Does your business have a social media strategy in place? What is it?

To increase customer retention? Increase sales? Decrease lead acquisition costs?

Increase visibility?

I read a statistic today and I’ll try to find the link but it is important for you to know that only 50% of companies have an actual social media strategy or social media plan in place. And even LESS are measuring the results or ROI of their social marketing campaigns.  Why? Because there is so much customization involved to develop and determine the proper key performance indicators, backwards engineer the campaign, and then establish the tools & tactics needed. Believe me when I say it- social media campaigns are extremely complex & customized around each clients business model and we LOVE a challenge. Something we love even more is when clients get results like winning the San Diego’s best green product installer contest or selling all their tickets for their fundraising event. Simply put, when your clients see results in social media and can measure ROI, they finally see the true value in social media that it can bring to their organization:

1. decreased online advertising expenditure

2. increased customer retention & satisfaction

3. much higher conversion rates than paid advertising

because of the trust factor (through facebook & twitter communities)

4. much cheaper lead acquisition compared to paid online advertising

What type of ROI have you demonstrated for your clients using social media?  Are you a business using social media yet? What have been your results?  I’d love to hear from you!

Cheers,

Justin “Results” French

social media marketing seems to still dominate conversations these days. Companies testing, companies measuring, companies even bringing in outside help like social media consultants. One thing is certain though, through all the hype, noise, and water cooler talk- there are some companies who take action and some sitting on the sidelines still waiting to get into the game.

Let’s take the top three benefits of social media that we have seen on why companies are embracing this new marketing channel:

1. Your business is looking to cut costs on traditional advertising and use internet marketing and social media marketing as a cost effective substitute. This not only cuts down on costs, but allows you to be more targeted with your messaging. You can effectively extract your audience according to the proper demographic and geographic market you are going after.

2. Your company is looking for sustained growth or long-term growth with social media as compared to advertising. If your business is considering social media and you’re looking for long-term growth & sustainability then social media should be part of your strategy. Social Media allows scalability, growth over time, and by consistently engaging with your target audience you build trust. You constantly educate your prospects and customers giving them valuable information. When you do this overtime, you develop greater trust with your audience and build your brand equity much stronger. This also helps shorten the sales cycle and touches your audience through various points across the value chain.

3. You can develop an influential relationship with a key influencer who has a large trust relationship built with their audience. Once you have their trust, you can possibly ask them to help you get out a message to your target audience. If you care about social media and go about it the right way, you will be able to leverage those relationships. But one word of advice- if that person does you a favor, don’t forget to do a favor for them when asked. It’s always 50-50.

4.Bonus: Because Lebron James is on twitter now and that’s proof enough of why you’re business/ personal brand should be on there too! Don’t believe me- watch this inspiring video on his brand and being “Real”

Lebron’s story is truly motivating and inspiring.  I think of Lebron as a humble leader on and off the court and he has much less of an ego than Kobe- but I digress…

Sent from my iPad 🙂

Justin “Results” French

p.s. Sharing is caring and re-tweeting is always appreciated

Everywhere I go lately i hear the talk about transparency. Maybe its that government should be more transparent, or business leaders and executives should be more transparent. One thing i know for certain that the MORE transparent you are in social media and social networking, the more this enables you to connect to many more great people with “similar interests” to share ideas. This is exactly what happen to me with twitter. I am 90% transparent on twitter (i doubt people want to know everything i do but i do tweet quite a bit) because i know that someone is listening and can perhaps connect with me on a similar level. Right away we can establish a connection, a friendship, and this creates a relationship.

Social networking for business and social media is all about connecting with like minded people facing similar challenges or opporunities to brainstorm, strategize, and share knowledge their interested in for the common good of the community. Being transparent in business is especially important in todays times after the financial meltdown, Enron, Madoff, etc. The list goes on with how many companies affected the lives of many people with their poor decision making. That is why i suggest that companies need to be more transparent, and by embracing social media and social networking this allows companies to get back to business basics and get our economy back on track by engaging in conversation first before selling/ marketing/ advertising to consumers. Us consumers are sick of being bombarded by spam, direct mail, telemarkeintg, etc.

A model example of transparency is the recent Zappos acquisition by Amazon. The CEO Tony has embraced social media and social networking and created the “culture” that companies can only dream about. Typically companies hold onto information and don’t want to share about what makes their company so great. We take the opposite approach. We want businesses to embrace social networking and social media for business development purposes and we have been teaching them how for the last 8 months and have been very transparent about our business model. Our investors may frown upon this a little, but it has worked and gotten us this far. We have seen the huge value in building a community around our services. The community on twitter and linked-in have been great feedback mechanisms for us in our start-up. We will see what happens in the near future as companies start getting on board with social media for business and Social Networking San Diego will be here when they are ready for a plan, strategy, execution, training, and consulting along the way in their social media journey.

Any feedback on this?
Thanks
Justin
CEO Social Networking San Diego
Want to speak to me directly? 760-576-GOLF (Google Voice)

The internet has become the most talked about medium of communication. It is the quickest way of launching an advertising campaign and you will find that customers and audiences can interact with the campaigns almost directly and instantly. Social networking campaigns and social media agencies are now making a lot of money utilizing this social marketing boom to its fullest. But are they producing ROI? Are they producing results? Here are some of our case studies here for some recent campaigns we ran: (click here)

Connectivity and engaging with people is the most essential feature for social networking campaigns to gather momentum and keep going. If there is no interaction, social marketing campaigns fail to perform up to the expected levels and do not go viral. Marketing efforts over the social media have seen positive as well as negative impacts with larger audiences.

Addictive and viral campaigns often catch the public’s attention sooner, but blow out faster if they do not interest and engage the customer. Designing the proper online marketing strategy is like a science, with many variables.

Take the case of Facebook. This social network is more of a communication between friends, colleagues and relatives that has becomes very tough for the marketing community to monetize. The majority of Facebook users do not like the marketing advertisements that pop up as it causes a distraction to users who are more interested in chatting with long lost relatives and friends.

The world is going tech savvy and by the year 2015, nearly half of all purchases will surely have some web-based element in them. The purchase could be offline or online, it does not matter at all. It could merely mean that the customer is reading or browsing for a new product on a blog, website, then reading news updates and simply comparing prices of the product online or through a networking site. But almost all sales will be related to the internet.

Social networking campaign specialists like Social Networking San Diego can utilize social networking campaigns and ensure good word of mouth sales for their clients chosen products. Just getting people to talk about the product is not enough. You have to clearly define whether the existing technology is sufficient or whether you should focus on discussions, videos, voting, PPC, etc. to promote your product. Companies big and small can take part online now and develop social networking campaigns and strategies to promote their business whether a product or service based business, we can develop and implement your social media marketing campaign the right way.

Ready to get started? Get a FREE Website Evaluation and see where your website ranks compared to your competitors now (Click Here- FREE Website Evaluation)

Many business and marketing people keep talking about social media and social marketing and how businesses can get into this new online marketplace, but I have some actual non-theory lessons from ACTUAL consulting on about 12 client projects we have worked on over the last seven months.

Social Networking for business is hard stuff. You have to be both technical, psychological, sociological, business savvy, marketing savvy, sales savvy, a good communicator, good writer,…… The list goes on. 1 full time employee or college intern handling social media marketing will not cut it I guarantee it.

My TEAM (together everyone achieves more) of Business consultants and I have been doing workshops, tweet ups in Carlsbad, tele-seminars, conference calls, coaching, training, blogging, strategy building, assessments, webinars, and consulting on social media and social networking for business for the last 7 months. (I have been doing various business and technical consulting for about 10 years)

I remember my first blog post on how i predicted that social media and social networking will save small business and STILL stand by that prediction and remember it like it was yesterday. I also remember each and every client experience, where WE went wrong, and what changes we made in our “process” to improve. I must say right off the bat that I could NOT be in this “Social CEO” position with out my twitter network. I learned more on twitter in 2 months from just listening, paying it forward, and helping others achieve what information, resources, or knowledge they cared about which in return they taught me what I needed to know to help formulate Social Networking San Diego. Consider it a PHD in internet marketing from twitter for FREE just 20 days a month on-line till 4am investing my time (video proof here).

I laugh at the colleges now trying to charge thousands of dollars for certificate programs for social media marketing and internet marketing (even Masters Degrees) when all people would have to do is just apply themselves a little bit, spend some time doing internet research, and start LISTENING! Also, we are in a HUGE recession, and colleges are in fact a BUSINESS too trying to stay on the trends and make MORE money off students. But I digress…..

Here are some tips about what to be careful of in the trenches of social media and social networking consulting for businesses:

1. ROI– If they ask you “what will be my ROI”, ask them, “what is your CURRENT ROI on marketing/ advertising?” Tell them to give you a fraction of that (at least 10%) show them some results in the first quarter or six months, and then ask them for a larger budget (if you can perform)

2. Don’t under charge– Your time is valuable, and just because they might not see the REAL value in social media and social networking for business development purposes and lead generation, you still want to attract the clients who have a “perceived value” in social media. This can be hard, but where are you looking??? Our first couple accounts we did FULL SERVICE for less than 1000$/ month AND worked on these accounts probably 80 hours per month. Talk about hustling! And you know what, they left because they didn’t want to “spend the time” in social media because they were too impatient and wanted overnight success. And they felt the training was something an intern could do. Do you really want an intern handling your corporate message and controlling your brand perception online???? Let me stress to you that being in the trenches now for 7 months, this will require your client to commit to 9 months to 1 year to make it worth your time. That is if you provide a comprehensive and holistic approach to social media and social networking for business. This is VERY time consuming and a lot of work I assure you but the BEST practices approach for building a lasting community around your client’s products and services.

3. DON’T DO PAY BY PERFORMANCE– Do you like working for free? I sure as hell don’t, and we tried that and learned NOT to do it again! On a few clients, we agreed to pay by performance model and you know what happen, we worked our A$$ off, did the research, the set-up, got them leads, and they still weren’t happy. (we don’t work for the company, we get you leads, its up to you to close your deals, we are not your sales team) I would advise AGAINST bartering as well, tried that too 🙂

4. Social Media and Social Networking is not for EVERY client– Every business is different so be sure you analyze the prospect in depth BEFORE taking them on as a client. If they have a 4 year old website, why would we want to drive traffic to it? So we recommended a new website FIRST, then we will drive the traffic. (they thought they could get a good site done for 500$ so I said be my guest, then they came back for a full word press site from us)

5. Make your deliverables clear– Make sure you specify where the hours will be allocated for the project so the client is clear about what THEY will bring to the table, and what YOU will bring. We ask our clients to commit to X amount of training per month, X amount of content submissions, articles, etc.

I hope this helps clarify what life has been like for the non-theory preaching social media enthusiasts (I used to be one too, and still am a little, but businesses need help so we are rolling up our sleeves and helping what businesses we can, and who have the budget of course)

Any thoughts on your experiences? I know we have many readers who are in this industry, so feel free to leave some insight or feedback on your experiences in the trenches of social media consulting,
Thanks
JustinRFrench
CEO Social Networking San Diego
Have any questions- hit me up on the G-Voice 760 – 576 – GOLF oh yeah!!

P.S. Get a copy of “Social Media Survival Guide for Business” The FAST TRACK
$9.95 Click Here to order: (if you have time to read it) But this will be a helpful guide for you and your business as you journey into Social Media and Social Networking for Business. Enjoy

Social Media Agencies are the newest of terms I have heard going around.  They usually have a combined offline and online approach to marketing and advertising but because of this new social media revolution occurring, social media agencies are coming to market.  The question is, how good are they?  Are they producing results for their clients?  Is their campaign on budget? Are they measuring results?  Our typical engagement is 9 months and this is the minimum time line i would suggest for a successful social media marketing campaign.

The internet has brought a tremendous change in our lives. Things all over the world are changing very fast, and people have to be on their toes to catch up with the changes in technology and media. The social media arena is just one vast area that has still not yet been tapped to its full potential. Opportunities are plenty, but unless you are aware of what social media agencies and social media consultants are about; you are not going to be able to use it!

Traditionally, social media was not considered a good market by agencies, but now times have changed. Marketers have now realized the positive aspects of using social media for marketing; and slowly but surely social media agencies are popping up. Social media campaigns are predicted to cause a great revolution online eventually, as 90% of the world’s population is online at one point of time or another.

At present, there are six different media that are used to support social media marketing and they are-

Social networking sites where individuals are free to build their own WebPages (personal profiles) and change the settings as they see fit. This allows them to be completely free about their individual personalities and thousands of people may popular pages and be influenced by their comments and ideas. A few of the more popular social networking sites are Myspace, Facebook, Linked-in and now my favorite twitter.

Blogs are another aspect where people can keep online journals with their personal ideas and thoughts about anything from products and services or opinions, but remember here that the value of the content to the audience is key.

Wikis are official pages hosted by Wikipedia but are open for editing and updating by the lay public. It serves as a communal store of information with over three million English articles.

Podcasts are available and a great source of advertising and spread of information through the internet.

Forums, communities and micro-blogging are the last three variants that allow large discussions to be held on several topics where thousands of people log in from all over the world. Twitter is the foremost leader in micro-blogging

Social media marketing companies can use these mediums to promote ideas or products and increase exposure of their product all over the world through a few simple click- throughs and a lot cheaper than traditional advertising such as radio and TV.  The returns on investment can be measured in a social media campaign, because basically social media is made up of people who frequently talk about what brands they like or dislike and what they buy and from where. An effective social media agency can maintain a brand presence in a social media campaign and can extract maximum benefit from a good social media commitment.

Social media or social marketing is about people and people buy things, its that simple.

What types of things do you look for in a social media agency?  Your feedback is much appreciated-

Justin

2. Our country is built on small and mid-sized businesses and because of the Internet, companies are now able to compete on-line with large fortune 500 companies with an even smaller budget. It’s all about having the right strategy. It levels the playing field and enables a communication channel that would have never been possible in traditional marketing or media. We have now seen that a small business with a great product or service and the right strategy can achieve huge economies of scale on-line. Look at what has happened with twitter. Our current business model leverages twitter to be used as a business tool for our clients to achieve some of these business objectives: PR, customer service, branding, marketing, and of course developing lasting business relationships. Twitter has enabled corporations to get back to the foundations of doing business in a digital age which is much needed right now. Being more transparent, not always selling things, and building an on-line community culture around community. Remember- people want to do business with people. Think of this new way of doing business on line as social marketing. If someone from company A does something good for me, say help me out or point me in the right direction, or does a good job on a project, I am going to tell 10 of my friends and just like word of mouth referrals, the same happens now online in a virtual setting.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post!

Social Marketing is a new buzz word going around. Social marketing basically means word of mouth marketing using online tools such as social media, social networking, and other online PR tactics. You know how powerful word of mouth can be, just imagine what it can do for your products and services! Social Networking San Diego has been able to achieve great success for our clients, and the way business is conducted today is very different from the 20th century. Consider our 21st century marketing methods which you can see here:

1. Even though businesses are going through some tough times due to economic conditions, this does not make it ok for management and executives to do nothing. Good leadership in all companies is needed to find innovative ways to be resilient during these times and figure out ways to cut costs where necessary (not employees) streamline operations, upgrade technology, and invest in an online marketing strategy. Why? Because online marketing strategies can mean a more cost effective advertising and marketing approach than traditional marketing efforts and can even reach a more targeted market in a shorter amount of time. Having your company set up on twitter, linked-in, or face book is one thing, but how are you using these tools? This is where you need an online marketing strategist to develop the right creative campaign that can then track results, measure progress, and show good ROI. The economies of scale are much greater with an on-line marketing approach as opposed to off-line. Consider this: an inbound marketing campaign, or inbound marketing system in which we help formulate and execute around your business model. We do the back-end work for our clients on social media and social networking and train them on how to leverage these tools for business development purposes and how to build business relationships online. We function as the out-sourced virtual marketing department and partner with our clients for long term contracts for long term business strategy success.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post!

As extremely busy executives, we know the following:

-budget allowances are gone
-competitive forces are growing
-layoffs and cuts have been made, and hopefully not a second round
-sales are down

As the VP of marketing goes into the CEO’s office Monday morning and says “I just spoke to a company on Linked-in who is doing social media and social networking consulting for business development and lead generation and I think we should consider it. This could be our chance to get ahead of our competitors and shift some of our off-line marketing budget into on-line marketing and advertising. The CEO says “That on-line marketing crap has never worked before, what makes you think it will work now? We don’t even understand how the hell it works! Do they even have case studies? What was the ROI?” VP Says “I spoke to a company who seems very credible from their recommendations, has case studies, video testimonials, and has developed a proven system and strategy that really seems to make a lot of sense. I think it leverages social networking and social media sites for business development and lead generation purposes. It really gets back to the old way of doing business by developing relationships with customers first, earning their trust, and then it’s just a matter of time before they do business with us. Plus, the viral ability with online marketing makes word of mouth referrals spread much quicker when they see how great our products are they tell their friends, family, and colleagues. What do you think? CEO says “Well, maybe this couldn’t have come at a better time because sales, marketing, and IT have never seemed to be on the same page, what we are currently doing isn’t working, and this may be a chance for us to gain a competitive advantage. How do we move forward? Well, they offered to do a FREE Webinar for us on the growing trend in social marketing to see if we may be a good fit for the program. I think we should do it. The CEO says “let’s check it out”. 3 months later……Progress has been made, ROI is up 15%, and employees at the various departments are shifting gears and getting re-educated/ re-trained on how to use these social tools and how to sell in a digital age.

“When is your VP of marketing going to take a NEW innovative direction for your firm? Give the CEO some hope so he can sleep”

What is your feedback on this story? How many think this ACTUALLY happened? Please respond below. Leave your comments. I look forward to your guesses-
JustinRFrench CEO & Chief Internet Marketing Strategist
Social Networking San Diego
http://www.socialnetworkingsandiego.com