Social Media Marketing

Say hello to Heidi Cool and Emily Cagle! Both of whom will be writing for the Social Media Marketing blog.

Heidi Cool is a marketer who builds websites at HeidiCool.com Web Design and Strategy in Cleveland, Ohio, USA (founded in February 2009).

Emily Cagle is the owner and founder of Emily Cagle Communications, a communications agency specialising in copywriting and public relations.

Emily and Heidi will be writing about a whole host of things, contributions including social media how-to guides, case studies, tips, tricks and much more besides — all designed to help you, the businesses that are new to social media and want to know more.

If there’s something you’d like to know more about, leave a comment and we’ll look into writing something to help you get a better grip of social media for your business.

In the mean time, download the free ebook, The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media right now.

So my ebook, The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media, is now starting to earn its keep. As of today, the Emily Cagle Communications website and blog goes live. So what’s that got to do with my ebook? Emily is a reader turned client.

In the end, it’s not rocket science; I give advice and help where I can. Emily downloaded my social media ebook and then came back with a few questions about her website, and since I’m a web designer and developer, I was only too happy to accept her work.

Emily had already made the decision to start a company blog, but her concern was that the website and blog would look like too very different animals. As you’ll see from the end product, the two flow into one another seamlessly, as if they were made for each other.

But it’s not all one way — Emily is now bringing her not inconsiderable public relations’ services to Octane, hopefully helping me grow my business.

It must come as little surprise to know that both Emily & I are thrilled with the end result, which you can read more about in my case study on the Emily Cagle Communications website. But this is only the beginning. We’ve both been working on planning a long-term social media strategy, making the most of the key technologies out there, like Facebook and Twitter to help promote her business.

If you think your business website could do with face lift, a tuck, a trim, a complete overhaul, or maybe you’re looking for a little more social media know-how, then get in touch straight away and let’s see if I can help!

In reality, there are few shortcuts to success. And while social media may be tipping that balance in our favour, there’s still a lot of work to be done when planning, building and then executing your social media marketing campaign.

Yesterday, over on the Blah, Blah! Technology blog, I talked about the problems faced by even the larger businesses when it comes to social media marketing, something I foresaw sometime ago:

“So even big businesses are struggling to make sense of social media. Why am I not surprised? Because way back in November 2007 I predicted only the top 1% of businesses on Earth would realize the full potential of social media…”

Like anything else, everything is hard until it’s easy! How does something suddenly become easy? Well, yet again, there are few shortcuts, so there’s often nothing sudden about success! And for things to become easy requires hours and hours or effort, patience, practice and the capacity to learn from one’s failures — of which there will most likely be many.

All of this must sound daunting, but if you’re going to follow some of the steps outlined in my ebook: The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media, then a reality check is in order.

6 social media myths debunked!

And on that note, you may want take a look at Business Week’s debunking 6 social media myths, which is a great leveling of the most common myths associated with social media, and here are highlights of those 6 myths:

1. Social media is cheap, if not free. “Yes, many of the tools that can be employed in social media marketing are free to use.” Ultimately, it’s still time and effort, with a lot of planning and preparation. The apparent simplicity of certain aspects of social media — such as setting up a blog for your business, or starting a Twitter account to name but two — obscure the truly massive and amorphous nature of social media itself.
2. Anyone can do it. “A surfeit of whiz kids and more experienced marketers are claiming to be social media experts and even social media gurus.” The truly great thing about social media is that the entry cost is low. However, without a plan and the social network to further that plan, just like any other marketing channel, social media marketing could be a very costly venture.
3. You can make a big splash in a short time. “Sure, sometimes a social media campaign can produce substantial and measurable results quickly.” As always, timing is everything, but if you’re looking for immediate success, then you’re either back to relying on paying big money for big ideas, unbelievably good timing, or blind luck!
4. You can do it all in-house. “Wrong! You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience — a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.”
5. If you do something great, people will find it. “Quite simply, that never was true.” You’re back to relying on unbelievably good timing, or blind luck again — hope was never any kind of substitute for planning. Not only must you know your audience, but you must also understand the terrain and the best choice of tools; knowing where your audience is to be found will prove pivotal in the selection of tools you’ll use to engage with those people.
6. You can’t measure social media marketing results. “You can use a variety of methods, including mentions on blogs and in media; comments on the content; real-time blog advertising results, and click-throughs to your company website.”

For me, the best aspect of social media is the ability to build genuine communities, which persist long after the mail shot and the press release and the advert have since faded from people’s memories.

Maybe you’ve heard about blogging, but you’re unsure how a blog might benefit your business. If you’ve already got a website for your business, having a blog can help in a number of ways.

Probably one of the best methods of spreading the word about your business and connecting with your customers is by having a company blog.

The benefits of a business blog

Blogging is a remarkably simple way of publishing. It’s cheap, it’s easy to do and it’s something that your business can benefit from in so many ways:

• Higher search engine rankings — generally speaking, a regular stream of new articles is considered appealing by the search engines, who will pay more attention to your blog or website, ranking you more highly accordingly. The more pages you write, the more there is to be found. However, it’s an exercise in quality not quantity!
• Gaining trust — by writing informative and authoritative articles, over time you’ll build confidence, trust, respect and a sense of “expert status” around your business.
• A sense of community — you’re engaging with your customers in a conversational style that’s difficult to replicate by other means. And by allowing people to comment on your articles, you’re encouraging those people to participate, giving them a reason to return. In simple terms, a blog is a great opportunity for you and your staff to quickly share ideas, and maybe also get some feedback from your customers.
• Better communications — a blog is essentially a publishing platform, where you control the content of your articles, and also when those articles get published.
• Cost effective — in terms of communications, blogging is very low cost but has the potential for a high ROI (Return On Investment).

Is a blog a CMS (Content Management System)?

Maybe you’ve heard the acronym / term CMS before, but didn’t quite know what it meant. Yes, a blog is a kind of Content Management System, simply because you use a blog to manage content!

This very website is powered by WordPress, which is probably the worlds most successful blogging software. There are other kinds of CMS, some of which are very sophisticated. Some of which are even free, like WordPress.

What are the advantages of a CMS compared to a website?

When you have a blog (which, as I mentioned previously is a CMS), you have the option to manage many of the day-to-day aspects of owning a website yourself, such as: adding new pages, editing existing pages, replying to comments, adding images, links to websites and more.

Assuming you have the right tools and skills, your blog can be as sophisticated as most websites.