Domino Theory's Marketing Blog

Social media offers tremendous opportunities for small and mid-sized business operators. With a strong social media and digital marketing strategy, you can compete with the big guys without having a "big guy" marketing budget. It takes time and it takes work, but it is well worth the effort!

You can even do it all yourself - if you take it on systematically.

[caption id="attachment_936" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Rocket Ahead with DIY Social Media"][/caption]

Before you read on, be honest with yourself. Do you have a written marketing plan that measures results of your current activity? Are you willing to invest the time to learn new marketing strategies and tactics? Are you willing to commit the time on a regular schedule and over the long haul to see them through to results? Are you currently handling all of your own advertising, PR, copy-writing, and collateral creation, production, and placement?

If you answered, "No" to any of these questions, your probably aren't ready to tackle social media marketing on your own and I suggest you look for outside help (or skip it all together, a big mistake in my opinion, but a decision many business make regardless).

1. Learn your customers' buying process.
Whether yours is a B2B or B2C company, your customers repeat a similar process each time they make a significant purchase (read more here). It's important to understand this process in order to make sure you providing them with the best information at the time and place in their process. Track web traffic on your site, when people call or walk in the door, ask where they heard of your business. Start tracking this data. (The more digitally focused your marketing becomes, the more easily track-able this data becomes).

2. Choose your networks.
Once you've begun to learn how your customers and potential customers are finding you and choosing to interact with you, you can begin to build a hierarchy of network importance. Statistics show that most people will use search engines to research products and companies. If you're not showing up well on search or if your search results don't show the strengths of your company. If you don't have them create your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and YouTube accounts.

3. Develop your content strategy.
To a company new to the social sphere, I suggest that you take the time first to listen. Are there already things being said about your business on Yelp, YP.com or other sites? What are your competition and businesses you admire doing well with social media. What is there that you can emulate?

The biggest mistake businesses make when moving into social media is that they take their old media advertising and promotion messages along with them. It's not that you can't promote your business, but you need to think about social media like you would a business function. You wouldn't walk right up to a stranger and tell them you're having a special on teeth cleaning. You shouldn't do that on your social networks either. Keep promotional messages to fewer than 255 of your total posts. Use the remainder to start conversations, ask questions, and share your professional knowledge and expertise.

4. Put together your publishing schedule.
What, where, and when are you going to publish? Your blog is posts are key, as are posts on various social networks. The average Facebook post has a shelf life of 3 hours. Because of this, it is recommended that for maximum effectiveness business post 3-4 times each, spreading the posts out by several hours. Twitter moves even faster, and LinkedIn somewhat slower. Work your publishing schedule to make sure you are achieving objectives. I suggest HootSuite and BufferApp as two tools that will help to automate your posts to your predetermined schedule.

5. Engage!
Now that your homework is done and your plan is in place, let it loose! Follow people who folow you. Ask and answer questions. Promote your blog posts. Most importantly, work to create conversations. Social media should not be on-way communications, that's for traditional media. 

6. Measure, evaluate, and tweak.
Maybe the best thing about digital media is that everything you do and your customers do can be counted. Free tools such as Google Analytics and HubSpot's Web Site Grader and Blog Grader are great entry points. Facebook Insights are also invaluable. You'll get a great idea of what is working and what isn't. You'll also be able to tack your growth and measure your success.

For some, this can be pretty overwhelming. I suggest you seriously consider whether this is a task to which you are committed. A neglected social media channel will give the impression of a neglected business. If you're only going to have to time to blog twice a year and post to Facebook once a week, you may be dong more harm than good.

 

For more information on how to quickly grow your company using digital marketing and social media, get our free eBook, How to Stop Looking for Customers and get Them Looking for You! [contact-form-7 id="541" title="Contact form 1"]


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At Domino Theory we continually are talking to businesses that have no formal communications plan or strategy. Many of these businesses are moving as fast they can to running day-to-day operations and while they'd like to have a communications plan, they view it as a "soft" business area meaning it would be nice to have, but not necessary to profitable operations.

Domino Theory's response?
- Define profitable.
- How profitable do you want to be?
- How much more profitable could you be?

Studies conducted over the last two decades suggest that formally documenting a company's communication strategies positively impacts the bottom line. In fact, consulting firm Watson Wyatt found that companies with the "highest levels of effective communication experienced a 26 percent total return to shareholders" over a four-year period as compared to the "-15 percent return experienced by firms that communicate least effectively," as reported in "The Essentials of Corporate Communications and Public Relations," published by the Harvard Business School Press. 

Putting together a Smarter Business Communications Plan does not need to be a daunting exercise nor does it need to dominate your working hours. Done correctly, taking your business through the following steps will have benefits far beyond the development of a Communications Plan.



Domino Theory's Smarter Business Communications Planning

Objective
Define your desired outcome. Be specific. More customers isn't enough. How many more? Over what time frame? Are some customers more profitable than others? How are they different? Are you looking to grow a market or grow share in an existing market? What is your current competitive situation? Who are the leaders and laggards in your market? What are they doing better, worse and differently than you? It would be highly beneficial at this stage to complete an entire SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). How do customers find you? Why do they leave? Research shows word-of-mouth to be the number one influence among purchasers. Keep this in mind as you shape your communications objectives. Most importantly, always tie your communications objectives to business objectives.

Resources
What resources of time and money can you allocate to a communications plan? Should you manage this in-house or contract with an outside firm like Domino Theory? There are benefits to both approaches, but if keeping the process in-house means you won't get around to getting a Smarter Plan in place, be honest with yourself. Even if you outsource, you will need to dedicate time in your calendar each week and month for status updates and evaluation, so don't expect to be able to hand off the process completely.

Audit Your Current Communications
Take an inventory of all of your current communications. Get copies of every every piece of collateral, print outs of web pages, social media pages, signage, logos, promo pieces, etc. What is working? What isn't? What is being neglected? What is current? What is out of date? What are you doing well? What are you doing poorly? Do an honest evaluation and build from what you have already created.

Define Your Audiences
Most businesses will have multiple audiences to address through a Smarter Communications Plan. Internal audiences, existing customers, past customers, potential customers, and influencers are among the audiences you should consider for your plan.

Craft Your Message
You will likely find that there is significant crossover of the messaging for the various audience segments you've defined. Each segment is likely at a different stage of their buying cycle (Interest, Educate, Trial, Purchase, Reaffirm). A well crafted message can often speak to each segment of the cycle eliminating the need to create a new message for each. Testing your messaging at this stage is an important step that is overlooked by too many businesses. Include A/B testing in your plan. Testimonials can also be very powerful, ask for them from satisfied customers.

Select Your Communications Channels
Advertising, brochures, flyers, web sites, e-mail, and social media are often the first channels that come to mind. But don't overlook verbal communications - are there conversations within your place of business and with your audiences that you can start now? Can signage and logos be better displayed? Start with the basics and move from there.

Build a Communications Timeline
Which of your communications elements should roll out first? Which will take longer to create and implement? Set priorities and deadlines. Commit to your dates!

Measure and Tweak
None of the above matters if you don't have the tools in place to measure your progress. If you set measurable objectives against time in Step 1 (above) you now can measure the success of your program. Keep rolling with what works and tweak and evolve the elements that aren't delivering as expected. Be sure you are measuring both business and communications objectives. The feedback you get from this sage of the implementation is your roadmap as you revisit each of the steps outlined above.

Remember, a product, service, or business strategy that is not widely and skillfully communicated to company stakeholders is likely to limp along and eventually fail or simply disappear. Don't short sell yourself or your business by not letting the world know what you do and how good you are at doing it. The only one who will be happy with that strategy is your competition!

For a free consultation on your Smarter Business Communications Plan, contact us through the form below or fill out our interactive planning worksheet online here. [contact-form-7 id="541" title="Contact form 1"]

 

 

 

 

How to Schedule Time to Update Your Content

Somewhere along the way you decided you needed a social media program. You set up your Facebook account, got connected on LinkedIn, have a profile on twitter, and eve have blog on your web site. Congratulations, you are way ahead of the pack!

Now the hard part. How do you use these tools - especially when work keeps getting in the way? After all, what good is having all these accounts and a "killer" web site if they sit stagnant? Being consistent and staying visible is the key.

Like everything else in your business, content publishing requires a plan. It needn't take over your life, maybe just 30 minutes a day. The return on this investment of your time can be huge!

Here is an easy plan that you can follow or modify to meet your needs

Daily:

• Tweet: This is an easy task that you an complete every singe day. Tweet an interesting article, tell your customers what you're working on, give an update on your product development. If your Twitter account is linked to your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, an easy thing to do, those channels get updated at the same time.


• Respond to blog comments: Respond to comments made to your blog on a timely basis. Remember you are working to create customer engagement. Nurture it and value it and it will grow. Post comments to blogs you read. Engaging with other bloggers and readers will raise your profile in circles beyond your own content areas.


• Post in at least one forum or group: Join LinkedIn Groups that are relevant to your business. make it a point to post in one or more every day. You don't need to always start the conversation. Post responses to theirs. Ask and answer questions. Being present is half the battle!

Weekly:

• Blog: Make it a point to update your blog at least once a week. 2-3 times is even better. While your content should be thought provoking and interesting, don't over analyze. Trust your business knowledge to be of value to your readers and just publish!


• Update your web site: Don't allow your web site to stagnate. If your web site always stays the same, what incentive is there for anyone to visit? Make it a point to add or change something on your site every week. Then Tweet or post the changes to your social network.

Monthly:

• Write a How-To Article: Write at least one article each month that helps someone accomplish a specific task.This can be related to your products or services, or something a customer can accomplish on their own. It doesn't matter, so long as you are helping your customers improve their business.


• Publish a Video: Chances are you have videos from trade shows, or training videos that you use in-house. Start putting these up on your site. If you don't have your own video content, YouTube is full of content that you can share with proper attribution. When you share existing content, add your two cents as to why you found it interesting. Work to stimulate discussion.


• Send an e-mail newsletter: Consolidate your Tweets, blog posts, articles and videos and send them in a newsletter to your e-mail list. Getting your content in front of customers is the objective of this entire exercise. An e-mail is the perfect way to remind your customers all the content you make available to them.

Take these tasks put them in your calendar. Assign them to key employees in order to share the workload.

As you see, this doesn't have to take over day, but done properly, following a regular publishing schedule will raise your visibility and customer interaction demonstrably!

 

This week in San Francisco Salesforce.com, the cloud computing/CRM company, is hosting over 40,000 people at its annual Dreamforce conference. The focus of this year's event is expected to be on Chatter, the year-old social-networking platform for business.

According to Salesforce.com, over 100,000 businesses are already using Chatter for for business collaboration. Is it something you should be exploring?

The ubiquity of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn means that your employees and customers are already interacting constantly online. Despite all of their advantages, these networks leave something to be desired when the need arises for more secure communications, project collaboration, and discreet customer interaction. This is where Chatter fits in by providing a platform for smarter business communications.

Chatter is a collaboration and communication tool for business. Chatter allows for the ease and interaction of the public social networks, but protects communications by keeping collaboration secure in the Salesforce cloud. Your communications remain private and secure.

Beyond secure communication, Chatter allows for secure document and file sharing and collaboration. Instead of transferring files via FTP or a service like YouSendIt and waiting for a response, Chatter allows teams to work together in real time - even if they are working from dispersed offices. You set the security rules based on organization, role, object, or department based on the sharing model you need to conduct your business. Projects can move forward at greater speeds and be tracked through their stages of progression by everyone on the team.

Here's an example of a collaboration stream from the Salesforce site:



Chatter offers two levels of service programs. A social collaboration service is free, and a service that integrates with existing an Salesforce.com CRM account and allows for customizations is listed at $15 per seat per month and is probably better for larger companies than smaller ones.

You have likely found that social networks are a great way to stay in touch with family and friends. Some of you are also using them to grow your network of business contacts and to market your products and services. Chatter allows business to take all the advantages of social networks and apply them to business while keeping communications secure.

The top uses include:

• Connecting with experts


• Collaborating with remote employees


• Sharing of large files


• Managing team projects


• Confidential group discussion


• Sharing of important company information


• Customer service


• Brainstorming

If these are areas where your company could benefit from improvement, it's worth your time to take a look at Chatter to explore how you can apply social networking to your smarter business communications plan.

 

I spent last night at a community meeting watching 4 hours of he said-she said between our town's elected officials and their highest ranking employee. Both sides were lawyered up as the Board argued their case for the recently hired employee's dismissal and the employee claimed he was being railroaded.

I watched as an interested citizen but also as someone who cares about smarter business communications. I left the meeting close to 11PM shaking my head as to how a group of successful and bright professionals could have allowed things to get so bad. Clearly there are either poor communications procedures or the procedures are poorly disseminated and followed..

At most businesses we spend more time communicating internally than we do with customers, and prospects. Unfortunately, as I witnessed last night, most organizations forego formalizing an internal communications plan. Big mistake!

Your workforce is one of your most important constituencies. You need to make employee communications a key element of your corporate communications plan.

Here are 12 Steps to setting up a Smarter Internal Communications Plan:

1. Identify target audiences and customize your message for each. Management and rank and file employees need different information to be successful. Recognize and acknowledge the importance of each group. By customizing your message for each audience, just as you should for your customer segments, you show your understanding of the needs of each group.


2. Establish lines of communication. Communication can't be only top down. It must be bottom up, sideways, interdepartmental, and intradepartmental.


3. Expand awareness. Make each employee feel a part of the team. Don't leave anyone feeling isolated on an island, be inclusive.


4. Highlight best practice. Don't just tell people what you want, use examples of best practices from members of your team.


5. Let staff tell their own stories. Encourage participation from your team in sharing successes. Recognize success.


6. Accept feedback and show how it is being used. Think of this as internal customer service. Problems will happen, but what people will remember is how you address those problems. It may seem insignificant to you, but it was important enough to someone else to raise the issue.


7. Promote employee development. Make sure employees know about education and training programs. These don't have to be internal programs. Direct them to association programs and encourage membership in professional organizations.


8. Communicate on a schedule and on time. Regular communication is key to the effort. Starting and stopping can be as bad as never having started in the first place, it sends a message that communication really wasn't so important after all.


9. Promote staff successes. Don't make communications about you and how clever and successful you are. Surround yourself with the best and the brightest and shine the spotlight on them.


10. Promote staff opportunity. Many on your team are looking to grow professionally. Make sure they know when an opportunity for advancement arises.


11. Catch dissatisfaction early. Don't hide from morale issues. Acknowledge and address issues in the workplace.


12. Measure! Are employees receiving your messages? Are they opening e-mails? Do they click the links? Apply the same metrics to internal communications as you do to external ones.

Most often, workplace problems arise from a vacuum created by a lack of communication. If you allow the vacuum to be created, it will get filled by rumor and innuendo that become the de facto corporate communications. If our local district management and board had followed these guidelines, our community and district employees would all be better for it today.

 

 

In speaking with business owners we often hear that they just don't have the time or budget to spend on marketing and smarter communications. Other priorities and customer needs eat up their day and there is no time left to spend a strategic marketing program.

Really?

What if you didn't have all those customers taking your time? What if your employees with those urgent problems found better, more rewarding companies to work for? Then you'd have time to market, wouldn't you?

No matter what kind of business you run, your business must become a communications company!

Marketing doesn't mean you need to buy advertising, send postcards, or produce expensive sales materials. It means you need to communicate with employees and customers - even better, you need to engage with them! 

Mark 30 minutes in your calendar each day for marketing efforts. Once every week or two carve out a bigger chunk, 1-2 hours. Don't leave you marketing to chance - make it consistent and purpose driven. Set goals and measure against them like you do for other key elements of your business.

Maybe you had a marketing plan at one point in time, dust it off and give it a fresh coat of paint. Does your web site need updating? How strong is your customer database? How often are you reaching out customers and prospects? How well informed are your employees about the latest goings on within the company and at their clients' businesses. Are you using social networks to keep a high profile? Has your company had major successes that would be strong white papers? Do you know the leading press and thought leaders in your industry?

Remember, if you let your marketing atrophy you might soon find you don't have worry about your customers and employees urgent problems because they've become someone else's. Then you'll have all day to market!