social media

Social Media Bashing is Boring as Hell

There’s a fair few blog posts doing the rounds about social media.

How its practitioners are snake-oil salesmen.

Why everyone’s just out to make a quick buck.

How businesses are being ripped off by consultants who charge an arm and a leg for their time and deliver very little back in return.

One of the better headlines I spotted was Why Social Media Gurus Should Be Trampled by Elephants (check out the edited URL as well for extra emphasis). To be fair, that post makes some good points, while draped in a humorous link-bait title.

But here’s the thing.

While there are definitely crap merchants out there who wouldn’t know a tweet from a poke, there are also many more incredibly smart and business-savvy individuals and agencies that are bringing their clients huge success in social media.

You know why?

Because their clients actually had the common sense to do due diligence on who they were employing as their social media arm. Because the consultants/agencies had results and actionable strategies (with return predictions) to show. Because, simply put, the business owner acted like a business owner.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. It doesn’t matter that “social media is new”, “social media is scary”, “we don’t understand social media”, or any other excuse or phrase you want to use.

If you do your job as a business owner and protect your investment, there wouldn’t be the need for any social media bashing (or any other industry bashing). You’d be asking questions that should be asked of any supplier.

What’s your experience?
Name some of the projects you’ve worked on.
What was the strategy used?
How did the results versus the projections go?
How will this really benefit my company?
What’s the time map?
How will you transfer your skills to my industry?

Forget how many Twitter followers someone has – that can be gamed and bought. Forget how sparkly their blog is – that can be paid for. Forget how they name drop players in the industry – is that relevant to you?

Instead, treat social media like you would any other part of your business. Carry out due diligence and don’t be sold on the first whiz-bang pitch you receive.

You’ve built your business to where it is now because you’ve been protective of your investment.

Why stop that now?

Image: What What

Why Loyalty and Mobile Marketing is the Future for Retail

You’re a customer that does all your food shopping at your favourite grocery or deli store.

When you get there, you see the normal weekly flyer that has the current offers. Some you might be interested; others, not so much. So you flick through the flyer, then leave it at the bottom of the shopping cart.

You wander around the store, grab the things you need, then go to pay at the checkout. You might have a loyalty card for that store, so you swipe it and grab your points, and leave.

Job done for another week or so (more, if you do a large monthly shop instead). Then you’ll repeat the routine in a month’s time, and then the following month, etc.

But it could be so much more.

The Relationship to the Sale

According to a new report from eMarketer, consumers aren’t just looking for the latest and greatest offers. Sure, price plays a part in any sales process, but that’s just part of the story.

The biggest part? We want to be educated as well, as this chart from the eMarketer report shows.

What’s interesting from this chart isn’t the fact that consumers want to know how your prices compare – that’s a given. Nor is it getting or redeeming coupons – again, that’s almost a given with any retailer.

It’s the remaining pieces of information – the parts about getting nutritional information, reading product reviews and visiting the company’s site for information.

Oh yeah – and the part that this is all via smartphones while the consumer is shopping.

So, looking at the report a bit further, it’s essentially saying we, as customers, are on our smartphones while shopping to not only see if there are any online discounts available, but to see if we can find more information about what we’re about to buy.

Now how could you, as a retailer, use that information? Because it’s clear our normal shopping methods are changing, and you need to change with that. So where do you start?

Loyalty on the Go

If you’re a retailer, there’s a good chance you already have a loyalty program in place to reward frequent shoppers (I’m looking at this from a medium-to-large retailer point of view; although smaller retailers could benefit as well from a low cost loyalty program).

But how well are you using that with mobile marketing? Are you using it at all?

In Canada, for example, loyalty programs are hugely popular, with almost 94% of consumers belonging to at least one loyalty program. If you’re a Canadian retailer (or have a presence there) that equates to almost 15 million consumers to target (working on the assumption half the population are minors or children).

We know that population is increasingly smartphone savvy – as this 2009 Nielsen report shows, Canada accounts for 12% of the smartphone market (which is probably more now that the iPhone and Android are available in Canada). This equates to about 4.8 million Canadian consumers on smartphones.

So let’s think about that a second. Loyalty is huge in Canada; more Canadians are using smartphones – so the obvious next step is to combine the two with your marketing (and this can be across markets – I just used Canada as an example as that’s where I live).

Tie in your loyalty card to a mobile app. When consumers sign up for your card, advise them of your mobile app. When they download, they enter their loyalty card number and that ties their accounts together.
Monitor the usage of the app. Is it for coupons? In-store specials? Research? Build a database of your consumers’ use of your app, and build loyalty offers into that. Offer small tips on nutrition, product energy usage, etc, depending on the products you sell. Give shoppers a reason to stay in your store.
Make it easy to shop with you. Best Buy and Future Shop currently have an app that offers a ton of features to make the consumer’s experience more enjoyable. Browsing and buying options, easy check-out, barcode and billing options are just some of its features. Tie that into the Best Buy / Future Shop card, that rewards your app use with physical points, and you can see the benefits immediately. (At Bonsai Interactive, we’re currently building a bunch of apps that take this to the next level for multiple retailer industries).
Have price comparisons at the ready. Saying you offer the best value is one thing; showing it is another. Have mini-chart comparisons on prices for you and your competitors – that keeps consumers off your competitors’ mobile sites and interacting on yours.
Pro-active use of loyalty points. Because your mobile app is tied into your loyalty card, you can instantly advise consumers of when they’ve reached a certain plateau. The app recognizes how many points has been accrued and lets the consumer know via an alert. They can then buy direct from the phone with smart, targeted and mobile-friendly ads and purchases (which then gets added to the loyalty card).

And on it goes – these are just some ways you could combine your offline loyalty card with your online mobile marketing. And we haven’t even discussed where social media or location-based marketing comes into the mix – combine that with existing marketing and mobile promotions, and the sky really is the limit.

We’ve all heard the line, “Social media is changing the way we do business”. But perhaps the real line should be, “Mobile and loyalty is changing the way consumers need us to do business.”

So how far along the line are you at making your mobile customers loyal?

Image: LearnVest

Social Media Roadmaps

This is a guest post by Kapil Apshankar, an innovative social media strategist. He writes about tips, tricks and techniques that help his readers score higher in social media at Social Media Notebook.

Kapil also maintains a personal blog, Spring Rainbow, which captures his life away from social media.

He can be reached via Twitter @KapilApshankar – or by email from his blogs’ contact pages.

Social media is one of the most misunderstood – and underused/abused – concepts of our times.

To borrow a term from Michael Stelzner’s lexicon, social media is indeed a jungle – where it’s very easy to get lost or get (b)eaten! We all need a roadmap for success here.

Chris Brogan had a wonderful post a few days ago – Sharpen Your Pencil – that talked about making success happen. The original post is a worthy read by itself – but one of the comments (by SocialSteve) really rocked:

This sounds similar to what Emmet Smith said at the induction of the Football Hall of Fame. He said something like he had dreams. And the next step after a dream was writing it down on paper. And then turning that into a plan. Maybe there will be a social media hall of fame some day. 🙂

Social media success strategies need to be customized and tailor fit. A one size fits all approach just doesn’t work.

Here are four key steps to build a custom social media roadmap – one that works for you.

Establish Your Base Camp

Your base camp isn’t Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Your base camp has to be your blog. Take it anywhere else, and you’re at the mercy of external forces to keep your camp alive. It just doesn’t work that way.

There is also the About Me page – the center piece of any base camp – that needs attention. To recap the wisdom of Darren Rowse,

Setting up an about page is really important ? it?s one of those pages that a new reader will head to in order to help them work out what your blog is about, who is behind it and to decide whether they?ll keep reading it.

Fortify (And Diversify) Your Primary Social Media Channels

The next step is to focus on your primary social media channels. In all likelihood, they will be Twitter, Facebook and/or LinkedIn.

One rule to remember here is something I learned from Tamar Weinberg. Every baby is different, so also every social media channel is different.

Play to the strengths of each channel. Danny had written a wonderful post right here on the topic, How to Use Blog Lists for Your Social Media Strategy. And then, take them to the next level. For starters, answer questions on LinkedIn and get on Twitter chats. You want to get more from your primary channels.

Establish Secondary and Tertiary Channels

Social media without interactions is a monologue at best. Think about ways to make your social media interactions rich – both in content and semantics. Encourage comments, cross-comments and discussions. Healthy debates are good for everyone involved.

Also to think about are mechanisms for your audience to share more than just text – how about images, audio and video?

That’s also what I would refer to as your secondary and tertiary channels of the social web.

Think beyond the conventional channels – think YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, UStream, Vokle et al.

Keep The Big Picture Perspective

Social media is all about real connections that thrive on the foundation of trust, empathy and authenticity. Anytime we violate the Golden Rule, we dent our reputation and credibility. Everything that we do with social media should fit into our big picture perspectives.

It might help to define your big picture using the framework I laid down at Social Media Success – One Day At A Time!

What do you think? What other strategies are helping you build your own successful social media roadmaps?

Image Credit: nullalux