Archive for the ‘Social Media Business Models’ Category
SMM for SMBs: Five Tips to Get You Started
Friday, November 13th, 2009In a recent article, the NYT outlined the ways small businesses are using Facebook to bolster business in a time when every dollar counts and each invoice can make or break these businesses that are, essentially, the backbone of the American economy.
Now, there are many out there that will charge $5,000 or more to simply set up a Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace page for your business that is guaranteed (in their words at least) to increase sales and generally turn the world into unicorns and rainbows. By taking a holistic approach to your social media campaigns and looking at the long-tail effects, you’ll ultimately bring more of that magical “ROI” everyone keeps talking about. We always tell our friends that they need a data and a plan if they want to be successful in social media – and we stand behind that.
To help out our SMB friends, we came up with five tips for the small business to think about when they start using social media:
1. Free doesn’t mean it won’t cost you anything – While it’s free to start a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account and many other social networking accounts the cost isn’t incurred when starting these properties. Creating and maintaining a presence on these sites can become a time-consuming task. When your time is money you need to think about how much time you can devote to these tasks and how much you expect to gain in return and find the happy medium.
2. Target, analyze, repeat – Facebook engagement ads offer a relatively easy way for small businesses to target their ads. Geographically specific targeting might not yield a high number of impressions, but if you’re a fly fishing company in eastern Washington, you can focus on winning the hearts and reels of your target audience. These ads’ simplicity also allows for easy A/B testing that helps you maximize your dollars.
3. Social media presence doesn’t make up for bad customer service – Social media sites aren’t a replacement for good products and great service. While having a presence in the social space can allow you to monitor and even provide a place for discussion about your brand, your online presence needs to amplify the values of your company, not act in place of them.
4. You can’t please everyone – The social Web isn’t a nice-fest, that’s for sure. You can expect to see some comments and feedback that isn’t represented on your in-store comment cards – that’s OK. Use everything you get back from your online experiences to change the way your company acts in the real world. You’ll be glad for that feedback when your customers keep coming through your door.
5. Make friends – Small businesses on the social Web can create a mighty thunder when they team up with friends and like-minded companies. Mutual referrals and post-trading make for a better ecosystem and can only help in the long run. It’s like the chamber of commerce in the digital space, but without the awkward brunches.
Those are just a few of our tips, but we’re always willing to hear more. What would you say to the small and medium business owners looking to get into social media?
Six Ways to Make (and Keep) Facebook Fans
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
Almost every business out there seems to have a Facebook page these days. While some really understand how to maximize their presence using this social networking site (Whole Foods, Starbucks etc.), others seem to be struggling a bit (we won’t point fingers).
One of the many important components of a business page is its fans. Here are 6 tips to help you get and keep Facebook fans:
- Promote your Facebook page on other channels and platforms. Be sure to provide a link on your website, make an announcement in your newsletters or e-mails and mention it on your company blog.
- Keep consistent and relevant activity on your Facebook page. Be sure to post to the wall often, add videos frequently, and always try to encourage discussions. Try and post content that will create conversation and get fans commenting. After all, people love to share their opinion and provide feedback. This kind of activity will make your page more interesting and appealing to potential fans.
- Send the most newsworthy and important information as an ‘update’ to fans so that they receive the messages directly and don’t miss it in their feed. However, be selective and don’t go overkill on your fans with updates.
- Create a favorites page by fanning other Facebook business pages that are related to your company’s industry.
- Depending on the services your business provides, offer some kind of incentive for fans to join or participate. For instance, maybe every 100th fan could get a $25 gift card, or offer a 20% discount for joining through Facebook.
- Use the ‘suggest to friend’ link – even though your Facebook friends may not necessarily be your target - the benefit is that it will display in their newsfeed, and in turn their friends will see it and may join because they are genuinely interested in your company and its services.
Like any well-thought out project, building a successful Facebook page takes time and effort. Hopefully following some of the above tips will get you started in the right direction. And remember it’s important to always keep in mind your potential fans as well as current ones.
StumbleUpon Pulls a U-Turn, Breaks with eBay
Monday, April 13th, 2009The road to achievement in the startup biz is usually a one way street with many broken-down cars littering the shoulder. However, in the case of StumbleUpon, the content discovery engine is entering back onto the startup superhighway after an amicable split with former parent company eBay.
According to a release, original founder Garrett Camp said the group “realized there were few long-term synergies” between the content discovery engine and the online auction portal.
Some can argue (and they may be correct) that companies struggling with getting off the ground and gaining funding are usually out to be more creative. Let’s hope this return to their investor-backed roots will spur a bit of creativity and create an even better product – something more social perhaps?
Social media love: give & you shall receive.
Friday, December 5th, 2008You want to make your brand a beloved entity online? Be generous. Be helpful. Commit random acts of branded-kindness. Your efforts will be greatly rewarded.
When a gamer named Nathaniel had his signed (in sharpie marker, by big names in gaming) Xbox returned from service wiped clean of autographs, game developer Bungie of Halo fame saw his blog post and sent him an Xbox signed by their entire team, as well as a box of Bungie schwagg.
Nathaniel was thrilled, and his blog post about the kindness of strangers became gamer gospel. Bungie earned brownie points and buzz by the truckload: all for the cost of an Xbox, a few things they had lying around the office anyway, and postage.
Ask the Social Media Guy: How do I convince my boss to start a company blog?
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008We’re in this little thing called a recession. Bosses don’t want to hear about new expenses, they want to hear about new revenue.
So here’s how you sell the idea of a blog:
Talk about the customer service opportunities the blog can create. The more ways you can reach customers, the better you can help them. Talk about customer retention via blogging. Social media strengthens bonds and lengthens relationships. Talk about the fact that people are already talking about your company online, and that the company needs to talk back or risk reputation destruction.
And, possibly most importantly, mention how the largest investment in social media is time, not money. Then offer your own time.
Offer to set-up, manage, and update the blog yourself. Offer to be the voice of the brand, and to act on behalf of the company. You’ll make yourself valuable. You’ll expand your skill-set. Then, if this little recession takes a bite out of your company, you’ll be less likely to get a pink slip and more likely to find work elsewhere if you do.
Have a Q for us? Shoot it over to askus@springcreekgroup.com
Facebook Connect. Let’s see some ID.
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
Facebook Connect: it’s Zuckerman & Co.’s version of Open ID, and it’s raising questions about privacy, monopoly, and advertising.
Facebook Connect will initially partner with sites like Hulu and Digg, with plans to expand—and eventually make your Facebook ID the only online ID you’ll ever need.
Sure, that helps the 120 million+ Facebook users skip a lot of logging in, and it gives potential advertisers even more info about those users and their surfing habits, but do we really want one company to know everything about our online adventures?
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The Free Web Application Syndrome
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008This post was originally entitled “Can Twitter Ever Make Money?” But as we wrote it, we realized the issue is bigger than simply wondering how, when and if companies like Twitter will monetize.
The early days of innovation are truly fantastic for early adopters and consumers who are ahead of the market. VC’s and Private Equity firms pour billions of dollars into cool ideas. Those who are “in the know” early are/were able to get M&M’s brought to them on a Friday night (Kozmo.com), groceries delivered free wherever they lived (Webvan), 100 pounds of pet food without a shipping charge (Pets.com), free music to their PC (Napster), free phone calls across the world (Skype) and more.
The problem is, like your economics teacher told you, there is no free lunch. Someone is paying the bill. And eventually, that person paying the bill, the person paying the salaries of all the people doing things for you, well, he wants to get reimbursed for his efforts.
So look today at what we are getting for free. We can stay in touch with every one of our business contacts no matter how many times they switch jobs, thanks to LinkedIn. And we know the personal lives of all of our friends, thanks to Facebook. And if we want, we can get global updates in real time, 140 characters at a time, thanks to Twitter. All of this for free.
Now the business models that the investors saw said something like this. “We are going to be hugely popular. Everyone will love us. We’ll run some ads. And if we get 1% of the people to click on an ad, we’ll make a gajillion dollars.” It’s the model that has worked since Mr. Marconi showed off his first radio nearly 100 years ago.
But 1% of the people aren’t clicking on Facebook ads, or upgrading to premium LinkedIn accounts. And Twitter hasn’t even come up with any ways to make money. Throw in the fact that the economy is struggling, and that even rich people don’t like losing money. Someone has to start generating profits some day.
Well, that’s the story FastCompany is addressing in this article. Their synopsis – everything cool you get today for free will basically become a lead generation tool for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Apple, etc…. For the Social Media Marketer, that means that these are the days to leverage the creativity and free form activity this medium allows. We all remember how Flickr got destroyed when Yahoo turned it into a way to generate YahooMail accounts. Take these great opportunities available to you today, and grab them before they are simply ways to get you to buy other products. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if we all would just click on a few ads 
