While Social media has a reputation for distracting employees, it can actually have the opposite effect if used properly. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc. can improve communication between an employer and its employees, along with employees and coworkers. Here are some steps an organization can take to start engaging employees in their social media activity:

Training

Employees need to be trained on the uses and misuses of social media. Along with this, they need to understand that they will be held accountable if they write something that damages the reputation of your brand. Don’t assume they know this! Have clear guidelines and a social media policy can help veer this discussion in the right direction.

Encourage Sharing

A great way to engage employees is to encourage them to share and lobby on behalf of the brand online. However, before you launch the proactive army of bloggers, Facebookers or Tweeters – you need to make sure you have a social media policy in place. A social media policy should be high priority for your brand, because sometimes even well-meaning employees can severely damage your company’s online reputation.

Lead by Example

If your company is not on twitter, then why should your employees? If your business is not blogging, then what incentives do employees have to write on behalf of the company? Offering an existing channel where you’re successfully sharing content provides good examples for employees.

Final Thoughts

Whether it’s a potential customer or potential employee, people will always research companies to find more information. Having a team of savvy and successful brand ambassadors can help set the right tone and shows that the company cares about what is said about their brand online.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to attend a webinar hosted by Debra Aho Williamson from eMarketer, discussing the growth and opportunities arising in social media marketing on mobile devices. She talked about the importance and difference of user behavior on smartphones and tablets. While many assume that both user types behave the same, there are some surprising differences.

Some of the key trends highlighted in the webinar were:

• Mobile and tablet social media usage is increasing, while desktop usage is declining. 
  
• There are notable differences in usage patterns of consumers using tablets and mobile devices.
• Facebook is starting to decrease their efforts on desktop-oriented brand pages, and more on newsfeeds and the mobile experience.
• Mobile and social are forever intertwined!

You can view the entire presentation here.

Twitter

Overall, there were 8.9 million tweets about the Oscars. While 2.1 million tweets were during the red carpet, 6.8 million were during the awards show. According to Twitter, the following events triggered the most conversations (based on tweets per minute):

• Best Picture award for Argo: 85,300 TPM
• Adele performs “Skyfall”: 82,300 TPM
• Best Actress in a Leading Role for Jennifer Lawrence: 71,600 TPM
• Best Original Song for Adele: 64,000 TPM
• Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Anne Hathaway: 60,400 TPM

Facebook

The social network reported that Oscar buzz was at an all-time high. There were 66.5 million Oscar-related interactions and “Oscars” received three times more mentions than last year. The most buzz was seen in the Northeast, followed by California. As Ben Affleck made his acceptance speech, mentions of him increased 23,500% and mentions of his film, Argo, increased by 2,460%! Overall the event scored a 7.17 on the Facebook Talk Meter. For more top Oscar moments on Facebook, check out the infographic below:

Key Takeaway: So what’s the big deal, you may ask? This data illustrates that social media is only growing and getting stronger. Organizations should track and monitor what their customers or brand enthusiasts are saying about them, on multiple social platforms. You might be surprised by what you find!

Infographic courtesy of Facebook.

More than 50% of the ads mentioned social media, with many using hashtags. Sysomos analyzed the reaction to these ads on Twitter and found that people prefer to tweet about a brand, rather than the commercial. So it’s not surprising that companies that used their own brand name in the hashtag (#doritos) performed better than those that didn’t. Popularity of the ad also played a role as well (#TheKiss).

The infographic below highlights the hashtags that were featured in different commercials and how they performed during the Super Bowl:

Infographic courtesy of Sysomos.

What were you talking about on social media last year?

Infographic courtesy of: The SEO Company. Twitter bird image via Shutterstock.

Help Scout, a customer service software company has put together this infographic that highlights research related to the topic. Here are some key takeaways:

• Remind your customers how easy it is to get started (example: one month trial) – help them get past the “Action Paralysis.”
• Research shows that customers are more trustworthy of companies that own their mistakes, rather than blame external sources.
• Focus on how your product or service can solve your potential customers pain-points fast. If you make them wait, you’ll loose their interest.
• Of customers who have a strong relationships with certain brands, 64% said it was because of their shared values with those brands.

Learn more below:

Infographic courtesy of Helpscout.

Create a Contest

Social media contests are a great way to engage consumers and can span large audiences. They’re also a great way to allow audiences to interact with your products across multiple social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). The example below comes from Fiji Water. They’ve put together a contest where they’ve asked their Facebook Fans to Instagram a picture of food with a bottle of Fiji water using the hashtag #DiscoverFIJIWater for a chance to win.

Show What’s Behind The Curtain

While Starbucks was an early adopter of Instagram and now has over 595,000 followers. The company uses Instagram to showcase in-store experiences at various locations around the world, how new coffees are tested, tasted and chosen at the Stabucks headquarters and provides a ‘behind the scenes’ experience. Starbucks also shares their feed on Facebook, allowing their fans additional opportunity to comment and engage.

Integrate With Event Marketing

The popularity of Instagram has proven that people love taking pictures! If your company is hosting an event, assign a specific hashtag to the event and have attendees apply it to their Instagram photos. This will not only increase brand awareness but will also give you a way to have real-time photos of the event – which you can also repurpose across different social media channels. The example below comes from a user who uploaded an event picture using the #marketingprofs hashtag:

Embrace the Power of Hashtags

Like many other social networks, Instagram has adopted the hashtag. This can give brands the opportunity to hashtag photo descriptions or tie-in to other popular hashtags. Looking at the example from above, if a user searches for #marketingprofs, s/he will find all images that are using that hashtag.

High end retailer, Marc Jacobs, used the route of encouraging their fans to snap and share pictures with them. Over the holidays, the retailer creatively asked users to share family moments by using the hashtag #marcfam. The company then compiled and currated the images and have showcased them on their website for all to see:

Have Fun With Your Photos!

The key element of Instagram is having fun with the photos. There are many apps available to help you edit and manipulate your photos in Instagram. You can also use collages to tell a story when you have multiple images to show. Sharpie is a great example of a brand that uses Instagram to its full potential. The brand uses the photo sharing tool to showcase fun illustrations using the simple permanent marker. Their page is nothing but boring and really feeds inspiration to those who follow.

Research company, Lab42, has put together the infographic below which highlights their findings. Some key takeaways are:

• 82% say Facebook is a good place to interact with brands
• 75% say they feel more connected to a brand on Facebook
• The biggest motivators of liking a brand on Facebook are promotions and discounts 
• 77% have actually saved money from liking brands
• 73% have unliked brands because: (1) They post too often (2) Stopped liking the brand or (3) Had a bad customer experience

Learn more below:

Infographic courtesy of Lab42.

Surprisingly, there are still things that customers say they wish businesses understood about them better. Help Scout, a customer service software company has put together this infographic that highlights research related to the topic.

Here are some key takeaways:

• Customers prefer knowledgeable and thought-out service, rather than having a rushed experience.
• Loyalty customers are bound to stay if get them started with the program.
• Consumers would rather connect with a brand emotionally than with “savings” type messages.
• Everyone loves pleasant surprises!

Infographic courtesy of HelpScout.

• Know Your Target
• Keep it Simple
• Stay Consistent
• Be Visible
• Get Social
• Have a Voice

Learn more below:

Infographic Courtesy of Webs.com.

• The platform has seen 67% year over year mobile growth
• There are 543M monthly active users on mobile
• 58% of all users return daily
• An average of 60 campaigns on Facebook found that 49% had a 5X or greater return on spend

See below for the infographic:

Infographic courtesy of Digital Buzz Blog.

Today I introduce you to Natasha Khan and Alicia Barnes. They both represent the PR and Social media faces of ModCloth, a vintage-inspired clothing, accessories and décor retailer. In our interview they share their experience with social media and offer some advice for businesses looking to build a social media marketing strategy. 

Being a strictly ecommerce business, how do you get people to discover your content?

Answered by: Alicia Barnes, PR Manager

We have a variety of methods for reaching new customers and audiences, from fun contests like our Name it and Win it, which invites customers to creatively name one of our items, to a comprehensive and targeted social media presence, to partnerships with brands that we think have audiences similar to our customer base. But among all of our efforts, the consistent objective is creating a fun and engaging experience for new customers that invest them in our products and brand.

ModCloth has a great focus on blogger outreach. How do you measure the success of the program?

Answered by: Alicia Barnes, PR Manager

Working with bloggers has been important to us from the beginning. We want to be a part of empowering all women to feel that they have a voice in the fashion industry. We want to build a site experience that does that, but we also feel that collaborating with bloggers is a big part of that – they’re real women with unique senses of style, and we love seeing how they interpret ModCloth pieces. In this context, revenue and traffic generated from these relationships is something we look at, but it has less of a focus than in more traditional avenues of marketing; what we’re most interested in is reinforcing our brand mission and involving bloggers in sharing ModCloth with their communities. That said, we definitely look at the engagement and buzz that our relationships with bloggers generate; we want to make sure that blog readers are engaged and participating in a conversation via comments on the blog and social networks.

Measuring the ROI of social media is a primary challenge for marketers in 2012. What is the goal of ModCloth’s social media efforts? How do you measure the success of these efforts?

Answered by: Natasha Khan, Social Media Manager

Our social media objectives are three-fold, the first being brand awareness, second brand loyalty, and the third increasing traffic to ModCloth.com. All three are essential to our success on social channels. We measure brand awareness with virality and reach metrics; we measure brand loyalty with engagement and customer care metrics; and we measure traffic to ModCloth.com through tagging and tracking of links using Google Analytics. Our ultimate goal is to assist in making ModCloth a household name, nurture brand advocates, and encourage our girls to visit our site on a daily basis.

Can you provide any examples of a successful social media campaign for ModCloth?

Answered by: Natasha Khan, Social Media Manager

ModCloth’s ‘Something ModCloth, Something You’ Contest: http://blog.modcloth.com/2012/01/23/something-mc-pinterest-contest. We asked customers to build their dream wedding board. We chose one board to inspire our wedding stylebook, and that customer received a GC. The quantifiable results from the contest were participation, new followers, increased traffic from Pinterest, and customer sentiment. Through the contest, we gained thousands of new followers. We had a total of 600 entries.

Every month we do a Twitter topic mashup! For example, one month, we asked our followers to mash up fashion terms and famous books using hashtag #literaryfashion. The contest gained us not only fans, but attention from acclaimed poet Margaret Atwood.

Today’s favourite silly thing: #literaryfashion #modcloth(A Tale of Two Mitties? How could I!)

— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) May 19, 2011

Mobile has been growing tremendously this year. Does Mobile play a role in your social media strategy? How so?

Answered by: Alicia Barnes, PR Manager

We just launched the first iteration of our mobile site a few months ago and we’re seeing a steady rise in traffic, but we’re still in the process of building the best mobile experience possible for our customer. Right now, mobile’s not playing a huge role in our social media strategy, but we’re going to continue listening to our customer as we improve our mobile site, so we’re building to what she wants. Ultimately, we see mobile as another way for our customer to engage with us beyond purchasing. We want her to be able to browse and shop of course, but also leave product reviews, participate in Be the Buyer, and connect to the larger ModCloth community.

What other online strategies has ModCloth found success in? Do you have a diverse online marketing mix?

Answered by: Alicia Barnes, PR Manager

One less obvious way we engage our customer is through our merchandising on the site. We launch many items a day but in small lots, and we allow our customer to let us know what she wants to see come back in stock. This allows us to gauge demand and notify our customers directly when the item returns to the site. We also listen to how she “loves” and reviews items.

Additionally, we use our blog and social media to create a personal dialogue with the customer. We have huge followings on Twitter and Facebook and are building significant followings on niche networks like Instagram and Pinterest–we believe in meeting the customer and talking with her wherever she is! Customer engagement has been integral to our success so far and is going to really drive what we offer our customers in the future.

What advice can you provide to small businesses who are looking to build a social media marketing strategy? What are some points that justify social media spend for executives who are resistant?

Answered by: Natasha Khan, Social Media Manager

Social media has elements of PR, Crisis Management, Outreach, and Customer Service, so when building your strategy all of the above should be considered. How they are prioritized definitely depends on your company’s objectives. Some companies, heavily invest in their social channels as customer service outlets, without doing a big push around merchandising or promotions.

One seductive element of social media is how frequently a new site or app is launched. The smart social media manager knows that not every platform is a fit for their organization. For example, if you don’t have a visually appealing brand, you should probably not be on Pinterest. Also, if your demographic is mostly women, Google Plus might not be a great traffic source for you, currently, as it skews predominantly male.

Whether you represent a brand or yourself, breaking through the noise online requires having an unique perspective and being consistent. Finding your voice is essential, as much as finding a schedule that keeps you top of mind with your audience.

This article was originally published on TMM.

I have been asked this question many times. While it’s always good to test and learn from your own experiences, it’s also helpful to look at research and what other companies are doing. As a business it’s important to try to focus on peak times you know your audience is most engaged on social media to receive the best feedback and/or responses.

Luckily, Kissmetrics has put together a great infographic that illustrates the top time zones, peak and low times to post. Some key takeaways are:

• The Eastern and Central time zones combined represent almost 80% of the population
• About 6% of all retweets (highest percentage) occur around 5PM
• CTR’s are higher around Noon and 6PM
• Best day to share on Facebook is Saturday
• Best time to share on Facebook is Noon

Infographic courtesy of Kissmetrics.

Luckily, The Whole Brain Group has created a social media checklist for businesses who are looking for more direction on how to proceed with various social media activities, ranging from blog posts to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest updates. Learn more below:

Infographic courtesy of The Whole Brain Group.

The infographic shows that tablet web use has increased over 300% from last year, and is actually growing 10 times faster than smartphones. It’s also expected to account for 10% of total website traffic by 2014. Some other key customer behavior findings are:

• The age group with greatest tablet ownership: 18-34; Predominantly male
• 77% used their devices for shopping during the 2011 holiday season
• Tablet users on average spend 20% more than computer users
• 30% agree that tablet mobility leads to purchasing more often

The key lesson here is for businesses to examine how consumers are using mobile technology during their purchase decisions. It’s also important for businesses to review whether they’re offering the mobile shopping experience that their customers are looking for. The customer landscape is changing and if you don’t embrace new technology – you might get left behind.

Infographic by Miva Merchant

A new study from eMarketer found that only 50% of companies use social media to track what is being said about their brands, and follow up with customers. Also, only 44% of companies have an internal response plan in place. What is the lesson here? Learn from other’s mistakes, monitor what is being about your brand, have an action plan and respond to negative feedback! Acknowledging any form of feedback will show your customers that you care about their experiences – which in turn can increase loyalty to your brand.

That’s the question many marketers or businesses face when thinking about including social media into the overall marketing mix. As the dynamics of this marketing channel change every day, answering the ROI question can be difficult but more companies are beginning to look at metrics that go beyond sales. Luckily the infographic below, which comes from MDG Advertising, outlines a new way of measuring the success of social media.

The infographic shows that not only are companies beginning to look at metrics like: site traffic, positive customer mentions, number of mentions, etc., but they’re also planning to increase their social media plans and budgets. They’ve also noted intangible benefits that social can provide, such as:

• New Partnerships
• Drops in Marketing costs
• Improvement in Search engine rankings

Another area that stands out is recruiting. Companies are now proactively using social media to recruit new talent (80.2%), and 64% have successfully done so. Learn more below:

Infographic by MDG Advertising
 

Disney

The simplest messages can go a long way with brand advocates. In the example above, Disney used an image to convey a fill in the blank post to it’s Facebook fans. Along with this, the brand not only integrated it’s logo but also used a color that pops.

Coca Cola

The Facebook posts from Coca Cola are fun and inspiring. Instead of using their logo, the brand made use of the iconic and universally known symbol of the bottle. They also used fill in the blanks and fun word play. It’s definitely engaging!

Sharpie

Sharpie is a brand that has embraced social media in a unique way with their products. For the Facebook post above, Sharpie took paper, sharpies and a camera to ask a simple question of their fans. This resulted in in over 400 comments!

Starbucks

In the Facebook post above, Starbucks uses photography to capture their audiences. The brand also makes the post relevant to their fans: who doesn’t like Ice Tea in the summer?! Throughout the Starbucks Facebook page, there are engaging visuals that include their products and people, which make the brand look more human.

Red Bull

Red Bull has used video to convey a strong message to its Facebook fans. This type of messaging “sticks” and encourages fans to share, comment and ‘like’ further – creating more engagement. Does the video entice you to try something new?

Empathica studied 6,500 consumers and their social media behavior while shopping, resulting in the infographic below. The study found that over half of the respondents, 55%, liked a Facebook brand page, and 37% visited the brands website on a mobile device. Twitter fell at the bottom of the list with 10% saying they followed a brand on the social network and only 8% saying they tweeted about a brand or an experience.

Also, 73% of consumers said Facebook influenced a recent store visit, followed by Google Reviews (38%) and Groupon (35%). Once they are in the store, consumers use mobile to either check prices (55%), scan a QR code (34%) or find a review (27%).

The key lesson here is to understand how your customers are interacting with your brand. Whether it’s social or mobile (or both), you need to reach them where they are, and monitor what they’re saying about your brand.

Infographic courtesy of Empathica. 

Posting too Frequently

If you’re posting five to six times a day, you’re definitely annoying your fans. Since your posts are being pushed into fan newsfeeds, they will be anything but excited to see a post from your brand by the fourth time in a day. At the very least, they will hide your content, making your posts invisible to them and giving your brand less exposure on Facebook. The minimum recommendation is posting once a day during a peak time when your fans are most engaged. There are also businesses that post a few times a week and still maintain good engagement.

Not Posting Enough

The opposite of posting too much, is not posting enough. Once fans have liked your page, they’re expecting posts that are engaging and relevant to them. As mentioned above, posting at least once a day or a few times a week is a good start. This creates consistency. If you stop posting after making your fans used to a certain amount of posts, you risk losing their attention, which in turn will decrease engagement.

Boring Posts

There’s nothing worse than liking a page that posts boring and irrelevant content. Facebook pages with less interesting and engaging content will eventually lose fans who will move over to a page that offers what they’re looking for. It’s key for businesses to keep things interesting and fun on Facebook in order to build a community of fans and brand advocates.

Ignoring Fans Questions or Comments

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is ignoring comments or questions they receive on Facebook. Being a public platform, these types of posts are visible to everyone. Businesses are responsible for responding to such inquiries and will be held accountable by other fans. Ignoring these types of requests will eventually result in loss of fans and will hurt your brand.

Deleting Negative Feedback

This is a number one way of losing credibility with your fans. Deleting negative comments or feedback can result in more negative comments, as fans will notice their deleted posts. Instead, businesses should take the opportunity to make things right – if a customer had a bad experience with your brand, figure out the root cause and try to make it better. They may come back later and say something positive!

These are some tips on how not to lose Facebook fans. Do you have more tips? Share them below!

Image courtesy of Photobucket.com.