Social Media

To get rankings for your products or services in Google search, it’s now imperative to engage your clients, customers, and prospects in social channels.

Google wants to know who you are, if can you be trusted, and what people are saying about you.

We harp on the necessity to build a social media strategy and game plan that helps to drive people to your website.

Bill Hartzer, one of the foremost search engine marketing  experts in the world, explains how the world of Google search is now focused on social conversations.

Bill spoke with us following his presentation to DFWSEM of which he is a founding member.

Is your business part of the conversation?  If not, that expensive website of yours will likely fail to produce paying clients and customers.

Video Transcription

Robert: Hi. I’m Robert Riggs. This is Brad Besancon back with a Clairiti Clip of the Week. Now you wanted to be at a playground. Why are we here?

 

Brad: Well, I think one of the things that we hear a lot out there in the industry and we hear from clients is they’re just kind of playing around online. They’re playing around with social. They’re playing around on their website. They’re putting out a blog but they really don’t have a strategy or anything written down or any kind of clue really when it comes down to it about what they need to be doing.

 

Robert: Well, we talk about listen, think, speak and you don’t know the language of your audience and they’re all out there talking. You don’t know your language unless you go through that kind of process.

 

Brad: Yeah. I mean the point is, is that you’re setting the table for the passion of your fans. You’re setting the table with your content, with the blogs, with what you’re doing in social, with the video like we’re doing here.

 

You’re setting the table to bring people in to the conversation. If you don’t have an idea about what that passion is or what that audience speak is or what you need to be doing, then you’re just out there playing around.

 

Robert: So this past week, we had a prospective client look at Brad about this past experience with the Dallas Cowboys and say, “Why the heck would the Dallas Cowboys need social media?”

 

Brad: Yeah, it threw me off a little bit because it’s kind of a – I never had that question and the bottom line is everyone needs social if you think about it, in different formats, right? You don’t have to be at all places and everything to everybody.

 

But you do need social because it’s the only place you can have a two-way conversation. Online is where it is. You bring people into the site. You could potentially drive them to a call-to-action. You have a conversation with them on social media out there one-on-one. Again, you’re setting the table to get that passion and to elevate that brand because as we always tell our clients is either you control the brand or someone will.

 

Robert: Exactly. You ever have that awkward moment in an office when you think there are a couple of people over in a corner and you’ve heard your name. You think they’re talking about you. You’re not part of the conversation. You know how uneasy that makes you feel? That’s happening every day to …

 

Brad: Every day.

 

Robert: … by thousands of people talking to them. They’re not there. They’re not interacting. And don’t you think you ought to be there? Because your competitors or even critics in them, they will define you if you have not defined yourself.

 

Brad: Absolutely, absolutely.

 

Robert: Cardinal rule of politics.

 

Brad: Yeah. Yeah. We’re seeing that play out on social media.

 

Robert: All right. Clairiti Clip of the Week.

 

Brad: I’m going to go do some slides.

 

Robert: Yeah. Work on those …

 

Brad: I’m going to work on my landing.

 

Robert: Thanks guys. See you next week.

 

Brad: Have a good one.

 

[End of transcript]

Day in and day out, we meet with companies who believe in a one size fits all social media. They use the “one button” push and copy posts throughout their social media platforms. Same picture. Same text. Same content.

We’ve even been told that this is the “standard practice” in business and we shouldn’t be focused on that. Really? Should it be standard practice?

Is each of the social media networks different? How about the audiences? Do you think they “live” differently in Facebook than they do in Twitter or Instagram? Then why is it “standard practice” to simply post the same pictures and content on all of your social media channels?

It’s our experience that companies that do just the opposite of so called “standard practice” are more successful in social media. They understand that their company’s voice is different in Facebook than it is in Twitter because their audience is different. We break this down in our post about how businesses should eat their social media.

The same holds true when comparing the other platforms. Each platform has it’s own unique qualities, uses, enjoyments, and audience. Businesses have to understand this in order to better relate, connect, and converse with their audience. It’s why we created the term #AudienceSpeak. It’s understanding and speaking the audience’s language in each of the platforms you’re involved in as a company.

In my experience with the Dallas Cowboys, I discovered that certain photos sparked more passion among Facebook fans than the same photos did with the team’s Twitter followers and vice-versa. For example, when we wished Michael Vick a “happy birthday” on the Cowboys’ Facebook page, engagement popped, but not as high as other posts related to an important game at the time of kickoff. However, when we tweeted the birthday post, it exploded. Every major news media outlet including ESPN, USA Today, and all major TV networks picked up on the tweet. Twitter followers spread the post quickly and news organizations and reporters (Twitter is probably their #1 tool now) picked up on it. The photo went viral on Twitter. Different tool = different audience = different results.

Think about it. If you put the same content on all of your social platforms it’s likely followers will pick only one channel for engagement. This means that instead having the same follower across all of your channels, you only get them once. If you are posting different content across each of your platforms you increase the chance that they will engage with your brand in all platforms.

So don’t just push the Easy Button, be sure you use the right #AudienceSpeak in each of your social media channels.

How many times are companies and brands told or “guided” to Listen to their Audience? What does that mean? Is it plugging keywords into a platform and searching social conversations? Is it analyzing your fans and followers and how they interact with your brand? I think it’s probably some of both, but isn’t there more to Listening to your Audience? It goes beyond analytics and data and maybe it’s time we applied some old fashioned, marketing common sense to our social media.

Listening is critical for social media success in today’s competitive environment. It should be a combination of analytics, data, common sense, and proper brand voice development. For example, is it better to know keywords or understand who your Audience is within the social networks?

What we typically find are companies consistently tweeting, “graming”, and posting on Facebook and Pinterest without any understanding who they’re talking to. In our experience, we find that individuals tend to be different personas within each of their social media platforms. The recipe driven home chef on Pinterest may be a crazed football fan on Facebook. Or the family oriented mom on Facebook who’s extremely professional and uses her Twitter handle for business only. These Audience Members require multiple brand voices and languages that your company has to speak, even to the same persons! That’s why brands must first LISTEN rather than SPEAK. In between is where our company applies the common sense, voice development, of THINK. By following this process brands can create and develop the right #AudienceSpeak.

So what’s the process? It’s actually very simple, but may require removing your “Posting Hat” and replacing it with two steps backwards, and putting in the hearing aids. Your social voice and strategy should derive from your Audience, NOT your marketing department. Sorry marketing departments, but in today’s world, Audience voice and conversations will show you where to go and what path to take. Ultimately, this makes everyone’s goals more obtainable when your Audience is relating to the brand more frequently.

So here’s a few tips:

“No Ties Meeting” – This is a meeting of the minds. A good old fashioned branding session.

Determine who and what you want to be in social media. How does it tie back to the “off-line” brand voice? Remember, you may need several voices to ensure you’re reaching far into your Audience.

What does the brand want to be in each of the social media platforms? Is it Follower Dominant, or more of a Boutique Interactive relationship?

Who is your Audience? Where are they and who are they in the social networks? Are they the “Home Chef” or the “Professional Pinterest Mom”? Each has a different language…now you have to start building the right #AudienceSpeak.

“Map it Out”

What did you learn in the “No Ties Meeting” and how can you now build from that to begin development of the new social voice….the #AudienceSpeak.

“Time for Talk”

This is the final stage in building your language. Here you actually begin to talk to your Audience. Test the language. Are they understanding it, following it, and relating to it? If not, keep testing based on what they’re saying back to you. This and only this, will continually develop your #AudienceSpeak.

 

#AudienceSpeak, the language beyond words for your brand.

 

The high priests of information are dead. RIP. Social media has destroyed the old media gatekeepers.

In a time not so long ago, the broadcast/cable networks decided what out of the countless events in the world should be shown to the public. What the journalists in traditional newsrooms did not report, in effect did not happen. It was a one-way, media-broadcasting message that pushed its way into living rooms.

And then, the Internet. It enabled the sharing of messages and events at the speed of light through a new realm of communication. It wasn’t just up to the networks and newspapers anymore; it placed the power into the hands of the everyday person. And finally, social media came to the forefront and broke the mold of communication, sports, events, and news. It was recently reported by Pew Research Center that 30% of adults get their news from their Facebook feeds. And now, over the last few weeks, anyone can be an “on the spot” news breaker.

The conflict in the Middle East and the Ukraine illustrates how anyone can become an influential media outlet and thereby “break news”. Twitter is the electronic nervous system of breaking news around the globe. Social media has shrunk the world and everything that happens is instantly broadcast and shared through feeds, tweets, and pictures. Instantly. Live. As it happens.

Marshall McLuhan prophetically dubbed electronic media as a “global village” decades before Twitter and other social networks became embedded in the social fabric. When the Arab Spring erupted in Egypt in 2010, it was dubbed the “Twitter Revolution”.

Now consider the shoot down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pointed not to intelligence data, but to a social media post as evidence that Ukraine’s Russian separatists shot down the civilian jetliner. The post on a Russian social network similar to Facebook was taken down when the jumbo jet’s wreckage revealed scores of civilian bodies.

In the minutes after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a surface to air missile, a leader of Ukraine’s Russian separatists boasted they had “downed” a military transport aircraft. He described in in social media as the, “bird fell for waste heap.”  The deadly truth was that it was a civilian jetliner and suddenly the post disappeared.

However, you can’t taking it back once you click post on social media channels.

 

Weeks before the missile strike, both sides in Ukraine have used Twitter and other social media networks to wage a propaganda war. Communication systems including social media are amoral. They’re powerful. They’re also rapid, but not always factual. It used to be the role of traditional media to fact check for half-truths and deliberate lies. Today, they trail behind the “average person” and their social networks. The ubiquitous presence of smart phones means that an unfolding event will reach the world in a simple click of post or tweet.

I think we can all agree that recently we’ve all seen how social media is more than just social. It can be a stream of events or tragedies flowing directly to the world while we watch it unfold on our phones and tablets. It’s become more than a communication tool or sharing your life experiences with your “followers and friends”. It’s become an electronic extension of everyone’s nervous system, which involves us deeply in all other lives.