Social Media Pay to Play: When it Makes Sense

January 19, 2014 by

www.jeffkorhan.com

One of the important social media trends for 2014 is making financial investments in the major social media networks in order to accomplish specific objectives, otherwise known as pay to play.

The key is to distinguish between an investment and expenditures that deliver little future value.

LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are now public companies. They are expected to grow the investment that shareholders have made in their shares, with that money naturally coming from users of the site that heretofore have enjoyed a free ride.

It has been apparent for some time now that your reach on Facebook is limited without advertising. It is evident that while Facebook advertising may indeed reach new fans, that does not necessarily convert into practical outcomes.

If you have not yet experimented with advertising on these social media channels, now is the time to do so before the pricing gets out of reach for most small businesses. However, be aware of end game – what you ultimately want to accomplish with that investment, otherwise it doesn’t make sense to play.

#1 – Quickly Building New Communities

If you are just getting started with new social media channels, it may make sense to make an investment up front to achieve critical mass more quickly.

For example, if the business is moving into a new market, it will be helpful to attract fans that are currently aligned with established competitors. Here is an excellent article that suggests ways for advertising on the major social media networks to build traffic to your account.

In reality, you are paying to rent the attention of a specific community. Your advertising dollars are buying a look from people that are known to have an affinity for businesses or brands like yours. If your content is solid you will most likely retain a generous number of them.

Of course, other ways to accomplish this for free are to partner with others in your space who will freely help you in exchange for a non-monetary value exchange.

#2 – Growing Your Content Marketing Assets

Let’s be clear that we are all renting space on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. For most that is free rent.

So, when does it make sense to pay to rent when everyone most others are not? When there is a direct conversion from that Facebook account into new business, or when it drives traffic to another site that converts it, such as your primary website.

Too many businesses are chasing Facebook likes that merely serve as social proof. There is nothing at all wrong with this. Facebook is great for nurturing relationships. However, one should question whether it’s necessary to invest in that or allow to happen organically.

If any of the social networks can help to build properties you own that can convert that traffic into profitable outcomes, such as your blog or email newsletter, then the investment makes sense.

In other words, pay to play when it builds traffic that can be converted.

#3 – Promoting Offers Designed to Convert

If your business has a specific offer with a limited window of opportunity, then investing to ensure it reaches as many targeted potential buyers as possible makes sense.

This may be the most logical reason for investing in social media advertising because social marketing is generally used to educate, not promote. It’s a process that is designed to convert attention into revenue when the time is right. This will include engaging not only the attention of that audience, but everyone that their social graphs.

Just as there is a difference between gambling and playing cards to win in the Las Vegas casinos, so it is with advertising. Gamblers like to say they enjoying playing cards, even when they are losing money, and you will always see them looking at a list of all the free bet deals for the grand national so they could get in.

Personally, I enjoy winning.

As pay to play becomes more common, it will be necessary to establish a budget with specific objectives, presumably to earn a profit from that investment. Intermediate objectives can be building your tribe, but ultimately offers have to be made that will generate a profit.

It doesn’t make much sense to invest in getting your content shared unless you have designed specific methods for earning back the investment, plus a reasonable (or better) profit. 

Make sense?

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business – (Wiley 2013)  

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Photo Credit

Organizing Your Social Media Marketing

September 20, 2013 by

www.builtinsocial.com

You can take the stress out of your social media marketing process by organizing it into written plan that is consistently implemented. That organized and written plan can then be refined as you grow with it.

The key to an effective social media marketing plan is following specific rules that are organized into a process. Following that allows you and your team to capably respond to unforeseen challenges and opportunities, thereby avoiding social media overwhelm.

Organization is not an activity, but rather the design and implementation of proven practices that are Built-in — a planned structure that gives everyone confidence for the accomplishment of practical objectives that sustain the growth of the organization.

Social Marketing is a Process

While earning my college degree in the sciences I learned an important lesson about managing change. Put systems in place to control what is controllable, so that you can better respond to what you cannot control, which for social media could be changes in the networks, or simply the actions of other people.

As you know, the various social media networks do seem to change like the weather. So, instead of stressing about the inevitable changes to LinkedIn, YouTube, or Facebook, expect and plan for them by getting and keeping everything else organized to run like a well-oiled machine.

Your social media marketing process should include, but not be limited to the following best practices.

1. Actions you will take daily, weekly, and monthly. This is simply building a schedule to which your business is prepared to commit, such as a weekly newsletter, daily Facebook page updates, checking your blog or Twitter for comments, Facebook for birthdays, and so on.

2. Specific topics that your content marketing will address. This will keep you on topic and more aware of balancing the type of content you create and share across multiple channels. Limit this to as few as one, and preferably no more than seven topics.

3. Keywords and hashtags that you will use. Having a handy list of hashtags and keywords that relate to your topics will streamline your work.

4. Tools that you rely on. There are thousands of social media tools and many of them work quite well. Choose and limit your use to just a few, but do your homework to learn about newer and better ones as they come along.

5. Allocating time for research and education. All of us have to do research to learn. So, make a list of blogs and other resources to subscribe to, while also attending educational events online, or in person where you can make new connections.

6. Making lists of like-minded friends and colleagues that can help you. Try to organize your friends into categories of expertise. A quick email to a colleague can save hours of research.

7. Methods for batching your work to build in flexibility. Some of the more prolific marketers do all of their content creation in one focused period every week, rather than pushing it all to a deadline.

8. Allocating time for making progress with what you have been putting off. You can dramatically reduce your stress by committing to periodically fixing or updating one channel you have been ignoring. For many of us this is Pinterest, and for others it is your blog.

9. Write down your process steps. That alone will give you more confidence.

Refine Your Process

At this point you have practices that got you here. Applying even a few new practices on a regular basis will serve to refine your process into a valued resource. You’ll also discover it helps with recruiting good people who will recognize your business has a process in place to help them succeed.

The process of organizing social media marketing comes down to understanding not just what to do, but also why. After years of working with thousands of small businesses as a social media coach and trainer I discovered the primary source of poor implementation, and often giving up altogether, could be reduced to simply not understanding why.

You absolutely have to believe your work will produce results, and that comes from knowing both why and how it works. This is the primary reason I wrote the book Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business.

Do yourself a favor and get the Introduction and 1st Chapter for free by clicking here. Reading just those 30 or so pages will teach you more than most small business will ever know about social marketing. Then take a look at the Table of Contents and you’ll get a sense of how the rest of the book builds on that essential foundation.

Everything in business is a process. What should be exciting is knowing that refining your social media marketing process will make your work easier, better, more readily managed as a team, or outsourced to skilled professionals.

Organize your social media marketing process; and have a plan for implementing it well.

About the Author: Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business and host of This Old New Business podcast.

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+