Turbo Social Media Marketing » Social Media Marketing for Business | Turbo Social Media Marketing

What Types of Social Media Messages Should I Be Publishing?

Tom Sullivan — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:55:53 +0000

By now most medium to large businesses have a social media presence. An assortment of small businesses are also using social media. While this is a good sign, the problem is that “having a social media presence” and “using social media” doesn’t necessarily translate into success.

The goal of any business using social media should be to grow the brand presence, engage the new audience and monetize these new Fans & Followers. So how exactly do you do that?

The key here is engagement. More specifically, getting consumers to engage with your business via social media. A 2011 study by Chief Marketer revealed that when deciding on whether to engage with companies or brands via social media, users look to several key types of interactions, but primarily, consumers will engage so that they can receive free products, discounts or coupons.

As you can see, consumers will also engage with businesses so they can receive product information or answers to a question or concern. Many consumers also like the ability to give feedback about a company’s products or services. In some cases, businesses can even rely on their Fans to help develop a new product, technology, or even care out a task. This is a newer phenomenon known as crowd sourcing.

So does this mean that you should simply post your promotions or discounts on your social networks? NO! Despite what statistics have shown, even with discounts and coupons, consumers will get tired of the same, boring messaging. In fact, according to interactive marketing provider Exact Target, the third biggest reason (38%) for consumers “unliking” a business was “the content became repetitive or boring over time.”

What was the number one reason people “unliked” a page? “They post too much,” said 44% of people surveyed. This response leads me to my next point: do not over-post or “spam” your Fans! Once a day is more than enough. More than likely you’ll find a sweet spot of about 3-7 messages per week.

So if you’re not just posting promotions then what else should you post about? Talk about anything that will strike up a conversation: the weather, the weekend, the Holiday coming up, etc. More importantly, provide feedback in the form of tips, advice and education to your Fans about industry-related questions consumers might have. One easy way to do this is to link to your blog.

Another idea is to ask your Fans for their feedback. If you’re think about running a special, or you’re looking to combine products or services, or you’re just looking for new ideas, ask your Fans. Their feedback is valuable, and the could even provide new ideas for your business.

Finally, make it fun to be a Fan! Offer sweepstakes and contests that will get Fans excited to check your page every day.

If you have any questions about getting established on social media or developing a strategy then contact Turbo Social Media, or give us a call at 877-673-7096 x2.

Developing Your Social Media Plan For 2011

Tom Sullivan — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:19:39 +0000

As the year winds down and the Holiday season swings into full force it is important for your business to think about your plan for 2011. You can follow these basic steps below for building your plan from scratch. You’ll probably need to revise it several times, but it’s a good idea to get started on this when you have some downtime during the holidays. Not everyone has “down time” but if you’re on, or waiting for a flight, on a long car ride (as a passenger) or simply in between items on your to-do list, do yourself a favor and start thinking about 2011.

1) Start with some notes: This is where your brainstorming begins. Think about what went well this year and what did not. Which marketing strategies were successful and which were not? If you can’t answer that question then you know you need to improve the tracking of your efforts. You should also jot down your goals for the year and then break these goals into monthly goals (even weekly goals if necessary). This will help you with the other steps.

2) Analyze individual efforts: Think about all the different elements of social media: Your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Videos, Press Releases, Social Bookmarking, etc. Now analyze each effort individually and what you can do to improve the effectiveness of each. Start to set aside how much time you’ll be willing to dedicate on a weekly and daily basis.

3) Determine your budget: Now that you have an idea of which elements of social media you want to focus on, as well as how much time you can devote to each, it is important to set aside a budget. Of course, this budget will depend entirely on how much of the work you’ll be doing yourself vs. how much you’ll need to outsource. Think about the value of your time and do a cost/benefit analysis to help you determine what you should commit to yourself.

4) Find a strategic partner to help you execute or fine tune your plan: If you have an employee who has been helping you with your social media efforts make sure they’re on board for 2011. Make sure they’re comfortable with your plan and what you need from them to make 2011 a success.

If you have some ideas that you’ve put together, but you need help coming up with a strategy, or if you’re new to social media and would like to see how it can benefit your practice you should turn to an agency to help. Even if you have experience with social media and have had successes, an agency can help to expand on past success, offer new insights, and free up more time for you to run your business.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to develop a social media marketing plan for 2011, consider talking to Turbo Social Media. We’re a full service social media marketing agency with a focus on ROI. Fill out this form for a free consultation or give us a call at 877-673-7096 x2.

Happy Holidays to all!

The Power of Custom Branding Your Facebook Page

Tom Sullivan — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:30:13 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I touched on the importance of custom, branded Facebook page in an article about how to make you business standout with social media. I want to revisit that topic and elaborate on it in more detail.

Your Facebook landing page is also known as your “welcome” page. It is the first thing people see when they come to your Fan page (for the first time). Your Facebook Fan page is likely the second most important piece of real estate online for your business, after your website. You need it to reflect that same uniqueness and creativity that your website does. Just like you website should be geared toward generating leads, your Facebook landing page also should be geared toward generating leads, or getting people to “like” your business. Here are some reasons why your business needs to have a custom Facebook landing page:

1) A custom Facebook landing page shows your business’ personality. Facebook has a pretty generic look as it is. A custom landing page is your business’ one opportunity to really give people an idea of what you’re all about. Show some pizzazz and creativity. Create that “wow” factor. Utilize video and a stylish design to brand your business and make you stand out from your competition.

2) A custom Facebook landing page allows you to capture leads. Along with branding, this should be your goal. While a “like” is valuable because it gives you an open platform to get in front of your Fans, and email address from an opt-in is even more valuable, and it should be treated as such. Someone who opts in for your services or offer on your Facebook page is just as valuable as someone who does so on your website. The best part is that you now have two lead generating machines: your website and your custom Fan page.

3) Your custom Fan page allows you to engage with your audience more. If a person goes to your Fan page and the first thing they see is your wall they are much less inclined to engage with you or comment than if the go to your landing page first. The reason is that your landing page can tell them exactly what you want them to do. You’re landing page can list an offer that is more enticing because it is bright and colorful, it can point directly to the “like” button requesting that they become a Fan, or it can use video to excite viewers or encourage them to interact with your business.

Check out this example of how iZigg has created a custom Facebook landing page that accomplished all three objectives above:

A custom Facebook landing page is essential to the branding and marketing of any online business. If you are looking to build your Facebook presence online, whether you have a Fan page up or not, contact Turbo Social Media for more details. We can help your business create custom pages and manage campaigns to strategically grow your Fans. Call today for more information: 877-673-7096.

How to track ROI from social media marketing

Tom Sullivan — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:30:04 +0000

The first question many businesses have when considering the decision to invest in social media marketing is: what kind of ROI should I expect? Many people view ROI as revenue/cost equation. Under this presumption, if a business brings in more money than they spent on a marketing campaign then they have a positive ROI. If they bring less money than they spent they have a negative ROI. This revenue/cost model should be altered to compare total cost with total value gained, not total revenue.

It’s easy to keep track of your businesses costs associated with social media marketing. There are hourly/salary costs associated with employees who spend a certain amount of time maintaining and updating social media accounts. There are agency fees associated with any outsourced work done for your business on social media. There are direct costs for advertising. Finally, there are miscellaneous costs for additional time, money and resources allocated to social media. Calculating value is not as easy.

The first thing to look at when analyzing value is revenue and sales. Like costs, this is also pretty easy to track. Setting goals will help you measure your success. Consider creating different “calls to action” for your website or Facebook Fan page that track conversions, and then track these conversions to see if they become clients. Beyond revenue, there are additional ways to measure value:

• Measurable goals (other than revenue): Generating leads is typically a necessary step to achieve before you generate revenue. Having the proper follow up process in place, like email marketing and newsletters, make these leads extremely valuable. Also consider improvements in website bounce rates, average time on site, unique visitors, etc.
• Customer Feedback: Additional knowledge that you gain by interacting with individual clients and get feedback from them about your products or services
• Industry Expertise: Putting out a consistent message that is both unique and valuable to your following on social media
• Testimonials & Referrals: It’s great to have testimonials on your website. It’s even better when happy customers are raving about you on social media. Even better than a testimonial is a referral.
• Customer Satisfaction: Improvements in various metrics can often indicate that clients are more happy with you product, service or brand.
• Improvements in other marketing efforts: Social media can often improve the effectiveness of a business’s other marketing efforts. Email marketing, direct mail marketing and mobile marketing campaigns are typically more successful and well received if your prospects have already connected with you via social media.
• Branding: This is a hard thing to measure analytically, but long-term brand recognition is easier to achieve if you put out a consistent message and identity for your business via various outlets of social media.

The tough part about assessing ROI with social media is that many of these benefits cannot be measured with analytics and other tools. Often times companies get too caught up with statistics, like “number of Facebook Fans”, “number of opt-ins” or “number of click-throughs”. These things measure value, but that is not really value in itself. Real value is measured over time. One happy customer that tweets about their experience to their 5,000 Followers could potentially lead to dozens of new clients. If you can track each of these new clients back to this tweet then you can determine the monetary value of that one happy client. However, how do you attach a value to the collection of happy clients who collectively make your brand well received, potentially leading to more business down the road? More specifically, how do you measure the value of a survey that you conduct through social media that leads you to promote one service more heavily over another?

The answer to these questions is that businesses need to determine what these values are before getting started with social media. Determine what the most important benefits are to your company from using social media (other than direct revenue). Give each of these benefits a (rough) value and monitor them closely. ROI isn’t just about revenue.

If you want to learn more about measuring ROI or getting started in social media, contact Turbo Social Media today.

Should I avoid social media out of fear of negative reviews?

Tom Sullivan — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:00:01 +0000

Social media continues to grow in popularity every day. Facebook has more than 400 million active users, and as Zack pointed out in a previous blog post, Twitter has surpassed the billionth tweet. More and more people are seeing the benefits of social media. They’re using the likes of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg, Reddit and much more to spread the word about who they are. However, there are some business owners who have yet to get into social media, and for many of them, there is a specific reason why they’re avoiding it. They fear the possibility of negative reviews.

This is an understandable fear. With an open forum that these social media outlets offer there is ample opportunity for negative reviews. One might think that an ethical and well-run company has nothing to fear, but no matter how excellent you might be there is usually someone out there who is hard to please (or will never be pleased). You know the guy. He goes into a restaurant prepared to give the waiters and waitresses a hard time about the food before he even knows what to order. Nevertheless, here a few reasons why you shouldn’t fear social media, or more specifically, negative reviews on social media:

1) You can address negative comments: Social media gives you the opportunity to demonstrate to a wide audience your customer service ability. If you’ve properly addressed the situation and the person continues to write negative things then others will notice how you handle situations and admire your efforts, rather than give credence to the complainer.

2) You can delete negative comments: On YouTube, Facebook and your blog you can approve or disapprove comments. Sometimes you might not want to delete all “negative” posts because, like #1 points out, you have the ability to address concerns and prove how responsive you are. Even the most ethical companies get complaints, so don’t hide everything. Pick and choose which non-complimentary comments you’d like to not delete and answer them appropriately.

3) You can overpower negative reviews: The website that has been the source of the most resentment most recently has been Yelp. I wrote an article a while back titled ‘Should I trust Yelp?’. There is still a lot of controversy surrounding Yelp, and because of that many people are fearful of setting up an account with Yelp. We know you can’t delete or even address Yelp concerns on your review page; therefore, the solution should be to push down the Yelp results in the search engine rankings. How do you do this? By utilizing multiple types of social media! Think about it, if someone specifically “googles” your business (possibly fishing for reviews) they should get a Google local business listing, your website, your blog, your Facebook Fan page, your Twitter account, your LinkedIn account, your YouTube channel, press releases and articles ALL LISTED BEFORE THE YELP REVIEW. I understand that this is a temporary band-aid on a bigger issue, but if you can push the Yelp listing off of page 1 it is much less likely someone will look at your Yelp listing. Then again, maybe you have nothing but great reviews on Yelp. In that case you would simply want to market your Yelp account more on all forms of social media, to draw attention to it.

If you run an ethical and professional business then you should never worry about getting into social media out of fear that someone might write a bad review. The best advice I can give you is to take advantage of all forms of social media to give you more than one voice to discuss your business and, if needed, challenge or address bad reviews. Give incentives to your clients to write good reviews of your business on your Google local business listing, your Yelp account and any other review sites geared toward your industry. Offer discounts or coupons off of future services for people that write reviews. There’s nothing to be afraid of with social media. In the long run it will only reveal the true character of your business.

Twitter: 2 Billion Tweets per Month and Counting

Zack — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:16:23 +0000

A new report has come out that states, that there are around 2 Billion tweets per month on Twitter. That is Billion… with a “B.” This is just more proof that Social Networking and Social Media Marketing are HUGE, and you and your business and missing out by not grabbing a piece of this. Twitter is getting bigger every single day, with more users joining and sharing their information for you to read. It only makes sense for you to be a part of it, so your company does not get left behind.

Now I know what you are thinking, “2Billion tweets a month is a lot, but there is no way that number will continue to rise, it has to be on its way down…” Well what if I told you that Twitter reached its 1 billionth tweet back in the fall of 2008. Nearly 1 year later, it reached 5 billion tweets. In March of 2010, Twitter hit the 10 billion tweet mark, and now, less than 3 months later, they are over the 15 billion tweet mark. The graph would look something like this:

Aside from showing the insane growth of Twitter, these numbers tell us something else: Everyone and their mother is now on Twitter. That means there are that many more people out there to sell your products or services too. It is a great way to keep in touch, syndicate out your Blog Posts, or Network. Twitter is the best way to stay up to date on current issues build your business to a level you are happy with.

To learn more about Social Media Marketing and the Importance of Social Networking, click the red button at the top of the page to watch our free video series or give us a call at 877-673-7096.

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. To learn more about the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here.

Article by Zack Zucker, Manager Client Services, Turbo Social Media

Tom Interviewed by Matt

Matthew Arndt — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:35:38 +0000

The newest member of the Turbo Social Media team, Tom Sullivan, is excited to be on board with such a fun and fast-growing company. With many years in internet marketing experience under his belt, Tom has seen internet marketing shift toward social media and he decided to make the move to Turbo. Tom and Matt have worked together in the past, and they are both excited to help Turbo continue to grow and reach unprecedented heights.

If you’d like to connect with and learn more about Tom, visit:

http://www.facebook.com/thomasiansullivan

http://www.twitter.com/tomturbosmm

No related posts.

Pepsi Ditches Super Bowl for Social Media

Zack — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:53:51 +0000

If I have not made myself clear int he past, allow me to do it now: Social Media Marketing is powerful, and is the future of advertising.

If you ares till skeptical about all of this, then maybe you have not heard the big Super Bowl news. The Super Bowl is known as the #1 place for companies to spend their marketing budget. 30 second commercials can cost as much as $4 million! This year however, one of the biggest spenders on Super Bowl ads, has decided not to focus their money elsewhere. Pepsi, who is known for spending at least $20 million a year, just on Super Bowl ads, has decided that there is a better way to do this: Social Media Marketing. (Read More about it here)

Social Media Marketing is huge, so huge that one of the biggest companies int he world is focusing more time and money on just that. Sure if you put an ad on the super bowl, millions of viewers will see it, but for much less money, just as many people, if not more will also see it online. The Internet is huge, and Social Media marketing is a big piece of that. By Pepsi making this move, I will not be surprised if more companies follow this lead… might be a good idea for you to take a shot as well.

To learn more about Social Media Marketing, click the red button at the top of the page to watch our free video series or give us a call at 877-673-7096.

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. To learn more about the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here.

Article by Zack Zucker, Director of Operations, Turbo Social Media

Simply Put, Turbo Social Media Is Awesome

Zack — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:47:06 +0000

For those of you faithful readers that have been following along to our posts, I am sure you have already come to the conclusion that we here at Turbo Social Media are simply awesome. If you have not realized this… then check your pulse.

The reason I say we are simply awesome is for a number of reasons:

We bring you fresh content and the latest information from around the net on anything and everything Social Media and Web 2.0 related
We are a full service Social Media Marketing company. While other companies offer you tips and tricks on better SEO, we will actually do it all for you
I, Zack Zucker am Awesome, making any company I work for awesome (transitive property)
Matt Arndt, our faithful founder and President, might be the most knowledgeable person you will ever meet when it comes to Social Media services
We can target your niche and make it visible to the world

Being a full service boutique marketing agency, Turbo is determined to live up to your expectations. Our goal is to build a site/blog that represents you and help you get ranked on all of the top search engines. We can help you drive traffic to your site and help you turn that traffic into leads and future customers/patients/clients. Rather than just give you a checklist of things to do to make your site better, we will work with you and help you become the best in your industry. By working with us, you too, will become, awesome!

To learn more about Turbo Social Media and Social Media Marketing, click the red button above and fill out the form to watch our free video series or give us a call at 877-673-7096.

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. To learn more about the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here.

Article by Zack Zucker, Director of Operations, Turbo Social Media

Messaging and its importance in Social Media Marketing

Matthew Arndt — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:07:36 +0000

So yesterday I decided to take a little walk to grab some lunch in downtown Pleasanton by our office. As I was walking, I saw something that caught my eye. It was a sign that read

Pleasanton Main St Brewery Live Beer Nightly Sign

“Main Street Brewery: LIVE BEER NIGHTLY!”. Now this really confused me… “Live Beer”? What is live beer, and how does this restaurant have it nightly? I took a picture, grabbed my lunch, and wondered back to my office.

I knew I had to get to the bottom of this, so I decided to give the Pleasanton Brewery a call. So I looked up their phone number, dialed, and told them I had seen the sign outside and wanted to know the meaning of “live beer”. The girl who answered the phone proceeded to tell me “Oh…we just have beer”. I prodded a little more, “So is there live music nightly as well?”…thinking that possibly they had just drank too much of their own product when making the sign, and actually meant to use the word “Music” instead. She replied, “Oh No, just beer”.

Wow, I’ve never felt more confused, bewildered, or left out in my life (just kidding Pleasanton Brewery). Now, not all of us have an office, storefront, or place to put a sign, but either way, messaging is incredibly important in every form of marketing that we participate in.

The important thing to remember when participating in Social Media Marketing is that if you don’t know your message, or the message is confused, then your message will not be clear on Twitter, Facebook, your Website, Blog…or basically ANYWHERE!

Now, the Pleasanton Main Street Brewery does have a Facebook Group, so I thought I’d include that in case any of you want to join up: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=68808012506

To learn more about Social Media Marketing for Business, click on the red “Free Video Series” button in the top right corner of this page to watch our free video series or give me a call at 877-673-7096.

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. To learn more about the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here.

Article by Matthew Arndt, President, Turbo Social Media