Pick The Proper Vehicle For Your Message

If you own a small town butcher shop, you probably don't need to post on Twitter every 15 minutes. (I can see the gruesome tweets as we speak!) Your clientele has probably never heard of Twitter and they could probably care less about how many pounds of sausage you just ground anyway. On the other hand, your customers are probably much more likely to log on to the local newspaper's website to check the weather, classified ads or read the forums. Your valuable time would be much better spent focusing your advertising and marketing efforts on local business websites such as your local newspaper's website. Being an active member of the discussion forums on these sites will benefit you much more than Twitter and Facebook ever would. For instance if there's a cooking forum on a local online hot spot, you could answer meat related questions using the business as your username/identity. Just be sure to speak in a tone that is familiar and comfortable to your demographic. There are many different social vehicles to get your message across including, Linked In, blogging, message boards, Digg, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many many, more. Remember to pick the outlets that your users actually use.

Speak The Language of Your Target Demographic

Everyone and their brother is on Facebook these days and it's a great way to keep your brand in a potential customer's mind. However, you can't just throw up an Acme Widget Corp. facebook page, post once per month and expect to see results. Users want something of value and if they're going to spend five minutes interacting with your brand online, do you really want them reading irrelevant internal company news? nope. Ideally, potential customers would be engaged with the brand through an appropriate message that evokes the desired feelings and responses. For example, if you're running an animal rescue and targeting animal lovers (who are generally a kind-hearted folk), you'll want to tug at the heart strings a bit more. Post relevant content about the injustices happening in your town and stories about beating all odds. Another scenario would be that of a large company selling wholesale rubber gaskets. You can bet that your target demo is going to be a bit more responsive to blue-collar humor and they'll be looking for something to brighten their day (I can't imagine that the world of rubber gaskets is terribly exciting without a little help. Though everything is relative I suppose!). Perhaps in this situation, you might post a joke of the day or even tweet about how Doug just tried to use a 3/4″ gasket at the convenience store by mistake.

Don't Tweet Too Much, But Don't Let Things Get Stagnant

There's a fine line between being active with social media and being obsessed. Conversely, if you're only updating your status or engaging in forums once every two months, you loose customer/user interaction and interest. Some users will update their Twitter status or their facebook photos every 15 minutes. I have to wonder how much a person can get done while constantly thinking about and looking for their next tweet or kitschy photo status update. On the other hand if you're too busy to interact with social media on at least a semi-regular basis, then perhaps you should focus your marketing efforts elsewhere or hire someone to help out. There are many freelance copywriters and social media experts who will help out on an hourly basis.

The ROI of Social Media

Return on Investment (ROI) of social media is often a hard metric to track. You may spend 20 hours per month focusing on social marketing and not see a single lead. The key thing to remember is that your brand is in front of people and when those people need your services, you'll at least have a portion of their mind share. You can always track click throughs and keep track of referring sites that lead users to your website and ultimately to your goal whether that is an online purchase, user education or anything else. Having proper analytics running with assigned goals is a crucial part of measuring the ROI of your social media marketing efforts.

Keeping all of these things in mind when working with social media in your marketing plan will help you successfully market your brand to your target demographic in a very valuable and personal manner.

Up next: Building an Online Presence – Part 3: Knowing The Competition. Subscribe to the RSS feed or signup for spam-free email updates to get notified about new posts immediately.

In this series of posts, I'll be discussing thoughts on how to create a better online presence through various channels.

Start With Your Own Website

The vast majority of people I talk to aren't happy with their website (the ones that have websites anyway). Web users are much more savvy than they were even 3 or 4 years ago. Even less "savvy" users know the difference between a good website and a terrible one. People are much more likely to respond in a good way to a well designed website. Aesthetics are important but website design involves much more than making a site look good. It also involves Information Architecture, User Interface Design and User Experience Design. What the heck does all that mean? Put simply, it means that when users come to your website, they get where we want them to go and they feel comfortable enough to hang out for a while. This is hard to achieve when your site has no continuity in it's presentation of information, navigation, links, styling etc. Would you enter your credit card information to make a purchase on a website that looks like it was built in the late 90′s using free templates that have been hacked together? Would you put much stock in a company that isn't willing to spend time and effort on their own website? Probably not.

Hiring the right person (or people) to design your website is key to building an online presence that gets results. Although your nephew may be able to put a website online and he works for peanuts, is he really the best person for the job? (Nothing against using relatives for web design. I have relatives too!) Do your research and figure out who will work better for you. More often than not, smaller web design shops hold advantages over larger agencies: agility, speed and quality of service.

Some things to look for:
- the designer's/company's portfolio. Are there example projects that fit your vision or is there evidence of being able to create many different aesthetics? Is there a wide breadth of work even though you don't see something exactly like what you have in mind?
- available services. Is there a wide range of services available that can fit potential future projects like print advertising, logo design, SEO/SEM, marketing, etc.?
client testimonials. (if available) Are there happy clients singing the praises of this potential website provider?
- SEO services. A website with no traffic isn't a good tool. Can this company/person get your site found via search engines? Did you find them through a search?

All of these will help you get a feel about whether or not they're a good fit for your project.

Up next: Building an Online Presence – Part 2: Using Social Media. Subscribe to the RSS feed or signup for spam-free email updates to get notified about new posts immediately.

Another factor is that people who aren't artistically inclined can be intimidated when confronted with complete freedom of design. It could be that the average user felt that Facebook's simpler approach leveled the playing field. No longer are users forced to "compete" for the cooler looking page. With Facebook, everyone is playing by the same rules. It's more about the content than the unique presentation of information. Both Facebook and Myspace have powerful platforms for social interaction though Facebook is very easy to use and has much less clutter than Myspace which in my opinion is why it has become the leader in online social networking.

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The site was built using an Open-Source Content Management System so that the client has full control over their own online presence. Using open source software also means that there are no monthly licensing fees of any kind which often come along with bulkier proprietary systems.

Nashville Interactive designed, developed and is hosting BoozeCampNashville.com. A rather simple site overall but one that I've already grown very fond of. Perhaps it will even make the web design portfolio in the near future. Once again an open-source content management system was used for the backend of the site, allowing various administrators to control the content from anywhere with an internet connection. The site is an ongoing project with many improvements in the works so check it out and come back often to see how it's going.

The site utilizes WordPress as a content management system which allows the client to take full control of their website and in-turn the message they want to put in front of their audience. Empowering clients to control their website's content is good website design, and this sort of self sustainability is part of Nashville Interactive's primary mission.