Very cool stuff…

Simplifying Your Social Media Schedule

Being successful with your social media strategy means having a schedule that allows you to participate and actively engage with your various channels. Have you thought about breaking up your tasks so that the work required to listen, engage, articulate, and demonstrate are staggered throughout the week…?

At MILK we create and follow strategic client calendars that plot a really simple, yet dynamic course of social media interaction…A sample calendar might look like this:

• Sunday – LISTEN – Take a well deserved break but keep listing. Check your Google Alerts and make note of any mentions that sound interesting. If you have a smart phone, then I recommend you push alerts to your mobile rather than having to sit in front of a computer.  Listening doesn’t have to be disruptive.
• Monday – ENGAGE – Respond to mentions on blogs that you hear over the weekend.
• Tuesday – ARTICULATE – If you are writing a blog, publish your article today. Tuesdays are the best day to post an article or send an email newsletter because most people are swamped with emails on Mondays. Continue to listen and respond to mentions as required.
• Wednesday – ARTICULATE – DEMONSTRATE – Post photos or videos to your Facebook page/Flickr/Youtube accounts.
• Thursday – ENGAGE – DEMONSTRATE – Review your social network profile pages and respond to comments or wall posts. Thank your customers when they post comments
• Friday – LISTEN – ENGAGE – Listen and respond to mentions and tweets.
• Saturday – LISTEN –  Listen only. If you can, respond or just wait until Monday.

You will probably find that as you become more comfortable with the social web, your mentions and hits will increase requiring you to listen and respond more quickly or more frequently.

In most cases, responding can be done very quickly using an Android, iPhone or Blackberry application for Twitter. In the case of the fan page or other blogs, simply make note of the mention and respond to it accordingly.

Now go out an be social….

Why Social Media Is Critical For Branding Your Business

When we refer to “social media” we are primarily referring to one platform – Facebook.

Facebook has completely revolutionized the way businesses can build, reach, and convert new customers – think about it…500 million people have a Facebook account, that’s like an 8th of the WORLD’S population and the numbers are growing…rapidly.

This comes primarily from the fact that companies can brand their business and products on Facebook faster, more effectively, and more efficiently than any other platform that’s previously existed…will it take over the company webpage? We doubt it, but there are some serious attributes to using Facebook to build leads, generate awareness, engage customers and build evangelists for your brand.

Leveraging your Facebook Fan Page

To leverage Facebook effectively for branding your business or product, you should be (in fact, you must) have a Facebook Fan Page – or a Facebook business page.

Some companies leverage Facebook Fan Pages for their specific products – like Rice Krispies for example.

Others use only one Facebook Fan Page for all of the brand marketing and communication – such as Louis Vuitton.

Regardless of your purpose, size of your business, or other marketing strategies that you have in place, your business and brand needs a Facebook Fan Page.

Facebook business pages allow your brand to reach people continuously with consistently updated information, promotions, contests, news, etc…

When someone becomes a fan of your Facebook Page (or “Likes” your page), then that person is now the equivalent of a high quality lead for your business – much like a business would gather a name and email from people who are interested in what they sell.

Except with a Facebook Fan Page, you don’t have to worry about putting together HTML emails, and all the other steps in putting together a broadcast email – simply type your message into your Facebook Page wall and send.

More importantly, your Facebook page updates can go viral. This means, if one of your fans comment on your update, click “Like”, or share your update with their friends on Facebook, then your business or brand Facebook page can be seen by hundreds, even thousands, or people that weren’t even looking for you – this is something that an email broadcast cannot achieve.

So what about you – does your business or brand have a Facebook Fan Page?

How are you leveraging it for your business?

Do you find your Facebook Page as an effective way to build your brand and reach new customers?

28 Awesome B2B Social Media statistics…

Below are a collection of B2B social media statistics collected from various sources covering a wide range of topics. So grab a coffee, have a read and think about that social media strategy you’ve been putting off for your business to successfully engage on a B2B basis…

Usage:

• 86% of B2B firms are using social, compared to 82% of B2C. (Source)
• B2B firms aren’t as active in their social media activity with only 32% engaging on a daily basis compared with 52% of B2C firms. (Source)
• More than half (53.5%) of marketers surveyed said they currently use social media as part of their marketing strategy. This is up from 2009, when 45.0% of marketers said they used social media for marketing. (Source)

Forecasts:

• Annual growth in US B2B online marketing spend is forecast at 8% in 2010 and is set to reach 14% by 2012. (Source)
• B2B advertising spend on social media and lead generation sites is forecast to grow at an annualized rate of 21% and 17% respectively to 2013. (Source)
• Online accounted for 7% of the B2B marketing mix in 2008. This is set to reach 12% by 2013. (Source)
• Two thirds of B2B marketers believe that online must be complemented by traditional marketing activities. (Source)
• Only 50% of B2B marketers formally analyze metrics to judge ROI – but those that do find online marketing more effective. (Source)
• B2B marketing spending on social networking sites is predicted to rise 43.3%. (Source)
• Forrester predicts B2B interactive marketing spending to reach $4.8 billion by 2014 – almost double that estimated for 2009 ($2.3 billion). (Source)
• B2B social media marketing spending will grow from just $11 million in 2009 to $54 million in 2014. (Source)
• US business-to-business (B2B) advertising and marketing spending will increase by 0.8% this year, to $129 billion. (Source)

Executive Interest:

• 36% of B2B execs surveyed said there was low executive interest in social media in their company, compared with 9% of B2C marketers who said the same. (Source)
• 46% of B2B respondents said social media was perceived as irrelevant to their company, while only 12% of consumer-oriented marketers had the same problem. (Source)

Focus:

• According to an eMarketer study, B2B online marketers focus on lead generation (38%), retention (34%) and awareness (28%).  (Source)
• The top applications for the use of social media for b2b marketers are thought leadership (59.8%), lead generation (48.9%), customer feedback (45.7%) and advertising on sites (34.7%). (Source)

Channels:

• Asked to rate the effectiveness of specific social media sites in their marketing efforts, more than one-half of respondents said that Facebook was “extremely” or “somewhat” effective. Somewhat fewer said the same of LinkedIn, and just 35% considered Twitter effective. (Source)
• In contrast, when Hubspot surveyed B2B companies in North America about lead generation through social channels, 45% rated LinkedIn effective, compared with just 33% who said the same of Facebook. (Source)
• Methods generating the highest B2B ROI are topped by advertisers’ own websites, followed by conferences, exhibitions and trade shows; direct mail; search engine keywords; and e-marketing/e-newsletters. (Source)
• B2B advertisers see cross-media marketing as most effective; 78% combine three or more major marketing methods. (Source)

Measurement:

• 34% of B2B marketers said they were not measuring social success at all versus just 10% of B2C respondents. (Source)
• Website traffic, brand awareness, engagement with prospects and engagement with customers are the leading metrics used to measure the success of social media for B2B companies. (Source)

Resource Allocation:

• 60% of B2B firms have no staff dedicated to social media compared with 54% of B2C players. (Source)
• Just 10% of B2B firms use outside agencies or consultants compared with 28% of B2C firms. (Source)

Budgets:

• B2B product marketers were spending an average of 3.4% of their marketing budgets on social media in February 2010, and B2B services marketers were spending 6.5%. Respondents expected those proportions to reach 7.4% and 11%, respectively, over the next year. (Source)
• B2B marketing spending on social networking sites is predicted to rise 43.3% in 2010. (Source)
• 39.2% of B2B marketers say they plan to boost their marketing budgets in 2010, 47.5% plan to keep them flat; and 13.3% plan to decrease them.  Among those that plan to increase budgets, 11.1% plan to raise them by more than 30%; 18.8% plan to increase them between 20% and 29%; 31.1% plan increases between 10% and 19%; and 39.0% plan to increase budgets less than 10%. (Source)
• Within online marketing, the top areas that will see spending increases include Web site development (70.7% plan increases), email marketing (68.6%), search marketing (62.3%), social media (60.3%), video (50.7%) and webcasts (46.0%) (Source)

The importance of social media marketing

Social Media Marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic.

There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.

If you are selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media marketing is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time.

Those who ignore the efficacy of social media usually fall into three categories; the ones who don’t know much or anything about social media, the ones who are interested but don’t know how to use it and those who don’t believe in the value that a social media strategy can bring to any site or business

For those who don’t understand or see the value of social media websites, let’s take a look at the benefits of creating engaging social content and effectively promoting it through social media channels:

• Primary and Secondary Traffic. Primary traffic is the large amount of visitors who come directly from social media websites. Secondary traffic is referral traffic from websites which link to and send you visitors, after they come across your content through the social sites.
• High Quality Links. Becoming popular on social news websites like Digg or Reddit will get you a large number of links, some of which may be topically relevant, some not. A good story can realistically acquire a large number of high quality editorial links, most of which cannot be easily bought.

Simply put,

Links = Better Search Engine Rankings

Primary & Secondary Traffic = Community / Supporters & Brand Evangelists

Think of the social networking as a platform or a soapbox. As something that gives you a chance to be heard or read, even for a brief moment of a few hours. The people who are drawn to your message will visit your site and recommend it to others, which we’re sure don’t need to explain will in the long run, build you secondary revenue channels.

sayhello@milk-media.com for our social media marketing options and online ignition solutions.

How Restaurant & Hospitality Can Serve Up More Customers With Social Media

Various trades and industries are using social media for marketing, creating brand awareness, reputation monitoring  and consumer engagement. The restaurant industry is no different.

There are many good reasons why restaurants, taverns and bars should be using social media marketing. It is a great way to interact with new customers and keep up with existing ones. It drives traffic to your website. It is much less expensive than traditional advertising mediums like television, radio and print.

Chances are that if you are a restaurant, especially a well known, recognized one, people are talking about you online. Make no mistake that there is chatter happening. The question is what type of chatter is it? Good, bad or in between, and how do you plan on dealing with it? Talk is happening everywhere, forums, blogs, comments, review sites, Twitter and so forth. Starting with the basics, Google Alerts should be setup to track any keyword/brand mentions. The next step is monitoring Twitter. Twitter is the real time watering hole for all types of chatter. It is often the first place that a rant or rave will be mentioned, and from there it can quickly go viral in no time. Once something starts to spread on Twitter, it’s often hard to do the right damage control. It’s imperative that Twitter is monitored heavily and should be priority number one for brand monitoring.

People who are talking about you on Twitter or any social media network are mainly two things, existing customers or potential customers. Follow back everyone who talks about your brand in a positive manner. After all, these are brand evangelists, it’s word of mouth marketing, and it’s not costing you a dime. Reciprocation shows that you as a brand have taken interest in your customer. Be responsive to this and when applicable engage them in a conversation, or at the very least send them a quick thank you note. You should also identify and develop relationships with  your loyal brand endorsers because these people are essentially an extension of your online marketing dept.  In addition to engaging these people, reward them with a gift card to your restaurant. Tokens of appreciation go far and are always remembered. If you think they are talking now, just wait until that gift card arrives in the mail. The positive stuff is pretty much a no brainer, but always remember  social media is all about the conversations, unfiltered at that. Responding to negative chatter is equally important as well, use these social media tools wisely to handle crisis situations, and avoid a PR nightmare. In the online environment, word spreads at an alarming high frequency, and once it does,  there will be very little that you can do no matter how much you try to correct the situation.

Twitter for the most part is a customer service tool as I outlined in the previous paragraph, but it can also be used for marketing. Announce the new menu or drink specials of the day. Promote a happy-hour event or special restaurant event. Ask your brand endorsers on Twitter to leave a review, as well as customers in your restaurant. Remember nowadays everyone is a food critic. These online review sites are a big source of customer information and they are global reaching.

Building a good community is like preparing a good meal. You start with the right ingredients. Open a Facebook account – the world’s largest site for social media marketing. Facebook has become a digital calling card for many restaurants. It allows you to network and stay in touch with your current customers and make new ones.

Restaurant & Hospitality have an advantage over a lot of other industries that use social media. Why you may ask? Social media is about story telling and visuals. Food is very visual, both physically and emotionally. Food evokes conversations, experiences, memories, and stories that people share. This is what social media is all about.

Social Media: The Importance of Building a Loyal Following

Multichannel to Cross Channel Marketing

The challenge with adopting anything new is that old habits die hard. Cross channel marketing, whereby marketers target customers based on channel preference and permission, is emerging as the most effective way of competing for mindshare at a time when 3,000 marketing messages bombard consumers every day (according to researcher SymphonyIRI).

Yet cross channel marketing simply isn’t that simple to implement. Just as many companies adopted email marketing as a distinct competency years ago, the same has more recently happened with mobile and social media. Moving quickly to utilize innovative ways of reaching customers leaves little time to consider how digital channels overlap or work better when stitched together. Marketing within channels, or multichannel marketing, is the result.

This would not be an issue, were it for the fact that customers who browse and buy via multiple channels are among the most coveted. RSR research shows this to be the case for retailers, but when you think about it, no matter your industry, anyone who visits your website, opts into your email program, provides permission to be communicated with via SMS text messaging and follows your brand on Twitter and Facebook, is someone you should know. You could infer that anyone who meets these criteria defines your highest value customer segment.

Getting Past the Marketing Silos

So what’s a digital marketer to do? Whether you’re a “one person show” with purview over anything digital, or oversee distinct teams aligned to email, mobile and social media, the challenge is the same:  you probably have separate databases of customers for email and mobile channels. Many companies possess internal email lists but their agencies often have mobile phone numbers obtained from one-off campaigns without any identifying data. With social media, playing by the rules in that space makes it difficult to connect with customers on a one-to-one basis.

The solution is a new category of software that ties these channels together, unifying the customer record, and providing the tools and workflows to enable digital marketers to target their cross channel customer segment with engaging marketing campaigns. The software itself doesn’t require businesses to completely re-think their marketing efforts or organizational structure; rather it complements marketing in each channel, helping create a “whole” more valuable than the “sum of its parts.”

And, it’s delivered as a service, as in Software-as-a-Service, a business model that ensures innovation is rolled out to all customers rapidly, and not isolated to one-off, custom implementations. Technically, it’s called multi-tenancy. At a time when social media innovation is outpacing all other categories, the value of a cross channel marketing application delivered as a service cannot be underestimated.

The Social Landscape

Social Media and PR – like two peas in a pod…

PR and social media go together beautifully. It’s about public relations on the web, protecting and enhancing your reputation through various digital channels.

Public relations has always been about protecting your reputation in the eyes of the public. And we’ve traditionally used newspapers, magazines, television and radio to get our messages across.

Social media is where a lot of the focus lies now. It’s believed to be causing the biggest cultural shift since the Industrial Revolution. Whole industries are having to adapt to cope with the changes it’s causing. Take the newspaper industry, for instance. People are now finding their news online these days, so newspapers are consequently suffering and having to seek new revenue streams as circulation figures continue to drop.

Then, look at PR and marketing agencies. Naturally, they’re having to adapt as well. Many are getting it right but so many are still getting it wrong – trying to apply the same old PR techniques.

Because many are using social media as a one-way conversation when in fact, it’s a two way thing. Social media isn’t like the old marketing days when you could just throw out an advert or press story for your local newspaper or trade magazine. It’s about talking directly to your audience in real-time. Scary huh? Well not really. It depends how you look at it…

Social media might be about talking directly to the public and engaging in two-way communication but it’s nothing to be frightened of. Unlike traditional media, you can actually track the results of your investment through Google Analytics, social media monitoring and stats on social media networks.

You can give yourself clear and defined goals and targets. You can respond quickly and easily to any issues or problems that might arise. You can attract whole new markets and potential customers via the Internet. It’s wonderful and PR agencies who are switched on to social media will help you make the most of everything that’s out there.

If you’re thinking of making better use of social media through your own public relations, then do some research on any PR agency before you approach them. ‘Mention’ them on Twitter; ‘like’ them on Facebook, read their blog and see how widely spread they are on the search engines.

A good tip is to see whether they respond to your tweet and how long it takes them to do so. Because a ’switched on’ PR agency will reply almost instantly and be happy to chat about your needs…