Social media has become the most exciting shift in communication that business is currently experiencing. This shift spans across generational boundaries and has made a more convenient lifestyle for people as the socialize on the internet.

Over the past year I have had the privilege to coach executives from Mr Price, The South African Presidency, the ACDP, Southern Sun, Three Cities, TomorrowToday and a number of Non Profit Organisations.

The key areas that we cover in social media coaching are:

• How to use social media platforms?
• How does this affect my business?
• How does this affect people?
• How can I make the work for me?

What makes social media coaching sessions different from social media workshops.

• The coaching sessions encourage conversations that speak directly to your needs or concerns
• One-on-one coaching can be done on your schedule (we can even do them over Skype if its more convenient).

For more information please contact workshops@mikesaunders.co.za.

This information comes from the Buyershpere report which I believe shows great insight into the platforms neccessary to create business to business sales leads from the internet.

A Summary: How important is your company website?

When looking at buying business services there are three stages of the purchase that have been identified:

1. Identifying and defining the need
2. Indentifying potential suppliers
3. Final selection of the supplier

In all three stages a company’s website was the primary channel used to gather information, even more than web searches. In stage one industry press, word of mouth and events were next in line as channels used to identify and define the need for the purchase.

The company website in this case has the opportunity to establish brand, share product details and specifications and add value to the different purchase stages. the interesting fact that rose oot of the study though was that the company website had very little influence on the conclusion of each stage.

The effect of social media on business to business purchasing decisions

It’s all about influence!

Every stage of the purchase cycle revealed that  social media channels and word of mouth were the primary influential channels that influenced the decisions made.

Stage one indicated blogs and word of mouth as the primary influencer, whilst stage two and three showed a preference towards twitter, blogs and Facebook.

Consumer 2.0

Touch Durban saw the opportunity to leverage the Currie Cup by doing something that can only work on a social media platform. They supported another Twitter profile!!

@touchdurban put all their effort into getting as many people as possible to follow @just_sharks. This helped the @just_sharks claim the number three position on the SA Twitter Trends and take @touchdurban into the Top 10.

The Royal Hotel, who runs the @touchdurban profile, gave a weekend away to a sharks supporter for showing their support to the Sharks rugby team. This helped drive the interest towards the @just_sharks profile and promote the hotel and their twitter profile.

There are a few things to take away from this:

1) When promoting yourself in social media circles it can be very beneficial to run joint promotions rather than trying to “go it alone”

2) Competitions are a great way to generate excitement on social networks. When running your competitions make sure you in,clued a way for people to follow your profiles

3) Join the passion – people promote what they are passionate about.  Aligning @touchdurban to the Currie Cup Final bought the Durban events profile to the awareness of rugby fans during one of the most passionate times for the sport in South Africa. As people promoted their love for the sport @touchdurban was taken along for the ride.

Well done to the team at Touch Durban for doing such a great job.

Join Touch Durban on Facebook of Twitter

YouTube also creates SEO advantages for your company because Google seems to love video. If there is video content on the web (especially in YouTube) that matches your search query you will find links to those videos on the front page of your search result.

So what you need to do is make sure that your video’s on YouTube have keyword specific titles and tags. This is much the same as making sure that your website has H1 headers and meta tags.

However, when people find your video through Google they are usually taken to your YouTube profile and not to your website. So make sure that your YouTube profile is geared to drive that traffic to your website.

So video marketing can not only help in creating more hype in social media but it can also have a great impact on your SEO efforts. All the more reason to get started on a video marketing campaign to complete your internet marketing campaign.

Basically the suggestion is to do nothing and actually fix the problem of the spill. In fact all BP’s resources should be focused on this one problem.

In the same way not every single negative piece of  social media press can be solved with social media. You may need to throw all your energy into fixing the problem.

An example would be a public dissatisfaction with the level of service received at retail outlets of a major brand. The dissatisfied public have chosen to ‘vent’ on their favorite social media platforms and as a result their message is spreading like wildfire. A literal PR nightmare.

You can respond to every single comment and produce all kinds of interesting media into the social realm, but if the root of the problem is not fixed then the bad social media press will continue. My advice (and Harvard Business’s Advice) is to tackle the actual problem first and train your employees to deliver greater service levels to your customers.

Once the actual problem is solved, return to your Online Reputation Management and build a campaign/message around how you have dealt with the problem and how your customers can now visit the store and experience better service. This positive experience (subsequently felt by the customer) may make it onto social media and their opinion will be heard much louder than yours!

So social media might not solve the actual problem, but it was very helpful in identifying the problem and then promoting the solution back to your customers.

I can confirm all the hype now after I sat with Mr. Vusi Mona, Deputy Director General: Head of Communications, from the South African Presidency. Over coffee at the King Shaka Airport we discussed the strategy to implement this new communication vehicle into the The Presidency.

I found Mr. Mona to be incredibly insightful and passionate about exploring social media.

Mr. Mona had this to say about our consultation session together:

“Thanks Mike. I derived lots of value from our discussion.”

I am looking forward to serving our country in developing their new social media communication strategy.

Bearing in mind alot of the content here is just my opinion but we looked some case studies, why social media is important, how I launched my consultancy, the most important asset to social media and B2B marketing online.

You can download/listen the podcast here

When looking at Facebook and Twitter most people know that you can link Twitter and Facebook so that you only update one and the other updates automatically. I have warned people about linking Twitter and Facebook before and won’t go into it here. Assuming that you agree with my argument that you should treat Twitter and Facebook seperately, the question goes back to focus because if I am on Facebook – Twitter suffers and vice versa.

According to an article in Hubspot Marketing a survey discovered that business to business companies benefit more from Twitter while products and services that are directed at the consumer can achieve better results on Facebook.

This starts to make more sense when you look at the atmospheres that each network has.

Twitter is more tolerant of business promotion because it is more of an information network than a social network. Business promotion is seen as more information and therefore if it is relevant to my need it is valuable to me.

While Facebook adopts a purely social stance in the mind of its users. Think about a shopping center, its a social venue. People spend time in shopping centers when there are relaxing and taking time out of the normal work routine. However there is an incredible amount of business transaction that takes places in a shopping center and it mostly takes place under the name of leisure!

Facebook is much the same. So it provides a great marketing platform, but only for particular products and services that interest a consumer.

If you would like to know more about Facebook and Twitter take a look at my Social Media Training and let me know if you would like to attend the next one.

Marketing Research

Marketing research needs to take place before the campaign begins and continuously thoughout the campaign activation process. If the correct metrics are not in place you are in danger of creating the wrong kind of return. Even worse, you may not generate any return on your campaign.

Facebook has done a very good job in providing its Facebook Insights on pages created in Facebook. These metrics can provide valuable information to the campaign and its return.

A Willingness to Change

All this research is available all the time. Some of it is even available in real-time. My suggestion when building your marketing strategy would be to identify your marketing decision maker and make sure that they are integrally involved in the strategy. You can make changes to your internet marketing campaign almost instantly, why not take advantage of this flexibility and make sure that your team is ready and willing to make quick decisions to activate intuitive marketing ideas as soon as possible.

Clear Project Management

There is nothing worse than a strategy activation where the team involved in carrying out the campaign are unsure of their responsibilities. Put someone in charge of making sure that all the task happen at the right time and make sure that everyone is clear about their responsibilities. Internet maketing campaigns often have alot of small but vitally important tasks that need to take place and these can easily fall through the cracks if not properly managed.

Good project management will also put the accountability in the hands of those responsible.

Content Creation

Differrent people use the internet in different ways. Some watch video’s, some read and other may prefer looking at images. A good internet marketing strategy will incorporate a combination of internet media to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Make sure that you have the resources in place to create blog articles, video and photo galleries. A well created content campaign that is engaging and that covers all your online media will put you in good stead to drive interested traffic to your website. Just remember to keep your content original

Keep It Simple

My favourite quote when it comes to internet marketing strategy is

“The role of the marketer is to remove choice”

I have no idea who said it first but it doesn’t really matter. The principle is made of gold. If you clutter you campaign with too many options you may destroy any chance of generating leads.