Social Media & A Bad Economy

Today’s economy is definitely going in a downward spiral.  Companies are making personnel moves to cut costs to remain profitable.  After 5+ years of economic downturn, are ongoing layoffs and operating budget cuts still the answer?

In any economic model, the basic principle of “Supply & Demand” can be applied.  Is it a sound financial decision to continue to reduce a company’s payroll and marketing budget (which will reduce the “Demand” side of the equation as fewer new customers are brought into the mix, in turn reducing the “Supply” side of the business which is represented by the company’s products which generate the revenues necessary to run the company) to keep profits and EBITDA (a widely used term by those in finance, “Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation & Amortization) at a targeted level? 

Let’s talk about that for a bit…….

By cutting marketing and advertising budgets, a corporation can certainly give the appearance of maintaining profits at an acceptable level.  But is that decision a wise decision by the company’s executives in the long run.  By cutting marketing, future sales will inevitably be lost….and new sales are the lifeblood of any company’s future.  Many of today’s marketing efforts rely on the use of social media.  While social media may seem “free” to the individual user, the cost for corporate programs can reach as high as $10,000+ per month.  The problem we face is being able to quantify the value of social efforts.  Implementing and maintaining a sound social media program can be extremely labor intensive for large corporations.  In order to justify the budget required to maintain the social media efforts, the program directors have the difficult task of demonstrating the “Return on Investment” or “ROI”. 

Demonstrating ROI on a social media program has been debated over and over recently and there are many opinions on how to do it.  Some companies count “Followers” on their Twitter account, some look at “Friends” on Facebook, others look to reviews on Digg or Yelp as a success.  But how do you turn this into real dollars when trying to present to a Board of Directors looking to slash the budget?

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong answer.  It is individual preference on how to present your case.  I’ve always kept track of prospective customers generated by my social media efforts and could easily track the closed sales resulting from them.  But I’m only one person.  When we talk corporate level social media with hundreds of people working on it, the reach of ROI becomes exponentially larger and more difficult to demonstrate. 

If you have had success representing ROI from your social media program or have any ideas or thoughts on how to do so, I’d be interested in hearing them and helping everyone learn from your experience.

Note about the Author:  Dave Hanron has more than 20 years proven experience in corporate sales and marketing and possesses a bachelors degree in Economics from the University of Rhode Island

Social Media.....Hype or Money Maker?

Social Media….I’m guessing you’ve heard of it? If not, you wouldn’t be reading this post.

Today’s information explosion is growing exponentially, fueled by sites like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Digg, MySpace, YouTube, Flicker, and thousands more. Sure, we all enjoy using them, but are they really a way for businesses or individuals to capitalize on the growth and actually earn some income?

I’m going to spend a little time and give my take on the trends.

People typically begin slow in the social media world, usually by opening a Facebook account because one of their friends has told them it’s the trendy thing to do. Some people start with a Twitter account. It really doesn’t matter.

If you’re looking to get return on your investment (ROI) you need to start by building your social “Brand”. How do you accomplish this? You’ve already started by opening your personal gateway to the social environment by using Facebook and/or Twitter.

Next step is to gain followers or friends. How do you do that? It takes a bit of effort but everyone can do it…start “tweeting” on your Twitter account. You can either write your own comments or “re-tweet” someone else’s. You can also “tweet” an interesting article that you find. I think the best approach is a combination of the 3. Be creative. Add picture to your tweets, using free app’s like YFrog or Twitpic. Remember, people like to read interesting stuff and you’re competing with millions of others for their time. Get to know your audience.

Once you successfully accumulated a following, keep expanding it by adding other means of communication to your social toolbox by creating a personal or professional blog. The Huffington Post is today’s #1 rated blog (Technorati research http://tinyurl.com/yg5gxnv). The Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) has more than 800,000 followers on Twitter. While this may not be the biggest Twitter following (according to TwitterStats, that would be Lady Gaga with more than 8,400,000 followers http://tinyurl.com/ddjtdd ), it has led them to being the most viewed blog on the internet.

Now that you have your blog, begin posting it on Twitter and Facebook to gain even more exposure to your brand. The more exposure your brand gets, the easier it becomes to monetize it. Think of the Dunkin Donuts “Keep it Coolatta” social campaign…..

The campaign incented the public to snap pictures of themselves and post them on the Dunnkin Donut Fan Wall on Facebook to win prizes including air conditioners, Jet Blue vouchers, Flat screen TV’s and more.

The reaction was fantastic and generated more than 20,000 additional followers for Dunkin Brands.

There are lots of companies out there today who are looking for heavy traffic “brands” where they can place advertisements for their merchants’ products. By partnering with one of these firms, you can start monetizing your brands and get your ROI flowing. To find some of these companies, simply Google or Bing “digital advertising affiliate programs” and you’ll find dozens of them.

Do your research, pick one, and you’re on your way to increased ROI…….all through today’s information explosion of social media.

To learn more on how to use social media to grow your business, contact me at Dave@socialstrategy1.com or @davehanron on Twitter

Social Media vs. Social Intelligence

I’m sure we’re all getting bombarded by Facebook and Twitter information from people calling themselves “Social Media experts”. If you’re like me, it’s getting to the point where you ask yourself how much “social” is too much “social”?

This brings us to today’s topic: What exactly is “social media" and what does it do for me?

“Social Media” is defined by Wikipedia as “the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue”. In other words, everyone using Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Linkedin, etc are using and contributing to “social media”. If you’re a bit more advanced and are “blogging”, then you’re contributing to the social media explosion.

Today’s businesses are just beginning to realize the role social media is currently playing and will continue to evolve into in the future. Where in past years, if you had a bad experience with a merchant or ate a bad meal at a restaurant, you’d tell a few close friends and relatives and that would be the end of it. Very little real effect took place on the business reputation, good or bad.

Today, people may have thousands of followers on Twitters, making it as simple as picking up their Blackberry or iPhone, logging into Twitter, and writing a quick one sentence review of their experience. This review quickly reaches all their followers and with “re-tweeting”, there’s no way to count how many people are notified of an experience with a business, good or bad. The results can be devastating to a reputation or fantastic for a company, depending on the temperament of the Tweet.

Here’s where “Social Intelligence” comes in. Businesses need to more than just follow their reputations with free services like Google alerts, or Trackle alerts. The business may or may not capture all of their social mentions with these services, but the bigger question now becomes what do you do with them?

The consumers must be engaged in order to gain value from the social media explosion. Social intelligence is the knowledge of how to handle the conversation about your business.  It includes having a  plan in place to respond immediately to comments once you find them, both positive and negative and requires many companies to employ a full-time staff to address this. It includes developing pro-active campaigns to improve or direct the conversation about your brand.  It may drive business to your website. There are many components of social intelligence. Far too many to address here...

It’s a fact in today’s tight economic market that many companies can’t (or won’t) expend the resources to hire additional personnel to handle this aspect of their business, and their current group of employees is either too busy or not trained to deal with the social media explosion.  It’s the current and next generation of employees (recent college grads and those students still in college, high school, and middle school) who will be coming into the workplace fully engaged with the need and skills to work in social intelligence.

Think back 10 years ago…..pre-requisite for employment may have read something like “working knowledge of MS Word, Excel, & Powerpoint a plus”. Today’s job listings might include something like..”at least 5 years of Twitter, Facebook, and blogging experience a must”.

Scared? You’re not alone.

There are solutions available today to help you through attaining and successfully developing and using social intelligence to help your business profits move forward as technology continues to evolve.  If you’d like more information on how to manage your company’s social intelligence programs, please contact me.

I’d enjoy hearing any other solutions or comments you may have so please leave your comments and forward to any friends or colleagues you may feel are interested in “social intelligence”.

Social Sites Drive Business Purchases by Young Adults and Teens

I’m seeing an interesting social trend developing over the last couple of years……consumers are moving from the age old habit of impulse shopping and buying, where a catchy advertising campaign or display might drive additional sales, to focused buying driven by the internet.


Nice opening statement, right? But what does it really mean? Let me give you a personal example.

This year’s “Black Friday” shopping event was highly anticipated by retailers across the country. Typically, the day after Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday shopping season in a BIG way. After the Thanksgiving meal has ended, the kids run to the playroom to hit the video games, the men typically retire to the den or “Man Cave” to watch football, while the women frantically browse through the fliers in the living room, making note of the stores they want to visit when they open. Some stores open as early as 12:01am on Friday morning and there are hundreds’ if not thousands, of shoppers anxiously waiting to be one of the first “250” in the door to get the “Great Deal” advertised in the flier. More often than not, stories of how “I can’t believe I got there at 3:30am and there were no X-Box 3 games left. It’s ridiculous! I’m never doing that again” are heard later in the day when the Mom gets home, frustrated from the crowds and lack of product availability.

Well, in my home, my wife followed tradition and looked through the fliers with her sister, mother, and sisters-in-laws, planning the next day’s shopping excursion. The difference was they were intent on hitting the stores quick and getting out. My wife left at 6:00am and was home with everything she went for by 9:00am. Now that’s a successful, focused shopping spree.

So what’s the moral here? To be successful in today’s information age, retailers need to be focused on providing an easy way for a consumer to get the product they want. The best way to do this is via social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Digg, and hundreds more. A recent Pew survey       ( http://tinyurl.com/ya9mmzv ) indicates that nearly three quarters of teens and nearly the same number of young adults use social media sites. Today’s consumers are no longer visiting corporate websites, but rather social sites to see where others are getting great deals, and avoiding the places where people are having bad experiences. Some retailers have already embraced the social media craze, added their own social sites, and created “followers” by providing coupons, discounts, or special announcements of sales via their social sites. Other businesses have sat back wondering why their sales are down….?

Take a look at this example of a social media deal listed on Twitter by BestBuy......BestBuy is considered a leader in their social media strategy plan:

A good social media strategy is a necessity if you want to keep your business growing and attract the consumers you need to do this. We must remember, there’s a lot of competition for the consumers’ purchases these days. If you remain in your old ways, thinking ”I didn’t need social media to get to this point, I don’t need it now”, then you most likely have peaked your business’ revenues and should settle in for a period of declining revenues and, the ultimate reality of asking yourself “ What happened to my business?”. Remember my “1990's Sales vs 2010 Sales?” post a couple months ago?

If you’re interested in growing your business and realize it’s time to learn more about how a social strategy business plan can help grow your business and increase revenues and profits, then please click on the form below and I’ll be happy to provide you with more information….

http://www.emailmeform.com/builder/form/tmfddb55Ql

How Are You Handling The Social Media Explosion?

Here’s a little personal story with a business twist and something to think about at the end….after reading this, I’d enjoying hearing of any similar personal experience any of my readers have had and the impact you think it might have on the company’s business…..


My story…….

We all know it’s the beginning of the Holiday season and sometimes we all think of doing something good for those that are perhaps not as fortunate as the rest of us…


Last week, my local Fraternal club was doing a Turkey raffle for charity. I had approached a local supermarket (I’ll keep the name private as I don’t want to mix business with a negative personal experience; if you’re interested in the name, email me and I’ll tell you off-line) in Wakefield, MA and asked them if I could place an order for 25 18-20lbs turkeys to be used in the raffle. They were on sale for 49₵ per pound and it was cheap enough. I went to the store and the meat manager was off for the day. I spoke with another clerk in the meat department who was very pleasant and helpful. He wrote down my name and cell number and advised me that while he couldn’t guarantee the order until the meat manager returned the next day, he would pass my info along and ask the meat manager to call me the next morning. Before I left the store, I specifically asked if there was a limit on how many sale priced turkey’s I could buy with my (XXXXXX’s) card and was told “no, there is no limit”. This was the clerk’s answer and it was verified by the girl in the courtesy booth. “Great” I thought, everything should be all set.


The next morning no one from XXXXXX’s had called me by mid-morning so I thought I’d call the store myself. I called XXXXXX’s and spoke with the meat manager who informed me he couldn’t honor my order and that the clerk shouldn’t have led me to believe they could fulfill it without speaking to him first. He then said there was a strict limit of “2 per XXXXXX’s card” on the sale priced turkeys. He proceeded to tell me he didn’t have enough on hand to fulfill my order anyways (they didn’t have twenty five 18 to 20lb turkeys the week before Thanksgiving? Interesting excuse, but that’s another issue). Even if they did, he would have to sell them to me at the “wholesale rate of $.99 per lb”. He said both the clerk and courtesy booth were wrong. When I mentioned that neither the store signs nor the advertisement indicated a limit, he said he couldn’t speak for that. Needless to say, I didn’t buy the Turkeys from XXXXXX’s.


We ended up at XXXXXX’s competitor, Market Basket in Wilmington MA who not only happily fulfilled the order, but upon receiving our tax ID, also further reduced the price as a charitable donation from Market Basket. Now that’s GREAT service and a GREAT neighborhood business. We’ll be seeing them next year!

While disappointed in XXXXXX’s, I wasn’t going to say anything about my experience until I looked at my XXXXXX’s receipt from yesterday and it asked me to fill out an on-line questionnaire about my experience yesterday at the store ( I needed some snacks for the Pats-Indy game). While filling out the questionnaire, it asked me about my experience. Well, I told them, not about yesterday's experience but about earlier in the week…..let’s wait and see what happens?

Now how much would a negative blog about a product impact the company’s business? Hard to say but one thing is for certain: the 350+ members of my Fraternal Club plus their families know about the incident and will think twice about shopping at XXXXXX’s in the future. On the other hand, Market Basket looks like a champ and I’ll be following my wife’s advice and start shopping there.

How does a company follow and react to a personal blog like this? The SS1-Engage platform from Social Strategy 1 constantly crawls the internet looking for mentions like this. Should XXXXXX’s or Market Basket have the service, this blog post would show up on their dashboard with a positive mention for Market Basket and a negative mention for XXXXXX’s. Market Basket could “Re-Tweet” it for good publicity, while XXXXXX’s would want it to go away.

Think how good Market Basket looks in this situation? Makes people want to shop there…..who doesn’t want to shop with good people? Think how much one little instance like this will hurt XXXXXX’s future business? (Not much as I didn’t use their real name because I’m ethical and wanted to use it as an example for my product. If I wasn’t, think of the bad publicity this would cause?) Now, maybe XXXXXX’s doesn’t have a social media program in place and will never know this type of negative issue is being blog’d about, or they may choose to ignore it, or they could come back in a positive manner and say something like “Dave, sorry you had a bad experience. There was some terrible miscommunication in play and XXXXXX’s certainly wishes to maintain a good standing in the local community and recognizes the needs of local non-profit organizations. Please accept this coupon for your next future purchase at XXXXXX”s. We strive to provide the best shopping experience for our Customers and hope you will put it to good use by considering a second chance for XXXXXX’s to earn your organization’s business on its next endeavor”.

The last response is an example of actions which may be recommended by the personal analyst from Social Strategy 1 to minimize any damage from a personal blog or Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, etc. posting. In excess of 80 million users access these sites everyday and follow this kind of publicity. If you or any of your friends (don’t forget the $500 referral from my previous posting) are interested in seeing how the SS-1 Engage platform from Social Strategy 1 can help your business, please contact me at dave@socialstrateg1.com or 781-937-0420