Business Innovation through Social Media

The ultimate goal of any business is to make profits. However the highly competitive environment driven by ever changing technologies leaves most organisations struggling with effectiveness and efficiency. In order to compete in this fast paced environment, businesses have to innovate. Business innovation is defined as...."an organisation's process for introducing new ideas, workflows, methodologies or products." This might be time consuming and expensive exercise especially for small to medium enterprises. With connectivity and especially through Social Media, costs for innovation can be contained. The following methods can be co-opted into any Social Media strategy to facilitate an affordable business innovation.

Crowdsourcing

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Premised on the idea of outsourcing, this concept allows for individual contributions from volunteers or part time workers and the total effort comes from an unidentified public. Since organisations engage with audiences through Social Media, they can solicit for contributions from the public on how to improve certain aspects of their businesses. When systems are improved with the assistance of potential customers, success is assured. Innovation remains key and to attract attention and run an appealing campaign, competitions can be co-opted into this strategy.

Crowdfunding

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According to crowdsourcing.org, "Crowdfunding is an approach to raising capital for new projects and businesses by soliciting contributions from a large number of stakeholders...." There are a number of crowdfunding sites and www.crowdfunding.com lists the following as the top three, ranked according to traffic data. 

1. gofundme

2. kickstarter

3 Indiegogo

Billions of dollars have been raised through these websites. Social trust is cardinal for a successful online fund raising campaign. An active presence with healthy engagement in Social Media networks is all you need to establish social trust. Most common models of crowdfunding are 1) Donations/Philanthropy/Sponsorship 2) Lending 3) Investment in exchange of equity

Co-creation

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In pursuit of innovative ways of product development, some organisations are inviting thier clients to participate in the design of products. Customers are requested for their input to create value reach experiences. These interactions would normally take place on the organisations' websites, but to reach a wider audience, you will need to make use of Social Media networks. This exercise is not only fun and rich in varying options, but can also be collaborated with product launch, brand awareness and new market explorations. Integrating these activities becomes a cost cutting measure

Big Data

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Bernard Marr defines big data as, "....data being collected and our ability to make use of it." He asserts that as we conduct our normal activities, we leave traces of data which can be analysed. Analysis of this data informs behavior. Big data can be exploited for commercial opportunities. Performance improvement can also be identified and devised through data analysis. Connectivity through the internet and most importantly Social Media is a very rich mine field for all sorts of data. 

Internet of Things (IoT)

Imange Source:- Credencys

Another online phenomenon that can help innovate any business is the Internet of Things, which is defined by Webopedia thus, "The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the ever-growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other internet-enabled devices and systems. Internet enabled devices can be used to control and operate various processes and all that will be required is one to be connected to the internet. For an example; an office's telephone system can be controlled through the internet reducing the costs of telephone equipment and a telephone operator. Most home appliances, security systems and even wearable devices are now internet enabled. Social Media networks are in hot pursuit of developing systems that utilize the IoT phenomenon.

Besides seeking to increase sales, how else are you utilizing your business presence in Social Media? We would be happy to hear from you with a comment below. Should you need to know how you can harness these lucrative developments in your business strategy, do not hesitate to get in touch.

The art of engagement in Social Media Marketing

Connectivity and mobility have made it possible for different segments of society to stay connected. This has perfected the innovation for online communities that are grouped according to their various interests. Online communities provide vast opportunities for marketers. The goals and aims of Social Network Platforms and Marketers will not always be in sync. Logic then detects that parameters to measure whatever each group seeks to achieve will differ. Another dimension of note, is the mushrooming of consultants (some may like to see them as opportunists) that have come into this space offering training, advice, support and tools to manage this technologically propelled jungle. These providers of support services, have their competency limitations. Some are merely computer geeks that communicate in technological jargon, others are professional marketers who lack technological depth. It is therefore not surprising that there is no generally consensus among these different groups in defining jargon used in such a multi-disciplinary environment. Engagement is one of those terms that have aroused a lot of debate; is it the core objective of a Social Media Strategy?  Some view it as a cardinal matrix whilst others think its overrated.

According to Facebook, engagement is when your status update receives likes, shares, clicks or comments. Linkdin trainers for community bankers TrakPointe, define engagement in Linkdin as the reaction for any update which can be in the form of comments, likes, clicks or shares. Seochat defines twitter engagement as being more than just reaching out to those you wish hear what you have to say, they assert that it should be a conversation. This dialogue will propel those you are communicating with to follow you, favorite your tweets, re-tweet and mention you. Simply Measured defines engagement in Instagram as, "The sum of likes and comments on one, individual Instagram post or all Instagram posts during an established time period." Across all networks, it seems engagement has a similar definition and measurement. However, some networks will tend to have more engagement than others. By design other networks tend to group people of similar interests, which inspire appreciation of average posts. Visuals have proven to attract more engagement than wordy posts.

For the purposes of brand awareness, whether its for a business or personality, engagement according to Social Networks is straight forward. Share posts that are informative, witty, exciting with lots of visuals especially faces; and boom....you will have lots of likes, clicks, shares and comments. You would have achieved a high engagement rate. However if our aim is to grow sales through Social Media Marketing, this type of engagement might just signal the beginning of a process. If we follow the AIDA Sales Funnel; engagement in the form of page views and likes would signal the top two rungs of the funnel which is the arousal of Awareness and Interests. Clicks and Comments assist us realize a desire from our prospects. Post shares are like a double barrel that gives us Social Proof and most important Word of Mouth Advertising. Through post shares our campaigns might even go viral. With smart listening and responding at each stage of the funnel, we should guide prospects to positive actions with the ultimate goal of sales conversion. The information that we share as status updates or paid campaigns, must be tactfully coined to exert appropriate influence which will guide our prospects through these different rungs. Whilst more page views, likes, shares, clicks and comments would be applauded, a business page seeking to increase sales, requires more tactical engagement.

There are a number of Tools and Applications that support and help us manage our Social Media Marketing efforts. These make it easy for marketers to engage in a complete conversation - a two way dialogue with their prospecting markets. This becomes the basis of our content design. Relevant content is aimed at triggering desired results. An up sale of Marketing through Social Media compared to other forms of media; where a marketer only heralds their campaigns without receiving feed back from the targeted audience, is the potential for dialogue. This might sound too cumbersome but with the aid of an expert, it is not an impossible task to achieve. Should you need any assistance with your Social Media Marketing Strategy, do not hesitate to contact us.   

Building a strong brand through Social Media Marketing

In order for us to understand how to build a strong brand, we need to first define some terms. The website businessdictionary.com defines marketing as the process through which goods and services are relayed from concept to customer. This process involves different elements that will affect our marketing efforts, although some of these elements are not directly under the marketing department. For instance the production process, from source of raw materials, through the production line and methods used all the way up to distribution channels, will affect our price. As marketers engage with potential customers, they make certain promises which are affected by all these other elements. Pricing has a direct influence on market perceptions. Our endeavor to attract more customers propels us to advertise. Dictionary.com defines advertising as, "....the practice of calling public attention to one's product.....". This brings us to our third definition, branding; which is defined by Small Business Encyclopedia as, "The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products."

From the definitions above; branding and advertising are part of the marketing process. When we only push advertisements through Social Media, we would have dismally failed our Social Media Marketing strategy. Our efforts should inculcate our uniqueness making it rather difficult to ignore Inbound Marketing as part of our Social Media strategy. When we showcase how we do things internally and preach about our core values, that naturally strengthens our brand. Social Media Marketing should be more than an exercise to canvass for sales.

Any marketing strategy should address the 4 p's of marketing.
Product - discussing the product is literally addressing Content Marketing issues
Price - when we look at price determination we are directed to Inbound Marketing
Place - alludes to distribution channels and this will also be part of our Inbound Marketing
Promotion - this will cover our advertisements. Note that how we cover these four elements influences our brand.

These are the agreed marketing elements and an effective Social Media Marketing Strategy will incorporate all of them. Emphasis on some of the elements at the expense of others, will dilute our marketing efforts and weaken our brand. Paid advertisements will only be effective if we have a strong brand within Social Media Forums. It is not how much we spend on paid advertisements that might generate us more sales, we might actually need to spend more on Content and Inbound Marketing in order to build a stronger brand. Social Proof has a key role in building our brand. Therefore, all the content that we share, must have an engaging effect. When we have a lot of engagement through liking of our content, sharing of our content and direct queries and inquiries including suggestions our brand will have a positive effect on our potential market. This effect will also reduce our advertising spend.

How has your Social Media Marketing efforts affected your brand? Should you need any assistance with your Social Media Strategy do not hesitate to contact us or you can drop your numbers here and we will get back to you.

Types of followers in Social Media and how to target them as your audience

Social Media experts generally agree on 7 different types of followers, with some adding an 8^th. In our article Targeting and Growing an Audience, we noted that followers are not necessarily in Social Media to look for products/services to purchase. It requires skill and tact to be able to convert a follower into a sale. You cannot appeal to anyone with your content unless you understand why they are following you. Below are the different types of followers and the type of content you could possibly use to attract them.

Follower Type                                                               Possible Content 

·         The quite follower – just there reading your content	Content should show how products or services are going to be of help/benefit to them
·         Casual liker – they fancy some of your posts, and will occasionally 'like'	Have content that makes this follower feel like part of your product offering. They already fancy you, make them see how they are missing out by not buying your product or service
·         Deal seeker – always looking for promotions / uses Social Media to stay up to date on business	Offer specials; Run competitions; Make offers for purchases processed through Social Media Forums or in response to any activity in Social Media
·         The unhappy customer – is there to share a bad experience	We all make mistakes; be ready to apologize. Come up with deals aimed at making peace
·         The ranter – always yelling about something	Some of our clients suffer from challenges that have nothing to do with our products or services. Do not delete these from following you. Their comments won’t change who we are, but understanding them might provide the right attraction
·         The cheerleader – loves your brand and everything you post	That this groups raves about us does not automatically make them want to buy from us. We still need to nudge them in the direction. Content targeting this group should not only appeal for a sale but should be shareable so that they become our word-our-of-mouth advertisers as well.
·         The loyal fan – always has your back	This is the group that will comprise mostly of happy and satisfied customers. Whilst we have already done business with them we still need to target them for repeat business and they provide vital information on product improvement or development
·         The Fakers – cheap followers bought from agencies; In early 2014 – 1 out of 10 twitter accounts were fake; mid 2012 – Facebook had 83 million fake accounts. Source http://bit.ly/1MwXOK5	Some Social Media experts will advise you to buy followers and some can show you tricks on how to have thousands overnight followers. You are also going to be followed by fake accounts. Whilst these should be avoided, where we do come across them, let us not even waste time pretending to be addressing multitudes, we can never fake a sale.

 Our posts should therefore not only comprise of advertisements or promotions or special offers. We need to have a content mix that will address the needs of all these different followers. Our follower mix will determine how fast we can start converting followers into sales. We can never come up with content to share without understanding our follower make up. Classifying our followers into their different types, marks the beginning of the audience targeting process.

For assistance in classifying your followers and targeting your audience to yield a higher Return On Investment in your Social Media efforts, contact us on +27218516121 / +27799319372

Targeting and growing an audience in Social Media Marketing

I was reading an article that was discussing how some organisations are not realizing the value they expected on Social Media Marketing. The author had their own reasons whilst those who joined the conversation through comments added their diverse views. Basically it boiled down to two important aspects. The first one being the ability to differentiate between followers who are just potential clients, and followers who are an audience for your content. The second aspect being the ability to have an accurate measure of your efforts. We are going to restrict our article on the first aspect.

To better understand followers and a target audience, I will use the following example. If you went for a football match for your local popular team and found the stadium filled to capacity. There is a high probability that there is a sizable number of potential clients for your product or service within the crowd. However if you somehow got a way of making a sales pitch to part of the crowd, maybe those sitting close to you, its highly unlikely you will get a sale. Reason being that the emotional state may not be conducive and also the mission of your neighbors in the stadium could be very far from the need for your product or service. This scenario might almost be exactly what frustrates most organizations with Social Media Marketing. Most of the account holders in these forums did not open their accounts to look for products or services to buy. Advertisements, which are mainly graphic chew up a lot of data for those who do not have access to free internet, offending the would be viewer. However with a well structured strategy, it is possible to appeal to these followers and even convert them into sales. The first step of a smart marketing strategy is identification of a specific audience and presenting them with engaging content. Posting advertisements without any prior engagement might be disastrous.

I once read somewhere where an entrepreneur was having issues with their Facebook marketing campaigns because the return on investment was below what they considered acceptable. Their standard of evaluation was the low sales that the campaign had generated. They then queried why the traffic that they witness in Amazon did not compare with what they found on Social Media Forums. This simplistic view overlooked a cardinal fact that we have alluded to. Those that open accounts on Facebook may not be having any intention to purchase anything; whilst those in the corridors of Amazon are in essence there for shopping. This brings us to a critical point in audience identification. Most of those found in the Social Media Forums, might be there for various reasons, but one thing for sure they are hungry for information. Now our target audience should not only be potential clients, but we should target to engage even former customers so that they can vouch for us and our service offering.

When we evaluate our Return On Investment (ROI) in our Social Media Campaigns, we can not only look at sales generated and consider that a competent evaluation. Social Media has the capability to help us build a strong brand. A strong brand will not give us sales today but will leave us with a competitive edge. An astute strategy on material to share on Social Media will take into cognizance conversations with past clients for social proof; relevant information and professional advice to attract new customers; dialogue with industry influencers to affirm our product/service knowledge. Therefore when we define our audience, we need to make sure that we are conversing with all these three categories. The growth of our audience will also follow the same path, which should equally be reflected in our content. The more past customers we have, the more new clients we are able to attract and the more industry influencers will find it easy to identify with us. The numbers that reflect as our followers will not automatically become sales. It requires tact and skill to convert them.

How have you justified or reconciled the difference between your overall followers and sales conversion from you Social Media Forums? Kindly share with your comments below.

Organic Followers - Your Social Media Currency

One of the greatest philosophers Aristotle has this to say about Friends, "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies." Another all time wise man, King Solomon states; "One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." These statements depict friendship as an emotional connection. In fact friends are viewed to have an inseparable connection. I would vouch for my friend and they can sacrifice anything on my acount. However, the advent of Social Media has literally redefined the meaning of friendship. In 1990 a British anthropologist Robin Dunbar in studying the relation between brain size and average social group, suggested that, "....humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships." But we find in Social Media, an average person doubling that number. Some celebrity profiles have friends that run into millions per account. 

What Social Media defines as friends, is not the normal intimate relations that we have as friends in the real world. However the principles of acquiring these friends remain the same. Take note that different Social Media Forums have different names for relations. On Facebook you can have up to 5000 friends but if you opt to have followers or are running a business page, you have unlimited followers. Instagram and Twitter has followers, with an unlimited maximum. In LinkdIn there is a combination of connections - those that you have a two-way relationship with. You can also follow someone, where you will be able to see all their updates by they do not see yours. In order to avoid confusion, for the purpose of this article we will refer all Social Media relations as followers

Organic Followers

Organic depicts originality. It has become a popular word nowadays with the advent of genetically modified foods. In Social Media it is possible to modify followers. Organic followers are those that we attain naturally. It could be that they have always been in our circle of friends, and we connect on Social Media. I believe that there are primary and secondary Organic Followers. The primary Organic Followers are; family members, school mates, workmates, members of professional associations and church mates. In the second group of Organic Followers will be; those from our neighborhood, those in the same profession with us, same industry, share similar beliefs or those we share friends on Social Forums. Although relations may not be intimate, we share something in common and they would not hesitate to either vouch for us or confirm our authenticity. Basically they provide social proof about us. These are the followers who will always like our content, will not hesitate to comment and or share our work. However it does not follow that they can automatically be converted to sales when we market ourselves in Social Media Forums.

Paid/Bulk or Mass Followers

As the name implies, these are the modified followers. There are several ways that one can amass these followers. On Twitter one can follow a large number of people each day and wait for them to follow back. Then you go and unfollow those that did not follow you back, and you could artificially inflate your followers. This is called Aggressive Following Technique. On Facebook and Twitter, you can pay a 3rd party who has thousands of 'zombie' accounts to follow you or like your page. This is called Zombie Account Following. In all honesty, this is a wasted investment because for starters you risk your account being suspended, above that, you will be living a lie. Your brand can never grow when you are being followed by 'zombies'. In Facebook others use Like-Gates to entice followers. In order to qualify for a contests one is required to like the Facebook page running the contest. Large numbers can be attracted, but be rest assured they will pay no attention to your other efforts as their only interest will be the contest. Since only a few are going to win, those that feel unfairly treated have a potential to actually bad mouth your page inflicting damage to your brand. Boosting our presence on Social Media Forums will with no doubt make us visible to potential markets that we have no relations with. But an astute Social Media Strategist, will make sure that we have a healthy social proof from Organic followers before engaging in any paid media.

Why it is crucial to have a strategy guiding your efforts in Social Media Marketing

Advertising in Social Media can be low cost without compromising quality. That is great news. In fact it is possible to run free campaigns. I recently saw an interview of a Marketing Manager for a low cost airline who was saying they were only running their marketing campaigns on Social Media as part of their strategy to reduce costs. However the key to success is having a sound strategy for your efforts. Dropping advertisements, sharing blog posts or running campaigns without a strategy that spells out target audiences, means of reaching out, desired results, intelligent data analysis and program evaluation is futile and might actually produce negative results.

I have been working with a client who is an Immigration Attorney. They opened a Facebook business page and their immediate action was to flight advertisements. Obviously they attracted a lot of traffic to their page. Unfortunately most of the respondents where not exactly their target market. Of a bigger challenge was the fact that some of those that were commenting were actually querying the authenticity of  these attorneys. A mere advertisement did not quite achieve the desired results. Their efforts equally lacked social proof - a cardinal component for success in Social Media Marketing. I also found lacking in their efforts the human element in their communication. One of the proprietors in this project is on a LinkdIn, they have a Twitter account, but these are not active nor are they linked to the business Facebook page. It has been proven that clients easily engage with a personality.

Another interesting experience I had was with a client who is running an accounting firm. They also ran advertisements on Facebook but they are linked to their personal account. The challenge that I found with their work was that they were not taking advantage of content marketing to share relevant information with their target market. A technical and legislated service offering like accounting, naturally requires a lot of information sharing. Information shared could be from other technocrats, service providers and regulatory authorities. Source of relevant information is not much of an issue, what is important is to show that you have adequate knowledge about that information. As you share advice and relevant information, showcase your expertise to assist your potential clients utilize the information to their most advantage.

I am currently working on a Marketing Strategy for a client in the Construction Industry but offering a unique service. Initially the client was not convinced that their services can be marketed through Social Media Forums. But after noting that most of their clients are on Social Media Forums, they have since acknowledged the possibility of running a successful marketing program through these forums. The uniqueness of their product and regulations in their industry are a lucrative environment for content marketing. What is clear from most of these experiences is that enlisting the services of a consultant will help you identify the best methods to pursue. Marketing efforts need to be treat differently from mere information dissemination. A specialist will also help you come up with appropriate evaluation methods which are cardinal for the measure of Return on Investment.

Are you realising your desired results with your Social Media Marketing efforts? Maybe you have not yet considered Social Media Marketing. Get in touch and lets see how best we can assist.