Social Media Strategy for Small Business – Part 1

Posted on 11. Jan, 2010 by in Blog

A key part to your Social Media Strategy is your Social Media Paradigm.  This presence is gained by many things, but none more important than your ability to manage conversation.  Let Phizz start with this…

Just the other day a client said, “Oh so you mean it’s back to good old, face to face interaction?  Without the face to face?”  With a sense of relief and a puzzled look on his face he made a break through about what needed to be done.  What provoked him to come to this conclusion?  What was this conclusion and what did it have to do with his social media presence?  Through the conversation we discussed these concepts which helped him arrive at this epiphany…

3 Portions of Your Social Media Paradigm

1. Recognizing the Past
2. Keeping Up With the Present
3. Moving Into the Future

Let Phizz explain what this has to do with your paradigm.  Search Engine Optimization is important, and in this ever changing world of the mysterious Google Algorithm you’re going to need fresh content, link to fresh content and be relevant.  I know there’s plenty more to Google SEO (check out the SEO Starter Guide), but let’s not confuse the fact that Social Media Paradigm is about your online conversation with real people and their response to that interaction (and vice versa).  Remember what the client above said, “Oh so you mean it’s back to good old, face to face interaction?  Without the face to face?”

Recognizing the Past

The “past” portion of your Social Media Paradigm relates to established relationships and maintaining past clients.  No matter what medium you use (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) you want to make sure and acknowledge your past associations.  Acknowledgment can come in many different forms, it basically means treat past relationships with an attitude of gratitude.  For example, you could comment on someone’s wall in response to one of their photos or status updates, maybe it’s posting a photo or video of that client and sharing it with them, on the other hand you might want to write them a wonderful recommendation or reTweet one of their Tweets.  You’ll start to think of more as you implement this as you practice.  People and clients love it when you recognize them and take interest in what “they are doing”, in turn they’ll recognize what “you’re doing”.

Keeping Up With the Present

The “present” portion of your Social Media Paradigm relates to establishing your brand’s personality.  This is derived from your current endeavors and keeping up with current events as they relate to your industry and services.  This should be an easy task once you put your content goggles on.  In your daily routine you and your company are generating content all day long; as an expert in your company’s field you’re already doing research to stay competitive, provide better service and a myriad of other things.  Guess what?  Your client cares about these things, especially if they’re going to make a decision to buy.  You want to share this content with your audience regularly within a schedule so your audience comes to expect it from you.  People and clients love it when they can watch “what you’re doing” as it relates to a product or service they require.

Moving Into the Future

The “future” portion of your Social Media Paradigm relates to building your online network.  This is no different than building your social sphere in real life.  Many businesses operate on the ever important “referral” and it’s widely recognized that referrals can be an extremely cost effective way to generate new business.  You’ve heard the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”  More than that, “It’s who you know and what they’re telling their friends about your brand/company.”  The same goes for you social media presence.  The future of your Social Media Paradigm ties to actively adding people to your network via the associations you already have.  Social media can do this for you in a very automatic way when you heed to the system of keeping consistent with the “past and present” portions of your paradigm.  (Nancy Baym, Professor at University of Kansas, does a good job of explaining the general idea in this write up)

Stay tuned for Social Media Strategy for Business – Part 2…

Social Media ROI: What to Measure

Posted on 31. Dec, 2009 by in Blog

Social Media ROI continues to be a highly debated issue among small to large companies and it’s apparent that measuring Social Media ROI is still somewhat unrefined and even mystical.  Actually, Social Media ROI isn’t necessarily unmeasurable.  Ben Stratley (CEO of Meteor Solutions) does an excellent job of explaining his company’s methodology for quantifying Social Media ROI with his presentation Is Your Social Media Program A Boom or A Bust? How to Use Analytics to Find Out What’s Working & What’s Not.

A marketing team has to convince executives or managers of the benefit Social Media has in terms of ROI.  Many times that’s the only language those in charge of managing the bottom-line speak.  In the current economic situation it’s probably for good reason.  Can you blame them?  After watching this hour long presentation Phizz felt it was important to re-visit a few basic internet marketing metrics to help with proving ROI for Social Media.

Putting your money where your mouth Tweet is happens to be paramount.  Let’s be clear…

Everything you do via Social Media will revolve around one thing:  Driving Traffic To Your Website!

Actions you and your team desire once the consumer is there must be defined before any Social Media campaign is launched (which is another topic of it’s own).

Darren Rowse said in How I Use Social Media to Promote My Blogs regarding driving traffic to his blog a.k.a. Homebase:  “[Social Media] is there to build and reinforce the Homebase.”  and “…Homebase is where I put my primary focus.”

Ben Stratley’s team likes to refer to a Homebase as Owned Media.

To attain Social Media ROI you must be clear about what you want to achieve with your strategy. The slide show along with the terms below help explain metrics that define costs for calculations of ROI.

CPI or CPM = Cost Per Impression or Cost Per Thousand Impression: This metric tells you how much you’re paying per impression.  Each impression is defined as a single instance of that ad, better yet every time the ad loads on a users screen, with certain exceptions.  A each person that receives your Tweet would be an impression.

CTR = Click Through Rate: This metric measures relevance of a topic discussed or popularity of the defined topic, but more importantly its a way to determine if what you’re saying is grabbing the attention of the people within your Social Network(s).  Do your friends, clients or prospects care about what you’re saying?

CPC vs PPC = Cost Per Click vs. Pay Per Click: This metric eludes to the marketing dollars spent per click.  CPC represents the expense incurred for each click through, but is more organically grown via Social Media.  PPC represents the expense incurred from paying your host every time a click through happens on a predefined keyword.

CPA = Cost Per Action: This metric represents the expense incurred on any activity generated by the click through, usually predefined, but typically a sale or an order generated.

These are some metrics you can use to determine your expense throughout a campaign, particularly by using tools like:

bit.yl
twitt(url)ly
Google Analytics
Alexa

There are plenty of other tools you can find with simple Google Searches for SEO Tools, etc.

Next time Phizz we be focused on strategy for implementing Social Media so you can start measuring your ROI.

What are we doing with Social Media?

Posted on 25. Nov, 2009 by in Blog

Plenty right? We’re Blogging, we’re Tweeting, we’re Facebooking, we’re Bizniking, we’re LinkedIn, etc., etc.

The question is this then, what is our strategy? Phizz uses the word “our” loosely because it’s not your problem or Phizz’s problem, it extends to all of us who know there’s something going on online. There are a vast amount of people present within online communities and that means consumers (you know the stats: Google “Social Media Stats”). Interesting enough, many of these communities are established based on similar interests or real life relationships, something that isn’t new to the web. The new twist on things is based on the premise that a business advertises by participating. It’s not about Tweeting a “Sale” or writing “Get your acme anvils half off” on someone’s Facebook Wall.

Social Media is like Television, Radio or Print in that it reaches out and grabs people’s attention, right? The difference is people can reach right back and grab you, or your brand. This is why it’s fundamentally different. So many companies perform surveys of their client’s experience and attempt to determine their client’s satisfaction level with their product. This is great, we all know we can’t improve unless we know what’s wrong. In addition, consumers come to expect quicker more accurate responses to their questions, concerns and inquiries about a product. Chris Brogan President of New Marketing Labs Tweeted a question the other day…

@chrisbrogan How does velocity of information & communication change business?

Phizz responded…

@phizzmedia As Velocity of Info and Communication Increase Client Expectation of Service and Response Time Increases

This roughly translates to participation. We need to participate in our consumer’s conversation, companies can no longer be able to hide behind a survey or a telemarketer who asks canned questions. An email to the “help desk” that disappears into oblivion will no longer be acceptable.

You can’t be everything to everyone, but when it comes to your online strategy you had better be…

Present, Participating & Pertinent.

Phizz is learning a ton about this from:
Chris Brogan
Jason Falls
Dosh Dosh
Darren Rowse

Phizz also subscribes to plenty of RSS Feeds here’s one:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/phizzmedia

Pheel the Phizz on Twitter @phizzmedia

The Gift of Giving…

Posted on 08. Nov, 2009 by in Blog

Interestingly enough Team Phizz had a chance to meet with Laurie of Stepping Stones to Learning Preschool.  It was interesting to meet with her and understand the desires of her organization.  One of the most interesting things was learning that “communication” was an important part of what she believed to be a prime function of the school’s website.  When Team Phizz introduced the ideas of Social Media and the propensity it has to strengthen communication between her past and present parent base it interested her.  It was actually exciting to see Luarie’s understanding increase when we applied Social Media concepts to the schools needs.  The concepts of Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter among other online communities were viable solutions to generating clients, earning referrals and informing current clients of upcoming events.

One last thing both Team Phizz found interesting was a concept of giving introduced in the form of WeeGift.  Check it out and feel free to comment here.  It’s basically a way to give, get and re-give that encourages unselfish, charity to perfect strangers.  Really a great idea!

Where Phizz Stands…

Posted on 05. Nov, 2009 by in Blog

At Phizz we’ve been discussing our new ideas and collaborative thoughts.  We’ve realized a few things about our team and where we want to take Phizz Media.  Here’s a portion of what we’ve reasoned…

Honesty is Paramount: Spiritually, with family, with friends, in business… honesty is truly the best policy in all aspects of life and it gives you the ability to act freely.

Phizz Philosophy: Social media isn’t about “social” or “media”.  No we’re serious, it’s about the injection of a person’s thoughts, opinions and overall personality into a community of family, friends, colleagues and potential clients.

Open Book, Open Mind: Phizz Media isn’t the people that make up the team.  It’s about us letting our clients know where we’re headed with their online presence and most importantly about opening our mind to our client’s personality.  Understanding what makes them special in their field, what quirks make their business or product unique is the key; it’s our intention to help a client down this path.  Phizz turns this endeavor into an online personality that says, “Here I am, here’s what I do, here’s why you want to work with me” without specifically saying “Here I am, here’s what I do, here’s why you want to work with me”.  Makes sense right?

We know our value and we know where we want Phizz to be.  Our clients know their value and they also know where they want to be.  When we help people get where they want, we’ll be where we want.

If the Cheese Stands Alone…
…then the Phizz Rises to the Top.