A  quote in a recent article by Tim Sanders really got me thinking about social media strategy. Some of the language used in the article is intended to provoke a response, but the content of the blog post, in essence, is excellent.

The article was based on a quote by Chris Kirubi, Chairman of Coca Cola Nairobi:

“You don’t need a social media strategy – You need a brand strategy that leverages social media.  Don’t get off the brand strategy just because there’s a new communication channel; that’s how you lose the plot as a brand.  Technology is the tail, not the dog.”

As you can probably imagine, this led to a lot of  “social media consultants” backing into a corner or pulling together overly verbose, nonsensical reasoning to justify their existence. Instead, what they should have focused on is that everything, including social media,  comes back to the company aims, brand strategy and more importantly business value.

As part of the social media strategy team at FreshNetworks (and I say that without worrying about that definition) our job is to look at how social media can be used to contribute to how the business operates. Yes, we do know alot about social media. But what sets us apart is that most of us come from a variety of business backgrounds with different skill sets and experiences.  This really helps us get to the crux of how and why  social media can be used for different business functions. By applying this knowledge, and providing pragmatic, expert advice, legitimate social media consultants have nothing to fear.

One way that we think about a strategic approach to social media is based on a model used by Prof. Gerry Johnson, Prof.Kevan Scholes and  Prof Richard Whittington in Exploring Corporate Strategy (2006), which shows all the different aspects we consider when thinking about how social media could be used to meet business objectives. Key to this process are the following three areas:

1. Analysis: understanding why you want to use social media, what is already out there, what your consumers want and the resources that are available within your organisation.
2. Strategic choice: given all the information available from your analysis , the next step is to consider which tools and concepts will produce the best results for your company.
3. Strategic implementation: social media is not just about a good idea or a campaign; it is as much of a cultural change as it is a technical one. It requires proper planning to ensure that what you have chosen is executed in a way that makes sense to the rest of your business.

I think by now most companies will have either tried social media themselves, or might have  reached out to agencies for help, and will be wiser about the value of social media; they will know when they are being fed rubbish.

As  a result, will the  “blood-sucking social media gurus” , as Milo Yiannopoulos describes them, simply disappear? Lets hope so. And will there be a market for people who actually understand social media? Definitely. 2011 will just be a year of distinguishing between the two.

Source: FreshNetworks.com

In the pursuit of trying to get things done, some “top” brands have made mistakes. Here are some things to avoid, with no exceptions – things that I hope are rarely repeated.

1. Run specials all the time. In a struggle to keep the consumer engaged, brands tend to keep offering consumers special deals. This all-out effort to discount and lure tends to have a negative impact by devaluing the brand and devaluing the relationship.
2. Wait for people to come. Brands set up shop on social media sites and simply wait for the consumer to come and find them. They do little to engage via dialogue or by trying to market along other channels. They have simply set up shop and expect that it is good enough to drive consumers in.
3. Run contests and games all the time. Gamification is the new buzzword for engagement with many brands investing significantly in games to engage their consumers. Additionally, brands tend to run multiple contests, which results in severely diluting their engagement to conversion metrics.
4. Block negative feedback. Many top brands tend to either block or ignore negative feedback. If you put up a comment on their site they either take it down or have a defined strategy to push the bad comments as far down as possible. This strategy diminishes the value of the positive comments.
5. Launch press releases on social media. Do you pay attention to more than 300 characters or watch long video clips? Brands tend to forget the conversational nature of engagement on social media sites – short, interesting stories are a much better way to engage.
6. Wait 24 hours to respond. Some brands take a long time to respond because they only check “social feedback” twice a week. Other brands take a long time to respond because they have to get approval before they can respond. The problem is that if you take too long, the consumer will probably call your brand for an answer or move over to someone else.
7. Not connecting your channels. Always a classic with the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Just two weeks ago, a major travel company sent two types of incentives – a gas discount card by email that shaved 10 cents off each gallon and a gas discount offer via social media that offered a five cent discount. It took a direct mail piece to fix the issue.
8. Snoop on and shock your customers. While it’s OK for a brand to leverage “widgets” to track consumer behavior on social media sites, it’s scary when the brand surprises these consumers with offers. A click on a social link led to a phone call by a cruise representative who unabashedly told me that he observed my behavior online.
9. Just roll along. Some brands feel that it’s OK to reach a certain critical mass in social media after which their sites can just “roll along.” The snowball can roll the wrong way and hurt brands.
10. Focus on “likes.” A blind focus on driving up “likes” has led to the “like” button being devalued and resulted in significantly lower ROI.
11. “Wait” to get started. Believe it or not there are still brands, especially in the financial services area, that are waiting for the social media “fad” to end.

Social media can make a positive impact. Do not wait, do not focus on “likes,” and please do not tell your fans that you know what link they clicked on at 11:33 a.m. Good luck with your social endeavors.

Source: Mashable.com

Marketers can leverage the massive reach and highly customizable targeting of Facebook’s ad platform. They can create ads that take clickers straight to an ecommerce site, bypassing fan marketing entirely. The ads-direct-to-websites option is often overlooked, but can be immediately profitable. If you’re not 100% sure about committing to the time and creativity required for fan marketing, then test direct-to-site ad traffic first.

For example, Vamplets.com, which sells plush vampire baby dolls, achieved a 300% ROI on ecommerce sales in its first month of advertising directly to the ecommerce site, according to a company representative.

2. Fan Marketing E-commerce

Fan marketing is selling to fans by posting from your page into their news feeds.

Fans appear to be more responsive when acquired through ads than through contests, content or legacy. Data analysis in 2011 from companies like PageLever revealed that many multimillion-fan brand pages were reaching 7% or fewer of their fans. Some pages have hundreds of thousands of fans who never liked or commented on a post, and have not seen the page’s posts for years.

Success with fan marketing requires that you be as visible as possible to your fans, and EdgeRank has a time decay factor. New fans may be required in some cases. Some businesses have taken the radical step to start entirely new pages and use Facebook ads to grow a new and more targeted fan base. With their more sophisticated and up-to-date understanding of how to engage fans, they achieve better results than they had with their old page.

Some profitable examples include Baseball Roses, Rosehall Kennel, WUSLU and SuperHeroStuff.

Baseball Roses sells artificial roses made from real baseballs. Founder of the company, Mark Ellingson, explained that they were unsuccessful with Google AdWords because no one was searching for their innovative product. They achieved a 473% ROI from their spend on fan acquisition via Facebook ads.

Rosehall Kennel breeds and sells German Shepherds, and has achieved more than 4,000% ROI on its fan acquisition spend, according to owner Eliot Roberts. What’s more, they have seen fewer requests for discounts and a shorter sales cycle.

WUSLU is a Woot-like site for home decor. While the company would not release exact profitability numbers, they are excited about their Facebook marketing results and have no plans to stop.

SuperHeroStuff.com’s founder Ronando Long told me that when the company began to use Facebook in 2011, it was the only new thing they were doing, and their revenues increased 150%.

3. Facebook Ads and Email

Many companies already have email dialed in. They know how much the average email subscriber is worth to their company, and they have an email marketing process that’s profitable.

For these companies, whether they initiate fan marketing or not, it makes sense to use Facebook ads to acquire even more subscribers, as long as those subscribers are qualified. Facebook advertising can be targeted according to 16 different criteria, including age, gender, interests, location, relationship status, connection to pages you admin, workplace, education level, majors in college and more. Add to that some ad copy that calls out the people you want to target, and you can ensure these new subscribers are qualified.

By sending contest-based email campaigns integrated with social networking, one Fortune 500 company achieved a 400% increase in email open rate, click rates of 14%, and one-fifth of their email subscribers also became fans, according to Steve Gaither, president of JB Chicago, the marketing agency that worked with the company.

4. Facebook Ads and Text Messaging

Businesses haven’t rushed to adopt SMS marketing, but 24% of mobile marketers have found their campaign ROI met or exceeded their expectations, and 4% of all mobile users have responded to a coupon for a product or service.

One local store (from a popular fast food franchise I’m not allowed to name) boosted revenue with this approach. It posted information about free text message coupons to its Facebook fans. Fans who opted in received an SMS coupon every day for 30 days. The result was $65,000 additional store revenue.

5. Generating Traffic to Your Ad-Supported Site

If you’re a publisher or blogger, content is your stock in trade, and advertising is usually your bread and butter. Why not create a Facebook page for your site, grow that fan base, then post a link to every new article? This boosts traffic to your website. Since your advertising revenue is tied to pageviews, more traffic from new readers and repeat traffic from fans mean more advertising revenues for your website.

Proud Single Moms, which created a Facebook page, grew about 98,000 fans via Facebook ads for less than $5,000, according to the site’s creator. Since the website uses AdSense ads, they chose to blog on topics that not only were interesting to moms, but which also had Google keywords generating high click fees. You can use a combination of the Facebook advertising platform and AdWords’ Keyword Tool to find interesting and profitable topics. Then they posted links to their blog posts on Facebook each day. Proud Single Moms was on track to break even on its initial ad investment within six months, and was privately sold to another party.

Which Revenue Model Should You Choose?

If one of these models isn’t an obvious match for your business, I’d recommend you first test direct Facebook ads to whatever is already working for your business. Do you have products or services that already sell well? Use Facebook ads to send more traffic to them.

Fans can also be affordably acquired through Facebook ads, but make sure you understand the amount of time and creativity required for fan marketing before you start. Companies that jump into fan marketing without that understanding and a good plan usually post in a way that doesn’t lead to much interaction. Then, EdgeRank reduces the reach and value of your Facebook page. Overall, the ROI of your efforts becomes low or negative. But when you get the right fans from Facebook ads and engage them with interesting content, profits often follow.

Source: Mashable.com

There is a certain tendency to follow suit and just embark on a strategy because everyone is talking about it without really thinking it through.

The past one to two years have seen many travel brands grow in their knowledge of how to better use social media to effectively communicate with their customers and prospects, says Jennifer Stafford, Social Media Manager, HomeAway.com.

Many companies are now more versed in targeting content to the various social audiences they communicate with on the different social networks through past experience and social network analytics that have become more advanced. Also, the value of having a fan base that is interested in your brand, versus just trying to get as many fans/followers as possible without regard to their connection with your company is becoming much more apparent as marketers shift focus to engagement.

“Similar to targeting content to different social networks, synchronising the look and feel of social media accounts and the tone of the messaging has also improved,” says Stafford, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Social Media and Mobile Strategies for Travel USA 2012, to be held in San Francisco (March 5-6) this year.

Stafford says most brands now have apps that are built in to their Facebook pages and are experimenting with Facebook ads and contests to draw users to their pages and increase engagement. On Twitter many travel companies have refined their strategy for engagement and offer deals to gain new followers. YouTube is being utilized for customer testimonials, highlighting corporate culture, site usage how-to and videos of important events and announcements.

“While not all travel companies have reached a fully diversified social strategy that encompasses all of the major social networks, they are moving in that direction and I expect to see more diversity in engagement, content, promotions and apps throughout 2012 as they try to stay ahead of the competition. But no matter where your company is in terms of social marketing maturity, developing a social marketing strategy if you don’t already have one should be a priority for all brands,” Stafford told EyeforTravel.com’s Ritesh Gupta in an interview.

Planning and budgeting

Social media is playing an increasingly important role in the way consumer access travel information and share their experiences online.

On how should travel companies go about planning and budgeting for social media marketing in 2012, Stafford says trip planning, engagement and sharing activities are moving deeper into the mobile space so ensuring that your brand has a strong mobile presence with an easy to use app is important.

“In terms of the social networks, and in addition to the mainstays of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Pinterest has emerged as a favorite among mom’s who lead the charge in most travel planning activities. If your business has photos or digital marketing materials it would be a worthwhile investment of time to be an early adopter of Pinterest,” says Stafford.

In terms of planning for 2012, according to Stafford, the key is to ask: What reason do users have to engage with us? Are you offering deals, do you have a useful or fun application, do you offer fan only information on your social channels, are you running Facebook ads to your page?

“Budget planning should be built around supporting initiatives, campaigns and applications that provide users beneficial information, help you achieve your business goals and are interesting enough that people will want to engage.  You should budget for running ads on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and StumbleUpon) that support your campaigns and branding materials, application building, promotions/prizes, social media management tools and design work if this isn’t available internally. We’ve found that these are generally the areas where you should bucket for the bulk of your social media spend,” explained Stafford.

Participation

It’s important for brands to monitor conversations and look for opportunities to engage current and potential customers, but before you try to insert yourself into a discussion ensure that you’ve got a clear picture of the context of the conversation. If someone is clearly asking for help from their friends and connections, then stepping in as a brand might not result in a positive outcome. However, if someone is directly discussing your company or asking a general question where you can provide valuable information then it makes sense to jump in to the discussion.

Stafford said the social network where you are trying to engage with users is something to be mindful of.

She added, for example, sending a tweet to someone is generally less intrusive than engaging in a discussion on a forum or other network where there is a closer sense of community. The tone and intent of the messaging is also important. If you’re only trying to sell something it’ll be less welcome than providing meaningful information to the user.

“You need to use the time that you spend engaging in social conversations effectively so choose situations that will provide benefit to the users and are more likely to result in a positive interaction for your company.  We’ve found engaging with customers and prospects online has been rewarding in terms of relationship building and identifying brand advocates so as long as it’s done with the intention to help solve a problem engagement from brands is usually accepted by users,” she said.

Evaluation

Travel companies are attempting to tap into online conversations around their brands, products or services to understand what their core audiences are saying and determine the influence they have on their brands.

As the travel industry is one of the most talked about on social media, the ability to find data should not be an issue for most companies, says Stafford. Travel companies can easily monitor likes, dislikes, requests, issues and more from their customers as well as customers of competitors through social media conversations. By tracking the conversations brands can gather public information from customers previously reserved for focus groups and surveys.

According to Stafford, many companies are using this data for improving customer service on social media channels and build social apps in addition to internal product and process improvements. Utilizing social conversations to learn what content your followers want to see from your brand is also a great benefit so you can deliver valuable information to users.

Additionally, conversations can provide you with information that can be used to more accurately craft messaging used in social advertising.

“Social data also gives brands the opportunity to identify who your brand advocates and social media influences are so you can engage with them if they’re providing feedback to your company,” concluded Stafford.

Source: Hotel News Resource

The Publican’s Morning Advertiser is calling for the Government to reduce VAT to 5% for the hospitality sector. 21 countries in the EU have a lower VAT rate for the hotel sector and 13 for the overall hospitality sector. In France, tax was reduced from 19.65% to 5% and led to the creation of 21,700 jobs in the first year. A cut in VAT could help create 320,000 jobs in the post Olympic years and help save pubs, restaurants and hotels.

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2. There are more American with a Facebook account than a passport
3. Only 7% of travellers use Mobile Internet when travelling abroad