social media Archives

4 Ways to Reach a Big Audience Fast

October 16, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What can you do to reach a big audience very quickly through the strategic use of social media?

With so much happening on social channels, it can often seem difficult to grow your fan base and reach a big audience in a short time frame. In order to really capitalize on all that social media has to offer and reach a big audience, there are a few tips you might want to consider.

Below are four easy ways to reach a big audience very quickly through the strategic use of your social channels.

Your Employees are Your Best Brand Advocates

Don’t let the fact that they work at your company fool you into thinking they can’t be an integral part of your audience. Your brand’s employees have a ton to offer when it comes to reaching a broader audience.

For any company, the first fans and followers should be the brand’s employees. By sharing your content to their networks, you immediately find yourself with a larger reach than if you are trying to simply penetrate new markets without an established fan base.

Share Content Aggressively

When trying to figure out a content strategy and schedule, you are going to want to share as much of your original content as possible, and often enough that anyone and everyone gets a chance to see it.

While you might adjust your content strategy once you have determined where your most engaged audience is and when they are at their most engaged, you won’t be able to figure that out until you have shared your content with everyone. This is also going to be a great way to increase your content’s exposure and acquire new, genuine fans.

Promote Your Best Content

To truly succeed with your social marketing strategy, you are going to need to make an investment. Of course, there is the investment of time, but for real, measurable results in a short timeframe, you are going to need to expand that investment into sponsored ads and stories on your different networks.

As you begin to share content, see what is generating higher click-through rates and engagement than other bits of content and invest a little in promoting these stories to wider audiences. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and now even Pinterest make it possible to promote ads for a very low cost. You can even track your ROI on Facebook using Conversion Tracking. Investing in your social media is a must if you want to reach a big audience in a short period of time.

Answer Questions

Before you begin sharing content, it might be beneficial to do some research and determine what your target audience is talking about. Determine what questions are being asked in your industry and devise a content strategy that answers those questions.

People are inclined to engage with content that they deem helpful, and they are even more likely to share it with their friends and fans. Consider this when determining how your plan on reaching a large audience on social media.

What other tactics can you think of to reach a big audience fast on social platforms? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How to Track ROI on Facebook in 3 Easy Steps

October 11, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Tracking ROI on Facebook and other networks is always among the top concerns for marketers. This is one great way to track ROI on Facebook.

Despite all of the methods that exist to measure ROI on Facebook – some more complicated than others – there are still marketers and executives that refuse to acknowledge that it can be done! One great way to measure ROI on Facebook is with Facebook’s easy-to-use Conversion Tracking. Below is a step-by-step set of instructions on how to create goals on the network and measure ROI on Facebook.

Step 1: Go To Your Ads Manager (or Power Editor)

This is about as simple as steps get. Get started by going to either your Ads Manager and clicking on “Manage Your Ads” (the green button on the right of the header image) or the Power Editor (depending on how familiar you are with Facebook advertising).

Step 2: Set Up a Conversion Tracking Pixel

The next thing you are going to need to do is create a conversion tracking pixel. This is a small piece of code that you are going to place on your conversion page (this could be a checkout page, a download page, form submission, etc.).

First, go to your Conversion tracking in your designated ads platform.

Then you are going to click on the green “Create Conversion Pixel” button on the right hand side where you will see this box pop up:

Fill it out with the name of your goal (in this case, we are creating a goal called “View Blog”) and what category that goal falls into. Above, we have selected Key Page Views (essentially, the conversion is made when a user views a specific page) but other categories include Checkouts, Registrations, Leads, Adds to Cart and Other Website Conversions.

Now once you click “Create Pixel” you are going to see a small snippet of code pop up. You do not need to know any complex degree of HTML to work with this. In the code, you’ll see a line that allows to add a value to this conversion (the line with the red arrow next to it below). It is here that you can denote how much this conversion is worth.

Say, for example, you are sending people to a contact form for more information, and you have determined based on some fancy accounting work that any lead that fills out the form is worth $5.00. So, you would change this line to read five dollars (the currency is in the line just below it) and save the code.

Step 3: Load the Pixel Onto Your Conversion Page

Now comes the part where you might need the help of your webmaster or code-savvy friend.

Copy the code you have generated and place it in the header of your conversion page (detailed in the instructions before the code, above). Now, when people have clicked on your ads and found themselves at your website, Facebook will register that they have taken action (a conversion) based on when they land on that page with the conversion pixel uploaded.

And there you have it. Three simple steps to help you measure direct ROI from Facebook.

What other ways do you measure ROI on Facebook? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Find out more about measuring your ROI on Facebook with our Consulting Services here.

The Numbers Behind Twitter [INFOGRAPHIC]

October 10, 2013/by Corey Padveen

The numbers in this infographic help explain why Twitter’s IPO is such big news.

Last week, the biggest news to come out of the world of social media was undoubtedly that Twitter announced its IPO. The microblogging platform is looking to raise $1 billion, and the numbers behind Twitter help justify that price tag. One of our loyal blog subscribers shared this infographic with us.

For a long time, a certain stigma has been associated with Twitter by those that did not (and do not want to) understand it. It was seen as a hub for celebrities to tell the world what they were eating, and devoted fans to reach out to them. Anyone familiar with the network knows that this is not the case.

The numbers behind Twitter, showcased in the infographic below, explain why the network is worth every penny that it is looking to get. There are over two billion searches on Twitter every day. On Thursdays, the popular #ThrowBackThursday hashtag has the potential to reach over 30 million users. A proper Twitter strategy can mean major reach for the right brands.

With the new advertising features Twitter has rolled out, business applications are certainly growing.

Take a look at the infographic below and let us know which fact or figure you find most interesting. Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Source: The Numbers Behind Twitter

5 Questions to Determine if You Should Outsource Social Media

October 7, 2013/by Corey Padveen

When deciding whether or not to outsource social media, there are a few questions you need to answer first.

There is always a lot of debate over whether or not brands should outsource social media. For some brands, running a program internally is going to be the right call. Others might benefit from having an outside firm run the program for them.

In order to figure out if your brand should outsource social social media, you are going to need to answer five questions.

What will go into your social media program?

The first thing you need to determine is exactly what you are going to include in your social media program. For some, a blog is going to be where it all starts and ends. (Although for best results, some social sharing is encouraged.) For others, a profile on every existing network will be created.

You need to know what you plan on doing and where you plan on doing it.

What will your goals and objectives look like?

Whether you outsource your program or you run it internally, you need to have a clear set of goals and objectives that you work towards achieving. Setting your goals is going to make the decision to outsource much clearer. When you know what you want to accomplish, you know if it would be possible to let someone else handle the program.

How long will it take?

Social media is not a 5-minutes-a-day endeavor. Either you, a team member or an firm needs to be seriously committed to sharing content, engaging with fans and followers, monitoring data and modifying programs in order for your social media program to pay off. Figure out how many hours you will need to devote to your social media program and then…

What is your time worth?

This is an answer that varies from business to business. For some, it is easy to determine. If you are a professional, you probably charge by the hour. If you manage your own social media and you bill $200 per hour, 3 hours a day to manage your program costs you $600. You might hire someone internally at a much lower hourly rate but essentially this question needs to be answered in terms of opportunity cost.

You need to weigh this against the cost of an outside firm running a program for you and working towards the same goals. Maybe you find that your return on the three hours above is $500, while the outside firms generates a daily return of $250. Then, it probably makes sense to run the program internally. Before making this call, however, you need to answer this questions with some good-old-fashioned math.

Can you collaborate?

Some people like to micro manage. It’s not for everyone, but for some people, it is how they like things to run. To each their own. If this is the case, you might want to avoid including anyone, outside firms included, in the management of your social media program. It simply won’t work. There needs to be collaboration.

Answer these questions and figure out what is going to work for you. Maybe you want to outsource your entire program and let a team of professionals handle everything. Maybe you want to keep everything in-house and do it all yourself. Maybe you want to outsource some parts of it and run other aspects, like Social Care, internally. Answer these questions before making the call.

Have you outsourced your social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

To find out more about the consulting services offered by t2, click here.

How Social Media is Changing the World [INFOGRAPHIC]

October 4, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media is changing the world and the proof is in the numbers!

When we write articles, we are often talking about how social media is changing the world from a business perspective. But when we take a step back, we can see just how important social media is on a much grander scale!

This great infographic from MyLife shows how social media has made a dramatic impact on our lives. Perhaps the most interesting piece of data in the infographic is how people aged 50-64 spend roughly 2.4 hours per day on social media websites! That goes to show how this new media has penetrated virtually every market.

Of course, these data can be looked at from a business perspective. It’s easy to look at these numbers and see how social media has an impact on every aspect of our lives – business in particular.

Take a look at the data below and let us know which data you think is most impressive or interesting. Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

5 Biggest Social Media Concerns for Executives

October 3, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There are five notable social media concerns that executives deal with when deciding whether or not adopting the concept of social business is the right move.

If you ask any marketer what hurdles they face when it comes to implementing social business strategies, many will tell you that there are social media concerns faced by management that are stopping them from executing efficient programs.

Below are five of the main concerns executives have when it comes to social media. Much of the information has been adapted from the MIT Sloan and Deloitte social business survey from 2013.

There is No Strategy

This is among the biggest concerns that executives are faced with. The burden of a carefully laid out strategy weighs heavily on any executive decision. Marketers need to be aware of this and need to have a clear strategy in place when presenting options to an executive committee.

For the marketer, there can be little success found with social media without a properly laid out, goal-oriented social business strategy. Keep that in mind and having something concrete put together before presenting the idea to an executive.

There is No Time

This is a big one. Efficiency is at the root of a successful business, and knowledge is at the heart of efficiency. For an executive that does not fully understand social business, they see it as more than a campaign or a program, but a learning curve that they will need to familiarize themselves with.

Focus on scheduling in order to appeal to this social media concern. If an executive sees that there in fact is time, they will be much more receptive to the idea of adopting a program.

There is No Proof

For anyone who is familiar with social business and has been following it for long enough, this one hurts. There is a ton of proof. And there are so many numbers that show it. Show up with examples of how a campaign similar to yours or in a similar industry has performed in order to ease this concern.

There is No Security

Whether it is the physical security of the networks that concerns executives or the security of brand integrity on social networks, security is going to be an issue seen often. Help reassure executives by showcasing how branding efforts are kept intact and that social networks can be highly secure when fully understood and configured.

There is No Room

There are a lot of priorities competing for the attention of your brand’s executives. Social media – a new venture – might not meet the criteria in the executive’s eyes. You need to make the case for why social business is a must and that there needs to be room. It needs to be conveyed that social is a top priority in any industry.

How do you deal with these social media concerns? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

5 Steps to Make Your Company a Social Business

September 27, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There are a few key steps your brand needs to take in order to be considered a ‘Social Business’.

In the last segment of this week’s ‘Social Business’ theme, we thought we would focus on the steps a brand needs to take in order to make itself a ‘Social Business’.

Some of these steps may seem redundant or a little too simple, but the reality is that every one builds off of the last, and the transition of a business into the social era needs to follow a clear outline. Making your business social is not simply about registering your company on Facebook or LinkedIn (although that is among the five steps); there is much more to it.

Step 1: Determine Your Social Business Goals

What is it your brand wants to achieve by becoming social? Like any other business endeavour, you need to set goals for the social functions of your business.

Some goals are going to be obvious and fairly superficial; you might want to increase sales, or improve customer service by offering Social Care. The key is to focus on the business applications of going social.

Every one of the objectives you set for yourself when it comes to making your business social should have a focus on creating value (Social Equity) in both the short and long terms for your brand.

Step 2: Bring Your Brand to the Socialsphere

Figure out what networks are going to help you best achieve the goals you have set for yourself and create accounts for your business on these networks.

Not every network will be right for your brand. Pinterest is a great resource, but only for certain industries. Not everyone is going to derive benefits from Pinterest. Figure out where the audiences that you want to target are active, and share you content with them.

Step 3: Engage Your Growing Audience

Your content strategy is going to help you determine what generates engagement for your three key audiences on social media that we discussed earlier this week. Once you have put together a proper content strategy, you are going to want to start engaging with your audience in order to keep them coming back.

People have an inherently short attention span when it comes to the web. With the virtually endless amount of content out there, you need to give them a reason to keep coming back to you. Being an active brand in the conversation is going to be key when it comes to building a ‘Social Business’.

Step 4: Leverage Big Data

Everything you do on social channels – from blogging to tweeting – is going to provide you with extremely valuable data that you should be incorporating into your strategy.

Simply sharing content is only half of the process – and not the more important half. Study your data, learn about your audience, customers and business and use that data, maybe in the form of Responsive Branding, in order to grow and expand your business in existing markets that you have yet to cultivate.

Step 5: Go Beyond Marketing

Your marketing and advertising departments might be the driving force behind your social selling strategy, but they should not be the only departments active on social media.

People do not necessarily want to engage with a faceless brand. Your C-suite and other departments should be engaging on social platforms and growing their audiences as well. In order to become a truly ‘Social Business’, it is going to take a lot more than your brand being on social. Every department needs to embrace the opportunities social offers.

Follow these five steps and it won’t be long before your find that you are a part of a ‘Social Business’.

We hope you enjoyed this week’s special segment on Social Business! Be sure to let us know what you think. Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

8 Questions to Determine if You Run a Social Business

September 25, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There are a few simple questions whose answers can tell you whether or not you are running a ‘Social Business’.

In keeping with the theme of the week, we decided we would create a short, simple survey that can help a brand determine whether or not it is a ‘Social Business’.

The 8 questions below are simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ questions and come with enough explanation to make answering them fairly easy. Go through the questions, answer all eight, and see if your score was high enough to qualify your brand as a ‘Social Business’!

1. Does your brand have a presence on social networks?

This refers mainly to the ‘Big 6’ (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest) and others. Does your brand have a page, account or simply a presence on any channels that have been deemed social on the web?

2. Does your brand have a blog?

This can either be a standalone blog on your website, or a blog built on a blogging platform like Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress or something else. Essentially, does your brand have a platform on which visitors can see why your company is an industry leader?

3. Are you engaging with your audience?

This is meant purely as conversation. Think about whether your brand is participating in conversations in the socialsphere around your products/services, competition or your industry.

4. Are you leveraging your data?

Every action on social media is recorded and stored. Some brands choose to use it to better their programs and others do not. Which category do you fall into?

5. Do you employ ‘Responsive Branding’?

Responsive Branding is the idea of leveraging big data (question 4) and applying it to your overall marketing and business strategies in order to appeal to the tastes and preferences of your engaged audience.

6. Have you figured out where social media fits into your overall marketing strategy?

Social media is not here to replace your other business activities. It is a tool like any other. Make sure you have figured out where it fits in to your business and marketing strategies (maybe with ‘Responsive Branding’ – just a thought).

7. Are you testing content with your social audience?

Not everything you do is going to generate the kind of buzz generated by a new Apple release. You are going to need to figure out what people want based on content testing in order to find a content strategy that works for you.

8. Has social found a place in areas other than marketing?

Social media is not just about marketing your brand – it is a communications tool. It can be used for internal communication, customer service, research and development – you name it!

Have you gone through and answered all eight of these questions? OK – good.

Now look through your answers. If you answered ‘No’ to any of these eight questions, your business is not a ‘Social Business’ just yet. At least not entirely. You might have answered ‘Yes’ to several, placing you in the maturing stages of becoming social. That’s still far ahead of many brands out there and you should keep up the good work. You’re on the right track!

What is your definition of a ‘Social Business’ and which of these questions might you change/remove and what would you add? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

3 Audiences on Social Media You Are Marketing To

September 24, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What audiences on social media are you targeting with your marketing?

We are all familiar with demographics when it comes to social media. We might be looking to target middle-aged women, or college-aged men, but these criteria are pretty superficial. We need to ask ourselves what audiences on social media we are really looking to target when it comes to social marketing.

There are three very specific types of audiences that we aim to engage with on social networks. Each of these groups engage with brands in very different ways, and our marketing efforts need to reflect that.

In order to simplify the explanation of these audiences, we’ll stick to one, easy example: a health research institute.

Direct Affect

When it comes to health, wellness and research, there is a small group that consistently has one aspect of the field or another on their mind. These are people who have been directly affected by the illness or condition that the research is looking to cure.

For the health research institute, the goal in using social media is to keep this highly and inherently engaged audience up-to-date with the work that is being done and breakthroughs in the field.

While sharing content every second of every day is not necessarily going to be the best course of action for most brands, there should be an attempt to keep this audience active on social channels by sharing content relatively consistently.

First-Degree Separation

Now a much larger population when it comes to this health research institute is going to be the one made up primarily of people who have not experienced the condition that the research is hoping to cure, but who can relate personally to it due to the fact that someone they know or are related to someone who has.

This is a group that does not consistently think of this ailment, but when it is brought to their attention, it certainly resonates. For the health research institute, there needs to be an effort every so often to remind this second audience on social media as to why they exist.

This audience does not follow the activity of the health research brand as closely as the first group, but calls to action will certainly resonate, often profoundly.

Societal Connection

The third and final audience on social networks is the one least aware or affected by the brand. This group is not thinking about the activity of a brand consistently, if ever, and will likely not pay attention to the content unless it is relevant within society.

One example of this is the month of October for breast cancer awareness. During this month, the cause is seen almost everywhere, from community fundraisers to the NFL. It is during this period that research institutes can generate new awareness within this third audience. From there, during the rest of the year, the content shared to the first degree audience may seem a little more relevant to this somewhat removed group, and calls to action may generate more success.

Of course, there are other audiences we may find on social networks. But these three categories need to be front of mind when creating content. Understand what types of audiences will be looking at your content, and diversify your content strategy in order to appeal to every one of those audiences.

How do you appeal to all three of these audiences on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Business: What Does the Concept Mean, Really?

September 23, 2013/by Corey Padveen

We often hear of the concept of Social Business, but what does that really mean?

This week, the theme of each of our blog posts will be this idea of Social Business and trying to breakdown the concept in a way that any business can understand and apply it.

A lot of people see Social Business as meaning a number of different things. That’s understandable; this is a relatively new concept so there is a lot of flexibility in terms of what it is and how it applies.

Social Business: A Definition

A lot of people consider the term ‘Social Business’ to mean something that it isn’t.

On a very superficial level, there is the school of thought that thinks a social business is one that has a presence on social media. There are also those that feel as though a social business refers to a member of the tech world, maybe an app developer or a standalone social network. These are not ‘wrong’ per se, they are just incomplete.

According to Deloitte, a ‘social business’ is one that employs any of the following elements:

Consumer-based social media and networks
Technology-based, internally developed social networks
Social software for enterprise use
Data derived from social media and technologies

(Definition taken from the MIT Sloan Management Review Research Report 2013 in collaboration with Deloitte University Press, Social Business: Shifting Out of First Gear.)

I would recommend taking it a step further. There are millions of businesses that could technically, based on the criteria above, be considered ‘social’ in some form or another. Now, the study cited goes on to explain that there are three types of ‘social businesses’: those in the early, developing and maturing stages of becoming social. That said, I would still create an additional barrier to considering a business social.

What Is It, Really?

In order for a business to truly be considered ‘social’, at least two of the criteria above must exist within the business. Those two are that the business must be present on consumer-based social media and that data derived from social media activity needs to be incorporated into the execution of business initiatives.

The world is social. In order for a business to be considered social as well, it needs to be highly active on social media and using the data derived from these media in order to modify and (this is the important part) improve business operations. A few weeks ago, I wrote an article detailing the concept of Responsive Branding. For a business to be ‘social’, this has to be a factor in business operations.

Take the data collected on social – and there is a lot – and use it to your advantage. If you really want to be a ‘social business’ you need to be using social to run your business. Simply sharing content to Facebook does not a ‘social business’ make. Analyzing response, engagement, customer reception, conversion and any other data from your social networks and using that information to build your business makes your business social.

Now, one of the inherent (or, at least, more likely) results of taking social so seriously is going to be the use of internal tools, like Salesforce Chatter, in order to increase internal efficiency. But for a business to really be social, points one and four need to be there.

So ask yourself, is your business social, really? Tell us why or why not in the comments below or on Twitter!

Also, stay tuned for more articles this week on Social Business!

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