Getting A Handle On Crisis Management

You may already have a few general Twitter handles in use, but your PR department needs to have a handle devoted solely to the purpose of addressing crisis situations. Not only does this serve you in terms of keeping marketing tweets separate of crisis management tweets, but it gives your audience an easier means of zeroing in on the information they need.

Meeting The Challenge

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges of managing a crisis via Twitter is the character limits of posting a tweet. Whereas other social media platforms may allow for a more elaborate message, Twitter forces you to be concise. With only 140 characters to work with, you have to be conscious of your word choice and the impact it will have on your followers.

Making A Real Connection

Another social media platform that can be combined with your Twitter strategy is YouTube. When a PR issue arises, simply create a video addressing it, upload it to YouTube, and then spread the word via Twitter. Not only does this put a real face on your brand, but it allows you to connect to your audience in a sincere, emotional manner, which isn’t always possible through text communications.

Sponsoring Tweets

Another tool that Twitter puts at your fingertips comes in the form of sponsored tweets. In a crisis situation, paying to keep your tweets at the top of the searches only makes sense. Plus, you can actually adjust your advertising campaign so that it targets your specific audience. Targeted crisis management has never been easier.

Staying Ahead Of The Conversation

The advantage of a social media platform like Twitter is that it gives you immediate access to the public and allows you to engage in real-time conversation, two key factors in influencing brand-related conversation and preventing small issues from snowballing into crisis situations.

To stay ahead of the conversation, you need dedicated representatives monitoring online conversations about your brand. Not only does monitoring customer feedback online allow you to address complaints in a timely fashion, but it gives you a broader perspective regarding the needs of your customers, and it gives you the opportunity to react accordingly.

For more on crisis management, contact Social Strategy1 today.

1. Get on Facebook: Facebook is the world’s most popular social network, and it offers great opportunities to businesses. Use it to extend special promotional offers to customers, spread the word about your business, and communicate information about your products and services.
2. Use Twitter: This micro-blogging social network allows you to broadcast concise messages to followers, and it’s an excellent way to support and extend your social media efforts.
3. Start blogging: A blog is a valuable SEO tool, and it also gives you a forum for providing your customers with value-added information about topics that matter to your business.
4. Maintain a regular presence: Check in on Facebook and Twitter at least a couple of times per day, and write a new blog post at least once or twice a week. If you don’t have the time or writing skill to blog, outsource the work to a professional writer — it will make a big difference.
5. Use management tools: Consolidating your social media presence through management tools like Twitpic, Ning and TweetDeck helps you get maximum return for a minimal investment of time.
6. Stay focused: Be sure to use your company Facebook page, Twitter feed and blog site for work and work only. Avoid personal socializing with your business accounts.
7. Stay secure: Keep your privacy settings guarded and beware of social media-based cyber-attacks. Also, remember that the things you say could potentially be disseminated to millions of people, so choose your words wisely.
8. Maintain control: While it’s fine to outsource the writing of your blog posts, you should not allow your account information and passwords out of your direct control. Ultimately, you want to be the person with final authority over what gets said, posted and shared online.
9. Be honest: Transparency is a hot trend in advertising, and for good reason. Social media users are savvy and respond well to straightforward advertising that doesn’t attempt to deceive or hide things.
10. Add media: Use social media tools to post photos and videos, both promotional and informational, for your customers.

If you need help understanding how to use social media to benefit your business, look no further than the comprehensive resources available through OfficeArrow and Social Strategy1. The OfficeArrow/Social Strategy1 network is replete with helpful tools, handy tips and professional support for media intelligence initiatives.

Here’s what you need to know to get started:

Develop Ads

General advertising principles apply to LinkedIn ads, too. As you develop an ad, follow these rules:

• Use effective copy, utilizing attention-grabbing words that will entice your target customer
• Include benefits so your audience can easily see the intent of the offer, discount, demo or trial
• Develop a call to action (C2A), using strong wording like “download” or “sign up”
• Always include a striking graphic

Strategize Your Campaign

It’s possible to create up to 15 ads in LinkedIn’s system. All of the ads will run initially, allowing you to split-test which ads perform. And LinkedIn offers a “pause” tool, so you can stop low-performing ads from running.

Target Audience

You can choose the demographics of your target audience by:

• Industry
• Job title
• Geographical location
• Job function
• Age
• Gender
• Group (via interest, skill or expertise)
• Company size
• Company name
• Seniority (such as owner or human resources manager)

The ability to target various demographics is one of primary advantages of using LinkedIn Ads.

Budget

The system works by allotting advertisers a daily budget, which you can set to whatever amount your marketing campaign allows. Keep in mind, however, that once you reach your daily budget, your ads will no longer run.

Bidding

There are two options for bidding for ads:

• Pay-per-click, where you pay a set amount for an ad every time a user clicks on that ad
• Pay-per-impression, where you pay a set amount for an ad every time it’s viewed

It’s to your advantage to set bids on the high end, because a real-time auction occurs every time a user logs into the system. If other competing ads outbid you, your ads won’t show. However, keep in mind that LinkedIn will discount your final bid, so that you pay the minimum bid allowable, compared to competing bids. If you’re not outbid, your ads will run, and you’ll pay a lower price.

Finding the right bid can be difficult when starting LinkedIn ads. The system will show a suggested bid, giving you an idea of competing business are spending for similar campaigns.

With LinkedIn ads part of your larger marketing strategy, you can target the right audience, at the right time, with complete control over your budget. Contact Social Strategy1 today, and find out how we can help your business develop an effective social-media marketing strategy.

When used for business marketing, there are a few golden rules blogs must follow. The three that are commonly cited as the most important are:

• Adding value for the end user.
• Posting regularly.
• Engaging the reader with a call to action.

Adding value for the end user simply means that your blog posts should be written with an informational rather than a promotional slant. You need to give visitors a reason to read your blog, and the best way to do this is to offer helpful information related to your company’s products or services, not shameless self-promotion. For example, if you are a roofing contractor, blog posts that discuss the relative merits of various roofing materials adds much more value than a vague promotional post about why you are the most trusted contractor in your area. Providing the reader with useful information helps you appear more authoritative, and positions your business as the solution to a problem the reader is having.

To enhance the SEO value of your blog, you need to constantly be adding fresh and up-to-date information, as well as creating new links to suitable external websites. The best way to do this is to keep your audience engaged with regular posts; experts recommend that you add a new post at least once or twice a week.

Finally, be sure to end each post with a strong, clear call to action. A good call to action essentially serves the same function as promotional language, yet it frees up the content of your blog so you don’t have to make fluffy advertorial claims that add no value for the end user. A call to action is an imperative statement that entices the reader to take an additional step to engage with you; examples include phrases like “contact our customer service team to learn more” or “click here to email one of our friendly professionals.”

The business marketing landscape is undergoing unprecedented change in the age of digital and social media, and the experts at OfficeArrow and Social Strategy1 are here to help you succeed in this challenging but exciting time. Using the professional tools available through OfficeArrow will put you at the forefront of this exciting time in the business world.

The goal of any B2B’s marketing strategy is to grow brand awareness, build relationships, and educate potential customers, eventually leading to a sale. Social media are uniquely positioned to build on these goals, as its three primary benefits include:

• Generating exposure
• Increasing traffic
• Improving search rankings

And over a short amount of time, Pinterest has proven to be a valuable commodity in these endeavors.

Pinterest’s main advantages include:

Generating Exposure And Educating

As a social media tool, Pinterest offers a B2B company a uniquely visual way to educate buyer’s during the purchasing process. In B2B, it’s important that you focus on building relationships, and then optimize the value of that relationship.

Throughout the naturally longer sales cycle of a B2B sale, where you need to educate potential buyers about the benefits and features of your products and services, you can take advantage of Pinterest’s visual appeal, and use it much like a slide show, demo or webinar.

While each “pin” can stand alone, you can create a message with a group of pins, keeping in mind that people will generally “read” pins from left to right, much like a book.

Increasing Traffic

One of the primary benefits company’s can gain from using Pinterest involves linking. Every pin is indexed, and the link goes directly back to your main website, or through a direct link.

Google reads keywords for pinboards, too, so maintaining SEO strategies are a must. There are several opportunities, just like any other web page, to increase traffic, using a keyword in your initial pin, its caption, its meta description and so forth.

Improving Search Rankings

Pinterest is an active community, and it’s quickly edging out some of the competition. In a little more than two years, Pinterest has quickly grown an enthusiastic and loyal audience. It outranks other social media tools, coming in right behind Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

In 2012 alone, Pinterest has gained 11 million unique visitors. And with its valuable links, the potential for pins to go viral increases significantly, with 80 percent of activity on its boards “repins.

B2B marketers are wise to employ Pinterest as part of their social media marketing strategy. At Social Strategy1, we stand ready to assist businesses with our long-standing social media expertise. Call us today to find out more about our social media services.

Search engines are now collecting information from social networks in their efforts to provide users with relevant and useful information. Social search engine optimization holds particular promise for businesses that seek to better understand complex consumer reactions to your business’ marketing campaigns. In addition to drawing information from your social media presence to help your business website rank higher, social SEO also improves the visibility of your social media pages to help you engage existing and prospective customers more effectively.

In social SEO, it is important to keep in mind that your community of business partners – which includes not only your end customers but also your suppliers and vendors – play a very important role. Each of these entities can help drive more traffic to your website and social media pages, and this synergy can be harnessed to build a great deal of momentum. This provides you with an effective medium for both marketing and sharing, offering an opportunity to refine a creative and powerful long-term SEO strategy.

To ready your campaigns and strategies for the arrival of social SEO, it is important that you define your objectives in clear and specific terms. Combining the SEO-powered reach of your social media presence with properly refined and targeted content that can be easily shared and distributed, you can expand your visibility and reach far beyond what current best practices are able to offer.

Here are four key benefits of social SEO campaigns:

• More referral-driven traffic: Social search engine optimization creates enhanced opportunities to draw in traffic organically, which is an increasingly important way of improving rankings.
• Expanded access to consumers: More and more consumers are launching searches for products and services through social media outlets. One of the key benefits of socialized SEO is its ability to improve your visibility across multiple channels.
• Advantage over your competitors: The more diversified your online marketing assets are, the better positioned you will be to beat your competitors to the punch.
• Effective reputation and brand management: These new SEO practices offer additional ways of counteracting negative commentary and customer feedback.

Social SEO is very powerful, but it is difficult to master. The professional resources available at Social Strategy1 and its network of partner sites will help you learn everything you need to know to start working on your small business’ Social SEO. And if you need some extra help, Social Strategy1 will be there to support your ongoing efforts to take advantage of today’s dynamic online marketing landscape.

But you can’t just upload your YouTube videos and rest on your laurels, waiting for the traffic to roll in. You need to implement a strategy to create social media buzz and move your videos up in Google rankings, netting a higher ROI for your efforts.

YouTube’s value

Businesses that know the value of YouTube are already ahead of the game. Video marketing is quickly becoming the darling of internet marketers, as YouTube ranks second among all search engines, after Google. And some experts believe video will eventually outperform all other social media tools.

You can position your business to take advantage of the shift toward video marketing, as it’s easy to develop user-friendly marketing videos using the same content marketing principles you would use for other social media tools:

• Design: On YouTube, you can create “channels” for your business’ marketing videos. To further brand awareness and increase authority, your channel should include only those videos that are relevant. Think of your channel like your website; your brand should be just as carefully constructed on your YouTube channel.
• Intention: To build videos that get traffic, each video that you create should have a specific intention. There are several types of “content” you can create here, as with a blog. If your video serves two purposes, you’re likely to get weak results. Before you proceed, make a decision about the video’s purpose. Is it generate leads? Build your brand? Create conversions? Keep that purpose in my mind during all stages of video production.
• Scripting: Not everyone can be an oscar-winning writer, but a good outline is all you really need to create a successful YouTube video. Here’s one basic structure you can use: introduce your business and brand; briefly describe the benefits offered in the video; unload the value (or benefits you promised); conclude; and end with a call to action.
• SEO: To rank high, you’ll need to follow SEO practices as you would with any other social-media tool. First, choose the targeted keyword phrase; use the keyword when naming the file and when titling the video; include tags; and write the meta description. This description should include a link back to your main website, a few sentences (including keywords) about the video and the actual YouTube URL.

You can quickly get up to speed on YouTube marketing with a $7 download from Digital Marketer, which features more detailed information on designing and creating your SEO marketing videos.

The experts at Social Strategy1 can help you develop a social media strategy that builds brand awareness and boosts ROI. Contact us today to learn more.

Start The Conversation

Don’t wait for disgruntled customers to start coming out of the woodwork to start employing reputation management techniques – get out there and establish your brand online. A website is a start, but you should also have an active blog and several relevant social media accounts. If you don’t have this already, you’d better get started.

Remember, a blog is the perfect way for you to not only provide content to your clients and affiliates – past, present, and future – but to also influence social conversation, increase rankings and drive traffic to your website. What’s more, by using the proper social media channels, you can distribute this content far and wide, which increases positive brand exposure while generating fresh leads.

Creating engaging SEO-optimized content is only part of the equation. Make and encourage social connections by sharing the content of others or breaking industry news, and keeping up with trending topics. The more people you can involve in your social conversation, the more of an authority you’ll become in the social media landscape.

Be Honest

Thanks to social media, even the most insignificant incident can become a PR nightmare overnight. Unfortunately, many brands haven’t learned the lesson that transparency is an absolutely essential element of reputation management.

One of the worst things you can do in today’s social media-driven world is to try to fool the public. Instead of trying to censor complaints or sidestep negative conversation, take control of the situation. Admit where you are wrong, apologize, take responsibility and attempt to correct the situation.

While the news of your positive reaction won’t spread nearly as fast as the initial negativity, you’ll reinforce your status as a trustworthy business partner and hub of industry information.

Be Proactive

The best way to handle PR problems is to nip them in the bud. Of course, this requires real-time involvement with your social media channels. Surprisingly, many fail to recognize the value of such efforts, but this is an essential feature of successful reputation management.

The trick is to monitor social conversations about your brand and industry, and to recognize current trends that may influence the way you and your competitors do business moving forward. In doing this, you also have the opportunity to quickly respond to negative comments, engage your detractors and influence social conversation to keep the buzz around your brand positive.

For more information on reputation management and what we can do to help your efforts, contact Social Strategy1 today.

• Paul Greenberg, owner, The 56 Group
• Esteban Kolsky, founder and principal, ThinkJar
• Brent Leary, owner, CRM Essentials
• Denis Pombriant, CEO, Beagle Research Group
• Brian Solis, principal, Altimeter Group
• Ray Wang, principal analyst and CEO, Constellation Research

Carlson made these predictions:

1. Context services will sharpen the picture of customers and habits.
   Context services will be able to more accurately describe customers’ characteristics, location, buying habits, interests, social relationships and other factors — based on examination of their social media participation and from location-based services, smartphone applications and mobile-phone usage patterns.
2. Real-time customer intelligence will become available.
   Powerful new analytics programs will allow almost instantaneous gathering, analysis and use of customer data and intelligence These applications will make use of cloud computing and other technologies that can tap an almost limitless source of computer resources to provide the infrastructure for real-time services.
3. Television will assume a major role in customer engagement.
   Television, found in more than 115 million American households, will assume a newfound importance in CRM activities. Companies are likely to interact with customers through Internet-connected TVs that take full advantage of the in-home big-screen experience.
4. Virtual meetings will become more common and will alter business.
   Customers will be able to participate in fully interactive virtual meetings with company representatives or even other customers. This ability can enable the creation of participatory virtual conferences, trade shows, product demonstrations, or other forms of sales and marketing activities.
5. Gamification will become a major component of business strategy.
   Gamification — the process of adding game elements to nongame activities to increase engagement — will allow companies to add educational activities, offer interactive contest and sweepstakes participation, and provide social rewards programs. Companies will be able to identify customer behavior and interest through their participation in these gaming activities.

Social Strategy1’s research and analysis services can help expand your CRM activities into productive new areas using the power of social media. Contact us today to discuss how we can help you find critical CRM trends.

Beyond doing their own research and making purchasing decisions without your input, the social customer gets involved in far-reaching conversations about your brand — conversations that can have a significant and lasting effect on your public image.

Complaints that were once handled and resolved locally without media fanfare now have the potential to play out on a global stage. If you don’t have a social customer service plan in place to handle or even prevent such situations, the results can be disastrous.

Taking control of the conversation
In order for social customer service to be effective, you need employees in place who are savvy enough to interact with the social customer on a day-to-day basis, recognize potential problems and react accordingly. This means having a social media response plan in place that establishes a clear chain of command along with a process for action.

Of course, before you can react, you must be aware of the problem. That’s where social media monitoring comes in; this process allows you to monitor social media conversations as they happen. So when problems arise, your team can react with the immediacy necessary to curtail the likelihood of an unnecessary and unwanted PR nightmare.

Social media monitoring also allows you to track your social campaigns and assess marketing strategies in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

Benefits include:

• Free, honest feedback about your products and services.
• The opportunity to measure customer response to your marketing decisions.
• Front-row access to current trends that could affect how you do business.

Responding promptly and appropriately
By staying alert and responding to issues as they occur, you can influence negative conversation and turn it around before it gets out of hand. Remember, ignoring the problem is never the appropriate response, nor is censorship. Social customer service should convey to your customers that you are willing to take responsibility for mistakes and do anything you can do remedy negative situations.

By taking disgruntled customers seriously, you build stronger customer relations and develop a sense of brand loyalty that can turn a formerly disgruntled customer into an ambassador for your brand. This, in turn, influences social conversation and elevates your brand in the eyes of current and future customers and brand affiliates — a win-win situation.

Need to improve your social customer service? Social Strategy1 can help you get smarter, faster, and more social.