Mike’s Points

Questions are great. With questions — the right questions — you can communicate your opinion while also seeking input. Of course, if you’re conducting legit market research, you don’t want leading questions.

But, if you’re in an online or social media community manager-type role, questions are a great way to obtain community input and feedback while giving the individuals in your community the opportunity to be heard and make an impact.

I’ve said all along that, in social media, you need to buy into others’ ego and that inherent need we all have to feel important. If operated correctly, an online community allows just that — while still accomplishing marketing objectives.

While all social media is about community, there are, of course, more community-focused platforms than others: Twitter, Facebook, and discussion boards* to name a few. If you’re a business or association, your followers and fans usually have some connection to you, and have accepted the marketing side of your involvement on these platforms. So, a little promotion is expected — but don’t over do it.

Below are 10 questions a business or organization can ask to give individuals in your community a voice while obtaining valuable feedback — and spurring positive branding as well. These are general and should be customize to your particular business, product, service, offering or whatever you’re trying to sell. Please add any other types of questions or feedback you have in the comments.

1. Invite community members to submit a design using your product/service/logo/etc., and then periodically use a submission for your profile or account icon. It’s a great way to see how community members visualize your brand and what they associate it with.
2. What tips do you have to share with other community members — could be tied to Brand XYZ or in general? This type of question is good if you have a cleaning product, weight-managment product, or other item where people can share their expertise on a topic wrapped around your market focus.
3. What do like best about Brand XYZ?
4. What is your favorite flavor, type, variety, meal, etc.
5. When was your first experience with Brand XYZ? How or why did you first learn of us?
6. What are suggestions do you have for improving Brand XYZ, i.e., add or get new location, flavor, design, color, functionality, etc.?
7. What could we do to get you to visit or buy more of Brand XYZ? Of course, price is always a main consideration but other than price, what? If price is the only consideration, feel free to say so.
8. When do you use or visit Brand XYZ? Does your use tie in to a particular time of day, when you first awake or are working on something late at night, when you are celebrating something, etc.?
9. What memories do you have tied to Brand XYZ?
10. Is there anyone associated with Brand XYZ — an employee or even another community member — that you’d like to give a shout-out to, helped you, made an impact, etc.

Of course, these are general questions and, as I said above, should be customized to your product, service, organization or whatever you are trying to market.

For other online community resources, I encourage you check out and follow:

• Connie Bensen, well-known community strategist who current works at Alterian-Techrigy
• Amber Naslund, who is director of community for Radian6
• Mashable’s 10 Rules for Increasing Community Engagement
• Chris Brogan’s Essential Skills for a Community Manager

Thank you!

-Mike

*On many discussion boards, unless you started it, there are limitations to the level of promotion you have. Some boards have threads dedicated for company news and such. For most threads, you have to be more generic to engage the community, but it’s still possible.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/travelinlibrarian/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The great thing about social media marketing is how encompassing it can be, and how many parts of business it can touch. With all of its potential and many opportunities, a part of me still likes things to be simple.

So, in this 1:37 video, I try to sum up what social media marketing is. In four simple words.

Please have a look. I very much welcome your comments and if you agree or not — especially if not.

-Mike

(The post headline is supposed to be said in the voice of a newspaper boy selling newspapers at a downtown corner. Sarcastically, of course.)

Last month, I tweeted:

Creating in social media is easy. It’s the maintaining that requires know-how, patience & time.

And, for the most part, that’s true. Social media technologies are cheap at worst; free at best. While there is value in the know-how in the creation of social media activities like a blog, a Twitter account, etc., the process often is not complicated.

So, during the past few days, I created a four-step process to create a Facebook Page. I have a few more thoughts on the social media creation v maintenance issue at my latest Toledo Social Media Examiner article.

If you want to see and download my “How to Create a Facebook Page for Your Business / Organization,” you can click on over to the Toledo Social Media Examiner article or see the file at my DocStoc account.

Of course, any feedback on the how-to will definitely be appreciated. Anything left out? How can it be better?
-Mike

During the last couple days, I looked at using search — or better, social media monitoring — to help with blogger outreach, and search to help improve one’s Twitter community.

Today (yes, I know I’m very late with this post), let’s take a look at LinkedIn for building business prospects. This can be used for various objectives, but, in my example, I’m looking at it as a small agency or solo practitioner using it in business development.

LinkedIn has many great ways to find people within your community — professionally and/or geographically — that are open to business relationships. While LinkedIn offers many ways to search, you do business with people, not “companies,” right?

So, use the advanced people search: see right.

While there are many ways to filter your search, I want to point out a few key ways:

Keywords: You can search for prospects based on terms related to vertical industries you have experience in. Sure, you can filter by Industry, but using keywords allow you to refine your search around specific industry terms.

Geography: Looking to do business near you or in your favorite city? LinkedIn has a lot of flexibility to help you search by geography.

Open to potential: The bottom box highlighted is the real key: It shows you who on LinkedIn is interested in what. I have the “interested in: Consultants/contractors” option. There’s also:

• Potential employees
• Entrepreneurs
• Hiring managers
• Industry experts
• Deal-making contacts

And, the ever-there: all option.

Once you get your results, you can sort various ways, from relationship to you, recommendation, keywords and relevance.

So, what are your good LinkedIn tips?

Since business is all about relationships, be sure you are networking with local Social Media Breakfast groups, Social Media Clubs, PRSA, chamber groups, etc. And, be sure you check out LinkedIn to see who is closely connected to you — but you don’t yet know.

-Mike

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use social media to build business — either having me talk with your group or help your social media marketing efforts — I would appreciate it if you’d contact me.

Cold-calling stinks. It’s a numbers game, and the nos don’t matter.

After graduating from college, I was fortunate to be brought on board with an Ithaca, Mich., personal finance advising firm. From hearing of the lavish company trips, the job offered great rewards. But, the bulk of the day was sitting in a phone bank room, calling people out of the phone book with script telling them how Social Security was changing and how I could help.

It wasn’t for me (though, I did set up two appointments before quitting after a few days).

If enough of your targeted audience is on social media platforms like blogs, Twitter and LinkedIn, you can use search to eliminate cold calling and develop a connection to open the door for a possible sales or marketing contact. As I’ve posted before, social media is about the Three Cs: Connecting, Contributing, Community.

And, search is a great connecting tool. Starting today and continuing Tuesday and Wednesday, let’s look at three ways to use search to improve your social media marketing or business efforts.

Blogger outreach

Say you have a new diaper that is super absorbent, does no harm to any baby and decomposes within five days of being tossed out in the garden. Cool, eh? And, you want to do some sampling to mommy bloggers.

But there are so many — do you contact just the most popular? Or, the ones that only do product reviews?

No, you conduct a search — with a free service like Google Alerts or a comprehensive social media monitoring tool — with terms like:

• “cloth diapers”: Chances are these moms want to be green and don’t want too have disposables clogging up landfills. There’s a connection.
• “disposable diapers”: If your new diapers have a small price differential vs regular diapers, most people would switch to being green if the effort doesn’t cost more. There’s a connection.
• “composting” or “gardening” with “mom” or “family”: You’re looking for moms who also have an interest in gardening or composting. They may not have kids in diapers, but they may have readers who do — and your product would be of interest. There’s a connection.

Of course, you may have to adjust your terms depending on if your first set of results achieves enough possible bloggers: That is, moms who already are blogging about subjects centered around your product.

Once you find these moms, do your research into their popularity to find the ones that have a sizable audience. Use services like Quantcast, Compete and Sitemeter (if they use it).

Also determine if they do product reviews.

From that list you develop based on the above two filters, read and become familiar with them before contacting them.

With the knowledge of their past related posts and your familiarity with them, you can establish a connection.

Next, I’ll take a look at how to use Twitter for sales efforts.

-Mike

Sales pitch: I’ve conducted numerous blogger outreach using the above method. If you’re interested in me talking to your organization about social media marketing, or in us possibly working together, contact me.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denverjeffrey/ / CC BY-ND 2.0