Beyond the Buzz Marketing

Recently, I’ve had a spate of clients who have come to me after having not so pleasant experiences with other marketing companies or agencies.  The vast majority of these people have paid a fortune for products or services that didn’t benefit their company at all but they were part of a package that was sold to them by very prominent marketing companies. By the time these clients have gotten to me, they’re broke, their marketing needs a complete overhaul, and they’re gun shy.  

How can you avoid letting this happen to you?

Make sure you get what you pay for. One of my current clients was paying almost $2000 a month to a marketing company for Facebook and Twitter posts once a day that ended up being automated based on their own company blog. Do you get the significance of that? Someone in my client’s company was spending a good portion of their own time writing thought provoking business related blog posts and this marketing company just tweeted the title of the blog entry with a link back to my client’s blog. Oh and did I mention that every single tweet had the marketing company’s name in it somewhere? Seriously. That’s $2000 a month that my client was paying to have their own content tweeted by a company once a day while the marketing company was getting a shout out with each tweet. Social media marketing does not have to be an expensive venture.

1. Check the numbers. Find out how many hours they plan to work on your social media marketing each month. Then ask how many posts/tweets that translates into and how much interaction they’ll provide with your fans/followers. Then do the math. You may find out you’re paying someone $100 an hour to make one tweet or post for you every day.  Is that worth the value to you?
2. Ask for examples. You want to see current clients and what they’re doing for those clients. Then watch the Twitter/Facebook posts and see if they’re delivering.
3. Find out who will provide the content. If you’re still required to provide the information, facts, etc. then you shouldn’t be paying a significant amount to someone else to package it into 140 characters or less.
4. Watch closely.  Once you’ve hired someone to do your social media marketing, keep an eye on what they’re doing. It’s your company. Not theirs. Are they effectively sharing your message? Are they giving you everything they promised? And are your fans/followers responding to that message? If not, then you need to re-evaluate that relationship.
5. Ask questions. Any company worth paying can answer the questions you have about social media marketing.

The last thing to remember is a big one. There are a lot of self proclaimed social media ‘experts’ out there. Listen, there is no school giving degrees in social media. There’s no one certifying social media specialists and there’s no list of social media experts you can trust that’s out there. Social media is something that’s recently cropped up with the advent of Facebook, Twitter and before that, Myspace. When people realized the value in these venues, they began utilizing them. As they should. This created the social media phenomenon. But it does not create social media experts.  Spending time online does not make an expert. Just because someone spends a vast amount of time on Facebook or Twitter does not mean that they are a social media expert. They need to understand your message inside and out and be able to effectively communicate that relationship to your audience. At the same time, they need to build a relationship between your company and that audience in a professional manner. Make sure that whoever you hire to carry your company message knows more than just Twitter and Facebook. Effective social media requires effective marketing and communication. Period. There are no shortcuts when it comes to your company’s message.

Next time: Good Reputation or Name Dropping?

Lori Twichell is the owner of Beyond the Buzz Marketing. She is also the Marketing Director for Christian Work at Home Moms and JV Media Design. In her spare time, Lori is co-owner of Radiant Lit and a professional book reviewer for Fiction Addict. Lori and her husband live in San Antonio, Texas with their three kids and two dogs.

“I just don’t get the point.”

That’s the biggest comment that I hear when I discuss Twitter with people. I’ve gotten into the whole microblogging definition and then the necessary explanation about social media and the benefits, but usually, none of these argument sway people in the least. They still don’t understand the point of Twitter or why it’s become so popular. This surprises me since Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media trends ever seen. According to Twitter’s own numbers, some 50 million tweets are sent every day. FIFTY. MILLION. In 2009, ‘tweeting’ grew 1400%. According to Alexa statistics, Twitter.com is the number twelve site in the world. Obviously someone out there understands it. So why this amazingly fast growing trend?

It’s very simple.Twitter provided the arena for instant connections and conversations with people you don’t know. Now wait. So do a plethora of other social media websites right? What’s so different about Twitter?

Safer Connections: Twitter created an online venue that allows for nearly instant conversations and connections with people who are interested in the same things. Twitter allows you to make connections with anyone about anything. And it does so more safely than Facebook or Myspace. Both Myspace and Facebook require you to be ‘friends’ with someone before you can make a connection with them. If you aren’t already friends, these sites require you to make that connection and call them ‘friends’. Giving someone the title of friend implies a much more intimate connection than what is comfortable for most people. It also gives them access to all of the details of your life that you put into the site. Twitter doesn’t require that. The only ‘bio’ on Twitter is a 140 character ‘micro’ sentence. You choose what you share. In fact, it’s more like real life conversations. Think about it. When you meet someone for the first time, you don’t pull out all of your family photos, your job pictures, your hometown, your spouse’s name and birthday, the names of all your relatives…the list goes on and on. With Twitter, you share only what you want, when you want.

Ice Breaker: At some point in our lives, we’ve all experienced the discomfort of being in a room full of people that we don’t know but with whom we’re expected to make some connection. Then the person in charge of that room pulls out the dreaded ‘ice-breaker’ game, designed to help you make that connection. Twitter is the ultimate ice-breaker. Instead of being forced into uncomfortable conversations, you can choose what you talk about and with whom you connect.

Conversations: Finally, the best part of Twitter is that it feels more like a real conversation. When you’re sitting at lunch with a group of people, think about how the conversation sounds. Everyone interjects their comments, opinions or ideas on the topic being discussed. Sometimes you have a longer ‘rant’ or diatribe, but the meaningful connections happen when there’s a back and forth to the conversation. These virtual connections allow people to easily inject their opinions into a relevant conversation and then create an ongoing dialogue.

Push/Pull Marketing with Twitter: Marketing can always be defined in two ways. Either it’s ‘push’ or ‘pull’. Push marketing entails ‘shoving’ a message to the audience, whether they want it or not. Some examples of this are television advertising (you don’t get to choose which commercials air) or spam email. You are pushing your message to the consumer. Pull marketing involves bringing the audience to you. Whenever someone visits a website or signs up for a mailing list, they are expressing their interest in hearing your message and finding out more. A good push/pull campaign could be a television commercial (push) that intrigues someone enough for them to visit a website (pull).

Twitter is the first fully effective instant use of push/pull marketing. Prior to Twitter, most social media involved push marketing. Blogging revolves around the assumption that an audience wants to read or see what you have to say. Messageboards or bulletin boards are conversations, but they are definitely not instant. Sometimes it can take weeks or months to have a complete conversation.

In short, Twitter changed the face of social media and gave us a new platform for marketing. Last year Twitter had over seventy-five million visitors and statistics show it’s still growing. Maybe now’s the time for you to give it a chance.

Lori Twichell is the owner of Beyond the Buzz Marketing and the Marketing Director for both JV Media Design and Christian Work at Home Moms. She is also a creative managing partner at Radiant Lit and a reviewer at Fiction Addict.