People don’t buy from companies.  They buy from people.  Somewhere along the purchasing decision a person is involved: either a friend or colleague that makes a recommendation or a good salesperson or helpful customer service or even a question answered on an online forum or network.  Even online people may purchase from a company once without a human interaction, but it’s probably the person-to-person contact somewhere along the line that brings them back.  People make a company what it is.

Jim Connolly’s post, Social media rock stars? Get real!, reminds us of how important it is to build a community – one with relationships and conversations instead of racking up followers:

Those numbers represent people. Real people. Real people, with real lives, real needs and real dreams.  Business is all about people too.  If we forget that, and just go for the numbers, we place a very low ceiling on our potential.

I think that too often businesspeople get caught up in the numbers – how many followers, how many retweets, etc. that they forget that the power of social media is in the ability to have conversations with more people.  There’s so much to learn from customers and potential customers about what they want and how they feel about your brand.  There’s also an opportunity to help out and build long term relationships.

Something like 80% of people trust peer recommendations over company advertisements.  Even if the relationships you’re building don’t lead directly to sales, they may lead to one down the line – when someone asks for a recommendation.

How are you building relationships through social media?

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Technorati tags: customer service, relationships, social media, business, marketing strategy, marketing

I run into this quite a bit – a client who wants to improve conversions on their website (which is good), but during our conversation they’ll say something like “I can’t seem to get people to pay for this” Huge warning flag!  If people aren’t willing to pay for your product or service then you’re either 1) charging too much or 2) don’t fulfill a need or 3) aren’t explaining things in a way that makes sense to the customer.  Upon further investigation, it often is #3, which is good, since that’s not too difficult to fix.

Since most small businesses write their own marketing and website copy, they’re often thinking about what they think is valuable about a product.  The problem is, customers don’t care about what you think is valuable.  They want to know what’s in it for them.  What benefits to the customer does your product provide?  What needs does it fulfill?  Specs and features and dimensions are all well and good – if the customer cares about those sorts of things.  You have to explain everything in a way that makes sense to the customer.

If you’re having difficulty with selling your products or services online, try re-writing your text and marketing message to focus on the customer needs.  Once you’ve rewritten it, try asking some customers what they think (you can do that at any point – and should).  Sometimes the best way to improve something is to ask those it’s intended for.

Still stuck?  Try filling in the blank:  Our product will help you ____ by  _______.

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Technorati tags: customer service, usability, customer experience, business, marketing strategy, marketing

Kevin from KidsDesk.net asks: Do Twitter Giveaways work?  While it’s hard to get actual numbers from Twitter giveaways and contests, they do seem to work for most of the businesses that use them.  Here are some guidelines and tips to avoid breaking Twitter’s terms of service and to make the giveaway work…

What’s Your Goal?

Is your goal to increase awareness of your website?  To signup for a newsletter?  Figure out what you want to ask people to do to enter the giveaway.  Most Twitter giveaways just have people follow and then retweet about the contest – meaning their goal is to increase followers, which is fine, just keep that goal in mind if you have something else you’d like to do.

Don’t Anger Twitter

Make sure you follow Twitter’s Guidelines for Running a Contest on Twitter.  Don’t have the same thing tweeted over and over again (duplicate tweets from the same person is a no-no) – let people enter only once.  Don’t encourage the creation of multiple accounts – make a statement that using multiple accounts will cause disqualification.  It’ll probably easier to track entries if your username is included in the tweet (have them include @yourname).

Work on Your Tweets First

Your profile needs to already have interesting tweets if you want people to continue to follow you after the giveaway (if you’re having them follow as part of the contest).  This is where the 80-20 rule comes into play: 80% of your tweets should be informative and interesting to your audience (and not be about you), then 20% can be about your blog posts and promotions (and what you had for lunch, although that’s not interesting to most people, except maybe your mom).

Don’t Be Annoying

Set guidelines that limit the annoyance of the giveaway to your audience (and to the followers of people who will be playing).  Don’t run contests very often.  And keep the contest short. 1-3 days is about the limit of people’s attention.

Worthwhile Giveaway

In order for people to be willing to enter the giveaway, it has to be something worthwhile.  It looks like at least $50-$100 for smaller businesses – and probably something tangible instead of a discount on your products.

Use Your Network

In order for contests to be successful, they need to be seen by those who have active followers.  This means you’ll probably want to reach out to some key influencers in your network and ask them to retweet your contest tweets.

Conclusion

I’ve seen some fairly successful Twitter contests by both larger and smaller companies.  The key seems to be running the contest in a responsible way with a giveaway that is valuable to the audience.

If you’ve run a successful Twitter contest or giveaway, we’d love to hear how it went for you – what tips do you have?

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Technorati tags: twitter, web strategy, strategy, marketing, twitter contests, business

Facebook provides some pretty interesting statistics for business pages.  You’ve probably seen a little box on your page (viewable only by page admins) titled Insights with a number (and some stars) for Post Quality, the number of Interactions this week and the most active country.  Cool.  But what does it all mean?

If you click on the See All in the upper corner of the Insights box, or you access your Insights by editing your page and clicking on All Page Insights under the Insights box on the right, you’ll be taken to a page with some graphs and charts.  Let’s break it down:

At the top of the page, you’ll see some numbers that look like this:

This will tell you how many interactions you’ve had this week (this is any time someone posts a comment, likes, shares or posts something to your wall – basically any time they do something other than read your page), which is further broken down into how many likes (when people like a post), how many comments (on your posts), and how many wall posts (you’ve posted, not total). In the upper right corner, you’ll see a number with some stars – post quality.  This is a measurement of how engaging your content is – how many shares, likes and comments you get on how many posts you’ve done in the past 7 days (it doesn’t count any posts by others).

Next you’ll see some charts and graphs for fans who interact with your page:

The chart on the left will show you how many interactions, posts, likes, and comments there have been per day for the past 7 days.  You can also select to view charts for interactions per post, post quality, posts, discussion posts, reviews and mentions for the past 7 days.  This can give you some feedback on which posts have done better than others and what your fans are engaging with.  On the right you’ll see some demographic data about the fans who are interacting and posting on your page, which may help you tailor your message (and possibly your product).

At the bottom is another chart and graph for total fans of your page:

The graph on the left gives you an indication of how many fans you’ve gained and lost over the past 7 days, but also can show you new/removed fans, top countries, demographics, page views, unsubscribes/resubscribes and media consumption.  On the right you’ll see demographics for all your fans (whereas the top chart shows demographics for those that have interacted with your content in the last 7 days).  If there is a large demographic of fans who isn’t interacting, you may have an opportunity to try to tailor a message towards them.

Hope that helps give you some basics for understanding Facebook page statistics.

How do you use your Facebook Page Insights?

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Technorati tags: social media, analytics, statistics, marketing, Facebook, social networking, business

This is a guest post by Chris Horner, a freelance photographer.

Over the years I’ve had the privilege of talking at length with many business owners, executives, and aspiring entrepreneurs. It seems that identifying a target market is one of the hardest tasks for these folks to accomplish. I believe it’s because they try to market their wares to anyone with a pulse. (Yes I was actually told that once – word for word – from a bank executive) This results in wheel spinning, poor sales, and the business owner/exec scratching their head trying to figure out what exactly happened as they’re driving to bankruptcy court.

Fortunately there’s a solution to this problem. It’s called niche marketing – or in other words finding a narrow group to focus your marketing efforts on and producing products specifically tailored to that niche. When people first hear this, their reaction is usually “why on earth would I want to do that? I want everyone to know about me/my company/my product!” But that doesn’t work – and here’s why:

If your target market is too broad, your product and message get diluted to the point where no one cares. In an effort to reach everyone, you reach no one. For example, if you develop a product for people who own dogs, and in analyzing the potential of your product say to yourself “If I just capture 1% of the dog owner market, I’ll be a millionaire!” then you’re doomed for failure. Now it’s true that if you were to sell a product to 1% of all dog owners, you could very well become a millionaire. The only problem is, to advertise to such a diverse group would cost MANY millions. By the time your message penetrates enough to capture that 1%, you’re out of business.

Conversely, look at a company like Ferrari. They build the most desirable sports cars on the planet. Not SUV’s, not minivans, not sedans – red hot sports cars only. Waiting lists for new models extend for years. Special edition models are sold out before the first one ever rolls off the production line. They don’t disappoint – driving one borders on being a transcendental experience. Oh, and by the way they do this without doing any advertising. Why? Because they’ve invested time and energy making their cars the best in their niche. While their cars are not for everybody, there’s absolutely no confusion as to what they make or what they stand for even among non-buyers. It’s a premium product, priced accordingly, and produced without compromise. And yet their yearly output of a few thousand cars doesn’t even register as a blip among the tens of millions of cars built yearly worldwide.

While the above is a rather radical example, it still makes the point. There are a lot of advantages to focusing on a niche market. It’s been said that it is easier to be a big fish in a small pond, and that’s exactly right. For one thing, you’ll know exactly who you’re selling to. With a smaller group to focus on, you can tailor your product to their exact needs. Your clients will receive more personalized attention and sense that you truly understand their problem and its solution. You’ll waste less time and resources chasing clients who won’t buy your product anyway because it’s not meant for them. Or worse, those who will ultimately be unhappy with a mediocre product meant for “everyone”.

As a photographer, I offer some of my photos as fine art prints. The professional printer I use has this concept figured out hands down. The first time I talked to him, I knew he was the one. For starters, he uses only top-notch paper sourced from European companies that have literally hundreds of years experience in the paper business. He personally reviews each file before printing to make sure the quality is up to snuff. Most printers just run the file and however it comes out is how it is. His prices are not cheap and not negotiable. And yet he is swamped with work even during the worst recession any of us have ever seen. That’s how you do it.

In this economy especially, companies don’t have time or money to waste. These days thanks to the Internet, social media, forums, etc it’s easier than ever to find clusters of people interested in a particular niche. Study that niche and figure out what problems they have that you can solve better than anyone else, then execute accordingly. It really can be that simple.

Chris Horner is a freelance photographer in Ann Arbor, MI who enjoys enjoys shooting urban scenes around the Metro Detroit area. You can find him at www.LensArtwork.com

You’ve got a Twitter account and you’re tweeting and retweeting like a maniac.  How can you measure how well you’re doing?  Well first of all, what’s your goal for using Twitter? Increase sales? Collect leads? Knowing your goal is the first step for figuring out what you need to measure.  Once you have that, here are some basic measurements you may want to use to see how well you’re doing:

1. Tweets – How many updates you’ve made.
2. Average Updates/hour – On average, how many updates do you send out? (useful for measuring how close you are to the 80/20 rule)
3. Followers – How many people are following you.
4. Listed – How many times other people have listed you on a Twitter list.  This can be a nice measure of influence since usually people only list people they feel are informative or interesting.
5. Followers/Following Ratio – Very important measure used by a lot of people when they decide whether to follow you.  While they probably don’t actually calculate the ratio, they may not follow you if you have a lot more people you’re following than who are following you.  I tend to avoid people I feel are going for auto-follows and have more people they’re following than are following them.
6. Retweets – Another good measure of influence.  How often people retweet something you’ve tweeted because they want to pass it on (also gives your message a wider audience).
7. Mentions – How many times your Twitter username is mentioned – either in a retweet, tweet or conversation.  Good measure of engagement and influence.
8. Clicks – Requires the use of a url shortener such as bit.ly or ow.ly. This is how many times people have clicked on links that you’ve sent out.  Can be extremely useful for tying in Twitter with goals.  For example, if you’re following the 80/20 rule (80% good information + 20% promotion), and occasionally send out a tweet linking to your blog or to a promotion, how many people click on that link?

There are more advanced statistics such as influence, sentiment, etc., but most of those require a bit of calculation or a specific tool.  These basic Twitter statistics should provide you with a baseline measurement for how you’re doing and you can tailor your statistics to your specific goal.

What other basic Twitter statistics do you use?

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Technorati tags: social media, analytics, statistics, marketing, Twitter, social networking, business

Well, two problems actually, but let’s take them one at a time.  The biggest problem for me is that I have three different identities as far as Google is concerned – and they all have a different Google Profile with a different gmail address and it’s own login.  I have one personal gmail account and two business Apps accounts and there’s no way to consolidate them. So how do people know where to connect with me on Google’s systems?  How do I manage different identities and who gets what information?

On most social networks you have one identity or profile (although you may have multiple on Twitter), and you can then tell everyone what email addresses and contact information they can have, what types of information you’re sharing, etc.  Google has gone about this issue from their point of view – every gmail address is separate and has it’s own separate profile.  This is a problem from a customer’s point of view because they may have to login to separate accounts to change information they’re sharing or to connect with people.  This may be ok from a personal vs. business standpoint, but you may also want Google to do the work for you and provide you with ways you can control your privacy without having to logoff from one account and on to another.

Why should they care?  Well if they want to be a place where people socialize and connect and do more than email and write documents, they need a way for people to manage their identities – for customers to decide how many profiles and identities they have based on their needs, not on the needs of a programmer who thought email was the best unique identifier.  This is strange too, because Google supposedly supports OpenID which is supposed to make it easier for people to login to various websites and services using one login.

Managing which of Google’s many products and applications are used be each profile would be beneficial too – instead of keeping one per email.  Then, you could easily access your documents from your home email or whatever – because you’ve decided how the privacy and Apps should work, not Google.

We’ll have to save the other identity problem for another post.

What do you think about how Google views you, your identity and your profiles?

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Technorati tags: Google, social media, identity, marketing, business strategy, business