The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue
Shama Hyder Kabani
Chapter 1: Online Marketing Basics
This book is (well, used to be) unique in that there was a digital copy, along with a workbook, available online. The digital copy was regularly updated, since social media is constantly changing—which would have been really helpful! However, I guess in the 4 years since it has been published, the publishers have taken down the online copy as well as the workbook, which I was really disappointed about. The book was still very helpful though!
Social media is a great tool for attracting prospective customers. In order to be able to successfully attract customers, a business must have a great BOD (brand, outcome, and differentiator). A business’s brand should be able to be summed up in one word. The outcome of the business should be clear; this is the final result that is delivered, not the process that is used to get there. The last part of a good BOD is what makes a business inherently different from its competitors.
To turn the potential customers you attract into clients, they need to spend time taking in valuable content about your business. One way that we could draw in new clients is by publishing a monthly or even just a quarterly online newsletter, and have a way to sign up for it on our website. This could give more information to potential customers, let them know more about our business and what we are about, and hopefully turn them into clients in the long run. Social media is not a way to get instant clients, but a way to build up interest in your company, get your name and business out there, and work your way up to gaining some new clients. It’s meant to be used as a tool for attracting attention and will lead to business over time.
A website is beneficial for a number of reasons. First, because you own your website; you don’t own your profile on social media sites. Second, social media profiles are structured and limit the information you can convey to potential customers. It is unlikely you will make a sale from a social media site; mostly, you will just attract and direct interest to your website—which is where you will make a sale.
Social media is a great place for client testimonials. Potential new clients you attract will be looking for proof that your company is successful, and worth their time and money. Because of this, social media sites are a great place for client testimonials. This is an area where you can potentially transform attracted customers into clients. In order to do this, you have to make sure that you are doing a good job (with whatever your product or service is), and then use your success to attract more success. Try to make client testimonials into something a little more; tell the customer’s story of what they achieved through your product or service. I think it would be a great idea for us to send out an e-mail to some of our long-term clients and ask if they would be willing to write a testimonial. We also periodically put out flyers, which have a comments section at the end. I think on our next round we should add a box asking clients to check yes or no of whether or not they are willing to allow us to use their comments on our website; while not a full testimonial, I think including some comments on our website and in our brochures is a really good idea in addition to some full testimonials and client stories.
Chapter 2: Websites, Blogs, and SEO
Our website needs to be great because it is the first impression potential customers have of our company. Research has shown that web users form first impressions of webpages in as little as fifty milliseconds (1/20th of a second). Basically, in the blink of an eye people will decide if they are going to stay on your page or move on. Successful websites generally have five common elements: design, structure, content, optimization and maintenance. Scientists have determined that when a person think something looks good on the surface, they will broaden the scope of positive judgment to include other characteristics as well; because of this, it’s important to have a website that looks good. If it looks good, people will assume that the work is good as well. If the structure of the website is too confusing and potential customers can’t figure where to go, they will likely just choose to go to another site where they can figure out what’s going on. The structure of a website should guide users through the site and lead them to take action, whether they are ready to invest in your company or just gathering information. The content of a website is crucial because it educates prospects in addition to building expertise. Really good content should make your website stand out from competitors. Content can be presented through writing, audio or video. If you are looking to kick your website up a notch, try to incorporate content in all three forms. The more fresh content that is posted to a website, the less likely search engines will be to pass it up because they think it’s a spam site. Optimization can mean a couple different things. One, if a website looks great on the outside but is not coded well, it can look distorted in certain browsers. A tool that is available to make sure the website is coded well can be found at jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator; all you have to do is type in your website address and it will tell you if there is anything that needs to be repaired. The second type of optimization is search engine optimization, which is discussed more in depth later. Today, it is absolutely necessary to continually update and perform maintenance on your website. The design and structure
I think we should add an audio interview with Jean onto our website, and eventually try to add some type of video with her cleaning or transforming an area of a house in just a few minutes very simply. If we can get these two things onto our website, we will have all three types of content on there, and I think it will help people get a feel for our company personality and interact with us more than they are able to now.
Search engines love blogs because they have content that is regularly updated. Right now, we have a section on our website called our “Tip of the Week”; I think we could possibly upgrade this to more of a blog-type area of our website. Instead of just posting the tip, we could so that and then add a story or more details about it to make a longer post and then ideally (if I can figure it out) leave a spot for visitors to comment on it.
Steps for SEO
Step 1: Target your intended market. Write a description of the type of person you would most like to visit your site. This description will help define how your website should communicate with your visitor. It should be obvious from your website that the clientele you wish to attract can afford and is willing to pay for regular cleaning services.
Step 2: Target your search phrases. For this step, you will need to think like a potential site visitor. Develop a list of words or phrases for which your target visitor is most likely to search. Keep the list short, because it will be easier to drive traffic with five or six carefully considered words and phrases than hundreds. This list will provide the information necessary to create relevancy later on.
Step 3: Write and edit page content. Content is king. “Content” refers to everything on your webpage that the site’s visitor sees. Generally, when writing your content, use the language your target visitor will use when searching (the exception is if you are educating the visitor). Incorporate the most important words in your content; repetition is a powerful tool for search engine optimization. As long as your content reads logically, you run little risk of getting blocked by search engines for overusing a word (overusing a word or hrase without regard to logic can make search engines think your site is spam). Besides the obvious text content on a page, every graphic not set as a background is another opportunity to communicate relevant content to a search engine. Although a search engine cannot see images, it can read their alt tags as content. The alt tags attached to buttons, logos, diagrams, etc. are content search engines can read.
Chapter 3: Social Media marketing: What You Need to Know Before You Start
Social media marketing checklist: these things must be in place or be in the process of being put in place before you start social media marketing.
A good BOD
A website
Content
An email capture mechanism (collecting their e-mail addresses through your website so you can follow up with them in the future)
Chapter 4: Facebook
This chapter offered a lot of information on how to use Facebook, how it is set up, and how it works. Because Facebook has been around for a while now and I have been using it for over 5 years, I already knew a lot of the information provided. However, there were some tips directly related to marketing your business that were helpful. This book recommends using your personal Facebook page to represent your business, but I think that could get too confusing. I chose instead to set up a page for our company. You can promote your Facebook page by sharing the link on your profile, adding it to your e-mail signature, inviting people to become friends, and other similar ways. Facebook also allows you to place ads for your business on there, which we may consider doing just for a short time in the future. You can create events for product launches, parties, meetings, pretty much anything (this also helps with SEO). If someone gives you a business card, look for them on Facebook and add them if they have a profile. Facebook Connect allows users to connect their Facebook identity to any website. As a website owner, setting up Facebook Connect should be high on your to do list; directions can be found at developers.facebook.com/connect.php. With Facebook Connect, you will be able to see who is visiting your website and if they make a comment, it will show up on their profile for others to see.
Chapter 5: Twitter
We don’t currently have a company Twitter because I feel like we need to get a good handle on our Facebook page and other things we have going on first before we introduce something new into the mix. If we do make a Twitter account in the future, I am thinking we could use it primarily for feedback and customer service purposes, so it wasn’t just doing the same thing as our Facebook page and website in a different format.
There are applications you can use that allow you to get onto Twitter without using your web browser, such as tweetdeck.com. There is a website (www.vincentabry.com/31-logos-et-boutons-pour-twitter-2480) that has a large collection of buttons you can put on your website allowing people to click and follow you on Twitter (although the website isn’t in English). There are also websites such as budurl.com, snipurl.com, tr.im, and bit.ly that allow you to track how many clicks a link receives, which is a great way to find out what attracts people to your website. More Twitter applications that were mentioned that I would like to look into are TwAitter, SocialOomph, SocialToo, Mr. Tweet, and HootSuite.
Chapter 6: LinkedIn
LinkedIn allows you to give and reaceive professional recommendations; its main point is to create an interactive resume for yourself. We don’t have a LinkedIn account either, but that may be another one that we choose to set up in the future.
Chapter 9: A Final Word on Social Media: Tools for Attracting Even More Business
This chapter listed another few applications and websites that I was interested in checking out, including StumbleUpon, Delicious, and ping.fm.
Kabani, Shama Hyder. The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue. Dallas, TX: Benbella, 2010. Print.
This book is (well, used to be) unique in that there was a digital copy, along with a workbook, available online. The digital copy was regularly updated, since social media is constantly changing—which would have been really helpful! However, I guess in the 4 years since it has been published, the publishers have taken down the online copy as well as the workbook, which I was really disappointed about. The book was still very helpful though!
Social media is a great tool for attracting prospective customers. In order to be able to successfully attract customers, a business must have a great BOD (brand, outcome, and differentiator). A business’s brand should be able to be summed up in one word. The outcome of the business should be clear; this is the final result that is delivered, not the process that is used to get there. The last part of a good BOD is what makes a business inherently different from its competitors.
To turn the potential customers you attract into clients, they need to spend time taking in valuable content about your business. One way that we could draw in new clients is by publishing a monthly or even just a quarterly online newsletter, and have a way to sign up for it on our website. This could give more information to potential customers, let them know more about our business and what we are about, and hopefully turn them into clients in the long run. Social media is not a way to get instant clients, but a way to build up interest in your company, get your name and business out there, and work your way up to gaining some new clients. It’s meant to be used as a tool for attracting attention and will lead to business over time.
A website is beneficial for a number of reasons. First, because you own your website; you don’t own your profile on social media sites. Second, social media profiles are structured and limit the information you can convey to potential customers. It is unlikely you will make a sale from a social media site; mostly, you will just attract and direct interest to your website—which is where you will make a sale.
Social media is a great place for client testimonials. Potential new clients you attract will be looking for proof that your company is successful, and worth their time and money. Because of this, social media sites are a great place for client testimonials. This is an area where you can potentially transform attracted customers into clients. In order to do this, you have to make sure that you are doing a good job (with whatever your product or service is), and then use your success to attract more success. Try to make client testimonials into something a little more; tell the customer’s story of what they achieved through your product or service. I think it would be a great idea for us to send out an e-mail to some of our long-term clients and ask if they would be willing to write a testimonial. We also periodically put out flyers, which have a comments section at the end. I think on our next round we should add a box asking clients to check yes or no of whether or not they are willing to allow us to use their comments on our website; while not a full testimonial, I think including some comments on our website and in our brochures is a really good idea in addition to some full testimonials and client stories.
Chapter 2: Websites, Blogs, and SEO
Our website needs to be great because it is the first impression potential customers have of our company. Research has shown that web users form first impressions of webpages in as little as fifty milliseconds (1/20th of a second). Basically, in the blink of an eye people will decide if they are going to stay on your page or move on. Successful websites generally have five common elements: design, structure, content, optimization and maintenance. Scientists have determined that when a person think something looks good on the surface, they will broaden the scope of positive judgment to include other characteristics as well; because of this, it’s important to have a website that looks good. If it looks good, people will assume that the work is good as well. If the structure of the website is too confusing and potential customers can’t figure where to go, they will likely just choose to go to another site where they can figure out what’s going on. The structure of a website should guide users through the site and lead them to take action, whether they are ready to invest in your company or just gathering information. The content of a website is crucial because it educates prospects in addition to building expertise. Really good content should make your website stand out from competitors. Content can be presented through writing, audio or video. If you are looking to kick your website up a notch, try to incorporate content in all three forms. The more fresh content that is posted to a website, the less likely search engines will be to pass it up because they think it’s a spam site. Optimization can mean a couple different things. One, if a website looks great on the outside but is not coded well, it can look distorted in certain browsers. A tool that is available to make sure the website is coded well can be found at jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator; all you have to do is type in your website address and it will tell you if there is anything that needs to be repaired. The second type of optimization is search engine optimization, which is discussed more in depth later. Today, it is absolutely necessary to continually update and perform maintenance on your website. The design and structure
I think we should add an audio interview with Jean onto our website, and eventually try to add some type of video with her cleaning or transforming an area of a house in just a few minutes very simply. If we can get these two things onto our website, we will have all three types of content on there, and I think it will help people get a feel for our company personality and interact with us more than they are able to now.
Search engines love blogs because they have content that is regularly updated. Right now, we have a section on our website called our “Tip of the Week”; I think we could possibly upgrade this to more of a blog-type area of our website. Instead of just posting the tip, we could so that and then add a story or more details about it to make a longer post and then ideally (if I can figure it out) leave a spot for visitors to comment on it.
Steps for SEO
Step 1: Target your intended market. Write a description of the type of person you would most like to visit your site. This description will help define how your website should communicate with your visitor. It should be obvious from your website that the clientele you wish to attract can afford and is willing to pay for regular cleaning services.
Step 2: Target your search phrases. For this step, you will need to think like a potential site visitor. Develop a list of words or phrases for which your target visitor is most likely to search. Keep the list short, because it will be easier to drive traffic with five or six carefully considered words and phrases than hundreds. This list will provide the information necessary to create relevancy later on.
Step 3: Write and edit page content. Content is king. “Content” refers to everything on your webpage that the site’s visitor sees. Generally, when writing your content, use the language your target visitor will use when searching (the exception is if you are educating the visitor). Incorporate the most important words in your content; repetition is a powerful tool for search engine optimization. As long as your content reads logically, you run little risk of getting blocked by search engines for overusing a word (overusing a word or hrase without regard to logic can make search engines think your site is spam). Besides the obvious text content on a page, every graphic not set as a background is another opportunity to communicate relevant content to a search engine. Although a search engine cannot see images, it can read their alt tags as content. The alt tags attached to buttons, logos, diagrams, etc. are content search engines can read.
Chapter 3: Social Media marketing: What You Need to Know Before You Start
Social media marketing checklist: these things must be in place or be in the process of being put in place before you start social media marketing.
A good BOD
A website
Content
An email capture mechanism (collecting their e-mail addresses through your website so you can follow up with them in the future)
Chapter 4: Facebook
This chapter offered a lot of information on how to use Facebook, how it is set up, and how it works. Because Facebook has been around for a while now and I have been using it for over 5 years, I already knew a lot of the information provided. However, there were some tips directly related to marketing your business that were helpful. This book recommends using your personal Facebook page to represent your business, but I think that could get too confusing. I chose instead to set up a page for our company. You can promote your Facebook page by sharing the link on your profile, adding it to your e-mail signature, inviting people to become friends, and other similar ways. Facebook also allows you to place ads for your business on there, which we may consider doing just for a short time in the future. You can create events for product launches, parties, meetings, pretty much anything (this also helps with SEO). If someone gives you a business card, look for them on Facebook and add them if they have a profile. Facebook Connect allows users to connect their Facebook identity to any website. As a website owner, setting up Facebook Connect should be high on your to do list; directions can be found at developers.facebook.com/connect.php. With Facebook Connect, you will be able to see who is visiting your website and if they make a comment, it will show up on their profile for others to see.
Chapter 5: Twitter
We don’t currently have a company Twitter because I feel like we need to get a good handle on our Facebook page and other things we have going on first before we introduce something new into the mix. If we do make a Twitter account in the future, I am thinking we could use it primarily for feedback and customer service purposes, so it wasn’t just doing the same thing as our Facebook page and website in a different format.
There are applications you can use that allow you to get onto Twitter without using your web browser, such as tweetdeck.com. There is a website (www.vincentabry.com/31-logos-et-boutons-pour-twitter-2480) that has a large collection of buttons you can put on your website allowing people to click and follow you on Twitter (although the website isn’t in English). There are also websites such as budurl.com, snipurl.com, tr.im, and bit.ly that allow you to track how many clicks a link receives, which is a great way to find out what attracts people to your website. More Twitter applications that were mentioned that I would like to look into are TwAitter, SocialOomph, SocialToo, Mr. Tweet, and HootSuite.
Chapter 6: LinkedIn
LinkedIn allows you to give and reaceive professional recommendations; its main point is to create an interactive resume for yourself. We don’t have a LinkedIn account either, but that may be another one that we choose to set up in the future.
Chapter 9: A Final Word on Social Media: Tools for Attracting Even More Business
This chapter listed another few applications and websites that I was interested in checking out, including StumbleUpon, Delicious, and ping.fm.
Kabani, Shama Hyder. The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue. Dallas, TX: Benbella, 2010. Print.