Social Media

DAILY QUESTION – How do we grow online?

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Today’s daily question is - We need to have a bigger presence online and more brand awareness and we have a very limited marketing budget. Can you suggest ways to increase sales and get people talking?

 

Thank you for today’s question and it is one that I am sure many small businesses are faced with each day.

 

The best way to get people to talk about your business is to engage with your buying community pro-actively and through various mediums, thankfully many of the internet platforms are free or low-cost.

 

Firstly let’s consider your businesses website, does it address each stage of your customers buying cycle, from research through to purchase and support? If I was to google your product category would you come up on the first page or preferably are you the first listing?

 

There are some great guides around to help do-it-yourselfers with search engine optimisation (SEO) and I would suggest checking out Mashable’s 20 essential tips.

 

If customers can’t find you online it’s going to be much harder for you to engage and generate brand awareness, conversations and conversions to sales.

 

The next area to focus on is social media and recent research shows that over 50% of online shoppers are logged in to facebook while they shop and over 80% of online shoppers share their experience on a social-media site. If you are serious about building your online brand you simply have to get involved in facebook and twitter, at the very least.

 

Through these sites you can engage with potential customers, build relationships and generate conversation and interest in your company. The key is to ensure that every landing page generates action back to your website which in turn creates a desire and action of purchasing.

 

If you blog why not mix it up with some video blogs to engage with customers in a way that lets you show off your product and how it is something they need in their life.

 

Also in Let’s Get the Conversation Started I explore how social media can assist companies procurement teams but the same principles apply to other areas of the business why not check it out here.

 

Finally I think it is important to identify at what point does a customer need your products, what triggers their research into buying your products and initially, at least, focus your online engagement at ways to answer that question.

 

Finally at every touch point with your business, make it memorable, it will help build your sustainable brand.

People Enable Social Media

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When talking about social media it is easy to talk about facebook, Twitter and other such sites and in doing so we are forgetting one important fact – these social media / networking websites and all those apps that connect in to them are just tools that enable people to connect with others in real time, efficient and usually in one to many manner.

The power of the human element of social media was evidently clear today at the first day of the 2nd Annual Social Good Summit possible through a joint partnership of the UN Foundation, Mashable, 92Y and sponsored by Ericsson.

Today’s speakers ranged from Ted Turner (Chairman Turner Enterprises Inc & United Nations Foundation), to Erin Schrode who at 13 started her first successful not-for-profit and also included noted public figures including Valerie Amos (Under-Secretary-General & Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations).

I saw two key themes running through today’s presentations, the first being that people make social media, good or bad. 20 years ago people were doing evil and people were doing good, today they can do either in the blink of an eye thanks to the connectivity and real time reach the internet and social media brings.

The second was that social media enables anyone and everyone to actively contribute to making the world a better place. If you can not afford to donate money or if you are time poor through simple actions such as a retweet the tweet calling for action, engagement helps spread the word and helps generate action.

Basically through social media you can help make the world a better place, you can be highly active or relatively passively by just retweeting/reposting messages but it all helps.

There was also a truck load of great insights throughout the day and I have called out a few below. You can also check out the twitter stream to see some of the other insights from attendees.

From Ted Turner

    1. More should be expected of us, we must expect more of ourselves, we live in an era where collectively we can achieve more than any generation before thought possible, inaction is not acceptable.
    2. Success is going to bed early, rising early and it pays to advertise.
    3. Be optimistic the alternative isn’t much fun.

Valerie Amos

    1. In some societies people don’t have running hot and cold water, sewerage or even readily available clean drinking water but they have a cell phone – the cell phone sometimes is their only valued asset it is what keeps them connected to their friends. We must get better at using the technology to inform, empower and assist people.

Monique Coleman

    1. In developing nations the youth are just trying to stay alive meanwhile in developed nations like the USA, Australia and the UK suicide is the number one killer of youth.

Scott Harrison

    1. Connecting peoples donations directly to projects and communicating the outcome is all about closing the loop and making social good meaningful and personal.
    2. Scalability is just as important in the social sector as it is in the commercial sector, perhaps more so to do more with less.

Ami Dar

    1. Ask yourself three questions. What do you want to do? Why haven’t you done it? What would help you do it?

David Jones & Co

    1. Do something, get out their and act … ideas are great, action is better.

Nancy Lublin

    1. 100% of text messages are opened the challenge is turning text messaging into social.

Alec Ross

    1. 21st century is the worst time in history to be a control freak. Information used to be power now connected real time information is.

From all the presentations today I really enjoyed the presentation from Scott Harrison, founder and CEO of Charity Water.  they are doing some excellent work and 100% of your donations go to projects. They currently have a project to buy a drilling rig which will let them deliver 80 more wells a year. I’ve started a campaign to contribute you can donate online here

CHECK-INS ARE JUST BEGINNING

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Last year I predicted the location aware services and promotions were going to be a driving force in social-networking and mobile services in 2011. A prediction many tech bloggers are now disagreeing with ever since facebook last week announced that they were ditching the facebook places option.

 

Firstly facebook have started ditching a number of features that just weren’t adding to their core business. Secondly facebook recently partnered with skype to bring video chatting capabilities right within their site. Could this be the start of facebook focusing on the core and partnering to bring other features.

 

Either way facebook dropping it’s check-in function isn’t a big deal there are a number of applications out their that let you check-in and share your location on social networking sites. I also don’t think this is the last we will here about check-ins on facebook, it will come back.

 

Currently Foursquare is the most widely known location-based check-in service with over 10 million users and boasting 3 million daily check-ins. The service has been continually evolving adding more and more features. Based on your check-in location you will be notified of special offers nearby, anything from free drinks to meals and more.

 

I believe over the next 12 months we will see check-ins become more mainstream as they become more integrated with our activities, for example you purchase an event ticket which gets sent to your smartphone, it provides you with a special pre-event offer which is unlocked when you check-in and then you use it to gain entry at the event and you are automatically checked-in. With all this being shared on your social-networking sites.

 

Where do you think the check-in is heading?

 

 

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