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Last week, I published a post where I shared some of the similarities that I see between effective social media use and fishing. Well, guess what — I see even more similarities today! Thus, here are a few more that I’d like to share with you:
Getting Ready for Fishing
In order to succeed at fishing, you must prepare properly. The same applies to social networking.
Before you dive into social media, you will want to make sure that you have the right resources. You will certainly want to ensure that you have people that are experienced with using different social networks… but who also have an understanding of marketing and achieving business objectives.
Also, you will want to fill your tackle box with content that is useful and effective. Don’t fall into the trap that every piece of content needs to be a flashy lure either! The bottom line is this: you need lures/content that deliver results.
When it comes to fishing, it’s important that you have the right captain. Someone with experience that is also willing to take risks. When it comes to social media, it’s important that your management team supports the efforts in some fashion. Your management team can help you to build a plan that guides you in the right direction, and enables you to grow and develop with each project.
In regards to team members, you’ll certainly want to target individuals that are flexible, creative, and willing to work cohesively with you through your campaigns.
Having designers to make your pages attractive and interesting to your potential customers is crucial.
Last but definitely not least are the people who create the content that carries the message or voice of your company. These people will help build a relationship with your customers that will last.
Bait & Cast
With fishing, you could have the right bait and right team, but you also need to cast your lures at the right time.
The same applies to business. While it’s important to have creative folks and people that can create content, you also need someone that can help you to determine what the right time is to publish your content and other online materials!
When making that decision, they will do with the goal of “posting with a purpose” — whether it’s to create awareness, generate leads, or to simply be helpful (which will hopefully position you as a thought-leader).
Hook em’, Reel em’ in, and Keep Them Around
The most exciting part of a successful social media campaign and a fishing trip is when you successfully bring in your catch. In social media, you might start to measure this by the amount of “Likes” that you receive on your Facebook page, or re-tweets and Twitter followers.
Always have the goal to attract your audience with useful content and give them a reason to “like” you! If you do that, you’ll develop a relationship with clients that continue to grow as you interact and reward them for being a part of your community.
Once you’ve got them on board, it is important to remain in contact with them and reward them for connecting with you. Incentives motivate people to be a part of your community and to continue to stick around. Why would a fish eat your bait if it knows there’s better meals elsewhere? Keep reminding them that you are glad they’ve come to you and keep them around with more rewards and incentives.
Now the final part of fishing and maintaining your customers is a little different since you eventually stuff, eat or let go of your fish — but hopefully you get the idea! Getting a customer on board is your main goal as a social media marketer. Knowing the right steps to success is critically important.
By executing a successful strategy, you will generate more leads and develop better relationships with your customers as your company grows.
Get connected with us and see who’s in our boat at Grow Socially!
Recently, I’ve been on a fishing binge. And for a couple of reasons!
For one, the weather up here in New England has been quite nice. Also, I’ve had the chance to work for some of Grow Socially’s clients that come from the fishing industry.
This activity has caused me to start thinking about how using social media is a lot like fishing.
Laying the Bait
Each new lead generated through social media is like a fish that was baited with creative posting and effective marketing.
Whether it’s that awesome post you made about how your customers can make the most of their experience through your services and products or an event you promote that drives more traffic to your website, those activities are the bait.
Having the right type of bait and a solid fishing strategy is important if you want to bring in the big fish.
The same applies to online marketing. Having the right social media strategy and effective content is crucial to generating leads.
Having the Right People In the Boat
While fishing can certainly be done on your own as a leisurely activity, catching the really big fish often involves having help from multiple people.
Before the boat leaves the dock, you would absolutely take steps to bring the right types of people with you in the boat.
When it comes to succeeding with online marketing, having the right resources on board is very important. This applies to all aspects of your campaign efforts. You need people that can help develop the strategy… you need folks to create and place the bait…. you need someone to monitor activity… and you certainly need people that can help you rail in the big fish!
The same applies to your social media efforts. You need resources to accomplish each of those tasks — developing a strategy, creating content, monitoring and measuring, bringing in leads, and then, of course, converting leads into sales.
More Similarities?
These are just two of the ways that I see similarities between fishing and effective social media use. I hope that you found them helpful.
In my next post, I will share a few more!
P.S. Would you like some help using social media to catch more leads for your business? Contact us today!
Also, I’d love to hear what you thought of this post. Please let me know on Twitter!
With the new timeline Facebook has rolled out we’ve developed these tips to help you improve your brand image and enhance your social marketing strategy. Using this feature effectively can really help your brand become more relevant, aware and successful as you build your social media presence. Below are three main tips you need to know in order to effectively make the most out of your timeline cover photo.
Make it Real
You want your image to be something users associate your brand with. For example this was an amazing opportunity for us here at Grow Socially to show people what our team is all about. Our new timeline opens up with a great image of our faces showing off who we are and what we do. We’re a friendly fun collection of young professionals with a passion for social media and mobile marketing. This is a snapshot of your organization and like a book cover is what pulls customers in to see what’s inside. Other brands like Ben & Jerry’s are leveraging this feature as well to show you who and what they are. The simple and recognizable cows that Ben & Jerry’s fans have adored so much is well incorporated into their cover photo while their branded logo remains as their profile picture across the rest of Facebook.
Make it Relevant
You want your profile picture to remain the face of your brand while you post content across Facebook. Use your new cover photo as a place to showcase your most recent and relevant content. Think of this as a frequently updated billboard for your company. When users go to your page what do you want them to remember when they leave? I’m sure they look at your cover and quickly as they scan through posts on their wall. For example Taco Bell kills it on this idea by posting like crazy about their new products and other campaigns they offer with awesome Cover Photo’s to match.
Make it Rapid
Your message like I said above needs to be relevant and quick. Make sure you meet the dimensions we are providing below and use them to your advantage. Quick and easy get your message on their with the right images and relevant text. What are the buzz words around your product and why would I as a user want to like your page? Make sure those answers are incorporated into the image you create for your cover and make the most of the area that is provided.
For more tips and help with your social media efforts contact us at Grow Socially and let our team become a part of yours.
So, this threw me off a little when I first read it: The NFL is actually going to allow players to tweet in-game through out the Pro Bowl this year. Lets step back a minute before I get into details.
Being a die hard Patriots fan that follows football AND enjoys the interaction between players & fans on Twitter, I find this very unique and definitely interesting. I think I recall Chad OchoCinco being fined $25,000 for tweeting during a game as a Bengal. (Not to show my bias too much but I don’t think that would’ve happened on Bill Belichick’s sideline, but that’s my own opinion.) With that being said, the NFL has policies set in place regarding social media usage by professional athletes and coaches. It states:
“Players, coaches and operations staff cannot use social media less than 90 minutes before kickoff. Social media use can resume after traditional media interviews conclude. Updates to player accounts (by the player or anyone else) are prohibited.”
The NFL is not the only professional organization that has installed policies like this to maintain the integrity of the game and regulate the image of the sport in the eyes of the public. NBA forward Charlie Villanueva was an early offender of in-game tweeting. Although there were no fines issued in his incident, there had to be some sort of regulations put into effect that channeled the behavior of athletes on social media websites.
So what is the Pro Bowl doing this year that slips quietly around these regulations? Basically, the NFL has decided this:
“Pro Bowl players will not be able to tweet from personal devices on sidelines. Will be computer station on each sideline,” tweeted Darren Rovell, CNBC. “The Pro Bowl twitter stations where players can in-game tweet will not be sponsored.”
I think that this is a great decision by the NFL! In fact, I believe that the ratings for the Pro Bowl are going to sky-rocket through the roof! I know that I will be following the stream and tweeting at my favorite players… and I do know my excitement level will rise quite a bit if one of them tweets back at me!
I am quite curious to see how this type of interaction can be used for future events. Of course, there could be a downside. By integrating real-time technology like this into a highly focused sport, it could certainly distract players and create future problems with leadership on the field.
Where do you think this technology will go? How far can we take this to allow for flexibility for athletes and fans while maintaining the essence of the game? It should be a very interesting day on Twitter this Sunday for sports fans.
For more on Grow Socially you can connect with us today on Twitter
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So it’s that time of year where everyone’s bank accounts fill up and then empty quicker than you can say Merry Christmas. As the “big deal” shopping days approach and savings is the first thing on consumers minds its important for companies to have unique campaigns that help their company build on that relationship with their consumers. With today’s quickly changing technology and the growth of the mobile consumers I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the major companies taking advantage of this trend and developing some really awesome Mobile Coupons or Mobile Oriented campaigns.
When you think about it the concept of mobile coupons is genius! Producing a QR code that leads to your stores savings while reaching to a new and developing crowd of consumers can do nothing but help your company compete. You will also be saving money with this type of advertising by posting your QR code to your social media sites, or all over your store where consumers will be searching. Develop a successful mobile marketing approach to this holiday shopping season and you’ll find some really interesting feedback from those bargain holiday shoppers.
Tag and Label Manufacturers Institute Inc. (TLMI) is a member-driven association that is dedicated to providing business solutions to its members that enhance prosperity. In 2009, TLMI introduced a program called L.I.F.E. or Label Initiative For the Environment. This program was designed to help their association’s members with finding cost effective ways to reduce their company’s environmental footprint.
During last week’s 2011 TLMI Annual Conference, our CEO John Foley Jr. attended and received a very interesting promotion for the L.I.F.E. program. At check-in, all of the Annual Conference attendees received the L.I.F.E. hotel key card as a celebration and promotion of their label initiative program for the environment.
- TLMI Environmental Committee Chair Calvin Frost’s Office
Creativity is always effective in marketing and provides the target audience with something that is memorable. Every time John keyed into his room, he saw this promotion. We’d like to applaud TLMI for an amazing conference and for providing such a creative and innovative promotion for their environmentally-friendly program.
Full disclosure TLMI is a Grow Socially customer.
Mobile. Social. The Web. Print. As a college student, I am exposed to a variety of marketing messages through those channels (and more!) every day. Here’s a story of one that recently caught my attention.
While catching up on some much-needed study time in my dorm room, I had Pandora playing through my smartphone (don’t worry, Mom and Dad. I promise that I was still concentrating). After a few songs, I heard an advertisement through my phone. Rather than being turned off by the mobile advertisement, I was absolutely intrigued.
Timberland was the company behind the advertisement/commercial. Since they could primarily only reach people like me through the audio of their advertisement, they did a great job explaining to me that the sound I was hearing was a man running through the woods. And, the man was running with his Timberland Boots. While you may think that is pretty corny, I give this ad at least a 9 for presentation. Why? Because it caught my attention and caused me to take action! I was able to click-through from the ad that led me to a video. From there, I was able to learn more about these boots via their website.
While I did not buy the boots (I am a college student, after all!), I know that whenever I see these boots in a store, I will notice them. Yes, hearing the advertisements across other channels increased my awareness and interest in that product.
So I’m sitting here on this rainy Monday morning in the office and I started thinking about ways that I can optimize my time while working at my computer. Some times I will go onto my iTunes and listen to a podcast that discusses social media and mobile marketing but this weather is just making me feel lazy and tired and the droning voices of my podcast’s are putting me to sleep. Then it dawned on me, why couldn’t I go on YouTube and watch videos that provide me with the same content quickly and with a much more appealing presentation. As I scan through the vast collection of videos and slide shows I thought it might be helpful to share with you my thoughts on helping yourself gain the most out of your YouTube channel.
Depending on the content I explore I like to share and collect content that I find interesting. I currently help promote a couple of different social media accounts and depending on where I feel necessary I share content that is relevant and interesting to that account. So if I stumble across a video that provides good content I will usually “like” the video from a related account and then work on connecting with not only my audience but the audience of that video. I will either comment directly on the video or I will leave a comment on my Facebook wall or the wall of a page that I find the content relevant to. For example, I help manage the social networking sites for the Charlton College of Business at UMass Dartmouth and if I came across a video that teaches me how to maximize my presence on LinkedIn and it is relevant to college graduates I will “like” it through the Charlton College of Business’ YouTube channel and then shorten the link and post it to my Facebook page and Twitter handle. I can follow how effective these videos are to my audience by tracking my links and posting links that are relevant and interesting. Most people don’t realize the effectiveness of using YouTube as a social network but it is personalized TV where you can gather a collection of videos that you want to view and share them with people you think will benefit from them. Here’s a video to get yourself started;
Now create a channel, produce content of your own and connect with other channels that are producing similar content to maximize your YouTube experience. There is so much you can learn on YouTube so start creating your collection of videos that are there to help you for completely free.
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Literally you can find coupons for almost anything you need these days and as the growth of mobile commerce continues to rise we will only see more and more of this. Today Groupon and Foursquare established a partnership where you can get daily Groupon Deals by checking into places. It was only a matter of time before Foursquare and one of the webs most popular coupon and deals site joined forces. Last week I used my daily deal at Chili’s where all I had to do was check in at the restaurant and then show the waitress that I was “checked-in” and I got free chips and salsa. I don’t know if you’ve ever had their chips and salsa but they’re awesome.
What I’m getting at is the fact that coupons are much more easily accessible now that mobile devices and businesses are interacting and offering their customers what they want, where they want it (on their phone), whenever they want it. Mobile is the best venue for offering deals and coupons because of a number of reasons. For one it is a much greener approach to buying and selling. There is no need to print out deals and present them at stores and businesses anymore because you can simply put them up on your phone and do the same. I know my mother has sat at the breakfast table drinking her coffee on a Sunday morning and tediously cut a number of coupons out of the local paper in order to save a few dollars on her next grocery visit. Eliminate that process by uploading them onto your phone. It’s becoming even easier when you allow google to access your location because they can offer you search results that are targeted in your area.
WAKE UP CALL: Local businesses should be looking at this as a tremendous opportunity to create a mobile campaign for their companies. It only makes sense for a local business to drive more traffic to their store by creating a mobile website that links to a coupon that is only accessible by using the mobile phone. I sat in on a webinar the other day by a few big business owners and was presented by Mobile Commerce Daily and the hot topic of mobile was debated and discussed mostly regarding the use of mobile strategy and Bricks and Mobile Strategy. I asked a question to see how small businesses could integrate mobile commerce even if they weren’t familiar with eCommerce (buying and selling online). They told me that most small businesses they know are using mobile websites and mobile commerce are using them more along the lines of coupon clubs. Say you’re a local Daddy Joe’s Liquor Store and you want to develop a mobile website to drive more traffic to your store. Create a Mobile Website that has your landing page state a call to action such as “find great deals and join our coupon club below!” and you have one of your pages be a list of coupons that can be presented at the time of purchase 1 per customer per visit. This enables you to develop a relationship with your customers that encourages them to come back and use that coupon again at your store another day. You give people a reason to use your mobile website and create that “coupon club” experience.
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Maybe you’re starting to realize that QR codes are hitting the mainstream of America very quickly or maybe you dont but one thing is certain, they will be beneficial to any type of business large or small. Studies show that QR codes are part of the next wave in marketing throughout the country and it really has made a tremendous impact on customer interaction for businesses worldwide. In Japan they started using QR codes in 1994. Its crazy to think I was only four years old then just learning how to read! Toyota factories in Japan were using QR codes as a way to track and organize their inventory. Marketing is one of those venues where QR codes have found a way to not only provide a unique approach to their uses but have developed an opportunity for companies to make their materials more interactive and interesting.
Smartphone use is only going to rise as technologies change and the growth of the mobile market continues to develop. Developing a strategy for using QR Codes effectively is important and absolutely a must! Develop a mobile website that has a direct link from your QR Codes that way anyone that scans your QR code will quickly be directed to your website and will be able to connect with you. Did you know that 51% of mobile users are more likely to make a purchase from a retailer with a mobile website? Don’t let your competitors get ahead of you! 73% of businesses are planning on investing in mobile by the end of 2011, are you part of that population? Find the most unique ways to connect with your customers and provide them with the venues of communication.
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FROM THE BLOG
A Few Thoughts on GM and Facebook Advertisting || Read More
May 17, 2012
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May 14, 2012
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