Social media marketing is being defined in a number of ways and continues to change as social networks evolve, new networks emerge, and mobile devices begin to transform and dominate  our future. But what is social media marketing? Wikipedia defines it as “. . .  the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites.” Although succinct, that definition seems less than complete. Other definitions include the idea of using social networks to promote your brand to gain more fans, followers, click throughs, likes, and a plethora of other social currencies. Although these all seem to have a place in social media marketing’s definition they don’t capture the true essence of social media marketing: 1:1 communication.

Social Media Marketing vs. Marketers

Although Augie Ray suggests in his title “Social Media Marketing is Broken” he is correct in citing marketers as the reason why many social media marketing programs are ineffective or fail. Many marketers focus on the following “tactics”:

• Repetitive ads
• Sweepstakes
• Freebies
• Hard sell press releases
• Twitter ‘bot broadcasting
• Social currency exchanges (I’ll like your page if you like mine)
• Flash sales
• Deal of the Day websites

Although some of these tactics work to a certain degree, they only work in the right situations and at the right times. Rarely are any of these tactics effective for a continuous ongoing marketing program.

Traditional Marketer’s Mindset: Scale

All of the above listed tactics have one thread in common that happens to be the biggest problem marketer’s face every day: scale. Scale or scalability is the idea that a brand’s messages will receive exposure to the  largest number of  potential prospects and current clients as possible. What is driving marketers in today’s social media marketing world to utilize old, less than effective, traditional marketing tactics? One answer is the pressure from their superiors or clients. Another, just as prominent, is the fact that many marketing professionals’ backgrounds and experiences were based in traditional marketing tactics.

What’s the Answer?

The answer is not scale as the end all be all for your marketing program. It is not blind, traditional marketing tactics that do not engage the prospect or customer. And the answer is definitely not doing the same things when those things are not creating effective results. Engaging 1:1 marketing tactics within a comprehensive marketing strategy is the answer. Stay tuned as we will outline this idea in our next post.

Why writing about cases produces qualified leads for law firms:

• Articles demonstrate your involvement with cases that the reader may need assistance with in a way that is more powerful than simply listing your areas of specialty
• Information in the article might answer questions the reader may have about whether they have a case
• Blog titles, tags and keywords in content provide organic SEO for those researching specifics about the case
• Blog articles showcasing your work gives your firm a higher perception than promotional content on your website
• Articles may bring more clients to file suit or witnesses to testify

Don’t know where to start? Think about all the information that is public record and how it can be leveraged to attract and engage a potential new client. Here are some elements we have seen used to create articles that have successfully generated leads for law firms:

• Name the party you are fighting in the case. Potential clients might also be involved with the party or may be having a similar experience with a like party. You will also capture organic SEO for readers searching specifically for information about this party.

• Describe the complaint. Some potential clients need reinforcement that what they have experienced may be deserving of damage relief.

•  Provide quotes from your client in the case. Communicating about the experience in first person is one of the most powerful elements to drive a connection with the reader.

• Describe how the complaint(s) affected the client personally. Potential clients are more apt to relate to feelings and emotions than hard facts about the case.

Questions? I’ll address any questions you have right here.

Related articles:

6 Excuses Why People And Companies Do Not Blog

The Top 10 Reasons Why Businesses Must Blog: Perception Is Reality

Blog Article Writing Format Matches Online Reading Habits: Save Words Get Read

It has always been our vision

With the evolution of social media changing the way that business is done, social media skills are needed to land many jobs today. We want to do our part to support others in developing skills that increase job marketability.

Program Details

The free training program will be offered in a webinar format on the first and third Friday of each month, beginning January 20, 2012 from 11 AM to noon. Sessions will be recorded and made available in segments on our website.

Topics will cover all platforms that are now becoming essential for business, including blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. We will begin with the very basics and take the training to more advanced levels as the program evolves. Homework assignments will be provided at the end of each session to guide participants to apply and practice material covered.

How to Sign Up

A session topic schedule and sign-up form are available on our Social Media Training page.

Hope to have you on board!

Any questions?

With the avalanche and proliferation of smartphones, applications for smartphones, and the adoption rates

Pew Research Mobile Statistics

• 28% of American adults use mobile and location-based services
• 28% of cell owners use phones to get directions or recommendations based on their current location
• 9% of internet users set up social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn so that their location is automatically included in their posts on those services
• 10% of smartphone users have used a geosocial service
• Smartphone owners ages 18-49 are more likely than those over 50 to use either geosocial or location-based services on their phones

The Anatomy of a Foursquare Deal Done Right: Hotel Los Gatos

Our best experience with a Foursquare deal was during a recent local weekend trip. The Hotel Los Gatos, in beautiful Los Gatos, CA, created a smart check-in special for their guests. Guests that check-in on Foursquare to the the Hotel Los Gatos receive a $10 credit for their in-room mini bar. That’s it? Here is what the deal delivered to us and to the Hotel:

• Mini Bar: the Hotel priced their alcohol and food items very reasonably. Due to there price structure, we were able to enjoy two premium beers (Heineken) and a food item- jar of almonds.
• Goodwill: the moment we confirmed our “free” Foursquare deal at the front desk, we felt a sense of goodwill. We felt the establishment would take care of us, provide us great customer service, and that they cared about our perception of them
• Economic Impact: Because the hotel invested in us, we invested in two more food items and a split of wine. Net result: we spent $18 on mini bar items we would have never touched
• Onsite Sales: materials in the mini bar, branded with the Hotel Los Gatos’s in house restaurant Dio Deka, led us to investigate the restaurant. Although we did not stay for dinner, we will return to the restaurant for a future night out

How Can Businesses Attract More Foursquare “Check-Ins”?

• Simplicity: create a simple, valuable offer that people will enjoy. Give your product, service, or expertise in a manner that is generous enough to make a visitor feel special yet economical enough to make sense for your business
• Top Down: ensure that everyone in your business, and most importantly those people coming in contact with the public, understand the Foursquare offer
• Give It Away: do not create an offer that requires consumers to spend triple digits before receiving something in return. Instead give away your product, service, or expertise first. Give first before asking for something in return
• Ensure They Return: create an offer that provides an incentive for consumers to return to your establishment
• Rewards Card: in step with keeping your consumers coming back, create a geolocation check-in rewards card. Allow consumers to accumulate points. Brand the points with your name and logo. Give them something to keep in their wallet or purse, something they will show friends, and something that is elegant enough to inspire them to continue to carry it with them

Courtesy Wikipedia QR Code

Do you plan to utilize QR codes in your marketing program? If you do the following are some solid steps to consider when implementing your QR code campaign into your marketing mix.

7+ Questions to Consider Before Launching QR Code Marketing Program

1. Security: more articles are being written about malware that has been designed to completely disable your smartphone. Before creating your QR code campaign, research QR code security so that you can assure your consumers that they will remain malware free

2. Plan Your Goal(s): what do you want your QR codes to do for your business? Do you want them to showcase your products or services , videos, photos, ecommerce store or are you providing a buying incentive through a coupon?

3. Call to Action: once you have your purpose aka goals in mind what is your call to action? How are you going to get your prospects, consumers, clients, affiliates, and friends to perform an action you wish them to take?

4. QR Code Design: it has been called “robot barf” but what do you want your prospect to see when viewing your QR code? Is a standard code enough or do you need to find a designer QR Code theme?

5. Mobile Landing Page: if you think that you will simply link your QR code(s) to your website’s pages you are in for trouble. There is nothing more annoying to a consumer who takes the time to load a QR code than to get to the point of reading the information and realizing that it is not optimized for smartphone consumption. Simply put, unless your prospect-consumer has X-ray vision he/she will never be able to read your message.

Creating a mobile landing page that is optimized, allowing a smartphone user to read the text, is the key to any QR Code campaign. Without this component, don’t bother trying to utilize QR codes.

6. QR Code Analytics: Mashable’s Hamiliton Chan nails it when he identifies the most important analytic for you to concentrate on measuring:

“The most important metric of a QR campaign should not be the number of daily scans. Rather, the length of engagement time that your code is generating should be a marketer’s primary indicator of campaign success.”

As Hamilton states “having a low number of scans should not discourage the advertiser. . . “

7.  Social Media Analytics: are you broadcasting your use of QR codes on your Facebook page, Google+ page, blog, website, YouTube account, and other social network sites? If you are making the effort to broadcast your QR code campaign are you tracking the analytics from these efforts?

Over the past few years

We discovered that Salesforce.com has recognized the needs of it’s clients who have adopted social networks by enabling CRM integration with Twitter and Facebook via the Salesforce for Twitter and Facebook app from Force.com. This powerful app led us to our current partnership launch.

Why the Salesforce Platform for our Business?

We highly recommend the Salesforce platform for managing social marketing. Salesforce’s ability to integrate with Twitter and Facebook enables businesses to:

• Keep track of engagement with social connections
• Schedule and manage social networking campaigns
• Measure and analyze results
• Hold historical conversational data at the record level
• Use social data to leverage efforts in social networking
• Use social data to leverage efforts in other marketing channels

Inner Architect Partners with Red Cote Consulting Inc.

Business partnerships are often the lifeblood of any successful organization. It is with that thought in mind that we are extremely excited to announce our partnership with Red Cote Consulting Inc.. As a certified Salesforce.com partner since 2003, Redcote Consulting Inc. has worked with a broad cross section of businesses from small startups to medium sized organizations successfully completing over 300 Salesforce.com implementations/integrations. Red Cote’s range of services include:

• QuickStart: This service rapidly has a business up and ready to utilize Salesforce.com.  Red Cote helps customers configure the application with a brief Business Process Review followed by configuration of the application. This can be done online or on site. In conjunction with configuration, Red Cote offers JumpStart Training, online or on site training, to ensure users have the necessary skills to begin using the application effectively.
• Customized Consulting: This service is for customers who have completed the basic installation of Salesforce.com but need additional ongoing support for more complex functionalities that are more iterative in nature.

Purpose of Inner Architect-Red Cote Consulting Inc. Partnership

There are many advantages to our partnership with Red Cote Consulting that all support the purpose of this collaboration: to provide a unique opportunity for businesses to harness social media networks as powerful new channels that produce quantifiable returns on investment.

Inner Architect’s purpose and role in this partnership is to provide Red Cote Consulting clients and partners with services designed to help them understand, implement, and track successful social network campaigns that create positive results. We accomplish these goals offering the following:

• Businesses with Marketing Staff: we offer comprehensive consulting and training which enable the business to learn how to develop and manage effective social marketing programs from the Salesforce CRM
• Businesses without In-House Marketing: we offer full prospecting, customer marketing, and content development services provided by seasoned professionals at the fraction of the cost of hiring your own staff.

One of the ways we at Inner Architect give back to our community

Challenges with adoption

We started speaking at Marin Pro in the fall of 2008 with a program we called “Blogging to Employment” which we delivered to a very skeptical audience. Although the group seemed intrigued, they challenged us pretty hard about the power and practicality of the tool we said could be leveraged as a vehicle for standing apart as a job candidate. Faces in the audience were looking at us like we were a couple of early adopter geeks evangelizing a passing trend.

Over the last three years, the skepticism has waned, although the group has generally remained uninspired to adopt. I am thinking that perhaps we’ve begun to see the beginning of change in the group that sat in on our presentation earlier this week as a number of heads were nodding in agreement as we gave rationale about how social engagement can open doors.

Social engagement success story

I shared a story of how one particular fan of one of our law firm clients has gotten on the radar of the managing partner simply by liking or commenting on their Facebook page 2-3 times a week. I shared that this fan has never asked for a favor, but if she did we (the people behind the firm’s logo) would roll out the red carpet to help because we are so grateful for all her support.

One more reason to adopt

I do hope to see more of my friends at Marin Professionals adopting social networking and digital media. We’ve all heard the hard facts about finding a job if you’re 40, 50, or 60+.  Don’t we all seem more youthful if we’re doing stuff that many people think is only for kids?

President Obama and Mark Zuckerberg talk before a private meeting with technology business leaders in Woodside, CA Feb.17, 2011. (Also pictured, from left: Art Levinson of Genentech, Steve Westly of The Westly Group, and Eric Schmidt of Google.)

Today set in motion a game changer in the world of social networking as we know it. In its F8 news conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other key players announced some significant changes to the platform that we see as revolutionizing the concept of social networking and will greatly impact the role of Facebook in user’s lives.

Change #1: The Timeline

Up until now a Facebook profile has been used to share updates, photos, links, etc. that go into a stream that goes back as far as anyone has the energy to click deeper into. It has been simply a stream of content you have shared since the time you began participating on Facebook.

Today Facebook announced the “Timeline”. The Timeline puts order to the shared content in a way that chronicles your life. For example, you can click on a link to a particular year where you will see the photos you shared, status updates describing what you were doing or where you went.

The Timeline is a game changer because the Timeline changes what Facebook is. Facebook has grown from being a social sharing service to a service that chronicles your life for you and anyone else who wants to get to know you.

Change #2:  Heavy Emphasis on Social Apps

Facebook’s social graph has fostered a mentality where we look to the content we see from our friends and trust their recommendations more than advertising or algorithms. Expect to see a volume of apps that are designed to enable consumers to share what they are reading, listening to, cooking, buying, etc. so that friends can be introduced from a trusted source.

What this Means for Businesses

There has been no mention of business pages in the last 48 hours since Facebook began unveiling the new platform, yet our instincts are tied to the implications that Facebook is becoming a more personally meaningful platform in the user’s eye.

We have always seen that Facebook fans are not very different than fans of fan clubs from back in the day. While fans may like your products or services, they are probably more interested in learning about the people that make it all happen. As the Timeline becomes a chronicle for your fans’ lives, consider adjusting your page content to align with that vision. Increase the content you share about your key players and team, activities and missions you’re involved with.

To succeed in this revolution, you’ll need to think of Facebook not as a place to focus on your products and services, but rather a focus on who the people are that make it all happen. What do you see that I have missed?

The viral benefits of social media networking for brands today

4 Steps to More Viral Sharing of Your Content

When consumers and companies begin to recognize your brand’s content via the Retweet,  try the following steps:

• Curate Content: write a solid article and showcase it with a succinct tweet:

• Thank You Tweet: write a tweet thanking the person-brand that RT’d your content. Do not cobble your thank you at the end of their RT of your content. Instead, honor their kindness by thanking the person-brand first:

• Copywriting: after completing your thank you copy, describe (“adoption & measurement”) the post you are referencing. By referencing and describing your post, you help your RTing partner to remember their RT of your content easily. More important is the fact that this description may be viewed by Twitter users who may have missed your article when it was originally tweeted and subsequently RT’d

• Link: remember to add the original shortened link at the end of your Thank You tweet. This completes the strategy by giving those Twitter users who missed your original tweet or the subsequent RT the opportunity to click through to your content

You are in-charge of your company’s social media marketing program and you have a difficult decision tree to maneuver.  Should you rely upon a massive ad campaign to drive consumers to your Facebook page and follow your Twitter account? Or should you instead implement a grass roots, multi pronged, organic approach that utilizes fundamental principles with testing as the backbone of your program? The decision was easy for CNET’s new social media manager Nathan Bransford: go organic and don’t throw cash at the challenge.

CNET Social Media Program Results

Since his hire and take over of the CNET social media marketing program in December of 2010, Nathan Bransford has accomplished the following growth by utilizing a grass roots, advertising cost free, organic social media program:

• Facebook Page: increased likes from 69,000 to 430,440
• Twitter Followers: increased from 24,000 to 106,222

Organic Social Media Marketing Strategies

The following are some of the strategies implemented by Bransford

• Facebook and Twitter Buttons: include these buttons in your sites toolbar and make them available on every page
• Customize: optimize the size and look of the Facebook and Twitter buttons
• Testing: monitor what works and what does not work aka test and observe
• Over messaging: post no more than 4 to 6 times per day on Facebook and tweet between 10 to 20 times per day on Twitter (Note: in the case of a media firm posting 4 to 6 times per day on Facebook is permissible but this is a violation of Facebook etiquette for virtually every other business niche)
• Interact: social media is about interacting with people not simply and repetitively broadcasting of your message
• Tools: use Hootsuite and Bit.ly to schedule posts and track links
• Competition: utilize Wildfire to understand how your competition is performing on Facebook and Twitter

Inner Architect Testing Tips

We believe the most important strategy highlighted by Nathan is testing. The following are some tips to keep in mind when testing your messaging on any channel:

• Subject Lines: do you utilize email as a channel to engage your customers? If so testing copy for the subject line can make the difference between a consumer opening your email or sending it to the trash
• Time Frame: do you analyze the best times and days to post your Facebook messages, Tweets, blog posts and other communications?
• Call to Action: do you test your call to action copy to determine the best method to ask for a consumer to perform a specific act?
• Control Group v Test Group: are you setting up your testing with the correct parameters? You should have your control group, consumers receiving messaging you have utilized, and test the results against a test group of consumers who receive new messaging
• Keep Your Laboratory Clean: assuming you are utilizing a control and test group to understand the effectiveness of your testing, are you keeping the “laboratory clean” by ensuring each group is the exact same sized population? Are you sending the messages out at the same time on the same exact day?