As a small business owner, sometimes you feel like you’re being tossed by the waves. I had every intention of heading down to sunny Austin this year for the Rockin’ SXSWi festival. All my favorite Peeps and Tweeps in my Twibes are going to be there. But sometimes life bites you.
After losing two major deals in my pipeline I had to make the excruciating decision to ditch SXSW this year. The fact is, I just couldn’t justify playing and spending the cash when I should be working. Even when you own a company, you don’t get rewarded when things go south. Instead you throw off everything that may get in your way, pull your boots on and get busy…working.
One of the things I am involved with in Columbus is the American Marketing Association Special Interest Group on Social Media or AMA SIG - Social Media for short. Instead of doing our usual speaker / Q&A format we mixed it up a bit with Round Tables! Watch the video for how it went. You can check out photos from the event on this Flickr Set!
The conversation has already been started on facebook. Go to other fan pages and answer people’s questions.
With so many cooks in the kitchen on a campaign (brand strategy, web, social media, the client), pick your channels carefully when measuring results. Are facebook fans the goal of the campaign? Are conversions on the corporate site the goal? Everyone needs to know what the goal is and work to the same end.
Before you build up your fan base with a special promotion, have a plan of action on how you’re going to engage them once they’re fans. Engagement needs to start immediately.
If you’re unsure you can pull it off for your business, try a personal one first. Get through the learning curve when the stakes are low
Don’t blog about “me, me, me”. Write about what your audience is interested in
Mutli-person blogs are more desirable than single-person ones but you need to get the C-level Execs on board and past their “fear” of what employees might say.
Driving users to become fans/followers of a brand/product page is most effective when offering something of value to the user. Abbott Nutrition gave a free sample Zone Bar to each person who fanned their facebook page. Their page went from 1k fans to 30k fans almost overnight!
Engaging users requires a lot of time and effort. The bigger the brand or user following, the more humans it takes to keep up with your customers.
Large brands or ones with a huge amount of feedback from users need to devise a strategy to identify the keywords and crisis scenarios that require personal responses and engagement, and others that are more “rhetorical” and can be left alone
Welcome to my Friday video blog. Today’s topic is innovation in Corporate America and why we don’t see much of it in many companies. I believe that the future of the United States depends heavily on whether or not our companies continue to innovate.
Oh, and I brush my teeth at the end of the video!
As a small business owner, sometimes you feel like you’re being tossed by the waves. I had every intention of heading down to sunny Austin this year for the Rockin’ SXSWi festival. All my favorite Peeps and Tweeps in my Twibes are going to be there. But sometimes life bites you.
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