Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Oh my

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Oh My. Repeat this to the cadence of Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh my. Do you know the line? It’s from a scene in the wizard of Oz where the heroines are following the yellow-brick road on the way to fulfill their dreams and desires. In the wizard of Oz, lions, tigers and bears are things to fear. Social media should not be something to be feared by businesses of any size or from any industry. Anyone interested in learning social media can do so by investing time and energy in learning about these new, hugely popular social media marketing and message distribution platforms.

To that end, I joined a local New Business Club that I found through my social network on LinkedIn, which was a social network in 1994, long before YouTube, Facebook and Twitter where even a twinkle in any visionary’s mind or even before the term social networking was coined. Tonight’s presenter at our New Business Club meeting is a successful health coach and entrepreneur, who, according to her, was directed by her business coach to begin embracing social media in support of growing her busienss and establishing her brand online. This person, by her own admission, is not computer savvy and intially resisted her business coach’s direction to embrace social media. At first.

Now, less than one year later this person has a Facebook fan page for her business with several hundred fans, a Twitter account with several hundred followers and a mechanism to syndicate content between YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, integrated through Ping FM. Ping FM? WTF? Don’t start muttering Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, oh my. If a self-confessed computer novice, initially opposed to Social Media can do it, so can you.

With so much buzz about Social Media, its easy to become overwhelmed by these social media icons that seem to dominate mentions on all forms of traditional media and just put getting started on the todo list. That would be a mistake. Do you know why? Because your customers are spending more of their time online, specifically on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Linkedin. Facebook alone has 400 million subscribers with users sharing 5 billion pieces of content each week. Facebook users spend 55 minutes on Facebook everyday! That makes for good odds that your target market is on Facebook, probably becoming fans of your competitors right now.

How to get started? Open a Facebook account and create a company page. It is free to do. If you are more interested in promoting your business through videos, sign up for a YouTube account and upload a video. Want to promote your business in realtime, then sign up for a Twitter account begin Tweeting. If this sounds like too much trouble, that’s fine, maybe you are ready for retirement soon anyhow. If you’re you’re a believer or don’t know where to start, request a free Social Media assessment.

There is a lot of discussion about Social Media Success and how companies are going to be able to measure their ROSMI (Return On Social Media Investment), and therefore the success of the Social Media efforts.

Most companies recognize that Social Media marketing is necessary in 2010, though many are not sure exactly how to build their social media presence and reputation or why they have to do it, other than the fact that everyone, including the competition, seems to be doing it. Sort of like the days when there was a gold rush on the Internet, with everyone rushing to lay stake to their domain and build a magnificent website before all the Internet gold ran out, without any plans on how to drive visitors to their web sites and more importantly, to convert visitors to customers. I guess we were all drunk on the dot com bubbly that was about to burst.

With Social Media, its good to have a plan for success. Just because it is Social Media let’s not get caught getting pulled over having a bit to much cool aid to drink on our way home from FarmVille or getting hurt in the Mafia Wars! Like any corporate sponsored project, you need to have your stakeholders who should be supportive of the business objectives driving the social media strategy with supporting tactics coupled with a clear definition of success, which ultimately have to tie back to fundamental business goals such as growing market share, reducing costs of customer acquisition, building and bolstering brand.

With Social Media, there are too many types and uses to be able to come up with any single approach to measuring and tracking ROI. The approach will be driven by strategy, which will be driven by business goals. For instance, a business goal is to land 6 new accounts. Suppose you are a services business in a B2B marketplace, trying to reach decision makers who are well educated with a high household income. While you might run into these folks in FarmVille, they re more likely to be reached through a professional social network such as LinkedIn. If LinkedIn is the mechanism you use to position your business, it is certainly possible to track traffic and leads from the source, so tracking ROI, in that example can be clear. The more intangible benefits include broad brand exposure and reputation and credibility establishment. If your a local services market, then maybe LinkedIn can simply be a conduit to know who to call in within an organization whereas if you are selling to someone across 12 time zones, social media provides a great first, second, third, fourth touch point to identify leads and prospects and moving existing prospects through the funnel.

So how do you define success of the social media objectives? Much like branding, the impact, while very real, is more challenging to measure, therefore, how can social media success be defined? Well, for beginners, we can measure audience to some degree based on followers (Twitter) or friends (Facebook) or connections (LinkedIn) and subscribers (YouTube Channel). Getting your brand out in front of audiences creates touch points and contributes to moving potential customers through the funnel. Audience size is measurable and each eyeball can be assigned a value – akin to CPMs in Internet Adverting and related to the concept of audience evaluation, it’s about getting out in front of your target market where they live, which is increasingly on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a personal favorite of mine, LinkedIn.

So delaying your foray into Social Media waiting for the perfect metrics for measuring success and ROI is not the best option. However, understanding your business drivers which should shape your social media strategy and tactics is critical to success. Once you have these, you are ready to begin diving to social media success, and better yet, you will know when you get there.

Check out the following presentation on how new businesses can use LinkedIn to promote their business.

LinkedIn Presentation Overview: LinkedIn for New Businesses provides a brief introduction of LinkedIn, shares some references to articles about LinkedIn membership and history, provides stats from Compete.com, Google Insights and Quantcast, provides business benefits of using LinkedIn to promote your business and concludes with four action points that if taken, can provide immediate business benefits.

This post was inspired by an article published in eMarketer today entitled “Hopes and Fears of Social Media Marketing,” three-quarters of US Web retailers surveyed by the e-tailing group and PowerReviews in August–September 2009 for their “Community and Social Media Study” said they thought brands were accelerating their use of, and commitment to, social media. In fact, 86% of those surveyed had a Facebook fan page, 10% plan on getting in the next 12 months, 3% plan on getting past one year out, leaving only 1% not currently planning on getting a Facebook fan page. Even they’ll get it by next year.

Many say that Social Media is a “Communication Revolution.” I tend to agree. Ponder a few facts and references provided by socialnomics:

Years for a Media Type to Reach 50 millions Users:

• Radio (38 Years),
• TV (13 Years),
• Internet (4 Years),
• iPod (3 Years)…
• Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.

Source: First Stats: United Nations Cyberschoolbus Document ; Facebook Stat: Mashable; iPhone Stat: Apple.

When you think about the way that social media changes the ways that consumers interact with their peers, coworkers and business partners, it is mind blowing. Add social media enabled mobile devices to the mix, now you have ubiquitous social connectivity beyond what original laptops and cell phones could have ever imagined.

Employers using LinkedIn to evaluate recommendations from current and past employers, to verify what others say about you in a public, networked forum. This came into play for reference I provided today. Some estimate that as many as 95% of employees use LinkedIn to get to know candidates during the hiring process. Powerful stuff.

Another fact highlighting how deep social media is becoming entrenched in our lives: One out of eight couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media. Source: McKinsey Study also posted by David Dalka. I know, it is hard to believe. Still think Social Media is a fad?

The keys for companies to be able to leverage social media as part of their overall marketing strategy is to get past their web 2.0 fears about handing some of the online brand stewardship to the end customers while realizing that this is going to happen anyway. Companies that have online success leverage social media to create excitement, buzz and loyalty around their brand and those that don’t have to compensate in other ways or miss the boat altogether.