Develop a social media strategy first, and you’ll save time and money on implementation.
I would no more send a client out to “do” social media without a comprehensive plan and strategy than I would send a child out in a snowstorm without a warm coat, or put my car on the freeway without gas.
Every time I see a seminar on social media “tips and tricks” for small businesses, small-to-midsize nonprofits, or any other organization without a full-time marketing communications person on staff, I cringe.
Those of you who tell me how you wasted time Twittering and wasted money buying Google ads? Your experience does not reflect badly on either of those tools. It means that you were using tools that didn’t match the problem you wanted to address. It’s like racing into the bathroom brandishing a hammer instead of a plunger when the toilet is overflowing. Even messier.
Yes, I know your budget and your time are limited. But instead of paying $100 for a two-hour tips and tricks seminar, read a good book about crafting a social media strategy*. Then budget $300 or more to have a good social media consultant (here’s how you know if you’ve found a good one) come in to your organization and talk with your team about what you’re doing, what your audience, your peers, and your competition are doing, and what your marketing communications budget might allow you to do in the future. If possible, find a social media consultant who’s familiar with your field.
Facebook? Twitter? Blogging? No hurry. Once you’ve got a strategy in place, you’ll be able to figure out what social media tools you want to carry around in your toolbox and which ones are better left in the basement.
You don’t necessarily have to “do” social media — it pretty much goes ahead and does you. The question is how much you want to try to shape what it’s doing.
For those of you who weren’t at the presentation at the University of Washington last night, a little explanation: Every year I give a short talk to a PR class at the university about social media as it’s used in the PR field. As you might expect, this talk changes rapidly as trends in social media change (Remember when Twitter was the hot, new thing?). This year I nearly entitled it “Social Media for Facebook.”
I promised the class that I’d post the slides from the talk, so here’s the link to the slide presentation in full-size PDF form.
This being a “new-style” presentation, the slides are meant to be used in conjunction with a talk that is pretty much counterpoint: questions for the audience, stories, and case studies. Molly Haas, head of PR for Northwest Folklife, joined me this year and she walked through the slides of Northwest Folklife’s social media presence (2010 contrasted with 2011), talking about what social media had been crafted by her team and what had “just happened.”
This slide deck is illustrated with examples of Northwest Folklife’s social media presence, but I’ve done customized decks for several of my clients and for prospective clients interested in “getting into” social media. As the presentation points out, you don’t necessarily have to “do” social media — it pretty much goes ahead and does you. The question is how much you want to try to shape what it’s doing.
Six quick and easy tweaks that can take your website or blog from looking sloppy and out-of-date to savvy and professional.
The start of the new year is one of the best times to touch up your website, blog, or LinkedIn page. I’m not talking about a big, expensive overhaul or redesign: I’m talking about quick and easy tweaks that can take you from looking sloppy and out-of-date to savvy and professional.
This checklist will point you in the right direction:
Check dates. If you’re talking about something happening in 2010 in the future tense, or if you’re featuring a 2010 event on your “upcoming events” page, fix it — fast.
Watch out for use of the word “new.” My ebook Take Control of iPhone Basics came out in October, 2010. I can probably get away with calling it “new” for another or month or so and then it’s simply “my ebook.”
Check photos. If your website has pictures of your storefront taken three years ago, when the awning was a different color and you had a different sign out front, it’s time to get a new photo. Same with your own photo — you may have been cuter and slimmer five years ago when it was taken, but everything from the haircut to what you were wearing is probably dated.
Scrutinize your client list and list of recent projects. This is the time to add the new capabilities you offer, list your most recent clients, and perhaps remove from the list former clients under new management, or who no longer use your services.
Clear out the clutter — especially in your sidebars. Check your blogroll or links lists to make sure these websites are still active (you may be astonished to find out how many changed URLs or ceased operations). If you’ve added links to several videos, books or images, take a hard look at the page and prune it down to the one or two you most want people to visit.
Finally, test all your links. It’s the Internet; things change.
Find out why many organizations that crave Facebook publicity aren’t yet putting their best face forward.
Isn’t it great that your customers and clients on Facebook can add a link, complete with images, that people can use to get to your website?
In theory, yes. But in reality, it turns out that many organizations that crave Facebook publicity aren’t yet putting their best face forward.
When well-meaning Facebook members write a nice note and link to your website’s URL, they may discover that the array of your images they can use to illustrate the Facebook post are just plain weird. Instead of a photo of your logo, or the image that accompanied your latest blog post, they get a choice of irrelevant logos of your partner agencies, or third party ads, from ‘way down at the bottom of your home page.
If you test this website, you'll see this image.
It’s easy to test your website’s Facebook readiness. Give it a try.
Fixing the problem may involve a little experimentation — particularly because Facebook doesn’t immediately register changes you make to your page. But it’s worth putting in some work on the process — if you want to get the most mileage out of Facebook publicity.
This MacVoices radio interview was a delightful, if unexpected, part of promoting my new ebook.
The new ebook Take Control of iPhone Basics, iOS 4 Edition
This summer I wrote a 138-page book for new and intermediate iPhone users. Take Control of iPhone Basics, iOS 4 Edition, is part of the Take Control series of ebooks (also available in print editions) published by Adam and Tonya Engst at TidBITS Publishing. I’d edited two books for them, and was thrilled when Tonya asked me to take on a writing project myself.
The writing process is iterative: You outline, you research topics, you write sections, you get technical and editorial reviews, and you rewrite. At the end it was tweak, tweak, tweak — plus another round of research and writing to cover the updated operating system for the iPhone.
Maybe you’re not supposed to say this, but I totally enjoyed writing the book.
I also enjoyed, as the writing gave way to editing, developing a modest marketing plan for the book. I didn’t want to find myself in the place where I’ve seen so many authors land: The book goes live, but there’s no support material. Fortunately, Take Control does a fabulous job of creating a book/author page and sending out targeted press releases. But I knew I needed to do much, much more.
A Blog
In July, as I was researching the book, I started the iPhone 4 Tips blog. I used it to write about iPhone accessories, apps, news, and research that didn’t quite fit into the book. Now it includes some information about the book itself — plus the updates to the ebook that Take Control will be issuing. (A huge “thank you” to the makers of the magical DoubleTake software I used to stitch together multiple screenshots to create the graphic for the blog’s header.)
Business Cards
I ordered business cards for the ebook. The problem with using my own business cards is that most prospective customers for the book don’t want to reach me — they want to buy the book. Making them email me, or go to this website — or even to the iPhone 4 Tips website — and hunt around for a link to the ebook is obviously not the way to make sales. The card has the URL for the Take Control sales page. I’ve since met several fiction authors who use book business cards, complete with graphics from the book’s cover.
Social Media
My marketing plan included a list of my existing social media identities: Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and some specialized professional lists. I drafted little blurbs for each that I used, with a bit of modification, when the book came out earlier this week. I’m still working my way through that list, crafting blurbs that are appropriate for each list. It’s difficult not to feel that I’m spamming people, so I’ve carefully studied the way that each community handles this type of announcement.
My partner, Tom, is an established member of two major web communities; his postings about the book on those sites, using short budURLs I created, have been more effective than mine in generating click-throughs.
The Unexpected
Now we get to the interesting part: What went, not wrong, but not at all the way I’d expected?
First, I sprained my ankle the day before the book went live, which meant that I was implementing the PR plan while alternately in severe pain or pretty thoroughly drugged. I used a proofreader.
Second, there were radio interviews. I’d been lining up some speaking engagements, but somehow overlooked the radio and podcast world. I found out that Take Control authors get invited to be on some of the major technology shows. The irony here, of course, is that my book is less for geeks than it is for the people who pester geeks when they can’t find their email.
Audio interviews require earphones and a microphone, I discovered. Fortunately, I have top-of-the-line noise-canceling earphones. I was not as well prepared on the microphone front — deep in my closet I found a box labeled “audio” that contained an ancient, cheap USB mic with a flimsy plastic mic stand. Fortunately, it worked (taped firmly to the desk), even when the cat leaped on the desk in the middle of the taping and began gnawing on it.
As for the content of the radio interviews, I’m realizing that I need more preparation. More on that, later.
The Definitive Twitter Guide is a must-have for contemporary marketers. Author Shannon Evans provides a substantive, thoughtful description of how the market has evolved to a place in which 140-word messages, carefully crafted and frequently sent, can establish, communicate, and reinforce a company’s reputation.
The Definitive Twitter Guide: Making Tweets Work for Your Business: 30 Twitter Success Stories From Real Businesses and Non-Profits by Shannon Evans (CreateSpace, 2010). 244 pages.
The only way to succeed in social media is to jump in, start swimming, and keep paddling, every day. There’s no alternative. Yet I watch businesses assign their receptionists to “do something with Twitter” and decide after a month that Twitter can’t do anything for them. (Would they have assigned the receptionists to design their TV ad campaigns? I seriously doubt it.)
If a company is avoiding Twitter, Facebook, and a robust, interactive web presence, chances are they are watching with growing frustration as their competitors the social media tools gain and serve customers.
“Twitter? Facebook? It just doesn’t make any sense,” one business owner I know, firmly “old school,” frets. Because she doesn’t understand why it works, much less how it works, she’s not going to do it—even though she can see it’s helping her competition.
The Definitive Twitter Guide by Shannon Evans
No amount of nagging or shaming or prodding is going to work here. But something that lets her see behind the fairy dust to the real-world mechanics of how and why Twitter works just might do the trick. That’s where Shannon Evans’ new book, The Definitive Twitter Guide — Making Tweets Work for Your Business, comes in.
Evans provides a substantive, thoughtful description of how the market has evolved to a place in which 140-word messages, carefully crafted and frequently sent, can establish, communicate, and reinforce a company’s reputation. Evans writes:
“As a marketing tool, social media presents a shift in thinking from the days of direct marketing and one-way communication. Instead, social media creates a different opportunity to interact with potential clients and to build rapport with a savvier customer base.”
With 30 studies of businesses and non-profits that have put Twitter to work to for them, Evans builds a convincing case for the advantages social media have over traditional forms of PR and marketing. These include:
Speed of production (you can get your message out in minutes, or even seconds)
Timeliness (you can play a role in discussions and reporting when current events involve your area of business)
Relatively low cost
Ability to target a specific audience (i.e., people interested in what you sell or do)
Ability to create and focus a conversation on a topic (using # hashtags)
Evans does an outstanding job of stepping outside the often self-congratulatory world of social media and approaching Twitter from the viewpoint of an established business professional. This is a great help to anyone who needs to assess the value of Twitter and social media work in relation to the value of their other PR and marketing activities.
The book includes illustrated step-by-step instructions to setting up a Twitter account for your business and using it, complete with examples of good and bad accounts and Tweets. (I loved her tip about reigning in your Tweets at 120 characters so you leave plenty of room for other people to retweet them.)
The book’s later chapters have deeply researched and sophisticated information on creating national and local Twitter campaigns, using multiple accounts, and developing audiences. In Chapter 12, Evans evaluates Twitter’s role in the context of business marketing (using as an example the experiences of my friend and client Joe Hage, director of Marketing Communications at Cardiac Science.)
In short, The Definitive Twitter Guide is a must-have for contemporary marketers and business owners—even if all they want to do is figure out what their competition is up to. You’ll find it on Amazon ($19.99) and also in ebook form.
Good website design is not rocket science. Or is it?
I have long pointed to the website of a local junk hauling company, Happy Hauler, as the epitome of effective web design.
Their clients call to book junk pickups. So, at the top of their homepage they’ve put great big phone numbers for booking appointments. Their left-hand navigation, consistent throughout the site, has prominent links to:
a list of their services
pricing info
an FAQ
This is not rocket science. Or is it?
Today I went to the website of a large local business to make an appointment for services and found the following:
A phone number at the bottom of the homepage in what is probably 6-point type. I couldn’t read it clearly, so I clicked on the “us” in the nav bar. Hey, it was the closest thing to “Contact Us” that I could find. But the “Us” page turned out to be the company’s mission statement. The first element in the navigation on this page (a whole other design, in a different part of the page) was “the founder.”
Showing customers their gushy, eye-glazing mission statement and telling us about the person who founded the company (whom I have never heard of, and who has no direct customer contact) was obviously more important to them than giving me a readable phone number so I could (gasp) book an appointment.
I can’t believe that in this day and age people are still designing websites like this. I called a rival business.
If you come across a detailed, comprehensive testimonial — for an individual or for a company — you can pretty much be assured that it’s well deserved.
To get a good reputation, you need to do more than just please clients and colleagues. You need to get them to talk to others about how pleased they are.
And, to get a really great reputation, you need to focus their talk — make sure it’s falling on the right ears. Telling other people what you want them to say about you, and to whom? Is this getting complicated? It sure is.
Starting small: Linkedin recommendations
If you use Linkedin, you’ve probably gotten a request from someone to write a recommendation that will appear under on the person’s profile page. How did this strike you? Was it something you wanted to do? Was it easy to do? Did you feel comfortable doing it?
I ask these questions because I struggle with recommendations — and writing them should be easy for me:
• I’m a sole proprietor, so I don’t have to ask my boss if it’s OK to gush about another company.
• I’m a professional writer, and it’s relatively simple for me get out some words of praise, be they glowing or merely reserved.
And yet, I struggle with these testimonials. Am I writing what the person wants me to say? Am I writing what their prospective clients would want to hear? (And are those two things even aligned in the requestor’s mind?)
The Big Time: corporate client testimonials
I bring up these issues because I’m often asked to help craft endorsements and testimonials about companies from their clients.
If doing a two-paragraph recommendation for a former colleague on Linkedin has its challenges, the issues with corporate client testimonials can be massive.
Does this customer-service policy make me look fat?
Typically, a company sales staff would love a client organization to write a testimonial that hits on each one of its strategic sales points. Let’s say that for Company A, those are
• trendy design
• rapid delivery
• customization of the product (on large orders)
• local service contractors for rapid repairs
The problem is that few customers are involved with all four sales points. The company that loved your trendy design and quick delivery has never called you for repairs. The company that loved your customization and needed a quick repair had no need for rapid delivery and barely noticed your product design.
It may also be that the customer who loved the design and delivery was disappointed when the repair work was bungled.
And yet, the expectation is that the client somehow sees you exactly as you see your (idealized) self.
Talk is cheap; hard data requires senior management
The sales force’s “dream” testimonial is filled with numbers that substantiate the customer’s high opinions of your work and quantify the difference your product or service made in their operations: With your service contract, they experienced 50% less downtime than they had while getting service from your competitor. As a result of your product’s trendy design, they doubled their sales to 20-somethings and high-spending homeowners.
Ah, but the problem is that the store manager or buyer for your customer’s organization has no authority to reveal that business-sensitive data. They know that the CEO or CFO of their company would need to sign off on it — and might well decline to make that sort of business data public. All they are authorized to give you are kind words and soft generalizations: They love your great customer service, and 20-somethings like your nice designs.
The CEO or a VP of Company A could, of course, ask his or her counterpart at Company B to make the endorsement. But, in practice, that sort of “ask” is rarely on a CEO’s or VP’s radar.
The good news
I’m not leaving you with much good news if you’re in the business of soliciting or writing client testimonials, but there is a silver lining for those of you who read them: If you come across a detailed, comprehensive testimonial — for an individual or for a company — you can pretty much be assured that it’s well deserved.
1. You followed the Tweets and blog posts documenting the mysterious disappearance of one-sixth of Amazon.com’s books (those published by Macmillan) from the website Friday evening and want to know what was going on behind the scenes.
2. You tried to ignore the back and forth, but want to know how it ended and why.
3. You are a public relations or marketing professional and you want to follow along as Scalzi documents all the ways that Amazon set the scene for a PR disaster and made things worse every single step of the way.
I would no more send a client out to “do” social media without a comprehensive plan and strategy than I would send a child out in a snowstorm without a warm coat, or put my car on the freeway without gas.
