Does social media have a place in corporate web design? This question is one we get asked often and we have put together not only this post but a great special report that you can find here: Social Media and Corporate Web Design.

So does social media have a place in a company’s website or is just for blogs? The short answer is yes. Social media has worked it’s way into every element of the web. Twitter itself was recently inducted into the library of congress and Facebook is working on taking over the internet with Like buttons. If this reason wasn’t enough then we move onto the generational issue.

The younger generation really does expect a corporation to be participating in some form of social media. Social media into corporate web designs should be completely embraced. The one thing it shows above all else is that the organization can be reached, cares, and wants to engage with their customers.

Expectations

When the web first hit mainstream it became obvious that if you didn’t have a website you weren’t considered “in business”. Many consumers simply didn’t trust companies that did not have a website.

This same paradigm of thought is starting to come to social media. Increasingly the younger generations are expecting that a responsible organization will engage within social media.

Social Elements of Corporate Web Design

I’ll summarize here what we have put in our report. These are the top elements that you should have within your corporate web design. I should mention that each industry and vertical market will have it’s own networks and interaction points but we can generalize on the concepts:

• Follow Us Buttons. These are the buttons or icons that link to your social presence, these should be prominent and be on 95% of your web pages.
  Share Buttons. These allow your users to easily share your content within their own social circle. We also suggest these show up on the majority of your web pages.
• Widgets. Widgets allow you to pull content from the social networks themselves. These can be powerful as well. These create a element of social proof but also allow for another interaction point for your user.
• The About Us Page. Studies have shown that one of the most visited page of a website is the about us page. We recommend that you make the about us page a business accelerator page–think about copy, headlines, and calls to action.
• The Team Page. If your company embraces social media include these connections on the team page.
• Social Media Page. We also suggest that you put together a roundup page of all your social media efforts. The users that care about social media will find this page helpful.

In Conclusion

Social media has a seat at the table of corporate web design. It’s an important element of any modern corporate website. Generally the more that you participate within social media the more that the ROI becomes apparent. The key is just to make sure that you are not just putting in social connections just to check off a box– you have to mean it and spend the time and effort with the engagement.

This is part 4 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media.

We also have a great report that you can download with each step and examples of these steps in action. You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.

Monetization -How You Make ROI on Time and Resources

It’s important to note here that monetization in social media is vastly different for each company or individual. For some companies it will be very apparent—such as a T-Shirt company it would be acceptable to put a store on Facebook page.

Also we mentioned this before but understanding how your product, brand, or service falls in relation to intent. Remember that people do not fire up a social network with the intent on purchasing something.  Will your followers tolerate your monetization strategy?

The good news is that for certain verticals special offers and coupons (one of the best monetization strategies) is the number one reason people follow a company or brand.

Key Questions for Monetization:

What does you target market expect? Is there purchase intent? How often are you able to monetize your audience? Are you able to monetize your audience in the network or does it require you driving them off the channel? (on channel is best). How can you create a monetization strategy that involves Acquisition and Engagement?

Examples of Monetization

Remember more than one department owns social media and when we give examples of specific monetization items the first two steps of acquisition and engagement came first.

Rite Aid Video to Coupon

At the same time, Rite Aid unveiled its Video Values program, featuring informative, educational and, in some cases, entertaining videos. By watching videos, customers earn video credits for savings on products.

For example, viewers of a clip for a Brita Water Filtration product earn a $2 coupon off one of the Brita items offered. They must print the coupon and present it at the store.

When they rack up 20 video credits, they receive a $5 Rite Aid Bonus Coupon. Rite Aid reports that it is averaging between 500,000 and 600,000 video views each month. Redemption rates average nearly 20%, depending on the coupon. (Fredricksen, 2010)

Social Coupons for a Mexican Grill

Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill, a West Coast chain of 195 restaurants, started placing coupons on Yowza this summer to reach people searching for a lunch spot. Larry Rusinko, the chain’s senior vice president of marketing and product development, saw a 4 percent redemption rate on coupons offered through Yowza, four times what he was getting through direct mail or ads in the Sunday paper. (Tiku, 2009)

Create a store right on Facebook

Storefront with Payvment: Payvment is an e-commerce application that allows for the development of a retail store on Facebook. Using the PayPal X global open payments platform, customers can shop from multiple vendors in a single shopper cart, turning FB into what could be considered the ultimate shopping mall.

The application uses PayPal’s new Adaptive Payments APIs and is built on the company’s existing shopping cart Web service that turns any online page into an e-commerce page with a single line of code. Another e-commerce app that lets users post products on FB is My Merch Store from Zazzle. Create and post products for sale on Zazzle and share them with people visiting your pages on FB.

Target On Tea

Organic tea brand Steaz needed to generate nation-wide awareness and drive sales at Target stores — and quickly. The brand felt that if it could get moms talking about Steaz in social media, the sales would follow. The campaign generated interest and results above expectations, thanks to blogs, email, and social media activity.

We were confident that we would generate 50,000 coupon downloads, 1,000 new fans/followers. Our goal was to get Target to notice the little tea brand it had just adopted.

Actual results were 250,000 coupon downloads (with a 20+ percent redemption rate), 6,000 blog and social network mentions, and more than 3,000 new fans/followers. Steaz’s December sales were double its previous best month ever. And Steaz shelves in Target stores nationwide were emptied. (Magnani, 2010)

This is part 3 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media.

We also have a great report that you can download with each step and examples of these steps in action. You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.

Engagement – the things you do once you have an audience.

This is actually the step where you get permission to move to the next step. First and foremost you must ensure that you deliver on what you promised in your acquisition strategy. If once someone has started to engage with you and they do not get what they expected they will leave or worse yet tune out. Just as the advent of timeshifted TV has allowed consumers to skip commercials if you don’t deliver value your audience will abandon you as well.

Key Questions for Engagement

• How can I add value to people that follow me or the audience that I gain in the permission marketing space? (email in addition to social is permission based)
• What are the acceptable forms of engagement in this channel?
• What is my engagement schedule?
• Who is responsible for engagement items?
• What are the unique ways I can engagement this channel that will set me or my company apart?
• What does my target market expect from me?
• What are my competitors doing?

Engagement Examples

Engagement can arguably be the most important step. Without proper engagement you simply would not be effective when moving onto the next element—monetization. The people and companies that successfully engage can then prime their audience towards offers, purchasing, and other elements of the sales funnel. Below I’ve included a few great examples of companies that are engaging within social media.

Steel Buildings are Social?

SteelMaster a manufacturer of prefabricated steel buildings engages Facebook in an unusual way. You wouldn’t guess that there would be much affinity to a steel building. First they found that Facebook is a great place to post pictures of customer’s buildings.

These pictures not only engage existing customers—they also tell a story to potential customers what is possible. Since the backbone of Facebook is pictures this plays well in this platform.

They also use Twitter to get exposure and create demand in vertical markets they had little traction in, such as chicken farmers and woodworkers.

Watch a Video Get a Free Night

Rogers Smith Hotel uses twitter to give away free nights of stay (click to see tweet below).

Even Paint Can Engage?

IdeaPaint does a great job with their blog. This is the launching pad of their engagement plan. IdeaPaint turns virtually anything you can paint into a high-performance dry-erase surface—every 3 year olds fantasy.

Their outreach typically starts with a great video post that shows the product in action. Telling a story each time it also gives potential customers what is possible with their unique product.  From there they engage within YouTube, Twitter and Facebook connecting with their core market.

Wait a Refrigerator?

Subzero (maker of appliances and high end refrigerators) whose core customer is a woman age 45 or older focuses on the essential element of adding value to its affluent customers’ busy lives. They do this by sharing seasonal recipes, wine pairings, and cooking tips. They also spotlight hot kitchen designers. Facebook is the third-top-referring site to SubZero.com.

Sub-Zero then engages their audience rewarding their affluent followers with exclusive news, discounts, videos, and pictures. This gave the follower the feeling of being on the inside. One recent question posed by SubZero has garnered over 200 responses or close to a hundred for the simply question what’s for dinner tonight?

This is part 2 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media. You can download this special report that covers Acquisition Techniques in social media.

Acquisition – The things you do to acquire a fan, follower, subscriber, reader, etc.

It’s important to define what you acquisition strategy per social channel. Your acquisition strategy for Facebook, Your Blog, Twitter, or LinkedIn will each have its own strategy and pull points.

When amassing fans I always say go with quality over quantity. Your social presence should be an extension of your brand’s voice. To build that foundation, establish and invite your core customers.

Begin by communicating to your existing database and announcing your brand’s places of contact (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Etc.) via e-mail. In addition, link to your profiles and pages on your website at every opportunity.

At retail, include the URL on receipts and checkout counter cards. Provide an incentive for your current customers to “follow” your brand, such as exclusive content, discounts or sweepstakes.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is part 1 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media.

We also have a great report that you can download with each step and examples of these steps in action. You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.

Social Media Engagement

Social media is a new paradigm of marketing, it’s requires a different approach to marketing. It’s ‘always on’ and contains elements of instantaneous communication. What we call social media should be more accurately termed social communication. Humans are social animals but what changes is how we communicate with each other. Social networking allows us to communicate instantaneously across the world in a matter of seconds. It also offers a direct one on one or one to many connections that has never existed before.

Setting Goals

Before embarking on any social media marketing campaigns, it is essential to set your goals and define your prospects or target audience. Without a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach, your promotional campaigns will not be focused and the results may be fragmented and weak.

What are the goals of your organization? Do you want to build your brand and increase the number of targeted visitors to your website?

Do you want to improve communication among customers, employees and other stakeholders? Do you want to strengthen your relationships and increase profitability?

Determining exactly what you want to accomplish through a social media strategy will drive prioritization of your actions.

Family, Friends and Fun

If there was one thing that is important to know about social media it is this–the core reason most people spend time within social media is to connect with friends and family.

Consumers put social media squarely in the entertainment column. The old interruption approach to marketing simply does not work within this channel of communication.

This means that people spend time to talk to friends, family, associates and have fun. Knowing this one element will ensure that you have success in your efforts with social engagement. Keeping this in front of your mind and interactions will be the key to making sure your communication, updates, and messages resonate with your audience.

Intent and Selling

create interest in our product or service. Very few people log into a social network to purchase something. The purchase or decision to purchase or even consider a product is a byproduct of the activity.

I Don’t Have the Time

This is the number #1 item of feedback I get when I present the best practices to marketing in social media. It usually goes something like… “I’m already busy enough” or “we are bogged down with day to day stuff already, how do we add this on top of it?”.

Here is my quick and easy answer…

First, just like everything else in your business if you find it worthwhile and it generates results you will find time. What we really are talking about is priorities. The second thing is focusing on getting strong foundation in place. What follow below is the core elements to a successful social engagement plan. Also some examples on how other companies are making it work for them.

Who Owns Social Media?

The short answer is every department in your organization can benefit from social engagement. Depending on the size of your organization different departments or people will play a more central role. Collaboration is the key. When the IT department can talk to the PR department and when the R&D side learns that they can access the vast element of general knowledge, real time conversations, and actual thoughts of the target market that’s when the proverbial light bulb flips on.

Out with Interruption Advertising

Shoving marketing messages down people’s throat doesn’t make much sense, so you have to jump in and accept the good with the bad. Things may blow up, as they did with Southwest and Nestle recently, but the two-way communication channel you can build up far outweighs [the potential for negative consequences]. Social is not just a marketing channel – it’s PR, product development, customer service and even HR.

You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.

Social media is going to rule the Web until at least 2012 – according to a post by Justin Kistner, a Social Evangelist at web analytics company Webtrends. Kistner also claims that Facebook has become the king of social media. In a panel at a Portland event today called Lunch 2.0, Kistner said that the current era of the Web “is Facebook’s game to lose.” More here from Justin also a roundup at ReadWriteWeb.

On the heels of its Promoted Tweets ad product, Tweeter has introduced another type of advertising: Promoted Trending Topics, where brands pay to appear below the “trending topics” on the site. The first company to try out the concept is Disney/Pixar with the trend, not surprisingly, of Toy Story 3. It is, writes Mashable’s Pete Cashmore in a guest post at CNN, an ingenious idea: “the perfect way to generate revenue from the popular social network without infuriating users…Brands long to be a part of the conversation, and Promoted Trends create buzz around a product or service without vexing the user.” More Here >>

Got to talk to Jeff Foster again and we covered some great information. Listen to the show below.

We first talk about what type of things you should really be focusing on in the search engine world. How to create content and the elements that make up a great content strategy.

Then we move on with the ever important aspect of search marketing–link building.

Read the rest of this entry »

NPV, Buzz on a comback, Attorney’s spend money on digital and cause marketing.

Is buzz on it’s way for a comeback? Tech blogger Robert Scoble appears to think Buzz may be ready for a comeback (it did start with much hype, but that has since faded out for the most part). He wrote an interesting post highlighting 9 reasons why such a comeback could be possible. Among these are superior mobile features (compared to other social networks), the addition of features in general (he says its getting “close to matching FriendFeed”, a service Facebook found significant enough to acquire itself), a good search tool, and possible SEO opportunities to name a few.

The New York-based plaintiffs’ firm set up websites with names like bigspills.com, oilspillclaims.com and oil-rig-explosions.com, and it filled them with news related to the disaster and invitations for visitors to provide their names and contact information. More than 1,000 people have now completed the forms on the websites, and Parker Waichman, which has 23 lawyers, has filed about a dozen suits related to the oil disaster. view the full story here >>

Cause marketing. As the popularity of social media continues to grow, the opportunity for having millions of eyeballs engaged and pushing an organization’s messaging or specific cause is moving marketers to constantly devise new strategies for driving the call to action. View this story here also a good example of this Toms Shoes.

I highly suggest you read this new post by Jason Baer on Are you ready for the opportunity economy. This is something I would put into practice within you, your organization or your company right now. I highly suggest this concept. We talk a little about this as well.

He goes into what is a great concept. The opportunity economy. How to set yourself up for the opportunities that present themselves in this fast moving and real time environment. With the advent of the search engine and now social media it is becoming easier and easier to connect and find people and situations where you can help.

Also I’d like to mention a few things that I’ve covered on my personal blog:

Recently the 3 Screen Report by Nielsen was released. This covers mobile, internet, and television usage in the US. While this report is one that I follow it also gives a little insight into how we consume all media. check out the post on the 3 Screen Report.

Elements of Viral. An great example of this comes from CCCP who started as a production agency, but quickly found out that they could easily vertically integrate advertising in their business model. I love some of these guys ideas and what they have put together. View the viral post here.

Having an authoritative website helps you create more leads, prospects, and sales. Not only will this help you when someone searches for your website but it allows you to create a launching pad for other marketing efforts. There are some things to keep in mind when creating authority around what you do. Today we talk a little about this and cover things such as…

Read the rest of this entry »