Reviews

Social is Seriously Serious Business

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I received an IM from a friend a couple days ago that got me thinking. He was asking for my advice because his friend’s 15-year-old son wants to start a social media marketing business. I asked my friend to send me this young man’s business plan, so that I could review and make recommendations. The response: “Um, he doesn’t have a business plan.”

WHAT?

Don’t get me wrong – there are teens who are capable of being businesspeople. Take Brooke Martin, for example, who created icpooch when she was just 12. This kind of magic can and does happen. But I can just see how this kiddo’s plan evolved… I want extra money > I like social networks > Local businesses use social networks > I could post for these businesses and charge them for it > I’ll start a social media marketing business! So easy, right? WRONG.

Clearly the first step would be to develop a business plan. But what that plan entails can really vary depending on the business. Creating and managing a business’ social media marketing could mean so many different things. A few examples? OK… a Facebook page, LinkedIn groups, a LinkedIn corporate page, a Twitter profile, a Google+ page, Tumblr, Reddit, Yelp. What about content driven social? Oh, how about… Pinterest, Instagram, a YouTube channel, Meerkat and/or Periscope and/or Vine, blogs. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

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Social Channel Selection & the Content Sandwich

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Back when the social media revolution began, there were few options available to businesses – blogs, forums and MySpace were the highlights. Shortly thereafter, Facebook, which began as a platform for college students became available to the masses and Twitter launched… fast-forward to today. Social media now takes the form of networks (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, MySpace), videos (YouTube, Vimeo, Vine), images (Instagram, Flickr), blogs (Blogger, WordPress), microblogs (Twitter, Tumblr), chats and video chats (SnapChat, WhatsApp, Skype), bookmarking/content-sharing sites (Pinterest, Digg, StumbleUpon, SlideShare), communities (reddit), music (Spotify, Last.FM, SoundCloud), Q&A forums (Quora, Ask.FM), location-based platforms (Foursquare, Swarm, Yelp), review sites (Yelp, OpenTable, TripAdvisor), and shopping (Amazon, eBay).

Online social opportunities for each and every business are endless. Unfortunately, time and money are not. Think you can just choose your favorite platform and dive-in head first? Probably not a good idea. It’s unlikely that your entire target audience will be devoted to one social site (see below). In fact, they most likely use several different social platforms at different times for different reasons. So try to be everywhere, right? NO. You’ll spread yourself too thin.

Social Media Matrix

Pew Research Center, 2013

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Haters Gonna Hate: Dealing with Negativity in the Social Space

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We’ve all encountered negativity in the social space.  It often comes in the form of nasty reviews, personal attacks, brand bashing, even bullying behavior.  But it can also come in the form of a frustrated customer seeking assistance for an issue or answer to a question.

First let’s address the haters, bashers, trolls and bullies…

A while back when I had more time on my hands, I used to blog about issues, often politically-charged ones, that were near and dear to my heart. One post that was inspired by several back-to-back incidents of horrible parenting I had witnessed garnered one response that crossed the line from critical comment to targeted personal attack.  Although the comment was posted anonymously, given the content of the attack and the poor grammar, which was a thinly-veiled attempt to disguise the commenter’s identity, I know exactly who authored the comment.  I did post a response, but what I realized afterward was that I didn’t need to.  Why? Because my supporters came out in full force to defend me.  Turns out there were many people who read my post and agreed with me and were more than happy to put my attacker in her place.

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