They launched the program to recognize those who have made significant contributions to the organization in promoting it’s mission and purpose.  The primary Honoree was Tom Horne, Superintendent of Education

At the event they distributed the December 2009 copy of SCOREBoard too and I was happy to see articles by Lon Safko and myself filling the issue.  I had submitted an article, but found out later that it was a bit long for the publication and left it to the editors to make the needed changes.

The result was it looked great and the message of the article was easily conveyed.  I feel blessed and flattered to have the article published by such a wonderful organization – I owe thanks to Maryanne, Lon and everyone associated with SCORE.

Those of you involved in social media will recognize the reference to Gary Vaynerchuk / WineLibrary.TV in the ROI example and the use of the analogy given by Marcel LeBrun as the ‘Social Phone’ in Episode 2 of my podcast interview.

As I said the article was edited to fit the space in the newsletter so now that they have it published in the edited format, I present the unedited article here for you to read and enjoy.

The question seems to be on many business owners mind these days – “should I be making an investment in social media today?”

Admittedly, I’m a little bias on this answer as a social media evangelist and I would hate to be a guy with a hammer that sees everything as a nail, so let’s look at some of the most recent published statistics.

From them, we can get some sense of the impact and effectiveness of social media and take my opinion out of the equation.

• A wine distributor in New Jersey grew their company from $4M to $50M using social media as a primary tactic to market

Consider these results –

• A company invested $15,000 in direct mail offer and got 200 new customers
  • $75 acquisition cost per customer
• They invested $7,500 in a freeway billboard, repeated the same promotion and got 300 new customers
  • $25 acquisition cost per customer
• Repeated the same promotion again, using a popular micro-blog system ($0 hard cost) and got 1,800 new customers
  • $0 acquisition cost per customer? Well, $0 hard cost at least

hmm…

If those statistics begin to interest you, then yes, you might already be considering how social media might be used by a company of your size and in your industry. Now the question becomes not ‘if’ you should invest in social media but ‘where’ and maybe ‘how fast?’

‘Where’ is a question that asks, “of the several hundred or thousands of places on the Internet I might open an account and dive in, where should I start?” Choices include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, but what about Blogger, Meebo, YouTube, FastPitch, or Flickr?

The answer is a bit deeper than I can approach here, but this may be a relevant statistic –

• 300,000 companies (competitors?) have decided to already opened a presence on Facebook

As I see it, there are two investment variables in a basic entrepreneurial equation – time & money. ‘How fast’ questions the ability to invest in what it takes to create and maintain a presence in social media. If you have no money, be prepared to buy and read everything you can and to invest time in learning what works best for you – we recommend ‘The Social Media Bible’ by Lon Safko and David Brake. Self paced education will always cost less money, but will take a good deal more time.

If you are constrained with time, money is your answer.  With prudent investment, you can buy time by hiring the right people. Of course, it is your company and you get to make the decision about how much of each to invest, but investing in social media is something you should be doing now.

Why? A few more statistics for you –

• Companies with the highest level of social media activity grew sales by 18%. Companies with the least presence showed a decline of -6%
• Online advertising effectiveness increases over 100% when coupled with social media
• 71% of companies surveyed are planning to increase investment in social media by an average of 40% because a) low cost, b) it seems to be getting traction and c)we have to do it

You may not be a statistics person though, so let’s put it another context then.

Imagine for a moment that a customer or prospective customer calls your company with a question, a comment, a request for help or maybe a complaint. Imagine picking up the phone and listening to them for a few seconds and then imagine you or your employee, carefully placing the phone on the desk, allowing the conversation to occur, but intentionally ignoring the customer or prospect.

They are talking to you, but you are not listening.

Sounds a little crazy doesn’t it?

When we move that image to online media that involves a social component, the scenario plays itself out thousands of times a day in hundreds of locations. The ‘social media phone’ could be ringing off the hook and unless they have the tools and tactics in place, many businesses will not even hear it and with the speed of electrons, hundreds or thousands of other customers and prospects WILL hear it! They may also notice that you did not engage or respond – would they take that as a comment on your ability to handle their business?

In spite of those discussions, you may be thinking that “this social media thing is probably just a fad though; I mean how popular could this social media thing be anyway?” Well, it is pretty big. Social media is now more popular on the web than adult entertainment. The membership in some online services is huge; Facebook is now over 320,000,000 members in 170+ countries – hat’s more than the population of Norway, Finland and Sweden – combined. Usage statistics show that about a quarter of them log in everyday.

OK, so social media is big, but how is a statistic about Facebook relevant to my business in Phoenix?  The best estimates suggest that as of July 2009, Arizona had over 1 million people using Facebook. How would your business be impacted by connecting with a million of your fellow Arizonans?  Could you expand your shipping to other states with the extra business? How many of the 320,000,000 would you need to connect to grow revenue 5%? or another 50%? or a 150%?

You might find with proper planning and a few dollars that you can connect with new customers with a click of the mouse, regardless of where they are or what time they decide to visit your website and buy.

Should businesses be investing in social media? Yes – if nothing else, start listening. Create an account in Google Alerts (a free service from Google) and set a listening post up that can instantly let you know when and where you, your name or your industry are being mentioned.

If you are ready for something more, check www.TheSocialMediaBible.com, or look over my website here at www.StevenGroves.com, look for and read the post on ‘The Trinity of Social Media’. It is a very basic tactical strategy that will get you moving with some of the basic social media tools and, in virtually every case, those tools can be extended into a more robust and engaging strategy when you are ready.

Social media a fad? Yes, it could be referred to as a fad; one like the Internet, email, and cell phones once were. It is a fad that will forever change the way we connect to our customers, prospects and stakeholders in ways that will change our culture.

Welcome to social media!

Related posts:

• Social Media Here, Social Media there, Social Media Everywhere!
• Social Network Marketing as a Long-Term Strategy
• The ROI of Social Media, Again

We get a lot of questions at TSMB Media about social media in general and blogs in particular.  This is a foundational post in a series about The Trinity of Social Media and blogs in particular that I hope you use, enjoy and reference often.

Lets start at the beginning - 

What is a blog?  A blog is a collection of articles, often by the same author or company, that is presented on the Internet, often for public consumption and comment.  It can contain any type of electronic or online content – audio, video or text.  I suspect that when we can transmit smell or touch over the Internet, it’ll contain them as well!  So a blog is not just the sharing of text for everyone, it is a sharing mechanism for whatever kind of content you might have.  I like text on a blog most, but that is because of the way the search engines index content – they work best on text right now. The tools are coming into play that will better index image and video content, but the technology is just not there yet or widely used by the audience – text is easiest to index right now.

What do you talk about on a blog?  Your blog is where you, as the individual or as a company, will create posts (or articles) of 200 or so words that showcase your company, your product, and your business philosophy.  Whatever you feel would be relevant to communicate to your audience of customers, prospects and stakeholders.  I have clients that have not one blog, but three!  One is targeted at their core business audience, one is more personal and one is a place they post industry observance.  Each of them draws a particular type of visitor or reader.  Likewise, I have clients that only have one blog and there, they post just video files with some text for consumption.

The content on a business blog then is primarily about the organization and why you are the company your customer deal with and prospective customers should deal with.  That is not all your blog should contain though – endeavor to share a bit about the company picnic, pictures and posts of internal events, videos of subjects that relate to your products, links to other blogs that support your comments or suppliers and places your products are being used or demonstrated. 

How often do you use or post to a blog?  Frequency of posts is relative to where you are in the life of the blog and the number of current visitors and subscribers.  Early on in the life of your blog you may want to post more often.  Frequent posting leads the search engines to make a determination that the posting source is a relevant news source and should be visited often.  More frequent updates = more frequent search engine visits, more search engine visits = higher authority, higher authority = better placement in search engine ranking.

So just post to a blog and I get readers right? Nope – not quite how it works.  In the Trinity of Social Media under the ‘Platform’ leg of the model, we point out two items; a ‘Posting / Publishing’ leg and one under ‘Reading / Commenting’. 

The reading of complementary and competitive content blogs is a very important step.  Participating in blogsphere will drive readers and comments / links about your blog elsewhere on the web – all good relative to your search engine ranking.

Your blog should be positioned as the foundational element in a social media strategy.  It should be the place you refer people to in your microblog post for more info, it becomes a place you connect to your off-line marketing, and it is where you always link your social network profile.

Why am I blogging? Passion… blogging gives you the control over what you are able to say about your passion, how often you want to say it and the context of how your message is presented.  If you are not passionate about your topic, it will show.  Your audience will not manifest and people will not come back to read your posts.  Zig Ziglar always said “fake it ’til you make it”, referring to being happy or successful.  This tactic will also work in social media… but only for a while.  If you do not find your passion, your voice will waiver and fail.  Find your passion and stick to it. 

What if your passion wanders?  No problem – the underpinning here is that you have to be true to yourself and you have to let it resonate in your blog content.

Are there pros and cons of one platform over another?  Sure, that question is beyond the scope of this post however.  I know I have the WordPress logo in the bubble, but it can be any blog platform you wish – important is to get the content out there and iterate on the message. 

What else do I need to consider relative to my blog? There are a few more parts of what makes a blog work for you.  My perspective is that unless you have a blog presence, the other aspects of the social media trinity lack the ability to create traction for your brand – without that blog there is just no where stable and consistent to point them.

Related posts:

• The Top 3 Key Apps for Driving Social Media Marketing Traffic – Updating the Trinity
• The Trinity of Social Media Explored Further – Microblogging
• The Trinity of Social Media Explored Still Further – The Social Network