Category: Marketing

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Small Businesses Increase Content Marketing Efforts

Many small businesses are already using some form of content marketing to promote themselves—74% as of a January survey of US small businesses by BusinessBolts.com. It’s a tactic that must be paying off, because three-quarters of small businesses also said they planned to do more content marketing this year than last—and just 4% said they had no plans to do any content marketing at all.

Small Businesses change in content budgets 2013

Articles and blog posts were the type of content most favored by small businesses—74% have promoted their business using articles, and 64% through blog posts. Slightly under half were publishing social media content and about two out of five used email newsletters.

Small businesses spent an average of 6.9% of their annual marketing budgets on content marketing last year, according to a November study conducted by Ad-ology Research.

Ad-ology found that US small businesses were spending a greater share of their budgets on content marketing than on social media advertising. This suggests that small businesses may be more focused on using social sites to publish owned content rather than paying for advertising on the networks—a trend at some larger businesses as well.

But small businesses in particular seem to rely on content marketing because it can be extremely cost effective. A majority of the small businesses surveyed by BusinessBolts.com estimated they spent less than $100 on content marketing per month; just 11% spent more than $500.

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Statistics on Social Media and Purchasing Habits

Social media is not a replacement for traditional marketing; it is only another tool in your marketing toolbox. You might ask the reason you need to engage with social networks at all. Some statistics on social media and purchasing habits:

  1. Consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals. (HubSpot)
  2. 49% of consumers use Facebook to search for restaurants. (Mashable)
  3. 58% of Facebook users expect offers, events or promotions when they become a fan. (HubSpot)
  4. 81% of U.S. survey respondents say friends’ social media posts have directly influenced a purchase decision. (Forbes)
  5. 15.1 million consumers go to social media channels before making a purchase decision. (Knowledge Networks)

What does one take from all of this? First, you do not control your brand anymore, not in the traditional sense. Consumers are talking about your brand (your restaurant) whether you like it or not, so it is up to you to engage the “community.” Even if you are not using any social media channels, check out your business listing on websites such as Yelp and Local.com. You will see reviews of your establishment, and, yes, some of them are negative. Knowing the above statistics, you need to engage the community. If a user gives you a rave review, thank the person. If the review is negative, you need to address it and not arbitrarily dismiss it. Show the consumer you care!

What will be the big social media trends for 2013? Let’s start with mobile. More than 100 millions users have a smartphone. Mobile Internet is due to overtake wired use by 2015. Are you ready? The second big trend is video. This is such a no-brainer, especially when combined with the growing use of mobile devices.

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Healthcare Company Kaiser Permanente Leverages Video

Healthcare company Kaiser Permanente’s director of digital media and syndication, Vince Golla, talked about how the company brought its fans’ genuine, unscripted stories to a bigger audience without hiring an expensive production company.

Some key takeaways from his presentation:

  • You can’t sample healthcare. Kaiser Permanente needed to show people in compelling, honest ways reasons customers love the brand. So the company turned to video testimonials and spotlighting the people who make it great: its staff.
  • Your videos don’t have to be perfect. Golla says to keep the video blog sustainable, the company had to pull production off on its own. So the company hired an indie filmmaker to show the staff some basics and an intern to teach them how to edit it.
  • Make your great content usable everywhere to get the most out of it. Kaiser Permanente didn’t stop at posting videos in social media. The healthcare company played them in waiting rooms, at meetings and on its internal channels to build pride in the content, while still spreading the word.

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Websites Still an important piece of the content marketing landscape

Are brand websites still relevant? Brands are spending more time—and money—engaging with consumers outside of their brand sites on the likes of YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook and many other channels. As marketing efforts move to social networks and to content sites such as BuzzFeed, what happens to the brand’s website?

Brand pages, although they are not very heavily trafficked as a rule, are still a primary resource for consumers seeking information about products and the companies that make them, according to a new eMarketer report, “What’s a Brand Site For? Engaging Consumers Across Multiple Channels.” An October study by nRelate found that 48% of online shoppers said they trusted content from brand websites. No other content type approached the trustworthiness of corporate sites, according to this survey—not even mainstream news sites.

In a separate survey of internet users in the US and Canada by marketing services firm Epsilon, the percentage of respondents who named company websites as a trustworthy source of information was much lower—just 20% of US internet users and only 16% of those in Canada—but those relatively low results were still higher than those for TV, radio or email.

Still, for most brands, traffic is unlikely to be very high. A joint study by Accenture, dunnhumbyUSA and comScore suggested as much. It showed that 64% of the top 25 CPG brands averaged less than 100,000 unique visitors per month to their brand websites. But ignoring this traffic could be costly. The study also found that, on average, visitors to CPG brand websites spent 37% more than non-visitors on those brands in retail stores.

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Across Channels, Retailers Push to Keep Customers Happy

The rise of the internet has meant big changes for customer service, according to a new eMarketer report, “Multichannel Customer Service: Best Practices for Building Retail Loyalty.” Consumers today have an array of digital customer service tools at their disposal, the newest of which include live chat, social networks and smartphones.

 

And the stakes are high for retailers trying to keep up. Consumers are quick to punish retailers that do not meet their customer expectations—and reward those that do.

Findings from a Q1 2012 study by the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting firm, showed that customers are loyal to businesses that provide good customer service. Some 86% of survey respondents who reported being very satisfied with their most recent customer service interaction with a company were likely to repurchase, as opposed to only 9% who said they would likely purchase again after being very dissatisfied with their customer service experience.

et another benefit of good service is that satisfied customers become brand advocates who refer other people to the company. A 2012 American Express study found that 48% of internet users told other people “all the time” about a good customer service experience with a business. The survey also found that people were roughly as likely to share their poor customer service experiences.

But consumers have different expectations and preferences for customer service depending on where they are in the purchase journey and the types of questions they have. A 2012 global customer experience study sponsored by Capgemini found that social media was most important in the awareness stage (learning about products and promotions), while smartphones were most valuable in the delivery and after-sales care stages.

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Responding to Negative Online Comments

12 basic principles for handling difficult questions, comments and statements on the social web. These apply to communications, marketing and customer service issues as much as they do HR and other activities.

Move fast. The longer you take to respond to comments, the more you risk appearing unresponsive, uncaring or, worse, secretive. According to NM Incite (pdf), users of Facebook pages expect to be responded to within 24 hours and Twitter users within 2 hours. In social media, it often pays more to be quick than 100% accurate.

Be accurate. Despite the pressure on speed, try to be as factual as possible – angry customers and bloggers love to highlight, question and poke holes in wooly or cagey responses. Make sure to double-check the facts with your sources and it you’re not confident about the answer, at the very least acknowledge the question, comment or statement, express concern and say you are looking into it. This can help buy you more time to find the appropriate solution.

Be flexible. Don’t assume that either the complaint is 100% genuine (consider carefully its motivation) or that you are 100% correct in your response. If you don’t have the full facts, say so publicly and communicate updates thereafter regularly. Appear anxious to help, as opposed to desperate to please. Backing yourself into a rhetorical corner can prove awkward when you have to extricate yourself publicly.

Be transparent. Admit if you have made a mistake. Denials, evasions insincere apologies as a means of quietening a community are often quickly spotted by the community and may simply inflame the issue. And while the tactic of trying to take a conversation offline can help diffuse difficult situations by buying you more time to assess the situation and/or find a solution, it can also be seen by the customer as a sign of weakness or withdrawal and lampooned as such.

Be sincere. If the complaint is genuine, apologize sincerely and with humility and in language appropriate to the audience. And yet an apology will mean nothing unless the problem is resolved in a reasonable manner. Sharing what you as an organization have learned through the experience is also a good way of demonstrating that your empathy is genuine.

Be human. As The Cluetrain Manifesto pointed out, ‘conversations among human beings sound human’, and are ‘conducted in a human voice’ that is ‘typically open, natural and uncontrived’. Look to use language that is accessible, engaging and empathetic while remaining at core professional and objective. Avoid jargon and respond direct to the individual or group using their actual names. ‘Dear valued customer’ doesn’t wash it with customers increasingly expecting personal attention.

Be focused. Not all customers are equal, and while social media is leveling the playing field, some – the 1% – are most active in the community. You need to identify your top influencers, make sure to understand their interests, requirements and behaviors, and make sure your PR, marketing and customer service teams understand when and how to interact with them. This is not to say you should ignore the rest of the community which, clearly, must not be allowed to feel unwanted or ignored, but be aware that complaints from highly socially engaged customers, bloggers and other influencers may impact not just the community itself but can also make waves beyond it.

Follow-up. Once you have acknowledged the issue and responded, find ways to engage direct with the customer in question on an ongoing basis. Encouraging deeper discussion on the topic will show you are willing to listen and learn, and help make them feel like you care. Equally, walking away once you have responded can make it appear as if the customer is no longer a priority.

Add value. Following up also provides you with additional opportunities to add value to conversations and hence deepen relationships and re-build trust. Look to be helpful by providing options rather than just a single solution, or be seen to go the extra mile by pointing people to useful or relevant information. People will notice – and may comment on the fact – that you are bending over backwards to help them.

Take control. Negative comments on your community should be actively managed – it is after all your channel. Proactively rebut statements that are demonstrably untrue or misleading and, above all, don’t run away from your page in challenging times as it will only make your detractors appear as victors. Ensure discussions remain within the parameters you have set in your Community Guidelines and enforce your terms regarding offensive posts, the sharing of confidential or personal information about company executives or other members of the community, third party advertising, repeat/verbatim comments etc. And remember that it is within your rights to ban members who consistently flout the rules, though you may want to explain why you are doing it both to the individual and to the community as a whole.

Avoid fights. Don’t antagonize your audience or get into online arguments: as Nestle discovered to its cost in the wake of Greenpeace’s palm oil campaign, David usually wins against Goliath in the court of online public opinion. If the situation is volatile, step back and wait for the right opportunity to engage with the customer in question, meantime work closely with the relevant internal stakeholders – often Sales, Public Relations and Legal – to develop a reasonable solution. Appearing thin-skinned will only make you appear weak and vulnerable.

Don’t censor. Nothing conveys a failure to listen and understand better than censoring or removing criticism from your official online communities or elsewhere. Realize that critical voices are a price of entry to the social web, and that deleting or demanding changes to negative posts can provide detractors with a powerful rhetorical weapon. Rather, always try to maintain the high ground, be seen to be responsive and listening and deploy a strong legal approach only as the final option: deleting content or threatening bloggers may simply result in the so-called ‘Streisand effect’ as complaints escalate and go viral.

It is essential that the teams managing official channels as well as interactions with third party online communities understand these principles and are properly trained in the art and science of handling negative opinion.

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Google+: You can bring a horse to the water but you can’t force him to drink

In an effort to challenge Facebook and boost it’s Google+ social network, Google  is now using a more than controversial tactic and forces users of its other platforms (Gmail, Zagat, YouTube, Picasa…) to create a public Google + account.

Because using Google+ requires people to sign in to their Google accounts, Google will be able to blend mounds of data about individual users’ search habits and the websites they visit with their activities on Google+. That is a potential boon to Google’s ad business, from which the company derives about 95% of its more than $40 billion in annual revenue

But as Google is learning, you can bring a horse to the water but you can’t make it drink.  According to research firm comScore Inc. a year ago Google+ users spent an average of three minutes on the site each month, versus more than 400 minutes for the average Facebook user.

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AMA Social Media Policy

Professionalism in the Use of Social Media

The Internet and social media in particular, have created the ability for medical students and physicians to communicate and share information quickly and to reach millions of people easily. Participating in social media, social networking and other similar Internet opportunities can support physicians’ personal expression, enable individual physicians to have a professional presence online, foster collegiality and camaraderie within the profession, provide opportunity to widely disseminate public health messages and other health communication. Social media, blogs, and other forms of communication online also create new challenges to the patient-physician relationship. Physicians should weigh a number of considerations when maintaining a presence online:

(a) Physicians should be cognizant of standards of patient privacy and confidentiality that must be maintained in all environments, including online, and must refrain from posting identifiable patient information online.

(b) When using the Internet for social networking, physicians should use privacy settings to safeguard personal information and content to the extent possible, but should realize that privacy settings are not absolute and that once on the Internet, content is likely there permanently. Thus, physicians should routinely monitor their own Internet presence to ensure that the personal and professional information on their own sites and, to the extent possible, content posted about them by others, is accurate and appropriate.

(c) If they interact with patients on the Internet, physicians must maintain appropriate boundaries of the patient-physician relationship in accordance with professional ethical guidelines just, as they would in any other context.

(d) To maintain appropriate professional boundaries physicians should consider separating personal and professional content online.

(e) When physicians see content posted by colleagues that appears unprofessional they have a responsibility to bring that content to the attention of the individual, so that he or she can remove it and/or take other appropriate actions. If the behavior significantly violates professional norms and the individual does not take appropriate action to resolve the situation, the physician should report the matter to appropriate authorities.

(f) Physicians must recognize that actions online and content posted may negatively affect their reputations among patients and colleagues, may have consequences for their medical careers (particularly for physicians-in-training and medical students), and can undermine public trust in the medical profession.

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Most top 50 Brands Not Social

Old habits die hard:  most top 50 brands not social

The more things change, the more they stay the same, 15 years ago, brands had static websites and a unique way to interact with their followers through email or phone, what did they do?  They remove phone numbers, addresses and email from their websites.

Fast forward 15 years, in the social media era, most brands have not changed.  reminiscent of their old ways, they block followers from initiating conversations and/or only allow them to respond to posts.

In short, brands are still afraid or at best awkward when it comes to one on one communication.  They are still stuck in their old broadcasting ways, using social media as a one way communication tool.

According to an A T Kearney study, out of Interbrand’s Top 50 Global Brands on Facebook,

  • 27 of them won’t even reply directly to their customers
  • 20 of the 50 companies have a 4:1 company to customer ratio of posts on their Facebook pages.
  • 71% of the company posts were promotional
  • Only 5% of all posts actually sought to create real conversation with their customers
    Companies as consumer-facing as Disney, McDonald’s, and Sony only allow posts that were created by the companies themselves
  • Only one of the Interbrand Top 50 routed fans to an unfiltered Facebook wall, while the other 44 initially choose to show consumers and fans a filtered selection of company posts only.
  • Of the more socially engaged companies, 25 companies in our study had consumer-to-company post ratios in the 3:1 range—three consumer posts for every one company post. These companies include Coca-Cola, BMW, eBay, H&M, Kellogg’s, Pepsi, Heinz, ZARA, NESCAFÉ, Nintendo, Amazon.com, Nokia, Honda, Gillette, Philips, HP, Samsung and L’Oréal Paris. The remaining 20, however, demonstrated nearly a 1:4 ratio between consumer and company commentary.
  • Only 5 percent of company-to-consumer posts engaged consumers in discussions, while 71 percent of posts were promotional

Most traditional marketers are still not comfortable engaging consumers one on one and default to their traditional ways.  they are afraid to lose control of their message and brand and do not understand the dynamics of social media and as a result, budgets may not be available to hire dedicated social media staff or dedicate employees to interact with consumers.

Most brands consider social media to be exclusively a marketing tool and lose sight of the value social media conversations bring to other departments like customer service, R&D, quality, HR to mention only a few.  As such, social media can considerably cut customer service costs, development time, correct product or service defects faster, attract valuable talent in a more cost effective way and fail to include these savings and/or revenue generation in the overall ROI

Can you teach an old dog new tricks, sometimes, but past behaviors and trends are not exactly encouraging most top 50 brands succeed at generating “likes” and followers but fail at social engagement and miss out on the real value of social media.

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Google+ SEO/SEM tool or social media platform?

Google+ vs Facebook use

Since its launch 15 months ago, a big question still remains: Is Google+ a SEO/SEM tool or a social media platform?

Google+ has grown tremendously in the past year (400M users as of September 2012) but the lack of engagement has led to comparing the platform to a ghost town.  Is the comparison fair, if you look at the figures, it certainly seem so.

A study from RJ Metrics shows that

  • The average post on Google+ has less than one reply, reshare and +1.
  • 15% of users will not post publicly again even after posting publicly five times.
  • The average time between posts is 12 days for active users.
  • The average number of public posts per active users declines steadily month after month.

In contrast, a the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 52% of Facebook users and 33% of Twitter users engage with the platform daily and a ComScore survey shows that Google+ users spent an average of 3.3 minutes on the site in January vs. 7.5 hours for Facebook.

In response to these dismal figures, Google decide to flex its muscle and leverage its strength in searches by weaving Google+ in their search results, forcing businesses in Google+ by shelving Google places and integrating Google+ and +1 in their search algorithm and the approach seems to show some results

According to an August 2012 survey by SEOMoz,

  • 54.9% of online marketers worldwide said Google+ was one of their top five most-used sites for social media marketing, compared to 87.7% who cited Facebook and 82.7% who cited Twitter. Google+ did, however, come in above YouTube, which 48.9% of respondents cited.
  • 63.8% of respondents stated that they had set up a Google+ business profile, compared to 75.8% who set up or ran a Facebook business page.
  • 89.5% cited changes in Google’s algorithm, like Google Panda, and Google+ as likely to make authorship, site and author ownership of content more important in the coming years
  • 56.4% said Google+ was likely to become massively influential in search engine results pages. Adoption and use of mobile and Facebook’s domination were also mentioned by 81.7% and 69.1% of online marketers, respectively.
  • 56.1% use Google+ for SEO
  • 65.9% use Google+ for branding,despite the lack of user numbers and buzz

In that respect, it looks like the arm twisting is working, boosting the numbers in terms of new accounts, but the growth in new account still has not translated into engagement.
The question still is:  Is Google+ a social media platform or a SEO/SEM tool
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