How do I know?

Firstly, I live in Manchester and I’ve seen notices tied to lampposts telling me where I can’t park as filming is happening.

Secondly I’m getting an amazing number of tweets about Captain America from many of the people who use Twitter in Manchester.

And interestingly, from people who don’t live in Manchester but have connections there.

If you’ve a business do you see the power that can give you?

Captain America filming has generated a vast amount of interest across the UK and in Manchester in particular. People are almost queuing up to tweet about it. Certainly if you search on “CaptainAmerica” you’ll see tweets every few minutes at the moment.

Do company press releases do the same thing? Usually not. And yet if you’ve something interesting you can say via Twitter you can also generate interest in your followers and the people who follow them.

And if you’ve set Twitter up correctly a lot of your followers should be the market you’re serving. Exactly the right people to get your message.

And that’s not even counting the people blogging about it at the moment.

So maybe this social media thing can be used by business!? What do you think?

Social Media Marketing or social marketing

Social marketing also covers blogging, which only really started in December 1997 and started to take off much later around 2003/2004. Similarly Twitter started in March 2006 and continues to gain followers.

Social marketing experts tend to be people who are self-taught and usually have an Internet marketing and geeky background – guilty on all counts!

Why use social marketing at all?

Firstly, there are some companies that don’t even need it.

However, for the vast majority social marketing is a very worthwhile experiment. Be careful though as it does have a time cost and if you’re not careful you can lose your way.

So the most important thing to recognise about social marketing is that it must be integrated into your overall marketing strategy.

Using such an approach means that you can combine your use of social marketing with advertising, customer relationship building, customer service, sales, pr, telesales – you name it!

So social marketing can increase the number of times you interact with your prospects and customers. It can also increase your speed of response, which can defuse critical customer service problems more rapidly.

Your first forays into social marketing should be viewed as experimental and changeable as you need to find what works for your company.

Social Marketing Working For You

It’s easy to get started with social marketing. But it’s important that you work out your goals first.

Do you want to position your company as one of the experts in your field? Maybe you want to be seen as a thought leader? Perhaps all you want are leads or to handle customer service?

Whatever your goals are, they should be written down and agreed before anything else happens.

Then  look at your customers and prospects. What social tools do they use? Which ones could you encourage them to use to talk with you?

Then look at the social media you want to use. Find the appropriate tools that make lighter work of social media. For example there are offline blogging clients that make blogging easy. Or Twitter clients that make customer service a snip.

Above all, don’t be afraid to find some help on social marketing. Some of us have been through the learning curve and can help evolve a social marketing strategy and advise on tools to assist you.

The important thing is not to re-invent the wheel and to make a decision about whether social marketing is right for you right now.

Questions like:

• Q1 How can we prevent employees spilling the beans about what happens inside our company?
• Q2 What about if our customers leave negative comments?
• Q3 Isn’t it a gift to competitors spying on what we’re doing?
• Q4 Isn’t my use of Twitter and social media a complete waste of time?
• Q5 Will my employees spend all day using social media without doing the job they’re paid for?

And of course all these are perfectly valid questions. However, think about this.

Preventing Employees Spilling the Beans

If you have a social media policy in place employees understand their responsibilities in using social media and the consequences of its misuse.

Still the possibility remains that you could have a rogue employee who tarnishes your reputation. That is actually no different to the situation before social media came along. And with the advent of social media it can actually be easier to fix if an employee messes up.

Customers Leaving Negative Comments

Firstly, thank them for bringing your attention to the issue they raise. After all pre-social media you were unlikely to get much feedback as to why your best customer suddenly went to another supplier, or your products weren’t selling as you’d hoped. Then do something about it and demonstrate that you took note and acted.

Remember you can’t shout louder than your customers on the Internet at the moment. So negatives will be heard. It’s what you do about it that speaks to your customers and prospects louder than any advertising.

Competitors Spying On You

Firstly people who follow others are unlikely to be leaders.

So using social media to trumpet advances in your products and services ensures your prospects and suppliers see you as the leader in innovation in your sector.

Why then would they buy elsewhere – provided you backup your offerings with a great customer service of course.

Wasting Your Time With Social Media

It is very easy to allow social media to suck you into a black hole from which you emerge several hours later, possibly wiser but certainly under more pressure.

You need two things before diving into social media: your social media business goals and time control.

Knowing your business goals means you know what to respond to through your social media channels. You also know what you can generate that moves you towards your goals.

And it’s vital that you control your time on social media otherwise you can interact with people all day to the detriment of your business.

Remember that networking is a tried and trusted business activity it’s just that we don’t do it every hour of every day. You need to think along those lines for your interactions.

Employees Wasting Time On Social Media

Employees can be very creative in finding ways to while their time away. But that has always been the way and the web just made it easier and more fun. If you allowed it your employees could happily surf the web all day every day. The same applies to social media.

You need to ensure you have policies in place defining how social media is used in your company. One of which is the amount of time allocated to social media. Another the sites that your social marketing strategy has documented as the ones to concentrate on. And another that defines who will use social media and why.

We’re all told what a great tool it is for business.

And yet, could it be the Emperor’s Clothes of Internet Marketing?

I really have lost count of the number of business owners who tell me they’re on Twitter and they just don’t see the point.

In earlier times I feel sure they would have been the asking why I thought a web site, or a blog was a “good thing.”

There are lots of people on Twitter who really still don’t get it. They don’t appreciate the possibilities that Twitter opens up to them.

Forget Celeb Watching

We can all twitter about and follow the stars as they tweet their latest adventure or lunch. However, that’s not the real aim of Twitter for business.

Getting More And More Followers Is Distracting

Contrary to some advice getting more followers is a good thing as it increases the likelihood of your tweets being seen and maybe even acted upon.

However, followers should arrive organically drawn by your content. That way there is a reason for you to talk to them.

Finding The Right People Is Key

Twittering is like online networking and it’s important at you engage in the conversations going on a round you, help when you can, comment and add value to the community.

The most important tactic you have is to follow the key people in the industry you’re in. You need to see what experts are talking about. You need to know what your suppliers, customers and ideal prospects are saying.

Knowledge really is power and positions your company as an expert in your field. And expertise brings rewards in the form of customers who are looking for the experts.

Everyone I know Is Way Too Important For Twitter

Maybe you don’t think it’s important to follow some lowly worker who is in your ideal prospects company? That worker could be the source of useful intelligence that puts you ahead of your competition.

Maybe no one you deal with is on Twitter. However, not being on Twitter is like saying that you don’t need a web site because no one else has one.

Having a web site, like being on Twitter, enables you to be ready when people want to check your web site. Having Twitter allows you to help mould the conversation your industry is having.

Plus, did you know that Google indexes Twitter conversations? Do your prospects use Google? Then having keyword-rich (and useful) Tweets are going to show up in Google search pages.

Note: Check out my FREE Twitter For Business handbook. Plus get updates on tools and ways to use Twitter more successfully as it develops and matures.

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When you read Twitter Power’s follow figures in screen shots used they look to be late 2008. By using them you can see how massively the followers have grown for the people Joel quotes.

However, I digress…

The book is subtitled “How To Dominate Your Market One Tweet At A Time.” It’s an ambitious plan, however I think that Joel has pulled it off.

Twitter Power Makes It Seem Easy

The book doesn’t rely on all the new tools that arrive, become fashionable then sink without trace. Instead in concentrates on the fundamental “how-tos” to successfully incorporate Twitter into your social media strategy and provides step by step instructions in its use, and notes how to avoid abuse.

It goes into the details you need to succeed in Twitter.for example Joel gives you ways of creating your own Twitter background – a key part of getting followed.

7 Killer Strategies For More Followers

Joel gives 7 ways of getting people to follow you. Although as Joel points out building a list of followers doesn’t happen overnight no matter what you do!

The easiest one to implement immediately is to add your Twitter name to your signature.

7 Tweet Types For Everyone To Use

Twitter Power breaks down the Tweets that Joel suggests you use into

1. Classic “this is what I’m doing” Tweets
2. Opinion Tweets
3. Mission Accomplished Tweets
4. Entertainment Tweets
5. Question Tweets
6. Picture Tweets
7. Tweet Sequences

Stuffed With Useful Powerful Content

The whole of Twitter Power is very useful for advanced Tweeters and new Tweeters alike. Joel shows how to use Twitter for customer support, to build your brand to find experts, how to track Tweets, using Twitter auto responders and much, much more that has the marketer in me salivating!

Crucially Joel also gives a highly experienced legal eagle a chapter to explain the niceties and dangers to be aware of when using Twitter. Look out for assumed contracts is all I’ll say on that subject!

In addition Joel has his business partner Ken Burge write a chapter on how you can extend Twitter to make it even more useful for your business and gives URLs to code you can use too.

One thing is very clear. That is that Twitter can help you get your message out in a way that doesn’t intrude in the same way that mass advertising does.

In conclusion if you’ve any thoughts of getting into Twitter for your business you must buy Twitter Power. In fact click here and get it now, remember whilst you’re thinking others are taking action!

If you’re not involved with Twitter or blogging it’s probably because you’re scared that the time you invest in getting interesting content together is actually a waste of time.

Twitter’s A Time Waster

So many people have denounced Twitter as simply navel gazing. Or they say they’re  completely uninterested in the fact that someone is making a cup of coffee, or is saying hello to everyone who follows them, or is going for a walk in the park.

That means they’re looking at it in the wrong way. Twitter is a relationship builder. It builds your profile for prospects and clients alike. It shows what you’re like when you deal with customers day after day.

Using Twitter properly is a definite advantage to business, check out my Twitter Action Guide for Business to see the tools you’ve got to help you.

Blogging Is A Dead-End

Maybe you’ve heard people say that blogging is a dead end, people run out of things to say. And anyway, “it’s impossible to make money through a blog.”

I make money through my blog, I know plenty of other people who make money from their blogs. And the important thing to remember is that a blog is really almost (but not quite) like a web site with content that’s continually changing. That changing content is the golden key to the Google front page ranking. Because Google likes fresh, relevant, content.

What’s Squidoo and HubSpot?

Are you aware of important social media sites like Tumblr, Squidoo or Hubspot? They’re all very much like blogs but use different terminology. However, they’re liked by Google and therefore your content can get good rankings, if used properly.

I Don’t Need The Internet

You’re right not everybody really needs the Internet. However, you can bet the number of people using Yellow Pages to find your product or service is dropping.

You can bet that even if you’re referred by word of mouth they’ll be able to check up on you on the Internet. If they dislike your site, or its content, that’s a referral you’ve lost.

If they’re referred again and they re-check your site and it’s still the same, they’re going to think nothing happens at your company. And they use Google to find another company.

Wouldn’t you rather be the company that hoovers up prospects disappointed by another company’s web site or lack of Internet presence?

Are You Missing The Point?

If you’re not taking advantage of these low cost ways of exploiting the Internet you’re guilty of not exploring and testing other ways to get new clients and to address previous and current clients.

Where To Start Social Marketing…

The best place to begin social marketing is to think strategy. You need to incorporate social marketing in your business. Do it half-heartedly and it’s totally pointless.

The other thing to bear in mind is that social marketing is evolving, you need to test what works for you. Incorporate it in your marketing arsenal and keep up to date.

That way you wont miss out on changes to how to use the Internet. Alternatively, of course, subscribe to this blog because I tend to be at the bleeding edge of marketing. Although I rarely advise my clients to go that far until I’m happy things are working.

Whatever you do remember that Peter Drucker said that in a cojpany there are really only two things that are important: Marketing and Innovation. And the Internet incorporates both!

At the moment we’re in the same place as the American rail barons where just before the automobile, it’s cousin the lorry and airplanes took a lot of business from them.

Strategic Mistake By The Rail Barons

The reason those barons lost their massive market share was because they thought they were in the rail business, when in fact they were in the transport business. And if they’ thought in that strategic way they would have been keeping an eye on emerging companies that they could buy into and help grow to maintain their share of the market.

Are Newspapers Dying?

There’s been a lot of gloom about the figures that show the local newspapers are making massive losses, or simply going out of  business. Consequently they’re losing advertising. TV is going the same way.

Twitter has demonstrated with the Internet pipe cuts in Asia and the River Hudson plane crash that it is capable of breaking news significantly faster than any mainstream newspaper or other news media.

Communication Media Is Evolving

Newspapers are using blogs, journalists are using Twitter but there seems to be no strategy in place that really understands and appreciates that news media, in fact publishing and broadcasting, as we know it now is changing.

And the issue for news media as it’s currently set-up is that if they continue to stick with what they know they risk losing out to the newcomers to their industry of global news and entertainment.

Those newcomers started with blogs and social media to communicate with people who are interested in what they say. And that includes up to the minute news.

There may be a place for extended pieces on the news itself. However, in our increasingly fragmented communication world I’m beginning to think that we just feel we don’t have the time to spend time reading in-depth reviews of anything.

That means marketing is looking for new ways of getting the message to prospects and customers. And love it or loathe it Twitter is one mechanism that enables people to put across a  reasonably lucid message without over complicating it with “business-speak” or “marketing-speak.”

Newspapers Will Limp Along

So the question is will newspapers die? Like I said before I think that’s probably unlikely as some will stick to print media for a while yet for more extensive review pieces and out of habit. However, as the current generation weaned on fast computers from birth continue to move into the mainstream workplace newspapers will be replaced by access to news and entertainment that you want -along the lines of choosing specific pages from a newspaper to read and ignoring the rest.

And what I said for newspapers applies to other media too. Rather than being a broadcast media it will evolve and become a “menu media” where people select what they want to read, see or hear.

Is that too radical a view? I wonder, what do you think?

Digital marketing is a set of tools that are available to any company. How to use them to best advantage comes down to deciding what strategy or strategies to use in  marketing the company.

After all if everybody in your market sector is on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter or any of the other social media sites how do you stand apart?  You’re part of the social media wallpaper. you can be easily browsed over before you even know you’ve had a visitor.

Instead your marketing strategy might call for tactics that don’t lead with digital marketing. Maybe your tactic is to run an advertising campaign in magazines you know your key customers (and their like) read. Or perhaps you could run a postcard campaign offering a nice freebie for calling you up, or visiting one of your digital marketing tools, such as your blog or maybe following you on Twitter.

Remember marketing is all about getting more leads, better qualified leads and more profitable leads into your sales funnel.

And yet when it comes down to it the digital tools we have available are simply a way of building a list of interested prospects and then funnelling them through to buy from you. 

And I think the problem we currently have is that digital marketing tools are springing up all around and there are very few true experts yet.

Twitter Marketing!

After all think of Twitter…

It’s only been going since the middle of August 2006. Not many people knew about it and it’s grown and grown to the current situation where there’s a lot of buzz about it.  And yet how many people could genuinely say they were experts in Twitter when new applications and clients are being developed for it all the time.

My own Twitter handbook is already outdated, although I do send email updates to the people who downloaded a copy.

And despite being on Twitter almost from the beginning I still discover interesting things about it all the time. And the challenge for many companies and "marketing gurus" is to make Twitter and other social media sites work for them.

Often the Internet is likened to the Wild West. I absolutely agree with that idea and just like the Wild West new boundaries are still to be discovered. So always treat any self-avowed expert with caution until you see whether they really understand the buzz words they use.

And when it comes to "digital marketing" that caution applies even more.

And equally anyone can have access to your thoughts.

So it’s important not to abuse the privilege with too many "hello I’m out of bed/going to bed/making a cup of coffee" tweets.

There are so many different ways to use Twitter in business that I wrote a guide for my own clients, get a Free Twitter in Business Guide.

So moving onto to the 10 tips:

1. Have an initial plan on what you intend to Twitter about
2. Always remember your Twitter account is to build relationships so that prospects and client get to know you and how you operate
3. Set-up a Twitter and Social media policy (see Airforce Blog Response Flowchart
4. Encourage staff to Twitter too
5. Always think about whether your audience would benefit from reading your tweet.
6. Whenever possible provide useful links
7. Don’t use Twitter to sell on the first tweet!
8. Use your profile to link to your blog, your web site and ezine
9. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to if you had an audience
10. Incorporate some automation but not too much, otherwise you become a spammer and your followers will drop off like flies.

If you’ve got your own favourite let me know!

And of course I just had to follow the David Ogilvy character!

There have been other cases of brand hijacking, fans writing further stories about Star Wars for example. And the Internet has made it easy to share your own stories based around other famous characters.

However, as I’ve said before the brand becomes what your fans/users/customers/clients want it to be. So you need to think long and hard before coming down on anyone who does "hijack" your brand. Because they may enhance it for you and even take it in new directions you weren’t even aware of.

And of course brand hijacking does matter, so it’s important that you keep abreast of new ways of working that could affect your business.

Currently it’s social media and Twitter. So if you’re in Film, TV or you’re writing books you need to reserve your names in Twitter before someone else uses them.

Registering Your Twitter Name

And you need to do it quick because people are registering a lot of different names, I suspect in the hope that they become valuable in the same way domain names have!

Names like Winston Churchill, Leonardo Da Vinci, Washington, Manchester even a Motorway (the M62) and try registering CarInsurance – yes, they’re all gone already.

There appear to be no country names available…

So whether Social media is here to stay or vanishes forever in a year’s time it’s important that you put a little effort into registering the names you want on Twitter (and on the other social media sites too).

Get my Free Guide to Setting up and using Twitter in business (before I revise it and start selling it!)