How to master inbound marketing using social media?

Mastering inbound marketing can be like solving a puzzle; but not because it’s confusing. It’s a puzzle in the sense that it’s made up of many different pieces – pieces that cannot stand on their own, but when put together, make total sense.

To truly succeed online, your business strategy needs to include all the pieces. The trick is to assemble those pieces into a structure in which they complement each other, interlock and net you a more complete and enduring business success.

One of the biggest pieces – and often the one that businesses struggle with – is successfully using social media for your marketing and branding.

I like to think of “digital branding” as the personality of a business through digital channels. A brand on its own has a character, a look, a tone of voice, a way of engaging, and a set of values that are being communicated. The question you should be asking yourself is, “How can I make my brand work digitally – how can I make it say the right things and how can I get it to speak to the right people and build the right relationships within this new context?”

The bottom line is that high-performing businesses focus their vision, processes and results on building long-term relationships with clients (keep in mind that clients can be individuals or other businesses). More and more, successful relationship-building is taking place online via social media.

If you want to learn more about this you can enrol in Lisa’s next intake of students for her Social Media Mastery course.

Social Media Mastery can be completed either as a professional development non-accredited course, or, if students also competently complete the associated assessment work for each unit within this course, you will gain the Nationally Recognised Qualification Certificate IV Business (BSB40212)

COURSE DETAILS AND STRUCTURE

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For more information about this course, please email upskillme@socialmediamastery.com.au

SOCIAL MEDIA MASTERY COURSE INFORMATION

Social Media Mastery course is designed for the person who sees the potential of engaging with consumers to build a community. You just need a very basic understanding on the fundamentals of social media such as Facebook.

Developed by social media entrepreneur Lisa Harrison, students will be taken step-by-step through the social media marketing landscape, and will learn how to:

  • Promote and grow their business using free online tools,
  • Boost sales and sell products and services online,
  • Create valuable long-term relationships with customers,
  • Build strong online communities,
  • Get feedback from these online communities to help refine and develop business ideas.
  • Just to name a few

WHO IS SOCIAL MEDIA MASTERY FOR?

With the progression, expansion and popularity of social networking sites, new media professions have been born such as the “social media manager” (SMM). SMM is just one of the new career opportunities arising in this new economy and you can read more about the skills needed to be a successful SMM here.

TESTIMONIALS

  • “Lisa has a great sense of the possibilities presented by social media and an enthusiastic ‘just do it’ approach that ensures students put their new skills to work straight away. She is also extremely generous with her time, knowledge and resources … and her classes are good fun.”Denise Cullen
  • “I thoroughly enjoyed Lisa’s workshops with Social Media Mastery, in 2012. Her passion, knowledge and delivery are second to none. Her generosity and creativity working with varying types of business owners made the course a pleasure, with many positive outcomes, bringing more clarity to planning clever marketing techniques for small business. Thank you so very much Lisa!”Nicole Armit, Head Foodie
  • “While the ultimate professional, Lisa is down-to-earth, engaging and approachable. She has that unique gift of being able to explain the complex in simple terms. I found her course in Social Media Mastery to be invaluable and would highly recommend Lisa to any small business owner wanting help in accessing the digital world.”Cath Hains, Website & Online Content Management Specialist
  • “The social media space can be complicated, Lisa is able to to explain this is a simple yet practical way. Social Media Mastery is perfect for beginners to those already involved in the the sector and would highly recommend it. Lisa’s knowledge and experience is displayed in every aspect and her passion is infectious.Thanks for all you assistance Lisa, it was a pleasure to be in your class!”Craig Montgomery, Marketing Manager
  • “Lisa provided a well-rounded, detailed and relevant course on marketing using social media using tools such as E-alerts, webpages, facebook, twitter and other tools. She was interesting, approachable and made learning fun. She respected and acknowledged all of the experience and knowledge in the room and allowed people to network and share really useful experiences and information. I would recommend Lisa for her courses and to assist you with marketing your business. She is friendly, intelligent, interesting and fun as a teacher.”Janis Meyers, Speech Language Pathologist

The course is delivered via a state of the art learning portal and monthly live online chats and brainstorming session to ensure you have the most current social media marketing and management strategies to achieve your personal and or business goals.

ABOUT LISA HARRISON

Lisa is the Digital Director and cofounder of POMO, a design and strategy firm based on the Sunshine Coast.

Lisa also works as a consultant with businesses helping them develop strategies, policies, guidelines and action plans for effectively using all types of digital communications in order to establish customer engagement. She has managed programs for such organisations as Birch Carroll and Coyle, The Royal National Association (Ekka), and is a speaker, facilitator, educator, researcher and blogger in social media. She was the winner of the Sunshine Coast Business Woman of the year in 2013 and a finalist in the Telstra Business Women’s Awards the same year. Lisa is currently completing a Doctorate with QUT Digital Media Research Centre.

For more information about this course and to express interest in enrolment, please email upskillme@socialmediamastery.com.au

How Influential Individuals are Changing Social Media

Things aren’t always as peachy as they seem at the start. In fact, peach is not even a shape when we’re talking influencer strategy!

Unlike the real world where it pays to have an influencer with a tonne of contacts on your side, it turns out that content marketing is a little different.

The general consensuses with digital-driven marketing has been to track the total amount of reach and impressions to gauge effectiveness. This is traditionally where influencers claim their stakes. These people with a massive following are engaged to spread the word about a brand and get big bites in return.

Based on the reach of the post, businesses are usually quite chuffed with ‘strategy influencer’.

But recently, this method was placed under the microscope to measure real life impact – that is loyalty to the brand and actual sales. These influencer campaigns look impressive at the start, but what tangible results have they provided in the end?

A research project #OnlyConnect2018 – The Power of Brand Influencers, conducted by World Wide Worx, in conjunction with social intelligence platform Continuon, studied the content marketing efforts of 50 major brands and concluded that influencer marketing has a shape. Not a one-size-fits-all shape. In their research, this shape seemed to changed from brand to brand.

Continuon’s product manager, Richard Nischk, said they used the study to revisit the measurements of influence. Rather than take only reach and impressions on board, they put the whole project under a microscope to see what really affected consumer behaviour.

“To redefine the measurements of influence, we took an approach that provides metrics that can be, in quantifiable manner, used to increase return on investment.

Reach is most certainly an important element of the equation. However, what really counts is having the ability to affect behaviour. In social media, this comes in the shape of sharing, engaging, interacting, tagging and gaining word of mouth from the people you reach”, Richard said.

An influencer algorithm was designed and used by Richard’s team to study the engagement types and behavioural data. The algorithm assigned a score out of one hundred to each influencer involved in a brand’s campaign, according to the brand-specific social media communities.

It was surmised that in respect to impact on brand loyalty, the most effective measure of social media influence was the power that an influencer had on extending conversations beyond the original post. Continuon say this velocity of social conversation and engagement can be measured exactly though three questions:

  1. When did the individual join the conversation, and what was the impact that the interaction had on the conversation?
  2. Did it reach and impact the right audience via the right channels, at the right time?
  3. Which individuals and groups of people were in control of this increase in velocity?

The score then assigned to each influencer is grouped into a segment. Each of these segments builds a shape and quality of a brand’s online community.

According to Richard, a score of 90 or over is genuinely rare. And he says that the common shape formed for each brand is similar to a pyramid.

The influencer segment pyramid

Most influencers are located at the bottom of these pyramids with a low score. These, according to Continuon, are called the Herd and Sharers.

Next up the pyramid you find Trendsetters. These influencers come in with scores of 40 to 60 and they start to have some actual influence. The top of the pyramid is made up of Lighthouses and Icons. Lighthouses have scores of 60 to 80, whilst Icons are the most priceless of the pack with their scores above 80.

Richard believes these pyramid shapes allow brands to determine the various levels of influence within their online communities.

“This enables brands to understand how each level can be leveraged to build an army of authentic brand influencers. Brands can drill down and get granular to understand every single person as an individual and what their individual score is. Now, from an impact point of view, influencer profiling can be granular, relevant and measurable within the social media universe”, he says.

The most valuable shape of influence is a basic pyramid. This demonstrates a sturdy base of Herd with a smaller number of Sharers just above. The pyramid then works up to a gradual point with fewer Trendsetters, followed by even fewer Lighthouses, and Icons as the most valuable sitting right at the tip.

However, perfect pyramids are rarely found. The majority of brands and businesses build more like a flat, shallow wall, with no Icons and only a limited number of Lighthouses. These strategies are flat in appearance and flat out having any real impact long-term.

Interestingly enough, their study found the industry that was most likely to have the largest number of Icons was the not-for-profit sector. Perhaps duly to fact many of these organisations encourage authentic connections and conversations through their non-commercial campaigns. These voices tend to have the greatest overarching power.

What have you done to measure the shape of your influencer strategy? Are your influencer campaigns offering real return on investment, or are they falling flat mid-construction?

Need help? Delve further into the shape of influence with our Social Media Mastery content marketing gurus – discover your shape here.

What makes a great social media manager?

Don’t be mistaken: being a Social Media Manager for your business takes more than a few posts and a bit of witty banter.

When you take on social media marketing you need to be capable of turning your online audience into loyal customers who are willing to spend money with you or the time and effort isn’t worth it.

Have you got what it takes to succeed as a social media manager?

A business’s social media presence is the face of the organisation, and with over 11 million – 50 per cent – of the Australian population using Facebook to connect it’s a good business decision to make sure you are there to interact.

At Social Media Mastery we are huge proponents of educating and encouraging people to get online and learn what it’s all about for themselves, but we are also sticklers for approaching your social media marketing professionally, efficiently and with a results-driven strategy.

The skills and expertise required to generate business with longevity, from social media are complex. AND time consuming.

Think about this: Do you know your CTR from your ROI? Do you know what a good or bad bounce rate is? Do you have the ability to solve very public problems diplomatically? Do you want to engage in Pay Per Click advertising or stick to organic virality?

I’m not saying you can’t learn these things but do you have the time to learn them and do you have the natural flair for online communication and engagement to build your brand community?

Here’s a list of expertise and skills a professional social media manager should possess:

  1. Strong interpersonal and networking skills,
  2. Comfort with technology, knowledge of the organisation and empathy.
  3. Proven abilities in planning, strategy and project management.
  4. Clear understanding of analytics, the ability to set up effective campaign tracking, interpret social measurement and ROI calculation as well as a heavy dose of comfort with statistics and Excel.
  5. The ability to interpret this data and gain workable insights to make recommendations.
  6. Lots of creativity and personality (even the stuffiest brand needs to show some personality to succeed on social media).
  7. Excellent copy writing skills, experience and expertise with photography and graphics production.
  8. A good understanding of business objectives and the ability to craft effective calls to action.
  9. Experience in crafting effective campaigns for e-newsletters, blog writing, website moderation, podcasts and vlogs.

Learn how to do these things yourself or hire a social media manager

Start by enrolling in the Government accredited Social Media Mastery Certificate IV in Business . Check out the latest dates for Social Media Mastery or you can leave the implementation and management to us leaving you to get on with the stuff you know best – running your company.

Considering your social media and digital marketing may be the most revenue-centric hours anyone will spend in your company – can you afford to entrust something as important as your business’s social media communications to an inexperienced trainee?

Follow Lisa on Facebook. Find out more about Social Media Mastery  This blog is published by POMO – a creative agency specialising in customer engagement based in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia.

How to prepare a winning communications strategy

It may sound like a cliché, but communication is the most important aspect of any healthy relationship – personal and business. In my last blog, “Why is a “Business Communication Strategy” essential for your brand?” I share with you the basics of communication and why every business needs a strategy. Today, I want to help you start preparing for building a successful communication strategy and giving you some seeds for thought.

It is important to use verbal and non-verbal communication in ways that avoid misinterpretation. For example, the use of humour can be a great way to build bridges, establish rapport, and resolve minor conflicts. However, if the other person is not in the mood to laugh (or just doesn’t share your sense of humour), your wit may have the opposite effect to the one you intended. So,we all know theory is all well and good but you need to be able to apply it in the ‘real world’ and make it a part of your business strategy…

Preparing to Be Strategic

Before jumping in and creating a strategy, however, you should be clear on the following:

  • The need for a realistic commitment to social media (time, personnel, budget).
  • The value your business can offer through social media channels.
  • What your business wants to get back from its social media engagement, such as brand awareness, sales, members, volunteers, specific project goals, or something else.

Implementing a communciations strategy is helped or hindered by your existing assets:

  • brand messaging,
  • amount of staff time,
  • size of your mailing list,
  • freshness of website,
  • ease of website revisions,
  • content management system, and
  • size of budget for social media efforts.

Spend the time to consider your existing assets and what may need to be built before you create a strategy. These are your starting points, and will likely be refined throughout the strategic development process.

Follow me on Twitter or subscribe to me on Facebook. I also publish a monthly newsletter, sign up by going to my website.

This blog is published by POMO – a creative agency specialising in customer engagement based in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia.

The future of digital marketing

Considering the current volume of digital and social marketing business, it’s hard to believe how young the Internet marketplace actually is.

Cumulative events leading up to where we are now have impacted the entire globe faster than any marketing revolution in history.

In 1994, spending for Internet marketing totalled practically nothing, but by 1995, the figure stood at over $300 million. Now, 21 years later, digital marketing spending and Internet marketing businesses have exploded.  PWC predict that in Australia alone we will spend $26.9billion.

Today, it’s hard to believe an organisation exists which doesn’t have some kind of digital presence.

As websites have multiplied beyond anyone’s imagination, searching for them has become increasingly important. Websites have become the first contact for many customers with a brand.

By the year 2000, heading into the new millennium, Google was (and still is) the dominant search engine and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) was born. SEO specialists interpreted the Google search algorithm and built websites that complied with the way their spiders wanted to assess the quality of content.

Google assessed the authority of links from a website by grading it from 0-10 and giving it a rank. Links to a website increase authority, pushing it further up Google’s search results. High Google rankings have become valuable commodities.

The next ‘game-changers’ were blogs. The structure and nature of blogs gave them a head-start in Google’s search engine results. Their numbers exploded, massively increasing the pool of links. Niche marketers were quick to exploit these strengths and created thousands of blogs dedicated to selling products through affiliate schemes and running pay-per-click advertising. Blogging brought Internet revenues to the masses.

Internet usage continued to grow exponentially; browsers evolved; Web 2.0 came along. Suddenly, interaction, personal relationships and multimedia became the new marketing challenges as their platforms absorbed more and more Internet traffic. Social sites burgeoned as users ‘stumbled upon’, ‘dugg’ and ‘liked’ links to web pages.

Users’ insatiable desire for the ‘new’ became the driver for the creation of streams of constant content. Google changed its search design to allow for the new, distracting traffic. Users wanted the freshest content. Marketers complied.

YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter are now some of the most important channels that marketers need to broadcast on. Doing well on these platforms not only boosts SEO results, it also pushes links to appear in all the other types of searches.

Google has started to lose its grip on web traffic dominance as Facebook grows. Comments and ‘likes’ from users are becoming a new commodity for brands. Traffic no longer needs to be directed back to a website because we can engage and convert our customers right there on their chosen social platform.

And more change is on the way.

Mobile devices are overtaking computers as the primary method of accessing information and interacting on the Internet. We’re going local, and big players like Google and Apple are gearing up for it. Local marketing is going to change the game again, but that’s another story…

Follow Lisa on Instagram or subscribe to her on Facebook. Find out more about Social Media Mastery or visit her website. This blog is published by POMO – a creative agency specializing in customer engagement based in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia.