MarketingSherpa Blog

I’ve decided to start a Facebook account. Now what?

To start, we need to determine if we are looking to do a business account or a personal account.

Which type of Facebook account is right for you? For the purpose of this blog post, let’s focus on a business account.

If you are going to have a business account, you must start with a personal account. Facebook business pages are similar to personal timelines. A big difference are the analysis tools Facebook includes for business pages that offer in-depth knowledge to help you see how well you are connecting with your community.

Let’s walk together through setting up a page for your business. Please note that the Facebook landscape changes on a regular basis, so remember you can always visit Facebook’s Help Center for updated instructions.

Step #1. Set up your personal Facebook account

First, you are going to need a personal Facebook account to set up a page for your business.

The reason for this is driven by Facebook limiting your availability to access its business account process without an initial personal account.

If there is a silver lining to this, the business page will not interact with your personal page and your personal information is not public on the business page.

Facebook will allow you to switch back and forth from your personal account to your business account so you can interact as the business on the business page and then simply switch back to your personal account.

In addition, the business page is capable of being managed by multiple administrators if needed. Once additional administrators are set up for the page, each administrator can simply log in to their personal Facebook account to access the business page’s control panel.

Step#2. Select “Create a Page”

You can find this in the “More” section at the bottom of your personal account homepage.

Step #3. Select a page

Which page category should you select? 

Facebook classifies business pages into six major groups. Here’s a breakdown of each group to help you select the right one for your business.

Local Business or Place

• If you have a brick-and-mortar store where customers physically visit, select the Local Business or Place page.

Company, Organization or Institution

• If your business is mostly run online or has multiple locations, then you should select the Company, Organization or Institution page.

Brand or Product

• If your business has products that are sold through multiple websites, resellers and/or retailers, then you will want to select the Brand or Product page.

Artist, Band or Public Figure

• If you are in the public spotlight and your business is focused on promoting,  the Artist, Band or Public Figure page is the appropriate selection.

Entertainment

• If you are looking to promote your television show, movie, book, radio station, magazine or other media, select the Entertainment page.

Cause or Community

• If your organization is a community of action that supports specific issues, campaigns or nonprofit organizations, select the Cause or Community page.

If you feel like you made a mistake in your choice of page, you can always change your page type and category. You can do this after you’ve created the page through the admin control panel.

Step #4. Select your category and get started  

The category selection is just a simple category drop-down list.

After choosing a group that best fits your business, enter the required information for your page, read the terms, and if you agree, check the box and click “Get Started.”

Now that your business page is set up, the hard part is over!

Step #5. Create cover and profile photos  

Facebook allows for a standardized template design with two elements that can be changed on a regular basis.

These two components are:

• Cover photo
• Profile photo

These elements are essential to the look and feel of your page. They also serve as free advertising space for your business. Let’s take a more in-depth look at each of them.

Cover photos

Cover photos are the large image at the top center of your page that can serve multiple functions.

The size dimensions for cover photos are 850 pixels by 315 pixels.

To give you an example, let’s take a look at Motorola’s Facebook page.

Motorola has blended images of its products and text to thank fans for their engagement, which leads me to another point.

Cover photos are versatile and only limited to your creativity. They can introduce visitors to your page, promote special offers, provide contact information, and most importantly, help you set the tone of your page.

Even if you are not a designer or have very limited resources, you can still create effective cover photos.

Freeware like GIMP or Paint.net will allow you to size, crop and save your images as needed.

Also, here’s a tip – try not cover more than 20% of the image with text. The reason is Facebook has been rather picky in the past about the amount of text you can use in images.

I also recommend creating multiple cover photos initially, and then upload and swap them out on a weekly basis.

Creating multiple images is hard enough without adding in the reminder to change the cover photo once per week. However, at the moment, when you change your cover photo, your audience will be able to see that photo in their timeline. Another recent MarketingSherpa blog post dives into the details on Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm.

But for now, I suggest implementing this tactic as a best practice to keep your brand top-of-mind with your Facebook fans. Also, changing out the cover photo on a regular basis to keep your page looking fresh is a good idea.

Profile photos

The profile photo is the square box to the bottom left of the cover photo. The dimensions for profile photos are 180 pixels by 180 pixels.

Your profile photo serves one main purpose: every time your page posts an update, your profile photo will appear alongside the post on your fans’ timelines.

The profile photo is a small square, so you will want to minimize the amount of text used in this box to maximize the real estate.

A lot of brands safely use a logo in this space for identity, but there is no right or wrong choice here. As I mentioned earlier, your boundaries are the limits of your creativity.

I recommend taking some time to find the right profile image that captures the heart of your business.

Related Resources:

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Social Media Marketing: A quick look at Facebook EdgeRank

Social Media: 4 simple steps to calculate social media ROI

Social Media Marketing: Why should I like or follow you?

I had a conundrum once at dinner when I was a young military guy stationed in Tampa, Fla.

I wanted to try something new, and I had my mind set on Chinese food. In an attempt to get an unbiased opinion, I fired up my trusty laptop and Googled “Chinese food Tampa.”

After sorting through a few million results, I arrived at a few good recommendations based on star ratings and other such nonsense. Just to double check, I phoned a friend who had eaten at the spot I chose.

Knowing my personality and my legendary picky eating habits, he recommended that I not go to my top choice. Of course, I completely ignored him and did it anyway.

Gripped in the depths of gastrointestinal distress two hours later, and surrounded by throngs of hipsters, I realized a simple truth: star ratings are a ridiculous way to gauge a product or service.

As it turns out, most Americans agree with me, at least in principle.

A recent report from Forrester Research indicated 70% of Americans trust brand or product recommendations from friends and family. To give you an idea of how high that percentage is, only 46% of Americans said they trusted consumer-written online reviews.

The takeaway from this research is Americans trust personal recommendations at a much higher rate than reviews from strangers.

That creates an interesting dichotomy since most e-commerce stores offer consumer ratings, but not friend and family recommendations via social media.

Take a look at this product page. It just so happens to be the Amazon product page for my recently published book. 

You’ll notice the product page offers a star-based review system whereby people who have read the book are able to review it.

This represents the traditional attempt by retailers to reduce customer anxiety about their purchase and increase credibility of the product by allowing real people to give their unfettered opinions of the product. The problem, of course, is the Forrester report has introduced an element of doubt about how effective consumer-written online reviews are at influencing the purchasing behavior of individuals shopping online.

Let’s compare Amazon’s attempt to assuage anxiety to another approach, below:

I really like this example of integrating a Facebook comment into a product page because it illustrates the potential for using social media to build your products’ credibility. The widget will allow anyone to comment on your product or service, provided they have a Facebook account.

The widget can be coded to display socially relevant results first. In other words, you can show any comments from your customers’ friends and relatives at the top of the list, and as we’ve discovered, the recommendations of friends can be much more trustworthy.

The only problem I can foresee with this approach is having a lack of comments on a particular product.

Could the Facebook commenting process be so foreign to people that it scares them away?

Do customers understand this is the functionality that they should use to leave a recommendation?

We don’t have answers to those questions.

It seems as if we’re left with a valid research question: which attempt at alleviating anxiety and boosting credibility will be most effective?

Will it be the traditional user-based “star” concept that made me sick, or the socially empowered “friends and family” approach?

Read more…

Buying your first house is a big milestone in American life.

There are two entire HGTV shows, “My First Place” and “Property Virgins” centered around the experience.

Every episode follows basically the same trajectory:

Overly anxious buyers, with expectations that far exceed their budgets, hoping to find the “perfect” dream home to live happily ever after with no problems.

“Oh honey,” current homeowners say pityingly, as they shake their heads knowingly.

Good luck to whoever has those expectations. The really difficult (and least interesting) stuff happens once you move into that glorious, shining home.

Take a friend of mine for example – she recently made that big step into adulthood and bought her first home. Closing went fairly well, so she was feeling good when she finally moved in.

Then, like most first-time homeowners, she looked around and realized how much needed to be done, and how much stuff she didn’t have.

All at once the chaos of happily ever after began to unravel in a series of rescheduled deliveries and insanely long waits on the customer service lines. The real breaking point came when she was trying to schedule the delivery of her washer and dryer.

The company-that-shall-not-be-named rescheduled her delivery four times, and upped her backorder wait time from two weeks to six weeks. After being stressed out by multiple phone reps and receiving no responses to her emails to customer service (she’s still waiting for a reply, in fact), she decided to take the fight to social media.

She was shocked to see the company’s Facebook page promoting the backordered machine that had caused her so much trouble five weeks after purchasing. Not only that, but the website was making the dubious promise that people ordering five weeks after her would receive their washers only three days after her machine was scheduled for delivery.

In spite of posting her concerns, the only interaction she had was with other customers – the brand never commented or attempted to help.

The truth is, many large companies are still not placing enough importance on social media as a customer service channel that more customers have come to expect.

But, there is hope as some big brands are starting to use social media to truly enhance the customer service experience.

Social media is the ultimate opportunity to connect with customers

For example, Cisco is a large company that focuses on meeting customers in the social media sphere. Kathleen Mudge, Social Media Marketing Manager and consultant, Cisco, has previously spoken with MarketingSherpa about her views on different social media platforms.

Kathleen consistently embraces social media as the ultimate opportunity to connect with customers.

“Providing customer service can be an entry point to an ongoing relationship,” she said, adding customer service is a great opportunity for conversation and connection with the brand.

Because Cisco is such a large company, Kathleen said it can be “daunting and confusing for customers when an issue arises.  I love delighting customers with quick replies to questions, issues or concerns they post through their social media channels,” she said.

Make customers feel heard

Cisco’s social media channels are monitored year-round, Kathleen said, and her goal is to consistently be “extremely responsive to our communities.”

During off-peak times, when one of Cisco’s events isn’t ramping up or in progress, she said customers may expect a response within 12 hours, “but normally within the hour during the week.”

During events however, social media is in overdrive, and customers receive a response time that local emergency crews would envy – within three minutes or sooner.

Kathleen credits proper staffing to this feat, a necessity when “event conversations explode, as they did last June [during the Cisco Live event] with 46,000 total social mentions.”

Use complaints as an opportunity

Responsiveness is especially key when dealing with a complaint or upset customers, and addressing the issue immediately will keep the issue in check, Kathleen said.

“I may not have the answer, but I want to let them know I am aware of their issue and I am seeking an answer or solution or whatever it is they may need,” she said.

The same principles of customer service via phone, email or in-person are true in social media (perhaps especially important since it’s available for other customers to see) and making sure a customer feels seen and heard is paramount.

If there isn’t a timely response, “they will most likely continue to get more frustrated and their complaints may multiply, causing a very negative situation for the brand,” Kathleen said.

A complaint handled properly is an opportunity to solve the same problem for other customers who may be following the conversation.

“We can’t always provide a resolution that is what the customer is requesting. No brand can be all things to all people,” she said. But letting a customer know you are aware of their situation and troubleshooting it, “that does a lot to ease the aggravation.”

Use and promote positive interactions

Sometimes customers are using social media as an outlet to voice their excitement for an event or their overall experience with the company, and those positive updates, “truly make my day and are the favorite part of my job,” Kathleen said.

When Cisco customers post positive updates on Twitter, for example, Kathleen retweets it from the brand in addition to responding to them.

“When I see that I can make a positive difference for someone online through communication with the brand, I am absolutely thrilled and I want to amplify their update by a retweet on Twitter or a ‘like’ and response on Facebook or another channel,” she said.

Cisco’s events are also provide a great opportunity to  flaunt those positive customer interactions – as updates may appear on the big screen during a keynote in front of 20,000 attendees, as well as being available for their virtual audience.

Singling those comments out works for both parties: “They love being recognized and we love highlighting their comments,” she said.

  Read more…

Recently, I went to visit some friends in Rochester, N.Y.

While waiting for my flight out there, I started browsing Facebook on my phone. After perusing a few status updates and pet pictures, I landed on Ray-Ban’s Facebook page.

Amidst the questions and comments, I saw a really nice pair of Clubmasters I like. While waiting for the return flight, I decided to catch up on some tweets from people I follow.

Coincidentally, one person I follow tweeted about the same Clubmasters sunglasses I was looking at on Facebook a few days earlier and included a link.

So, I clicked on it and was redirected to Ray-Ban’s e-commerce site. I spent a few minutes customizing pairs of Clubmasters to find the perfect combination to suit my tastes. I was tempted to order them, but it was time to start boarding – maybe some other time.

A week later, I noticed a PPC ad in my browser for Ray-Ban. I clicked on the ad, visited its site again, and checked out a video on “Clubmasters Remastered.” I was about to order them for a second time when the phone rang.  A few friends wanted to meet up at the Lemon Bar, a favorite dive for Jacksonville Beach locals.

After a few margaritas, I got a wild hair and decided to finally purchase those Clubmasters. I got home and plopped down in front of my desktop computer, navigated to the e-commerce site I visited earlier, and bought those suckers!

So goes the saga of the multidigital channel user and multidevice user, for that matter. What a mess!

Is accurate attribution even possible?

We have entered an era that presents new challenges for marketers.

How do we accurately attribute credit for conversions with so many possibilities? When it comes to crediting digital channels, a number of attribution models exist that can provide clarity. However, when talking about social media, some models are better at accomplishing this than others.

For example, social media is generally not a last click before a conversion.

Therefore, basing a marketing budget solely upon this method would undervalue the contribution of social media to the conversion process. Google Digital Marketing Evangelist Avinash Kaushik wrote an excellent blog post on attribution modeling, addressing these issues. He opined the Time Decay Attribution Model does a fairly good job above and beyond the last click, and I would agree.

Time decay assigns more credit to media that is closer in time to a conversion, rather than giving full credit to the touch point closest to a conversion as last-click does.

In the Ray-Ban example, instead of Facebook receiving zero credit for my purchase, it would receive at least some credit even though it was my first touch point. This gives a much more realistic picture of how users are engaging versus a last-click model.  Of course, it is the lesser of evils, not immune to biases.

How should you attribute social media ROI?

Now that we have a pretty decent way of attributing credit to digital channels beyond last-click, the next challenge is finding a way to accurately quantify the monetary value of social media.

There are a number of businesses offering solutions on how to determine social media ROI. However, I am not aware of a totally foolproof method. It’s still like the wild west out there and one can become lost.

To provide some direction, I’ve reviewed white papers and other literature floating around in cyberspace, piecing together the most compelling elements into a set of steps to estimate social media ROI that goes a little further than the methods I’ve mentioned.

How does your social media stack up against paid channels? 

The idea of analyzing social media’s value here is by indirectly comparing similar paid channels to social media first. It’s like assessing what the cost of a social media page would be if it were equivalent to a banner ad, for example. We might multiply the number of Facebook page impressions by the typical CPM of our banner ad campaigns to calculate cost.

A white paper I found offers six ways to measure social media and is responsible for that particular example, which I illustrate in Table 1 below.

The article does a great job of laying out this concept for a number of social media platforms. Other sources have expressed similar approaches. I cheekily refer to the whole of them as “vicarious values.” It’s not quite catchy as an acronym, but it encapsulates the main idea well enough.

Step #1. Determine the vicarious value of your social media channels

Table 1. Calculating the vicarious value for Facebook 

It’s likely your business uses multiple social media sites, so you would need to account for the vicarious value of each social media platform to calculate total vicarious value.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume our only social media presence is on Facebook.

We can easily calculate social network revenue since Facebook’s vicarious value is the same as total vicarious value in this case.

Step #2. Determine how many time decay conversions are attributed to your social media channels

This is where time decay attribution comes in.

So, for our example, we used data were taken from the Google Analytics Model Comparison Tool found under the conversions navigation menu. Facebook is our only social media platform. We can go ahead and assume Social Network (Table 2, Row 5) means only Facebook.

Table 2. Facebook’s time decay conversions represented as Social Network

Under the Time Decay Conversions column, we see 3,029.57 conversions were attributable to Facebook.

Step #3. Calculate the revenue due to your social media channels

The conversions attributable to Facebook (Social Network) amounts to 2% of the total conversions as illustrated below.

Table 3. Channels as percent of total conversions 

Step #4. Subtract the vicarious value from the revenue attributed to your social network   

From here, you can calculate revenue due to Facebook by applying an average sale price for your goods or services to the number of conversions as seen in the formula provided in Table 4 below.

Now, do you remember that vicarious value we figured out in Step #1?

Here’s where it matters.

Table 4. Calculated estimate of ROI for Facebook 

By subtracting the vicarious value (labeled cost here) from the total revenue due to your social network, the remainder gives you the profit.

From there, we have all of the pieces to estimate the ROI.

Read more…

Once upon a time, I was the new kid at school. Since I was a fairly athletic kid, I soon found myself in the midst of a pickup football game at recess. Imagine my horror when, despite my lack of knowledge about the competition, I was selected as a team captain.

I remember asking kids to explain to me, as quickly as possible, why I should choose them for my team. Some kids gave excellent reasons. “I’ve got good hands,” says one. “I’m the fastest kid here,” chimed in another. Many of the kids, however, never offered any answer to my question. Some of them ended sitting out the game because they couldn’t articulate why they should be picked. In football, as in social media, the key to getting picked is selling yourself.

You’re probably used to selling your products, but do you sell your social media?

Here’s what I mean.

How does value proposition relate to social media?

The fundamental value proposition question is:

“If I’m your ideal prospect, why should I buy from you rather than any of your competitors?”

I’ve even heard the phrase expanded in an academic environment to include this add-on phrase: “or do nothing at all?”

The “do nothing at all” is an important distinction because given a set of equally depressing options, a consumer may elect to forgo any product purchase at all.

Therefore, the smart companies tailor product development efforts in such a way the value proposition question produces a satisfying answer in regard to product offerings.

This leads me to another important question.

If product developers know that answering the value proposition question effectively is the key to successful product development, then why can’t a similar logic be applied to your social media efforts?

Whose problem are you solving?

The biggest problem I see with most social media marketing campaigns is usually a paradigm problem. It’s also the primary reason why a company won’t ultimately become successful in the medium.

When companies launch marketing efforts, it’s generally to boost sales. But social media, however, is only successful when content solves a customer problem, not a lack of sales problem.

In other words, most companies are not asking the right value exchange questions. Let’s take Twitter for example.

The prevalent mindset is a company-centric focus of “how can we sell products using Twitter?” instead of a customer-centric focus on “why should potential customers engage our Twitter feed rather than any of our competitors’?”

Consequently, it would do well for marketers to stop and ask the fundamental question, “Is there any true value in our marketing proposition?”

From my experience, when marketers begin to ask these deeper questions about their social media content, the conversational ratio of their posts begins to change – usually for the better.

Here’s another fantastic illustration of my point.

Do this:

Not this: 

Notice how Publix has given the visitor a solution to their problem of wanting to eat more fish. They’ve included a free fish recipe, and a mouthwatering image of a completed meal.

The value of this post is clear and easily recognized. I want to engage with this content because doing so will enable me to cook a great fish meal for my family and achieve my goal of eating more fish.

The hoodie retailer, on the other hand, clearly has no answer to the question of why a user would want to engage with the content. Other than the gratuitous pandering about Saturday tailgates, the retailer makes no effort to solve any problem for the customer.

It even goes as far as to command the customer to “shop now.” Anybody who’s ever crafted a call-to-action knows that dog won’t hunt.

This post is designed to solve the retailer’s problem: the need to sell hoodies. It holds no value for customers whatsoever.

Read more…

According to the MarketingSherpa Inbound Marketing Handbook, companies that create content “produce higher-quality leads that are more likely to convert than organizations that do not.” Although effective, content creation is difficult.

At B2B Summit 2012, Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, sat down with a panel of marketing experts: Eddie Smith, Chief Revenue Officer, Topsy Labs; Nichole Kelly, President, SME Digital; and Chris Baggott, Chairman, Compendium. They exchanged insights on content creation, the importance of genuine content and how marketers can kill their career with inauthentic content they create or repurpose.

Watch as the panel discussed the value of harnessing a company’s internal email power, verifying sources and using a human tone with customers. Discover why Nichole said, “Email is the biggest wasted content resource,” and what marketers can do to utilize it.

Creating inauthentic content was one of the five career killers the panel discussed. Watch the full free presentation to see the rest of this discussion as well as the other four social media career killers, including:

• Thinking your CFO is your nemesis
• Single-use content
• Treating social media as “special”
• Not soliciting outside content

Read more…

Having a multitude of fans and followers on Facebook is a good thing. However, getting more fans on Facebook does not mean you’re getting more customers. In fact, it could be the opposite.

At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013, Jay Baer, President, Convince and Convert, presented, “More Alike than Different: Why email is Madonna, and Facebook is Lady Gaga,” in which he explained the relationship between email and Facebook and how marketers can take advantage of the two channels of communication to customers.

In this excerpt, Jay discussed a myth he spends of half his time working on disproving.

“When we talk about social media, there’s this tremendous myth, and I spend about half my time fighting against this concept. This one concept epitomizes what’s wrong with social media for business today,” Jay said.

Many marketers believe they must have as many fans as possible on Facebook. However, as Jay explained, this is not always a good approach to marketing on Facebook. Having more fans does not necessarily mean you have more customers.

Jay explained 44% of corporate social media marketers look at Facebook as a way to get new customers (Wildfire, 2012), but 84% of fans of company Facebook pages are current or former customers of those companies (DDB, 2011). People who have never used a product or service are less motivated to like it on Facebook.

“We like on Facebook what we actually like,” according to Jay.

Watch this excerpt to learn more about the biggest myth about fans on Facebook, and also how your fans and followers can become accidental marketers for your brand.

View Jay’s full free keynote from Email Summit 2013 to learn why social media and email should be integrated at your company, plus many insights on how to make this possible.

Read more…

At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2014, attendees will hear a wide range of case studies and keynote addresses covering many aspects of email marketing.

At last year’s event, Jay Baer, President, Convince and Convert, presented, “More Alike than Different: Why email is Madonna, and Facebook is Lady Gaga,”  in which he explained the relationship between email and Facebook and how marketers can take advantage of the two channels through integration.

In this excerpt from his presentation, filled with 16 ways to integrate email and Facebook into marketing plans, hear highlights from Jay’s session, including why this integration is so essential for businesses, now and especially in the future.

00:10 “If somebody is subscribing to your email newsletter on your website, on your thank you page, why not ask them to also like you on Facebook?” Jay asked, citing many brands he has audited have not tried this approach.

2:26 Jay explained why marketers who are doing advanced segmentation should turn to connecting Facebook accounts to websites to collect information from customers. Instead of having customers fill out a lengthy form with their information, allowing them to connect their Facebook accounts makes it easier on them to give up their information and faster for marketers to collect this essential data.

2:56 Jay revealed in this session how any time a marketer sends something, it is likely only 25% of the audience will see it at any given time. This is precisely why it is essential for marketers to surround customers with many options for communication, including email and social media.

4:08 While the integration tactics discussed in Jay’s keynote address are not difficult technically, they can be difficult to accomplish culturally, operationally and tactically. But, email marketers’ jobs depend on doing these things “because email isn’t going anywhere, but social media is getting a disproportionate amount of attention, and you know that to be true.”

Watch the full, free session from Email Summit 2013 to hear all of Jay’s insights about integrating email and Facebook.

Read more…

“I’m so far behind. Everyone tells me I need to be on social media, but I don’t know where to get started!”

Today’s MarketingSherpa Blog post is for the late adopters, those not yet deeply engaged in social media marketing.

But even if you are engaged in social media marketing, these tips may help you. Marketers all experience the same type of consternation when it comes to social media and receiving questions like these from peers:

• Are you on social media?
• Which platforms are you on?
• How often do you post?
• What are your engagement numbers?

Let me put your mind at ease. You are not alone. It’s a pressure we all feel within the industry. Companies large and small experience the same pressures.

• How do we get noticed?
• How do we create our social brand image?
• How do we drive sales from a social-oriented platform?

At MarketingSherpa, we have many more resources to help you dive into the complexities of social media marketing and I’ll end this blog post with a few links to help you answer some of the above questions. But first, let’s back it up a bit, and take a 10,000-foot view of the essential elements of any social media marketing endeavor.

Essential Element #1. Realistic goals

To start, we need to keep this in perspective.

Does social interaction and engagement directly correlate to conversion? No.

So, if social interaction does not directly create conversions, what are we spending our time, money and resources on? While we cannot directly correlate brand engagement, brand recognition and brand interaction with engagement on a social media platform, we can say the personality and presence of a brand helps to inform consumers and keep them engaged in the conversation.

Essential Element #2. Organic conversations

First of all, we do not need to be on every single platform to get to the next level. Start with one platform (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) and start the conversation.

To start a conversation, we need to understand our audience wants to engage in an interaction. Start by asking questions (i.e., I’m having a case of the Mondays, how are you doing today? or TGIF! What are you planning this weekend?) then move on to talking about what you do or want to promote.

Obviously, these questions should be relevant to your brand. The goal is to engage visitors in a conversation and keep it going.

Ask more questions, respond and follow up. You do not want to be that company that puts something out there and doesn’t respond. It’s the same as sending a message to a friend to ask them out to dinner, having them respond to you and never setting a date or time.

Essential Element #3. A (growing) community

Grow your following.

I know! I know! How do I grow my brand’s following?

Once you pick where to start and you have a conversation going with your followers, this is an easy transition.

Let’s talk about the demographic you are targeting. Let’s get specific. I know. This is a hard thing to do. This is where you are probably saying “Come on Rachel, my product is perfect for everyone.” I get it.  I’ve had the same trouble myself.

So, let’s pick your top demographic and go from there. Pick your top demographic and find out:

• Where they visit
• Who they follow
• What they read about.

Why is this important? It’s simple. Once you know where they go, start networking.

Social media marketing is all about the connections and creating conversations. For example, if I’m looking to help a company that is coaching boys soccer, where would I go? What would I search for?

I’d start searching locally. I would Google the top Facebook pages for the area by typing “Jacksonville” and “boys soccer” and “facebook.”

This search criteria would pull together the right information for my competition – Facebook pages I should start interacting with.

Read more…

At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013, I interviewed our keynote speaker – Jay Baer, President, Convince&Convert – about the book he was writing. Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype will be released in two weeks, so we’re sharing that interview with you now …

A few key takeaways from Jay …

1:00 – Brands have to compete with customers’ friends and family on social media and in email.

1:27 – So how are you going to compete with friends and family? Just be useful.

1:41 – Make your marketing a benefit, not a burden.

2:16 – Hilton Worldwide’s instruction to employees monitoring social media – “Pay attention to Twitter. If you can find a place you can help, just help.”

3:02 – The difference between helping and selling makes all the difference.

To register to win your very own shiny new copy of Youtility, sign up this week for the MarketingSherpa Weekly Book Giveaway.

Related Resources:

B2B Social Media: Jay Baer discusses social media ROI and Facebook likes [Video]

5 Ways to Deliver B2B Marketing Content that Sells (Without Sabotaging Sales) (via Convince&Convert)

Value Proposition: How to use social media to help discover why customers buy from you