You’ll discover the biggest marketing mistakes businesses make today and how to remedy them. Scott also talks about some of his successful video marketing campaigns and shares great tips on how to make viral videos.

Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

• How to position your business
• Why your customers want to get to know you before they buy from you
• The core elements of viral videos
• Why people spread emotion and what this means for you
• Why company videos don’t go viral and what you need to do
• Why you need to stop locking down your content
• How to approach the challenges of social media for businesses
• Why the future is “getting better at now”

Find out more and connect with Scott on Twitter at @unmarketing, on Facebook and on his Un-Marketing blog.

How does your business use social media? What video marketing tips do you have to share? Please share them in the comment section below.

According to the survey, marketers admit to struggling with customer engagement on multiple channels. This makes sense as many marketers are just beginning to experiment with more engagement efforts, one channel at a time.

In the near future, we’ll begin to see this single channel engagement morph into a more synergistic engagement effort over multiple channels. As we’ve seen with other social media trends, these shifts take time.

Here are some of the findings:

• Customization: The vast majority of respondents have created a customized experience for their social channels. (Only 9% admitted to not customizing any of their channels.)
• IT vs. Marketing: 66% of respondents admitted to having friction between their IT and marketing departments.
• Social Conversations: A vast majority of marketers (7 out of 10) say they have little understanding of social media conversations surrounding their brand.

In addition to delivering these insightful statistics, Alterian also created the above infographic to give a snapshot of the most important stats.

Click here to read the full report and download the infographic.

Alterian asked marketing professionals a series of engagement questions. Let’s take a look and see where you stand in relation to others in your industry.

#1: How will marketing budgets change over next year?

About half of the marketers surveyed claim their budget will increase slightly, while about 9% see their budgets greatly increasing.

In addition, about a quarter of those surveyed plan to maintain the same investment, roughly 10% will decrease their budgets and a little over 7% say they have not yet determined next year’s budget.

#2: How will social media budgets change over next year?

About half of the marketers surveyed expect their social/digital marketing expenditures will increase slightly while 23% see their expenditures greatly increasing.

Also, 14% of the marketers plan to maintain the same investment while 4% will spend less than the year before.

#3: Do you monitor social media conversations?

Almost 40% of those surveyed said they are using a few ad-hoc tools and 30% said they are reporting regularly to management.

In addition, almost 30% claim they have very little understanding of the social media conversations happening around their brand or those of their clients.

#4: Are you as engaged with customers as you should be?

A little over half of those surveyed (57%) feel their brand (or client’s brand) is somewhat at risk and are taking action to fix the challenge.

13% said they know they need to better engage but haven’t taken action and 7% admitted there were major concerns, but didn’t know where to start to fix the issues.

Lastly, about a quarter of the marketers claimed their brand (or those of their clients) was not at risk and they were fully engaged with their customers.

Now it’s your turn! Did any of these statistics surprise you? What changes have you made to engage with your customers? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.

As enticing as the saying is, “If you build it, they will come,” we all know that just because we build a social media presence, people don’t magically start knocking down our door.

Instead, we need to encourage people to come to our social pages and once they’re there, we have to create enough value for them to hang around. And through these repeated exchanges, casual users can become regular visitors as well as valuable leads.

In previous posts, I’ve written A-Z guides to help create the absolute best presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs. Now let’s turn our attention to harnessing the power of those efforts for lead generation.

#1: Assets

As part of your social media marketing plan, Michelle deHaaff suggests that companies examine social media and online assets to see what they can leverage for full social media engagement. She identifies seven key assets: location, people, stories, images, video, audio and words to help us think about engaging more fully.

#2: Brand Message

Ethan Lyon suggests that users want to identify with a brand. He offers Nike’s identity as an example, “Customers buy Nike because the brand gives them the confidence to succeed—much like an effective coach.” What is your brand message? What should users know about you? Can they tell that from what you’re posting?

#3: Compelling Messages

Use compelling messages throughout your communications. Craft messages that users can relate to and won’t be able to resist. These are generally the messages that speak like real people and not marketing spin. Below is an example from Pogue’s Post.

David Pogue uses a conversational tone and a bit of humor to drive home a point from Pogue's Post.

#4: Differentiations

Because there’s a tremendous amount of competition vying for consumers’ attention in the social media arena, businesses that can differentiate themselves will stand out and get noticed. Zappos Service Twitter page shows how to make it friendly and feel like you’re hanging out with a good friend. Create remarkable content.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=8364&message=1

Zappos employees tell you when they're signing off and when they're leaving for the night.

#5: Etiquette

Michelle Golden recommends in her book Social Media Strategies for Professionals and Their Firms to practice good etiquette. “Definitely don’t write about and link only to your stuff. Instead, go out of your way to promote others liberally.”

#6: Feedback

Users who write comments and ask questions appreciate receiving feedback. Make it a regular practice to take time to respond.

A fan poses a question on Social Media Examiner's Facebook page and Cindy King responds with a timely answer and directs the fan to a link.

#7: Google

Remember that the social media updates you post via your blog, Facebook page, tweets and YouTube channel appear in search results, too. The person searching is an active user looking for information, and bringing the user to your pages is an excellent way to get in front of potential customers.

A person looking for sources for how to choose a paint color would find blog posts and videos. This person is looking for help and the companies have provided advice and solutions. The companies have found ways to get in front of potential customers.

#8: Help a Reporter Out

Companies are often looking for ways to share experiences that might be referenced in blog posts and articles. You don’t have to be a big company to get picked up for a story.

Sign up for Help a Reporter Out and when you have a story to share on a topic, offer the information to the reporter. HARO is one good way to spread information and get high-quality, free publicity for your business. Keep your eyes open for other ways to distribute information about your business with social media press releases.

HARO serves as a vital social networking resource for sources, reporters and advertisers.

#9: Icons

Social media icons help users share your content and offer ways for people to like your content. Likes are valuable votes of confidence and go a long way with users who may have come to your site for the first time. Make your content easy to share.

#10: Joy

In Guy Kawasaki’s new book Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, he tells us that achieving trustworthiness will go a long way for a business. People want to do business with companies and people they can trust. And sometimes it means that we may end up giving our time or some kind of service that we’re not compensated for. Guy suggests that we give with joy.

#11: Knowledge-sharing

Share your knowledge freely in blog posts and white papers. Some businesses are afraid they’ll give away all of their secrets. Your knowledge is a valuable asset; don’t be afraid to share what you know.

HubSpot's inbound Internet marketing blog regularly shares the blogger's personal experiences in marketing and is very generous about sharing tips.

#12: Leverage Content Products

Jeff Bullas recommends using 7 content products for marketing: social media, e-newsletters, blogs, white papers, article marketing, case studies and online videos.

Use a good mix of content, because not all users will read a case study or watch an online video. You’ll increase your odds of being seen by more people by using a mix of content products.

#13: Monitor Conversations

Monitor conversations about your brand and competitors. There are many social media listening tools that will help you keep a pulse on what’s being talked about. The more you know, the more responsive you can be.

#14: Nobodies Are the New Somebodies

One of the most serious mistakes we can make is to pass up a potential lead because we don’t perceive the company or person to be a valuable lead. As Guy Kawasaki says, “Nobodies are the new somebodies in the world of wide-open communications.” Treat everyone with the same attention and respect.

#15: Offline Skills

Online skills don’t have to be inherently different than the way we act offline. Erica Swallow suggests that we use our offline skills and go out there and “Meet people, communicate and build relationships… Be genuine, track conversations and respond to inquiries promptly and thoroughly.”

#16: Produce Content

Not only do we have to produce content, we also have to produce enough of it. HubSpot provides some interesting recommendations: “Businesses must produce enough content for their blog to kick off growth in leads, which starts with about 24 to 51 posts.” HubSpot found that more indexed pages on Google also translate to more leads. They suggest that every 50 to 100 incremental indexed pages can mean double-digit lead growth.

#17: Questions

Lisa Barone recommends that social media marketers should “answer questions because they’re a good way to establish your authority, but also for people to ‘test’ you out.”

#18: Relationships

Lisa Barone also suggests that “social media is an emerging lead generation tool because it lowers the barrier to the sale by building relationships, displaying expertise and through networking you’re able to bring in more people than cold calling ever could.”

#19: Showcase Your Experience

According to Erica Swallow, “The first step to engaging a community of potential customers is sharing content that showcases your expertise. A simple social media update usually isn’t enough to convey a full analysis on a topic. Include links with your updates that expand on key ideas. Keep in mind that your goal is to create value for your followers. Learn what your fans respond to and what they don’t, and then adjust your updates based on that information.”

#20: Target Personas

Buyer personas have been around long before social media hit our radar screens, but marketers have found that having a good picture in mind of the target customer is beneficial in terms of how we write our content.

A blog, for example, can have multiple categories of topics and so you may find that certain categories speak more to certain personas than others. And certain Facebook and Twitter updates may appeal to certain users.

Regardless of how you segment these groups, it’s incredibly beneficial to share target persona information with whoever is developing content for your social media channels.

Before writing, review your persona list to remind yourself whom you're conversing with.

#21: Useful Content

Kristina Halvorson, author of Content Strategy for the Web, says that if our content isn’t supporting the successful fulfillment of our business objectives or our users’ top goals, then it’s a waste of pixels. She suggests adding two columns to a content inventory: value to user and value to business.

#22: Value

Guy Kawasaki says there are three types of value: 1) pointers to useful, inspiring or entertaining content, 2) personal insights, observations or content, 3) advice and assistance. Guy’s recommendation is to pass along these gems to friends and followers to help them derive more value from online resources.

#23: Word of Mouth

The Marqui Web Marketing Blog’s post 6 Ways Social Media Marketing Helps B2B Lead Generation says, “Word of mouth has been, and continues to be, one of the best ways to generate more leads for your business. Buyers tend to trust peer referrals more than any other source of information and since social media allows people to share their experiences (both good and bad) with a wide range of people, this can help increase trust in your company’s products and services.”

#24: Excellence

The Network Singularity blog says “there are 5 C’s to social media excellence: coordination of social media activities, commitment means engaging with your environment and deliberately pursuing social interactions, confidence in your social media activities, comprehension of social media, and cultivation of worthwhile and friendly relationships.”

#25: Yes

Being likable on social media enhances our potential for lead generation. Guy Kawasaki says one way to become likable is to “adopt a yes attitude. This means your default response to people’s requests is yes… By contrast, a no response stops everything… To make a default yes work, you must assume people are reasonable, honest and grateful.”

#26: Zeal

Enthusiasm is contagious. By showing the fervor you have for your business, products and services, and through the content you share on your social media channels, users will be inclined to want to stick around, engage and build a relationship. Reach out and show your enthusiasm.

What ways have you generated leads with social media? What would you add to this list? Leave your comments in the box below.

But first, it’s easy to pigeonhole WWE as fringe cable channel with a small group of die-hard fans, but you likely don’t know all the facts…

WWE.com outperformed ABC.com, CBS.com, NBC.com, NASCAR.com, PerezHilton.com, NHL.com and UFC.com. More people attended Wrestlemania XXVI than the Super Bowl, held in the same stadium.

“WWE” ranked #3 for most searches on Yahoo! in 2009, behind only Michael Jackson and Twilight. (As I write this, WWE is the top-trending search term on Yahoo!) And WWE.com has more than 14 million average monthly unique visitors worldwide.

More significantly, WWE’s own social networking site has 610,000 registered users who participate in forums, comment on blogs, and consume the millions of photos and videos that WWE updates continuously.

Therein lies the conundrum for WWE’s web production team. When you already have millions of fans engaging with you, do you really need to add Facebook and Twitter?

For WWE, the answer was yes.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” said Mark Keys, VP of web production, digital media. “People were engaging on those sites and communicating about our products anyway, so we might as well embrace them and bring them into the fold.”

But even WWE, accustomed to its enthusiastic fandom, didn’t expect the welcome it received.

The Party’s at WWE – and Only at WWE

It’s not that WWE hasn’t embraced social networking. The brand actually came fairly early to the social media party – but held the party at its own house.

Two years ago, WWE launched its WWE Universe site, a hub for fans to interact directly with more than 200 performers – called superstars and divas in WWE lingo. The site features wrestler profiles, along with forums, photos, videos, chat and blogs. You can even “friend” other fans and performers Facebook-style.

Many of the wrestlers and commentators blog about recent or upcoming matches. And just like in the business world, blogging helps each WWE performer build his or her brand – or in this case personality – with the fans. In turn, the more engaged fans are with the performer’s story, the more likely they are to tune in.

Fans from all over the world post words of encouragement to superstars and divas, or debate who’s going to come out on top in the next Smackdown.

Superstar Randy Orton

They can peruse videos of the most recent events and more than 3.3 million photos, or even create their own “smash-up.” You pick the videos and the theme music to make your own two-minute video montage.

Fans can create their own “smash-ups” on www.wweuniverse.com.

One of the site’s most popular features, live chat, runs during live TV and pay-per-view events, with performers joining in from the arena and WWE hall-of-famers as hosts. On average, each fan stays active in live chat for an impressive 45 to 50 minutes each session.

Going Where the Fans Are

As social networking has become more and more popular, the question of whether to join was increasingly pressing. Keys and his team didn’t see a clear business case for jumping in.

“To be completely honest, two years ago we didn’t care about social networking because we didn’t have to,” Keys said. “Our audience was so engaged on our site that they consumed whatever we put up there. Why would I send my audience over to other brands? I don’t need their engagement because I have such a rabid fan base.”

The turning point? They realized that fans were talking about WWE on Facebook and Twitter – with or without them.

Moreover, WWE had a huge problem with imposters pretending to be superstars and divas, on Twitter in particular, pushing the network to establish an official voice.

However, WWE wanted to do it right. Three months ago, they quietly created corporate Facebook and Twitter accounts – without promoting them – as a test of sorts.

“We’re not rushing into anything,” Keys said. “We want them [fans] to have the best and highest-class experience they can have with the same robust quality experience of our TV and the website.”

Within two months, 500,000 Facebook users had hit the “Like” button to become fans on WWE’s Facebook page and more than 93,000 were following the brand on Twitter.

They also set up Twitter accounts for many of their top performers. Within just two hours of his first tweet, superstar John Cena had amassed 5,000 Twitter followers, with the number growing to 30,000 in his first week.

Now, WWE has more than 50 official and performer accounts and 90 official and star pages on Facebook.

In a couple of months, without any promotion, WWE has 106,000+ Twitter followers on its main account, and millions more through other official WWE accounts.

Protecting the WWE Brand

WWE is upfront about being a scripted TV show. In the arena and out, performers follow a set storyline. WWE superstars and divas can choose what to post on Twitter but mostly stick to their WWE storylines, with some reality peppered in.

When some of the stars got ash-trapped in Ireland, with flights halted because of the volcano, they tweeted about the predicament.

“We even created a funky map feature that followed stars from ferries to trains to buses, and then we produced a TV feature,” Keys said.

To maintain brand consistency across social networks, WWE created a “W” logo to distinguish Twitter and Facebook from imposters.

Though initially under the marketing team at WWE, the digital content division now manages social networks, realizing that it’s largely about online content.

About five staff members devote part of their time to the WWE Universe site, Facebook and Twitter. The team tweets about 10 to 15 times every day, posting news and links back to videos, photos and other content to encourage fans to come back to WWE Universe.

They schedule tweets and follow inbound social networking hits with HootSuite and use Omniture for more advanced web analytics. While WWE could outsource comment moderation to a number of professional companies, it has so far chosen to keep its hand in oversight and responses.

Opening the Two-Way Street

WWE has not yet started actively promoting its Facebook and Twitter accounts on the WWE Universe site. So far, the only evidence is a Twitter feed on its website that streams all WWE and performer tweets.

Yet growing traffic coming from Facebook and Twitter gives WWE confidence in this new direction.

In the coming months, it will put its “foot on the gas” and begin telling its community of users about Twitter and Facebook. Icons for both sites will encourage fans on the WWE Universe site to share any of that content with their friends and contacts – opening the whole world of WWE content for fans to post.

By having mainstream and its own social networks, WWE expects to increase traffic and content sharing going both directions exponentially.

“If you go to superstar pages, we have very close to three million total fans on branded pages,” said Corey Clayton, online community leader at WWE. “It’s a vast network to reach out to and we’ll easily triple that in two weeks.”

As the brand goes full-force with social networking outside of its own site, WWE aims to evolve less-frequent website visitors to more active users. In doing so, they indirectly hope to increase pay-per-view sales, website page views and product sales.

“If we engage someone on Twitter who is a lapsed fan or bring new people into the product, then we’ve done our job well,” Keys said. “We’re now following the philosophy of going where the audience lives instead of getting them over to our house.”

How about you? Are you a WWE fan? Are you meeting your best fans in the social networks where they hang out? How do you ensure you stick to your brand story in all of your social media activities?

The good news is social media has finally made it to the grand stage of “accountability.” A place where there are lots of people who want to measure it. The bad news is there isn’t a single clear-cut answer.

However, with a few simple steps, you can build a measurement strategy that accomplishes your goals.

Defining Terms

To start, let’s agree that brand awareness is a measure of how recognizable your brand is to your target audience. For those looking to get ahead of the curve on social media measurement, the first step is to align your social media metrics with metrics your company is already comfortable with.

Also, let’s agree that the measurements for social media aren’t all that different from how you’ve been measuring traditional media. To put brand awareness measurement into the context of the sales funnel, the key areas to evaluate fall into three categories:  social media exposure, influence and engagement.

With that understanding, let’s look at how you can level the playing field between your traditional media metrics and your social media metrics.

#1:  Measuring Social Media Exposure

How many people could you have reached with your message?

In social media, this measurement is about as reliable as a print magazine’s circulation, but knowing your potential audience does have value because it represents your potential sales lead pool.

Unfortunately, as of the writing of this post, some of these metrics have to be accounted for manually, so you’ll have to balance the level of effort to track the metrics versus the value you’ll receive from them to determine their importance to your overall strategy.

A good example of where there can be unreliability in social measurement is when isolating unique users for each of your metrics. You want to avoid counting the same person twice in the list below, but realistically it’s difficult to do.

These measurements highlight the number of people you’ve attracted to your brand through social media. To mitigate the potential for duplication of users, track growth rate as a percentage of the aggregate totals. This is where you will find the real diamonds.

• Twitter: Look at your number of followers and the number of followers for those who retweeted your message to determine the monthly potential reach. You should track these separately and then compare the month-over-month growth rate of each of these metrics so you can determine where you’re seeing the most growth. A great free tool to use for Twitter measurement is TweetReach.
• Facebook: Track the total number of fans for your brand page. In addition, review the number of friends from those who became fans during a specified period of time or during a promotion and those who commented on or liked your posts to identify the potential monthly Facebook reach.  Facebook Insights provides value here.
• YouTube: Measure the number of views for videos tied to a promotion or specific period of time, such as monthly, and the total number of subscribers.
• Blog: Measure the number of visitors who viewed the posts tied to the promotion or a specific period of time.
• Email: Take a look at how many people are on the distribution list and how many actually received the email.

Exposure is the top of the brand awareness funnel and represents your potential sales lead pool.

#2:  Measuring Engagement

How many people actually did something with your message?

This is one of the most important measurements because it shows how many people actually cared enough about what you had to say to result in some kind of action.

Fortunately engagement is fairly easy to measure with simple tools such as Radian 6, Biz360 and TweetEffect. These metrics highlight who you want to target to retain on social media channels.

For a starting list of key performance indicators for engagement, this post by Chris Lake is a great start.

• Twitter: Quantify the number of times your links were clicked, your message was retweeted, and your hashtag was used and then look at how many people were responsible for the activity. You can also track @replies and direct messages if you can link them to campaign activity.
• Facebook: Determine the number of times your links were clicked and your messages were liked or commented on. Then break this down by how many people created this activity. You can also track wall posts and private messages if you can link them to activity that is directly tied to a specific social media campaign.
• YouTube: Assess the number of comments on your video, the number of times it was rated, the number of times it was shared and the number of new subscribers.
• Blog: Evaluate the number of comments, the number of subscribers generated and finally the number of times the posts were shared and “where” they were shared (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.). Measure how many third-party blogs you commented on and the resulting referral traffic to your site.
• Email: Calculate how many people opened, clicked and shared your email. Include where the items were shared, similar to the point above. Also, keep track of the number of new subscriptions generated.

#3: Measuring Influence

This category gets into a bit of a soft space for measurement. Influence is a subjective metric that relies on your company’s perspective for definition. Basically, you want to look at whether the engagement metrics listed above are positive, neutral or negative in sentiment. In other words, did your campaign influence positive vibes toward the brand or did it create bad mojo?

You can also use automated tools like Twitalyzer, Social Mention, Radian 6 or ScoutLabs to make it a little easier, but ALWAYS do a manual check to validate any sentiment results. Influence is generally displayed as a percentage of positive, neutral and negative sentiment, which is then applied in relation to the engagement metrics and to the metrics for reach where applicable.

A great application for influence is to look at the influence by those who engaged with your brand in the above categories. Do you have a nice mix of big players with large audiences engaging with your brand, as well as the average Joe with a modest following?

If not, your influence pendulum may be about to tip over, because it’s important that you spend time engaging with both influential users and your average user. Note: many of the automated tools that track sentiment and influence are not free. And many times, you will need a combination of tools to measure all of the different social media channels.

#4:  The Lead Generation Funnel

After you’ve measured through the influence portion of the funnel, you’re now creeping into where too many companies are starting their measurement efforts: the lead generation funnel. This is where the brand awareness portion of the funnel ends and the traditional ROI-driven action begins.

Exposure, influence and engagement represent brand awareness in the measurement funnel.

Understanding your reach, engagement and influence through these primary social channels will allow you to define your presence and impact, which can then be applied as a model to other social networks.

Now that you’ve tracked all of this information, how do you make it meaningful? Excel is a great tool to help organize your data. Build yourself a standard dashboard in Excel that highlights the key metrics that matter to the organization. Create a tab for a high-level overview of multiple campaigns, and a tab for each campaign for the time period you’re reporting on. Ultimately, you should put the information into the same format that you’ve used to report on traditional brand awareness campaigns, with social media as just another vehicle in the overall marketing mix.

If you’re looking for tools to use for tracking, this post by Mani Karthik at Daily Bloggr gives a nice view of options.

To really understand the importance of measurement, here’s a great post on social media measurement from Social Media Examiner: Is Social Media Marketing Measurable? The Big Debate.

What about you? Are you measuring?  How are you measuring?  What metrics would you add? Leave a comment below and let’s talk.

It’s time to debunk the big myths that are keeping business owners and marketers on the social media sidelines.

Myth #1: My Customers Aren’t on Social Media

Wow, if I had a dollar for every time I heard this one….  Seriously, this myth keeps more businesspeople from interacting with potential customers through social media than any of the others.

The fun part is all you need is a little data to convince people that their target customers are indeed on social networks.

For instance, 80% of female Internet users have become fans of a product or brand on a social network site and 72% said they learned about a new product through social media.  As the graph here shows, more than half of Facebook and Twitter users are over 35, not to mention LinkedIn.

Social networking is a true cultural phenomenon, and there is no demographic that isn’t represented substantially on one or more sites.

This chart shows demographic information for social media sites, demonstrating that they are accessed by a wide variety of age groups. (Courtesy of Pingdom.com.)

Myth #2: I Can’t Measure the Impact of Social Media on My Business

The social media return on investment debate has been picked apart by so many intelligent and creative marketers, you would think it wouldn’t make this list.  But it continues to rank high on the list of objections about social media and I completely understand why.

Since the interaction mechanisms are different with social media than traditional marketing, judging purchase intent and likely customers from social media behavior is a new skill for many marketers.

It doesn’t have to be overly complicated though, and if you put in place some of these methods to tie online behavior to offline actions, you can track the impact social media is having on your bottom line.

Pay close attention also to the referrals from social media sites on your web pages and these people’s behavior compared to users who get to your site through other means.

Myth #3: I Don’t Have Time to Manage Social Media

Learning how to interact on social networks is very easy, because it simply involves talking with people and having candid conversations about interesting topics.  Though you do need to spend some time interacting with people and posting useful, engaging content, the returns on your time should be enough to make social media interaction worthwhile.

After some basic exposure, you’ll see how similar social media interaction is to offline conversations, and it should come naturally.

Some helpful tools can make interaction a breeze, including HootSuite or TweetDeck for Twitter interaction, and Ping.fm to post updates to multiple profiles from a single interface.

Ping.fm client for managing multiple social media profiles from one location.

Myth #4: If I Engage on Social Media Sites, I’ll Get Loads of Negative Comments

Nobody likes to hear negative feedback about their work, product or service.  Many businesspeople fear that their social media profiles will be overrun by people posting complaints and competitors “flaming” their brand.  But the beauty of social media interaction is that transparency and responsiveness rule the day.

If a customer chooses to voice a complaint publicly, you have the chance to demonstrate your customer service ability to a wider audience.  If the person is unreasonable and continues to post negative information, people observing the dialogue are more likely to admire your efforts to right the situation, rather take to heart the angry customer’s complaints.

Plus, sometimes your customer base does the heavy lifting for you, like this gem from the American Airlines Facebook page.

Myth #5: Social Media Is Hard Work

Well, this one isn’t a myth, but it’s worth addressing while we’re at it.  Sure, successfully growing and interacting with a community on social networks require dedication and reasonable, sustained commitment.

If that sounds like hard work to you, well, it is, but the rewards justify the effort. If you’re allergic to hard work, then you probably shouldn’t be in business anyway.

Take some pride and joy in the interactions you have with your community and soon, what may have felt like another item on your to-do list will actually be one of the best parts of your day. And when you start demonstrably affecting sales and capturing purchase intent with social media interaction, then the hard work will be worth it.

I hope these myths won’t hold you back from engaging in social media interaction any longer.  There are customers out there waiting to talk to you and all you have to do is join the conversation.

Which other social media myths do you think need to be “debunked”?  Have you fallen victim to any of these? Do you have anything to add when addressing these myths? Leave your comments in the box below.

In this article, I’ll share some tips to help you leverage social media to gain more exposure.

#1: Reap What You Sow

What are you aiming for? What is your goal?

If you want to get yourself known, social media is a great way to build visibility and a platform. Getting known might be your goal or it might be a means to an end. Again, social media can help you build connections that pay off in terms of opportunities and offers.

At the very least, when you do the right things in social media, you’re building a profile that represents you in the best possible light when anyone wants to look you up. It is a rare potential employer who will not do a quick Google search, and apparently even potential dates now do this routinely!

#2: Model Real Life

Social media grew out of real-world social rules and therefore what works in real life works well in social media, but with wider distribution and accelerated cause and effect.

Often people say to me that social media does not work, but what they really mean is they tried to extract value before they put any in. In fact, at the time of this writing I almost got into a protracted debate on Twitter about this very thing. Because this one person didn’t see any results, he believed social media “didn’t work.” The problem is, social media does not work for people who just want to take and be selfish, so he is setting himself up for a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can’t withdraw very long from an empty social capital account. Essentially, if you want to get out value, then you need to start putting value in.

#3: Be Likeable

Another aspect of social media engagement is that your basic interactions are communicating more than the 140-character status updates. People also read between the lines. Again, this can work for or against you.

Brands are built through experience just as much as what you say and any image you create. The brands you love and hate are much more about how they have treated you than their logos and corporate mission statements!

The same is true on a personal brand level. It’s about treating people well and giving them a positive experience with you. It really helps if you like people because you are going to need to be consistently a good person to know.

Using light humor, being kind, sharing about more than just your work—including your interests—allow people to connect with you on a human level as well as a business and technical level.

Beyond this we have to be aware of boundaries and limitations to sharing. We have all seen the damage that can be done through “overshare” or Too Much Information, and also what we find humorous might well put people off, or even cause emotional or professional damage.

Consider a popular blogger who is constantly on the attack, belittling people, making fun of people, “digging up dirt” and so on. Yes, he will gather a following—bullies often do—but how do these kinds of tactics affect long-term relationships and loyalty?

At SXSW I had a discussion about this very topic and we realized many of the highly visible people who used this approach 4 or 5 years ago are now seldom heard from and nobody will take their calls.

Social karma works in the negative as well as the positive, and the Internet has a LONG memory!

Does This Really Work?

At this point you might still be skeptical. So to reassure you that there is some real cause and effect going on here, just look at your own social media activity.

• Who do you follow? Think about your top three social media users and what they have in common.
• Which blogs do you read? Again, which are your “must-read” blogs?
• When have you had the best results? Think back to when you had your best win. What did you do?
• How do you attract new contacts? When you want a social media or list boost, what works best for you?
• What can you test today? Still skeptical? Good! Test, verify—what can you try today to move your metrics needle?

I am 100% sure that when you put out good, valuable, positive stuff—when you share only the best—that’s when you will get the best results. It also follows that the people you are most attracted to or listen to most are the people you get the most value from, be that entertainment or education, and with whom you feel the best connection.

#4: Share, Share, Share

Tactically this is about sharing good stuff. If you want to position yourself as an expert, then share what you know.

The more you share good stuff, the more people will want to listen to you. Even better, if you share your expertise with good stuff from other people mixed in, it shows you’re generous and have your followers’ best interests at heart rather than pure self-promotion.

• Answer questions in LinkedIn.
• Share links, videos and anything useful that you find in Facebook and Twitter.
• Post your slide decks to Slideshare.
• Upload advice videos and demonstrations to YouTube.
• Write valuable content in your blog and answer comments.
• Invite people to ask you questions on your Facebook fan page, Twitter and your blog.

#5: Conduct a Whuffie Audit

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing fame invented the futuristic reputation, or social capital–based currency, of Whuffie. Some days I wish Whuffie really existed and that just by looking someone up we could see what kind of person they were and how much they added to society. Unfortunately we do not have Whuffie yet, but you can “audit” yourself to see how much social capital you are generating.

Keep an eye on your key metrics to see if they are growing and what behavior is influencing them:

• Followers, friends and subscriber counts—How many people you have following you is not the best metric, but it does tell you if you’re attracting versus annoying people!
• Retweets, clicks and shares—If people want to share your stuff, it’s a hint that what you are putting out is valuable.
• Comments, favorites, discussions—Can you spark discussion and debate? That’s value right there.
• Key contacts, referrals, recommendations and testimonials—Are you reaching people and are they telling others about you? What do people say about you behind your back? Will people publicly connect their name, and reputation, to yours?

Closing Thoughts…

I know how frustrating it is when we say things in interviews like “provide value, join the conversation.” Hopefully I’ve explained a bit more about what this means and some of the steps you can use. It comes down to having the intention to really help, inform and be an excellent person to know.

A reputation is difficult and time-consuming to build, but with social media we can damage it in an instant. When you have what’s best for your community in mind, you will not go far wrong.

How does this work for you? Got any tips to share? What has worked best in your experience? Please SHARE your thoughts in the comments!

Here are two current studies that show how the integration of social media marketing is changing the way marketers connect and engage with their audiences—online and offline.

#1:  Marketers Ditch Silo Campaigns and Report Social Media as “Critical for Success” (Alterian)

As digital and social media marketing mature, the demand for greater integration is evident. Marketers are quickly realizing that operating in a one-way marketing tunnel makes success impossible in this social media–saturated world.

Listening first and then communicating and engaging have become “musts” for any successful social media campaign. Results of a 2009 survey by Alterian indicate that social media is becoming an integral part of most companies’ marketing campaigns:

• 50%+ direct at least “a fair amount” of effort toward integrating social media marketing into their overall strategy
• 66% will be investing in social media marketing in 2010
• 40% of the 66% plan to shift more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget toward funding their social media marketing activities

eMarketer’s report on the findings of the Alterian study pointed out, “[Social Media] is yet another channel to be incorporated into an integrated communication strategy, rather than addressed on its own. And it can provide unique insights into the consumers who can now use earned media to build brands alongside marketers.”

As with earlier reports in 2009, marketers still feel a need for education and training with social media, as more than one-third reported only being “minimally prepared.”  The good news is 37% planned to invest in training in this area.  In addition to training, the survey also found that 36% are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools.

It will be interesting to see how marketers begin to use not only Facebook and Twitter to reach their audiences, but also start to take even greater advantage of podcasting, message boards, forums, video sharing and the many other social media tools consumers are using today.

#2:  Online Forum Users Transcend Online and Offline Worlds, Becoming Influential Brand Advocates (Synovate/PostRelease)

Word-of-mouth has always been vital in building loyal customers. Friends—whether online or offline—and family are trusted sources when making purchasing decisions. As mentioned in my previous article, a recent study from PostRelease showed how online forum users are enthusiastic brand advocates and are taking their online activities to the streets, telling others about products and services they recommend. Not only are they recommending brands to their family and friends, they are also more likely to publish blogs and organize meet-ups, compared to non-forum users.

The PostRelease study focuses on consumer’s organization offline. Consumers are merging their online and offline influences, and this could be a huge opportunity for any savvy marketer who sees these new possibilities.

Marketers are becoming acutely aware of the need to integrate new media activities into their existing marketing plans and consumers are demanding greater social media engagement from the brands they follow most.  This could be a win-win situation if carried out strategically.

Now it’s your turn.  How have you seen the growing integration of social media marketing change your company’s marketing strategy? As social media matures, what are some ways you see this integration taking shape? We want to hear from you, so start talking!

So what better way to understand social media than by looking at the fundamental principles of influence as taught by Dr. Robert Cialdini, professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University? In his seminal book, Influence, Cialdini covers six “weapons of influence”  that are hardwired into our social and cognitive minds.  In other words, we can’t help but behave in accordance with these laws of social interaction.

Does this sound like something useful to keep in mind during your social media engagements?  Well, let’s take a look six powerful persuasion techniques:

1. Reciprocation

In Cialdini’s words, the rule for reciprocation “says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. If a woman does us a favor, we should do her one in return; if a man sends us a birthday present, we should remember his birthday with a gift of our own; if a couple invites us to a party, we should be sure to invite them to one of ours.”

And so it is in social media: we’re more likely to retweet someone who has already retweeted us.  We link to people who have linked to us.  And we tend to give a business far more trust after it has provided us with a lot of free value.

Used manipulatively, this turns into autofollow bots that help you amass thousands of followers in a breathtakingly short time—none of whom may actually care what you have to say.  Doh!

Used more positively and constructively, if you focus on initiating reciprocity by providing no-strings-attached value to those in your network, you’ll ultimately wield far more influence.  Not because the gift economy is a new fad in marketing, but because following the law of reciprocity is how we’re wired as humans.

2. Commitment and Consistency

“Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.  Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision,” said Cialdini.

Chances are, you follow too many people on Twitter.  And you’re signed up for more RSS feeds and newsletters than you can really read.  Objectively, purging your list of followers and unsubscribing would eliminate distractions and increase your social media signal-to-noise ratio.

But most people never make that purge and hardly ever unsubscribe.  Part of it goes back to reciprocation, but a larger part stems from consistency: you’re loath to admit that following and subscribing to those people and newsletters was a mistake.

On the positive side, how much more likely are you to comment on a blog that you’ve already commented on before?  Especially if you’re now “signed in” to comment on the blog during future visits—and if your Gravatar or Disqus headshot shows up next to the comments?

According to the principle of consistency, you’ll want to remind people of their previous positive commitments through perks, public displays, an elimination of friction for increasing their commitment, etc.  It works for Amazon prime, Amazon’s 1-click ordering, and Amazon’s reviewer system, and it will work for fostering blog comments and a blog community, too.

3. Social Proof

One method we use to determine correct behavior is to find out what other people think is correct. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA8z7f7a2Pk

Just watch this video to see this in action!

Whether we admit it or not, most of us are impressed when someone has a ton of blog subscribers, Twitter followers, YouTube views, multiple blog reviews for their upcoming book, and so on.

Yes, people can game the system (autofollows and such), which can jade our intellectual response, but our core and initial emotional reactions stay the same.

On the positive side, creating a lot of value for others can help companies and individuals gain social proof via reciprocation: writing engaging content for guest posts, offering to interview authors and subject matter experts, and so forth.  Not only do these activities provide social proof in themselves, but they can help you gain a support network capable of “salting” your blog comments, your retweets, etc.

And when it comes to social proof, tribes matter.  It’s not just about what the mass of people are doing on social media that constitutes proof, it’s what other like-minded people and peers are doing.  So according to the principle of “social proof,” you should concentrate your social media efforts on finding and building social proof within your tribe.

4. Liking

“We most prefer to say yes to people we know and like,” says Cialdini. Extensions of this principle are:

1. Physical attractiveness creates a halo effect and typically invokes the principle of liking;
2. We like people who are similar to us;
3. We like people who compliment us;
4. We like things that are familiar to us;
5. Cooperation toward joint efforts inspires increased liking;
6. An innocent association with either bad or good things will influence how people feel about us.

How does this work for social media?  Well, to start with the virtual equivalent of physical attractiveness, we give extra credence to attractively designed blogs, messages contained in videos with higher production quality, and corporations’ landing pages displaying a better sense of social media savvy in their overall design and layout.

Similarly, individuals involved in coordinating joint ventures for the common good are associated with—and therefore “haloed” by—those efforts, while at the same time invoking cooperation toward a joint effort, which further increases “liking.”  Think of Seth Godin’s efforts at compiling free and thoughtful ebooks and then using the compilation to raise funds for a non-profit.  Bryan Eisenberg’s Trick or Tweet efforts from a year ago also come to mind.

As for complimenting others, what else is a retweet, a trackback, or a positive blog comment than a social compliment?  And yes, those are all activities you should participate in authentically, sincerely, and liberally if you wish to leverage the principle of liking to your advantage.

5. Authority

Cialdini talks about “The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of authority…”  In his book, he examines how authority can be conferred by (and also manufactured by) titles, clothes, and trappings.

In social media, authority is less about titles and clothes than about virtual trappings.  In his (fantastic) report, “Authority Rules,” Brian Clark talks about how perceived expertise can frequently differ from real expertise.  Meaning that the guy known for blogging about and offering intelligent commentary on a subject will likely have far more perceived expertise (and therefore influence as an authority) than a genuine but unknown non-blogging expert.

But perhaps the most direct measure of authority is the number of people who will buy or download a recommended resource based on little more than an authority’s endorsement.  How many people would buy a copywriting book simply because Brian Clark said it’s a must-read?  How many people will download a free PDF on nothing more than Seth Godin’s evaluation that it contains important insights?

But one thing social media has seemed to spark is a dawning understanding that authority is (or should be, at least) limited to a legitimate field of knowledge.  So when a relatively famous figure like Robert Scoble states on his website Scobleizer that search engine optimization isn’t important for small businesses, he’s “taken to task” on it rather severely.

6. Scarcity

Apart from reciprocity, this is perhaps the most used tool in social media.  When bloggers open up a class or inner circle membership or subscription service, it is never for an unlimited number of customers or for an always open/unlimited time.  Smart bloggers either create or fully leverage already existing scarcity by limiting seats available, length of time to buy, etc.

Laura Roeder has rather famously made scarcity a centerpiece of a signature technique,  wherein bloggers hold competitions with free services as a prize.  When contestants don’t win, they then value the prize more highly precisely because of the newly perceived scarcity.  This makes them more likely to accept a consolation prize of getting the services at a slight discount.

Parting Recommendations

While the six principles of persuasion started out as “weapons of influence” that were used against us by “compliance professionals,” I—along with Cialdini—would encourage you to practice the positive side of wielding influence. To sum up many of the recommendations from the post, here are some very positive ways to leverage the principles of influence to increase your social media success:

• Focus on creating value and initiating the reciprocity principle by gifting your social media contacts with high-value content, insights, reports, etc.
• Sincerely flatter your subscribers, friends, and commenters by responding to them and nurturing your growing community.  Actively reach out to people you admire using social media and pay them the compliment of commenting on their blogs, following their tweets, linking to their content, etc.
• Commit to consistent engagement on the social media platforms you chose to use, to the point of staying away from new social media platforms that you don’t have the resources to actively participate in.
• Use social proof as credibility cues where appropriate.  Show off your number of subscribers next to the Subscribe button.  Possibly use colleagues to “salt” your comments on important posts, build up your network by guest posting, commenting, and retweeting.
• Coordinate within your community on larger efforts for the greater good.  You’ll probably be psyched at what you create or accomplish, you’ll do good and feel good about it, and you’ll likely become associated with the effort.
• Put the extra effort in on achieving professional and inspiring design.  Dress for success on your blog, website, and social media landing pages.
• When creating a contest or trying to spark immediate action, use the scarcity principle to positive effect.  But be honest about it—no changing “last day for” dates, no miraculously replenishing supplies, etc

But, hey, I’d be THRILLED to add to the list if you recognize any of your tried-and-true techniques as falling within—or totally falling outside of—these weapons of influence.

What are your secret weapons of influence? Let’s engage.  Please comment below now.

#1: Social Media Engagement Big Challenge for Many Businesses (Deloitte)

Survey results from a recent Deloitte study (2009 Tribalization of Business Study), point to some key challenges that organizations are facing as they move toward integrating online communities into their social media strategy.

Here are the top three areas respondents identified as obstacles:

• Keeping visitors engaged:  30%
• Getting people to join:  24%
• Encouraging return visits to the online community:  21%

In addition, the majority of respondents agreed that the following are key business outcomes for their online communities:

• Increase word-of-mouth:  38%
• Increase customer loyalty:  34%
• Increase brand awareness:  30%

#2: Social Media Used as a Discovery Tool by 18% of Online Population (Nielson)

With the recent integration of Twitter and Facebook with Microsoft’s Bing, there is no doubt that social media has become a top player in the world of search.  A recent study by Nielson Company examined the relationship between social media and user search options.  The report compared social sites to search engines and portals like Yahoo! Of those surveyed, 18% reported social media sites as core to finding new information.

Jon Gibs, VP Media Analytics, reports, “While still a smaller percentage than those who use search engines or portals like Yahoo! or MSN, it is a significant figure. And as social media usage continues to increase I can only expect this figure to grow.”

It is speculated that the amount of information on the web, especially on social sites, contributes to the increase in content discovery on these sites.  The report goes into much more detail and is worth a read.

#3: Businesses Slow to Incorporate Social Media Into Practice

Although numerous recent reports show how businesses plan to incorporate social media into their 2010 marketing mix, a recent study by BIA/Kelsey reports that many small- to medium-sized businesses are slow to incorporate the strategies into their plans today.

When asked about their current social media experiences, results showed many businesses are slow to adopt social media:

• Have used Twitter to market in the last 12 months:  9%
• Have used social sites in the past 12 months:  23%
• Have incorporated video into their website: 16%

In addition, according to the survey results, adoption of social media by small- and medium-sized business is more prevalent among younger businesses:

• Businesses 3 years or younger: 16% report using Twitter
• Businesses 11+ years:  2% report using Twitter

What are your thoughts? What effect, if any, do the constant changes and shifts in social media have on your overall marketing strategy?