Social Media Integration - Maximise Your Online Business Potential

You have a website, and you get leads and information from this,perhaps even some data, and you might be thinking    "why do I need social media?"  and that's a good question. After all, what else can integrating social media into your business online presence do for your organisation? How about this...

• Customer service. You can interact with your customers in real time on social media, answering any enquiries or complaints and building on line communities. This gets people engaged with your business.
• Invite people you've searched for to connect with you.Offer them incentives, coupons and discounts. It's a great way to seek out new business. 
• Generate new sales leads by looking for users who tweet or post about your business area or product.
• Add your social media 'handles' to your brochures and website and ask people to connect with you. Position yourself as *the* expert in your field of business
• Recruit new staff by using social media to advertise. You can even use social media sites like LinkedIn for the application and CV submission process. It's also a great way to head-hunt the right people as you can search through on line profiles.
• Monitor your competitors.You can watch to see what they're up to and engage with their customers. Do it better than they do!
• Promote new products across all your on line sites. Increase the reach of your campaign.
• Use stats and analytics tools to direct your marketing and tell you where your business is coming from. Big data can give you loads of useful information you perhaps didn't know about your business area.

If you use a bit of blue sky thinking you could probably think of many more reasons to integrate social media into your business, but whatever you do,get some good advice from a specialist social media consultant and make sure you maximise the potential of social media.

It is really great when you start to see folks using the social media 'buttons' on your website to tweet you and post to Facebook. Or connect with you via LinkedIn or leave a tip about you on FourSquare. But make sure you set up your website to tweet and Facebook and Google+1  automatically whenever you make any changes.

 Maximise your business potential with fully integrated social media. Let Nomsindo become your social media partners. We Create Conversations...

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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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Developing leadership capacity...characteristics of great leaders

This is a blog post I've been writing for the best part of a year now. It's ideas and observations from running workshops on leadership for various people and organisations. You learn a great deal from running these events, Just as you learn a great deal when teaching. If you look at good leaders closely whilst they are working, they usually all share several, if not all of the same characteristics. They certainly are not in the business of collecting followers, but in making new leaders. Now you'll have read that quote in quite a few 'leadership' bibles by now probably. But what are the essential characteristics leaders display which inspire people to achieve great things for their organisations. I think you could possibly distil it down to the following list.

• Passion. All great leaders have a passion for their profession or/or business and/or organisation. This passion is infectious. It rubs off and inspires everybody else around them. No big inspirational speeches, just a constant enthusiasm for a clear mission which others want to be a part of. Good people want to be a part of something exciting and bigger and want to be able to say that they were a part of it. If you make these people feel like they are essential to the success of the mission, and give them credit that's due, your passion will inspire loyalty and that 'go the extra mile' factor in your team.
• Capacity-building. They always try to add value to their organisation by recruiting great people. its not the job of a leaders to gather followers but to enable more leaders to develop. Finding talented and creative people is a characteristic of truly great leaders.
• Excellence. This is not an aspiration but constantly and consistently modelled by great leaders. Your people can see by your example how they should be working, and they will set themselves their own goals for success based upon your example. When the going gets tough, they will model their responses on your behaviours and example.Everyone in the team is accountable for the success, but also for sharing the load. There are no favourites on the team; everyone is treated the same, with the same expectations of excellence from everyone.
• Lifelong learners. Great leaders are learners,but more than that, they are completely open about this. You don't stop learning once you get to a top leadership position, you just keep on going. They utilise the expertise within their own teams. If someone knows more about a particular area of the work in hand, great leaders are not afraid to defer to that expertise, not seeing this as a threat to their leadership, but an opportunity to learn by listening to the talent in their teams.
• Delegation. Great leaders give their team members the space to work, and to be creative and innovative. They don't micro-manage, but give people ownership of their work. They trust their people (who they've probably recruited) to do their jobs and perform their particular roles, giving them space to solve problems and challenges without the boss looking over their shoulders. Great leaders have their team members' backs and don't sacrifice them for their own personal 'safety' if something goes awry. 
• Mentoring. Great leaders are a constant presence mentoring everyone in their team where its necessary. People are not just recruited and told to get on with the job. Great leaders work with people to bring out the best in them and its a constant process of professional development. Regular feedback on performance is a hallmark of this mentoring. Great leaders also take an interest in the personal lives of their people. They know about their families, their interests and activities outside of work and make them feel valued by asking about these things. And this personal knowledge helps them to know when they can push for more or when they need to pull back.
• Experience. Great leaders can walk the walk as well as talk the talk. people who want to get on will go with leaders who they believe will bring them success. They know that a leader was once in their shoes. Great leaders expose their people to a range of skills and experiences to broaden the overall skill sets of their teams. They are genuinely interested in helping more of their people to become great leaders themselves and they celebrate success when their people are promoted or move on. They help them develop their professional learning networks and share contacts where appropriate. They'll never block you on Twitter or LinkedIn -where they usually have plenty of endorsements of their skills and experiences.
• Facilitation. Great leaders facilitate the success of their people. They clear the path, and help them to achieve success by smoothing the way as much as possible, flattening out or removing the obstacles along the way. They know what might hold back their people and remove these barriers. They take care of all the politics, freeing up their folks to do their jobs without distraction. 
• Bravery. Standing up for what's right, for their teams and for individuals is inspirational behaviour. Great leaders are visible. They don't spend all their time behind the closed office door, but out in amongst it mixing it up where the action is. They don't just follow the vision, they make the vision happen by fronting up to all the issues which can threaten success. They are not afraid to put their own jobs on the line where they believe that something needs to be said or done which might be viewed as controversial or a bit left-field.
• Fairness. Great leaders are scrupulously fair to everyone. They treat everybody in the same way, including themselves. They hold themselves to account in the same way as they hold their people to account, and never expect their people to do anything they wouldn't try to do themselves. Not afraid to dirty their hands and muck in with the team where necessary.
• Consistency.  They always deliver what they promise. They are genuine people with no falseness about them so that you always know where you stand. Hidden agendas are not a part of their modus operandi. Great leaders understand that their people take their cues from them and so they behave in a way they'd expect others to behave also. 

Have I missed anything out? please add your comments below. For great leadership seminars and workshops for your organisation, contact Nomsindo using the details on this site and let us help you to develop your leadership capacity. 

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