Making Social Media Work for your Business

We recently attended the Charlotte Interactive Marketing Association’s Panel discussion on “Making Social Media Work for your business”. It was a great event and the panel was killer. We recorded it to share with anyone who wants to learn more about how to leverage social media to better your business.



We recently attended the Charlotte Interactive Marketing Association’s Panel discussion on “Making Social Media Work for your business”. It was a great event and the panel was killer. We recorded it to share with anyone who wants to learn more about how to leverage social media to better your business.  The panel of social media experts includes--

• Nicole Hall, Editor-in-Chief, LendingTree.


• Jason Keath, Social Media Consultant; Owner, Social Fresh; Founder, Social Media Charlotte


• Brian A. Wright, Senior Vice President of Social Media Monitoring and Analysis, Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Bank of America

The venue at the Mez was pretty dark and the video quality isn't great. If the video doesn’t float your bloat you can grab the audio as well to listen to on the go. Runtime 59min. Really great tips on using social media for your business. Shownotes are included below.

Audio: http://www.alterimaging.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/IMAPodcastVersion.mp3

Making Social Media Work for YOUR Business from Alter Imaging, Inc. on Vimeo

Notes on the Panel

2:00 Any Company with around 50 people or more already have content creators in their organizations. Leverage these people to help jump start your initiatives

 

4:00 Start out using social media internally. Maybe starting with an internal twitter network by making updates private and only for people in your organization. An Example of this is Duke Power and an even better one is how BestBuy implemented Twelpforce internally first.

5:30 Set up social media guidlines and policies for your organization. Here is an example of social media policies from 80+ organizations

6:15 Start out in social media by just listening. Study how your customers interact online and then you can learn how to best engage them in their natural habitat.

7:42 There are many,many,many free tools to get you up and running in social media.

10:30 Free social media listening tools include Blogpulse, technorati, and don’t forget about Google alerts.

12:00 Creating your own blog is very important. You don’t own the content on other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. A blog is a good place to host your own content and have complete control of it.

13:00 Measuring Social Media

14:30 As it currently stands, a lot of the social media metrics that we get back are not hard numbers. More often than not, the metrics we get back are directional and gauged by the level of engagement.

16:00 It is important to use Social media to support your existing traditional channels.

17:45 Facebook and Twitter rarely equate directly to dollar sales. What they equate to is relationships, which in turn can be those driving forces in transactions.

19:15 Dell has made over 3million dollars in sales from twitter alone. However this will not work for every brand.

21:00 Pros and Cons of using social media for customer service

25:00 You must jump into social media but do it smartly with training ansd support.

25:42 Have a real voice and be authentic. Canned responses can be noticed from a mile away.

26:30 Social media marketing is just another example of how to drive word of mouth

27:17 “Social media is better for brand engagement because people are talking back to you, Period.” –Jason Keath. You can’t talk back to a T.V. commercial or a print ad.

28:30 Social media allows for traditional word of mouth to spread much more rapidly and much more broadly.

29:00 Guidelines for responding and engaging in social media. Get everyone in your organization on the same page. assign who is going to handle what when it comes to talking back.

30:05 Ask yourself these questions before responding: Can we diffuse the situation? is it relevant to our business? How influential is this person?

30:50 Don’t just use social media to plug your brand. Authenticity is key and great, relevant content is a must.

31:59 don’t disallow social networking from your organization. This is just restricting your resources if you do so.

33:30 Encourage employees to get into these social media spaces and test the waters. More often than not, they will benefit and enjoy participating.

34:00 Integration of online and offline channels

36:40 Remember: Social media is a huge EGO zone. It is very personalized and thus you should treat people as such. The more you can make people feel special in social media, the more they will support your cause.

38:25 The lifespan of things online is exponentially longer than that of traditional media.

39:25 Always, Always, Always create content. If you are not creating content then you are not setting yourself apart.” –Jason Keath

40:30 Fresh content gives you SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits.

42:15 Creating your Call to Action in Social media.

43:20 Creating customers from your content

47:57 What tool are out there that will help us with content creation, specifically what our target audience wants to know/read about? Online surveys, asking the customer directly what they would be interested in, looking into what competitors are doing and out doing what they are currently doing.

48:54 Question about Contests and giveaways on Facebook.

50:25 Get influencers to help you spread your messages.

51:49 B2B Social media applications

53:45 Using LinkedIn to build up networks

56:09 Tips on advertising on Facebook

58:20 Using niche blogs to advertising.

“Always, Always, Always create content. If you are not creating content then you are not setting yourself apart.” –Jason Keath