Having been speaking about social media topics for almost two years, I’ve seen the tide change from early adopter to businesses now understanding that they must be in the space. Even so, I still meet much cynicism that questions whether social media can really produce sales.

What most companies tend to lose sight of is that your current customers and your former customers are the people most likely to buy from you.  This means that if you are looking at Facebook and Twitter to be a next evolution sales channel, you need to be sure that you are reaching your customers on these networks.

How to reach your customers on Facebook and Twitter:

• Have a solid strategy for inspiring them to connect with you. After all, if they’re not seeing or opening your emails, Facebook and Twitter provide you with another opportunity to get your message in front of them.

1. • Provide incentives for your customer to become a fan or follower. Make you sure answer the question— what’s in it for them?
   • Place your requests to connect  where your customers will see them. Don’t expect a casual mention at the bottom of an email to do the trick.
   • Ask for the connection at every touch point. Don’t rely on just one channel to do all the work.

• Leverage the third party resources that are now available to enhance your database. Take active steps to identify which of your customers are on Facebook and Twitter and understand who is connected to you and who is not. Create a strategy to fill in any gaps in these very important connections.

Over the past decade, companies who market directly to customers added email as a vital element to their contact strategies. Capturing email addresses has become a higher priority than postal addresses for many businesses. Here we are now in the early age of social media marketing, yet few companies have adopted a practice of capturing relevant social network data for their customers.

In a future article I will discuss the resources that are now available to purchase data that enables you to know what social networks your customers are on and the URL of their profile. While I consider myself an evangelist for these kinds of resources, I also heartily encourage any company who recognizes social networks as a serious direct marketing channel to start capturing social data on your own. Here’s why:

1. Communication preferences are changing as more options in which to communicate become available. Depending on demographic, the emails you send to your customers’ non-work email addresses may pile up unseen as they rely more and more on Facebook for their personal communication.
2. Measuring the impact of social networks at the customer level is only possible if you apply  social network activity to your customer records.
3. Targeting customers with social efforts can only be done if you can identify where your customers can be reached.
4. Being the initiator of the social relationship shows your customer that you care about engaging with them. Don’t sit back and wait for them to fan or follow you. Ask them for their social contact data and start cementing your relationships!
5. Don’t give your competitors an opportunity to engage with your customers before you do! When a loyal customer is followed by your competitor and you’re not on the scene, what message does that deliver?

I’d love to answer any questions you might have on this evolving topic.

Do you understand how to manage your social media marketing program? Most companies and entrepreneurs simply “show up” establishing a Twitter account, Facebook page, or blog without a plan. The idea that being there takes precedence over strategically leveraging each social network.

By understanding how to manage your social media marketing, your efforts will  evolve from a casual, random, unmeasured effort to a strategic, analytical and consistently refined program. By not planning your social media marketing and without ongoing monthly management, your marketing efforts will fail with very poor to ineffective results

8 Tasks For Managing Your Social Media Marketing

1. Content Strategy: you must develop a message content strategy that supports your business goals
2. Contact Strategy: you must develop a contact strategy and schedule
3. Delivery: you should deliver messages according to schedule
4. Analyzation: you should analyze the results of your messages
5. Adjustments: you should refine your strategy and schedule based on results
6. Recognize People: you must acknowledge new connections on the various social networks
7. Conversations: you must engage with connections on the social networks
8. Search: you must research opportunities to reach out to new individuals that align with your product by utilizing the internal search engines within each social network you are marketing within

What If You Can Not Do This?

If you or your company does not have the time, manpower, or expertise to manage an ongoing social media marketing program, you should consider hiring a consulting firm to take on this vital function. Inner Architect manages the Facebook page(s) and Twitter account(s) for major companies, like Whitehall Lane winery, in order to provide the following benefits:

• Lead Generation
• Prospecting
• Sales
• Research
• Broadcasting
• Announcements
• Customer Relationship Management
• Customer Service
• Reputation Management
• SEO

I am not the only person who sees the potential for social media to make a more significant contribution to a company’s business goals this year. But just like a toddler blossoming into childhood needs interaction and support from the family, social media will best develop as a significant contributor to the business by integrating it with already established marketing efforts.

Here are 5 steps any direct marketer can take to influence results across all channels:

1. Use Twitter as a vehicle for identifying and engaging with prospects.
2. Once engaged, invite your new follower to become a fan of your Facebook page.
3. Provide incentives on your Facebook page to add your new fan to your “traditional” marketing lists.
4. Support your email and offline efforts through your Facebook and Twitter messaging.
5. Invest in ways to measure ROI as a function of lifetime value.

Just like your any well-engined marketing strategy does not surface overnight, develop the expectation that your integrated social media strategy will evolve over time. A good place to start is understanding what’s happening on your Facebook page.

One last thing. Don’t ever forget the marketer’s credo—

Always be testing!

Ship Naming Wiki

If you have adopted a social media plan are you on the right track? How do you know if you are taking the right steps? In order to understand the position you are in today, it is important to answer five questions.

5 Questions About Your Social Media Plan

• Have you adopted the right tools to effectively leverage social media as a marketing channel?
• Are you participating in the social networks that best reach your target audience?
• Do you know what to say in your messages?
• Do you have an effective contact strategy?
• Can you measure your efforts?

5 Components of Social Media Diagnostic

• Social media overview: Analytical review of your social media presence
• Profile analysis: Reports how well your profile is strategically positioned to maximize and attract opportunities
• Diagnostic overview: Review to insure all your social media sites include your links, links are interconnected, and all your sites are pointing links to and from one another
• Marketing analysis: Insuring that you understand how to send your blog article links, leave links in comment sections of blogs, and how to move your value message forward in a strategically targeted method
• Traffic analysis: Insure your sites are open to traffic, check availability of widgets and their usage, and analyze your networking efforts within each social media site

Results

If your company can not answer any or a majority of these questions then it is time for a social media marketing diagnostic. Before you begin investing time-money-manpower-effort into this vital strategy get more information on how to get started.