Today I wrote a post for the Salt Lake City Social Media Club (SMCSLC) about Hiring for Social Media.
There are some new challenges and new opportunities arising within this arena and I touched on some of them in this post on the SMCSLC’s blog.
Please go check it out and let me know what you think, I’d love to hear your feedback on this subject. It’s something I’m going to be talking about more (and doing more guest posts on) in the coming weeks.
Thank you for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters
Before I go over 7 Things to think about when launching a Newsletter I want to bring something up. For a couple weeks now the newsletter sign-up box has been active on the right side. I haven’t said anything about it, pushed it, or brought it up, yet I get several people a week who sign up for it. Thank you.
This next year is going to be bringing some changes and I’m working on focusing my efforts and building something, and part of that something is the Social Media Launchpad newsletter.
The SML newsletter will make it’s debut in January. It will contain information, links, announcements, and thoughts I don’t put here or on the SML (to be launched later) site. It’s going to be something that will tie together thoughts and use to help us connect on another level.
When deciding to do this I had to sit down and look at how everything currently connects first.
This is something I haven’t done in a while and needed to be done.
7 Things to think about when launching a Newsletter
Target Audience – Well you, the reader of this blog are who I’m targeting and from my Google Analytics I can see that you’re a very diverse crowd.
Voice – I want to keep a similar voice to what I have here on this blog, but I think it needs to be tightened up a bit. I’d like you to share the newsletter and encourage others to sign up and read it. So I need to make it a bit more accessible.
Social Integration – I’m looking at ways to enable sharing and other social integration and interaction through the newsletter.
Flexibility – How flexible are you and your audience to experimentation? The SML newsletter will also be a source of experimentation for the both of us. If I have any huge successes or failures I’ll be sure to share them to help you either succeed or avoid failure.
Content – Knowing your audience will help you with knowing what content you need to create. For the SML it’s going to be all based on social media and it’s use, application, and integration.
Frequency – How often is the newsletter going out and will that bother your readers. I promise you that the newsletter will not go out any more than 2x a month, most likely it will be 1x a month for the first year. If I ever decide on upping or lowering the frequency I’ll use the newsletter & blog both to communicate that fact.
Off platform assets – In this case the platform is email, and the off platform assets are blogs, twitter, etc. I’ll be working to figure out the best integration between them all and I hope you give me feedback of what you think.
Now of course there is more that you will want to consider if doing this for a business vs yourself, but when it comes to the basics of launching a newsletter now that should cover it.
What do you think? If you have any more tips, please put them in the comments below, and don’t forget to sign-up for the Social Media Launchpad Newsletter!
Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters
Facebook has updated their promotion and contest guidelines again and it seems like nobody is paying attention. Which is a bad because if you’re not following the rules Facebook states they have the right to take your page down and remove all contest related materials.
I’ve read over then latest revision (dated 12-22-09) and while it’s not much different than what they were there are some key things to keep in mind, so here’s a quick breakdown of the rules as they sit now.
Section 1. General:
You need to be sure that your promo* complies will all the laws (state, federal, etc) before considering one. You are also completely liable and responsible for the contest in it’s entirety, Facebook holds no responsibility what so ever. You also can’t use their name, trademarks, copyrighted material, etc. in the rule or promo materials without express written consent. Also, misleading people in any aspect of your promotion is a big no no.
Section 2. Prohibitions:
You are prohibited from using a promotion if it’s open to people who are under 18, reside in a country embargoed by the US, residing in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, or India, or if you have to purchase something, complete a lengthy task or any other form of consideration.
Also, your promotion can’t have anything at all to do with alcohol, tobacco, dairy, firearms, gambling, gasoline, or prescription drugs as a source or a prize.
Section 3. Administering a Promotion through the Facebook Platform:
You can NOT administer any promotion at all without prior written approval from an account representative. Once you get that approval you can only administer it through an application (like WildFire) and users can only enter the promotion in the applications tab (or canvas page of the app).
There is also some VERY specific language you must have adjacent to the promotion entry field, very specific wording for how Facebook can be mentioned in the rules (see the rules for wording) and you must submit all materials to your account rep 7 days before the start of your promo.
You MUST have a designated person to contact about the promotion. In your contest rules you MUST say that Facebook does not sponsor, endorse, etc your promo, have release from all entrants from Facebook, and that all questions, comments, etc. be directed to the designated person and NOT Facebook.
Section 4. Publicizing a Promotion on Facebook:
You don’t need the written approval of a Facebook account rep if the promo is administered completely off of the Facebook platform and you’re just promoting the off platform promo through your Facebook account. However, if they think you’ve violated any of the other rules they will remove any and all materials related to the promo from Facebook and disable your pages and accounts.
To avoid this never ever indicate (directly or indirectly) that Facebook is a sponsor, partner, promoter or has anything at all to do with your contest. You can NOT condition it so that entry into your promo is gained by having people complete actions on Facebook (like posting on a wall, updating status, uploading a photo, etc.). However, you can condition entry to the promo after they become a fan of a Page (tab hidden to non fans).
Section 5. Indemnification:
You are responsible for EVERYTHING and Facebook is responsible for NOTHING.
Section 6. Facebook Rights:
They may (and have) change the guidelines when ever they want to and don’t have to notify you. So bookmark the promotion and contest guidelines page and refer to it before you launch any promo, contest, sweepstakes, competition, etc on Facebook. All decisions about promotions are at their discretion and can tell you to stop at any time for any reason.
They have the right, but are not obligated to, look over all of your rules, materials, etc. for the promo so you need to have them all at the ready in case you are asked for them. They may remove any material at all regarding the promo (including your pages and accounts) from Facebook if they want.
Facebook is not responsible for making sure your promo falls in line will all the state, federal, etc. laws. You are responsible and if someone is wrong you will be held responsible, not Facebook.
So that’s the breakdown of the rules as they sit right now. If you’re considering a Facebook promotion don’t use this as your ultimate guide. If you’re considering PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES.
On the guideline page Facebook gives a few quick examples of what you can and can’t do. They help clarify some of the sections so I’ve copied and pasted them here for your convenience:
You cannot: Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as making a post on a profile or Page, status comment or photo upload.
You can: Use a third party application to condition entry to the promotion upon a user providing content. For example, you may administer a photo contest whereby a user uploads a photo through a third-party application to enter the contest.
You cannot: Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by becoming a fan of your Page.
You can: Only allow fans of your Page to access the tab that contains the third-party application for the promotion.
You cannot: Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages.
You can: Collect an address or email through the third-party application for the promotion in order to contact the winner by email or standard mail.
You cannot: Instruct people (in the rules or elsewhere) to sign up for a Facebook account before they enter the promotion.
You can: Instruct users to visit the third-party application to enter the promotion (as described in Section 3.4(i)). Since users must have a Facebook account in order to access an application on the Facebook Platform, if you give this instruction, they will be prompted to sign up for a Facebook account if they do not already have one.
What do you think? Good changes, bad changes? Good limitations or did they make it too difficult? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.
Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters
*promo refers to any sweepstakes, contest, competition, or promotion
Using social media in a loyalty campaign is a great way to interact with your loyal customers and build exclusive value for them. The goal of this kind of campaign is to reward your current customers, frequent buyers or to entice customers away from competitors because they get more from you. This can take the form of a discount card, some kind of point system, to keeping a list of your best customers and having an event in their honor.
Creating, marketing, and following through with this event or program is the point in this campaign. You want people to have the desire to be your loyal customer because if they are they’ll be part of an exclusive group that gets XYZ benefit. People love exclusivity, it makes us feel special.
Before you start using Social Media in your loyalty campaign
Audit, Verify, and Plan.
Audit your existing loyalty program (if you have one, if not, start with making one). Make sure that you have everything in place and that it’s working properly. Listen online and see if people are complaining about it, if they love it, or just not saying anything at all.
Verify that everything is working in regards to rewards, any related online tools, and partners involved. People are very vocal online and as you start engaging and spreading it to them you run the risk of a backlash if everything’s not working right. That’s why listening is so important, it will clue you in on any major troubles.
Plan how social media will play a part in this campaign. If you know your plan inside and out you should be able to start seeing where the campaign can be enhanced by social media. Look at your existing resources like customer database, email lists, mailing lists, etc. and decide how you’re going to let them know you’re online (that part should be easy).
Figure out how you’re going to deal with different groups online and how you’re going to interact, deliver deals or awards, etc. to them. You need have all of your offline or traditional ducks in a row first before applying the social media aspect to it.
If you don’t have a loyalty campaign or program and want one then you’ll need plan what you’re going to do. Don’t jump in and make it up as you go. Figure out how you’re going to split up your groups of loyal customers (afterall, treating different customers differently is important), if you even need to, and how you’re going to reward them, what’s going to fit with your business, what’s affordable, etc. First plan it out, then figure out how you’re going to apply social media to it.
Setting up a Social Media Loyalty Campaign
When setting up you need to find out who is already using the platforms you’re on. Twitter and Facebook make it easy because you can search by their email address and find them. After you have found them that’s when you will want to figure things out like do you want to address them based on the platform they use or based on what kind of customer they are or both.
This can get very complicated very quickly, but so long as you have it planned out and stick to the plan you’ll be just fine (unless it’s obviously failing horribly and needs to be re-worked).
Giving exact specifics on this one will be hard because loyalty programs vary so much. How and what you do will depend wholly on your customer, your business, and what you setup. So here I’m going to go over the same 3 platforms we’ve been discussing and give some general ideas and info on each.
Twitter – The newly launched lists are going to be incredibly useful here and you will definitely want to make your loyalty lists private. Here you can reward your Twitter using customers by sending them exclusive deals. If you have your loyalty program broken up in stages dm them links to exclusive events and more. Use this channel to engage and deliver extra value to your loyal customers.
Another option you will want to look at is loyalty based on what they say. You might have 1 customer who buys a ton of your products, yet never really mentions you to their friends while someone who buys very little (maybe due to finances) but loves what they get and tells everyone on a frequent basis.
Look for these people that are helping to build the awareness of your company and driving traffic to you and think of a way to reward them. Make it appropriate and engage these brand advocates because they will be incredibly helpful to you.
Facebook – Using Fan pages to give exclusive deals to your fans is always a good idea, but based on the amount of your users on Facebook, how you have your loyalty program structured, etc it may not work well for that particular purpose. Instead think about private groups.
Depending on where the customers fit and how your plan is structured you might want to consider having private groups for the various levels. This can also be done on LinkedIn with private groups. It all depends on how big your customer base is, type of program, type of customer etc.
Your Facebook fan page can also be used as a great information portal about your loyalty campaign to help get people interested.
Blog – The blog isn’t the best way to deliver exclusive content or offers to your loyal customers, but it is a good place to talk about the program itself. If you have levels, break it down and explain the levels. Make people aware of what’s going on with the program and if you hold events related to it talk about it. Use it as a platform for awareness of the program and as a way to entice people who might be considering you.
Managing a Social Media Loyalty Campaign
Here your biggest challenge is going to be managing who gets what if it’s split up into different groups. You might want to get multiple people involved and have them manage a certain group of people or have one person who knows it all inside and out working it. Depends on how your loyalty program is setup.
You’re probably going to have a lot of ups and downs in the engagement levels and when things are rolled out. You might want to consider creating totally separate accounts / groups that are specifically for this purpose. People are spending more and more time online so making the delivery of info, deals, etc more convenient and giving it to them where they are will always help the perception of your company.
Monitoring a Social Media Loyalty Campaign
Whatever you end up doing and how you end up running it you need to monitor it. Use links that can be tracked and monitored, use discount codes or services that can be tracked and the results tallied. You will want to know how your work is paying off.
If none of your loyal customers are buying stuff using your exclusive offers or whatever they may not think the offers are anything special. If your results aren’t that great look at the offers before throwing the social media applications out the window.
ROI is a valid metric under the right circumstances here. You’ll be able to determine how effective your program is, what kind of repeat buys you get, etc. from your loyal customers. Part of loyalty is rewarding the customers so they will buy more from you so financial metrics will be used as part of the overall metrics used.
Other impact metrics should also be employed to see how people feel about the program and your company, how the message is being spread, etc. This is going to be tricky and require some fine tuning because depending on how you’ve structured it some parts of the program may use ROI as a measurement, while others will need impact since there are no direct financial gains.
Communicate with and get feedback from these loyal groups to find out what they think of the company. Find out what makes them tick and want to buy from you. This is one area where what you do will have more than one use. Here you can not only target your exact audience, but certain portions of your audience and find out exactly what they are thinking.
Talk to them and find out what they want in a loyalty program and what would incite them to buy more and use the offers and such you give them. Once you have this setup and you know who your loyal customer are online, who your gold members are, etc you can take these same lists, groups, profile, etc. that you have created to get VERY valuable feedback.
Knowing exactly what your customers want and why will help you deliver something they want to keep buying and keep talking to others about and the value of that continues to grow over the years with each cent of repeat business you get. Don’t think of your loyalty campaign as just a way to reward your customer but also as building inroads to make your business better too.
Thoughts? Feelings? Input? I’d love to hear it in the comments below.
Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters
This is post #4 in a 5 part series about the basic types of marketing campaigns and social media’s place in them.
1. Social Media for Lead Generation and Acquisition
2. Using Social Media in an Awareness Campaign
3. Using Social Media in a Brand Marketing Campaign
Using social media in a brand marketing campaign can help make your brand more tangible. The goal is to associate the company with it’s services and offerings. This type of campaign will usually have hooks into the sales channels and marketing materials are often riddled with copy points surrounding what it is, does, or offers and will typically have a CTA (call to action). That CTA will be to get people on to your sales page (and into their sales funnel) or into your store for a killer deal, etc. The end result is financial so ROI is very relevant here and a good metric to judge your effectiveness.
Before you start a Social Media Brand Marketing Campaign
Get your online marketing materials lined up and within easy reach. Testimonials, comparisons, 3rd party verifications, reviews, news stories, etc. You need to be able to solidify who you are, what you do, and the value you provide. People are often weary of materials coming directly from the company so if you have any 3rd party reviews you can link to and share that is ideal.
You’re going to be getting them to your site with the intent to purchase so you need to have your site in line first. Make sure it’s nice and easy for people to make purchases, that your discount codes work, and any materials you have will insert them in the right portion of your marketing / sales funnels. When using social media (or any other tool really) making sure you have your materials at hand and properly setup will make it easier to convince people to buy from you.
Setting up a Social Media Brand Marketing Campaign
Once again we’re going to be addressing the basic 3. If you’re working with niche networks then you’ll have to figure out the rules (spoken and unspoken) for that niche network. No matter what networks and platforms that you engage customers and potential customers you need to first listen, then plan, then engage, then measure, and repeat.
If, after you’ve monitored the network, you decide that you need to create special deals, have new marketing materials (often times landing pages) created or adjusted then do that first. Once you start engaging ask questions and answer any that you can, the soft sell is going to be the most effective here. Get to be known, offer your services and products and always ask for feedback. They will tell you exactly what they want if you let them.
Twitter – Setup your keyword monitoring for Twitter conversations. Follow leaders in your topic and If there are any industry related chats (like #SMchat) then be aware of them and participate. Be ready to listen and act quickly. If you have discount codes, promotions, etc available send them out. Try and make them Twitter exclusive and when people land on the page have some clues that let them know you meant for them specifically to get there. Things like “welcome tweeps” and having your current tweets or tweets about your company going on the page will help with that.
When building offers or even just landing pages make sure that it feels exclusive. “10% off for our Twitter followers” and then back it up on the site when they land there. Don’t have them landing on your home page or on any page other than the exact one they need to be on. This will take some time and will need to be perfected over time. Watch your conversion rates for that page and see how it compares to others used in you other campaigns and the regular site pages.
Facebook – Same thing as Twitter, give exclusive deals for your Facebook fans, customize the landing pages, and make sure it has unique copy and any elements of social proof that people like your product you have. Make them feel like it’s exclusive with the wording on the page and show it’s exclusive by making it a different offer than on Twitter or through any of your other channels. Build the value.
Use FBML tabs to create some awareness about your services and offerings. Each one should have good marketing copy, a call to action on it, and a link to the proper page to order or signup. Facebook can be used to help gather video testimonials and customer photos by allowing your fans to upload their own content and link to reviews of your products. Empower your community to talk to about you and have them build the social proof of your business’s value.
Blog – Here is a great platform for talking about your industry and how you fit in it. Be sure to talk about more than just yourself on it, but also point out any reviews you get, address problems and issues on your blog. Encourage comments so you can engage and then interact with those comments.
When it comes to getting inbound sales from your blog you need to have good, relevant content. When talking about your products features and benefits play to the customers emotions. Tell them and show them how it solves their problem and have a link to buy in your call to action. You can’t do sales pitch blog posts all the time, because it will turn people off. Think about it, if every time you talked to someone all they did was tell you why you needed to buy something they made how long would you keep talking to that person?
Having the constant, relevant content on your site will associate you with your name with the products and services that you offer and give people an insight into your thoughts and views about the industry as a whole. If some big news or problem arises in your industry addressing it on your blog and explaining how your product solves the problem or helps with that issue is immensely valuable in getting people to buy your product because you are solving their problem.
Managing a Social Media Brand Marketing Campaign
Depending on how active your niche and customers are online you might need more than one person working on it. For Twitter you might need to use Co-Tweet or segment your Twitter strategy and have separate accounts for each. You’re going to have to play with it for a while to figure out the flow of where ever you’re participating online. Some places you may only need to visit 1 or 2 times a week, others might need daily attention.
Once you figure out how much time you’re going to need where you will be able to create a schedule for yourself to make your life easier. Some of this knowledge will come from monitoring to see how much time you need to spend and where for maximum efficiency. Also be aware of which ones end up not being worth your time.
Monitoring a Social Media Brand Marketing Campaign
Monitor your inbound traffic, the impact of your conversations, and also the conversion rate on your incoming links. Using specifically made links to specifically made pages will help with this tremendously.
Remember a minute ago when I said make exclusive deals on the platforms and have exclusive landing pages? If you were wondering why that is so important here’s your answer.
Let’s use Twitter as the example in this one. Lets say that you have all of your listening rss feeds setup and you have unique landing pages and links setup for people you send to your site from Twitter. These links can be monitored for how many people click them, and you can use Twitter search to see if they get shared past you. Having that link go to a specific landing page will then help you see what people from Twitter do once they are on your page.
Using an analytics program you can see how much time they spent on the site, links they clicked on and the all important conversion rate. Using your site analytics you can see how many people went from the Twitter landing page to your shopping cart and bought something. You will also be able to see if people are finding your “Twitter only” deals page through other means. Which is a good thing because that means people are spreading it.
Once you know what your conversion rate (and thus your sales numbers) are you can pop the data into the ROI equation and you can figure out how well Twitter is working on the inbound side. Remember Twitter can only get them to your site, once there the site is responsible for making the conversion and so you’ll need to do your A/B testing (or use Google web site testing) to find the winning combination of copy, images, and design that works best for your Twitter followers.
So much of what you will be doing will rely on having your site setup properly and having your site analytics in place that you really need to spend some time making sure all of that stuff is ready and optimized to the fullest extent that you can. Of course the real testing won’t start until you get customers there and see how they react to the site.
Questions? Comments? Additions or ideas? Please put them in the comments below
Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters
This is post #3 in a 5 part series about the basic types of marketing campaigns and social media’s place in them.
1. Social Media for Lead Generation and Acquisition
2. Using Social Media in an Awareness Campaign
Image by AMagill