The "Red Thread of Fate" - For Business

by Kelly Campbell
www.liqui-site.com

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We're destined to connect. We don't know how, when or why.

I watched the preview premier of a new TV series on Fox, called Touch, this past Tuesday night. I'd been intrigued by the trailers, but the show ended up provoking thought on how the premise of "destined connectedness" was just as applicable in business.

Have you ever considered that "our lives are invisibly tied to those whose destinies touch ours." This belief is an Eastern Asian philosophy called the "red thread of fate" – whereby an invisible red string is tied to each person destined to encounter another sometime throughout their lifetime. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but it can never break.

Regardless of religious or personal beliefs, I immediately contemplated how this applies to business. We never really know from where the next lead, sale, employee, affiliate or vendor will come, when they will appear, and how we'll come into contact. That's where the strings come into play!

For business, isn't the "red thread of fate" really a combination of (1) maintaining a great brand reputation, (2) client relationship management, and (3) effective social media?

Need a better idea of what I'm seeing? Example time!

- The executive coach I personally worked with years ago became a client, and refers us to her clients, colleagues and friends. She recommended us to her pilates instructor and personal trainer – a husband and wife team. And while I never had the opportunity to meet either of them, I did meet with the personal trainer's new business partners – and we've since launched three new websites for their medical practice and a film production company with offices in NYC and LA. Additionally, one of my executive coach's colleagues, who I last spoke to about a year ago, has recently referred two of her clients, one in NY and one in LA.

- My college professor became a client for a business that she and her husband started. A few years later, she referred a fantastic graphic and website design student to me, who is now one of our lead web designer / production specialists. (Yes, Chris, that's you if you're reading this. LOL)

- I offered value in a discussion on LinkedIn several months ago. From a single comment, a fellow group member contacted me and has since become a new client. (And your CEO says social media has no measurable ROI?!) Anyhow, I recently our new client an NDA so that I could discuss an idea that another, existing client presented to me. Who knows where the next idea can lead when put in the right hands!

The "red thread" is real. The "red thread" is real relationships.

Comments, questions, opinions? I'm really intrigued by this concept and would love to hear your thoughts!

Know Thy Social Community Demographic

by Kelly Campbell
www.liqui-site.com

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How to interact with your communities – and track marketing effectiveness

If you’re like most business owners or online marketing managers, you know that you need a presence in the social stratosphere: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn at minimum. But the lesser know specifics about how to determine appropriate interaction with the members of your individual online communities (and track self-promotional results) is rarely written about.

In other words, does the same messaging work for members of each of these social platforms?

The answer is a resounding “no”.

Contrary to popular belief, there are enormous differences between the purpose, functionality and (your company’s own) membership of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Even more important is the need for different, relevant messaging to your membership on each of these platforms.

As an analogy, let’s use a couple of well-known retail stores to further explain how crucial it is to know thy social community demographic. Shoppers at Target will generally fall into a different demographic makeup than shoppers of Neiman Marcus, for example. The advertising departments for these stores rely on demographic information (i.e. gender, age range, socio-economic status or HHI, education level, etc.) to ensure that messaging -- in the form of which products they carry, special offers, sales, store-specific credit card offers (the list goes on...) -- is relevant to their particular audience.

It’s no different in social media.

So, the obvious questions become: (1) How do I gain insight into the demographic makeup of each of my social media communities, and (2) How do I not only craft different versions of messaging that will be relevant to them – but track its effectiveness as well?

First, there are a few great social media software tools that allow you to gain an understanding as to who your audience is, from platform to platform. In a recent blog post, Liqui-Site announced its game-changer, called Social ROI.

Second, crafting relevant, targeted messaging is a bit of trial and error. That said, there are basics that great marketing teams follow based on experience, previous results, etc. It’s important to understand that creative copywriting is critical on a platform like Twitter, due to its 140 character limit. On Facebook, you have more freedom with character count, attachments of photos, videos and so on. Regardless of platform though, a link to a landing page on your website (if the post is self-promotional) is the #1 priority. Without that, there’s no way to track the effectiveness of your posts, tweets and messages.

That brings me to the second part of question #2. Web-based software programs like Social ROI allow business owners and online marketing managers to create campaigns, push different messaging to their individual social media presences, and then run a report on the results. Return on investment is then measured by taking your cost per campaign, cost per conversion and value of conversion – calculating it based on actions taken from those posts, tweets and messages by your community members, and reporting on the results.

Pretty sweet, huh? If you’re interested in learning more about Social ROI in 2012, we’d be happy to answer any questions you may have. There’s even a no-obligation 30 day trial of the program. Post questions below or contact Liqui-Site Designs, Inc. at 855-WEB-PLUS.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for a Prosperous New Year, from our family to yours.

Kelly Campbell
President & Creative Director
Liqui-Site Designs, Inc.

Facebook Page Reviews and Discussions

by Kelly Campbell
www.liqui-site.com

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An Honest Update on the Newest Facebook Page Changes

On October 31, 2011, Facebook disabled two features on Pages: the Reviews tab and the Discussions tab. Personally, the Discussions tab never did much for me. The action is on the Wall, we all know that. But Reviews? Those are super important, not only for the credibility of the business but also for the prospects who want to know what previous clients or customers of a particular company had to say – in their own words. And as another blogger so aptly put it "I don't think 'Recommend' is the best description for this, because you are basically giving a review, which could even be negative." He's right.

And now we have what Facebook deems a better, more engaging solution called Recommendations. I'm not sure about that, but I do know that (a) it's harder to find on the right hand side of the Page (when all of the other tabs are located on the left), and (b) all of the previous content has vanished into cyberspace.

Facebook issued this notice shortly before making the change:

“We’ve found that the best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your Wall, so we’re removing the Reviews and Discussions tabs for now. We’re working on tools to help you moderate, filter and manage content in one powerful place. Stay tuned.

You won’t be able to access your reviews and discussions once they’re removed, so please save this content if you’d like to keep it for future reference."

If you didn't get the memo, as was the case with most Facebook Page owners, you'll have to reconnect with as many customers and clients as possible, and ask them to write a Recommendation (again).

Recommendation on facebook.com/Liqui.Site

Now, for the worst part. You can no longer comment on your own Recommendations as your business. If you select the option to "Use Facebook as [Your Business]", the Recommendations are automatically made invisible to you as the administrator. So, if you want to comment at all, you must first personally "Friend" your customer or client. That's right, you're forced to connect and comment as you, under your personal profile! To me, this is the biggest oversight in Facebook history. We're hoping they change this one – and fast! What do you think?

As the Page admin, you still have the ability to either hide Recommendations or report inappropriate or abusive comments. But don't get too excited about either of those because hiding comments only hides them from your front Page; Users can click to see all of the Recommendations you've hidden. Plus, Facebook has been known to ignore reports of inappropriate comments.

Of course, a better way to handle this – on Facebook's part – would have been to simply move Reviews over to the Recommendations section, since they basically work the same way. No harm, no foul.

But these are the changes, for better or worse. Now, it's up to us to garner new Recommendations, think of fun and engaging ways to build our brand awareness, and keep up with every drastic change at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google – to name a few.

Let us know if you need any help navigating these social waters. Questions or comments? Please tell us your thoughts!

Kelly Campbell
President & Creative Director
Liqui-Site Designs, Inc.

Website Been Hit By Panda? You Need UGC.

by Richard Feldman
www.liqui-site.com


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Your customers are more important than you. Google says so.

If you’ve noticed a big drop in traffic to your web-based business during 2011, then you may have been hit by the big, bad Panda. The Panda update is Google’s latest series of algorithmic changes. In early 2011, Panda affected what it considered to be "low quality, web-based content farms". The result was lost traffic, millions in lost revenue, and lost jobs for many SEO consultants.

Briefly, the main triggers of the Panda Update included duplicated content, excessive use of manufacturer or non-unique content, RSS feed issues, incorrect canonical tag implementation, excessive on-site ads, poor on-page optimization, and other issues.

Back in February, when Google rolled out the initial Panda update, they provided very little concrete, actionable advice that Webmasters and business owners could use to directly reverse the drops in traffic and rankings they were experiencing. Finally, in May 2011, three months later, Google Fellow, Amit Singhal, published a detailed post on it’s Webmaster Central Blog. In it, Singhal described what constitutes a quality site and then lists twenty-two content-related issues Webmasters should be aware of when reviewing their site content going forward. I won't list all those questions here, but the full list above should be reviewed by ALL site owners (and not just those already affected by Panda).

It’s critical to understand "Google's mindset" about what they may be looking at specifically when reviewing a page in a post-Panda world. It’s called User Generated Content.

What is User Generated Content?

User generated content (UGC) is content that your audience adds to your site or which you add as a result of discussions with your audience.

UGC is all about connecting with a niche community, engaging that community to add content to your site, while promoting and sharing that content with others in and outside that niche. This idea of community content creation is nothing new.

The biggest take away here is that publishing new content isn’t enough anymore. You’ve got to create it for relevance and to provide something of value: create it for humans (not spiders). That’s the only way to truly engage your audience and incentivize your community to share, comment and engage over and over again.

Follow @Liqui_Site

Introducing "Social ROI": Part III

by Richard Feldman
www.liqui-site.com


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Experience how social media efforts truly impact your business.

In Part II, Social Media Measurability, I talked about the missing link in social media – the almighty measurable ROI.

For the last few years clients have known they needed to be involved in key social media channels, though they haven't been sure why or how to truly leverage it. Many still aren't. And with no way to track each aspect of their collective efforts across all channels, the challenge was in proving that social media was a sound investment of resources.

Enter Social ROI

Now, those days of quasi-accountability are gone. Enter Social ROI – a social media analytics solution that allows businesses to monitor individual social channels and the demographics of their entire network, track promotional efforts, discover conversations by keyword – and measure the conversion results in actual dollars.

Just as Google Analytics measures and reports website statistics, Social ROI provides granular demographic information on your membership (community fan base, followers, subscribers), including gender, age, interests, geography, education, employment, referring links and more. More importantly, Social ROI enables businesses to create goals and campaigns, promote their offerings through their social channels – and measure the conversion results in real dollars.

Discovering conversations by keyword across all channels saves time and can lead to providing value, cherry-picking prospects or see who's talking about your brand to better manage "online PR".

Get a 30-Day FREE Trial of Social ROI

Liqui-Site announces a 30-Day FREE Trial of Social ROI (no credit card required), for either our "Lake" or "River" plans. As an exclusive offer, now through November 23, 2011: Sign up for the "Lake" plan and Liqui-Site will set up all of your social media accounts within the Social ROI solution for you at no additional cost! No risk. All reward.
Learn more about Social ROI and View Plans & Pricing >


Richard A Feldman
Senior Account Director
Liqui-Site Designs, Inc.
[T] 845 353 7771
[C] 845 548 9679
[E] rfeldman@liqui-site.com
www.liqui-site.com

Follow @Liqui_Site

Social Media Measurability: Part II

by Richard Feldman
www.liqui-site.com


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What's the point of social media if you can't measure the effort?

In Part I, Social Media Monetization, I shared a few examples of how to directly increase a brand's revenue using social media. It was a direct answer to a direct question a client had asked me.

But, there's a bigger, more important, long-term piece to the social media puzzle. And it’s called measurable ROI.

Driving prospects to a website (or landing page) and seeing an immediate revenue increase is the easiest and fastest way to understanding the power of social media. But a well-crafted strategy could take that one-time revenue increase and allow you to take what you learn and apply it to similar or brand new campaigns across other channels (new channels mean new prospects). While at the same time, the relationships you build with customers or clients allow you to sell them on other products or services once you’ve established that your brand is trustworthy, provides quality and value, and is committed to its customers needs and overall satisfaction.

Now, increasing exposure through social media leads me to think about how to measure and track results. Seems to me you'd need an analytics solution that allows you to track your social network channels just the same way you would track the performance of your website -- you know, something like a Google Analytics clone, but designed to analyze and report on your social media efforts. I mean, just like GA tracks visitors, time on site, keywords, geography and many other aspects of web performance, an integrated social media measurement system would allow you to track all aspects of your brand’s social media presence.

Hmmm... Imagine being able to get real-time reporting on your social network accounts to overlay with your other (i.e. traditional) marketing initiatives – to zero in on membership trends, activity and engagement, thoughts and feelings of your customers and members, their interests, their geographical distribution, education levels, gender, employment, and countless other metrics. If you were able to compare your social media channels and understand the difference among them and their impact on your business, you might even improve your ROI by being able to adjust spends.

Imagine learning the real-time answers to questions like these:

1 - Which social channels are most effective for us?
2 - What are the accurate traffic patterns/trends?
3 - Which customers and segments are most valuable?
4 - Where are my customers and members located?
5 - What is my demographic (age, gender, education, HHI)?
6 - What's our level of activity, engagement, membership?
7 - What are they talking about; what motivates them?
8 - Who's talking about products / services we can offer?
9 - Which networks produce more response and better ROI?
10 - What kind of ROI are we getting, in real numbers?

Now, imagine having these answers presented to you as intuitive, thorough, visual reports. As I wrote in one of my last blog posts, Brand Monologue? Try Brand Dialogue Instead!, social media is about an exchange with customers and prospects, not a one-way street of self promo. A dialogue makes communication more satisfying, fulfilling and much more profitable. Successful brands have given creative thought to the process of communicating with customers – and to their social media strategy, making it a viral engagement.

Interestingly, just like traditional media, social media requires testing to learn what works and how to improve results to build a genuine community around YOUR brand.

Richard A Feldman
Senior Account Director
Liqui-Site Designs, Inc.
[T] 845 353 7771
[C] 845 548 9679
[E] rfeldman@liqui-site.com
www.liqui-site.com

Follow @Liqui_Site

Social Media Monetization: Part I

by Richard Feldman
www.liqui-site.com


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What's the point of social media if you can't monetize the effort?

More and more, each day, I hear from business owners, executives, and online marketing professionals “If social media doesn’t influence the sales process and the effort can't be monetized immediately, then what’s the point?” I understand their frustration and how overwhelming both social media strategy and questionable ROI can be. Looking for ideas on how to test social media as a revenue generator? Here are a few real-world examples:

Burt's Bees is perhaps a little more well-known for its lip balm than its Facebook Page, but Facebookers can buy products directly from Burt's Bees Facebook Page’s Shop & Share feature. The company has become one of the leading manufacturers of natural personal care products. With more than 150 products to sell, Facebook is the perfect space for the company to connect with its fans and customers. “Through Facebook, we can introduce new products more interactively than in print or banner ads…and provide a space where [our consumers] can connect with one another,” says Melissa Sowry, the company's social media and content manager. Burt's Bees, nearing 700,000 fans, prides itself on its ability to engage with its customers on Facebook by responding to comments – and allowing customers to lead the conversation. In 2010, the company reported that its Page has doubled the traffic from Facebook to its e-commerce site, and the increase in sales and overall brand awareness from their online marketing test was enough to make it a must-have for future fiscal budgets.

The NY JETS launched their Ultimate Fan social game in September 2010, which was the first revenue-generating Facebook app to be backed by a pro sports team. The application lets football fans do online what they would normally do at home and in stadiums — root for their favorite teams and players, predict game scores, hold a virtual tailgate party and purchase promotional wear. Ultimate Fan sells banner advertising to other firms like Ticketmaster, and has since lured four major sponsors integrating their brands: MetLife, Motorola, SportsNet NY and HotelPlanner.com. Monetize much? Let’s just call this game-changer a blowout.

Whitecaps Foul Weather Gear is a great example of engaging a smaller, niche audience in order to monetize social media. Testing effective email marketing, coupled with social media engagement, Whitecaps saw an increase of $5,000 in less than 30 days, using Facebook to drive sales via a promo code. Now, that really gave folks in the global sailing and boating community something to "Like". The offer was hugely successful using a single platform as the test. (See my blog post "Viral Messaging Spreads Like Wildfire".) Recently, we learned that Constant Contact will promote Liqui-Site's email marketing and social media customization work for Whitecaps Foul Weather Gear, nationally. According to company president, Mark Kamen, “We were thrilled with the test success and we plan to greatly increase our exposure through social media in 2012 and beyond.”

The next question is “Now that we’re increasing revenue through social media, how do we ensure that increase for the long-term – and improve upon it?”

I’ll answer that very question in my next blog post, Social Media Measurability: Part II. To make sure you’re the first to know, you can either bookmark us in your browser, subscribe to our blog via RSS feed or follow us with Google Friend Connect at right. Since this IS all about social media, we’ll also post a link in our social channels on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Any way you see fit, connect with us. We’ll provide tremendous value, just keep the comments and questions coming!

Richard A Feldman
Senior Account Director
Liqui-Site Designs, Inc.
[T] 845 353 7771
[C] 845 548 9679
[E] rfeldman@liqui-site.com
www.liqui-site.com

Follow @Liqui_Site