Courtesy of thenextweb.com

Research indicates that a person’s decision to buy a product or service is largely emotional. We already know if they like your business better than other companies, they are more likely to become your client. That’s why personality, likeability and passion are three key ingredients that you need to have in your social media content.

The Art of Personality

Businesses on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are expected to be like real people – which in fact they are, depending on who is doing the posting. You need to infuse your content with as much personality as you can, in order to get an emotional response from your readers.

This means finding the right balance between creative, personal and opinionated content. Use first person speech, and weave personal stories into your content. Try to steer clear of depicting your business as a faceless organization. Be as transparent as you can, without sounding false. Remember that stories are supposed to bring you closer to your readers, not push them away.

Being Likable on Social Media

Likeability is an understated, yet highly important part of any social media content strategy. If your fans or readers don’t like you much, they’re not going to care about what you have to say. To make them like you, approach them on common ground. Spend time creating content that really interests them, solves a problem they’re having, or makes them feel good about themselves.

When you are proactive in your content, and have a variety of media on offer – it rapidly increases your likeability. This is because people remember more when they are doing or watching something. Videos of you doing and teaching, are a brilliant way to build an emotional connection with your fans. The more they see your face and hear your advice – the more they’ll trust you.

The Passion Curve

Content needs to have a tone, which is what is lacking in many content strategies all over the globe. Passion, and getting other people excited about your business, products and services, is a direct route to social media success. One of the most shared subjects on the internet is motivation, and positive affirmations.

When you are passionate and positive about your business, it becomes inspiring for others that consume your social content. It’s also infectious, and a lightning fast way to make real emotional connections with your fans. The next time you plan your content strategy, remember personality, likeability and passion.

Healthy doses of these in all of your content will lead to a wonderful, vibrant social media community. Don’t just sit there, get cracking!

How do you connect emotionally with your fans? Do you have any tips you’d like to share with us? Please leave your awesome comment below!

Courtesy of siena.edu

With social media, it all becomes a lot more involved, as each site has different ways to communicate with different target audiences. Let’s take a closer look at how you should come up with a solid, reliable and effective social media strategic communications plan.

A strategic communications plan is really made up 4 of sections:

#1 Researching, Defining, Finding and Tracking Your Audience

In order to create an effective communications strategy, you need to know who your audiences are, where they hang out, and how you can reach them. The only real way to do this is through lots and lots of research. Any strategy relies on great research, so make sure yours is diverse and accurate before you begin putting together your key audience research.

• Who is your general audience?
• What does your ideal audience member like to do, wear, eat, hang out, say, watch, play…
• How does your audience change on different social media sites?
• How do these different sites affect the way they interact with you?

When you put in enough research, you’ll be able to identify patterns on each platform, and slowly begin to formulate a more accurate plan for communications on each site. Once you’ve done this, you can move onto your objectives.

#2 Researching, Defining, Applying and Adjusting Your Objectives

Once you’ve nailed down who and where your key audiences are, its time for some strategy. This is not as easy as it sounds! Because every social media site functions based on its own set of rules, you’ll need to adjust your objectives to suit them.

• What are your main objectives for your Facebook page?
• What are your secondary objectives for your Facebook page?
• What kind of strategy can you build based on these objectives?
• How will you implement them?
• What are the costs involved, and can you afford them?

Make sure that your communications strategy is realistic, and manageable. You’ll have to spread your resources around several social media pages. Target the ones that count the most, and rotate as necessary. These objectives should be segmented into short and long term goals. Carefully brainstorm ways to reach each target.

#3 Researching, Identifying, Measuring and Monitoring Your Plan

With all social media and strategic planning, you need to consistently monitor and measure your efforts. This begins by identifying the most suitable ways to do this. If you don’t track and analyze your progress, you’ll never know how to improve your overall communications strategy on that platform.

#4 Implementing Changes To Improve Your Original SMSC Plan

The final basic step is the implementation of changes, based on your research, what you’ve seen, done and collected via the tracking and measuring process. Take this in stages, and focus on one site at a time. All of this needs to be laid out along a workable time-line, with action steps and strategic evaluation processes.

That’s how you arrive at a social media strategic communications plan that works.

How did you put together your social media communication strategy? Did you use any specific software? We’d like to know, so leave your comment below!

Courtesy of life.nationalpost.com

Pope Benedict XVI has been very outspoken about new social technology, commenting that it provides the church with an unprecedented level of interaction with Catholics all over the globe. This in itself is surprising, as the church has a long-standing track record of not embracing new technology right away.

But what significance does this hold for social media, and engaging your target audience?

A Closer Community of Loyal Followers

The Vatican has a very specific social media campaign on the go, which includes Facebook, Youtube and now Twitter. What is even more interesting, is that the Pope’s first tweet was done in English. The social significance in such an act is very meaningful for all businesses using social media today.

It proves beyond all doubt, that the only way to truly reach your customers these days is with a targeted social media campaign. This campaign is the most far-reaching in English, and should involve several different types of social interaction, nurtured on several social platforms. Even the Vatican recognizes that engaging their target audience is done most efficiently via social media strategy.

Right now the Vatican’s social platforms still have a fairly low following, but this will change as they continue to endorse new technology. Catholicism has a built-in audience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

And with the Vatican moving forward with their plans to unify all of these people on social media, we might be looking at what could become one of the most powerful social communities on the internet.

The Hype is Gone

Social media hype is disappearing behind endorsements from spiritual leaders like the Pope. The Catholic Church has never invested itself in something that is a passing craze, or something that won’t have positive long-term ramifications for the church.

Businesses that are still not convinced of the power that social media has, to not only build their business, but bring together their community – will start to see the value in social engagement.

It’s not that print, television and radio is dead – it’s just that they can’t approach social media when it comes to community growth, and eventually turning these fans into paying customers. A business owner can spend weeks reading about social media, and still not want to take that first step into social technology.

But even the Pope knows, that it’s here to stay. At some point, you will have to join the social media boom, or risk losing all of your business to your social competitors.

If you don’t have a social media campaign yet, then it’s time to get one. If you do, then you need to concentrate on strengthening your social media content strategy. If history has taught us anything, it’s that when the church hops on the bandwagon, the change is permanent. Social media isn’t going anywhere.

What do you think of the Pope’s social media endorsement? What effect will it have on your social media campaign? Leave your comment below!

Courtesy of lighthousevirtual.com

We’ve moved from having no outside contact with our customer bases, to being permanently connected with them 24/7. This was bound to cause some issues. Let’s explore exactly how customer behavior has changed recently.

The Two Way Conversation

Back in the days of polite sales and even more polite returns, customers had almost no say in daily business or marketing schemes. Businesses applied market research based on surveys and test groups – and sales plans were created. These days marketing is still based on research and data, only there is more data to collect, and it’s direct from the customers.

The one way conversation has become a two way conversation. Customers are now able to tell you, via social media sites – what they like or dislike about your product, marketing system and business. This is where the massive change has happened. Social media has made it easier for the customer to have their say in your business. As a result, the behavior of your customers has changed the way you market, sell and promote.

It’s all about brand identity and exposure now, putting your business out there so that customers can find you, comment and interact. You gather all this valuable feedback, and use it to make your business better, stronger and more efficient. We’re driven by customer expectation – and this is the big difference. You are able to predict customer behavior based on their social profiles.

A More Demanding Environment

This shift in customer behavior has led to many positive and negative outcomes. If you need to find out what your customer likes, simply see what they talk about in their Twitter feed. But if they want to tell you something – good or bad – the whole world is going to see it. It’s a more demanding environment of rapid growth and customer service excellence.

We live in a content driven age, where open dialogue is what sells your business. Customers are becoming very used to being entitled to their opinions. Your business has to face the fact that without two way communication, you will become redundant. It’s not a case of ‘join the conversation’ anymore. It’s more like ‘be the conversation’ in this world of social media sharing.

With conversations flying back and forth about your brand, and with the customer at the centre – one thing is for certain: you better have a very good social strategy in place. If you don’t, the trending customer behavior of today is going to be your downfall. You simply can’t keep up with businesses that know their customers, and have more data to use on sales, than you do.

Become a customer-centric business sooner rather than later. Engage your customers on every level possible, using as many different forms of media as you can. Learn from them, and prosper!

How do you think customer behavior has changed since the social media boom? We want to know what you think!

Courtesy of therealsjr.posterous.com

#1: Segment Your Community Based on Engagement

You have access to the names and activities of everyone in your social community. This means that you can segment your potential customers based on their interaction on your pages.

Outspoken people are easy to profile, as you can collect info based on what they say, comment on, like, disagree with – and so on. You can also get a clearer picture of what less-outspoken community members like, because they will only interact if they are truly interested.

If you monitor the conversation on each of your social media pages, soon you’ll get a clearer idea of what each person is all about. Some will be passive shoppers, never saying anything – but they buy from you.

Some will be extremely interactive, and won’t buy a thing. Sort your community into segments based on their behaviour, and come up with a social profile for each. Determine what their social personality is, and what sort of messages will engage them enough to want to buy something.

#2: Cracking The Social Engagement Code

There are a few distinct social personalities online, and they are easy to identify. Use this key to segment your community, and get a head start on streamlining your messages, so that they work.

1 – The Business Marketer

Usually a business owner or marketer that is highly interactive. They are more likely to respond to messages that will help them improve their businesses, or get them more exposure online. They often like to talk about themselves.

2 – The Competitor Expert

Many people will become part of your community because you are in direct competition with their business. They will offer a lot of interaction, but will be very wary about buying anything from you – unless it is guaranteed to work for them.

3 – The Social Butterfly

Someone that loves to interact but rarely buys anything. The only way to reach these people, is to build a solid relationship with them. They won’t respond to run of the mill marketing messages. Try including them in a promotion, sending them free samples or recruiting them as a word of mouth marketer.

4 – The Named Ghost

A person that never shares – and is barely ever on your pages. If you want to get their attention, you’re going to have to entice them with gifts, or personal emails with colourful multimedia. These are the most difficult people to convert into buyers. They collect communities, but are never truly part of them.

#3: Different Ways To Engage

As we said before, everyone if different. So, approach them with different media. Use articles, podcasts, video, slideshare presentations, app games – anything you can to get them interested in your business, and what your business has to offer.

You’ll be able to measure and track who in your community responds to certain types of media. Make a note of this in their social profile, and market to these segments based on relevant data.

How do you engage your many customers on social media? Do you have a tip you’d like to share? Please add it to the comments below!

Courtesy of rkweblog.com

Many businesses these days choose to make their tone as entertaining as possible. This is because social media is just as much about engagement as it is about response. If your content isn’t inviting, then you won’t get people to like or follow your pages. Even if they do, you’ll still have trouble getting them to interact with you. Of all the effort you put into your writing, your tone is the most important.

Visit Competitor Pages and Take Notes

How do your competitors communicate with their communities? There’s a lot you can learn about language when you see it in action. Pick 10 of your closest competitors, and take notes on how they treat their readers, and how they respond to problems. The quickest way to identify tone, is to notice the attitude of the writer. Are they friendly? Sarcastic? Negative?

Moods translate in writing, so make sure that when you nail down the type of tone you want for your social media content – it stays the same. The right tone will let your community know that you are open to interaction. That’s what you want!

Never Pretend, or Overdo It

You know what a fake greeting sounds like, right? Well there is such a thing as fake tweets, blogs and Facebook posts. If you don’t sound sincere, then you’re going to come across as a fake personality. At the same time if you sound to generic, people will think you’re a spambot. The trick is to narrow in on your customer base and your community, and mimic their friendly tones and casual communication styles.

There are many businesses that think sounding dynamic and energetic, is the same as shouting, overdoing exclamation marks, or using ridiculous hearts, smileys and pictures in their content. You’ve seen a tweet made up of lines and dots that forms a picture. These are not acceptable in business, unless you’re a daycare centre.

The Fine Line Between Personal and Business

If you have more than 1 writer creating your social media posts, you could come across a fairly urgent problem. Some writers put too much of their personality in their writing, and this sticks out like a sore thumb. The last thing you want is for people to know that you don’t manage your own social media pages – unless you’ve made that clear on that platform.

Always be helpful, humble and friendly. These are 3 attitudes that will work well in any business. Be wary of the metaphors and imagery you or your writer use – they say a lot about your business.

Tone is the single most important thing you’ll have to manage in social media. You can be the world’s greatest marketer, or business person – but if your tone is wrong online, everyone is going to respond badly. By bad – we mean no response at all. Stay relevant, be professional and don’t forget to entertain your community!

What tone do you like to read on Facebook or Twitter? Witty? Edgy? Angry? Tell us below!

Courtesy of frenchyme.blogspot.com

As a social media manager or business owner, you should always be looking for ways to improve the conversation on your social media platforms.

While this does mean learning the A-Z of using each platform, it also means being smart about what you say, and what you do. How many streams have you read where a social media marketer announces that they had Oatees for breakfast?

These random fillers don’t contribute anything to your niche conversation, and as a result they have no place on any of your pages. Here’s how to constantly keep yourself in check, so that you’re always improving your business conversation.

Your Conversation Should Mean Something

Assuming that you are out to gain more natural fans, and are looking to become an authority in your niche – you should tailor make your posts, tweets and updates to meet your readers needs. What does your ideal reader need? Insider information, not general, beginners nonsense they can find anywhere.

This means doing in-depth research, or taking notes during your work day, recording valuable nuggets of advice and insight that is rare on the internet. If you have to monitor every news site, and bookmark industry searches – then do it. A blog post published on a hot topic and then syndicated through your social media network, will show your readers that you are the authority to follow.

Going the Extra Mile For Your Community

We worked on a social media campaign once, where the niche was so obscure that few people were interested in it. No matter what we tried, attracting fans and follows was a real problem. This happens quite a lot for small businesses, that either face a hugely flooded market or one so small, building a community is very difficult.

After some brainstorming, we decided to make the community members we did find, feel like they were part of something real and tangible. To do this, pertinent questions that were asked during a small Twitter discussion – were turned into blog posts, to effectively answer each question that was asked by their community members.

An entire blog post based on someone’s Tweeted question. Sounds excessive? Why not just answer them concisely in a tweet? Because going the extra mile works! Twitter members were so impressed by the company’s attention to detail, and flattering replies – that they joined them on other social networks.

A real conversation began. Today, this modest social media campaign has led to more profit and joint ventures for that business, than we’ve seen in much larger campaigns. To better contribute to your specific niche conversation, you might have to do some brainstorming of your own. How well are you reaching out to people? How can you boost interaction that will have long term effects on your campaign?

To improve your niche conversation, you first have to be dedicated to producing quality information all the time. Then you have to find a way to make your business something special. Do this, and your conversations will never dry up.

How do you improve your conversation on your social media pages? Any tips you’d like to share? We’d love to discuss them with you!

Courtesy of blog.ovrdrv.com

Whether you’re looking to sell something, gain more likes, fans and followers, or simply to give something back to your fan base – a social media competition is the best way to do it. Here’s how to plan and implement a successful contest using your social media pages.

1. Read Your Promotional Guidelines on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube

Surprised? Many people are when a Facebook administrator takes down their fan page for violating their terms of use. Make sure that you spend some quality time reading and understanding their promotional guidelines. It will save you time, money and trouble. Check out the Facebook, Twitter and Youtube promotional guidelines here.

2. Decide What Your End Goal is Going to be

For your social media contest to be successful, you’re going to have to nail down your goals and make them happen. Your entire contest should be geared towards reaching that end result. Whether it’s boosting your online reputation, increasing word of mouth marketing, or getting more fans – each requires a different contest strategy.

3. Decide on The Platforms You’re Going to Use

Which social media platforms are going to make reaching your goals that much easier? Which of them will work together well? Decide if you’d prefer a photo contest on Facebook, or a video contest on Youtube as your central platform.

Then build your social media contest strategy around that core platform. For example, a video contest would originate on Youtube, but you’d be able to view the video on Facebook, and there would be a link about it on Twitter. Is this a quick contest, or will it take some time to get the results you need?

4. Formulate Exactly How To Make Your Contest Go Viral

For a contest to really become successful, it has to go beyond your marketing – and become viral all on its own. That means it’s your job to advertise your contest in the real world, as well as in your email signature, on all of your social media pages, on your blog – everywhere you possibly can. The more people see it, the bigger the chance that other people will see it and start promoting it for you for free.

5. Research Contests And Plan Yours Around a Simple Model

Though some contests can be complex and over complicated, when it comes to social media – simpler is always better. Give your fans one thing to do instead of three things. Something as small as this, could boost your ‘likes’ from 500 to 5000. Use easy sharing options like copy and paste, or an active link.

6. Track Your Progress and Announce The Winner Publicly

Use social media tracking tools to see how effective your contest was, and make positive changes so that your next contest is better and more effective. Don’t forget to announce the winner, as this will help to let your fans know that you did actually award the prize. More will enter next time because of it. Keep your business image intact, and don’t do anything that could endanger your accounts!

Have you ever run a social media contest? What happened? Tell us!

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And, because many of us are blissfully unaware of the implications of this – it hasn’t bothered us much until now. Then – horror stories of people being fired because they said something on Twitter about their boss.

Businesses ruined because employees ran rampant in a public Facebook group – what’s happening? Well, thanks to search engines and social networks nothing is private anymore. Not if your name is attached to it.

Indexing What You Say in Real Time

Email is a fairly private form of social media, and one we have become accustomed to over the years. Unfortunately, it has managed to ruin our ideas on what privacy should be on social media sites. Don’t think for one second that what you say on MySpace, FourSquare or Twitter is private.

Each word you create and publish is carefully indexed by these sites and stored under your name (or alias). Real time searches and search engines will produce your latest comments on Facebook or any other network they like just as soon as someone types in your name or nickname. Every detail can be traced back to you. Anyone can access this information, even if they aren’t your follower or friend.

Private Is Not So Private On Social Media

If you think your comments or posts are safe in private groups, think again. Social media thrives on information. If you publish a particularly entertaining rant, in a ‘private’ group, it may end up on a client rant site – via someone else who has republished what you’ve said.

Next thing you know, there’s your name, or your business name, with a very inappropriate comment shining out for all the world to see. A lot of social media is recycled, or republished – especially the things you shouldn’t say because they are the most interesting to read. There are some things you should never utter online – ever.

Don’t Freak Out, Remember it’s All about Business

Remember when your parents used to say “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all?” Well, like always – that rule should be followed. Think of social media as a direct line to your clients, bosses, competitors and employees. Assume that they can and do see everything you publish online.

That way, you’ll never stumble into a bad situation by mistake. The internet is no longer a platform for little groups of people. It’s everyone’s arena now. As long as you stay honest, pleasant and aware – you’ll be just fine. Don’t be afraid of your opinions, just remember that posting them on Twitter is the same as sending a private email to the people you are talking about! Most of all learn with every experience to improve the way you communicate online.

Finally, stay positive. No one in business wants to read about how sad or angry you are anyway, it never helps your image. Good luck!

Have you ever landed up in hot water over a comment you’ve posted? Tell us about it!

Courtesy of blog.gannettlocal.com

There are several advantages of this of course – the main one being that you’ll know what they’re up to in real time. Social media has a way of letting competitors ‘inside’ the community circle, which is not always a good thing.

So what do you do when you begin to notice that a few of your main competitors have gone out of their way to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ you. What if you notice their work email on your blog subscriber list? They’re monitoring you! Here’s how you should handle it.

We all like to see our direct competition as threats to our business, but the truth is – if you’re working with your social media on a daily basis, and keeping your reputation clean, they can’t hurt you. In fact follow them in return.

Social media is about sharing with each other, even if the person you’re sharing with is trying to steal your clients. The beauty of social media is that no one can copy your personality or unique value proposition.

In a recent post we discussed how important creating great content is for your social media pages. If you continue to stick to these rules, then you shouldn’t have any problem with competitors listening in on your community pages.

Make sure that everything you publish is open to the public, and never say anything that might give your competitors a little bit of ammo to use against you. Hay, we can’t all be ethically sound!

Don’t start announcing that you’re working on this revolutionary product on your Twitter page, or your competitor will investigate it.

Before you know it, they’ve released the first version before you, and your entire product launch is ruined. If you’re going to announce something, make sure it’s within a week or two of the release date, so that they don’t have time to capitalize on your great ideas.

A foolproof way to keep tabs on your competitors is to follow them back. That way you’ll be kept in the loop about what they’re doing. On Twitter especially, use their own hashtag feeds to stay involved.

Never – under any circumstances – say bad things about your competitor’s business on their social media pages, or you could spark a war. It’s very easy for two rival companies to ruin each others social media campaigns.

Stay calm, and inform your social media manager to be wary of what they say in the public domain. If your competitors try to copy you – then you’re obviously doing the right thing! Instead of concentrating on bringing down your competitors, you should ‘friend’ them. Who knows – you could end up doing business together one day.

Has a competitor ever tried to make you look bad on your social media pages?
If so, what did they say? We want to know!