» social media strategy

Facebook: The Internet’s Most Abundant Business Opportunity

admin — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:06:34 +0000

Facebook: The Internet’s Most Abundant Business Opportunity

You won’t believe these stats!

2010 was a BIG year for Facebook. The site’s user base grew 42% in the U.S. to more than 145 million, according to iStrategyLabs. The prime group of users 25-54 represents 50% of that user base. If you were under the impression that Facebook was for teenagers, it’s time to think again. EVERYONE is on Facebook.

No matter who your target demographic is, a good percentage of your target market are on Facebook. Facebook has more than 600 million active users, and half of them log on daily. People spend 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook. Yowza! That’s a lot of time.

In fact, the average American Facebook user spends about 421 minutes per month on Facebook, which equals about 14 minutes a day. None of the other mainstream sites come close: users spend an average of one minute a day on Google and YouTube, and two minutes on Yahoo. Even if you lump them all the big-time sites together (including Wikipedia), Facebook is still the head honcho.

More than 30 billion nuggets of web content are shared each month on Facebook (that includes links, photo albums, etc). The fact that there’s a ton of stuff on Facebook doesn’t mean it’s harder to get noticed, though. Quite the opposite. A lot of people are on Facebook sharing information, and all you have to do is get on the train and get into the mix.

Also, the average user is connected to 80 pages. One of those pages could easily be yours, couldn’t it?

Furthermore, over two million websites have integrated with Facebook, and an average of 10,000 sites hop on board each day. 250 million people engage with Facebook from an external website each month. In other words: Facebook is all over the web.

Facebook has gone mobile, too: more than 200 million users log-in on smartphones or iPads. Mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile users. Since smartphones are surely going to rise in popularity over the next few years, we can expect to see many more active users.

In a nutshell: Facebook is the land of opportunity for small business entrepreneurs. It is now the most-searched, and most-visited. It’s also the place where web users spend most of their time.

So, in a nutshell? Facebook is the ideal place to connect. What are you waiting for? There is a whole world of Facebook prospecting opportunities for your business, and the training is waiting for you at The Practical Social Media University.

Image: Courtesy of Facebook

How Starbucks Uses Social Media (and What You Can Learn)

admin — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:22:53 +0000

How Starbucks Uses Social Media

And What You Can Learn

About six months ago, Starbucks held a “Free Pastry Day”, and attracted over one million people to their stores. How? Social media. Twitter and Facebook captured the buzz about the event and people went searching for a free pastry.

Starbucks is a leader in effective social media marketing. Starbucks has over eighteen million fans on Facebook. The company’s MyStarbucks Idea has also generated over 80,000 ideas, and the Vice President of Brand, Content and Online, Chris Bruzzo, credits Twitter for the success of the project. Starbucks was also the first company to offer a nationwide Foursquare deal.

So, where did Starbucks get their social media smarts? The company listens to their customers. Starbucks works on engaging a dialogue, and considers social media as a relationship, rather than a one-way promotion. Also, Starbucks uses social media to tell a story about their brand, via stories and videos. During the Haiti disaster, for example, Starbucks used videos as part of the Haiti outreach campaign on both YouTube and Facebook. Customers were able to donate to Red Cross in stores, and learned that Starbucks cared.

Alex Wheeler, Director of Digital Strategy at Starbucks, calls their social media approach “scrappy”. As one of the first companies to really embrace social media, figuring out what worked and being open to different options was what led to their success.

As a small business entrepreneur, you can learn from the company’s social media activity. You can use social media to start a genuine conversation with your customers. It’s not about marketing as much as it’s about relationships (though, the relationships will lead to sales or clients). And remember, your relationship is one that constantly gives value, and expects nothing in return. Your are there to help and tell your story along the way!

This is yet another reminder of just how important your brand is to your social media success. For more on this subject, please look over our lead article on “The Importance of Your Brand To Your Social Media Success.”

Social Media: The Number One Way to Spread News

admin — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:38:18 +0000

Did you know that most online news sharing now occurs through social media? A recent CNN study showed that almost half of of online news sharing occurred through social media (including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace). E-mail was responsible for 30%, SMS 15% and instant messenger 12%.

News is actually spread by a small group of people: a handful of the “frequent sharers”. Anyone who sends out at least six stories per week is considered a frequent sharer, and most people who read online news send around 13 stories per week. Most people who spend time online receive around 26 stories each week, via social media or email. Here’s the kicker: 27% of the frequent sharers account for the online distribution of 87% of all news stories.

In other words, if one of the frequent sharers catches your news story and passes it along, you enter the big leagues through social media. Social media is the key to the rapid spread of news. CNN is not everyone’s news, of course, but the attitude of their readers says a lot about the general habits of online readers today. The study was conducted through “Pownar” research, which means “power of news and recommendation”. It was a two month study based on 2,300 consumers.

Didier Mormesse, senior vice president of research at CNN, noted that recommended stories are important to advertisers. He said: “There’s more engagement in emotional terms with content and advertising in the recommended scenario, as opposed to randomly consumed content advertising, and brands that are around recommended stories also benefit from stronger recognition and recall.” Obviously, this is true for your brand, too. If readers share your blog post or story, they are likely passing it on with genuine interest to a social network with similar interests, and that’s the an extremely effective way to spread the good word about your company.

Six Reasons to Love the New Twitter

admin — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:40:22 +0000

The new Twitter is rolling out around the world, and the response is relatively positive. After all, it’s basically a more sophisticated version of the old Twitter, with a sleeker, easier-to-use design. The added features have turned this good old-fashioned social media into fancy, cutting edge social media. Here are six new features that will make entrepreneurs happy.

The Ability to Embed Videos

With the improved version of Twitter, you can tweet videos (without having to download any third party apps). Twitter has developed partnerships with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube, and so it’s easy to embed media content. Multimedia is a key way to connect with those potential customers (and their short attention spans!).

A Quick Way to Peruse Related Content

With the new Twitter, you can click on a single tweet and see an expanded version with all the info you need. You can see the embedded media and all users mentioned, as well as their bios and related content. This will make it easier to gauge the value and significance of a tweet, without any need to take a long detour.

Easy, Accessible Info With the Help of Mini Profiles

You can now check out a potential customer without having to open a new page. By clicking on their name, you will see all the important info, including their location, bio and recent tweets.

Move Quickly With Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts might take a few minutes to learn, but in the end, they will make your life much, much easier. You can hit “f” to favorite, “m” to direct message, “n” for a new tweet and so forth. With the shortcuts, you will find you can navigate through Twitter much more efficiently. When you forget which shortcuts are which, all you have to do is hit “?” and a nice little menu will be displayed for you.

Simpler Searching With Auto-Complete Usernames

Shortcuts will make everything faster, and so will the new username search. You can simply type an @ and the first few letters of the username, and next thing you know, the username will pop up. So, the last 500 users you’ve followed are only a few keys away.

Infinite Options With the Infinite Scroll

There is no longer an end to the list of tweets you see, or any need to click the “more” button. There are infinite tweets to scroll, and endless potential clients to connect to through (the new) Twitter.

Setting Goals for your Social Media Marketing Campaign

admin — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:13:25 +0000

By now, most of you would have recognized that social media is an indispensable part of your marketing campaign for your small business. Social media offers zero to no cost opportunities, is accessible by anyone who has a computer and internet connection, and is easy to learn, as long as you have the determination and will to reach your marketing goals.

A huge part of any social media strategy is figuring out what you want out of all your social media related efforts. You must have a clear direction as to where you’re headed or you won’t be maximizing the time spent on social media. A good, targeted campaign is the only way to go. You also want to have a keen understanding of what your business is all about (in other words branding). Your small business must have a clear identity that you seek to communicate to your target audience. You also need quantifiable goals.

Here are some guide questions that could help you in figuring out a goal for your social media strategy:

What is the top thing that you want to achieve for your business with this social media marketing campaign? Do you want more traffic to your website? Do you want brand impressions and increase buzz and awareness about your business? Or is it first and foremost sales conversion? How much do you want your sales to increase? Maybe you just want to create a forum/community where your customers can converge so you can garner feedback and recommendations. Social Media is an excellent tool to listen to your audience and modify your business according to their wants and needs.

What do you want to primarily say to your target audience? Do you want to tell them that you have a cool product that would be useful to them? Do you want to tell them how to use your product?

What is the unique selling point of your product? Why would your potential customers want to choose your product or service over another?

Who are the first people who would most likely use your product? This is the principle of the lowest hanging fruit. You would want to target someone who has the greatest inclination to be a customer.

Here are some examples of some common goals for social media strategies:

Drive traffic to my website (increase in x% of traffic)
Increase awareness of my small business
Increase sales (by x%)
Customer Service (listen and respond to feedback)

We hope that this helps as your continue to embark on your social media journey towards making your business prosper. Practical Social Media is here to help and give you practical advice. Keep on checking back on the blog for great social media tips and information!

Social Media Best Practices for Small Business

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:56:58 +0000

There are many social media tools out there for small business, ranging from blogs, microblogs, forums and messageboards, video sites, photo sharing sites and more. The plethora of social media options is enough to make any small business owner confused as to which social media platforms to focus on. In every marketing campaign, whether it be for small or more corporate, bigger businesses, there is such a thing called ‘best practices.’ Best practices means the main core of your strategy; these are indispensable strategies that must be part of ever social media marketing campaign.

When thinking of best practices, we start with the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of the population use 20 % of the resources. What do I mean by this? There are many internet users, but most of them use the same media such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and MySpace. Of all the choices available in the social media sphere, people choose the same thing over and over, the same way some people have the tendency to order the same thing over and over from a restaurant.

The image above shows the social media landscape.

These are six sites that are part of social media best practices:

Twitter

Facebook

YouTube

Flickr

Myspace

The question is, what do you do after setup? It all depends on what you want to achieve. Always keep in mind that keyword optimization is a default for every medium. Tweet with your audience’s keyword search habits in mind. Write keyword-based titles for your Flickr pictures. Name your video with a compelling and optimized title that will make your video easy to find. After all, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world!

Knowing your Target Audience

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:00:08 +0000

Just like in normal, everyday conversation, you always want to know who you’re talking to. This gives you a feel of how you’re going to approach the person, what to say and what not to say, and ideas that would appeal to them. As you converse with this person, on a small scale you are creating a strategy in your head as to how to capture this person’s interest.

It’s the same way with social media marketing. Social Media is primarily a tool of a four way conversation – You create content, your audience receives the content, and your audience reacts to the content. You either respond verbally to this reaction or respond with a positive action. Your audience’s reaction to your content or product is largely determined by how you craft your message. And if you don’t even know who your audience is, it is hard to determine how to reach them. What should you include in your Facebook updates? How should you tweet? What kind of keyword strategy should you use? What type of videos should you upload on YouTube?

All these questions can be answered by knowing your audience. These are the questions you should ask in order to create a realistic and accurate audience profile:

Who are they? Are they customers, product reviewers, content creators or suppliers?
What is their basic demographic? (Gender, Age, Location) This is one free tool that you can use to get an idea as to approximate demographic that searches for keywords related to your business online. http://adlab.msn.com/Demographics-Prediction/
What can your audience do and how do they behave? Do they just lurk around your website? Do they contribute via feedback or comments? Do they gather your information and share it?
Are they mostly web or mobile users?
What sites do they frequent?
What content do they look for? For this question you can use the Google Keyword Tool to see which keywords are popular. You can also use Google Insight to see latest search trends.

These are just some starting questions that can help you determine the profile of your audience. Know your audience and be able to create social media messages that appeal most of them, pique their interest and make them want to know more about your product. They say that knowledge is power and knowing is half the battle. In Social Media Marketing, knowing your audience IS half the battle.