I recently wrote this guest blog post for EditMe, a wiki where regular people build websites.

We’ve all been there: we’ve got a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, you name it…..you’ve got traffic….. but no one’s giving you any love.  No “comments” love.  No “click” love.  No “Facebook Like” love.  No “Twitter Retweet” love.

Is it you?

Well, it is, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that your content is bad itself.  It may mean you haven’t given people a good enough call-to-action, a reason for them to do more than just read what you put out there and move on.  It doesn’t mean that they walk away dissatisfied, or unfulfilled.  In fact, you may very well have left a good impression on them.  But you could be doing more to get them to interact.

So, you ask, what are some ways I can make people want to *do* stuff with my content?  How can I get them to react to it, or even to share it? I’ve listed a few ways below, and would love to hear from you some of your success stories.

Way Number One: Question Them

Assuming that your content is actually good and offers value to your readers, and that you’ve distributed your content enough that it has eyes reading it, getting your audience to take that one step further and process your content increases the likelihood that they’ll want to react to it in some way.  What I’ve found to be an effective tactic – as a practitioner and as a reader – is asking a question.

Whether it’s in the middle of a blog post or at the end, or as part of a conversation on a social networking platform, a question forces your reader to pause and think about what’s being discussed.  Quite literally, the act of reading a question provokes your brain to actually ask it of itself, and therefore mull over answers. This is a much more active process than simply reading, which can sometimes be very passive as we skim, consume, and move on through the piles of content we see each day.

Additionally, asking a question invites your readers to a discussion, and shows them that you want to have that discussion, while also empowering them as capable and knowledgeable contributors to the discussion topic.

Read more at EditMe>>

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Today’s Guest Post is by Kristin Zajac, a social media marketing enthusiast and recent MBA graduate from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Feel like you spend as much time trying to “sell” your own organization on the value of participating in social media as you do actually harnessing value from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook? You’re not alone.

How many of these objections sound familiar?

• “Twitter is just for posting personal updates that no one cares about. Why would our company want to participate in that?”
• “We want our customers coming to our website for information about us, not Facebook.”
• “What if a customer posts something negative about our company or product? We can’t let that happen.”

One of the biggest challenges for the social media marketer today is assuming the role of evangelist within his or her own company.  For those marketers who want to move forward with a social media marketing program, gaining buy-in from internal teams can be a frustrating and painful process. Try these tips to help accelerate acceptance.

Tip 1: Carefully consider the perspective of your audience.

Marketers, salespeople, lawyers, executives, etc. all have different career goals, and these goals influence how they perceive anything new and different in their company.  If a colleague feels that the company’s participation in social media threatens their ability to be successful in their job, they are going to resist it. Therefore, it’s critical that you consider why someone doesn’t want social media.

• Does the salesperson fear that their value will be eroded if customers can post questions online and any employee in the company can answer?
• Does the engineer worry that too much information about her product will be revealed publicly?
• Does the executive believe that the demographic of social media users is all wrong for your product line?

When you understand the source of the hesitation, you’re more likely to be able to address it effectively. Not only can you mitigate fears, you can also find unnoticed aspects of social media that may positively impact your colleague’s goals. For example, an executive concerned about the ROI of employees producing white papers may respond to the idea that content assets repurposed for a new medium may provide additional return.

If you don’t know what might be making a colleague hesitate – ask! Maybe the concern stems from a simple misunderstanding and can be easily cleared up. Or if it’s a bigger issue, it’s likely that others have the same misgiving and you’ll need to address it eventually anyway. Either way, you’ll show that you understand the important business issues and that you have the expertise to overcome them.

Tip 2: Speak the same language.

Be aware of key vocabulary used in the department of the person you’re talking to, and incorporate it into your conversation if appropriate. Try to avoid using a lot of marketing terminology that may be more familiar to you than to them.

When you’re talking to someone in sales, mention that social media generates leads that will help them reach their quota.  If it’s someone in finance, stress that adding social media marketing will add little to nothing to the budget.

At the same time, don’t use social media-specific  terms like hashtag or fan page — not only will novices not understand what you’re talking about, they may also feel defensive about their lack of knowledge and annoyed that you don’t understand where they are coming from (see Tip 1). If you need to reference a social media term, make sure to explain it.

Tip 3: Provide relevant examples of success.

One of the most powerful ways to convince skeptics of the value of social media is to give concrete success stories. Research your competitors’ efforts and make sure to point out any wins they have had, even if it’s as simple as their number of Facebook fans.

Anecdotal evidence works great too. For example, perhaps you’ve heard that a competitor closed a big sale with a client who came to them by finding the company’s blog. Relay those stories to colleagues early and often.

The more concrete examples you can give, the more you can open up a skeptic’s mind to the ways social media can be a fantastic tool — and less of a liability.

Tip 4: Reference or hire third party experts.

Sometimes an external expert in a space can bring credibility to a claim made by an employee when colleagues are skeptical.

Find and share an article highlighting the value of social media in a publication that your colleague respects. For example, if you’re trying to win over your CFO, scour the Wall Street Journal.

Or, consider bringing in a speaker who is an expert on social media marketing to explain the space and answer questions. This can take some of the onus off you to be able to respond to every potential issue.

Tip 5: Show that your customers are already on social media.

Provide evidence that your customers are already present on social media and talking about topics related to your industry. Gather screenshots of customer comments about your company, your competitors, or the pain that your products solve on various social networking platforms. Then show your colleagues. Ask: If our customers are already having these conversations online, shouldn’t we have a voice in the dialog?

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Emotional Brand

I’ve been thinking a lot about branding lately.  It’s because there are a lot more elements we have to be thinking about in new marketing that we may not have had to think about in such a way or to such an extent before.

A few weeks ago it was on the Voice Brand.  Closely related is the idea of your Emotional Brand.

There’s always been an emotional component to your brand (or there should have been, at least).

But now it’s different than what it meant 15 years ago.  Then, it was a uni-directional connection, and generally the emotions were connected to how people felt about product or service performance or how your advertising campaign made them feel.  The emotions weren’t tied to the things we’re all talking about now: conversation, engagement.  All of those terms have different meanings in new marketing. 

Now you have a bi-directional relationship with your customer, the emotional connection to your brand is more than liking your products.  It goes beyond a one-way connection, and becomes a give-and-take relationship.

These emotions can work both ways for you.   Take two long-standing social media examples:

• Zappos. Mashable even said “your relationship IS your brand” when discussing Zappos.  Spot on. Zappos has been able to develop strong and positive relationships not only with existing customers, but with non-existing ones as well (many of whom I’d be willing to bet are now loyal Zappos users).
• Motrin.  Now, granted, you don’t want to get me started on the response by the actual mom’s in this situation, so we’ll leave that alone (I disagree with it, plainly put).  However, the social media response (or lack thereof) on the part of Motrin was at best weak, and at worst late and irritating for the angry crowd it needed to talk to.  What did that do? Increased the negative emotions even more.  This is where the response part of the brand wasn’t effective enough to mend the relationship.

A more recent example (still in play) is Domino’s Pizza Turnaround Campaign, which I think is working pretty darn well for them.  This is a case where the saw their relationship with customers declining for reasons unrelated to social media (basic quality) and they’ve launched a relationship management program that’s reinvigorating the emotions of their eaters (or non-eaters) in positive ways.

Get Emotional

The way you choose to handle the relationships with your audience  members will be a big determinate in how your brand is perceived, and the types of emotions they’ll have towards your brand. 

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Conversation
Response
Bi-Directional
Engage

We’ve heard them all.  Social media marketing requires us to think seriously about these aspects of our marketing campaigns.  You must engage in bi-directional conversation and respond to your audience and engage with them when they reach out to you.  With a focus on conversation and valuable content, brands literally must talk to their customers, both in private and in public.

These concepts are new anymore.  Are we taking them seriously enough? But WE’RE NOT TAKING THEM SERIOUSLY ENOUGH.

The Voice needs to become an integral and crucial part of your brand strategy. It is….your Voice Brand.

Yes, that’s capitalized for a reason.  It should be an” official” part of your brand.  A line item in your short list of brand elements.  Like your Logo or your Tagline.  Something you sit down and have brand meetings about.

How is your Voice expressed? Much of the time in new marketing it’s through content.  Valuable content.  That content is what starts the conversations we’re talking about, the ones you need.

How you communicate through this content – your Voice – is something that needs to be very well thought out, not just in terms of your social media strategy, but also in terms of your core branding strategy.

Aside from asking yourself how you want to “sound,” you have to also be asking yourself who you want to start conversations with, and what you want to have conversations about.  These are the same types of questions you’ve been asking about your brand for years – what types of people do you want be aware of your brand, and what do you want them to do with that awareness.

Where the traditional type of marketing, made up in large part of push marketing, relied on getting your logo or some other recognizable brand element in front of eyes (think billboard, magazine ad, TV commercial), new marketing suggests that the relationship people make with your brand is through conversation and engagement with the brand beyond simply a recognition.

I don’t mean to suggest that the traditional elements of your brand are less important.  That’s not the case at all.  But it’s kind of like trying to find a date in bar – your trendy shirt and fresh haircut only take you so far.  You’ve really got to nail the “Hi my name is” part to stand a chance.  And cheesy pick up lines can also only take you so far…. so you better put some thought and emotion into it.

Visualization vs Readability

In a recent Six Pixels of Separation Episode (Episode #207, Media Hacks #31, 20 June, minute 38:20 or so…..and you should definitely listen to the rest of the podcast as the whole conversation is full of good stuff), Mitch Joel talks about brands creating content for readability:

“…..in a lot of instances, most people didn’t design so that the consumers could consume the primary force of content, they’ve actually designed it so it would look good and attractive so that they could give it a level of credibility that might incite an advertiser to buy a banner ad, and I think that that is the real dichotomy of marketing….we’re trying to design really nice websites, and a lot of the time I look and I do say to myself, “Is this simple enough?” and part of the reason I think [Twist Image] gets accolades for the design of the Six Pixel blog is because the focus for me when looking at it has always been….please make the reading as easy and seamless for the consumer as possible so they can read it quickly and comment effectively and that it not be too complex….and what I find is that, all too often, as designers, we design with the complexity of the visualization in mind versus the simplicity of making it more readable….they are completely selfish …not embracing the reader’s need to get to the content in a fast, simple and clean way.”

This highlights a number of really important points about the concept of a Voice Brand.

• Again, it’s not just about how you LOOK.  You have to make sure that your content can be consumed easily and can be interacted with appropriately for it to make a real impression on your audience.  If you can do that and make it look nice, icing on the cake.
• If you’re trying to cater towards advertisers, you’re probably missing the point.  If you haven’t solved the problem of making your content easy to access, you won’t have an audience to woo advertisers with regardless.  Google knows this.  If they didn’t make their experience what it is for the users, it wouldn’t be nearly as valuable for the advertisers, and the way they do that is they cater almost 100% towards the needs of those users.
• It’s a constant revisiting of your content.  Mitch mentions that he continually tells himself that.  I’d bet he does it with close to every piece of content he puts out (yes, it’s probably at the point now where he doesn’t need to put a lot of effort into this thought process, but he still likely does it on some level).

Develop your Voice Brand for the New Marketing Landscape

Thinking about how marketing concepts are shifting doesn’t mean that the foundations of marketing don’t apply.  Your brand is still your brand, and it’s still incredibly important.  But it’s taking a new form, and requiring new elements to be effective.  Wherever and however you’re reaching your audience means that brand elements  are and should be present, so be sure you’re thinking about the right ones.

Don’t miss the opportunity to create a strong brand that fits today’s marketplace.

(Note, this piece assumes that an organization has created a strategic plan for using social media, rather than having someone in a cube in the back office posting to a blog once a week).

I got into an interesting discussion in the comments section of a post about social media success over on B2B Voices with Mark W Schaefer, wherein I came to the conclusion that we were both basically saying the same thing, but looking at the process differently.

It really emphasized the importance of segmenting your overall Program in order to accurately identify success – or failure. This could be your business program, your marketing program, your sales program… in this case it’s the program that you’ve decided to supplement with social media.

It goes without saying that you should be setting measurable goals for your Program, and that they should all point towards money, whether it’s in a corporate setting or a non-profit setting or what have you. The dough may come in different forms, but let’s be honest, without it, you really don’t exist. However, the ability to bring in this money more often than not does not rest on one single mechanism, it rests on many.

All of this may seem blatantly obvious when I say it, but it really surprises me how many times I hear that social media is a failure because it didn’t sell something, or how many times people expect that a Twitter following is directly related to ROI.

The conversation should go more like this:

“The website traffic from the month of October increased by 40%, with 80% of that being from our new Twitter program.  Additionally, the number of sales that resulted from our website increased by 30%.  We can draw the conclusion that our Twitter program is bringing in valuable traffic to our website, which has always had a great conversion rate.”

Or, perhaps more telling:

“The website traffic from the month of October increased by 40%, with 80% of that being from our new Twitter program.  However, the number of sales that resulted from our website didn’t change.  Either our Social Media Program is not bringing in valuable website traffic, or our website is not structured in a way to convert viewers to customers.”

This conversation is entirely dependent on the goals you’ve set out for your Social Media Program, and then how they are linked to your other programs.  The process looks like this:

1. Identify overall Program Goals
2. Identify Components that will go into this Program to achieve those goals
3. Determine the goals of each separate Component and how each of those goals is connect to your overall Program Goals.

So, if our social media program brought in more qualified leaders to our website (Component Goal), which was restructured to funnel any traffic to a new sales team (Component Goal), who would then convert them to users (Component Goal), we profit (Program Goal).  If one of these fails, it doesn’t mean all of them are failures.

Of course, if you set up your social media program to get direct sales, and that’s not happening, then yes, social media is a failure.  But just because your sales are not increasing when you start using social media doesn’t categorically mean that your Social Media Program is a failure.  If you haven’t touched your website in 5 years and you were never getting sales from it, and you’re hoping to increase website traffic with social media, your problem is probably not social media, it’s your website.

A couple of scenarios to consider:

Social Media Success + Sales Team Success = Program Success

Social Media Success + Website Failure = Program Failure IF the website was in place to convert viewers to buyers

Social Media Success + Website Failure = Program Success IF the website was in place to actually convert without the website (therefore you’re really running two separate programs)

Social Media Success + Customer Service Success = Program Success (this is an implicit one that addresses the Lifetime Value of the Customer, and assuming that with happier customers, you will get continual long-term share-of-wallet from them)

Social Media Failure + Sales Team Success = Program Failure IF social media was meant to bring increased leads to the Sales Team

Social Media Success + Product Failure = Program Failure (more accurately, this would be Business Failure, since nothing can support a lousy product)

I could go on with various scenarios, but I’ll stop….

The focus here is on the Component level and the fact that, far too often, people draw too-direct a connection between a Social Media Program (which, at first glance, can seem quite qualitative) and money coming in the door.  By highlighting a series of connections, you’ll be much better equipped to account for success, measure for it, and build an effective overall Program that is illustrated in stages, rather than “If I build a Facebook, when should I expect to see money in the door.”

This is why it’s so important to think strategically about what a social media program really means for your company, and how it fits into a Program that has been well thought out, and is well-measured.  Don’t go out and hire social media guru and expect him to move mountains unless you plan on allowing them access to your overall business processes and make darn sure that he is capable of making the above links and laying out effective goals that support your Program.

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