But Hitachi was willing to give it a shot if it could keep the budget low and use tracking to closely monitor results.

In her presentation, Crost shared five shortcuts learned along the way and how the test project more than doubled Hitachi’s goals for Web traffic, social engagement and live sales leads.

Her shortcuts:

• Test early and often. You’re not going to know which content is socially engaging until you start testing and trying things out.
• Segment. Provide different levels of engagement for your audience, and let it self-select.
• Amplify. You don’t need a big budget to amplify what you’re doing. Hitachi worked with partners, used its corporate site and engaged industry influencers to raise awareness for its social campaign.
• Measure. Focus on a few key performance metrics, and integrate them into your campaign. Use early results to shift resources. (For example, Hitachi found that Facebook outperformed LinkedIn and Twitter for its campaign, so it shifted focus and resources there.)
• Nurture. Social media interaction must be nurtured. Crost encouraged having fun and developing an experience map for how each touch point leads to a nurturing goal.

Watch Crost’s presentation. Slides are available.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related Posts:

• Andy’s Answers: How Dell engages online fans and critics
• Social media marketing and social-networking tips from Foursquare Day
• Andy’s Answers: How to start building your fan community
• Andy’s Answers: How Coca-Cola monitors social media
• Do you give a Klout?

Andy’s Answers: 5 shortcuts Hitachi Data Systems uses to earn B2B sales leads through social media originally published by SmartBlogs

Vaynerchuk illustrated the necessity of this message when he asked the nearly full ballroom of attendees, “How many of you think Twitter is stupid?” and half of them raised their hands. Then similar numbers raised their hands to say they once thought cellphones and the Internet itself were stupid, but all admitted they use both today.

The arguments people are having about social media today are the same ones they had about those now-ubiquitous developments just 10 to 15 years ago, Vaynerchuk said. And arguing instead of getting on board is just a waste of time, he said. “Innovation doesn’t care about anyone,” it just flows on and will run you over if you don’t jump on and ride the wave.

It also isn’t helpful to disparage social media when you haven’t even tried it out. “I love it when people have a whole lot to say about Facebook and Twitter and they don’t even have an account,” said Vaynerchuk. “Shut your mouth!”

All business owners, he said, are just in one business: the attention business. Today, people’s attention is fragmented and harder than ever to capture. To get it, you have to use new methods and strategies; you have to use social media.

“People aren’t looking at billboards, they aren’t even looking at the freakin’ road anymore,” said Vaynerchuk, who admitted to using traditional advertising in the past and explained he believes it is grossly overpriced today.

Companies had it easy when they could take a broad-sweeping approach with billboards, newspaper ads and television commercials, but today, businesses have to work harder to reach out to individuals, Vaynerchuk explained. We’ve gone back to a small-town way of doing things, where the way you treat individual customers matters because they are going to tell others about the experience they’ve had with your business.

“We’re living in an era where word-of-mouth is on steroids,” he said. People aren’t just talking to their neighbors and the folks they run into around town; they’re talking to the world via social media.

If you’re finally ready to get your business on social media, take a deep breath and try to relax with the help of these four simple tips from Vaynerchuk.

• Don’t worry about what you’re going to say; just get started and build from there.
• Don’t focus on trying to win new customers, but instead on treating your existing customers well so you can keep them and inspire them to endorse your business.
• Don’t obsess about ROI. There’s a certain amount of serendipity in word-of-mouth marketing, and the numbers don’t always tell the full story.
• Don’t ignore what people are saying on Twitter. It’s a great source of information about what consumers like, think and do.

Related Posts:

• The quiet person’s guide to getting people talking online
• 3 ways to increase in-store social awareness
• Social media for the complex sale: Where should you start?
• This week's most clicked
• This week's most clicked

Gary Vaynerchuk explains why small-business owners need to stop debating social media and start using it originally published by SmartBlogs

At ShortStack, we provide a platform to build, install and carry out these contests. But the key thing to remember is that we cannot market your contest. And as we’ve said repeatedly, you cannot “set it and forget it” and expect your contest to work.

We decided to look at one brand using our platform that has seen enormous success with its sweepstakes and let it teach a thing or two about effectively conducting a Facebook contest.

Oxygenics is a Reno, Nev., company that creates and distributes eco-friendly shower heads to retailers such as Bed Bath & Beyond and The Sharper Image. It recently decided to rapidly increase its Facebook fan count and use a contest to do so.

Oxygenics created a tab with our platform. It launched the contest March 12, when it had 117 “likes.” Every day, the company picks one random entry to win a $50 gift card to Bed Bath & Beyond. All entrants must provide their name, age and e-mail address. Oxygenics’ goal: 10,000 fans total in 90 days.

It was slow to get started. Despite an ad budget of more than $200 during the first three weeks, the page didn’t break 1,000 fans. Not impressive progress considering the initial goal and caliber of the prize.

In a late-night Google search for other Facebook contests, Oxygenics’ marketing team stumbled on a discovery: There are Facebook pages and blogs dedicated to giveaways. These pages had upward of 10,000 fans and an active audience. By e-mailing these websites, posting to their Facebook pages and offering blogs a shower head for review, Oxygenics jumped on the fast train to success. Pages such as Suburban Coupon Mom, Sweeties Sweepstakes and Freebie Junkie gave Oxygenics multiple mentions and urged fans to join the Oxygenics network and enter the contest. Fans happily obliged.

From the start date of that outreach, April 3, to April 27, Oxygenics added more than 5,000 Facebook fans. The top five references to its page are giveaway bloggers, with Sweeties Sweeps sending 2,500-plus fans.

Oxygenics accomplished this without spending thousands on ads, hiring social media experts or taking away from existing resources. This can easily be accomplished using your marketing team — or even person — and a few hours of research and e-mails.

Such fans are great for Oxygenics because:

• They are active on Facebook. Since adding contest-blog fans, Oxygenics has seen an increase in individual post engagement, with each post averaging 44 engaged users and a reach of 946 people. After adding these fans, the page has yet to post an update that goes without a like, comment or share.
• They are the company’s ideal audience. Women usually do the shopping. By attracting them to Oxygenics’ network with the contest and bloggers’ stamp of approval, the company is building trust with this audience, which is spread nationwide (Chicago, Los Angeles and New York are the top cities of the audience). Oxygenics’ stylish and eco-conscious product largely appeals to women who are concerned about their family’s bills, health and environmental impact.
• They add momentum to the contest. Instead of becoming a fan, then deserting the page, these fans enter the contest and share it with their network. Oxygenics sees more than 1,000 entries daily, and shares from those entries result in an average of three fans per post.

And the momentum has yet to stop. With each passing week, more bloggers come on board to spread the message. They’re giving multiple mentions as well, rather than a one-time deal.

Simple steps from Oxygenics for anyone looking to do the same:

1. Find your niche. For Oxygenics, it was easy to start with the giveaway sites. But there is just about every kind of blogger out there, from travel to pet products, and if you have a contest that fits the scope, the blogger is likely to give you support. Find such bloggers and ask them to help in exchange for something. Oxygenics offered a shower head and said a dozen shower heads for thousands of fans and advocates were more than worth it.
2. Tell them exactly what you want — and say exactly what you will provide. Lay out that you want, for example, one tweet per week and three Facebook posts total in exchange for a shower head. If you don’t have a ton of product to give away, consider making an original tip sheet or other content that bloggers can use. For instance, if you’re a tourism page giving away a huge vacation, send travel bloggers the top 10 reasons Wyoming is awesome, or something to that effect. You’re giving them something of value in exchange for their valuable efforts. Everybody wins.
3. Tell them to tell their friends. Oxygenics found its true success when the initial bloggers contacted their network of buddies. Requests and promotions came swarming in. Let them know that any online comrade is welcome to participate, providing it works for both parties.
4. Share the love. Give the bloggers public credit. Become their fan, tag them in your postings, tweet them; they will appreciate and reciprocate this action. Take time to thank those who directed people to your page. Oxygenics found that one blog sent more than 2,000 fans, so the company requested to purchase an ad on the blog, knowing its effectiveness.

While the power of Google is always a primary tool, blog-index sites such as Technorati and Alltop allow you to easily find blogs within a subject to begin this outreach.

Oxygenics still has a bit to go before reaching its overall goal. But with momentum continuing and several weeks left for the contest, the company is confident the goal is reachable and passable.

You can see the contest and enter. Our platform to build a similar-looking contest is available.

This post is by Jim Belosic, CEO and co-founder of ShortStack, a Facebook platform-based application helping businesses build customized tabs for Facebook pages that maximize their social media presence and potential.

Related Posts:

• 9 tips for building a Facebook fan base from scratch
• Smart contests Part 1: How to design a successful Facebook contest
• Don't be a Facebook failure: Unlock the viral potential of social media through contests, comments and sharing
• Facebook Timeline: How to cope with changes to the Default Landing Tab
• Deck the social halls: How Facebook pages are decorating for the holidays

How Oxygenics is using a Facebook contest to pump up its Facebook fan base originally published by SmartBlogs

But there’s something missing. Even if you have an ironclad strategy, impeccable tactics and sterling branding, you can still fall flat in the social media arena. There is still one more thing you need to learn.

Are you ready for the final lesson? Is your mind prepared and your spirit pure? Can you snatch the pebble from my hand? Good. Because the final step to social media mastery (at the individual level, anyway) doesn’t come from a business-school textbook, a Fortune 500 CEO or a mountain of data. It comes from Bruce Lee.

When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.

Lee’s awesomeness doesn’t lie in his ability to beat up Chuck Norris. He was a philosophical man who understood the nature of combat. He argued that no one method of attack is best — great champions are ones who can assess a moment and adapt. If you’ve ever been in a real-world fight, you know he’s onto something.

You can’t build a social media following only by connecting the dots. Think about it: If it were as easy as following a recipe, don’t you think more people would have pulled it off by now? The answer is that there is no answer. There is only the right thing to do at the time.

Look at your social media activity. What are you spending time on each day that benefits your organization? And what are you spending time on simply because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do?

Great social presences are always adapting. They make a plan — then break the rules with abandon. They don’t care about best practices, only results.

How is your social media presence adapting?

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

How to make your social media kung fu stronger originally published by SmartBlogs

So to build up communities around Yahoo!’s brands, the company launched a series of campaigns designed to attract and engage specific audiences. At our recent BlogWell conference in San Francisco, Yahoo!’s Robin Zucker walked us through one of the projects for Yahoo! Movies.

Her case study covered the strategy behind the project, how it was done and how it all resulted in a million Facebook fans.

A few of her big ideas:

• Focus on earning the right fans. Zucker and her team targeted moviegoers for this entire project because they wanted to build a fan base of people who love movies and love going to them. These are the people they want to build a relationship with at Yahoo! Movies.
• Find a great partner. Yahoo! partnered with Regal Cinemas, which helped promote giveaways and create a “real-world” community experience.
• Leave room for flexibility. Like all word-of-mouth ideas, you never know how certain ideas are going to play out. Some might not work as well as expected, while others surprise you with how much they catch on. Always leave room to drop something that isn’t working, and double down on what is.

Watch Zucker’s presentation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related Posts:

• The value of social media customers
• Andy’s Answers: How National Geographic uses social media to get fans talking
• Andy’s Answers: How to start building your fan community
• 3 ways to increase in-store social awareness
• Andy’s Answers: How Coca-Cola monitors social media

Andy’s Answers: How Yahoo! earned 1 million Facebook fans for Yahoo! Movies originally published by SmartBlogs

Most chief marketing officers acknowledge social media’s importance but attempt isolated social media campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. Many marketers find social media ineffective and frustrate themselves with unintegrated attempts at making them work. Integrating social into the larger mix of marketing to achieve overarching corporate objectives can yield results.

We have seen many examples of social media’s independent success, the building of groundswells of loyal customers. Consider the niche marketing of Etsy, the restoration of Dell’s brand and the rise of media mogul Arianna Huffington.

While incredibly impressive, companies seek to copycat them. Instead, the marketing round demonstrates how they should integrate social into the larger mix. There are other strategic approaches beyond a groundswell that social media can support as part of a larger, multichannel effort.

Here are three primary types of campaigns with which social media can help.

Direct: The marketing channel that produces the most return on investment, direct marketing can be bulwarked by social media. Direct is also used internally to recruit and to increase employee morale. But what better way to be direct than to have a one-on-one conversation with stakeholders online? Methods to go direct with social are widespread.

Here are a few examples.

• Create a channel for customer-service response on a large social network such as Twitter (pioneered by @ComcastCares, @NetSolCares and extending to many consumer brands).
• Recruit employees directly through social media (examples: Sodexo and KPMG UK).
• Interact and incentivize the most loyal customers in online communities (Starbucks and LEGO).

Top down: PR works best when a company has a position of authority in the marketplace. By using events, speaking engagements, media relations and strategically placed advertisements, companies can launch far-reaching product initiatives. Social media can support and play an increasingly larger role in significant campaign launches.

Some common support tactics:

• Influencer and blogger relations (Cisco Systems and Nikon).
• Content marketing on a large social network such as YouTube (Dollar Shave Club and Blendtec).
• Initiatives for customer-generated content (Ford Motor’s Fiesta and Doritos).

Flanking techniques: Many companies and organizations serve within regulated sectors and feel as though their hands are tied when it comes to social media. They rely on niche advertising, trickle-up media relations, guerrilla marketing and events to find and compel customers.

But social media form a wide-ranging tool set, and there are many creative ways to interact with and influence customers.

• Create or participate in private communities on LinkedIn and other networks (BIO and GovLoop).
• Release relevant and tangential data through blogging, infographics, social networks and other methods (Booz Allen Hamilton and American Red Cross).
• Release relevant and entertaining content to garner attention from an unengaged audience (Chrysler and Old Spice).

These approaches embody some of the ways companies think about their general marketing and PR campaigns. Certainly, there are many more social media tactics that can be deployed to support them. Imagination and creativity can create fantastic opportunities.

Social media tactics supporting these approaches should be selected in conjunction with other disciplines to achieve larger, measurable performance indicators for the overall marketing department. This kind of focus brings social out of the world of follower counts and “reach” and into the world of achieving real marketing objectives.

Moving forward, the question for social media marketers isn’t “What is my social media strategy?” Rather, it is “How can social be weaved into larger marketing campaigns and support the organization’s overarching goals?”

Geoff Livingston is an author and a marketing strategist. He serves as vice president of strategic partnerships at Razoo. A former journalist, Livingston continues to write and most recently co-wrote “Marketing in the Round” and wrote the social media primer “Welcome to the Fifth Estate.”

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago firm for integrated marketing communication. She also founded Spin Sucks Pro, a professional-development website for PR and marketing professionals, and co-authored “Marketing in the Round,” which shows how to get more value from integrating all marketing and communication channels.

Related Posts:

• Has social media for business hit the mainstream?
• Andy’s Answers: 5 shortcuts Hitachi Data Systems uses to earn B2B sales leads through social media
• Andy’s Answers: How Yahoo! earned 1 million Facebook fans for Yahoo! Movies
• How are you marketing on Pinterest?
• The value of social media customers

The unintegrated world of social media marketing originally published by SmartBlogs

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alerti social media monitoring graph on social media chatter surrounding the release of Google+ Hangouts on Air:

Related Posts:

• Learning the basics of social media monitoring
• How brands can use social media to leverage cause marketing
• Social media marketing and social-networking tips from Foursquare Day
• What you can learn from Google’s social media unveiling of Project Glass
• What are social media saying about #SXSW? Find out in “Future of Engagement”!

What is Google+ Hangouts on Air? originally published by SmartBlogs

This week, we asked: How often do you review your social media strategy?

• We don’t have a social media strategy: 31.62%
• Less than three months between reviews: 25.64%
• Every three to six months: 21.37%
• Every six to nine months: 10.26%
• Every nine to 12 months: 5.13%
• Every 12 to 18 months: 3.42%
• Every 18 to 24 months – 1.71%
• More than 2 years between reviews – 0.85%

Is a social media strategy necessary? Good question. According to the results, maybe not. Here are five of my observations on these poll results.

1. It’s alarming that almost 32% of respondents to the poll “don’t have a social media strategy.” Now, knowing our community, this does include the small percentage of our readers who do not use social media for their business, but even still, that number seems super high — 3 of 10 do not have a strategy; that’s akin to having a map and a compass, but no destination.
2. As alarming as that may be, the one possibility is that this segment of our readership is using social media before the strategy-formulation stage for a period of “experimentation.” I would actually be a proponent of that. Do you fall into that category? If so, how are you getting the information from experimentation into your strategy? If not, you need to step back and ask, “Why are we doing this?”
3. I’d say that the almost 50% of respondents who rejigger their plans more often than every six months are reviewing their social media “strategy” too frequently. I’m good with you reviewing your goals, tactics and campaigns that frequently — but your “strategy” should not change that often. I’d recommend re-evaluating your strategy annually to ensure it remains relevant and in alignment with your corporate strategy.
4. The basis for the above is that in general, I think we have a misunderstanding of the word “strategy.” It’s not your social media plan, the launch of your Facebook page or the social media monitoring software you just purchased; it’s the overarching reason those things exist. In a post by Shannon Paul titled “The Missing Ingredient in Most Social Media Strategies,” Tac Anderson sums it up perfectly:
   

   “What are most social media strategies missing? They are missing organizational alignment with the overall communications strategy, which is often not in full alignment with the business strategy to begin with. This is why we mostly see one-off social media campaigns that don’t accrue to anything. A social media strategy would be a subset of the communications strategy. It should support the communications strategy in supporting the business strategy.”

5. From a social media standpoint, we remain in the infant stages of development from a business perspective. As I’ve said a number of times before, we can’t rely on best practices; all we can do is work hard at learning from the practices we’ve implemented. As we see with these polls each week, we rarely have a single best answer. Social media is just getting started, and it will be a while before it finds its rightful permanent place within every organization.

What’s your take on these results? Can a business effectively succeed in social media without a strategy?

This poll analysis was written by SmartBlogs contributor Jeremy Victor. He is the president of business-to-business content-marketing agency Make Good Media and editor-in-chief of B2Bbloggers.com. For more of his writing, visit B2Bbloggers.com and follow him on Twitter and Google+.

Related Posts:

• 4 steps to building a more interesting brand through social media
• At work or not, employees’ social actions affect brand equity and value
• Little-known ways to improve your social-content strategy
• Should deals play a role in your social media strategy?
• Should geography affect your social media strategy?

Is a social media strategy necessary? originally published by SmartBlogs

Besides being an excellent place to find Mother’s Day gift and recipe ideas, Pinterest is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for businesses. According to a recent study by Shareaholic, Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than Twitter. Sure, it’s easy for big brands such as Whole Foods to be successful but what about small and local businesses? The good news for local businesses is that Pinteret’s search feature makes it incredibly worthwhile for local businesses to be on Pinterest.

Tips for setting up your business account

• Link your Pinterest account to your business’ Twitter account, because you can’t set up a business Pinterest account through a business Facebook page.
• Keep in mind that your boards should not be overly promotional. Pinterest is the place to show off your company culture and show people what kind of ideas can correlate with your products and services. For example, a jewelry store should not only create boards with pictures of their products, but also showcase hairstyles and clothes that might go well with their jewelry so that people can get a sense for how everything comes together.
• Before you seek out local people to follow, create a few boards first so you give people a reason to follow you back.

How to find local pinners

Since people have to sign in with either their Facebook or Twitter accounts, Pinterest grabs the information that people attach to those profiles. Most people list the specific city that they’re from — which is good news for local businesses. To find local users, click the search bar at the top left and enter the town you are targeting and hit search. Pinterest will naturally default to search for boards that have been created with that town name in it, but the trick is to filter it by People. Now you should see Pinners from the town that you searched and can search for towns in surrounding areas to connect with even more local Pinterest users.

Okay great, you know that local people are on Pinterest, but what should you do next? You can follow them, comment and like their boards. You can even repin and create a board full of local pins and title it, “Coolest Repins” or “Best (Insert your town here) Pinners.” Social media is all about engagement and Pinterest gives you a
prime opportunity to connect with users in regards to ideas that are very personal to them.

Pinterest as a research tool

What’s better than being able to see the specific interests of your target market? Look through the boards of your local users and take notes on what kind of products they love and what kind of style trends they are attracted to. This is a perfect opportunity to really learn who your target market is. The greatest thing about Pinterest is that people go there to discover and be inspired by things. It’s different than people shopping online where they usually know the exact thing that they’re looking for. With Pinterest, you can really get a feel for the interests, desires and inspirations of your target market. Then you can use this information to position your business effectively in front of your ideal customers.

Amber Wallor is the president and co-founder of Left Hand Marketing in the Chicago area. She specializes in social media training, social media management and video marketing.

Related Posts:

• How are you marketing on Pinterest?
• 3 ways to increase in-store social awareness
• Andy’s Answers: 5 shortcuts Hitachi Data Systems uses to earn B2B sales leads through social media
• Andy’s Answers: How Yahoo! earned 1 million Facebook fans for Yahoo! Movies
• The unintegrated world of social media marketing

How local businesses can do research and gain an edge with Pinterest originally published by SmartBlogs

But how does National Geographic manage it all? How does it find content that fans want to share? What is the voice of the brand? At our last Word of Mouth event, National Geographic’s Brendan Hart shared a bunch of the secrets about how it is done.

A few of his big ideas:

• Define your voice and the team behind it. When National Geographic first launched on Twitter, Hart ran the account — but over time, he weaned himself off because he didn’t think it would scale with him alone. So, he turned the reins over to a core team, and, with a laugh, he said growth has been exponential since making the change.
• Who are you, and what are you trying to do? Every day, the core team has a meeting at 11 a.m. in the chief editor’s office to talk about big things happening in the world, things the team can use to fulfill its mission: inspiring people to care about the planet. This is the fundamental mission that drives the company, and it’s also what drives its social strategy.
• Put the fan first. Everything National Geographic does is through this lens: Would you want to be marketed to this way? Would you want to be talked to this way? Would you want to have a discussion in this format? This is a key behind how Hart and his team are able to establish their authenticity.

Watch Hart’s presentation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related Posts:

• Andy’s Answers: How Yahoo! earned 1 million Facebook fans for Yahoo! Movies
• The value of social media customers
• Andy’s Answers: How to start building your fan community
• 3 ways to increase in-store social awareness
• Andy’s Answers: How Coca-Cola monitors social media

Andy’s Answers: How National Geographic uses social media to get fans talking originally published by SmartBlogs