Archives for March 2014
Social Agencies Are Failing Their Clients
Social media agencies are doing a lot for their clients, but thereâs one area where most fall behind. This was made obvious to me a few days ago when I read a benefits statement from an agency that outlined the advantages of its services, including âbuilding a bigger fan baseâ and âincreasing positive sentimentâ across social channels.
For big businesses with budget to burn, I guess this makes sense. Have an agency rack up likes and followers, publish social content and use social monitoring to make sure social conversations are positive. It checks social media off the marketing to-do list, and the business generates sales through its other marketing and sales channels.
But this approach doesnât make sense for a smaller businesses, or even big businesses who are focused on financial return. Granted, awareness is important, but a large fanbase or following isnât worth anything unless a business can turn it into actual leads, sales and dollars.
A Better Focus for Agencies
The majority of agencies are doing an incredible job of promoting awareness of their clients and getting them involved in social conversations. However, when agencies shy away from bottom line conversations, they do a major disservice to their clients. 
How can an agency boost their clientsâ bottom line? By focusing on social media lead generation. Ask clientsâ fans and followers to exchange contact information for an incentive: exclusive content (ebooks, whitepaper, etc.) or as part of an entry process for a giveaway or contest. Once a business has contact information, they can add these leads to email and sales campaigns.
This has two main benefits:
1. Fans and followers donât want to see direct sales messages in social feeds. Theyâre there to talk to friends, be entertained and have fun. But the email inbox is a place of business. In fact, 77 percent of consumers prefer to receive sales-type communications through email (compared to 5 percent for social media). Valuable content and giveaways are a great way to transition fans and followers from a soft, fun channel (social media) to a more sales-receptive channel (email).
2. Your clients wonât need to pay to play. As social media sites become more crowded, itâs very easy to get fans and followers, but incredibly difficult to get a message seen without paying for ads. On Facebook, less than 16 percent of fans see a pageâs posts, and on networks that show all posts, like Twitter and Pinterest, they are buried in minutes.
Social media is an incredibly effective way to find new potential customers, and thereâs nothing wrong with regular posts, but once potential customers are fans and followers, itâs cheaper and more effective to collect their contact information and move the conversation to phone or email.
Obvious, Measurable Results
Iâve seen a social lead gen focus make a tangible difference for businesses. Most recently one of the clients I work with, James Breese of Kettlebell Fever, tripled his revenue by focusing on social lead generation. His main tactic was using Facebook giveaways, and then putting entrants through a qualification process, and it worked like magic.
Obviously creating lead forms, giveaways and contests for clients takes some time and energy. The process is a lot easier, and faster with an agency tool that allows agencies to add pre-built elements, but also customize to their clientsâ specifications.
When agencies focus on lead generation and the bottom line, they keep their clients, even in hard times and bad economies because they are actually generating revenue.
What do you think? How do you incorporate social lead generation in your agency offering?
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Using Social Media as a Customer Service Channel
Many businesses use social media as a customer service channel. In fact, you may not have a choice thanks to the nature of social networking. After all, thatâs where todayâs consumers go to share their frustrations with their friends or seek immediate feedback from businesses.
While you may notice an incoming question or complaint on your social media sites here and there, if youâre serious about using social media as a customer service channel, youâll need to do more than just respond as needed. Use the tips below to improve your customer service on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.
1. Equip your customer service team with social skills and access. Using social media as a customer service channel means getting your CSRs involved. Many businesses consider social media to be a marketing channel. Thus, only the marketing team has access to social 
profiles or interacts with users. However, marketing professionals have a different mind- and skill-set than customer service professionals. They may not know how to resolve problems or have the authority to do so. In contrast, your customer service agents already know what to expect and how to quickly resolve service issues that may arise.
2. Monitor social sites for customer service issues. In order to respond to issues on social media, your CSRs need to know that an issue has been aired. Unlike phone complaints, a ringing sound doesnât prompt the agent into action when Twitter or Facebook are used. For social sites with a lot of interaction, complaints can easily get lost in news feeds and streams. Whatâs more, some complaints are not directed to your company page yet can cause significant negative buzz without your knowledge. Use filters or third-party monitoring tools to be alerted whenever your companyâs name, brand, products, or specific keywords are mentioned. Your customer service team can then be notified in real time when a complaint has been aired on or off your social media page. Thus, they can proactively reach out to the customer and start resolving the issue. This simple act can quickly turn an unhappy customer into an impressed one.
3. Empower your customer service team to use social media. Now that your CSRs are equipped with social media skills, access, and alerts, empower them to use social media to deliver fantastic service. Because social conversations are social, others can be exposed to your impressive response. Your CSRs should be trained so that they know when to take a conversation offline and when to keep it social. Customers donât generally want the details of their purchases or problems displayed publicly, so the conversation will likely need to go offline at some point.
However, CSRs should return to the social media conversation after the problem has been resolved to update the thread. For example, a CSR could post something along the lines of, âIt was a pleasure straightening out the order mix-up. I just overnighted your order. You should have it first thing in the morning tomorrow.â
In addition to resolving complaints, consider using social media to send surveys, follow-ups, and thank-youâs to your customers. This could be as simple as collecting email addresses and then following up with a message that points customers to a review site or survey or as complex as uploading your customer database to Facebook in an attempt to match customer phone numbers with existing Facebook users and then reaching out to customers personally.
Using social media as a customer service channel is becoming a must. The more proactive you are, the better. As you know, unhappy customers love to share their horror stories with an audience. By actively monitoring social media sites and jumping in immediately, you can mitigate the damage, change an unhappy customer into a happy one, and show others just how great your customer service really is.
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
LinkedIn Tags â A Tool You May Not Know About
Did you know that LinkedIn allows you to group your contacts using custom tags? This little-known feature is a useful tool that allows you to filter your LinkedIn contacts based on your own criteria. Better yet, once filtered, you can send messages to 25 tagged contacts at a time. Hereâs what you need to know about tagging and filtering contacts on LinkedIn.
Creating Meaningful Tags
LinkedIn provides you with some default tags such as Friends, Colleagues, Classmates, and Group_Members. While useful, itâs even more powerful to segment your contact using your own custom tags. For example, you could segment your list based on the types of products and services your prospects and customers are interested in or their business types, job roles, or even favorite sports team. The possibilities are endless.
Before you get started, think about your tagging structure so that you donât inadvertently create redundant tags such as âsalespersonâ and âsales consultant.â In addition, keep in mind that you can use multiple tags for each contact. Thus, you could tag someone as a âcustomer,â âcar 
enthusiast,â âCEO,â and âDodgers fan.â
In order to create a tag, you will need to go to your Contact list in LinkedIn. Do this by going to Network > Contacts. Hover your mouse over a contact from your list and then click on the Tag button that appears. Click the Add a New Tag link in the sub-menu. Give it a name and click Save. This will both create the tag as well as tag that person with the tag you just created.
Once created, you can then tag other contacts with that same tag (or create new tags as applicable). To tag another contact with the tag you just created, find that person in your Contacts list, hover with your mouse, click Tag, and then choose the tag in the drop down list. Repeat as needed to tag your other contacts.
Filtering Contacts by Tags
Once your contacts are tagged, you can filter your list based on the tags you just created. Why? It makes your list more manageable. For example, if you need to refer an IT project to an IT consultant but arenât sure where to start, you could start by filtering your contact list based on those who you have tagged as IT consultants. Instead of wading through a large list of contacts from all kinds of backgrounds, you would then have a small, highly relevant list.
Using Tags to Send Mass Messages via LinkedIn
Another reason to use tags to filter your list is to send targeted mass messages. For example, letâs say that you want to reach out to all of the IT consultants on your list about a new product your company is preparing to release. While you could use tag filtering as discussed to send messages to them individually, LinkedIn allows you to send the same message to up to 25 tagged contacts at once. This can save you a great deal of time and ensure that your message goes out only to those who meet your specific tagged criteria.
To do this, filter your list by tag as described above. Next, click Select All. Now, click on Message. Enter a subject line and message. Before you click the Send Message button, decide whether or not you want your recipients to see who else the message is going out to. By default, names and email addresses will be shown to all contacts. If youâd like to override this, remove the check in the box next to âAllow recipients to see each otherâs names and email addresses.â
If you have more than 25 tagged contacts, you will need to send your message in batches and repeat. This means that if you have 250 contacts to send messages to, youâll need to do this process 10 times. Though tedious, itâs far less tedious than having to do it 250 times.
LinkedInâs tagging feature is a nifty tool that you may not know about. Start using tags to segment your contact list as needed.
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Monitoring Social Mentions
Remember the saying, âMy ears are burningâ? Itâs an idiom that people often use when they have found out that someone was just talking about them. Your virtual ears may be burning, too. After all, people are talking all over social media, and they may be talking about your company, your products, or you personally. Unlike stumbling onto a conversation in real life, you can actively monitor the Web and social media for specific mentions in real time. This is powerful stuff! Not only can you respond to customer complaints or perform damage control when something negative is said about your company or products, you can also join relevant conversations and introduce your solutions to people who are talking about your competitor, and more. It all begins by using monitoring tools to find these conversations.
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Monitoring Tools
Free and commercial monitoring tools are available. For example, you can monitor Twitter for mentions of your brand â or anything else for that matter â by using Twitter Search. Simply go to twitter.com and enter your search term into the search box. Like other search tools, if you enclose your phrase in quotation marks, you will restrict search results to exact matches. You can also save your searches simply by clicking the Save link once your results appear. 
HootSuite allows you to create a dedicated stream that constantly updates your search. Letâs say that you want to actively monitor the term âneed help with brochure designâ so that you can offer your graphic design services to companies who are actively looking for help with their brochures. You would be able to refer to that stream at any time and see the latest cries for help.
Other services such as Mention extend the reach of your searches to include social media platforms, blogs, websites, news sites, and forums and include additional features such as real-time alerts and analytics.
Ideas for Monitoring Mentions
Whether you use free tools or paid ones, you will need to decide what to monitor. Your company name and flagship products are a good place to start. You may also want to monitor various opportunities by monitoring keywords related to your products and services. For example, if you manufacture running shoes, you would likely monitor the brand name of your shoes but you donât have to stop there. You could also monitor ârunning shoesâ or even the brand name of your competitor.
For service-oriented companies, monitoring social media for recommendations can also open the door to opportunities such as our brochure design example mentioned earlier. In that example, alternate terms to monitor might include âanyone know a graphic designer,â âneed a graphic designer,â or ârecommend a graphic designer.â
Are your virtual ears burning? Find out for sure by using social media monitoring tools to actively seek out mentions and relevant conversations.
Christine Kelly | Change Agent | Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Retweet Like a Pro
If you have spent any time on Twitter, you already know how to retweet. Thereâs not much to it, really. Simply click the Retweet link followed by the Retweet button and off it goes. Ah, but thatâs not how the pros do it. Yes, thereâs more to retweeting than meets the eye. Use the tips below to start retweeting like a pro.
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1. Donât simply retweet, quote. Though retweeting using the Retweet link and button is easy, thereâs another way thatâs not all that difficult. Plus, it helps to get your @username included in future retweets. Copy and paste the tweet into your Compose New Tweet box and place âRT @usernameâ at the beginning of the tweet. This indicates that itâs a retweet, and it will notify the original tweeter that you retweeted it. However, should one of your followers deem that tweet retweet-worthy, when that users retweets it, your @username as well as the original tweeterâs @username will be tweeted in the new retweet. This simple tweak can expose your @username to many other Twitter users, some of whom may choose to follow you.
2. Choose relevant tweets to retweet. Think about your followers before you retweet anything. What are their interests? What do they enjoy? Ideally, you should know this because you have targeted a specific type of follower in the first place. Assuming you sell pet supplies and have a list of dog and cat lovers, you would want to retweet tweets that dog and cat lovers would enjoy rather than a speech by a business guru.
3. Choose tweets that are likely to be retweeted. One of the big ideas behind retweeting is to get your name out there as described in step 1. Thus, the more your followers enjoy the tweet, the more likely they are to be to retweet it along with your @username. So, whatâs 
likely to be retweeted? Interesting tidbits and fun facts are usually retweet-worthy as are cute photos, funny sayings, and interesting quotes. Be careful when using humor though as itâs easy to cross the line from funny to offensive.
4. Donât just focus on retweeting othersâ tweets; make your original tweets retweet-worthy. As the originator of a tweet that goes viral, your Twitter profile will likely get a lot of fresh new visitors. Users may see your tweet and want to know more about you. If your tweet is particularly engaging and relevant, they may check out your profile to see if you might be someone they would like to follow. Again, fun facts, cute photos and videos, and quotes could be considered retweet-worthy as long as they are relevant to your audience.
5. Ask your followers to retweet your tweets. Once you have an awesome tweet that you think will appeal to a wide audience, enlist your followers to spread the word. A simple âplease RTâ at the end may be all it takes to prompt your followers to share it with their followers.
6. Take advantage of reciprocal retweeting. Many Twitter users will reciprocate after you have retweeted some of their tweets. After noticing that someone has retweeted them, they will pay attention to that personâs tweets with the intention of returning the favor. Obviously, the more followers they have, the better as their retweets will expose you to a wider audience. Thus, look for Twitter users with a large audience that is similar to your target audience. Choose several of these influential Twitter users and retweet when it makes sense. Some may ignore you completely, but others will return the favor if your tweets are something their audience would be interested in.
7. Create a fun promotion such as a contest. Contests are naturally shareable. Take advantage of this and hold a fun promotion on Twitter. Again, ask users to âplease RTâ to ensure that even more people have the opportunity to participate.
As you can see, thereâs more to retweeting than meets the eye. By quoting tweets and then retweeting them, your @username can get exposed to a wider audience. But again, thereâs more to it. You also need to consider your audienceâs interests and choose content that is likely to be enjoyed and shared. You may also want to strategically retweet the tweets of influential people, in the hopes that they will reciprocate as well as create your own retweet-worthy content and contests.
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.