Social Media Fail: Commit Only Half Way

Many companies only commit 20% of the resources to social media that they need to succeed. Jump in all the way or don’t waste your time.

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Social Media Maturity for Businesses in 5 Levels

Many businesses have started using social media, few are using it well. Here are 5 levels to serve as a road map to mature your usage and presence on social media channels.

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 Video Transcript

Hello. I’m going to lay out a road map for how to get your business to
mature in a social media space. So a lot of businesses have gotten into
social media, but they don’t really know where to go from there. We’re
going to lay out a road map of kind of what your next steps should be if
you’re a business that is getting involved with social media. Stay tuned.

Hi, my name is Mike Roberts. I am an online marketing specialist. You can
find all my marketing materials on my website at
MRobertsOnline.wordpress.com.

Now I’m going to talk about five steps that your business can use as a road
map if you’re involved in social media, and this will be five steps to
mature your business in a social media space. So, the first step is really
simple. It’s launch. The adoption rate for social media is incredible. The
vast majority of businesses have Facebook pages. They have Twitter pages. A
lot of them don’t see returns, and they don’t see justification for being
in the space because they’re not really involved with it yet. They kind of
put up the sites and send out a few tweets, a few Facebook posts, and they
don’t really get it. What’s the point? What they need to do is to get
involved quite a bit more to build a community, and there are a lot of
other goals you can set up to reap from social media.

The second stage is the formation stage. One of the uses for social media
is for PR and for crisis management and for connecting with the customers,
and this is where this stage is really important. The formation stage is
where you see corporate governance or social media governance and social
media policies come into play. That’s where you’re actually putting some
thought into what is going to happen when crises come up. So you’ve got a
crisis response plan responding to customers. You have processes for who
does what in your organization in regards to social media, and you have a
workflow, approvals. You have put some thought into your presence on social
media.

The third stage is to formalize. So this is the point where you have a
center of excellence. This is not just, “We have people that are governing
or restricting or making sure that there isn’t any risk with social media,”
but you actually have champions in your organization that are striving to
learn best practices and learning to apply those and what that looks like
in your specific business, in your specific industry. These are people that
are really teaching others and leading the charge. Most times it’s the
marketing department, and the problem is that the rest of the organization
usually lags behind and they’re not really involved. So if you’re going to
respond to customers, a lot of times it’s really slow because you need to
consult or you need to get buy-in from other people in other parts of the
organization in order to have a unified approach, and that’s where we
really get into enablement.

So enablement is when, it’s best explained when you have like a hub and
spoke model. So this is going to be the stage where you’re really going to
be able to scale your social media efforts. The mom-and-pop shop on the
corner, the way they do social media is going to be drastically different
than if you’re Hewlett Packard or you’re Whole Foods or you’re some sort of
a chain nationwide restaurant where you have a corporation headquarters and
then you have regions that are all trying to do social media.

On one end of the scale you have all of the regions taking charge and the
corporate headquarters is really not involved. So the regions are doing
their own thing, and the problem, at that point, is that the regions don’t
talk to each other. They don’t know what the other regions are doing.
There’s also not much enforcement or unification. So that’s obviously a
problem.

The other end of the scale is a problem when you have, like we just talked
about, you have a center of excellence, the people in the headquarters that
are champions for doing social media, but it doesn’t scale very well
because you can’t have them do all the stuff for the regions. They’re too
detached. It’s not relevant enough. You need the people on the front lines
involved with the customers to be the ones on the social media channels.

So what the winning combination in this enablement stage is where you have
a center of excellence, and they’re able to set the policies and set the
standards and set the best practices for the organization and how it’s
going to be applied and all those things. They govern it, but then it’s all
of the regions that separately are actually on the front lines carrying out
the social media on the channels, responding to customers, putting out
posts. It’s store-specific. It’s location-specific, region-specific. So you
can have a much more customized, tailored experience with your customers.
So that’s kind of the enablement stage, and that’s really far beyond many
organizations.

The last stage is enlightenment. This is really the goal for all of you
involved in social media is to get to a point where you’re able to respond
to customers in real-time and you have a very connected organization that
is all on board. Every department is on board. Every region and the
corporate headquarters are all on board, ready to respond to the customers.
So if it’s a customer issue concern or if it’s a manufacturing problem or
whatever the issue is, the entire organization has decided what the
policies will be, how to implement them, how to carry them out. So you’re
able to respond in real-time, solving the customer’s problem, and
eventually you start to be able to predict what the problems will be and be
able to solve it before the customer has a problem. So that’s the goal.

So I thought I’d lay that out. Five steps, you have launch, formation,
formalize, enablement, and enlightenment. So use that as a little road map
and as a little bit of direction if you feel a little aimless in the social
media implementation in your business.

Content is not King, Web Design Trumps it

Great content is king, but there is more to the story. Bad web design can discredit content and cause people to bounce away from your site before reading any of that great content.

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Blog: http://www.mrobertsonline.wordpress.com
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Video Transcript:

Hi. My name is Mike Roberts. I am an online marketing specialist. You can
find all of my marketing materials on my website at
MRobertsOnline.wordpress.com.

Everyone has heard the phrase content is king. All of the internet
marketers out there anyway have, and it’s very valid advice. However, it
needs to be qualified.

Content is how someone gets to your website. Content is what keeps readers
coming back. Content is what gets shared. Having good content is what gets
shared on social media, and that’s all very true. However, when you have
someone that comes to your website, maybe for the first time, and you have
a terrible web design, they immediately start to form a first impression
and they start to immediately distrust what you have to say.

There have been some studies that have been done that show as many as 94%
of people distrust a website because of the web design. The reasons could
point to the font is too small. The aesthetics is just poor. They have bad
graphics. They have too many ads. The user experience is bad. The
navigation is terrible. They can’t find what they’re looking for. The fonts
or the colors are odd. It’s hard to read.

All of these things need to be paid attention to when you have a blog or a
website, and it needs to show that you actually put some thought and time
into how you are going to present and package your content. It really is a
big difference between good and bad sites, and it makes or breaks because
you have a split second to catch people’s attention to say hey, stay a
little longer and start reading my content.

A lot of times people come to a site and get an immediate first glance at
it, and they’ll bounce back. They’ll hit the back button. They’ll bounce
back to another site. They’ll click over to somewhere else because the
design is bad.

So I would encourage to put some effort, put some time into how are you
going to present your content and the overall website design or blog design
that you’re working with.

Facebook’s Auto Sharing: The Future of it

Soon, it will be common for people’s personal information to be updated on Social Media channels of all kinds. Here we talk about some of those implications of Facebook introducing auto sharing.

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Check out an earlier article about everything your business needs to know about Facebook’s changes to learn more.
Video Transcription:
Facebook introduced the idea of automatic sharing on social networks and
that exists today. The question now is how far will it go? What will the
next steps be? And really, how many aspects of your life will be
automatically updated to your entire social network in the near future?

Hi, my name is Mike Roberts. I am an online marketing specialist. You can
find all my marketing materials on my website at
MRobertsOnline.wordpress.com.

Because these tools don’t actually exist today, we have to look at our
society’s trends, essentially, where we’ve come from and where we’re headed
in the future. And if you look back, maybe 40, 50 years ago, people were
much more conservative with the amount of information they gave to complete
strangers. And progressively, we have seen people become much more
comfortable giving away personal information, and now we have a generation,
Generation Y, who has grown up in a world with Facebook and does not know a
world without it. And so, they’re used to sharing photos and friends having
everything be very public about what they’re doing, what their relationship
status is, and where they live, and all of these details that were never
given to strangers before.

So, we have a shift, that I don’t think will slow, I don’t think will stop.
I think social media has picked up the pace pretty drastically. I see that
we now have come to point where Facebook is taking a huge step in that
direction, even more so. So, automatic sharing is an example, where now I
can listen to a song on Spotify, and all of my songs can now be updated
automatically to all of my friends and so they can all hear what I’m
listening to. That’s a pretty safe example, but expand that to all areas of
my life, and now all of my friends in my social network can find out all of
the details automatically.

I wonder about Foursquare or other location-based services. Will those also
be included sometime? Maybe right now, people aren’t comfortable with that.
There’s a backlash against Facebook saying, “We don’t want this. It’s too
much. It’s too transparent. We need some privacy still.” But what about in
five years or so? People will gradually become more and more comfortable
sharing more and more information as the trend continues to evolve. And
now, every time I stop by a Starbucks, everyone knows because it
automatically checks me in. I don’t even have to pull out my phone. I can
see this is how it could be happening in the future. This is where we could
be going, and I think that there will be people that will drag their feet,
screaming privacy, that they want more privacy. But there’s also going to
be people that find it very cool and a way to express themselves.

So, I expect the trend to continue. I’d be very interested in hearing what
your thoughts are. These are just my thoughts and my musings, and I thought
I’d throw out the question to you. Do you think this is where we’re going
with social media in our society, with Facebook and Google+ and Foursquare
and things? Or do you think that there’s going to be a pendulum backslash
to things like Facebook?

If you have a burning marketing question that you want answered or you need
some help with, go ahead and make a comment below or send me a tweet on
Twitter, and I’d be happy to do the best I can to answer that in a
following video post. Keep an eye out for my next post about Google+, how
businesses can actually use it effectively and how to get followers, how to
get people to actually care about what you’re doing there. So stay tuned.

Again, my name is Mike Roberts. If you want more digital marketing insights
or advice or questions or anything like that, go ahead and follow me on
Google+ or on Twitter as mrobertsonline or subscribe to my Youtube channel.
Thanks for watching.

Facebook Changes: Everything Your Business Needs to Know

For all links referenced in this video post and for the complete article I wrote covering more details, please visit my company’s blog.

Evernote: Best Note Taking Program for Blogging

Evernote is the most versatile, useful, and robust note taking software that I have come across and I will highlight how to maximize its usefulness when writing a blog. If you want some other great note taking options, check out an earlier post laying out the Best Note Taking Software for different purposes.

Evernote, replaces the need for post it notes, but it does far more than that. Many bloggers compile articles they come across by topic so that they can more easily include relevant links when they write a post about that topic. Evernote is the perfect tool to replace the Word document with all that information. As you’re reading blog posts online that relate to the area you write about, grab the link, create a short description about which part of it is the most relevant or highlight an engaging quote and then create a note with a specific tag to find it later.

Search Links with Keywords

One of the most valuable parts of Evernote is the ability to add all kinds of tags or keywords or meta data to each note you create. That way you can search through the program as you would search in Google for all the notes that you’ve created that relate to a particular topic. For example, if I know that I write about social media frequently, whenever I come across a good blog post I might want to reference about Twitter, I’ll save it and attach the tags “Twitter” and “social media” to it. This allows me to write blog posts much more quickly and is especially helpful when I need to write one in a pinch.

Build a Link Strategy to Help SEO

This same functionality can be used to to keep track of a network of other bloggers to help effectively build a link strategy too. As most bloggers know, giving and getting links to your blog is extremely important to boost SEO or Search Engine Optimization rankings. This is where building relationships with other bloggers and building a network of connections is important. To take advantage of Evernote here, create a note documenting contact info for bloggers in each topic area. Again, organize the notes with appropriate tags. Include information about your relationship with them such as when you’ve given them a link, when they’ve given you one, main topics they focus on, any research you’ve done about their blog and anything else about your relationship with them. This will be a very helpful, easy to access bit of information to refresh your memory when working with them in the future. This is particularly helpful when you have lots of contacts across many topics.

I believe Evernote leaps ahead of many of their competitors because of their organization structure. Information will increasingly drown us and being able to find the information you want when you want it will become increasingly important. That is why search is such a big industry. He who can get the information someone wants to them the fastest and easiest wins.

What do you think?

Can you see Evernote fitting into your blogging link building strategy? If this was helpful, link to this article, comment, or tell your friends about it.

My Recent Blog Posts

This is a compilation of some of my most recent writings (with some graphics and co-proofing help) at the digital agency, Mindgruve where I currently work. Let me know if you like any of them by leaving a comment saying so. Thanks all!

Behavior Targeted Advertising is About to Blow Up

Visit Carlsbad’s Facebook Page Climbs to 30K Like Thanks to Mindgruve

Foursquare Specials: How Local, Small Businesses Can Use Them

3 Big Brand Campaigns to Learn From on Foursquare

What is Foursquare?

Old Spice Interactive Commercials go Viral

Old Spice Creates an Interactive Video Campaign

Companies that create a two way dialogue with their customers are reaping the rewards. Old Spice has created You Tube commericals specifically responding to tweets they’ve received. See below for examples.

This is a really great idea. The production time for these videos is really minimal but are great, interesting content causing it to go viral.

Interact with Mike Roberts; QR Code landing page

This post is a landing page for a QR code flyer at Interactive Day San Diego.

My name is Mike Roberts. I am at Interactive Day San Diego today. Text: 5624811117 or say hi to connect. I am also actively pursuing new career opportunities.

Click here to view my Interactive Video Resume and learn more.  

Connect with me:

   

I will be attending these sessions at IDSD:

9:45 am: Email Marketing in the age of Social Media

11:00 am: The Unfair Advantage of Inbound Marketing

2:00 pm: Twitter Stories: True Tales of Marketing Success

3:30 pm: Creating Real Fans for Real Brands

 

I would love to meet up after the conference and exchange notes for these and the other sessions available.

 

Cell: 562.481.1117

Email: MikeRoberts [at] MrobertsOnline [dot] com

Interactive Video Resume; Mike Roberts; Part 1 – Intro

This is an Interactive Video Resume for Mike Roberts. Mike Roberts is actively pursuing new career opportunities. To view his resume and learn more about his job search, please visit his job search page on his blog. To contact him about an opportunity or simply follow him online; please see below.

Contact Mike Roberts:

Email: MikeRoberts [at] MrobertsOnline [dot] com

Cell: 562.481.1117

Follow Mike Roberts on:

   

To follow his other online activity, please visit his blog home page.

This video features and was produced entirely by Mike Roberts.