Make no mistake. Pinterest may be a pretty interface full of recipes, do-it-yourself tips, and pictures of cuddly animals (what social site doesn’t have cute animals anymore?), but the end game is all business.
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As social media continues to expand and enter more areas of our lives, the health and fitness segment has been dominated by a handful of major companies and publications. Nike was a trendsetter. Men’s Health made a splash early on. For the pure healthy lifestyle enthusiast who also enjoys a good Tweet or Facebook update, there’s an up-and-coming site that has the right mix of substance and social: Greatist.
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Facebook celebrated its 8th birthday this month. How much has it changed? How much has it changed us? Are we all a little more batty now that Facebook has become a prominent part of so many of our lives, giving us insights into friends and family that we never had before and offering a venue through which we can exclaim the nuances of our lives for the world (or simply our world) to see?
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A Google+ update sent out by internet entrepreneur and FamilyLink.com founder Paul Allen hints there may be another reason to keep an eye on the recently launched Search Plus Your World. According to the post, Google looks to be indexing web content faster for users who are logged in to its social network than those who are not.
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Every few months I take a serious look at my chosen profession and wonder if it’s really a tool for good or if it’s real “use” is to promote the negative in the world. There are many examples of good happening through social media whether through revolutions that weren’t possible a few years ago from oppressive regimes or the simple connection of people with others who they need to meet.
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These days hysteria about social media has reached fever pitch. All signs are pointing to social media being the printing press of the 21st century. And like Gutenberg’s 15th century printing press, social media is a revolutionary tool will thousands of applications, many of which we probably haven’t even discovered yet.
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The numbers are rising on businesses using Social Media to their advantage and rightfully so, since 97% of customers will purchase from your business based on a review they find on the product they are looking for, even more so the review is through people they trust, hence why social networks work.
Using Social Media as a form to communicate with customers does leave businesses open for negative sentiment and this has to be the biggest worry or response as to why businesses have yet to figure social media as a part of their Marketing strategies. However, people are not always going to be happy with your services or products and that is always a pitfall to owning a business, therefore people are talking negatively about your business online already. Using social networks to share in customer service and share a friendly persona while furthering your brand online will entice many who are upset with your business to flock there, giving you the greatest gift, the ability to respond quickly.
This will please the 34% of those who complain online more so than the ones that go ignored. As a business part of your job is to respond even to negative feedback. Look at it as a way to improve what may be lacking at your company and a form to build the trust back from the customer, which begins with a response that is customer service oriented.
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It seems almost silly to be looking at how brands are behaving on social media these days. Shouldn’t this be old hat by now?
Sadly, it’s not. A mere 20 percent of 200 businesses questioned by Forrester Consulting in a Dell-commissioned survey said social media efforts were at the core of their marketing efforts. Frighteningly, 27 percent called their social media efforts “experimentation.”
Some of that may be due to the fact that 42 percent of the company representatives surveyed said budget was the greatest internal challenge to their efforts.
Could that be because so many companies run around saying how social media is free? How it doesn’t cost anything? How they spent nothing on marketing, yet got amazing results.
I was at a meetup in New York City recently where the fitness app owner went on and on about how he spent no money on marketing, yet went viral and got amazing results, blah blah blah.
During the Q&A, I asked how much he spent on social media and social media marketing and asked him if it was kind of disingenuous to say they spent no money on marketing, when they obviously spent money on social media. Got a blank stare. Then the explanation, “Oh, I just meant that we didn’t spend any money on traditional marketing.”
That’s not what he said, though.
I’m not going to mention the company, because he’s not even close to being the only one who pretends that social media is without cost.
Can you spend less? Is it possible to go viral and get tons of free publicity on top of what you spent? Is it possible to cut back on ad dollars, go totally social and have better results? Yes. Yes. Yes.
Does that make social media and social media marketing free?
NO.
To do it right, you need to spend money and time making sure you’re targeting the right people in the right way. You need to spend time listening. You need to interact.
Marketing is different. Marketing is community now, not just saying, “Hey, our brand is great, buy us!”
Take a look at this infographic from GetSatisfaction, which nicely details the Dell/Forrester report. Very curious to hear from both marketers and brands about how you’re shaping your social media efforts and how you use it.
Just don’t tell me it’s free, OK?
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I lost all my phone contacts recently, which of course was a pity, but it led to an interesting discovery about privacy. Here’s my story.
I wanted to restore my smart phone to its original state – it started to work pretty slow after some time. The thing is that I simply forgot to copy my contact list backup. Shame on me.
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