies/interest – even, gasp, ask them!

4. Competition

Call them competitors (or potential colleagues/collaborators as I like to call them – more C’s!) but if you don’t know what they are up to online, you’re missing a trick.

Where do you come in a Google search versus your competitors, what social media presence do they have, what content are they putting out, do they get good engagement from it? Just a few of many questions you should be asking.

It’s out there in the public domain; use it to your advantage.

5. Creativity

On average, we actively follow just 9.4 Facebook pages and can build meaningful relationships with 100-150 twitter followers. As a business you are up against multinational brand juggernauts and pop stars and film stars to boot. How are you going to get your target audience to follow and engage with you?

Do you churn out all your latest press release where you just talk about your business? That would be a NO!

Do you make your presence more about fan-centred engagement where they feel part of a community and their opinion is valued as it’s more about them than you? That would be a YES ☺

Old Spice (yes, the aftershave your dad wore in the 1980’s!) is one of the best examples of turning around a brand (in the US predominantly) using social media, all it took was a little creativity.

6. Confidence

Whatever you do, do it with style/creativity/pizazz – bland and wishy-washy toeing the line stuff won’t work on social media, remember, you need to try to stand out from a phenomenally large crowd if you want your business voice to be heard online.

Adding personality to the brand is one way, some create characters (my favourite still is Wells Bombadier Ales on Facebook) and others just have a strong opinion and are confident enough to see it through.

This is especially true of blogs, you have to get off the wall and have an opinion (and a fairly strong one at that) to stand out from all your competitors.

7. Commitment

Linked to consistency above, there is a lot to be said for committing to a platform over a long period of time (I usually quote 12 to 18 months as a starting point).

Quick wins can and do happen on social media but the mainstay of your social media return will come from developing relationships over time. You don’t go to a networking event and expect to walk away with 10 new clients after the first visit do you…do you?!

Over to you, did I miss any important other social media ‘C’s’?

Is there anything you’re planning to do differently this year with social media?

Jan

Further reading: Why you should spend LESS time on Social Media…

Image courtesy of society6.com

The post The 7 C’s of Social Media appeared first on The Net Advantage.

I’m diving straight back into work with new half-day training courses that I’m delivering through Shropshire Chamber of Commerce.

So if it’s time to dust off your twitter account and poke your toe into the Pinterest or Google+ water, the courses below should cover your needs.

Dates and course titles are below, booking and course details are available via the Shropshire Chamber website. There will be two cycles of these courses before Christmas.

Tues 17th Sept – Introduction to Social Media
Wed 25th Sept – Twitter for Business
Tues 2nd Oct – Facebook for Business
Tues 9th Oct – Google+ and Pinterest for Business
Tues 16th Oct – Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation
Wed 17th Oct – Social Media for Professional Services

Tues 6th Nov – Introduction to Social Media
Tues 13th Nov – Twitter for Business
Tues 20th Nov – Facebook for Business
Tues 27th Nov – Google+ and Pinterest for Business
Wed 5th Dec – Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation
Tues 11th Dec – Social Media for Professional Services

All the courses go from introductory level through to advanced so are suitable for all levels of understanding.

Any questions, just let me know. I hope to see some of you soon!

Jan

p.s. If you know anyone that might benefit from these courses, feel free to pass this on (and thank you!)

Image courtesy of zatchels.com

The post Back to [Social Media] School time … appeared first on The Net Advantage.

In the firing line this week … Supermarkets.

Last week I sent the following perfectly pleasant inquiring tweet to Morrisons twitter account:

Hi @morrisonsnews can you let me know if you give excess perishable food from your stores to e.g. homeless shelters? I ask because I saw …

— Jan Minihane (@JanMinihane) July 13, 2012

Now, I’ll give Morrisons their dues, they do state to call their helpine for customer services issues but didn’t say they didn’t answer all tweets; I could clearly see customers service tweets on their timeline so assumed they were open for business, so to speak.

So far, tumbleweed. No response whatsoever from Morrisons. And as a regular Morrisons customer, how do I feel?
A bit unloved and with the impression that Morrisons don’t care about food waste – oops. (I’ve since learned that due to the possibility of being sued by someone who gets ill from this food they can’t/won’t – not convinced by that, has to be a work around, I’ll leave that for another post!).

My regular blog readers will know I had quite the run in with Tesco at the start of the year after being stuck in their car park for 4 hours when the snow hit.

Again, silence on Twitter and my Facebook post was deleted (!) And as a (at the time, no longer) regular customer, how did I feel? Angry, deflated and with a distinct impression that Tesco really don’t give two hoots once you’ve parted with your hard-earned cash – again, oops.

Twitter is literally littered with mentions of the big Supermarkets, most of which goes unanswered (I at least hope they are monitoring it!), such as:

@tesco shenfield poor service again. Fridges closed ten mins early, one guy on till causing queue as two others stand chatting #notimpressed

— Mark Peter Reed (@theatremark) July 14, 2012

Morrisons don’t have a dedicated customer services Twitter account. Tesco do. I’ve had bad experiences with both.

One supermarket which is impressing me so far (online at least!) is Sainsbury’s – they allow their social media team to respond as they think is appropriate to the tweeter, they aren’t stuck with rigid guidelines as to what they can respond to and how.

The result? A happier, more positive, personal service on their 2 main accounts, @sainsburys and @sainsburysPR.

So, what can we learn from these examples?

1. Be clear - if you offer a customer service offering online or not, be VERY clear about where you do it, what you do, and won’t do, and in what timeframe (e.g. ‘This is the customer service account for Joe Bloggs Ltd, we aim to respond to all tweets within 24 hours’ OR ‘We prefer to talk to you if you have a question about our business, not tweet. Call us on 0845 234 567 between 8am and 8pm 7 days; we’re waiting for your call a week’).

2. Be consistent – if you don’t offer enhanced customer service through social networking sites, then always direct inquiries to the website/helpline and don’t waiver from it, otherwise you’re putting out an inconsistent message about where/how to contact you.

3. Reply – I don’t mind being told you can’t answer my query as long as you actually make that effort to reply – not replying is the easiest way to make we want to escalate my complaint – nip it in the bud by being friendly, polite, helpful and informative. I’m sure there is this old wives tale that the customer is always right …

4. Be sure – do you want customers contacting you through social media? There have been some wonderfully embarrassing examples of big companies getting a hard time on twitter. Why? Mainly because their offline customer service isn’t good enough. Put it online too and you amplify it, not resolve it. Solve any offline issues first before considering diving into online.

And a final thought – the supermarkets wanted to become giants, some might say they want to rule the world – well with great power comes great responsibility (thanks Voltaire for that gem) – staff your online customer service offering adequately and do it well or don’t do it at all, the long line of disgruntled unloved customers is just getting longer, and more vocal.

Your customers are your brand advocates; treat them well and you’ll reap the rewards.

Have you had any negative (or positive) experiences with online customer service from the big supermarkets?

Jan

p.s. If you like this post, why not share it?

p.p.s. If you’d like a copy of future blog posts delivered to your inbox, just fill out the sign-up box below and I’ll do the rest!

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The post Hello? Is anybody there? ‘Social’ Customer Service appeared first on The Net Advantage.

1. All sell, no engagement

You know, the ones who put up endless links to their website/latest offer/picture but as far as engagement goes there isn’t any? 

Worth noting that on Twitter, even if you are engaging (i.e. having @mention conversations), if you don’t have many mutual followers, most followers will just see the links that you are pumping out – what message is that sending to them?

2. Automating too much

Automatic feeds of blog post, auto-DM’s, all pumped out without calls to action or personalisation – for me it’s a missed opportunity. Add a call to action to a blog post you’re tweeting about, ask a question on Twitter but put it in a poll on Facebook. A little more work = greater return.

And sure, use a scheduling app in moderation to space out your content (I use Buffer, it’s simply awesome!), but you need to intersperse those tweets with lots of engagement (remember, you are human, not robot).

3. Repeating the same posts on all sites

Yes, there are tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsute which allow you to easily post across the main social media sites, BUT remember that each site has it’s own style, tone, post frequency and length. 

Far better to spend a few minutes checking with sites the post is suitable for and then changing it up to suit the site and your audience.

4. All about me, not you

When you’re at an event and you get talking to someone who dives into telling you their life story, their latest stresses and strains and after 20 minutes they draw breath … you make your excuses and leave, sharpish! 

Social Media is no different – if you make it more about your audience than yourself, you’ll be putting out a much more appealing proposition.

5. No focus

The scattergun approach, where you see so many different kinds of posts from one user that it creates noise in your stream, it doesn’t add value. The result? Followers unfollow or hide your posts over time, in favour of those providing value, offers, fun and personality.

Concentrate on niching your efforts, try to appeal primarily to a different segment of your entire audience on each site and providing them with what they want, not just dishing out all your company news across all sites, whether it’s relevant to them or not.

All of the points above can be addressed by focusing on what your objectives for using social media are (on each site and overall), what time you have to dedicate to it and as a result, what’s realistically achievable.

There’s many more social media no-no’s out there, what’s your pet hate?

And if you like the post, why not share it?

Jan

p.s. if you don’t want to miss future blog posts, just sign up below in the footer and I’ll deliver them straight to your inbox.

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The post 5 habits of highly annoying social media users appeared first on The Net Advantage.

Answer these questions:

• Do you want more customers?
• Do you have a list of your target customers (either name, company name, position)?
• Are you on Linkedin and have a good number of connections (say 250+)?

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions…read on (and if you didn’t, you should keep reading too)…

LinkedIn often doesn’t get business owners too excited under the collar as a lead generation tool, the likes of Facebook and Twitter often get more press as the place to be. Not so: in recent research* it was shown that LinkedIn is 277% more effective as a lead generation tool than both Facebook and Twitter.

There are many reasons for that, including effective contribution to LinkedIn groups & use of ‘Answers’ but for me, the killer feature of LinkedIn is the ‘How you’re connected to’ feature. You don’t know who knows who, until you can see who knows who and LinkedIn does that brilliantly.

Let’s say your target client is Sir Richard Branson, your options are call his PA, hope she gives you the time of day and then says Richard is unavailable til 2018 OR you go to LinkedIn, type his name in the search bar and see if you’re connected to him via your connections. Next to his name, if you’re lucky, will be a number, either a ‘2nd’ or a ‘3rd’. If it’s a 2nd, result!

Click on their name to look at their profile, scoot down the right hand side of the page and LinkedIn shows you how you’re connected to them. In an ideal world you know that connection well enough to pick up the phone (or use the ‘Get introduced through a connection’ feature) and ask them how well they know Sir Richard and would they mind providing an introduction or give you some insider knowledge to turn a cold lead into a warm lead.

The above process can save you a huge amount of time trying to turn cold targets into warm leads. I continue to gain clients through it and every client who I’ve done this process with has got at least one client from it.

Even if you don’t have a name but have the business name or a position of the usual decision-maker for your product/service (e.g. operations director), the LinkedIn search still works really well, just use the filters down the left hand side once you’ve done the search to narrow it down by geography, position, 2nd level connections only – the options are really good.

And if your target is a 3rd level connection? You can still access them; you just have 2 levels of connections to get through but it can still save you huge amounts of time.

My advice – before you do the searches makes sure you’ve connected with as many people as you can (that you know well enough to pick up the phone to) to increase your reach.

Have you tried out this feature yet within LinkedIn? If not, why not?

If you like what you read, why not share it?

Jan

*Data from Hubspot, January 2012

Image from wittwertrainingsystems.com

The post How to: get a guaranteed win from LinkedIn appeared first on The Net Advantage.

Hands up if you don’t have a vision statement for your business (or you’re an employee and don’t know what it is)? [Getting any funny looks from your colleagues for putting your hand up to your computer?!].

What’s a vision statement I hear (some of you) cry?

A vision statement is exactly that, a statement of the vision/end goal/purpose for your business – here’s a couple of examples:

Disney: To make people happy.

The Net Advantage: To help people, businesses and organisations rock it, online and offline (see ‘why choose us‘ page for more).

When I’m delivering Social Media training, I ask attendees if they have a vision statement or knows what it is – if 20% put up their hand that’s a good day – scary huh!

Let’s break it down:

Without a vision statement, your business/organisation and staff do not know the ultimate goal.

Without a mission statement (that explains how you’ll achieve your vision), you won’t know how to get to your vision.

Without company values, you can’t tell people what makes you different as a business and why they’d want to do business with you.

Without business objectives, you can’t get to that mission and vision statement.

Without online marketing objectives (that FIT within your business objectives), you can’t help achieve your overall business objectives, which will help you achieve your ultimate vision – make sense?

Without identified key messages, you can’t communicate a consistent message to your online (and offline) audience.

In conclusion

It’s essential you nail down your vision statement (and then ensure it is communicated to all employees – e.g. I saw House of Fraser employees with the vision statement on their lanyards).

Whoever is running your social media presence, be it in-house or outsourced, simply MUST know all of the above – if they don’t know, they have no hope of communicating the right messages to your social media audience.

Sure you may get some results over time from social media but you will be more focused, produce less ‘noise’ and provide a consistent user experience to your audience if you put these business cornerstones in first.

Anyone care to share their Vision statement (if you have one!)?

Do you communicate your business cornerstones to your staff?

If you like what you’ve read, why not share it?

Jan

Image courtesy of wsph.biz

The post Seriously, where are you going with Social Media? appeared first on The Net Advantage.

Welcome to most businesses I’ve talked to – one of many key things to do is to make sure you are connecting your online efforts with your offline efforts. 

Ask yourself the following questions and you should give yourselves a handy to-do list:

1. Do you point to your social media presence at every offline & online opportunity?

For example:

• social media icons on email signatures
• social media icons on product despatch and confirm emails?
• social media icons /qr codes to your online presence on your premises where clients linger
• a Facebook competition when you’re at a trade show
• your social media presence on your business cards/all business stationary
• prominent social media icons (ideally with a compelling reason to follow you) on the ‘right’ pages of the website
• talk to customers, are they on Facebook/Twitter etc…if so encourage them to follow now?

2. Which sites do you want potential/future customers to go to? 

e.g. Your business cards may want to point people to your LinkedIn profile, your trade show social media competition may point to Facebook – think about who the audience is each time and what you want them to do/want them to see & think.

e.g. For your website, you don’t need all your social media icons everywhere, that can be overwhelming as I discuss on my recent post ‘Why you won’t find social media icons all over this website’, so put the right icons on the right web pages depending on who goes where on your website.

3. How can you make it easier for your target audience to like/follow you?

• add hyperlinks in your email signature to each social media profile so they just have to click through 
• where possible don’t just have ‘follow us on Facebook’ with a Facebook icon, add the exact page name/URL
• use QR codes where appropriate (but always provide the web link also so you don’t alienate non-QR code users)
• incentivise them, run competitions (compliant to Facebook/twitter rules) when you’re on a trade stand

This is just the tip of the iceberg that I analyse with social media advisory clients. This post is to get you thinking about ways to organically grow your audience when they are warmest to you.

If you have any other tips for linking the offline with the online, please do add them below in the comments.

And if you like what you’ve read, feel free to share it, thanks

Jan

The post How to: Grow your social media followers … offline appeared first on The Net Advantage.

You’d probably expect from a social media website to have every kind of social media icon and share button under the sun on all pages, in the sidebar, footer, top right hand corner, above the fold and so on – you know, everywhere.

For a number of reasons this website has a more subtle approach – let me explain why:

- I believe strongly that if you’re going to do social media, you must do it well (or risk damaging your brand). Like most small businesses, I cannot run personal and business accounts effectively, I would literally need to clone myself to find the time. So you’ll note that with the exception of the LinkedIn company profile, all the social media icons you will eventually stumble across point you to my personal accounts. Therefore I’m not making them so visible to avoid potential confusion.

- I could have renamed most of my personal accounts but ultimately, people trust and buy from people, not companies – ask anyone around Shropshire for a social media advisor and the response (if they know of me!) will normally be ‘Jan’, not ‘The Net Advantage’ – I’m sure there are plenty of branding specialists with some good arguments here, but I am where I am.

- Maybe it’s just me, but I’m getting fed up of seeing a plethora of share buttons rammed down my throat at the bottom of every page and blog post, so I asked my web developer to give me a more subtle sliding share button (the ‘Like it? Share it’ button to your left), so wherever you are on the site you can share as you wish, it’s just a little more grown up and inconspicuous.

Would I recommend this to my clients I hear you cry? Most of them ‘no’ as they are much larger, their presence is all corporate/business focused so my advice would differ accordingly. Who they are trying to connect with on which parts of their website and why drives what they need and what they want to be shared. For me, for now, this works – just thought I’d explain it before I get asked by my peers

That said, I think we’ll all see social media icons starting to take a more subtle prominence on websites in the future, as there are now too many icons, which leads to confusion and messy web pages. Often you’re asking visitors to do too much when they visit your website – this is why I only have easily visible icons on my blog and contact pages, as that’s where visitors are mostly likely to connect with me.

What are your thoughts? A step too far or have I given you food for thought for your own website?

Jan

Image courtesy of promotionalplr.com

The post Why you won’t see social media icons all over this website… appeared first on The Net Advantage.

1. Less will be more – most businesses will finally twig that you can’t be everywhere online and do it well without serious commitment of time (and therefore cash). Fewer sites, managed better, will mean enhanced return for most businesses, I promise. More sites, poorly managed due to time/commitment constraints say BAD things about your brand.

2. Finding a different social voice on each site – it’s critical to understand that what may work well on one site may not work on another. Each social networking site has a different tone and style, post frequency etc.. and what is posted on each site needs to respect that to have true reach and impact. If you are still duplicating content across multiple sites, that’s called noise, not added value.

3. Using different sites for different target markets – long gone will be the days where the same information gets churned out across all sites, businesses will realise that an enhance return for their efforts can be attained by breaking down their customer and stakeholder profiles into different categories and using different sites specifically for sections of their target audience, thereby making the objectives for each site much strong. The result: a stronger, more consistent message on each site.

4. Getting more mobile – without doubt the biggest growth area for 2012, so there is growing pressure on businesses to ensure their online presence is mobile friendly: smart phone friendly websites, apps, m-commerce, use of QR codes and augmented reality will become even more commonplace and an essential part of the marketing mix. Remember when people said websites were a fad and would never amount to much? (Sadly, I do!) That’s what a lot of people are saying about people buying goods and services via their mobile & tablets – its happening and it’s growing, fast. Microsoft predict that by 2014, we’ll be using our mobile phones more than our desktops – are you ready?

5. Getting nice(r) – as the brilliant Gary Vaynerchuk says, you need to be a part of the thank you economy to thrive online. You have to work harder than ever to get loyalty for your brand (offline and online), so starting thinking more proactive than reactive in terms of your customers. When was the last time you thanked them for their valued customers with no strings attached? Try it…. When was the last time you ran a competition as a thank you, again with no strings attached? Go on, amaze yourself…

These are just a flavour of the sea changes ahead for 2012 in the world of social media marketing, what would you add to the list?

Wishing all my readers a wonderful festive season and a big thank you for all your comments & support this year!

Jan

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