7 Key Success Factors for Social Media for Business

I recently got back from the Social Media Marketing World conference. Marketers from 49 countries gathered to network and learn from each other about best practices for social media for business. Some of the information was confirmation of things I am already doing and posting about. But there were also some new tips, tools, and techniques. Equally important was interacting with other marketers to understand their businesses and learn about their successes, challenges, and failures. The world of social media continues to evolve and change quickly. (It was also great to go to a conference for the first time in 25 years that I was just an attendee and not working!)

After some reflection on the conference and recent research I have identified seven key success factors for using social media for business:

Content is your hub: It’s your compelling content that will engage your audience and cause them to interact with your business or brand. (See our related blog post on compelling content.) And people will pay for your knowledge and expertise if you package it up and distribute it in ways they can easily consume it. It may be a product, but it also may be a service or other format. If you have content that answers a question or solves a problem that others have, you have a hub of knowledge to grow your business. Don’t just think about promoting your product or service on social media. Think holistically about your content. How can you help people? How can you answer their questions? How can you help them save time, be more effective, reduce costs, have more fun, etc?
Re-purpose your content for multiple platforms of distribution: Once you have compelling content, you can leverage, re-purpose, and package it in multiple ways for people to consume it. You may be using your compelling content to create a lead funnel for a product or service, or you may be a consultant selling your knowledge. Know your core message and let people experience that in multiple ways. You may use it for live events. You may use it for videos and webinars. You may use it for blog posts. You may share parts of it on social media platforms. You may re-package it into speaking engagements. You may write an e-book. You may create a guide or recipes. You may record a podcast. It’s NOT a sales pitch. It’s helping people to answer a question or solve a problem or be entertained in a way that they want to share with others. Think about how you can reach your target customers in various formats on various platforms.
Use videos and photos – Visual content gains attention on crowded social media platforms. The data show the most engaging Facebook posts are now videos, ahead of photos and status updates. Not only is visual content eye-catching, a picture really is worth a thousand words. People are looking to consume information quickly and easily. Sometimes that is seeing a picture or watching a short video or listening to a podcast while traveling or driving.
Don’t be on social media, be social: In recent years there was tremendous attention on increasing your number of followers or fans. That didn’t necessarily produce business results. While you want to increase the number of potential customers you interact with, the critical success factor is engaging your audience with your business and brand. Being social makes your business human. People do business with other people who can help them. When your audience interacts, they will see more of your posts organically. They also are more likely to share your compelling content with their friends and followers to extend your reach.
Participate and leverage others’ audiences: Beyond being social on your own Facebook page or Pinterest Board, host or participate in social media groups. Demonstrate your expertise, compassion, and humor. Your reputations and abilities become visible to the audiences of others hosting the group.
Email is still the most effective and the most direct: Social media is great for engaging your audience and extending your reach. But the people most likely to become your customers are the ones who are interested enough in your content to opt-in and give you their email address. Email is still the most personal marketing. People are more likely to see and open your email than they are to see your Tweets or Facebook posts. One of the mantras at Social Media Marketing World was “Content is King and Social Media is Queen.” Maybe we should add, “And Email is still the Ace.” Use your compelling content and social media to extend your reach, but also to give you their email addresses.
Don’t assume people will take action: This was an aha! moment for me when I heard from someone running a YouTube channel. He shared that in the beginning he assumed listeners would subscribe to his channel if they listened to the programs and liked them and got value. It wasn’t happening. So he added an explicit call to action asking his viewers to subscribe to his channel. Immediately there was a spike in subscribers. People don’t take action unless you ask them to! In past job roles I was sometimes amazed working with sales people. I would get the prospect engaged with some compelling content and the sales people would not think to ask for the order as the next step. Sometimes I had to prompt them and then the sale would be made. Don’t assume people will take action on their own. Always have a question, next step, or call to action – visit a web page, share the post, subscribe to the channel, etc.

A final thought: If I have just followed you on Twitter or liked your Facebook page or connected with you on LinkedIn, don’t immediately send me an advertisement or try to sell me something. If someone is just starting to engage with you on social media, it does not mean they are ready to purchase something from you right away. It means that there was some interest in learning more and seeing how you might be able to help them. I think this a key point for many businesses and marketers. The objective of social media for business is not direct sales – although stay tuned as Facebook and others add more ecommerce functionality.

Let me know your experience. Do any of these success factors resonate with you? Have you identified other success factors? If you would like to regularly receive updates, please follow Kauai Digital Marketing on LinkedIn or sign up for our email list on our web site.

Periscope App for Business: Opportunities and Threats

New tools have come into the market that make it easy for anyone to be a mobile broadcaster. Now anyone can “show” in real-time, not just “tell.” This changes the landscape for broadcasting and social media engagement and also opens up new opportunities and threats for all types of businesses.

The Meerkat app was all the buzz at SXSW. They have already grown to 300,000 users, but have been cut off from Twitter graph functionality. You can still post on Twitter that you are broadcasting. The Periscope app from Twitter created all the buzz in the past week. Since Twitter purchased Periscope in January, they have it pretty well integrated. And there is Google Hangouts on Air that isn’t quite as new and shiny, but still a contender.

Each of these mobile broadcasting platforms has its strengths and weaknesses, but I believe the Periscope app is the real game-changer and will have tremendous benefit to Twitter and to businesses using it. Anyone with a Twitter account can watch live streaming video on Periscope or Meerkat. Anyone with a Gmail address can watch on Google Hangouts on Air. Periscope and Google also archive video streams for later search and viewing. Meerkat does not, but using the #Katch service provides archiving functionality. Just as Instagram has added huge value to Facebook post-acquisition, I believe Periscope will do the same for Twitter. Live streaming video and audio is not always great through these services, but it is certainly good enough. And the lack of quality is offset by the ease of use and immediacy of live streaming.

Google Hangouts for Air is farther along in having an ecosystem of functionality adding to its value for business. For example, you can schedule a broadcast in advance. You can create a landing page for registration and to collect more information on planned attendees or even to collect a payment. Your streaming videos are saved to YouTube with its rich functionality for perpetual archiving and search/recommend functionality. I expect that an ecosystem will also evolve around Periscope to exploit the business possibilities.

For most business broadcasts of importance you will want to schedule them in advance and publicize through all of your social media, web, email, and podcast channels.

Opportunities

Periscope for Business presents a lot of interesting opportunities to connect with your customers real-time and with visual content. Here are some examples:

Product or Company Event – Let your customers be part of the experience live. Let them share comments and Tweet to their followers about highlights.
Panels – You don’t have to wait for a conference to host a panel of experts and foster a dialogue between them and your audience.
Training – A picture really is worth a thousand words. Live and archived training can be produced cheaply and easily, be interactive, and prevent support issues later.
Advice and Discussions – You can show a use case for your product or service and get feedback or you can offer advice on how to optimize value from your product or service while entertaining questions.
On-site visits – You might host a behind the scenes visit to your factory location or to a customer site to see your product or service in action.
Product demos – Show the world how your product works and how it can benefit them while answering questions and getting new ideas for enhancements.
Product launches – You don’t have to gather press and analysts in a room for a launch or at least you can extend your audience online.
Regular broadcasts of news and opinions – Host your own online news broadcast or ongoing video blog and gain immediate feedback from your audience.
Live support – Show rather than tell someone how to solve their problem. Let them follow along in real-time while also potentially benefiting others who have a similar problem/issue.
Realtor open house – Host a virtual open house and get additional viewers who cannot or will not come in person. Get immediate feedback on the property.
Online focus group – Need some quick market research? Have an idea you want to bounce off potential customers? Crowd-source a virtual focus group to share ideas and feedback.
Tourist information – Don’t just post some photos, but let your target audience experience some of the sights and sounds of your destination in real-time.

I’m sure I am just scratching the surface with these ideas and that many other industry-specific ideas may come into your mind. I believe the opportunities to use Periscope for Business are great.

However, it is not all unicorns and rainbows. As with most new technologies, Periscope opens up new threats that will have to managed and possibly regulated.

Threats

The idea that now anyone can be a mobile broadcaster anywhere also presents potential threats to your business. Some that come to mind for me include:

Search – How do you enable your audience to find either live or archived video streams. What if you throw the party and nobody comes?
Copyright infringement – What if someone is mobile broadcasting your copyrighted images, music, or text? How will you know and how can you enforce?
Loss of revenue – What if someone broadcasts an event, concert, musical program, conference, or other content for which you normally charge a fee? How much revenue might you lose?
Privacy – Images of you, your employees, or your customers may be broadcast without their explicit knowledge. Periscope location pinpointing is more granular than just your city and may draw people to a location where you don’t want them.
Journalism and Broadcasting – If you are in the news or blogging business, you now have a whole new set of competitors – anyone around the world with a smartphone!

What do you think? Have you tried Periscope yet? For your industry do you see other Opportunities or Threats in using Periscope for Business? Please share your thoughts and ideas.

2015 The Year of Social Media Marketing Video

2015 is the year of social media marketing video. If you look at the statistics of organic reach and engagement, I should be doing this blog post as a video. Video is taking off in 2015. Marketers are jumping on the bandwagon to gain organic reach and to cut through social media clutter to engage customers.

Last week Socialbakers released survey data showing that Facebook photo posts now have the lowest organic reach. Video posts are seen twice as often, followed by text status updates. Here is how Socialbakers’ breakdown of post-based organic reach looked in the fourth quarter of 2014:

Why is this happening?

One reason is clutter. Your customers’ social media feeds are overflowing with content. Marketers are all competing for share of attention and engagement. Video is still less common, so it stands out. And the motion of video (in auto play) catches attention while scrolling. Some marketers are even going back to paper catalogs in the mail to cut through the clutter and integrate with other social media channels.

Another reason is because Facebook, Twitter, Vines, and Instagram are pushing social media marketing video. In 2014 the number of native video posts on Facebook exceeded the number on YouTube. Mark Zuckerberg stated last year that if you look to the future, a lot of content that people will share will be video. Facebook’s algorithm now prioritizes video over photos for display in news feeds. It’s not just Facebook. Twitter is also pushing native video this year.

A third reason is that video is just a better medium for some communications. Explanations, screencasts, and webinars are often more effective ways to tell a story or to show product or service features and benefits. Micro videos via Vines or Instagram may be very effective for a short burst of humor or beauty or amazement.

Social media marketers have historically talked about and striven for video virality. But the data show that after a short viral period engagement goes back to pre-viral levels. I believe the goals should be:

match the medium to the message
strive for engagement and shareability

If marketers just read the headlines, we would all migrate all future content to video. But that will just shift the social media clutter to video instead of photos. What will we do then to break through the new video clutter? It’s the latest fad, but I would argue to think more about matching the medium to your message. Use video when it makes sense and will help you to not only capture attention but also to engage your audience.

Use video when you need to:

explain and demonstrate something
do a webinar to go in depth on a subject
tell a story
show something beautiful
share a heartwarming experience of interaction
interact with people or animals
amaze people with a stunt or feat of adventure

I believe 2015 is the year of social media marketing video. I also predict that many marketers will jump onto the bandwagon blindly. What have your video marketing experiences been so far on social media? What are your plans for 2015?

The Facebook Ads Mafia Shakedown: Pay or Suffer the Consequences

Facebook ads can be a very effective way to gain awareness of potential customers and to engage customers and prospects over time. It is a critical digital marketing tool for most businesses to establish and nurture profitable customer relationships over time (there’s that definition of marketing again!). Facebook used to be the village square where people and merchants met freely to exchange information and goods. On the small island of Kauai where I live we do this at the local Costco. But Facebook allowed us to do this globally.

The Start of the Shakedown

Ah, the good old days. But then the Facebook ads mafia decided the village square didn’t have to be free for merchants and businesses. They could cleverly extort money from them in order to stay in place or else be relegated to the back alleys. This shakedown scheme began a couple of years ago now. If you were a business on Facebook back in February 2012, you saw an average organic fan reach of 16% with your posts. By March of 2014 you saw an average organic fan reach of 6.51%. (Source: Social@Ogilvy study.) It was even worse for pages with more than 500 likes. In other words, if you didn’t pay up, your reach and performance suffered. If you are a new business developing your social media marketing strategy, be prepared to pay up and pay for advertising to achieve results that were previously free.

Back in 2012 Facebook started changing their algorithm about what would be displayed in News Feeds. So while you still may see that casserole recipe post from Aunt Mary on a regular basis, you are not seeing all the photos posted by a big box store you follow. Many businesses have tried increasing the number of posts in order to tread water with the total reach that they previously had. But is that achieving the desired business result? Is your objective just to get something in front of a person with your business name associated, or is your business objective for them to do something (click your website, signup for a newsletter, go to your ecommerce site, contact you, etc.). Most of us would say the latter. So where it used to matter how many “likes” you had to establish a fan base, now what matters is the cost per desired engagement. Note that I say “desired engagement” as opposed to Facebook’s “engagement” defined as like, comment, or share.

Engagement in Facebook’s terms means that someone reacted to the photo or status

Note that Facebook’s reported metrics may still not be accurate for either reach or engagement, although they continue to improve. I know from my own Facebook ads that in auditing some engagements on posts, I found that the person was not at all in my defined target audience. So there is still plenty of room for improvement. Your mileage may vary.

What Can You Do?

You really have two primary alternatives:

1. Create extremely engaging content that will be widely shared within your target audience so that Facebook displays your posts more often.

OR

2. Pay up or suffer the consequences – buy ads and pay for boost posts to your specific targeted audience or be sidelined by Facebook

Extremely Engaging Content

According to TechCrunch, Facebook’s algorithm takes a large number of factors into consideration when deciding how much to display your content. But the main factors for News Feed Visibility are:

Interest – Has the user expressed interest in you before or your type of business/content?
Post performance – How well did this post perform with other users?
Creator – How has other content you created before performed with users?
Type – Is it a photo, status, video, or other, and does this match the type preferred by this user?
Recency – Is it new or stale?
and about 100 other factors

If you already have a lot of “likes” then you have an advantage, but no guarantee of success.

Pay Up - Buy Facebook Ads and Boost Posts

If you’re new to the game or you want to do more than just tread water with your fans/prospects/customers, then it’s time to pay up. But first make sure you are clear on your business objective and on your target audience. Otherwise you will be wasting money. Back in December 2014 Facebook announced a new feature of Call to Action buttons on business pages. This will help move someone to action if they actually visit your Facebook page. But how many will? And how many will just look at your post and move on? So think carefully about your target audience, what post content will engage them, and what desired action they should take as a result? In my case, having someone “like” my post isn’t very valuable to my business. I don’t know if that person will do anything else or remember my company of if they just like the photo that I posted. I want them to come to my web site, learn more, and either sign up for a newsletter to stay in touch or contact us. It’s good if they like our page as a secondary objective to have some connection to us. Your objectives may be different in order to grow your business.

Besides having a Facebook page with a Call to Action button and a page full of interesting content, what makes an individual post compelling for someone to take action?

First, you have to capture their attention visually as they scan through a News Feed or sidebar:

An eye catching image
A video
A compelling quote or status update (some people argue that text posts are now cutting through the clutter of picture posts in order to get more attention)

Once you have captured their attention, you need to have some compelling content that causes them to take action, whether that is to like your post, click through to your web site, like your page, or start shopping. See our related blog post on compelling content for some ideas on how to keep attention once you have grabbed it!

Finally, be sure to create more than one ad to test and measure. Be prepared to make modifications based on performance metrics. It is not a “set it and forget it” system. Monitor your dashboard and be prepared to cancel, revise, or kill ads based on your testing and results.

Do you have a Facebook page that the reach has declined? Have you done Facebook advertising? How did it compare to Google Ad Words for you? What have been the business results? Please share.

7 Advantages of Digital Marketing Strategy over Traditional

You’re a business owner or executive looking for ways to grow your business. How do you come up with an effective marketing strategy? What is the role of advertising as part of your marketing strategy? Should it be traditional marketing? Should it be online, digital marketing? Or should it be some combination of the two?

The Modern Customer Purchase Funnel

The purpose of marketing is to enable and drive sales. In my many years of experience as a marketing executive, I believe effective marketing starts with an understanding of your target customer’s buying behavior. Market research and feedback helps you to refine this. But there are some useful customer purchase models to help organize your thinking and idenitify where you may need to gather further information or do testing. A classic customer purchase model was the AIDA one:

Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action

But the Internet has changed that. It is no longer sufficient. A modern customer purchase model that I find useful is:

Awareness
Research and familiarity
Opinion and Shortlist
Consideration
Purchasing
Champion/Repurchase OR Defect/Detract

Think about this with regard to your own buying behavior for different products and services. For example, I am planning to build a house and need kitchen appliances. I have some general awareness of appliance brands, but I have become aware of newer ones through ads and web sites and store visits. I started to research the brands and how they will meet our needs. I asked people in stores. They offered a little insight, but I found a lot more insight and information on the Web. This is a major purchase that we will live with for a long time so I want to make sure we get it right. On the Web, I can also see customer reviews and lab tests of products to understand what other people have experienced. I can see video demos of the products being used. We have formed some opinions and narrowed down the list of brands we are interested in. Now we’re drilling down on those two brands to consider features, pricing, reliability, style, etc. to decide which ones we will purchase. Once we purchase and begin to use those products, we will either be satisfied customers who will champion them to others online and offline and eventually repurchase OR we will be dissatisfied customers who will make that known and detract from the brand.

Traditional vs. Digital Marketing

Customer buying behavior has shifted and so should your marketing mix. Should it be all traditional or all online? It depends on your business and your customers. For many businesses the answer may be somewhere in the middle. But the 4 Ps (product, price, place, promotion) are no longer sufficient.

What are the advantages of online, digital marketing strategy over traditional marketing?

Lower costs –Traditional marketing is expensive. It takes a lot of people, lead time, and materials. Trade shows, direct mail, TV or radio ads are all costly. Digital marketing is much less expensive. The cost to create and maintain a web site is much lower. The cost to write a blog or send an email newsletter is minimal. The cost to run PPC ads on Google or Facebook is much less. The cost to make changes is dramatically less.
Target your message – Your targeting is limited with traditional marketing. Many of your tools are broadcast to a wide audience rather than narrowcast to someone getting ready to make a purchase decision. You can target the right message to the right person and based on where they are in the customer purchase decision process.
Measure ROI – In traditional marketing you are often guessing which marketing elements contributed to return on investment because it would cost too much to find out. With digital marketing feedback is immediate and measurable. Analytics give us data on the performance and conversions associated by different online marketing activities.
Change or refine strategy easily – It’s difficult and time consuming to make changes to traditional marketing elements. Re-designing and re-printing a brochure takes time. Re-shooting a television ad takes time. Digital marketing is much faster to test and refine. You can do A/B testing and get immediate feedback. You can see where you are spending money with results and without results. You can stop and/or change things with less effort and shorter lead times. Real-time feedback and analytics tell you when and how to change your strategy.
Engage prospects longer – Nobody reads a long brochure. A TV or radio ad is usually 30 seconds. A trade show may yield a brief conversation. But online marketing can grab and hold attention. It can help to start building a relationship with a prospect or reinforce a relationship with an existing customer. Online, digital marketing is informative. It is not just PPC ads. It is educating and informing your audience so they can take the next step in their purchase decision process. They can interact with your business via text, images, video, chat. They can see what others have experienced with your business. They can learn more about the values of your business or how you work behind the scenes.
Be available 24/7 – If I wake up in the middle of the night I can still engage with your business as part of my purchase decision process. I don’t have to wait for a store to open or a sales person to call. And the content is long lasting. A blog post I write this year may be just as valuable to new prospects next year. Or it can easily be updated to be always accessible over time.
Be less intrusive – Most of us don’t want to be sold on something. We want to come to our own conclusions. We value advice and a small set of alternatives that are tailored to our particular needs and wants. But we don’t like people pushing something to us based on features and functions that we may or may not need. Online, digital marketing is available when I want it. It is informative. It helps me move through my decision process at my pace.

On the island of Kauai we have many businesses that are targeted to visitors. One of those businesses is selling activities to enjoy while on vacation (ziplines, fishing trips, snorkeling, etc.) It used to be that visitors almost always arrived and then met in person with a concierge at a hotel or a shop to be told what the offers and recommendations are and to make their purchase decisions. But that business model has been shifting rapidly. Now a large proportion of visitors arrive on the island having already researched activities online, reviewed customer reviews, shopped for discounts and promotions, and made a purchase before they ever got here.

Is the answer today all traditional marketing or all digital marketing? For a startup business in particular industries all digital may be the right answer. For some more traditional industries, traditional marketing may still dominate overall marketing investment. But for many businesses the shift is occurring between the two. You may still need traditional elements for that face to face connection via trade shows and an outside sales force. It depends on your product/service and your target customers’ buying behaviors. But chances are your marketing mix will need to shift increasingly toward online, digital marketing.

What do you think? Have you shifted your marketing mix or is it all traditional or all digital? Have you seen customer buying behavior changing in your business? Please share for the benefit of others working on their marketing strategies.

There ain’t no such thing as a free website!

Many small businesses looking at web design on Kauai or anywhere else in Hawaii or around the world are finding free website alternatives online. But what does free really mean? Are you being smart and economical or are you locking into something with other implications and challenges? Over 6 million people and businesses have joined Weebly and have set up many more million websites on their platform. Websiteooltester.com covers the pros and cons of many of the free website providers. So wouldn’t that be the way to go? With them or one of their competitors? Not necessarily.

In economics the principle that there is no such thing as a free lunch is used to denote that everything has an opportunity cost. The phrase was used early on in the U.S. in the days of saloons that offered a “free lunch” if you purchased at least one drink. It was also used to talk about government corruption. But in modern times the economist Milton Friedman helped to make the phrase really popular by using it as the title of his 1975 book.

The concept that nothing is free serves to remind us that there is an opportunity cost to everything. By choosing one investment you have an opportunity cost of what the alternative would have been. Even if someone does invite you for a free lunch, there may be some other agenda or obligation on your part. At the very least there is an opportunity cost of the alternative ways that you could have used your time while eating the free lunch. Your time has value and that value is determined by how you use it.

What does free lunch have to do with a free website?

There is opportunity cost to accepting a free website. You are choosing a set of parameters, design styles, contracts, and timeframes for a free website that may sound good in the short term, but have other costs. After all, who doesn’t want free? You’re starting a new small business and you’re looking to do everything economically. However, being economical may not automatically mean taking the free alternative.

What are some of the advantages of the free website?

It’s free! (well, mostly anyway)
The tools are simple and easy to use
It’s fast to do
You can do it yourself
The complexity of web design tools, domain names and web hosting are masked to you
There are a lot of pre-loaded designs available
The sites are large and growing and adding features over time

What to look out for with free website providers

Is the domain name registered in your name? Can you take it with you?
Are you obligated/required to purchase other services from the free website provider?
How long is the hosting contract with the free provider?
Is the free part limited to a certain time period?
Will they display ads on your site? Will you be able to control the type and placement?
Will they add other external links to your site?
What level of support do they provide and in your time zone?
Do they provide any system availability guarantees?
Do they run regular backups of your site in case of a crash?
Do they require a setup fee or other admin fee?
Do they charge for monthly hosting and is it a higher fee than the industry average?
If you decide to switch later to a custom site can you take the site with you and transfer it to another host?
They may say they will submit your site to search engines, but are there any tools or guidelines to optimize your site for search engines to rank highly?
Do they provide a branded email address with your domain or is that an additional charge?
How much space do they provide? How expensive will it be to upgrade if your business grows?
You have access only to the features they provide
There are limits to what you can customize to your business
What happens to your site if the company is acquired or goes out of business?

You may be thinking I’ll start out with this free website and then switch to a custom one later. That may not be possible to do or it may be costly. You may be disappointed when you are not showing up in search engine rankings, but another web designer can’t help you without building a new website.

Is a free website good marketing?

Free websites continue to improve and add features, but it may still be apparent to your prospective customers that it is a free website. How serious are you about your business? Do you look like a business that is investing to succeed? Or do you look like thousands of other Weebly sites who have chosen the same design template?

Your web site is one of the key marketing tools to reach your new and existing customers. Are you able to provide compelling content in a way that makes sense to them and that reflects the unqueness of your company?

If upfront cost is the issue, you may be able to work with your web designer or digital marketing partner to bundle the cost into a year long contract that could include web hosting or other social media services. If they are open to that alternative, you may be able to spread part or all of the upfront cost over a longer contract with them. You may want to consider alternatives other than just looking at the upfront price and making that your sole decision criterion.

After all, there ain’t no such thing as a free website!

Kauai small business landmark Na Pali coast

Does a Kauai small business need social media marketing?

I have heard the question of whether a Kauai small business needs social media marketing. On the island of Kauai we have a small town culture. People take time to talk story with each other. People know people who know people. There are a lot of word of mouth business referrals. But there are also many businesses whose target customers include not only locals, but also visitors. Small businesses here and in other parts of the world are wondering what to do about social media marketing and whether it is worth the time and effort. As a small business owner your goal should not be excellence at social media. Your goal should be to increase your business by picking and choosing some social media marketing that will reach your customers and prospects cost effectively. You could get social media training to do it yourself or you could hire someone to write and manage marketing content for you.

Why Kauai small business social media marketing matters

Gain awareness of your target audience, whether locals, transplants, or visitors: People increasingly look for information online and on the go. There are local Facebook groups for causes and for rants and raves. There are locals, transplants, and visitors not only searching the web, but also searching social media for Kauai information, products, and services. Kauai small business is fortunate to have many repeat visitors. What are you doing to stay in touch with them and make sure they do business with you on their next visit? What are you doing to encourage them to share information about your business with friends and neighbors who may also visit sometime? Social media is another place to find out about your small business and to stay connected over time. It is also a fast and affordable place to do A/B testing of content to see what your target customers responds to most and where they do it from.
Drive traffic to your web site: Having a web site is a basic start for online marketing. Getting your web site noticed, though, is the goal for attracting new business. Social media visibility and sharing useful content for your target audience can help to drive people to your web site for more information and to take action. Or it may cause their friends and neighbors to become aware of your web site by seeing a “like” or share.
Capture contact info for email marketing and newsletters: Sharing interesting content in social media may be the hook to get someone interested in your Kauai small business. You now have a reason for them to give you their contact info and to sign up for email updates or a newsletter. They may become aware of your blog posts and updated useful content that will cause them to come to your web site and fill out a form to contact you. Yes, it’s good to have this on your web site. But you can use social media to interest people in contacting you.
Induce trial of your product or service: In addition to generating awareness through social media, you may also be able to induce a trial of your product or service. Providing useful, interesting content can cause them to take action to request more information or to visit your shop. You might also offer a special promotion on social media for a free sample at a certain time that creates an urgency and excitement to be shared with other friends and neighbors.
Foster customer relationships and repeat business: Social media marketing is also a great way to retain customers, to deepen customer relationships, and re-inforce their buying behavior with you. We feel proud as consumers when we see an ad or promotion for a brand that we use and with which we have a positive relationship. Your customers will feel a much stronger connection to your business by also knowing more about you, your suppliers, your employees, your locations, etc. We all like a peak behind the scenes and to feel like we are insider.
Create social media referrals in addition to word of mouth referrals: This is a real strength of social media marketing. Humorous, emotional, or just useful content doesn’t have to go viral to benefit your business. But having your customers’ friends and contacts seeing and hearing about your brand is an online word of mouth that can spread much faster and certainly much wider than just talking story at the farmer’s market or other local gathering spot. What are the chances that your small business will come up in conversation? But if there is useful or interesting information on social media, that can be seen by or shared with others.

How a Kauai small business can get started

Social media marketing for a Kauai small business takes some time and effort. But you don’t have to be everywhere. Work with an advisor to pick and choose the platforms that make the most sense for your target customers. Focus on one or a few. Don’t try to be an expert on every social media platform. Focus on the content to be interesting, humorous, emotional, useful (see our other blog posts on compelling content). It’s not about selling. It’s about communicating, gaining awareness, inducing trial, and fostering customer relationships. Test to see what works and to focus your efforts on those that produce real results to grow your business.

So if you are a Kauai small business, you can likely survive without social media marketing, but will you thrive?

Want 10 Ideas for Compelling Content?

A lot of people doing online, digital marketing are focused on the tools and channels. But it’s compelling content that causes someone to look at and engage with you. As you are faced with hundreds of blogs, Facebook posts, and tweets some catch your eye and some don’t. Here are 10 ways you can catch the attention of your reader with your marketing content:

Tell a story that is relevant – We all like to know how other people have solved problems successfully. What was the problem/situation? What did you do? What was the result? We all like to learn from these mini case studies. They establish your credibility.
Write in the language of your customer – I see a lot of web sites, blogs, and Facebook posts aimed at small and mid-sized businesses that use the jargon of tools and acronyms for compelling content marketing. But their audience are business people, not necessarily technologists or marketers. To engage your customer, speak their language, not yours.
Provide compelling content that is timely and relevant – It’s about issues and problems your customers are dealing with now. It’s current. It’s up to date. It’s not information on a web site that you last updated 2-3 years ago.
Help solve a problem or give tips and techniques – You provide compelling content when you educate and supply information that assists your audience to solve a problem. By teaching, your audience solves the problem on their own and remembers your assistance. Or they may reach out to you to solve the problem on their behalf. Or your content may be compelling not because it solves their entire problem, but it aids your audience to improve and increase the return on their investment.
Analyze and summarize data for decision-making – Your target customer has multiple competing priorities. Helping them with data and insights from that data will assist them to make better decisions. And that will lead to more sharing of the data and visibility to your expertise in the area.
Be concise – The more senior your target customer, the less time they have to consider your information. Don’t expect them to read a long white paper to get the key points. Summarize the conclusions/recommendations first and then give the option to read the longer report. Make your text easy to read. Use bullets, lists, and graphics.
Create an emotional connection – People love to read and hear heart-warming stories. Maybe it’s about one of your employees. Maybe it is about one of your customers. Maybe it is about something going on in the community in which your business is involved. Not only do people love to hear a heart-warming story, they also love to share them with others.
Give a peak behind the scenes with insider information – Part of a strong customer relationship is the customer knowing a lot about your company and the people that make up your company. We feel more connected when we know more about individuals working in your organization. We also feel valued if you give us a peak behind the scenes. Do you have an innovative process or interesting equipment or a new technology that would engage me more by becoming an insider with you?
Be humorous – Poke fun at yourselves, your industry, your employees, your pets, but in a positive way. Be “punny” about your business. We all love to laugh and to share things that will make other people laugh.
Provide a picture worth a thousand words – In the crush of online blogs, posts, and tweets, pictures grab our attention and compel us to stop and look. Many pictures are worth a thousand words. They communicate concepts and ideas succinctly or they at least stop our eyes to read the text.

What are your thoughts? Have these 10 ways worked on you? Can you think of examples of marketing content that caused you to stop and take action?

Couldn’t I do social media marketing and a web site myself?

You may be looking at our site and wondering if you could do all this yourself. Can’t anyone do online and social media marketing? The answer is yes. There is nothing magic here. It is not rocket science. But will you or should you do it yourself? It’s

time consuming
requires learning new skills
needs new tools
is easy to forget or de-prioritze

Marketing strategy

You know the most about your business. You’re the one who runs it every day. You may know the most about your current and potential customers. You can talk to your own customers and prospects to understand their buying behavior and how they search and use information online related to your product or service. You can research and monitor your competitors online. You can create your own logo and brand identity or hire a graphic designer to assist. You can research marketing best practices and new technologies. It takes time. It may take even more time until you have gained some experience.

You could use a soup to nuts digital marketing platform, like HubSpot. It will cost you more money, but it will provide all the tools and already has them integrated. We looked at HubSpot for our business, but thought we could be more economical, have more flexibility, and do our own integration to achieve a higher return on investment. Many small and medium-sized businesses are going this direction for digital marketing. It’s not cheap and it will take time. You will be locked into their tools and integration platform, but it may easier and faster to do it this way. And you have complete control of what or what isn’t done.

Web site

Yes, you can develop a web site. There are tools available now to do a simple web site using drag and drop. It will get you a web site, but will it communicate in the way your audience looks for information? Will it lock you into using one particular company’s technology? Are they stable and well-established or are they a start-up that may disappear?

We use WordPress to develop a web site. You could install and learn it, too. It’s the most popular web site development tool. You could take a class on it. It will still take some trial and error to learn the ins and outs. And there are lots of options, like themes and plugins to consider and choose as part of your design. You will also have to register a domain name, select a web hosting service, and install whatever web design tool you choose.

You can choose the topics and write/edit your own blog posts. You can keep your site up to date both with the latest technology updates and compelling content.

You can also learn and do SEO (search engine optimization).

Email newsletters

You can also do this on your own. You will need to manage your own email list. You will need a design for your newsletters. You will need to write and edit. You could use a service for this, like Constant Contact.

Social media marketing

You can decide which social media platforms you want to use for your customers. You can write, schedule, and post compelling updates. You can decide whether or not to run ads on social media. You can create and post ads and monitor their results. It just takes getting familiar with each platform, best practices for using it, etc. You can also get a tool like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to help manage and monitor your social media marketing. We use Hootsuite so that we can schedule posts across multiple social media sites at once.

Analytics

You can set up Google tracking code for your web site and use Google Analytics to analyze its performance (and performance of your social media to drive web site traffic) relative to your marketing strategy. You can get and monitor analytics for ads placed on social media sites. It’s all available online. You can read about it or take a course. It takes some time and some analytical skills.

So yes, you can do all this digital marketing stuff yourself. Do you have the skills or the time to acquire the skills? Is it where you want to use your management time and creativity?

SEO: Do I care and how do I get it?

We see a lot of web design and other digital marketing sites highlighting that they offer SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services. We have intentionally not labeled it as a separate service that we offer. We have done that for a couple of reasons:

As a small or mid-sized business owner you may not know what SEO is, why it matters to you, or what constitutes a good SEO service
Why would you have a web site and NOT want it optimized for search engines to display your content to customers and prospects? Why would it be something separate from web site design and development?

Yes, we offer SEO services, but as an integral part of our Design and Development services. As a business owner, you shouldn’t have to care about the technical details of how web sites get optimized for search engines. But you should care that your valuable, relevant, compelling content is being displayed to customers and prospects when they search for information.

We use WordPress as the primary tool to develop web sites. With that, there are some other tools and techniques that we use. (And we think you should look for them as part of any web design and development project.)

It's primarily your content

If someone else is speaking with you about SEO and not starting with your content, they are too far down in the weeds of technology. A blog may be your most important tool for SEO. The first and most important way to be noticed effectively by search engines is to have plenty of well written content. It should be written in the way that your customers and prospects look for information on the Internet. It should be embedded in links and images as well. And your site should use good, straightforward navigation links. Your site and content are deemed more important if they are also linked to by others, including social media.

Other tools and techniques

Meta tags provide search engines with places and content to index
robots.txt help search engines know where to look for content
WordPress categories become technorati tags and others can be added
Permalink make it easier for search engines to find your content
A sitemap may also enable a search engine
Search engine submissions may also be helpful to raise the visibility of your content

So, yes, you should care about SEO. Start with your content and we can assist.

Quicksprout has put together this very useful infographic as well:

SEO

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Want 10 Ideas for Compelling Content?

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