In the world of social media it is all too common that people forget the importance of minding their manners. By cutting out the face-to-face interaction it’s incredibly easy to respond less earnestly to people or further- to just ignore them all together.  While it is necessary to make thoughtful and timely responses to your customers, you have to consider the size of your online following.  Your online social circle may extend to thousands or even millions of people.  While it is ideal to cater to each and every request, you need to find an efficient way to prioritize your responses so that they can remain thorough and engaging.

There is no doubt that ignoring customers is a recipe for disaster in terms of brand management for you and your company.  To provide proper customer service in a busy digital media landscape it is key to ensure people know you’re responding to their concerns.  It is crucial to respond to any and all questions, even if the answer is as simple as “Let us research your problem and get back to you.”

Each and every customer matters to your brand’s well being.  If a customer is loyal enough to engage with your social media platforms, he or she is doing you a favor by providing feedback that will help your business grow in a positive direction.  Quickly respond to customer requests so that they continue to provide you with direction.  Remember: if a customer came into your office with a question or complaint you wouldn’t just ignore them!

Obviously, there is a scalability issue here, along with influence analysis. While every legitimate question, or issue deserves a response it may not be possible to answer them quickly. Start by analyzing influence. If the customer in question has all of 12 Twitter followers, then they are obviously going to drop on the priority to list to someone with 1 million followers.

The initial response is what most consumers are looking for, so give them what they want and solve their problems when possible.

This week’s tip is for those of you struggling to manage your brand’s social media efforts on a daily basis, and finding that the work is time consuming, and monotonous. The solution is simple, “think campaign.”

In order to see the true benefits from managing your brand’s social media pages is treat it like any other marketing or public relations campaign. Start with research and planning. Learn where your targeted publics are located, and how they are using social media. Use that knowledge to create your plan.

Next, implement your strategy and measure along the way. Follow the strategy you set forth, but don’t be afraid to change directions when needed. Stick to your brand’s voice, but don’t be afraid to change your content strategy if you’re not getting the engagement or reach you’re looking for.

Once you’re into a solid strategy you’ll find that scheduling content in advance becomes easier, and if you’re campaign is done well, you’ll begin engaging with customers in an organized fashion that’s never been possible in the past.

If you’re current social media strategy is to turn on your computer and do a few posts each day, then it’s time to start focusing on developing a plan that looks out more well into your future rather than the next 24 hours.

REVIEW:

1. Research
2. Develop A Plan
3. Implement Your Strategy
4. Stick to Your Brand’s Voice
5. Don’t Be Afraid to Change
6. Measure

Had a great time this morning with the Indiana Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America at the Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s session on “The New Normal”.

I got to present with Slingshot SEO’s Jeremy Dearringer (a genius) and Kevin Bailey (also a genius). Also, Rodger Johnson from YourPRGuy was there, the Global Director of PR from Cook Medical, the head of PR from the NCAA, and several other amazing speakers. Lots of bright folks, I was way out of my league.  : ) Honored to even be in the same room with them.

Wow.

My topic today was the “how” behind social media. I went over several different tools, including one of our favorites at Raidious, Radian6. When I got back to my office, I found an email from Radian6 talking about their new product launch which was very exciting, and which I wrote about over on SocialMediaRisk.com. You should check it out – game changer for large enterprise.

If you were in today’s session and you have more questions for me, please email me or leave a comment. Great audience today, really enjoyed the event. Thanks Hoosier PRSA and Indiana Chamber of Commerce!

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Recently I had the opportunity to present a workshop at the Social Media Bootcamp presented by the Indiana chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. I was asked to give a session called “Blogging 101″ targeted at public relations professionals who are transitioning from sending out media releases to generating blog posts for their clients.

Other speakers were: Kristofer Karol, National Sports Journalism Center; Eric Deckers, Pro Blog Services; and Chad Richards, Firebelly Marketing. My particular session was attended by about 40 public relations and communications folks, most of whom were new to the blogging world. It was a bit of a whirlwind session, packing a lot of information into 90 minutes including a hands-on blogging exercise.

If you are a marketing, communications, or PR professional in Indiana and you’re not already a member, I highly suggest looking into it. The Hoosier chapter of the PRSA are smart folks, real movers and shakers.

The Hoosier PRSA Blog has a nice wrap-up, and you can view my slides on Slideshare, but of course it’s not the same as seeing it live and in person.

If your organization is interested in having me out to speak about blogging or other social media topics at your brown-bag luncheon, conference or event, get in touch and we’ll talk about it.

eMarketer recently published some great research on current trends in marketing spending for social media.

Social Media = Content

According to their report there was a 23% increase in social media spending excluding paid advertising, which is a great sign for a company like ours. What’s even better is they are projecting an additional 35% for this year.

This is a great indicator that marketers get it. In the online space, you can’t buy brand preference, loyalty, awareness or affinity: they must be earned.

That’s not to say paid online advertising doesn’t work; it is very effective if there is a clear call to action, conversion path and great creative. But it is difficult for advertising to accomplish what an authentic, humanistic engagement can accomplish as it relates to hearts and minds.

One of the issues eMarketer brings up is the difficulty in tracking the marketing spend due to the number of different budgets from which it comes. Is it advertising? Not really. Is it PR? Probably not. Is it coming from IT? Nope. The need for resources to drive the socialization of business is the reason we’re here, but we constantly find ourselves working with our clients to help them figure out where the budget should come from.

So what’s the answer? We usually tell clients it should come from their Media budget, as social engagement–while not free–is still much more efficient than a typical offline media buy.

For instance, for about the cost of a week on a mid-market radio station or a single half-page newspaper ad in a mid-tier market, we can proactively manage a brand’s presence across the entire internet.

We make, manage, monitor, moderate and measure the content we create across all your brand’s digital platforms and outposts. Reallocating just a small portion of the offline media budget allows brands to actively participate in and leverage social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, company blogs, websites, email programs, and even mobile devices.

We’d love to tell you more about it: contact us any time. Here is a link to eMarketer’s full report if you have an extra $695 and you’re really interested. In the meantime, ask yourself: where is your social media budget coming from?

UPDATE: I changed the title of this post, because I came up with a better one. Also, there is a discussion we started related to this over on our Facebook Fan Page if you’re interested.

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• Increased Spend On Social & Video (viralblog.com)
• What Type Of Social Media Engagement Is Right For Your Brand? (socialmediatoday.com)

Back in September, I wrote this post regarding the definitions of Paid Media (what Ad Agencies do), Earned Media(what PR firms do) and Owned Media (what Raidious does).

Recently found this article from Forrester Research, apparently they’ve been looking into this. Good information!

Raidious is purpose built to manage owned media properties for large brands.

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• The 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem (socialmediatoday.com)

In the past, there were basically two approaches to marketing services: earned media (PR) and paid media (advertising). More recently we’ve seen the rise of owned media.

What’s the difference? It’s mostly about Control.

Earned media: Getting someone else to provide content about you on a media platform they own and control. Also known as Public Relations.

Paid Media: Paying someone to include your message alongside their content, on media they own and control. Also known as Advertising.

Owned Media: Providing your own content on media platforms you own and control.

Raidious deals only with owned media – we help you provide the content for the media platforms you own and control – email, blogs, social media, web video, mobile devices, and more.

UPDATE: Recently found this article from Forrester Research, apparently they’ve been looking into this. Good information.