Social Media Today: Top Six Reasons Companies are Still Scared of Social Media

Recently, B.L. Ochman, President of whatsnextonline.com, Inc.and author of the http://www.whatsnextblog.com, wrote an extremely popular post (5000 views as of this post) about the Top 6 reasons why companies are stil scared of Social Media.

Here is a shortened list for you:

1. Employees will waste time with Social Media
2. Haters will damage our brand
3. We'll lose control of the brand
4. Social Media requires a REAL budget. It's not really cheap, or free!
5. They're scared they will be sued
6. They're scared of giving away corporate secrets or that information on social networks will affect the stock price. 

All content copyright B.L. Ochman, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By B.L. Ochman, What's Next Blog, and a link to the post
Link to original post

As MeHype has continued to add Social Media services to our business model and service offerings, we have personally experienced some/all of these excuses from businesses considering Social Media integration. Most can be addressed directly with simple conversation about consumer's reactions to brand social media efforts, that for the most part it is positive versus negative.

However some require specific examples or metrics to help business to run risk-vs-reward evaluations. Social Media Today offers a wealth of information that many agencies or advertisers will find helpful in making informed decisions about Social Media integration.The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) also offers some excellent resources for creating an ethical Social Media plan, visit them here.

If your business is considering Social Media Marketing, feel free to contact us here at MeHype for a customized evaluation and program development.

Expansion Plus: Social Media Training, A Good Investment

 

Excellent article from our friends at Expansion Plus about the importance of Social Media training for your brand's employees. Enjoy!

ComScore’s latest data about advertising online shows that social networks are garnering ad dollars from pretty much everyone except big brands. Social networking sites now account for one out of every five ads people view online.

Data from Equation Research’s 2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report shows that within the next year an astonishing 82 percent of brand marketers will be using social media to promote their brand.

A UK recruitment company, Major Players, warns that this rapid growth may be stunted by a lack of social media knowledge in the talent pool. Candidates with social media experience make up only 2% of the talent pool, says Mark Begley, Major Players’ head of digital and creative. “An increasing number of companies have expressed their need to find highly skilled people to help build their social media capabilities and provide effective return on investment.”

Companies need to invest in social media training advised Begley.

The situation in the U.S. is no different: The PRSA Counselors Academy recently identified mastering social media skills as one of the top 3 issues for PR professionals in 2009 and 2010.

“Mastering social media skills is definitely a priority requirement,” said Betsy Berkhemer of Berkhemer Clayton, a retained executive search firm based in Los Angeles that handles senior level assignments in corporate communications, marketing and public affairs. “There is a demand for these skills and executive level individuals are scrambling to get up to speed. And social media is evolving and changing so rapidly it’s a bit like getting onto the onramp to the Indianapolis 500.”

Companies may have their eyes on the social media prize, but the “2009 Edelman Trust Barometer” found that as a source of company information, a company’s own website is seen as more credible than business blogs, personal blogs, social networking sites and advertising.

The Digital Readiness Survey from iPressroom, Korn Ferry and PRSA, notes that the fact that organizational communicators see social networking, micro-blogging and blogging as more important than actively managing the content at their own corporate website – particularly when people find company websites more credible than social media channels — may indicate a fundamental gap in judgment with respect to online communications planning.

Is it an either-or-choice? It shouldn’t be.

There is ample evidence to show that the majority of people are active on social media sites and that they expect companies to interact with them there. So mastering social media skills and developing a social media strategy is necessary. But understanding the importance of the corporate website is just as important.

Understanding search engine optimization (SEO), how to develop a web content strategy based on listening to your customers and watching your analytics, should be included on that list of skills to master in 2009 and 2010.

You want your site to be seen as the originator of your content. For example, if you distribute a social media press release through a wire service you should publish it on your website first. That way the search engines credit you as owner of the content – you get the ‘Google juice.’

A social media newsroom (on your own domain name) is one way to integrate and gather all your social media content on your website. It makes it easy for a site visitor to find your social content, your profiles and the places they can interact with you online.

Content that sparks conversations in social media sites is very effective for brand building; much more so than advertising. It’s not about the click through rate – it’s about how people perceive and talk about your brand.

Social media is best done by people within your company – your customers want to talk to your employees.

The Cluetrain Manisfesto said it best:

Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.

Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

We are immune to advertising. Just forget it. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.

This Equation Research study reiterates what several others have found: the biggest barrier to a company starting a social media program is a lack of knowledge.

Social media training is vital to your marketing success in 2009 and 2010. Become educated on the subject of social media marketing and add it to your list of priorities for 2010.

Author Bio:

Sally Falkow is a Principal and Social Media Strategist for Expansion Plus, Inc. She is the author of The PRoActive Report, a leading blog for PR professionals. She is a senior fellow of the Society for New Communication Research and speaks at industry conferences and corporate training sessions on how technology affects the practice of PR today. The importance of social media in business today is another point of interest for Sally. She urges businesses and individuals alike to attain the social media training necessary to succeed in this new area of digital media. For more information, please visit http://www.expansionplus.com.

BusinessWeek: The Overlooked Side of Social Media

Most companies are embracing social media—but too many are wasting their efforts through sloppy management

By The Staff of the Corporate Executive Board

More than 70% of companies are already using social media; many are planning to increase their spending on social media across the coming years. Whether for learning from customers, building their brands or a range of other hoped-for outcomes, companies are clearly diving in.

Unfortunately, few have thought very hard about managing these initiatives. In a classic case of "ready, fire, aim," companies are committing resources to social media efforts with very little process behind them. The result? A hodgepodge of unrelated initiatives, wheels re-invented and resources wasted.

The Corporate Executive Board has found that the best companies recognize that social media are just another set of promising tools and as such are to be understood, mastered, and used efficiently. Importantly, they also recognize that how they manage their social media efforts depends on where they are in the journey from initial discovery to mainstream use. That journey has three stages:

• Discovery: At this stage, the organization is just finding out about the potential uses (and risks) of social media for its purposes and making initial forays. The goal: understanding ("could this work for us?"). Since few resources are necessary at this point, companies don't need heavy managerial oversight. But they do need downside protection. Clear, well-communicated policies on everything from information sharing to appropriate language is in order.

• Experimentation: As an organization does more with social media, the importance of learning efficiently becomes urgent. At this point, companies need tighter oversight and coordination of efforts. There are a number of ways to create that kind of transparency and sharing, ranging from steering committees to tiger teams" to social media czars. These bodies should develop and steward a learning agenda for the firm's efforts, using each initiative to deliberately increase the institutional knowledge of social media use.

Measurement standards also become more important at this stage. The best companies settle on a consistent set of measures for similar initiatives, using that data to test and learn over time. Metrics like track-backs, for example, can clarify better or worse social media vehicles for a given objective.

• Adoption: While few companies currently find themselves in this stage, those that do loosen their managerial posture, moving away from oversight toward support. Here, the role of any central or dedicated management body should be one of education, coaching and provision of expertise. Some firms are building centers of excellence, repositories of people and knowledge about using social media. Metrics should shift here too, tailored for assessing efficiency and effectiveness of specific initiatives.

The short story: Social media isn't a fad about to fade away; it's a good idea for your organization to learn how to use it to your advantage. The best companies will learn faster and get more out of social media by aggressively managing their efforts.

Provided by Corporate Executive Board —What the Best Companies Do™

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Hubspot: How Do You Market Successfully Today? Same As Always: Creatively

Original Post: http://tinyurl.com/oqcadq

Inbound Marketing Takes Time and Creativity

Many marketers starting down the path of inbound marketing expect to find it sprinkled with magic pixie dust -- that they'll be able to sign up for Twitter and buy a software service, then see the leads come flooding in.

Guess what? It doesn't work like that.

Inbound marketing requires time and creativity. In fact, creativity has ALWAYS been a vital part of marketing and ultimately is the defining difference between a successful marketing team and an unsuccessful one.

Still, there are four recent changes that you need to understand before jumping into your creative happy place.

1. Different Tool Set

The tools needed to achieve marketing success today have changed a little.  Am I saying that traditional channels are worthless?  Absolutely not! These new tools are here to stay and are a requirement to understand and do right.

• A Website -> The 24/7 access is unparalleled and has replaced things like catalogs, phone support, etc.
• Email Marketing -> Replacing what we used to get in our home mailboxes (cheaper and easier to measure)
• SEO -> It’s so important to remember that it’s not about what you call it. It’s about what your audience calls it.
• Online Video -> Slowly replacing certain uses for TV (cheaper and easier to measure)
• Social Media -> It’s still simply word of mouth—except in a one-to-many format

2. You Need to Target Niche Audiences

The shotgun approach of blasting everyone is a thing of the past.  Not only is it extremely expensive, but it’s practically impossible to measure.  Many of the tools listed above can help you find a target audience, but once again you are still required to be creative in approaching that target audience.

3. More Chances to Strike Gold

Everyone knows that the more you practice something the better you are at it.  It makes complete sense that if you throw 100 darts you are much more likely to hit the bullseye than if you throw just one.

We believe that unique content creation (blogging, video content, research, etc.) is a fundamental pillar of inbound marketing and there are so many reasons for this.

• Blogging helps SEO.  Larger website footprint, targeting of long-tail keywords, new content for Google to crawl, and hopefully people will link to interesting blog posts.
• New content means increased traffic.  Why is a visitor going to come back if they have already read your whole website?
• Visitor engagement.  Visitors can leave comments, subscribe, and share through social media.
  

The point is you aren’t going to be great at this the first time you do it, but you don’t have to be. 

In HubSpot's case content creation IS the marketing strategy.  The more value we can produce and the more channels we can fit into, the more likely we are to be found. Therefore, the more brand awareness and authority we can build with more audiences. 

Keep throwing those creative darts and some will succeed, and then again, some won’t.  Remember, because of the analytics of these tools we can learn what is successful and do more of that and less of the unsuccessful. 

You didn’t ride like Lance Armstrong the first time you got on a bike, did you?  Of course not!  You probably never will be Lance, but you can and will get much better at content creation the more you do it.

In a Global Recession Budgets Are Smaller

It is this final point which has helped many of the reasons above be adopted at such rapid rates.  The technology that we have today is light years above what we had even ten years ago.  In today’s tough economic environment a small business faced with the option of paying its monthly lease or doing traditional marketing will always chose paying the lease.

Some of the leading indicators do show that things are getting better, but we are not out of this recession yet.  If you have made it this far you definitely have proven to be smarter, more financially savvy, holding better brand awareness, and luckier than some of your competitors.  

The internet isn’t some fad that will disappear as fast as it established this foothold. Young generations have adopted the internet at extremely high rates. Finally, with the ability to do things cheaper, more targeted, and better analyzed we know the internet is here to stay.  If you are a creative marketer and able to adapt to these straightforward changes, you can and will succeed. 

Small Business Trends: 5 Ways To Spread Content, Whatever It Is

Excellent article from Small Business Trends and Lisa Barone about integrating Social Media into your marketing mix. Enjoy! - Tyler@MeHype

By Lisa Barone

Original Post: Small Business Trends

Whether it’s a blog post, a funny video on your site or your product itself, you need to come up with a plan for spreading that content. As much as want to believe that a good blog post or product “sells itself”, that’s very often not the case. Someone has to get the ball rolling, the buzz buzzing — and that typically means creating some type of content promotion strategy.

Here are the five methods I most often use to make sure that my content is getting in front of the right people.

Twitter

For the past few months, Twitter has been one of the most effective ways for many businesses to drive traffic and exposure to their content. It’s also really easy. You use the network you’ve already created on Twitter and then time tweets to come out during the periods of the day when you know your audience will be on Twitter (typically when they’re supposed to be working). By using combining a strong call to action with a little bit of snark, you can even help increase the effectiveness of your tweets. You also want to make sure that you leave enough room so that someone can retweet your message without having to edit it and to include the twitter handles of the people or companies mentioned in your post. If someone sees you’re talking about them, you increase the chances that they’ll help promote the piece for you.

Other Social Media Outlets

Depending on who your audience is there may be other social media outlets that are just as, if not more, effective for you than Twitter. For example, if you sell products or produce content geared toward women, you may want to spread it via Kirtsy. If you’re in the financial sector, Tip’d will be your social network of choice. If it’s business related or you have a new product you want feedback on, LinkedIn may be a viable alternative. And of course, some people just use their Facebook status message or notes to push content to their network that way. Find where your fish are, and throw the line in accordingly.

Guest posting

Part of your content promotion strategy should be finding ways to build buzz before you need it. If you know you’re going to be producing a killer blog post, that you’ll be starting a new blog or launching a new product, you need to be working the pavement the weeks prior to help get people excited about what you’re going to bring to the table. One of the best ways to do that is to guest blog on other authoritative blogs in your niche. Reach out to other blogs, let them know you have something awesome cooking, and offer to write a guest post for them. The post may be about whatever it is you’re launching or it could be about something different but tied to that blog’s audience. The point is to get people seeing your name and put you in your top of mind for later. Build buzz early.

Newsletter

You know that email newsletter you send out religiously? Start really using it! Include a section to help customers find you on the various social media sites and start using it to feature your content. Reprint articles in full, use it to tease and build buzz for what’s coming in the weeks ahead on your site, put links to the week’s top blog posts, etc. Most of the newsletters and emailings I receive from small business owners do little to grab my interest. Start rewriting them to help you promote your content, new offerings, etc, so that you’re left better able to meet your goals.

Form partnerships

It takes a village to raise a child and it takes an even bigger village to help content go viral. Form partnerships with others in your niche or town and make arrangements to help one another out when it makes sense. By forming your own little promotional army, you not only remove the strain of having to do everything yourself, but you also lend credibility to what you’re trying to promote. You can tell me how your product is. That’s great. I believe it more when someone else tells me. These types of strategic partnerships can be very effective when leverage correctly.

Whatever type of content strategy you decide to use, make sure you make it easy for people to share your content and distribute it for you. The more obstacles you put in their way, the less likely it will be that your content gains traction.

Original Post: Small Business Trends