If you’re within driving distance of Knoxville, Tennessee, you may be interested in my upcoming Social Media Boot Camp on Wednesday, March 24. This will be a different sort of training event for me because I’m not going to just talk about social media strategy to the group, but I’m going to show them how to put their social media plan together, and then everyone will develop their own plan that day. This is the most specific and tactical training I do for my clients, and now it’s going to be available in a seminar setting to anyone who attends.
Knoxville’s own Chuck Morris of Morris Creative Group will be joining me to offer additional perspective and insight to the attendees.
Here’s the agenda for the day:
7:30 - Registration
8:00 - Introductions
8:05 - Thinking Like A Social Media Marketer: Why How You Think Really Matters More Than What You Do
9:15 - Break
9:30 - Being A Social Media Marketer: Everything You Should Be Doing (And A Few You Shouldn’t)
10:45 - Break
11:00 - Succeeding As A Social Media Marketer: Growing Your Business and Protecting Your Brand In The Social Economy
Noon – Dismiss
If you plan on attending, letmeknow, because we’re going to schedule a meet-up the night before at a local restaurant in Knoxville. Hope to see you then!
A question many people want an answer for, even if they never ask it, is how long they should wait before they’ll begin to see any results from their social media efforts. This can be a tricky question because what one person deems as positive results, another person may not. Most people seem to be talking about at least one of the following four things:
An increase in awareness of their product, service, or business
An increase in conversations on Facebook and/or Twitter
More traffic to their website or blog
New leads and sales for the business
In my experience it takes three or four months for most people to begin to see positive results in any of the above areas. By they time they cross the six month mark, however, they tend to feel like they really have momentum going for themselves and the sky is the limit.
Social Media Success Time Line
I should note that all of this is based on my own observations and experiences with clients over the last three years. This scenario is an average, so that means there are exceptions both positively and negatively. For instance, I’ve known companies that took well over a year to really see any tangible results from their social media efforts, while other people see great things happening within their first month. For most of the organizations and individuals I’ve worked with, however, it seems their social media efforts and feelings follow the following cycle:
Months 1-3: Minimal feeling of success and fight temptation to quit but persevere.
Month 4: Begin to see some positive things happen. Get confidence in their work.
Months 5-6: Continue to see good things happen and gain further confidence and certainty.
Months 7 and beyond: Convinced of their social media efforts. See clear and tangible results. Begin to tweak certain aspects of their social media strategy to refine their efforts.
When It Doesn’t Work
The timeline above is what I’ve observed for companies who are “all in” on their social media efforts. Companies that play around with social media, don’t have a strategy, or just flat out do it the wrong way, may never see any results regardless of how long they take. Starting off with the right strategy and the right people makes all the difference. If you don’t have both components you’re going to have a much more difficult time seeing even minimal success. If you don’t know where to start, try Forrester’s POST method and my EIEIO approach to social media content.
A few years ago one of the first big viral videos on YouTube was Ok Go’s treadmill video called “Here It Goes Again.” To date that video has almost 50 million views. A few days ago the band released their latest video that is quite a spectacle itself.
Enjoy their new video called “This Too Shall Pass.” If you’re like me, you’ll take it in and enjoy it the first time, but when you watch it a second time you really begin to appreciate the complexity and effort that went into this whole thing.
My wife and I have been expecting the birth of our first son any day now and today he was born. William “Will” Cannon Seaver was 7lbs. and 4oz. This was our third child so I’m not a novice at seeing my children born, but every time I come away with a greater appreciation for my wife and what she endures just to bring these kids into the world. In this particular case, she was on bed rest for six weeks and then had to be patient for 11 more hours at the hospital today as we were waiting on all the conditions to be right for the delivery. I’m happy to say that both mother and baby are doing very well.
Whether I like it or not, some companies don’t want to make a move in business that hasn’t already been done by some of the biggest companies in the world. I guess it feels safer knowing the big guys have been there already. I’ve encountered that issue a number of times over the years trying to convince companies to move forward with social media. I even recall a small research project last year to try to convince someone that large companies are using social media.
Until now there haven’t been great stats to help me make the case but PR firm Burson-Marsteller just released their findings of social media use by the Fortune Global 100 (the largest 100 companies in the world.) I think my job just got a little easier for future conversations with those needing proof like this.
Lori asked a great question on yesterday’s blog post. I started to respond to her in the comments and realized the answer may be one that other people are asking so I thought it would be more helpful as a post. Here’s Lori’s comment and question:
Bill,
I continue to think of this whenever I’m writing or speaking. A long time ago I learned another reminder catch phrase that is along the same line when I was in sales. It is the WIFM idea. That stands for “What’s In It For Me”. A customer or reader is always going to ask this question. And, it is more important to ask this question these days because we are getting so much information. There is no time for people to read all the content that comes throug. Heck, I don’t even listen to the majority of commercials that bombard me daily. I would rather TiVo everything I want to watch then go back later and fast forward through everything I don’t want to see because there is nothing in it for me.
I guess the next question that needs to be asked when writing to an audience is “how do I know what will EIEIO them”. Where do I need to touch to find the pulse of my audience?
Warmly, Lori
Who Are You Talking To?
When I talk about creating content for your audience I assume (perhaps wrongly) that people know both of the following things:
Who they’re trying to reach
What will be valuable to those people
If someone doesn’t know who they’re trying to reach, they have some major issues beyond their social media efforts. Knowing who you need to reach is so foundational to every aspect of business you must nail that down very early on. If you don’t know who your customer is you may think you’re selling to everyone but in reality you’re not really selling to anyone.
What Will They Pay Attention To?
Most people know who they’re trying to reach and are asking the question that Lori did, which is “how do I know what they’ll find valuable?” You can do two things here: ask and listen. If the people you want to reach congregate in any form, look for a way to ask them questions to learn more about them. Do a survey. Take a poll. Pose a question in a forum. Attend a conference. Interview some of the influential voices.
In order to listen you obviously need to pay attention to the questions you ask but you also can listen without asking questions by monitoring what people are saying. Here are some places to begin social media monitoring:
In all the above cases you can see what people are saying and identify more of the people you want to reach and get a better understanding on the things that interest them. You’ll see what they like and dislike. You’ll get a sense of the culture, the language, the leaders, and the followers.
So, to answer Lori’s question, when you’re not sure what adds value to the people you’re trying to reach, just ask and listen. It’s a simple answer but it can be a complex process to discover what you’re looking for. Just know that when you do, you’ll be better positioned to provide content they’ll choose to pay attention to. That’s the new world of marketing.
I wrote the post below back in July, 2008. I’m reposting it now because someone encouraged me recently to revisit some of the foundational elements to understanding social media. Since it seems there are quite a few new people reading the blog now I thought the person’s point was a good one. I talk about creating valuable content all the time and the Old McDonald approach continues to keep my own blog focused and is helping a lot of people I know too.
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If you know me or have been reading this blog long you know I’m a firm believer in the idea of compelling content being the best way to use social media tools. That’s what the whole “Old McDonald” approach to good content is all about. If, however, it’s still not coming together for you, think about this: content MUST have value to the people you’re trying to reach. If it doesn’t, it’s not good content. It’s probably boring information that lacks something interesting or it’s marketing copy that’s just you talking about you.
So…let’s go back to the old McDonald idea. If good content that has value to someone contains at least one of the EIEIO elements (Entertain, Inspire, Educate, Inform, or Outrage) then you are creating content with value. If you’re still stuck though, add “me” to the end of the words. It would look like this:
Entertain Me.
Inspire Me.
Educate Me.
Inform Me.
Outrage Me.
See what’s missing here? You. It’s not about you. It’s about me…the person you’re trying to reach. Now go write a blog post for the “me” you want to read your blog.
I heard recently that at one point in the last few weeks there was snow in 49 of 50 of the United States. This weatherman from Baltimore decided to really make sure his viewers knew what was coming at them as a major storm approached. I think I like this guy. Enjoy the video of the week.
Within the next few weeks this blog (which is also my company website) will move away from Wordpress. For the first time since I launched the business in 2007, I’ve found something that I think is far better. I’m moving to a solution by a company here in Nashville called NetEffect Services. NetEffect is going to provide a new blog platform for me, but more importantly, they are going to provide a blog that runs on the mother of all analytics solutions, Omniture.
Why The Move?
If social media is going to continue to prove itself as a set of viable business and marketing tools, it’s going to require proof of the return on investment. Businesses rightly realize that doing social media well requires time they may not have right now. In order to justify the time they are spending and validate a need to spend more time, they need data to show that it’s worth it.
Data is one of the best ways to make your case no matter what you’re talking about. I’m hoping data will push the adoption of social media further than it is today and really solidify its role in business. I think the social media ROI conversation is only going to increase in the future and the ability to measure the true impact and reach of your organization’s voice is going to make all the difference in whether or not your business is helped from using social media.
Why Omniture?
The guys at NetEffect are doing something I’m not aware of any other company doing. They’re creating a web development and marketing team that focuses on websites built with the world’s best analytics solution. This tool, Omniture, has previously only been available to large, Fortune 500-type companies because they were the only ones who could afford it. What NetEffect is doing is taking something that has always been inaccessible to the little guys like me (and probably you), and making it available to the average business.
What all of this means is that I’m going to know things about the content of my blog that I’ve never known before. Floyd at NetEffect wrote a blog post about it recently so I won’t talk much more about it now, but I’ll just say that I’m really excited to learn more about how data with content can lead to better content. I think my friend Brannan Atkinson said it best recently when he said that when you can put math with content you have something we haven’t really seen before. It’s my hope that I’m going to learn new things about content specifically, and social media in general, that we haven’t really known before.
Bottom Line
So that’s it. I’m leaving Wordpress for a blog platform that has an analytics solution that hasn’t really been used for blogs too much before. I feel like we’re stepping into the next phase of the evolution of social media. As such, I’m the guinea pig for NetEffect and they’re the guinea pig for me, so it woks out nicely that way. It’s my desire that I’ll begin learning more about how to create better content and also apply that knowledge to my clients.
Finally, I want to thank Nathan Moore and the team at Anthology Creative for designing and hosting my blog these last few years. Nathan is a friend as well as a business associate and I really can’t say enough about how great they are to work with. I’ll continue to work with Nathan and his team in the future and we even have a little side venture we’re developing right now that should be fun.
When the new blog is up, I’ll announce it here, especially for the feed readers who won’t necessarily see anything new. Be sure to subscribe to the NetEffect blog because they’ll be posting results about what we’re learning. I’ll talk about some of that here in the future as well.
