Once upon a time, customers could only get in touch with you by telephone, letter or by visiting your premises. If they were unhappy, they’d probably moan about you to a friend or two and you’d be non the wiser.

How times have changed. Now, if they’re unhappy they’ll tweet about it or post in on their Facebook page. Before you know it, the whole world will know they received bad service.

That’s why, as a business, it’s vital you’re using social media.

How social media can be used to your advantage

If there’s one thing everyone loves, it’s to talk. By listening to social media channels, you can learn a lot about your customers’ likes and dislikes. So you need to use that to your advantage.

1. Sales Department

The optimum time to sell to someone is when they’re ready to buy. Hitting on that golden moment isn’t easy. But monitoring social media channels will give you the advantage.

If you’re an electrical retailer and someone in your Twitter feed is asking advice on buying a new radio, you can respond and offer advice. That puts you in the right place at the right time.

2. Marketing Department

Listening to your target market will tell you whether your marketing materials are addressing the questions your customers are asking.

3. Customer Service

We’ve already looked at how an unhappy customer can use social media to vent their frustration. But imagine if you were monitoring Twitter for anyone mentioning your company name. You would be able to pick up the fact that there’s a problem and deal with it straightaway.

Then you would go from a disappointment to the best company in the world because you listened and put it right.

4. Research and Development

Eaves-dropping will tell you a lot about what people really want. But you can also use social media as a way of conducting customer research. Ask your customers what they want and give it to them.

5. Human Resources

Can social media really help with HR?

Yes, users fill out profiles showing their skills and experience (e.g. on LinkedIn). If you’re looking for someone with a particular skill, just search for them.

It’s amazing just how many ways social media can help businesses today. If you’re not already there, start using it today – your competitors are.

Everyone uses social media these days – or at least it seems like it.

As a copywriter I use it a lot. Whether it’s tweeting for help (usually IT related problems), offering advice, promoting my blog posts, or just general chit-chat, I love using it as a way of connecting with other people.

Did you see that? I said I used it for connecting with people.

The problem is, some social media users out there don’t connect, they spam. And that’s not something you want to do – especially if you want people to follow you or ‘like’ your Facebook page.

What’s spamming?

Well, if you constantly tweet about promotions, your products, news about your company and what you’re doing, without actually engaging with people, you’re spamming.

Granted, social media is a fabulous marketing tool through which you can:

• Encourage newsletter sign-ups
• Promote your blogs
• Promote offers and give-aways

But, if that’s all you do and never respond to questions, share information, or join in with conversations, you’re not going to get a lot out of social media.

Why? Because it’s all about conversing and building relationships and that’s a two-way street, and that means you have to:

• Listen to others and help if you can
• Engage with your followers to see what they are looking for
• Build relationships with people
• Give advice and ask for help

Plus, if you listen to what people are talking about, you can use it as a valuable market research tool.

It’s not all about you

Another great way to build relationships is to promote other people.

If someone tweets that they’re looking for a great designer, and you just happen to know one, put them in touch with each other.

Marketing – Connecting – Reciprocity : The 3 pillars of social media.

If you remember that, you’ll start to get the most out of social media.

Go on, join in, it’s fun. For starters, why not follow me on Twitter –here I am, @sallyormond.

Most people will either love social media or hate it – with the odd few thrown in who simply don’t ‘get it’.

But the problem is for those who hate or don’t ‘get it’, social media is here to stay and it will continue to grow. We’ve already seen Google join the party with Google+ so your days of keeping it at arms length are numbered.

It’s time to join in.

Personally I love it. Working as a freelance copywriter it has helped me not only gain new clients but its also enabled me to meet great people, boost my online exposure and find people to help me in my hour of need.

If you think to be effective you have to sit on Twitter or Facebook all day, you don’t. Having said that, an occasional look in when you feel like it won’t help either. You must have a regular presence but that doesn’t mean it has to rule your life.

What social media is all about

Have you ever been guilty of saying:

“I can’t see the point of Twitter”

“Why do I want to know what a complete stranger’s had for lunch?”

“It’s not as if anyone reads that stuff anyway.”

“None of my customers use it so why should I?”

The strange thing is, people view social media as some sort of ‘new age’ passing fad and yet it’s just traditional networking that is carried out online. It makes people more accessible so you can actually get to speak with those people who normally hide behind a wall of stern secretaries.

It’s a social activity so it’s just about chatting, building relationships and being interested in other people – just like face to face networking. The only difference is you don’t have to get into your car and drive to an event (which in itself is a God send considering the price of petrol these days).

What’s there not to get?

If you’re an avid face to face networker all you have to do is transfer those skills to the online community. You already know that a sales pitch never goes down well at networking events so you’ll know that’s not how to conduct yourself on social media either.

Build a strategy

Just as with traditional networking, you won’t get results overnight. You have to devise a long term strategy that’s right for your business.

If you decide to blog you’ll need a plan, lots of ideas and a blogging schedule. When you start to tweet you must build time into your day and make it part of your routine if you want it to be effective.

Becoming part of the growing online community is a great way of getting your business known. Be generous with your information, have conversations, ask and answer questions – by participating and engaging you will draw people to you and start to see results.

Over to you

Have you started using social media? If so leave a comment and tell us how you’re getting on.

Perhaps you’re still resisting – what’s stopping you from joining in?

Leave a comment below and let’s start a conversation.

Internet marketing is vitally important for your business.

Not convinced?

OK, utilising activities such as article marketing, social media, blogging and other content creation will have a dramatic effect on your business’ online visibility and exposure.

Just in case you are still sitting there shaking your head, take a look at a few facts and figures that were compiled earlier this year by Pingdom about internet usage, social media, email etc.

So if you’re ready, prepare to be blown away.

Email

Whether you use email as a marketing medium or simply as a method of communication, it is a vital part of your business. Just take a look at these stats:

• 107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010
• 294 billion – Average number of email messages per day
• 1.88 billion – The number of email users worldwide
• 480 million – New email users since the year before
• 89.1% – The share of emails that were spam
• 262 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 89% are spam)
• 2.9 billion – The number of email accounts worldwide
• 25% – Share of email accounts that are corporate

Amazing eh? When you see those sorts of numbers you suddenly realise how reliant we have become on technology for our businesses and every day lives.

And that’s just the start.

Internet

This is the biggy – especially if you’re still unsure whether your business should be online or not. Bearing in mind there are 255 million websites (as at December 2010) with 21.4 million added in 2010 there is an enormous opportunity for online marketers.

Add in the following stats on internet usage and you’ll see why the internet is the place to be:

• 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (June 2010)
• 14% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year
• 825.1 million – Internet users in Asia
• 475.1 million – Internet users in Europe
• 266.2 million – Internet users in North America
• 204.7 million – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean
• 110.9 million – Internet users in Africa
• 63.2 million – Internet users in the Middle East
• 21.3 million – Internet users in Oceania / Australia

When you view these figures as a potential market for your products and services you’d be mad not to be making the most of it.

But what about the new(ish) kid on the block? Well…

Social Media

Yup, social media is here to stay and is sure to morph into all sorts of new forms over the coming years.

It has opened up new lines of communication making it easier than ever for consumers to voice their opinions.

If you are one of the many people who still think social media is just a passing phase, take a look at this:

• 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse)
• 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
• 100 million – New accounts added on Twitter in 2010
• 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
• 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user)
• 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010
• 250 million – New people on Facebook in 2010
• 30 billion – Pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month
• 70% – Share of Facebook’s user base located outside the United States
• 20 million – The number of Facebook apps installed each day

That doesn’t look like a passing fad to me.

If you want to grow your business exponentially, get on the internet and join in the social media conversation.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter, blogger and social media groupie

Twitter – a world in 140 characters. It seems such a harmless tool and yet it can make or break a business.

Social media hasn’t only given you a much louder voice, it has also provided your customers with a huge stage from which they can address the world in an instant. That’s great if they are shouting nice things about you but what happens when things go wrong?

As soon as you hit send, your tweet is released into cyberspace to be potentially seen by millions. OK, you may not have that many followers but what happens if one of your followers retweets it to their followers and then one of their followers retweets it to their followers…

Before you know it your blooper could be circumnavigating the globe faster than the fastest thing you can imagine.

That is why when you use Twitter you have to use it carefully because if you don’t you could end up in some seriously hot water.

5 Classic Twitter Bloopers

1. No arguing

It’s a sad fact of life but you can’t please everyone all of the time so, I hate to say it, but not everyone will love your company.

The problems is, Twitter gives a dissatisfied customer a very loud voice. If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having someone loudly voicing their displeasure about your company, don’t get drawn into a slanging match – even if they are wrong.

Remember potentially thousands of people will see what’s happening so you have to quickly deal with it in a positive way. Whatever their issue, apologise and put it right immediately.

That way you would have turned a potentially negative situation into a goal in the back of the net. People will see you as a responsive business who cares about its customers. One nil to you.

2. Autofollow

Let’s get one think clear – Twitter is not a numbers game. You won’t gain any respect for having thousands and thousands of followers. In fact if you do (and you’re not Lady Gaga) it will be obvious you’ve just followed one of the many ‘how to get loads of twitter followers quickly’ schemes.

But why have so many? Surely it’s more important to follow people you want to follow and not just anyone who follows you.Which means don’t use autofollow.

When you get a new follower take a look at their bio and their tweets. Is it someone you’re interested in? Do they tweet great stuff? If the answer’s yes, great follow them. But if not, there’s no rule that say you have to follow everyone who follows you.

3. Think before you tweet

Yes you can use Twitter for your business but if you constantly bang on about it and link back to it at every given opportunity you’ll look like a spammer. So be careful what you tweet.

Mix up advice with your promotional tweets. And don’t forget to join in with the conversation. Twitter is about chatting and sharing not standing on your soap box and promoting yourself.

Share opinions and great information – add value to your followers and they’ll love you.

4. Be a personality

Even if you’re a company you can still show some personality.

Engagement is the name of the game so show your human side. Have fun with Twitter and show your business as one that’s approachable.

5. Two way traffic

Twitter isn’t just a platform for you to shout from. You also have to listen to what’s going on and enhance relationships with advice and chat.

Keeping an eye on what’s being said about your business is vital if you are to quickly react to problems.

So make sure you also listen to what people are saying.

Twitter has been a revolution in marketing. It’s opened up a highly responsive communication channel between businesses and customers. If you use it wisely it will be a huge benefit to you. So give it a go – just make sure you don’t make any of these bloopers!

Over to you 

Are you using Twitter? If so what has your experience been? Leave a comment below and share how it has helped (or hindered) your business.

In the good old days customers would communicate with you via letter, phone or in person. Today things are very different. Now they can send you a tweet, post a comment on your blog or leave you a message on Facebook.

In the past if someone was unhappy with your service the ‘bad press’ was usually limited to a few of their friends and family (unless it was seriously bad service and the wrote to the Editor of your local paper). Now a single tweet or Facebook message could potentially be seen by millions.

Now, more than ever, you must have procedures in place to deal with social media communications. You have to think about how you will monitor them, how you will respond to both positive and negative comments and how you’ll interact with your audience.

Enhancing your online reputation is essential in todays transparent culture. Here are 3 easy things you can do to make sure your company holds its head up high and shines.

1. Thank you

Manners cost nothing and a simple ‘thank you’ can be a very powerful tool.

When a follower retweets you, leaves a comment on your blog or sends a referral to you, thank them. It doesn’t take a lot of effort and shows that you are listening and that you care about your customers. And in the eyes of your customers, that translates into the image of a company they want to do business with. 

But you don’t just have to keep an eye on your social media platforms. There are many other ways you can be talked about online so it’s important to monitor the internet to find out what’s being said. There are a number of tools out there such as Google Alerts which will email Google results based on your query or topic:

Or Social Mention which works in a similar way but searches social media channels:

Using these tools will help you keep track of what people are saying about you online so you can see how your brand is perceived and, as a customer service tool, enables you to solve issues quickly before they get out of hand.  

2. Blogging

Loads of people blog so that should tell you its a valuable tool to use within your business.

Not only does it allow you to own more of the web, it also is a great way to add value to your customer relationships because you can offer them tips and advice that will make their lives easier. Plus it will help position you as an expert in your field which is always good.

But the trick is to ensure you write stuff your readers want to learn about. If you are a building firm and blog about holidays, you’re not going to be adding value. But if you wrote about important issues in your trade, design ideas etc., you would create a connection with your readers and inspire them to make the most of their homes.

Take this blog for example, as a freelance copywriter I not only write about copywriting but also general marketing issues, social media, brochure copy etc., which are all topics business owners find useful. Therefore not only do I get traffic to my website, the people that come also find the experience useful.  

3. Focus on benefits

Whenever you write about your products or services, always focus on your customer; why they will benefit from it. By writing for them you are showing that you understand what’s important to them and want to help them achieve that.

Showing that kind of connection will identify you as a company that cares about its customers and not just its profits. And let’s face it, you tend to buy from people you like and trust. So if you come across as arrogant people aren’t going to buy from you.

When marketing your business it’s all too easy to get wrapped up in it and lose sight of what’s really important – your customers.

Make sure they are at the forefront of everything you do because without them you don’t have a business.  

Interact with them, thank them and go out of your way to make sure they are happy. Use social media to your advantage.

Social media isn’t always an easy thing to get to grips with. It’s like any new thing – it takes a while to get the hang of it and a lot of practice. And understanding it is unlikely to happen over night; it will take time and patience.

Let’s face it, communicating via a computer, iPad or smartphone to a bunch of people you’ve probably never met before isn’t the most natural thing in the world.

If you were physically in a crowd you could stand out and be noticed by your looks, clothing or extravert personality. When chatting with online ‘friends’ standing out isn’t so easy but that’s what you need to do if you want to attract followers.

Get noticed in social media

When tweeting, Facebooking or chatting in forums you must let your personality shine through which is why it’s best not to farm out your social media activity.

But make sure it is the real you and not a persona you’re adopting purely to attract followers. You may think you can be anyone sat in front of your computer but what happens when you meet these people face to face? And you will – not all of them but some of them.

If when they do business with you or meet you, you come across as something completely different from what they were led to believe they’ll lose their trust in you – so be warned and be yourself. 

Companies on social media

A lot of companies get it all wrong. Don’t get me wrong, we all make mistakes when first starting out using something for the first time – but they miss the point about it being social.

Just because your are a company doesn’t mean you have to come across all corporate and starchy. Showing a bit of personality will endear your followers to you and show that you are a company that’s approachable and that cares about its customers. 

Whether you’re a sole trader, partnership or company, social media is a platform from which you can directly communicate with your customers. Injecting some personality into your communications will give a face to your business. It will show you are someone to do business with; someone who cares.

Social media can help every business given time. Just work out your strategy and, if you’re a larger business, your company social media policy and have fun.

Communicate, share and above all enjoy it – it is meant to be social media after all.

Social media is everywhere, everyone seems to be using it but are you really getting the most out of it?

Of course, that is assuming you’re using it – you are though, aren’t you?

Using social media doesn’t mean simply setting up a Facebook page or Twitter account; anyone can do that. Using these social tools effectively will help you attract followers and, in turn, boost the visibility of your business along with sales.

Yes, it really can do that.

Using social media

The amount of time you can give to social media is going to depend on:

• Your job
• How important you think it is as a marketing tool
• Your motivation

As a freelance copywriter I use social media a lot (especially Twitter - @sallyormond). Because I’m always tweeting and posting on Facebook, people know my name and as a result I have gained a lot of new clients through social media.

See, I told you it was an effective marketing tool.

But I also see a lot of people who have the accounts but aren’t using it as effectively as they could. That inevitably results in them losing faith with it as a marketing tool and giving up before they’ve even got started.

To help you make the most of your social media marketing (and to have fun with it), here are 5 elements that may be causing you to repel more people than you attract.

1. Talking

Most people love to talk and that’s what social media is all about. But that doesn’t mean you can just talk about you – it must be a 2 way conversation. It is not a broadcast channel. It’s not like radio when you can buy an air slot to promote your business. Constant business tweeting will turn people off – why should they listen to a Twitter version of junk mail?

2. Biography

All social media platforms allow you to add a short biography so people can learn a bit about you. If you want to attract followers you must make the most of the words you use. Make sure your keyword is there and make the rest of the text human and not a blatant advert.

Writing it with personality will attract far more people than something contrived and robotic.

3. ‘Social’

There’s nothing like pointing out the obvious but social media is a social activity.

If you constantly send out things about your business and not about you, how will people get to know you? And, as you are well aware, people buy from people. So open up and let them get to know you.

That doesn’t mean you can’t mention your business at all. Of course you can – you can promote offers (but not all the time), draw attention to your latest blog posts etc. But mix them up with tips and chatty conversation. 

4. Pied Piper

One mistake many people make on Twitter is they follow these ‘get loads of followers really quickly’ techniques. Why? It’s not a competition. The person with the most followers doesn’t get a prize.

Your Twitter community should be made up of people you know, want to know or find interesting. Just because someone follows you doesn’t mean you have to follow them back.

When someone follows you check out their profile and take a look at their tweets. Are they someone that interests you? Are they in your industry? Do  they tweet interesting or useful stuff? Those should be the questions you ask yourself before clicking follow.

5. Wallflower

When you’ve set up your social media accounts, you have to go out there and meet people. If you sit back and wait for them to come to you, you could get very lonely.

Find interesting people and start a conversation with them. Slowly you’ll gather more followers, have more conversations, gather more followers etc. Basically if you want to be part of it you have to join in. 

Social media – in all its guises - is a great tool for business but it should also be fun. Through it you can open doors that would normally be firmly shut and interact with people you would never normally meet. So give it a go.

Just about any copywriter you meet would have, at one time or another, uttered the words - content is king

So you know how important content is and you understand the importance of social media in today’s marketing strategies but do you know how to use them to optimal effect?

Content and social media – a marriage made in heaven

I spied a post recently on Social Media Examiner called How Content and Social Media Equal Marketing Success which investigates the union between content and social media.

The video interview with Jo Puilizzi (author of Get Content, Get Customers) points out the importance of content and how it must be written in conjunction with your social media strategy.

Start at the beginning

Before any business dips its toe in the waters of social media, it has to identify the online ‘hang outs’ of its customers.

Then its has to start having conversations with them. This relationship building is the foundation to all social marketing:

• Talk to them
• Find out what they’re looking for
• Contribute to their conversations
• Provide great information.

Done effectively, your customers will absorb your information (eBooks, white papers etc.) and spread them to others.

The video is about 12 minutes long but is well worth a watch so grab a coffee and discover how to make your content marketing go further.

Whether you’ve fallen in love with social media or you’re still being a wall-flower not quite confident enough to dive in and give it a go, it really is a great way to market your business.

As more companies begin to get their head round it they are starting to embrace Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave and all the other weird and wonderful platforms out there.

Through trial and error they are beginning to work out which applications work best for them and their marketplace.

As they begin to engage with people they gather follower and fans but for some, converting those into customers is still a big issue.

Can you really get new customers through social media?

Yes you can – I’ve had several new clients enquire about my copywriting services and hire me to work with them through contact initially made through social media.

The key thing to remember is that just because you are using social media doesn’t mean customers will automatically come flooding to your door.

It doesn’t work like that.

As a business you have to follow customers across the social web engage with them and build a relationship with them.

I came across a blog post the other day that will help you achieve this. Convince and Convert’s “4 Detective tricks to find your customer in social media” will help you understand how to use social media as part of your business.

So don’t be that wall-flower. Dive in and enjoy the social media experience.