With certain video games placing more of an emphasis on health than anything else, it’s clear that there is a demand for said emphasis. The typical gamer does not engage in physical activity as much as he or she should, so the idea of games incorporating more active elements is smart. In fact, one can make the argument that Nintendo was one of the companies at the forefront of this, given the success of its “Wii Fit” series.

With that said, the idea of Nintendo’s recent focus on “quality of life” may not bode as well and I believe it doesn’t speak well about Nintendo’s marketing in general.

This past week, The Guardian posted an article about Nintendo and how it would be turning to the health sector in order to help its business on all fronts. Given the lackluster sales of its current home video game console, the Wii U, it would make sense that Nintendo would try its hand at exploring other fields. However, does this necessarily mean that “quality of life” is the best way to go about it? One of the biggest concerns I have with this is that a good number of gamers that engage in physical activity are not the serious video game enthusiasts Nintendo might want.

For those who do not know, the Nintendo Wii was originally released back in 2006, which was during that time when mobile gaming was not as bustling as it is now. In comparison to the competition, the Wii offered not only a more affordable base price but a focus on motion technology, the latter being tied to physical activity. From Wii Sports to Just Dance, the system proved viable but that same audience has moved on. Casual players are far more intrigued by games that cost less than a cup of coffee than their Wiis, which are most likely gathering dust on their shelves.

It’s clear that Nintendo wants to drive positive attention back to its brand and understandably so, given the current state of its home console endeavors. With that said, “quality of life” might not be the kind of turn that an online marketing company would support. Instead, wouldn’t it be more in the interest of Nintendo to ramp up development on Wii U titles in house? Even though the number of Wii U owners now is dwarfed by the number of Wii owners that might have been prevalent back in 2008, the former is still a substantial number and shouldn’t be cast aside.

Perhaps you feel differently, though. Do you think that “quality of life” is where Nintendo’s focus should be set on? Do you think that Nintendo’s attention would be better served elsewhere? Please leave your thoughts down below!

Photo Credit

There’s a disturbing trend I’m seeing in the automotive industry when I visit websites. Perhaps it’s been like this for a while and I simply took my eye off the chat ball. When I see chat windows that instantly prompt for the customer’s contact information, it makes me cry a little inside.

This isn’t what chat is supposed to be about. I’d love to have that debate with anyone. Chat is an alternative means of instant information. In other words, it’s more akin to phone calls than to anything else. If you believe in having a barrier of entry for your customers to chat, then you should have your receptionist answer the phone with, “Thank you for calling XYZ Motors. Can I have your name, phone number, and email address, please? No? Okay, thank you for calling.”

Click.

I totally understand how this came about. Chat companies were pressured to generate leads and that became the only goal. If you, as a car dealer, believe this, then I would contend that you’ve either been misled or you’ve lost touch with what chat should really do. There are two parts: lead generation AND customer service. Some people call the dealership to find out when the parts department closes. You don’t need their contact information in order to tell them a time over the phone just as you should not require their contact information to give them the time over chat.

Whether you believe it or not, here’s a fact that common sense should tell you: you’re making some of your website visitors unhappy by creating a barrier to inquiry. Some people (more than we all want to admit) will never give their contact information before coming in. Unless your leads have a 100% appointment ratio, a 100% show ratio, and your lead volume is at 90% of your total traffic to the dealership itself, this fact should be clear. Despite what the up-log says, your customers are not driving by randomly. They went online. They’ve probably been to your website.

With that understanding, why would a dealership want to put a bad taste in their customers’ mouths before they even decide to come by the dealership?

Serve your customers the information they want online without prejudice. Don’t force them to fill out a lead form first. A skilled operator should be trained to work with people during chat, determine if they’re a valid prospect, and gather the information the dealership wants DURING the chat process, not before. Will volume decrease? Maybe. Maybe not. I am no expert but I would imagine that the people who come into chat that wouldn’t have entered because of the lead information wall will be more likely to leave their information as their questions are being answered.

You don’t just want leads. You want good leads. You want great leads. Chat should be the best of both worlds, combining the dialogue potential of the phone with the information gathering of a lead form. If you make them fill out the form ahead of time, you’re pushing away many who want to have a dialogue first. This is a big mistake.

Some would say, “If they’re serious, they’ll fill out the form, first.” BS. There are plenty of serious buyers who want information but who have had bad experiences when they fill out lead forms. There’s a reason lead form submissions are on the decline. People have been burnt in the past. Get them into a conversation first, then pursue the lead when appropriate. That’s the right way to handle it.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “Mr. Chat Provider – tear down this wall.”

Social media is the one marketing medium that allows customers and businesses to interact in an organic fashion.  However, it astonishes me just how many companies don’t take advantage of this.  Rather than engaging with their customers on social media, they use it to tell the customer what the business wants to say.  There is very little listening going on.

I would suggest that every business should use social media as a two-way radio as opposed to the megaphone that it currently is for so many companies.  When you listen as well as speak, you get the opportunity to find out what your customers want, what they need, and what they think of your business.

Customer Service Hotline

More and more customers are taking to social media to voice their concerns over their experience with brands and businesses.  Customers will tweet reviews of their experiences at restaurants, they’ll post about their stay at a hotel on the hotel’s Facebook page, or they might Instagram an image of a product they received in the mail.

The point is, a company needs to be monitoring this for good and negative mentions.  If a customer has a horrible experience, it’s better to engage with them on social media and attempt to diffuse the situation before it spreads across social media.  I’ve witnessed many companies calm down an angry customer over social media and turn a potentially harmful situation into a positive one.

Likewise, if a customer is praising your company for something you did right, you want to make sure that you’re taking advantage of this.  Always be searching for mentions of your company on all of the social media networks.  There are several tools that will do this automatically for you.  Whenever your company is mentioned in a positive light, thank the customer and maybe even ask them if you can use the mention as a testimonial.

Focus Groups

What should your next product be?  Will the customers like the new design?  What about the new color scheme, will the customers react positively to it?  These are a few examples of questions that are being asked in businesses every single day.  There are groups that will work to get these answers for you via focus groups and surveys.  It can also cost a company a pretty penny to go this route.

Instead of spending money on third party groups to have them tell you what your clientele wants, go directly to the source.  Utilize the survey features on Facebook to poll your customers and find out what you should be doing with your products and services.

You can also start a Twitter campaign with tweets that say “If the new product should be blue, favorite this tweet.  If it should be red, then retweet this.” You can then go back and count up the results and use it as a quick method of surveying.

There are endless possibilities for picking your customer base’s brains when it comes to new product or service innovation.

Sales and Specials

Companies use sales and specials to increase sales.  They select promotions that they hope will resonate with their customers in order to get them to spend money with the company.  Sometimes these sales are a success.  Sometimes they’re not.

Instead of choosing one direction and one special, a company could utilize social media to roll out several different offerings and see which ones receive the best reception from their customers.

A simple change in wording can have a huge impact on how a special is received.  A business could put two coupons on their Facebook page.  One could say “$25 off your next purchase,” while the other might say “Save $25 on anything in the store.”

Both give the same discount, but your customers will usually pick one more often than the other.  Utilize your social media following for this A/B testing to optimize your promotions.

Regardless of how you utilize your social media outlets, you can be sure that by ignoring your customers’ feedback will damage your image and your brand.  Use both your mouth and your ears when operating on social media and you’ll be sure to receive the full spectrum of benefits.

If there’s one family that’s probably not too fond of social media these days, it has to be the Snays. It was recently reported that 69-year-old Patrick Snay, the former Guillver Preparatory School head, filed an age discriminatory complaint following issues with his contract. Snay came to an agreement with the school that would ultimately wind up with him being granted an $80,000 settlement. When Snay’s daughter took to Facebook to boast, said settlement went out the window. Along with it went the aforementioned sum of money.

The fact that Snay’s daughter’s grouo of 1,200 followers saw the message was bad enough but keep in mind that many of them were in Gulliver at one point or another. One could make the argument that Snay should have been clear with his family, telling them about the confidentiality agreement that came with the settlement. If he did not properly detail it, then it would be nothing short of an oversight on his part. While $80,000 might not seem like much to some people, to others it can practically change their entire worlds.

This does not mean that no blame should fall upon Snay’s daughter because to say such a thing would be projecting a lie. From what the story detailed, she was around the typical college age, which means that she should have had enough sense to not scream about her father’s settlement from the mountaintops of social media. Everyone has a right to be excited about cases like these. It was just a matter of choosing the places to brag; Facebook, as one could imagine, was very low on that list.

It’s also important to think about how those followers would react to such news. When it comes to the advice that a social media agency can give to anyone who is new to this particular platform, one of the most important bits of information that can be presented is to not post messages online that you would not necessarily say in real life. Would Snay’s daughter brag about the money that could contribute to the supposed summer vacation in Europe that her post entailed in a real-life scenario?

As much as I enjoy the perks that sites such as Facebook and Twitter offer, it seems as though social media overall has allowed people to believe that they have a sense of ambiguity. They may believe that the messages they post or tweet out are not going to come back around on them but, more and more, stories are released about individuals being negatively impacted by networking. Last year in June, for example, a Taco Bell employee was fired because of a photo that was leaked of him licking a stack of taco shells. One would have to imagine that he didn’t anticipate that sort of backlash but these occurrences happen, giving the lack of any true ambiguity on social media.

The Snay family is likely none too happy about the actions taken by the daughter and it’s hard to blame the members of the family in question. Even if $80,000 isn’t looked at as a tremendous amount of money, it still matters. With that said, if Patrick Snay didn’t previously outline the rules of the confidentiality agreement to his family, it’d be easy to make the case that he had a part in the matter as well.

Regardless of which side is taken, one cannot overlook what this story is: a circumstance turned unfortunate by poor utilization of a networking platform.

Photo Credit

It’s no secret that images are a powerful tool in human communication. Numerous psychological studies have found that our brains not only process images more quickly than text, but images also register with us on an emotional level. Throughout the history of humanity written text has only been around for a few thousand years, while visual stimulants and images have been around for tens of thousands of years. Even cavemen used images, shown in the paintings they left behind.

Advertisers and marketers have been using images in print media for years and are realizing more and more that images are just as powerful — if not more so— on the Internet. In the past few years, image-based social media has become increasingly popular; in fact Instagram and Pinterest are two of the fastest growing social media sites ever. Images in social media marketing are truly the way of the future. Here are a few reasons why images work and how you should use them in your social media campaigns.

Why Are Images so Important in Marketing?

As mentioned above, numerous studies have shown that our brains love pictures, and process them much more readily than text alone. According to Billion Dollar Graphics, psychologists estimate that we decode images about 60 percent faster than text. Furthermore, according to Zabisco, about 90% of the information that comes into our brain is visual. Images even play a role in how we learn. For example, if you’re enrolled in continued education courses, taking a study break with a colorful magazine is a great way to help recharge your brain.

The appeal that images have doesn’t just apply to photographs — infographics and videos also help attract and keep our attention. YouTube receives about 4 billion views per day; that’s about one view for every other person on the planet. All of this means that if you’re not using images and videos as part of your Internet marketing campaign, you’re just not getting the most out of your efforts.

What Makes an Image Shareable?

Images will inevitably be shared more often than text online, but certain types of images are shared more often than others. Here are some of the reasons people share images on their pages.

Quotes and Stories: Good quotes usually resonate with people. Quotes elicit a “me too!” response among readers, which prompts them to share the quote with others. Disney, for example, often posts stills of its movies along with a quote on Facebook. These posts have hundreds — if not thousands — of likes and shares. Granted, Disney is an internationally recognized corporation, but the same logic applies to small businesses, too.

You can embed quotes in images using tools like PicMonkey. This is especially effective if you want to give the words you post extra emphasis. SomeeCards, Inc. is a whole business built around the idea that quotes in an image are highly shareable.

Humor: Everyone loves a good joke, no matter how serious your business is. Several months ago, marketers for E&A Credit Union attracted a great deal of attention with a post about zombies. To promote their home equity credit services, E&A posted a photo of a zombie-proof house. The photo’s caption let followers know they could use the 1.99% equity line of credit to prepare their home against a zombie infestation. It received hundreds of likes and shares within a few hours.
News: If images share pressing news about a business or current event, users will likely share them. This is part of what’s made Instagram a valuable news source. By following natural disasters or other breaking news events, people often get their news through social media before traditional outlets.

“Mirror” Images: People also tend to share images that are similar to their own. If you’re designing an infographic or another image with embedded text, do some research and see what kinds of images are trending. Chances are, if a person liked a design well enough to make it their cover photo, they’ll also like it when you use it in a post.

Also, you don’t necessarily need to have a post about an image to use its power. Regardless of what kind of content you’re posting, you can often get the most mileage out of your post by combining an image with text. For example, when posting a link to a story on Facebook, you should always craft an image post and put the full link to the article in the caption. This way, the image will be much bigger and will attract more attention.

Start using these tips to get the most out of your social media marketing today!

The more social media followers, the better — right? As is often the case, it’s not quite that simple.

A big boost in your Twitter followers might give you a warm glow inside, but it’s not going to pay the bills. Likewise, a popular post on Facebook might collect hundreds or thousands of “likes,” but it doesn’t always follow that your bottom line will receive a boost.

To ensure that your social media presence is effectively advancing your company and brand, you’ll have to hit the right notes with your customer base and navigate a minefield of dodgy shortcuts. And it’s important to understand exactly what you’re getting (and what you’re not getting) from your company’s investment in social media.

What Are Those ‘Likes’ Worth?

Think of a “like” as a high-five from your customers. You’re not going to be able to expand your business or drive revenue on the strength of a high-five, no matter how vigorous it is or how many you receive. Every social network has its own metric for measuring success — “likes,” retweets, and favorites — but it’s not easy to convert these symbols of support into cold, hard cash.

There’s no shortage of people looking to put a value on your “likes” for you, though: EContent Magazine estimates that each “like” is worth $3.60 annually, while the HBR Blog Network came up with a detailed formula to help you work it out yourself. You’ll find just as many commentators suggesting the figure is actually zero.

I’ve worked with big Fortune 500 companies and very small businesses, and within that range of experiences, I’ve found that it doesn’t much matter how many fans and followers you have. It comes down to what you do with them.

How to Make Those High-Fives Count — Literally

So, what’s the process for unlocking the tangible value of your social media presence? You should begin by thinking of your network as a complete ecosystem. You need to build engagement, and then you need to monetize it. You wouldn’t try to sell to an empty room, nor would you fill the room and promptly leave your audience in the lurch.

1. Listen. Listen to the consumer buying signals on social media, and familiarize yourself with what your customers are saying. Pay attention to what they say about their needs. Respond with unique coupons or offers for your followers.
2. Incentivize. If customers take advantage of one of your offers, give them the opportunity to share it with their friends. This philosophy of customer-organized sharing is at the heart of most successful social media marketing.
3. Scale. These one-to-one conversations and unique offers will give you a better idea of both how to reach your customers and what they want. Build on these successes with targeted advertising (on Facebook or Twitter), which will amplify your reach.
4. Supplement. Use your social media accounts as a bridge to more in-depth content for your followers. You could link to a blog post on your company website or to a free e-book available only to users who provide an email address.

Each of these ideas leads to new customers or at least new prospects who might later become customers. The end goal is to make a sale, but growing a community through interesting posts and conversations is still an important part of getting people into the room.

Avoid the Fakes

You can buy social media followers cheaply and easily, but as with most business shortcuts, you’re not really getting value for your money. You might not be quite as high-profile as Mitt Romney, but you will attract negative attention all the same if it looks like you’re paying for your popularity (or, even worse, if you actually are paying for your popularity). What kind of message does that send to potential customers and clients?

These fake followers boost your numbers but hardly offer any kind of engagement, which can leave your social media pages deserted — online ghost towns. Again, this isn’t the impression you want to make. Organic and honest community-building is the best way forward. It takes longer to achieve, but it provides more rewarding and long-lasting results.

Additionally, it’s easier to spot a fake than you might think. Spammy Twitter accounts don’t hide very well: They have around zero followers, rarely tweet, and often keep the default egg icon as their avatar. A lack of community engagement on Facebook is another giveaway, as are sudden, sharp rises in follower numbers. The money you spend will make you look more popular, but only at first glance.

Like any tool, social media is most powerful when you know how to best use it. You must be serious about turning your fans and followers into paying customers, as well as attracting them to your social networks in the first place. Only when you’re engaging genuinely and providing real value to your following will you see a real return on the time and effort spent on your social media strategy.

Don’t worry. This isn’t one of those “feel good” stories about how social media is all about interacting with your local community. That part’s true, but you should know that already, right?

Today, let’s go over a quick explanation of how social media algorithms, especially Facebook’s, work and why you’re actually hurting your local page’s chances of being seen by having too many people outside of your local area liking your page. It isn’t just a matter of them not being interested in your content the way that locals will. It is an algorithm play that can actually prevent locals from seeing your posts.

There was a video that came out last week talking about the evil ways that Facebook advertising works and why it’s pretty much worthless. The things that the video discusses have been known by many in the social media marketing arena for some time now. However, we’ve also known that any poor execution or strategy will yield the bad results described in the video.

The redeeming quality of the video was that it highlighted something I’ve said many times: the algorithm plays on reactions. If you post something that gets interactions shortly after it’s posted by the some of the people who see the post, it’s more likely to be presented to more people. Conversely, if a ton of people see the post and do not interact with it, Facebook knows this and believes the content is not as worth as others. This is the game that Facebook has mastered and it works for the most part as long as your content and advertising strategies are strong.

One of our clients, Albany Chevrolet, posted the image above. It was pertaining to a national story about Chevrolet giving money to colleges that were participating in their environmental push. Rather than take it at face value and discuss the OEM’s initiative alone, we turned it into a localized story by highlighting the local university with the story.

It’s okay to take national stories and post them on social media, but try to put the local spin into it whenever possible.

From a reach perspective, you should be shooting for over 95% of your Facebook reach going after people within driving distance of your business. In this case, someone local will be more inclined to like the post rather than someone further away. As more people like it, more people will see it, which makes more people like it… etc.

Stop pushing for far-off fans. Stop allowing them. Put the emphasis on only the locals and you’re going to be in front of more of them.

Those of us in the Facebook advertising world were greeted with an amazing new look and feel to Facebook Power Editor today. This is a pretty neat development for those who are new to the tool because it’s much cleaner and more organized than before.

While the changes were mostly cosmetic, it does allow for real-time monitoring of stats rather than constant downloading. That’s all. No big deal otherwise.

Social media marketers know the key to reaching a broad audience is through an understanding of what it is their targeted audience wants to see. To remain relevant, note-worthy and timely, you’ll have to do a bit of research to find out what those wants are. Doing so will help you better comment on the topics and become part of a greater conversation.

One of the greatest ways to do this, is to take advantage of trending topics on multiple social media platforms, which, luckily, make it easy for you to determine the data you need. By better understanding your audience, you’ll be able to create content that interacts with them and brings your message to the forefront. Here’s a list of the best places on the internet to gather data to help you become the trendiest spokesperson for your company:

1. Twitter

Twitter is one of the greatest platforms for discovering trending topics. It’s based in real-time and allows users to have more immediate interaction with one another and with topics of interest. There are lots of ways to locate the topics on Twitter, but I’d suggest trying Trendsmap.com.

Trendsmap.com shows the hot hashtags around the world. You can focus on your geographical location if you want, or you can make a comment on something else trending thousands of miles away from where you’re seated. You can choose different levels of visibility for your account. For a small fee, you’ll be able to see trend detail and history, allowing you to better navigate the social sphere.

2. Facebook

Facebook is new to the trending scene and will soon be rolling out its own set of rules for gathering “trendy” topics. The company announced the change mid-January with hopes of seeing it spread throughout the next several weeks.

The “trending topics” section will soon appear in the right-hand corner of a user’s News Feed and will show customized topics based on the user’s interests and computer-use. The difference between Facebook’s version and Twitter’s is that the topics share a brief description of why they are trendy. For example, if commercial construction company were listed, it would tell you what the company did to get the attention.

As a social media marketer, you’ll be able to take those trends and build content around them to make your Facebook page interactive and conversational. The only tricky part with this one is that Facebook is less “real” time than some of its competitors, making some of the trends less timely than those on other platforms.

3. Google Trends

Google Trends is a great way to find out what people are looking at through the highly used search engine. The site gives you information on how many searches accompanied a certain phrase, and where it came from around the world. It actually allows you to choose the trends by country or globally, so it all depends on what sort of information you are looking for.

By finding out what your area is looking at the most, you’ll be able to approach the topic with a unique perspective and open a forum for your site visitors and potential clients to comment. By doing so, you’ll be creating a conversation and finding a deeper way to connect.

Why You Should Be Familiar with Trends

So, you’ve been given some resources, but what difference do they really make for your company or for your job as a social media marketer? The answer is completely up to you. By creating interesting content that speaks to topics your users are interested in, you’ll be able to better show how interested you and your company are in the larger picture. You’ll be able to create conversation and opportunities to show how you and the services you offer fit into that picture.

Take a look at this infographic from a small winery in Pennsylvania. They took the trending topic, Hurricane Sandy, and made a comment on it, a humorous one, at that. In doing this, they were able to show what they had to offer: wine to get people through it. Posting the graphic just as Hurricane Sandy was trending allowed the winery to get thousands of shares and increase their brand recognition. Isn’t that something we all want?

If I were to tell you that companies like Facebook, Google, and others would have the ability to work together, you might think that it’d be a silly claim to make. After all, these are companies that are looking to make it to the top and the only way that they can be at their best is through competition. That being said, it appears as though they made peace, at least for one day. This is where a particular time called the Safer Internet Day has to be talked about.

Those who have been bullied know all too well about the physical – not to mention emotional – trauma that it can cause. However, these days it’s like the bullying does not end at school, as the online world has been both a blessing and a curse. For as much software as there is as far as communication is concerned, there have been a number of stories of young men and women being harassed through the Internet. Stories like the one about five-year-old Disney star Mia Talerico being sent death threats shows that this problem hasn’t faded entirely, regardless of the level of awareness it’s garnered.

According to a report on Forbes, Safer Internet Day was founded in Europe a little more than a decade ago. It was recognized throughout many places in the world but it wasn’t until recently that the United States climbed onboard the proverbial ship. Many different companies that have been in competition over the years will put their differences aside for a day in order to celebrate this day. From Twitter to Sprint, the list of supporters is more like a who’s who of global entities.

Not only does this act show goodwill on the part of the companies, but it’s easy to say that this is being done in order to keep consumer trust. Any social media agency can tell you that platforms like Facebook and Twitter are hotbeds for networking, though this can be a negative at times. What’s stopping a schoolyard bully from logging onto one of these patforms and continually harassing someone else on his or her page? The promotion of a greater level of personal security and safety on this day is understandable.

Yesterday was Safer Internet Day and the list of companies that were in support of this day is hard to overlook. While it’s likely that these companies want to appeal themselves to current and potential consumers, it’s apparent that they recognize the situation at hand. There is a clear problem with matters such as bullying and the fact that individuals can be targeted through their computers and phones is unfortunate, to say the least. The tagline for SID is, “Let’s create a better Internet together,” and it’s hard to imagine a nobler endeavor in the online world.

Photo Credit