Category Social Media
Be Helpful, Attract Prospects: 6 Social Marketing Tactics
SUMMARY: Still confused about what to do in social media? Try thinking about what your prospects need help with, and then show them how you can be the helper they’re seeking.
Check out these six social marketing tactics used by a professional services firm to show how helpful, responsive and accessible they can be. Includes tips on monitoring Twitter conversations, subscribing to LinkedIn Answers, and keeping tabs on journalists to get lots of free media mentions.
Eric Majchrzak, Marketing Manager, Freed Maxick & Battaglia, CP, knows that customer service can make or break a professional services firm. He says that client dissatisfaction with how they’re treated by a firm is one of the top two reasons businesses look for a new CPA.
So when social media emerged as a new communications channel, Majchrzak and his team saw a chance to highlight their firm’s helpfulness, responsiveness, and accessibility — and generate leads in the process.
“Social media makes our marketing intrinsically more helpful to prospects — it’s a two-way dialogue,” says Majchrzak. “That dialogue helps, too, in positioning our firm and reinforcing our value. We’re accessible 24-7, through live chat, LinkedIn, Twitter…hey, we’re worth the bucks.”
They began their social marketing efforts in 2005 with LinkedIn, blogs, and Wikipedia, then added Facebook in 2009 and Twitter in 2010. Along the way, this social media exposure helped increase website visits 35%-40% each year, and helped generate millions of dollars in new revenue since 2004.
The goal of being helpful guides the team’s social media outreach, and is one of the reasons the efforts helped generate online leads. Here are six specific tactics they use to ensure they’re helping their prospects:
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Social Media on May 10th, 2010
Unvarnished, a new website where people rate people; advancement or trollfest?
Unvarnished is a site that allows people to review people anonymously. We think this is an extremely negative event with dangerous ramifications. The web allows engenders a type of sociopathy in some people which has led to an increase, and maybe a pride in, trolling. (Are there paid trolls?) Reality TV provides tutorials on how to be mean spirited delivered by “troll” role models. In addition, any savvy web user knows that people will take time to write bad reviews more often that people will make the time to write good reviews. In addition our experience is that most negative reviews are a result of some disappointment with a product or service rather than the product or service failing in some disastrous way.
That’s not the least of it. If sites that allow people to post reviews of other people take off; how will that affect someone’s willingness to make controversial statements that may need to be said? What will it do to controversial people? For example, would you be less willing to tell the truth (after all you might the crowd) if you knew that negative reviews of you could be posted on social networks, and that you had no control over them?
Even further, could a person take you hostage or bend you to their will by threatening to post negative reviews about you?
Would we eventually be forced to become a moving mass, a cud chewing crowd of people living in fear of being different? (Don’t want to chance ruining my reputation)
Don’t tell us about how physically expressive society has become with tattoos, nose rings, and fixed gear. If a large group of people adopt a look it loses its power and is no longer an example of “freedom”. We’re reminded of the black and white pictures of Chinese Communists wearing the same “look” in their clothing choice(s) and on their faces.
Molly Wood at cnet wrote what we consider to be a “fair take” on the situation here.
Jessica Guynn with the LA Times give an overview of the feedback about the site here.
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Social Media, Trend Tracker on April 1st, 2010
Simple Redesign Doubles Social Sharing: 5 Insights
SUMMARY: Getting website visitors to share your content on social networks is a great way to boost traffic. But what’s the best way to promote social sharing to your visitors?
Find out how a travel insurance company doubled the amount of content visitors shared on third-party networks with a simple site redesign. We offer five insights they gleaned from this simple, eye-opening test.
World Nomads sells traveler’s insurance in 150 worldwide markets, and relies heavily on user-generated content to attract visitors to the site. Some 8,500 travel bloggers have published more than 55,000 stories and 600,000 images through the team’s platform.
The site’s blogs are free to create, and this content provides a wide funnel to introduce visitors to the company — typically through travel-related searches. But social sharing is increasingly helping them fill their funnel.
“We recently noticed that people were getting far more connected in their social media lives and their social networking, and we just did a tiny little redesign in how our share tools were displayed,” says Christy McCarthy, Community Manager, WorldNomads.com
A simple redesign — making social sharing a more prominent option — doubled the amount of the site’s content shared through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. If you’re offering social sharing tools on your site, you may have a similar opportunity to increase usage.
Here are five insights about how to encourage sharing that McCarthy and her team gained through the test:
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Social Media on March 2nd, 2010
Relationship Management – How To Build A Community That Will Spread Your Brand’s Word
Forbes CMO Network
Douglas Atkin, who wrote The Culting Of Brands: How To Turn Customers Into True Believers, observes that brand communities have mushroomed since he published his book six years ago, and social tools like Facebook and Twitter have exploded. But, he says, most brand stewards are confused about what “community” means.
“Being a fan or follower is not the same as being a member of a community,” he writes. “Membership delivers a whole higher degree of commitment. It also demands a whole other level of engagement from participants and, consequently, a deeper appreciation by the community leader of their responsibilities.”
Atkin then offers five different strategies for building a community along with examples of marketers who have done so. But the golden rule in the brand-community business, he says, is “BE USEFUL.” If you prove that you genuinely care about the people who are giving you their hard-earned dollars, “the social networks will enable people to tell others. If you don’t, they’ll also enable people to tell others.” – Read the whole story…
Posted by eBrand Media Research Department in Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter on February 22nd, 2010
The eBrand Media “Online Social Responsibility” Facebook fan page
eBrand Media endorses Online Social Responsibility for the purpose of creating an awareness that the web is an environment, and like the three dimensional world around us, its vulnerable to pollution, and other types of degradation. Therefore Online Social Responsibility not only applies to interactions between marketers, companies and users of the web, along with our relationships with one another on Social Networks, but also to the interaction between the eyes, mind, feelings, and thoughts. eBrand Media will always support freedom passionately but we’re ardently against immoral means of manipulation meant to cause an action that an end- user will later regret.
Online Social Responsibility is about connecting with individuals, companies and organizations who abide by the principles of transparency, honesty, and fair play. Our code of ethics and our beliefs are the conscience, heart, and backbone of eBrand Media. Companies who affirm Online Social Responsibility live by the core values listed on the next page. Do you?
Posted by eBrand Media Public Relations Department in Ethics, Social Media, eBrand Media on February 1st, 2010