At the Innotech eMarketing Summit I attended a presentation entitled “Communication Shifts: How Brands Communicate through Twitter and the Blogosphere” by Simon Salt and Chad Sour (yes, those were their real names). I came away realizing that social media is really a tightrope act. Mastering social media requires that you learn how to play the game with today’s rules, while simultaneously preparing to play within a different set of rules (or a different game entirely) tomorrow to leverage social media for your company. This balance between focusing on the now and looking forward to the future will determine who the real social media “winners” will be.

Today’s Rules

Today’s rules are important to follow because without abiding by them your brand’s social media strategy will never get off the ground.

There are some rules that apply to all social media platforms today (and probably always will), such as:

• Make people want to follow your company and talk about it with their circle of friends
• Establish a clear company voice (not necessarily your own voice as a business owner) and stick to it
• Know how you’re going to handle negative situations before they arise and then stick to your plan when the time comes

Rules are always evolving on social media platforms. Major changes like the Facebook news feed, FTC blogging guidelines, or Twitter follow limitations changed the game significantly for brands that were utilizing those platforms. These changes serve to demonstrate that with every new rule a company’s focus must remain on the here and the now first and foremost because otherwise your social media strategy can easily become outdated, ineffective, and potentially harmful to your business goals.

Tomorrow’s Changes

But it’s easy when one or two major changes happen on a well-established social media network, what about when a former favorite starts to die of old age and new networks are emerging? (more…)

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Brands are a part of our lives and social networks are where we express our lives online; therefore, it’s logical to conclude that these spaces are hungry for brand conversations. Consider the following facts:

• 19% of young adults have added branded content to their social network profiles and 24% have recently added advertising clips*
• 60% of social media users interact with a company more than once per week*
• 93% of social media users think a company should have social media presence*
• 20% of tweets provide product or brand information**

Why Should You Care?

It was once assumed that there was no room for businesses in social media- that users would become disinterested in social networks if brands barged in, pandering to consumers like they do in other forms of media. While this may be true in some instances, the above statistics are evidence of the extent to which brand conversations are being adopted into social media spaces.

Social media users these days are starving for brand conversations- they want to compare brands and products, they want to share their stories, and they expect brands to be engaging them as well. With this in mind, there are a few things you should remember:

1. If social media users aren’t already talking about you, they will be soon!
   Social networks have made it easy to generate online buzz about any brand- big or small. If your brand isn’t being talked about yet online, give it time- it will be.
2. You’ll need to get comfortable seeing your name online.
   When your brand first starts appearing online in conversations, it can be easy to let it distract you. This sort of distraction can also happen if all of the feedback about your brand has been generally positive and all of a sudden you are seeing negative press spreading. Whether the opinions being expressed are positive or negative, keep one thing in mind: that is just a small subset of opinions. Only the most extreme ends of the spectrum are the ones that are going to be talking about you. No one is going to take the time to say something neutral like “Just received my order from Company.com It was fine- just as expected.” (more…)
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With a record number of women on social networks, getting to the heart of their motivations for participating in these social spaces is more important to marketers and business owners than ever before.  A recent survey by a women’s social networking site called ShesConnected attempted to tackle the question “What do women want out of social networks?” Their findings not only illuminated what women are looking for on social networks, but also where they’re going to get what they want.

Why is this so important? Well, if you’re looking for the perfect gift to get the woman in your life for her Birthday or trying to decode what she means when she says “It’s fine!” this information won’t help you; but, if you’re selling women’s products online this will give you a good idea of where you need to be to reach your market.

Where Are All The Ladies?
Facebook and LinkedIn were by far the most popular social networks with the women surveyed. Below is the percentage of women who indicated that they were members of each social network:

• Facebook 83%
• LinkedIn 73%
• Twitter 55%
• MySpace 41%

The results of the survey show that the women on these social networks are very active. In fact, more than half of women check their networks multiple times per day, and 48% reported being a member of four or more social networks.

What Makes These Social Networks Appealing to Women?
When surveyed, the top five responses that women cited as being “very important” reasons for them to join social networks were: (more…)

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Throughout the month of November we will be running our “SMB Blog Series.” While SMB traditionally refers to “Small/Medium Business,” here at Volusion it has come to mean something else: “Small Made Big.” This month we will be sharing resources, tips, stats, and inspirations to help you turn your small ecommerce endeavor into something greater- something BIG!

We all know Twitter can be great for advertising your business and connecting with your customers, but what business owners sometimes overlook is the value that Twitter provides them as entrepreneurs. Twitter can help business owners stay on top of industry news and connect with fellow online store owners.

Here are some great hashtags to get your business plugged in on Twitter:

• #smb
• #smallbusiness
• #SMBs
• #entrepreneurs
• #startups
• #ecommerce

(more…)

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Earlier this year eMarketer wrote an article based on MarketingSherpa’s surprising findings concerning social media effectiveness and measurability.

MarketingSherpa’s study asked US Social Media Marketing Professionals to identify the most appropriate marketing uses for social media. Here are the results (in order of effectiveness):

1. Influence brand reputation
2. Increase brand awareness
3. Improve search engine rankings
4. Increase website traffic
5. Generate leads
6. Improve internal communications
7. Increase online sales

If you have a small company, chances are you’ve heard the following phrase in a marketing meeting while discussing whether or not to engage in social media: “It will increase our online sales!” As you can see, however, this oft cited justification for involvement in social media is actually the least effective marketing use for social media. When you’re thinking about social media involvement you have to be thinking long term. The biggest marketing impact you will have will be changes in brand reputation and brand awareness. Next in line will be SEO benefits, and an increase in traffic and leads. It’s likely that all of these things will ultimately lead to an increase in sales, but not overnight.

Social Media Tactics That Get the Most Bang For the Buck

Since your company’s social media efforts are going to be a long-term commitment you should determine what’s most important to your company and which activities align with those factors. Ask yourself “Is it more important to be able to measure the results of my social media efforts now or is it more important to focus on social media efforts that will be the ‘most effective’ in the long-run?” (more…)

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