• If you already have a strategy in place, is it working for you?
• If you haven’t, are you taking the necessary action to put a strategy in place?

These are just some of the questions you may want to ask yourself before continuing to read this post. If everything is fine and peachy with your social media strategy and you are achieving all of your set objectives then keep on top of your game and keep sifting through all the great ideas to really crush it in 2010.

However, if you are in constant search of social media strategy improvement, then read on.

Here are 5 Easy Steps to a Successful Social Media Strategy:

1) Know Your Objectives

Before starting any social media initiative you have to really figure out what the purpose of your social media strategy is and have clear objectives in place. We all want our businesses to succeed and be profitable but that is simply not a clear enough purpose for your social media strategy to succeed.

You have to ask yourself and the team, questions that will drill down to exactly “WHY?” using these tools will contribute to the success of your business.

Do you want create a better customer service experience? Raise brand awareness? Generate 17% more business leads? Or most importantly, increase sales by 34%?  There are tons of other questions you can ask but always make sure you have a clear objective before jumping in and starting to post content on the web.

Watch the video below by Mitch Joel of Twist Image to get more ideas:

2) Fine Tune the Details

After figuring out your objectives for using social media, you have to fine tune your strategy. What tools are the best fit for your social media strategy? Will Twitter allow you to listen to your clients and help you improve customer service? Is Facebook going to help you engage with the fans of your brand and allow you to provide them with great offers? Which tools are you going to use and why?

But most importantly, how are you going to implement the social media strategy? Who will be part of the team? What are the time-lines and set objectives?

To help you fine tune details and pace your success, be sure to use your role models within your industry who had success with their social media strategy. A good example of this is Future Shop following Dell’s lead into social networking by creating a Future Shop (FS_Deals) Twitter account where they offer latest deals and exclusive offers. Dell has a similar profitable Twitter account -(DellOutlet). Do research on your competitors and see how they are using social networking tools.

3) Take Action

At the end of the day, no matter how much knowledge you might have or how many solutions you can provide, it all comes down to action. It is great to have clear objectives but over analyzing can also hurt you. This is exactly why you need to put the social media strategy you developed after asking all those important questions into ACTION.

However, listen first and talk later. Monitoring the conversation that is happening around your brand and your overall business interests should be your first action. After getting the feel of the conversation and the overall environment, start engaging with these people who you’ve been listening to, and build your presence with time.

If you are too small and no one is really talking about you online then listen to what people are saying about competitors and try to learn from those comments to make your business even better than the competitors.

And as Tom Peters said recently at the Art of Management conference:

Image Credit: arbinsky edited by Alex Ikonn

Be sure to always be listening to your clients, employees and competitors.

4) Is It Working?

Using social media tools can be very beneficial for you business but you have to make sure you are not wasting your time and money. Make sure to set evaluation periods for your strategy in order to be able to tell if it is working or not?

Have you achieved your set objectives? Are you getting closer to them? If you are not getting closer to your set objectives, instead of giving up the social media strategy all together and saying this was a total waste of time – Change Your Approach.

5) Change or Tweak Your Strategy

After noticing that your social media strategy is working or not, you have to tweak your strategy accordingly. Social media tools like Twitter empower your business to ask your stakeholders – What are we doing wrong and how can we make it better? Listen and learn from your successes? Mistakes? Your competitors successes/mistakes? And tweak your social media strategy accordingly.

Even if you are having tremendous success with your social media strategy, make sure to look out for emerging trends within the social space and adjust to stay on top of your game.

They also created a kinder, gentler version of this presentation titled “What is Social Media?” for people in more conservative organizations.

Enjoy this presentation and let me know what you think.

Are you still ignoring social media? Think it is all just a bunch of hype? Only techie kids are using it? Social media has shown tremendous growth in the past couple of years, but you are still skeptical and are still not ready to commit real currency. If you are one of the sceptics, then you should give it a second or fifth glance already.

Traditional advertising model is, well….. BROKEN. British marketing and advertising giant WPP just announced yesterday that their profit have tumbled 47.9%. Yes you heard it right- forty seven point nine percent!

Will the advertising industry recover?

Some will and others won’t. The agencies that keep trying to milk the traditional marketing mediums (print, television, radio, etc.) will keep seeing their customers decline and profits tumble. WPP will be one of powerhouses that will recover as Sir Martin Sorrell understands the movement to digital marketing agencies and is implementing the appropriate changes at the firm.

I am not telling you to drop everything you are doing in the traditional space and put all of your money in the digital marketing basket. But start taking the new media channels seriously, and educate yourself and your clients on the potential of these tools. Understand that this is a paradigm shift in the area of human communication.

If your excuse is still, “Well our target market is moms with kids who probably don’t use these tools as social media is for the tech kiddies.” Even if this excuse was true although it is NOT TRUE, as there is hard data showing the older demographic is embracing the change; the tech kiddies will grow up and be moms with kids someday anyways. If you don’t want to be the next company to go bankrupt then you have to be prepared for your evolving target market.

If you want to succeed, then you would be better off embracing CHANGE once in a while.

Check out the video below:

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Thanks for visiting and keep in touch ~ Alex.

Have you ever wondered what makes music, fashion, or even the names of our kids popular? Someone has to stick their head out and introduce crazy ideas like the Crocs. Who really thought that funny looking rubber shoes would sell so well that the company would even go public? They succeeded because of the herd mentality.

Back in the Soviet Union, one of the favourite past times of American tourists was starting line-ups. How it works: two people stand beside a random door and wait for enough people join the line that they can escape unnoticed. People would keep standing in the line for hours not knowing what was going to come from the mystery door. Pretty sad but true. This is a really basic example of a herd. Mark Earls, author of Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature, in the video below defines a herd as a way of describing how large creatures (humans) interact with each other.

People follow other people’s decisions because it is much easier to do what others are doing other than thinking for themselves. I challenge myself and YOU to be the wolf to lead a bunch of sheep in this society. Be the thermostat and not the thermometer! (More on this soon)

Do you believe  we live in a herd society?

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Thanks for visiting and keep in touch ~ Alex.

Video Credit: StillMotion

When I was in school I used to love learning. This was especially true when my teacher taught with examples or case studies that showed how the theory worked in life. Only then, would the light bulb go on in my head.

And this is exactly why I wanted to dedicate a post to a quick case study to follow up the previous post on “How to Listen On Twitter”, where you learned the basic concepts of using Twitter as your business’s listening tool.

Social Media Case Study: The Travel Agent

My fiancée and I have recently been on a search for a travel agent that specializes in destination weddings. After countless Google and Yellow Pages searches, we found two travel agents that claimed to be destination wedding experts. Long story short, neither walked the talk and actually cared for our business even though it could have been a potential deal worth more than $50 000. How much commission would that be? Regardless of the size of the deal, a business should tend to tend to its customers well. Taking care of your customers will lead to positive word of mouth, overall good reputation and increased revenues.

Being a little bit frustrated I sent out a quick tweet to the Twittersphere:

Within minutes I got a response from Classy Concierge, someone that wasn’t following me but was clearly listening to conversations related to their business:

They referred me to Platinum Events, a full-scale destination wedding planning and travel company, located in Toronto, who contacted me immediately after hearing they were being referred some business.

A little freaky, I know, but this is exactly how social media tools are making our daily lives easier. A dilemma might arise as you are invading someone’s privacy and this is why you have to be careful at times. But on the other hand, as in the example shown above, I asked for help, I received it, and I’m not going to be complaining as someone just solved my problem.

With time, a greater number of businesses will be listening and the competition will get a lot tougher in the social media space, so why isn’t your business already listening to potential opportunities on Twitter or other social media sites such as Facebook? (How to Listen on Facebook- coming soon)

I hope I sparked a small fire in you to start listening and engaging in conversations that matter to your business as they might just open a few doors.  I recommend reading the last post “How to Listen on Twitter” once again if you haven’t already.

If you are ready to start now, set some social media goals that will take your business to the next level.

Goal: Set up a Twitter search that relates to your business “video production” for example and engage with people mentioning that tweet by trying to add value to the conversation.

Can you see your business engaging potential customers through Twitter?

Thank you for reading! If you have not already, why not subscribe to my RSS feed, or you can get the latest updates from me in your Email inbox for free.

Thanks for visiting and keep in touch ~ Alex.

Listening is one of the most important elements of any successful businesses. There are hundreds of business books preaching the importance of listening and how to do it effectively. Nevertheless, a great number of businesses have their ears plugged or are trying to listen in the wrong places. However, with the help of new social technologies it is now easier than ever to listen to what your clients are saying about your brand, product, service, experience and even YOU.

People are also offering suggestions and solutions for your business at no cost (your time to listen may cost). In addition, there are millions of potential customers looking for products or services online BUT at the same time are having a hard time finding exactly what they want. Your goal is to help them and add value to their experience.

In comes twitter. With its simplicity, Twitter has become the listener’s tool of choice. With applications such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Seesmic Desktop listening in on what customers are saying has never been this easy.

At this point you might be asking this question:

“How do I listen on Twitter and how is this going to make me money?”

The search function on Twitter is equivalent to your ears and it will help you listen to what people are saying about you, your brand, products, services, or any other interest of yours. Search has become such a significant part of Twitter that it is now included on Twitter’s homepage.

For demonstration purposes I will be using Tweetdeck as my listening tool of choice and small case study using some of these tactics will be posted tomorrow.

How to Listen on Twitter (The Basics)

Step 1: Download Tweetdeck – It is a free Twitter client that enables to have more control of your Twitter experience. 

Step 2: Read the Beginners Guide to Tweetdeck (It will answer all of your wildest questions including to how to get started)

Step 3:  Create a Search Column

• Click the Search icon at the top-left.

• You will then be prompted to enter a keyword you want to search for.

Step 4: Choose Your Strategy (Target Your Keywords and Using Search)

• Brand Monitoring – If you want to know what people are saying about your company or brand then just add your business name into the search keyword in the step before and that column will give you an idea of what people are saying about your brand.
• Customer Service- Similarly to above, enter your company name and you may add a spicy keyword like “sucks” or “service” using smart search column feature. Tweetdeck recommends using the following parameters in the keyword prompt to search for more than one keyword:
  • AND will search for both search terms (or more if used).
  • OR will for either one or the other search term (or terms).
  • Use ‘quotes’ to search for a specific search phrase.

Note: When using AND or OR they must be used in CAPS.

However, you may search without these parameters at times getting even better results.

Example search: Starbucks service

This will give you all the results of people who are talking about Starbucks’s service in a 140 characters. Listening in on what people are saying about your brand will enable you to improve your product, service, or improve the overall customer experience.

Should you respond to negative commentary? This will be covered in a future post.

(Here is one perspective)

• Listening in for Potential Business – Set up your keywords to reflect the product or services your offer (example: destination weddings). You may also mix the keywords as described in customer service (example: planning AND “destination wedding”). When your search term comes up, you just got yourself a lead. HOWEVER, be cautious as you may be intruding another person’s space. You may choose to respond and help the person who is looking for help planning their destination wedding or any other service that you are offering.
• Competitive Intelligence - Your competitors may already be implementing many strategies and you can learn from them by being a little snoopy. Follow your competitors and see how they are using Twitter

Do you believe your business can benefit from listening  on Twitter?

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All the talk today is how the latest research from Nielsen shows that- Teenagers Don’t Use Twitter. According to Nielsen and 250,000 US internet rats who took part of the study, only 16% of Twitter users are under the age of 25 compare to 25% in the same age group that use the internet. The study is shocking marketers everywhere that claim that social media tools such as Twitter are just for their children or grand kids.

No Excuses Marketers!

Many marketers previously had an excuse that their older target market wasn’t using social media. However, more and more studies similar to Nielsen Twitter study are making social media harder to ignore for marketers.

Stop procrastinating and start taking action by engaging your customers and potential customers online.

You may start by listening to them first.

Thank you for reading! If you have not already, why not subscribe to my RSS feed, or you can get the latest updates from me in your Email inbox for free.

Thanks for visiting and keep in touch ~ Alex.

Foursquare is a relatively new social media application that wants to change this perception by helping you meet with your friends and other interesting folks in your local community. By being a location-based social application it allows you to track location of you and your friends and at the same time earn points whenever you are adventuresome and explore more parts of the city.

In translation, this application encourages you to go out more often and be more social.  There are many similar apps such as Brightkite, Google Latitude, and Loopt but none of them make stalking your friends this much fun.

There has been lots of talk about Foursquare being the next Twitter and I believe the talk should be about Foursquare being Foursquare. Yes, it has some similarities such as updating your status on where you are and what you are doing but the true spark of this application is the game that you become part of when you are using Foursquare.

Here is the breakdown of the game as recently posted by Mashable:

The Game: To those of you not playing, it may sound like a joke, but don’t knock it till you try it. You earn points for every check-in — unless of course you check-in at the same locale all the time. You’re rewarded with more points for being adventuresome (exploring different parts of the city), for hitting up multiple spots in one night, and eventually for the tips other people try and the to-dos you complete.

Mayorship is key. Should you check-in at the same location a few times, you’ll become the mayor of that spot, and though it sounds silly in theory, in practice it’s incredibly sticky. Being mayor is pretty nifty, and you might find yourself trying to actively maintain your power, which is good for your game stats, good for the business, and great for creating competition amongst friends.

Another cool feature is that users are able to create “Top 12 Lists” of their favourite spots in the city. We all have our top spots and why not share it with our friends. This makes word-of-mouth marketing that much easier.

Now what do you think of this app? Personally, I think it totally ROCKS! Except for one thing – it is only available in 21 cities and Toronto is not one of them. Toronto being one of the social media capitals of the world and boasting a large number of restaurants, bar, and coffee shops, this app would be a total hit here!

Marketing Potential: Many people will ask right away – “How can you promote your business on Foursquare?” Firstly, this app is great for restaurants, bars, coffee shops, gyms and other local merchants. A simple answer to the question- reward Foursquare users for checking in your establishment and they will reward your business.

Businesses that use social media will be able to gain regulars and have people competing to become the mayor of the establishment (if you offer a nice incentive to becoming one that is – Free Drinks anyone)

Would you use Foursquare or is it a total waste of time?

Image Credits: Amit Gupta, @MSG, Foursquare

Thank you for reading! If you have not already, why not subscribe to my RSS feed, or you can get the latest updates from me in your Email inbox for free.

Thanks for visiting and keep in touch ~ Alex.