How to design your social media marketing campaign

You know how it goes...you pick up the paper, surprised by it's weight. When you open it up, out tumbles a huge wad of advertising leaflets. We've all been there! The problem for businesses who still use this form of advertising is that hardly anybody reads them. The recycling bins are full of Pizza take-away menus, supermarket deals leaflets, furniture store sales flyers... etc etc. Is your business still advertising using the print medium? If so, you are probably wasting your money, and this sort of advertising doesn't come cheap by any means.. And in this day and age,it's becoming increasingly irrelevant...

                                                               (photo from hloom.com)

Social media has worked its way into every part of our lives.It is ubiquitous, and more to the ppoint, it is where people go to find things they want to buy and services they need. They just don't want to plough through all of the bits of paper cluttering up the house. If your marketing campaign is to reach people who want your services or products, then social media is where you just have to be. And more to the point, you need to pick your platforms very carefully according to your target audience. There is no point taking time to participate on a social space which is not the home of your target market. This is where good advice is essential. There is always a cost to social media, be it time or outsourcing it to somebody to do.

                                                         (image from library.ohiou.edu)

Take expert advice on the design of your marketing campaign on social media. This should include design, inception, integration with your website, creating conversations, management, detailed monthly analytics on line reputation management and brand protection. 

Whilst expert advice is never cheap, it could save you money in the long run if you get your social media activity right first time and managed for you effectively and efficiently. Many web design and digital media consultancies claim to be able to advise on social media, but you wouldn't ask an orthopedic surgeon to deliver your baby would you? Pick a specialist social media consultancy to advise you. It will be money well spent...they can advise you on every aspect of your marketing campaign and provide you with a real return on your investment (ROI). This is important because there is lots of available data which will help you with the direction and fine-tuning of your marketing and put you right at the heart of where you need to be - on your potential customers' social media feeds..

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Online Reputation Management - Protect your Brand

Recent food health scares have burst over social media like an atomic bomb. Horse meat scares have done the rounds on twitter and facebook and the other platforms and some big names have come under attack due to the way they did or did not handle adverse publicity on social media.  And it's not just food. HMV went bust in the UK thanks mainly to some terrible social media coverage which they failed to deal with. Hello Peter and other complaints sites are full of complaints against both big and small business (including St Elmo's Pizzaway and KFC South Africa which seem to attract more than their fair share of gripes).

If you care about your brand,you need to be alert to these complaints. If you value your on line reputation, you need to deal with them. The internet has a very long memory and Google searches will bring up these complaints,putting off potential customers from wanting to do business with you).

An online complaint on social media will quickly spread. This is called Amplification as the bad news for your business is spread from user to user and all their followers. The potential reach of one bad news tweet can very soon stretch into the hundreds of thousands in next to no time, irreparably damaging your brand.

However, these complaints do offer you a fantastic opportunity to engage with your customers and to turn complaints into satisfied folks who will even recommend you to their families and friends, winning you new business. You just need to be alert to the dangers and the opportunities because the long memory of the internet search engines can be made to work in your favour.

So don't just sanitise your Facebook page of any bad news. Don't ignore negative tweets, and don't use cut and paste responses to complaints on sites like Hello Peter,but instead take the opportunity to placate your dissatisfied customers and turn them into good friends, winning extra sales in the process. It is hard work. It needs some investment in social media and a good specialist consultant to give you advice. Consider outsourcing this work to a specialist social media consultancy because they will know exactly how to look after your brand and your reputation.

Here is a great article about how brand rescue and online reputation management is becoming a big challenge to many businesses and individuals

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So, Why does my business need to be using Social media?

We get asked this question a lot! Prospective clients often feel confused and even scared of being active on the web, and think that having a website is enough... well, its not.

Not any more. Websites are static and difficult to use for conversations. They are the 'Shop Window' for your business, but nowadays, a good website will be integrated with social media. Here are a few reasons why you can't afford not to be using social media for your business..

• Answer and address complaints quickly. Increasingly, businesses are using Twitter and Facebook to handle complaints. Just check out KLM, Vodacom, and Virgin for good examples.If you want to see badly used social media,look at the KFC South Africa FaceBook page!
• Get feed back on your business activity. If you want to gauge the possible reaction of consumers or customers to something you're planning, Social Media is almost like an instant polling station! Just ask your questions on Twitter or Facebook for almost instant answers.
• Share photo's and video of your business activity and products. Its a vibrant community out there and with the right images, you get wonderful free exposure. 
• Word of mouth marketing is a powerful way to boost your sales. And without the cost of radio or television campaigns either. Its quick and effective, and all about making connections.
• Increase loyalty. Your social media activity will make your connections feel a strong sense of loyalty to you. After all, you're not just broadcasting to them...you're engaging with them
• Market research. You can easily search your business area or market and see what's happening. People will be talking about it, that's virtually guaranteed on social media. 
• Your competitors will be on it. So you don't want to be left out and lose business. If they're not already on social media, they soon will be!
• Statistics tell a story. You get tons of useful information from the data provided by social media activity. Web analytics and traffic reports tell you where your activity is coming from and allow you to position yourself vetu clinically to where you need to be.
• Become the expert in your field. Using content curation (collection and aggregation) positions you as the expert to ask questions from in your field. People will come to your sites for information and advice. before they even get near your competitors.
• Brand protection. You don't want people to criticise you on line, but if they do, you need to be able to talk with them instantly.Just look at HMV in the UK - they ignored social media and were driven into bankruptcy by a barrage of negative social media commentary they failed to answer.

                                                           creating conversation...

Social media is how you can engage with your customers and business contacts in real time and almost instantly. Increasingly, its how we do business, search for purchases and perhaps most importantly, make complaints about poor service or products. 

Social Media is growing and is a powerful force in marketing and brand protection. Nobody wants folks out there saying bad things about them on Twitter, facebook, Pinterest and all the other platforms which give people a genuine voice. That voice is affecting the way we buy products and services. Social Media sites are replacing traditional search engines (YouTube is second to Google for the number of searches recorded).

But you need to be positioned on the right Social Media platforms for your business. Thats where we can help. The advice of a good social media consultant is vital. A good consultant will live and breathe social media. They won't design websites, or do advertising. They'll just know exactly where you need to be on the many platforms that exist out there. 

This is our business. Social media is what we're all about. So we can help you with your website...from a social media integration perspective. But Social media is our speciality here at Nomsindo. 

We Create Conversation for your business...

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Social Media - What we do

We've been asked a lot recently just what is it we do for our Social Media clients. So here it is..

• We carry out a full review of a client's existing social media and web activity.
• We ask lots of questions about their business.Its important we 'get' their vision and mission to be able to understand just where they need to be on social media and what their market is.
• We would seek to understand where and how the client feels they should be using social media.Contrary to popular belief,its not for everyone!
• We'd want to talk about possible budgets. Its important to us to know how much they think it might cost to have a social media presence managed for them.
• Following this, we'd make a series of recommendations based upon our analysis of their needs. Some social media channels are a 'must have' for most clients. Others are more sector-specialist. Others are more related to the demographic of their potential markets/clients. For example, Pinterest has 65% of its hits coming from young women, whereas Google+ is more male oriented.
• We'd then offer a setup package which would include social media integration with their website, setting up of a blog and other social media platforms as necessary.
• A monthly management contract sets out the level of activity we'd undertake, as a minimum. For example,number of daily tweets, facebook posts etc. This is always flexible to suit changing business needs. We'll do the work and then talk with you later!
• We provide a detailed monthly report including web analytics and social media activity so that you can see where your traffic is coming from and how your social media presence is growing and effective. After all, you need to know what the return on your investment is.

And there it is....in a nutshell.

Nomsindo - We Create Conversations. 

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But what's the ROI ?

It's a question we are asked very, very frequently. In fact, its the one question every client or potential client of ours asks. Just what is the return on investment (ROI) from my business social media activity?

This is actually a very difficult question to answer because to be honest, there is no easy answer. Are you looking to generate more business from your social media activity? If so, its probably quite simple to measure business generated from leads or enquiries coming from social media. Of course, these leads would need to be *extra* business generated over and above your normal lead-generating activity.

Are you looking for increased visibility for your business or organisation? This is easy to measure,in terms of straight hits on your social media channels, but what does hits or the number of followers really tell you, other that you've about three million less followers than Justin Bieber on Twitter? You really should be looking for quality, not quantity. Are your followers and facebook likes from your business market or potential customers, and do you engage in conversation with them or just broadcast your own activity? After all, we are now in the age of web 3.0 and this is the creative collaborative web. Any successful social media activity must involve some degree of dialogue. If you look at some of the large business using social media, the successful ones are the ones who use it to have conversations with their followers. Social media is a community where you have to interact with people, talk to people, deal with complaints, answer questions and engage in discussion.

And if you want to position yourself as an expert in your field, the number of questions you answer on sites like Quora and Google+ will also be important.

Its not the raw data or metrics or stats which are important, its how these are analysed and interpreted. This is where you will find your true ROI, and this where an expert social media consultancy will be worth it's weight in gold. We can show you just what your  bucks are generating, and because we live breathe and work social media, we know just where you'd be best to focus your activity if you want a demonstrable return on your Rands.

ROI - its not just followers and likes, its quality not quantity,and above all,  it is focussed activity designed to suit your individual needs.

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