'Why Should I Use Social Media?'-- A Guest Post from a Social Media Marketer

Why should I expend
the effort on social media?

Today's guest post, "Managing Reputation and Social Media in a Digital World," is by Kelly Carson, Director of Strategic Marketing, Charter Homes & Neighborhoods

You hear it again and again – social media is the future of business marketing. Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites are experiencing exponential growth, and are gaining prominence in the worlds of marketing and advertising. Most of you already know the basics – a Facebook Page, blog, Twitter account, or LinkedIn profile allows you to talk to current and potential customers and to promote your products, services and latest news. However, for many business owners and marketers, the actual value of social media to their business still seems unclear. Why, you might ask, does my printing firm, landscaping business, B2B supply firm, restaurant, or car dealership need a social media presence?

While I can’t answer each and every objection to spending time on social media, I’d like to tackle one frequent objection I’ve heard – here’s a quick summary:

Why does it even matter if I’m on Facebook or Twitter? Why should I expend effort – and resources! – spending time on sites that are known as “time wasters”? I mean, my customers are on these sites to talk to their friends, and if I start talking to them on Facebook, I’ll just annoy them – or maybe even encourage them to leave negative comments about me!

My response? I believe that social media exists to help people connect in ways that were previously difficult (or impossible!) to do. Want to connect with your best friend from third grade? Just “friend” them on Facebook. Want to vent your frustration with a local restaurant? Tweet away, and Chili’s is listening! The bottom line? No matter what type of firm you are involved with, in order to build relationships with your customers, you need to be present in as many venues where people connect and communicate as you can.

Your customers want a dialogue
and an authentic connection with your company.

Here’s the surprising truth: your customers expect – and even want you to be involved in social media. The capabilities presented by social media have created all new challenges for marketers. No longer can businesses simply “broadcast” a marketing message to customers. These days, your customers want a dialogue – they want to speak directly to the companies that they patronize, and they expect an authentic response from a real person. The more “present” you are where your customers spend their time, the more authentic your connection with them will be! The key for your business is to be where your customers are – whether that is on Facebook, on an online forum, or Tweeting with friends and peers.

You need an active social media presence – and to actively manage your online presence - if you want to know what people are saying about your business and have the chance to respond. In the age of social media, people are becoming increasingly more likely to talk about their experience with your business online. Whether through a tweet, a blog post, an online review, or a comment on Facebook, your customers will find an outlet to express how they feel about you. If you are a member of these sites, you’ll have a greater likelihood of being able to capture – and respond to – these comments. At a minimum, you should take a few minutes to set up free Google Alerts so that you’re notified whenever someone mentions your brand or a keyword related to your brand online.

One additional tip: find someone to keep an eye on your website traffic. Are there a large number of visitors to your webpage from a site you’ve never heard of? If so, check out the URL that they’re coming from – you may be surprised! For example, a few months ago, I noticed a significant amount of traffic coming to our site from a local blog. After doing a little “Googling,” I discovered that the woman who wrote the blog had visited one of our Parade of Homes entries – and then wrote a blog post about how she used it as inspiration as she decorated her own home! As a result, we were able to connect directly with the blogger and share a great review of that home with our other online followers.

Sure, but what if someone complains about my business? I like to think of complaints as “unmade requests.” Rather than ignoring or avoiding your customers’ online complaints, why not address them before they have the chance to fester and grow? People who are unhappy with your business are likely looking for some validation, some sort of response that lets them know that you care. Some of the most successful companies using social media have been able to address their customer’s complaints instantly – just look at Boingo, HP, or Best Buy’s celebrated Twitter customer service efforts. The ability to respond directly to customer complaints is a powerful one. You are reaching out and solving a problem for someone when they are upset or frustrated – meaning that you may just get to be the hero in the story of their customer experience!

Social media: an endeavor worth taking

In the end, while much of social media may still be a “Wild West” yet to be explored and figured out, it’s an endeavor worth taking. Best of luck as you start the conversation!




Charter Homes & Neighborhoods (www.charterhomes.com) is a new home builder based in Lancaster, PA (with a brand new website!) Kelly received her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2010. Originally from Littleton, CO, Kelly has enjoyed working in online marketing and social media since she learned her first snippet of HTML in 2003. You can reach Kelly at kcarson@charterhomes.com.

Some final thoughts on Social Media

As summer gasps its last breath in the US Northeast, it's about time to conclude our Social Media Summer posts on "High Ground." Before we resume more conventional topics for a family business blog, it is worth mentioning that even if family businesses, most especially B2B's, don't see a lot of potential for social media marketing in the near future, they need to be aware of what other businesses, large and small, are doing and why.

Here's a handful of great articles from a fantastic website called Social Media B2B: Exploring the Impact of Social Media on B2B Companies worth your perusal:

• Five ways for B2B companies to engage on Facebook
• 10 examples of B2B Facebook Fan Pages
• 5 cases when social media isn't right for B2B
• 11 B2B social media predictions for 2010

This concludes your summer reading from your friends at High Ground!

Quote of the week

“Those who ignore the party/conversation/network when they are content and decide to drop in when they need the network may not succeed. It’s pretty easy to spot those that are just joining the network purely to take – not to give. Therefore, be part of the party/conversation/network before you need anything from anyone.”

– Jeremiah Owyang, Web-Strategist.com

Facebook means business

by Gale Martin, Director of Marketing and Member Relations at the S. Dale High Center for Family Business

Today I read an interesting blog post at Inkling Media called, "But My Customers Aren't on Facebook."

The article was so titled because many in the small business world (and that might also pertain to the family business world) aren't on Facebook and thereby assume their customers aren't there either. Essentially, the author made the argument that yes, your customers most likely are on Facebook by examining numbers alone:

The U.S. currently has a population of about 310 million. Of those, about 60 million are under the age of 13 (the age at which you are legally permitted to join Facebook). That means there are 250-million Americans are technically able to be on Facebook. Now consider that nearly 132 million Americans ARE on Facebook.

In other words, more than half the available population in the U.S. is on Facebook.

Still, the disconnect that "customers aren't on Facebook" continues. For how long? In the case of Facebook and many social media, numbers speak louder than words. Facebook users are estimated at 500 million. How much larger does it have to grow before businesses acknowledge that yes, their customers are hanging out on Facebook?

If you are a retailer targeted a geographic customer base, Facebook even has a nifty way of identifying how many Facebook users within a 10, 25, or 50 mile radius are interested in your product. This customer engine is free to use and is found on the Advertise on Facebook page. Though the engine is used to create an ad, you don't need to follow-through and purchase Facebook ads to use it.

Here's an example. Let's say you are a family-owned business that does home remodeling located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Using Facebook's ad engine, you can enter some data and quickly calculate the the number of Facebook users within 50 miles who are interested in Home Renovations, Remodeling My Home, Home Design and Home Building.

In this case, there were 100 potential new customers talking about home remodeling on Facebook, who live within your service area. How many more remodeling jobs would make your year a profitable one? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? How many potential customers could you be cultivating through a Facebook presence or Facebook ads?

Like Twitter, it costs absolutely nothing to open an account and have a presence on either of those social media.

In part two of "Facebook means business," we'll look more closely at Facebook ads and how to use them.

The Twuth about Twitter, part deux

by Gale Martin, Director of Marketing and Member Relations at the S. Dale High Center

Since numbers of Twitter users are growing even faster than numbers of Facebook users, it's time well spent investigating how businesses, large and small, are using Twitter. (Or in reading a blog post by someone who's been studying up on Twitter.)

One of the things I really value about Twitter are the links to great content readily available. Nearly every worthwhile news and business news publication is on Twitter and posts links to their news: Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc. Magazine.

I follow all these publications and numerous others. In very little time, I can scroll down my feed and find several things that would be of interest to family businesses or those who work with family businesses. Besides posting our own Tweets on Facebook, I use content I find via the Twitter feed to post on the S. Dale High Center's Facebook page. So, if you've already made the leap to an organizational Facebook page, Twitter can be a great resource for valuable content. And, if I repost a link to their content, it's a win-win in the Google Juice arena--they get more, we get more.

If you don't want trivial and useless information coming through your Twitter feed, you need only be selective about who you follow, or simply "unfollow" anyone whose not offering the content value you're seeking.

Business2Consumer uses of Twitter
If you are a family business with retail operations, Twitter has so many uses:

• Post links to daily or weekly specials detailed on your website, driving more people to that that website you spent so much time and money creating. 
• Provide instantaneous customer service by responding to anyone who says anything about you. (Remember Lauren's experience with Dunkin' Donuts on Twitter, and they got back to her--even game her a nickname--"Latte Lauren"). You can subscribe to a service like Social Oomph and receive a list of anyone who mentioned you, or just use the @ feature built-into Twitter to know where your company is being mentioned instantaneously.
• Promote upcoming special events.
• Host a contest and offer prizes to someone who can answer a question about your product or from one of your advertisements.
• Provide a link to a discount coupon.

The only caveat I would offer is that in between promoting your company, take time to respond to customers. Time invested is well spent. Spend as much time talking about others as you do yourself, and you'll be a valued member of the Twitter community. Twitter is a no-cost customer service tool that can be as effective as your telephone. Maybe better--you have to pay for phone use.

If you're not sure how to use Twitter for your retail business, here is a list of retail practices and retailers on Twitter. Follow them and watch what they're doing. You'll soon be expanding on their ideas or come up with ideas of your own, based on your resources.

Business2Business uses of Twitter

• Post job openings with a link (bit.ly) back to your careers page.
• Post new product announcements with a link back to your page.
• Check out the Tweets of new hires or, even better, future hires.
• Search company name to see what is being said about you.
• Use Twitter to make connections with executives you haven't been able to connect with otherwise.
• Respond to industry leaders about their Tweets--relationship building.

At present, opening a Twitter account is free to anyone. I've heard rumblings that may change for commercial users, but the only costs at present are opportunity costs. If you decide to have a Twitter presence, from what other marketing functions will you draw the time and the people to do so? 

If you are interested in social media, I would advise you to think about whether you have the personnel to make your Twitter presence truly personal and authentic, and whether you can stay active. Having an inactive account is almost worse than no account at all. 

Twitter has great search engine optimization potential. If you are a retailer and have been talking about how to ramp up hits to your website, you really should see if Twitter is a fit for your organization.

If you'd like more information about Twitter uses for family businesses, don't hesitate to send me an email at marting@etown.edu.

The twuth about Twitter

by Gale Martin, Director of Marketing and Member Relations

I'm sure you've heard them--the Twitter jokes. Usually they are told by non-Twitter users. TV personality Conan O' Brien joked, “I hear YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are merging to form a super-social media site – YouTwitFace.”

Even President Obama joked that Twitter could replace the Cold War-era red phone after he heard Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also set up a Twitter account.

Whatever you think about Twitter or Twitter jokes, business leaders and marketing communications managers need to be aware of that numbers of Twitter users are growing exponentially. Social media consultant Jeff Pester has predicted that Twitter (now 250M and years later into the game) will beat Facebook (500M) to 1 billion monthly active users.

Why is Twitter growing so fast and why should you care? I mean you have a family business to run, right? You can't be playing with the latest Web 2.0 craze while there's real work to do! One reason Twitter is growing so fast is that its search engine potential is lightning fast. Millions more people are turning to Twitter for real-time information about things that matter to them--news, sports, weather, entertainment. If you've invested in Google Ad words as part of your online marketing strategy, you need to consider that Twitter may outstrip Google in search potential sooner rather than later. Also, Twitter is simple and fast to use in sharing information. It is the most accessible micro-blogging platform currently available.

As to the second question, why you should care, forward-looking businesses know marketing potential when they see it: Consumers are talking about products and services on Twitter, and businesses with a presence on Twitter have the opportunity to respond and engage customers more quickly than ever.


"In the past, companies would hire a market research firm to understand their audience," says Mike Hudack, CEO of Blip.tv, a New York-based video website. "Now we use Twitter to get the fastest, most honest research any company ever heard — the good, bad and ugly — and it doesn't cost a cent," he says.

With Twitter, any business leader can monitor every mention about them and see exactly what people are saying. Smart business people can use it to ramp up their customer service and in turn develop loyal customers. Consider the case of my friend Lauren, who will ever hereafter be a Dunkin' Donuts customer because of their outstanding customer service via Twitter. Read all about Lauren's watershed experience here.

You can even Tweet information about services and products your company is thinking of offering and get instantaneous feedback about whether they're worth your company's time and energy to pursue.

At the very least, you owe it to your family business to know where your current and future customers are hanging out. In part two of "The twuth about Twitter," I'll talk about both B2B's and B2C's are currently using Twitter with customers, consumers, and other publics.

The 4-1-1 on Google Juice

PK Dennis of Die-Tech, Inc.

When the marketing director for Die-Tech, Inc., (one of the S. Dale High Center's member companies), PK Dennis gave her presentation on Social Media for our family business community this spring, she mentioned "Google Juice." And I have been intrigued by the term ever since.

What is Google Juice?
Google Juice (or in more official circles--Search Engine Optimization) is the virtual substance which flows between web pages through their hyperlinks, in both directions! (Notice in the preceding paragraph I have four hyperlinks embedded in the text--just look for the underlined copy for live links). Pages with lots of links to them acquire more Google Juice; pages which link to highly juicy pages--pages with great content which are highly ranked--can acquire additional Google Juice.

Google Juice, in essence, is the value that Google gives to your site, for having a valuable link from a good site. The value adds up for each link, and you get better search rankings!

 Why should you care about Google Juice?

Googlebots will crawl and index your site more often if you have inbound links. Google Juice will help your site be more popular with Internet browsers like Google--though Bing is another popular browser that operates much the same way and responds to SEO techniques.

If you want to attract more visitors to that beautiful brand-spanking new website you've just invested untold thousands of dollars into (and believe me--you do want more hits), Google Juice or search engine optimization should be a primary concern for your marketing/communications/IT people.

How to create more Google Juice?
I can tell you, from having done some SEO research in the past, that posting content regularly is important for best SEO or for kickin' Google Juice. So, if you venture into Social Media, try to carve out time to post content regularly for optimal results.

There is actually a free downloadable report called "Fast and Easy Search Engine Ranking" available at a blog called Google Juice. I merely sent them my work email address, they sent me a confirmation notice and I downloaded the report within seconds of receiving the confirmation. The report contains more specific information than "update content regularly," on how to maximize your Google Juice or SEO and link building.

Here's some other great links I found on fortifying your Google Juice:

• How to Get Ranked Higher on Google
• More Juice, Please! A Link-Building Checklist for Editors
• Using Social Networks to Get More Juice

Quote of the week -- social media

“ATA – be AUTHENTIC, be TRANSPARENT, be ALTRUISTIC, and you will find enough success in social media to have a satisfying career and experience.”

– Nils Montan

Summer of social media on "High Ground" . . .

by Gale Martin, Director of Marketing and Membership, S. Dale High Center for Family Business

If you're not heading out for the beach anytime soon but would like a chance to play with fun stuff and bask in a little quick success, why not consider investigating some social media tools this summer right here on "High Ground"?

I liken Social Media to beach toys and sunbathing not because I don't think it's important. I do. In fact the marketing director from one of our member companies, Die-Tech, Inc. and I gave two seminars to members this year to make them aware of the freight train that is Social Media. Family businesses need to know about the extent of its use in business and the degree to which customers are relying on Social Media to conduct business.

Click here for slides from the High Center's Social Media seminar.

How important is Social Media becoming to conducting business in the 21st century? Some, like this online expert, would say vitally important:

"If you don’t have a web presence, your competitors will overtake you. You’ll miss out, without ever knowing about it," say the experts at Kendall Copywriting.

I mention Social Media in the same context as summer fun because it is entertaining, learning about these tools and developing fans and followers. And hunting down little blue birds in search of Twitter banners to post on your website. And for those who've tried to log on when Twitter is over-capacity, even sighting the smiling #failwhale (below) has entertainment value.

Social media use in the era of Web 2.0 is growing exponentially. The latest estimates put Facebook users topping 450 million.

So, in July and August, "High Ground" will look at each of these Social Media tools/sites with an eye toward sharing best practices and other tips.

Stop back soon. Beach pails, smiling white whales and royal blue birds are all welcome. In the meantime, if you need a primer on why you should be paying attention to Socialnomics, watch this video below:

Leadership is paying attention to trends and knowing if and when to follow them...