Embracing Social Media

By Karen Carpenter



What is business-based social media, and what do you need to know about it to use it effectively in your company?



What Is Social Media?

No matter the size of your company or the product and service you deliver, every business needs to be engaged in social media. It's not a choice; it's 2010, and ignoring the sweeping effects of online community building can become an unfortunate and negative self-fulfilling prophecy. Traditional marketing alone is no longer enough to sustain and grow a business.

Social media is relationship marketing, and it includes e-mail, blogs, participation (forums, reviews, surveys, contests), RSS feeds, Twitter, instant messaging, podcasts and variations. Social media is an affordable, efficient marketing strategy. Embracing social media can include the following.

¥ Integrating it within your strategic and marketing campaigns

¥ Providing the resources (funds, staff and time) for it

¥ Maintaining it so it's current, informative and community friendly

¥ Measuring its effects

Social media emphasizes long-term relationships, focusing on retention and satisfaction. Unlike traditional marketing techniques, the focus and the measurement of the campaigns emphasize community building and awareness.

At its best, social media does not concentrate on point-of-sale marketing; rather, the focus is community building. Business-based social media as a dialogue tool, inviting participation and feedback around topics, brands, products and clients - without directly selling - is different: It's powerful.

Another difference is the measurement. Unlike traditional return on investment (e.g., how many more widgets will I sell if I post a blog, send an e-blast and survey my customers?), measurement is in terms of awareness, community building and feedback opportunities. And, most importantly, the metrics used must match the specific business goal and the audience participating. So, having restaurant patrons responding to their chef's tips on his vegetarian chili is a good restaurant blog.

The following are some social media tools.



E-Mail Campaigns

Plan e-mail blasts to launch, follow up and measure campaigns; to make announcements; to send information to the community. Although there are numerous products on the market, Constant Contact is known to be reliable for its flexibility and professionalism of product and service.

Tom Funk, in the April 2009 issue of Chief Marketer magazine, suggests these benchmarks for measuring an e-mail campaign.

¥ Open Rates: Ten percent to 19% is normal; 20% is good.

¥ Click-Through Rates: Research says the 2%-5% range is average. Shoot for 10%.

¥ Conversion Rate: To include hard numbers here would be misleading. But consider that visitors from your house e-mail are highly qualified; they should convert at least as well as people who enter your URL directly. Review your web analytics, and benchmark e-mail conversion rates against those other highly qualified segments of your web traffic.

¥ Unsubscribe Rate: Less than 1% is desirable. Try for 0.5%.

¥ Revenue per Message Delivered: Here's an e-mail rule of thumb: Assuming you have an average order value of $100, aim for around $0.15 to $0.20 revenue per e-mail message delivered. The math with healthy lists might look like this.

¥ Send 10,000 messages

¥ Open rate is 20% [2,000 opens]

¥ Click-through rate is 10% [200 clicks]

¥ Conversion rate is 10% [20 orders]

¥ 20 orders x $100 = $2,000 or $0.20 revenue per message mailed



Blogs

Blogs have the ability to do it all - they invite dialogue to a degree you control; they launch discussion topics, announce useful information and enhance search engine optimization on your web site.



Participation (Forums, Reviews, Surveys, Contests)

E-blasts can be used to promote contests, invite reviews and survey responses or direct community members to your postings on a specific topic.



RSS Feeds

RSS (real simple syndication) is a vehicle for sending news efficiently.



Twitter, MySpace, Facebook

Twitter is used for real-time social messaging; some refer to it as a microblog. MySpace and Facebook are social utilities you can post to to keep in contact with business associates. The three spaces are worth noting, depending upon your target audience and business goals.



Instant Messaging

Like Twitter, IM is real-time, text-based communication; IM may be used as a project management tool. Also important to business use, whereas Twitter usually broadcasts out to groups, IM is typically one-on-one.



Podcasts

While the delivery changes from downloading to streaming, podcasts are digital audio or video files that can be downloaded via the Web on any computer with the capacity to play a media file.



Why Use Social Media?

The integration of social media campaigns within traditional marketing campaigns adds the social awareness, community building and cohesion essential to sound strategic planning for growth. By incorporating strong graphic design; intriguing and useful dialog; compelling offers and smart merchandising; and inviting subject lines, personalization and segmentation; social media campaigns will strengthen market position.



Karen Carpenter is president of Galley Creative Group Inc. in Ellicott City. She can be reached at 410-997-7777 or via www.galleycreativegroup.com.