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KristineS
05-07-2012, 12:53 PM
I run a pretty robust slate of social media for EnMart. We have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, a Youtube account and several Pinterest boards. I don't jump on every new fad that comes down the pike, but I have spent time determining where our audience and our industry is and I've made sure we're there too.

What's been interesting is that lately I'm seeing a real upsurge in people knowing who we are as a company and who I am in relation to the company. At first I thought it was because I blog in a couple of places, and write for an industry magazine, and I think that's part of it, but the rest is from social media. People recognize my voice from the company videos I've narrated. They seek us out at trade shows because they saw we'd be there from our Facebook page. I've had people come up to me at the reception desk at hotels and tell me they're so glad we came to a show and I don't even know who the person speaking to me is. I've also had people want to have their picture taken with me in our trade show booth.

I'm just wondering if anyone else who uses social media for their business has had this sort of experience.

Art Vanderbie
05-07-2012, 01:24 PM
First of all, congratulations on your Social Media success! That is awesome.

I helped my brother get his restaurant up and running, the marketing side of it. It took a while to find our audience, but we too have had success, especially posting deals on Twitter. We make a point of telling customers in the store to follow us on there. It typically leads to incremental sales so it's definitely a win-win!

Art Vanderbie
05-07-2012, 01:25 PM
btw, I used a lot of info from here: http://mashable.com/2011/12/09/new-twitter-tricks-tips/

KristineS
05-08-2012, 01:01 PM
btw, I used a lot of info from here: http://mashable.com/2011/12/09/new-twitter-tricks-tips/

Mashable is a useful site. I visit it quite regularly.

natalia
05-30-2012, 07:17 PM
I am now using linkeding and twitter to promote my business, they bring quite good result as they increased traffic to my website.

RitaCarrol
05-31-2012, 11:25 AM
Congrats! This sounds like a social media manager's dream come true. I think that your customers/target audience are really relating to your message and the fact that they remember who you are is even greater! They are tying emotions to your brand - which is such a big goal of social media.

KristineS
05-31-2012, 11:36 AM
Thanks, Rita. I'm lucky in that the industry in which I work (garment decoration) tends to be pretty social media savvy. If you build the sites or the profiles, they will come and they will talk to you if you talk back. I definitely have had people tell me they trust our company because we are so transparent, and that tells me that our social media outreach is working.

AccountantSalary
06-03-2012, 12:01 PM
Congratulations KristineS. I'm glad this is working out for you.

Have not had much success with Twitter. But I do get a lot of visitors from Facebook, and, oddly enough, Pinterest. You may want to try posting some images there that relate to your site.

KristineS
06-04-2012, 11:27 AM
Congratulations KristineS. I'm glad this is working out for you.

Have not had much success with Twitter. But I do get a lot of visitors from Facebook, and, oddly enough, Pinterest. You may want to try posting some images there that relate to your site.

Actually, I run several boards on Pinterest on behalf of EnMart. Since the decoration world is such a visual one Pinterest was a no brainer for us. It was brought some traffic.

greenoak
06-07-2012, 05:02 PM
your facebook sounds really good kristine...and it just builds and builds...... ....have you done promoted posts? how about offers?
i am deep into pinterest.... over 1000 followers , i really like it...and my customers are crazy about it....i hear about it several times in the store daily..

KristineS
06-08-2012, 12:06 PM
your facebook sounds really good kristine...and it just builds and builds...... ....have you done promoted posts? how about offers?
i am deep into pinterest.... over 1000 followers , i really like it...and my customers are crazy about it....i hear about it several times in the store daily..

I haven't done promoted posts, Ann, and I doubt I ever will. I know Facebook is now trying to force everyone into that business model, and I'm not fond of that.

We do offers every once in a while. Mostly, the Facebook page is just news about the company and information that will help our customers. We don't do a lot of special offers or sales because they generally don't generate a lot of interest.

greenoak
06-08-2012, 05:52 PM
i liked our promoted post... we have about 2800 fans now and the promoted post reached over 2000 people, the analytics said the promotion part reached over 700, which was out of our fanbase so a great pool for us to market to..... with maybe a few from their friends.... it was so cheap.....our post got a 48% connection....my guess is that post would have reached a bit over 30% without the promoion.... facebook says this promoteed post thing doesnt change anything about how your regular posts work but i sure see a lotof worry on this .
what do you think about sponsored stories? im against them for my page.......i do not want my name on an ad for some business that i liked, without my permission.....and i figure many of my customers would have the same negative feelings about it...i am holding back on liking places for this reason....
our customers dont respond to special offers or sales either...we have tried it tho...

KristineS
06-11-2012, 12:52 PM
I was really kind of peeved about the whole promoted post issue because I think Facebook has started restricting who sees your general posts to sell the promoted post part of things. Now, of course, they're revealing their stats that show how many people see any regular update you post on your page, and that's clearly all aimed at getting you to spend money to promote your posts.

I guess the only way to know if a promoted post would work would be to test it with an offer or something and see how much response you get if you promote the offer vs. if you don't. That's really the only method that would tell you how valuable promotion is. It sounds like your promoted post did reach more people, but did it inspire more action?

Don't really care for the sponsored stories or anything like that. I do like recommendations and will do those for companies I like, but that's about it.

greenoak
06-11-2012, 05:47 PM
so many people think that about facebook restricting views...... sad if its true...i never hear the proof tho....where i saw it discussed in the facebook help section,,, the facebook person said there was no change.
..i think the absent fans sink to the bottom because we werent interesting enough.or they signed up for the wrong reason......also there is so much competition for on line attention....
..if 7oo extra people saw my post i know it was worth the 10$$$...... it was my target audience,,, i look at it as a billboard, so they might remember and keep me in mind when their girls day out shopping trip comes around,,,....interesting that you use offers, they never work here so that w ouldnt tell me anything...but i dont sell online....
. they do talk about facebook in the store all the time...so good to hear that day after day........
.
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ReganP
06-12-2012, 11:46 AM
That's great, congratulations on your success. Although your actual social media strategy is always important, I feel like the type of customers/audience you have is almost equally as important in determining your social media campaign success. It sounds like the garment decoration industry is pretty community-driven already, which is great for social media!

KristineS
06-13-2012, 12:14 PM
I think targeting your audience is the one thing that a lot of people forget about social media. It doesn't matter if you have 1000 fans if 990 of them aren't interested in your product or service. You have to target your market. I call it strategic following, and I think it's one of the most important things you can do to make your social media plan a success.

AlexMc
06-19-2012, 04:17 PM
Kristine- I feel the same way "It doesn't matter if you have 1000 fans if 990 of them aren't interested in your product or service. "

You need to make sure that all of your followers are loyal, brand enthusiasts who want to share your message. Otherwise, you run the risk of them hiding your messages (remember you can do this on twitter now too!). As my small business grows and I am pulled in different directions, I am starting to look for services that can help me be in multiple places at once. I'm looking into Salesforce's social enterprise (www.salesforce.com/solutions/) first - because with the acquisition of Buddy Media I know that their product is going to really help me grow bigger and better. While my budget doesn't cover a social team right now, this honestly is going to help me connect with my customers on so many different levels.

KristineS
06-20-2012, 12:01 PM
Be wary of the whole be in multiple places at once thing. It's a difficult truth for some people to face, but automating your social media feeds doesn't generally work very well. Social media is about the connection, so it's better to be there less but be there in reality than it is to automate all your feeds and never interact with those who follow or friend you. There are great tools out there that can help you organize your feeds and monitor who's saying what where, and I always encourage people to use those tools, but I don't encourage automation. It's just too sterile and there's too little room for interaction.

That's only my opinion of course.

J.Voelkel
09-17-2012, 03:27 PM
Congrats on your success, it sounds like you have hit the right spot.

KristineS
09-17-2012, 04:41 PM
Just an update for those who might be interested - we did try the promoted post on our Facebook page, just to see what would happen. We promoted an post referencing an e-mail we'd sent out asking for feedback on something new we're thinking of trying for next year. The e-mail got a surprisingly good response, so we were interested to see if the promoted post would do something similar and perform better than a regular post. In the end, it did not. More people saw the post, it's true, but we had about the same number of comments and from generally the same people who would normally comment. So, for my money, promoting a post, at least a post of that type is not worth it.

Harold Mansfield
09-18-2012, 12:16 PM
Great feedback. Thanks Kristine.

Will Cunningham
09-19-2012, 12:31 AM
KristineS - can you elaborate just a little on "strategic following" - sounds like you find the people and businesses that you want as clients and you follow them, commenting and building a relationship with them so they can hire you when the time is right?

Also do you, or anyone do anything on Google+ ?? I have heard that they are past 100million users now.

Harold Mansfield
09-19-2012, 09:05 AM
Also do you, or anyone do anything on Google+ ?? I have heard that they are past 100million users now.

I do now. And I now recommend that everyone who blogs has a Google+ profile and have an authors box at the end of their posts where their name links to their Google+ profile.
And from your personal or authors profile, you should create a business page, and keep it updated with your latest posts.

I can't say if it will ever be the networking platform that Facebook is, but getting all of your information in the Search Results is immeasurable and something that you just can't do with Facebook.

KristineS
09-19-2012, 11:45 AM
KristineS - can you elaborate just a little on "strategic following" - sounds like you find the people and businesses that you want as clients and you follow them, commenting and building a relationship with them so they can hire you when the time is right?

Also do you, or anyone do anything on Google+ ?? I have heard that they are past 100million users now.

The first question here made me laugh as I was just thinking I throw around the term "strategic following" all the time, but have never really explained it. I am planning on writing about the subject for my Stitches Magazine blog this week, so explaining here will be good practice. Anyway, strategic following is essentially what you said, Will, following businesses and people who might be clients or who could lead you to clients. The goal is to create a follow/friend/fan list that is relevant to the subject of your page or feed, not to follow a bunch of random people who may have no interest in your products or services. Strategic following takes more time and thought than just following randomly, but it tends to help you build a more engaged base of followers/fans/friends. Hopefully that makes things a bit clearer.

As for Google+, I have an account for the company, but I've done very little with it. The main problem has been being able to strategically follow and that a lot of other people in the industry our company is in weren't yet using Google+. I have to admit I haven't been back in a while, so that may have changed now.

Harold Mansfield
09-19-2012, 11:52 AM
As for Google+, I have an account for the company, but I've done very little with it. The main problem has been being able to strategically follow and that a lot of other people in the industry our company is in weren't yet using Google+. I have to admit I haven't been back in a while, so that may have changed now.

Yeah, I haven't quite figured out the networking part of it yet, I'm merely speaking from a promotional stance. You know how you search for a subject and an article may come up with the authors image next to it? That's a G+ profile linked to from the article.

Have you ever searched for a business and had their profile come up on the right side of the page? G+
Of what about searching for a brick and mortar and having the business profile and map appear on the right? That's Google Places.

And it's all free.

Google is tying G+ accounts into search results now, so for that reason, I now recommend it to everyone.
I hate dropping my own links, but I wrote a more explanatory post about it a few days ago, and how to use the Google [rel=author] link to accomplish that:
How to get your company or author’s profile listed in Google search results | NHABIT (http://nhab.it/how-to-get-your-company-or-personal-profile-listed-in-google-search-results/)

Elabusiness
09-20-2012, 09:47 AM
Great Kristine! You are doing great social media management and getting good response. Social media platforms are really very helpful nowadays if done in well managed way.

KristineS
09-20-2012, 12:00 PM
I know Google is really pushing Google + and I thought being an early adopter might be a good thing, but Google+ hasn't really gotten rolling all that much for businesses yet, or hadn't when I was working with it regularly. As I said, I've kind of been ignoring it as other platforms have taken priority. I should go back now and see if it has improved.

Will Cunningham
09-21-2012, 12:45 AM
Harold, I subscribed to your Kindle feed and love your post about G+. I will implement what you said and give some feed back. Thank you so much! :)

Harold Mansfield
09-21-2012, 07:54 AM
Harold, I subscribed to your Kindle feed and love your post about G+. I will implement what you said and give some feed back. Thank you so much! :)

Thanks Will! Glad it helped.

Wyatt
12-08-2012, 12:16 PM
No doubt social media have very important role for us. Which provide us plate form to learn, earn in different ways. It give us also facility to advertise your business/product or brand.
Twitter, facebook, linkedin are top sites in social media.

fanbizzy
01-08-2013, 03:20 PM
How did you get so many pinterest followers?

neil@camisonline
01-24-2013, 07:31 AM
Would you say that there is any method of social media that you wouldn't use? Twitter is pretty much universal but do you still think it's worth creating a facebook page for a product or service that isn't that social (such as if you sold boilers for a living) or would you say every bit helps?

KristineS
01-24-2013, 11:42 AM
I think the use of social media depends on the market. I have a really great case study for this because I'm Director of Marketing for two companies. The customers of one are severely behind the technological curve in most cases. The customers of the other are very technologically savvy. We built a Facebook page for the company with the technologically savvy customers and they visit it and interact with us regularly. We also built a Facebook page for the company with the non tech savvy customers, mostly because our competitors did, and I ended up mostly abandoning it because there wasn't anyone else from the industry online to connect with, except our competitors.

I'd say go where you market is and don't waste time where they're not. Sometimes people get caught up in the latest cool thing, but if that cool thing doesn't get used by your market then you're just spending valuable time on something that's vanity at best. The trick is to do your research, stay in touch with your customers and your market and know where they go and what they do so you can be where you need to be to be seen.

TopLineComms
01-28-2013, 12:23 PM
I'd be inclined to agree with the above statement. Facebook doesn't seem to attract much success if you're a B2B marketer. In my opinion that's because Facebook is purely a social platform. Who wants to talk shop on Facebook?

KristineS
01-28-2013, 05:59 PM
I'd be inclined to agree with the above statement. Facebook doesn't seem to attract much success if you're a B2B marketer. In my opinion that's because Facebook is purely a social platform. Who wants to talk shop on Facebook?

I'm not sure I agree with that. We use Facebook for one of our businesses and I've connected with a lot of other businesses who are our clients there. For our particular market it works. Facebook can be a social platform, but the business part of it is becoming more developed too. It can be a great tool for interacting with your customers, if your target market is there. I think it's a mistake to just dismiss Facebook as the place where you poke people and post pictures of your cat.

LGCG
07-18-2013, 08:42 AM
Social media marketing has become a mainstream way of communicating — for businesses as well as individuals. Find out how to make the most of the opportunities it offers — and avoid the pitfalls — in our essential set of guides to social media marketing for small businesses

What sets social media marketing apart is that it's not just about putting out content- You've also got to be responsible for what you put out, and be ready to respond to your audience.

KristineS
07-18-2013, 03:11 PM
What sets social media marketing apart is that it's not just about putting out content- You've also got to be responsible for what you put out, and be ready to respond to your audience.

Very good points. Being ready to respond and doing so in a timely fashion is key. I find the more we respond to those who comment on our page or our Twitter feed, the more they continue to talk to us. Communication is the goal. Social media shouldn't be about vanity, it should be about community.

chrismarklee
07-28-2013, 02:01 AM
The key to Facebook is building relationships. Once relationships are established then you will get repeat customers and referrals. It takes a lot of time. People now live on Facebook. The best time to share links etc is Tuesday through Thursday.

OlegLola
07-30-2013, 10:56 AM
The key to Facebook is building relationships. Once relationships are established then you will get repeat customers and referrals. It takes a lot of time. People now live on Facebook. The best time to share links etc is Tuesday through Thursday.
That's true. There are some common mistakes which you need to avoid while posting on Facebook:
-you shouldn't post too often, otherwise you can irritate your followers
-don't post the same content several times
-don't argue with your fans, be tolerant
-don't ignore your fans, respond to them as quickly as possible

jlynn149
07-30-2013, 10:59 AM
congrats on your social media site!

dianecoleen
07-30-2013, 06:24 PM
Cheers to your success on social media Kristine! The pages I manage as well is gaining popularity, however, being known by the customers as the manager of the pages is not a part of the business. I guess, the business you have and the media used is a perfect combination in your marketing. I'm handling several legal fan pages and I'm glad that some of it is gaining interactions from several people within the target market.
I am still thinking of the offered sponsored post that Facebook and Linkedin have. I've seen your comment on Facebook, how about on LinkedIn? Have you tried the sponsored post on LinkedIn as well?

KristineS
07-31-2013, 11:18 AM
C
I am still thinking of the offered sponsored post that Facebook and Linkedin have. I've seen your comment on Facebook, how about on LinkedIn? Have you tried the sponsored post on LinkedIn as well?

I haven't done much with LinkedIn. I really need to spend some more time there, but I'm skeptical about whether that would be a good contact point for our business.

I'm not a fan of sponsored posts in general. We've tried them on Facebook and more people do see the posts, but I'm not sure the response is any better.

dianecoleen
08-14-2013, 08:04 PM
I haven't done much with LinkedIn. I really need to spend some more time there, but I'm skeptical about whether that would be a good contact point for our business.

I'm not a fan of sponsored posts in general. We've tried them on Facebook and more people do see the posts, but I'm not sure the response is any better.

Yeah! LinkedIn is far better than Facebook if you're in a B2B market. But I guess, that would depend on the consumers/market on how they used these media.

Thank you for the heads-up on Facebook sponsored post. Me too, I'm a bit hesitant to use that sponsored post as well. Organic post is still doing well with the pages I handled, so I guess sponsored is just an option for me. :)

KristineS
08-15-2013, 12:20 PM
I have to say, we've been giving sponsored posts on Facebook another try lately, and while I still question whether they bring in more people to comment and interact, I know the sponsored posts do bring in more people. We've definitely seen an uptick in traffic, but I'm not sure that's also led to an uptick in engagement. Jury's still out on that one.

PayForWords
08-17-2013, 05:36 AM
I ran some sponsored posts a while back and $5 got me around 300 likes, 10 comments, 5 or 6 visits.


Not one of them converted.


But, with that being said, it wasn't a complete failure.


I got over 300 people to engage with me and my page. That's a good start.


As far as LinkedIN, I honestly have never messed with it. Should I?

ztoone
08-17-2013, 07:52 AM
These days social media is a big tool to promote any thing on internet. Not for local world but also it is beneficial for the global world also. I have a small new business and after the use of social promotion I got so many client.

nexxterra
08-17-2013, 01:38 PM
The Key to Social Media is SOCIAL
You need to make your posts about your followers, interesting to your friends, even though for some it comes easily, lets face it, when you go on facebook, it is all about YOU! So if YOU are not attracted, entertained, amused or engaged by what you see, you do not pay attention.
When you post keep this in mind. I do webhosting, something MOST people on Facebook DO NOT need, but with humorous ads and interesting posts, some of these people "share" which gets me a better reach.
Like a friend that is obsessed with cars and only talks about cars, it gets old quick, so try to be well rounded, and add your comments to friends posts and tweets once in a while...unrelated to your core business/motivation.