Tag Archives: Social Media Management

Meet Your Audience Halfway

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| Leave a comment
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Just because you show up to the party, doesn’t mean anyone has to interact with you. Social Media works similarly in that you can build a nice looking Twitter or Facebook profile and put out some great content at the right time, but there’s no guarantee that anyone will engage.

Listening 101
When someone is nice enough to follow you or like your page, it’s your responsibility to show them you are listening. You can do this by using the keywords and hashtags they are already using. Respond to the conversations already taking place.

Remember the questions they are posting on your page or tweeting. The answers to these questions make great blog posts, and if one person has that question you can bet others do as well.

Politeness counts
When your followers start engaging with you always say “thank you for your post/comment/RT.” You can also like their comment or favorite their Retweet.

Examples of Listening In Practice
When you see your name mentioned see what else they are referencing. For example, when I search for mentions of Engage121, I usually see #SMMS, SM tools, or community management. Then I search those hashtags or keywords on the web to seek out leads and potential customers.

College Hunks Hauling Junk is one of our clients and they do a great job meeting their audience halfway and engaging with them on their terms. College Hunks is not waiting to have someone tag them on Twitter but they are actively searching for their brand name being mentioned. Not everyone is going to take the time to search for your twitter handle before mentioning you or your services, especially when they are not satisfied!

Facebook fans can now direct message a business page. This is great for brands because not everyone wants to post their question or concern publicly on the brand’s timeline. Make sure to turn this feature on in the admin panel on your business page. Since College Hunks has enabled this feature on their business page they were able to get a new customer from responding to one of their fan’s immediate needs. Remember Social Media is in real-time and as you can see this was an immediate request. If College Hunks had waited a week to check their messages they would not have got this customer.

Are you engaging with your audience on their terms?

To read more posts about Best Practices for Optimizing your Social Media Publishing scroll through our blog here and SocialFlow’s blog to see posts written by Megan Smith.

Our next webinar will be on Septemmber 13th, you don’t want to miss this one! With the help of SocialFlow’s Head of R&D, Gilad Lotan, we will be delving into the power and intricacies of timing in social media optimization.

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Engage121 Clients, Facebook, Social Media Monitoring, Twitter

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The question still remains for Top Executives: What should we do about Social Media?

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Jon Victor| 1 Comment
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When we first developed our social media management application in 2009, our product development team benefitted from the insights of well over one hundred companies that were clients of our grassroots communication service. These clients included national real estate companies, automobile companies and a broad cross-section of the franchise industry. All wereasking us the same question: “What should we do about social media?” We heard that question so often that we decided to invest a substantial sum and many hours of hard work on the development of Engage121.

A few years have now passed. Engage121 has launched – and so have hundreds of other companies and products also focused on helping companies manage their social media presence.

Every once in a while, we get an objective glimpse of whether we – as a company and an industry – are meeting the needs of our clients.

In both cases, our work is far from done.

At the suggestion of a client, I recently read IBM’s October 2011 survey of Chief Marketing Officers, “From Stretched to Strengthened.” I recommend the survey to all marketers – but, I especially recommend the survey to social media professionals who consider the survey a report card on whether we are meeting the needs and expectations of CMOs, arguably our most important constituency.

A quick summary: “CMOs see four challenges as pervasive, universal game-changers: the data explosion, social media, proliferation of channels and devices and shifting consumer demographics.” Note “pervasive” and “game changers” – those are noteworthy choices of words. And, how do CMOs feel about all this?Among many of the statistics reported, 68% of CMOs feel unprepared to manage social media, and 65% express concern about managing the growth of channels and devices.

In my mind, CMOs are expressing one big concern, and that’s “what should we do about social media?” CMOs are expressing the same concern today that I heard several years ago – notwithstanding the proliferation of new products, more data, sophisticated analytics and the explosion of digital media professionals offering help.

Our business objective – as Engage121 and as the “social media management services” industry – is to provide the data, analytics and functionality that marketers require to survive and thrive.

We have more work to do.

– Jon Victor, CEO Engage121

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Posted in Engage121, Social Media Marketing

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