Blu Maya Digital Marketing Agency

You have to be impressed by Ford Motor Company. They’ve turned around a BIG ship and made into one of the most ‘social’ companies out there by being committed to being accessible, authentic and transparent on social media.

One thing I’m always asked about is the ROI on social media. To answer this you first need to understand what the nature of these tools is, they’re not sales tools. They’re amplifications tools. They enable us to connect with customers on their terms in an authentic way while also spreading our ideas through them.

It’s how involved you get that counts.

Ford’s leaders understand that ROI in social media means ‘Return on involvement’ and this fundamental understanding has enabled Ford to break from the pack, it’s really impressive.

For your viewing pleasure, Scott Monty of Ford highlights some of these points in his presentation on how Ford has transformed into a social company.

Zero to 60: Ford’s Social Media Story, by Scott Monty; presented by GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council from GasPedal on Vimeo.

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In this weeks must read digital marketing story a recent study says Facebook is fast becoming the most valuable source of traffic on the internet in terms of stickiness.

According to the findings, Facebook provides the most loyal visitors, with 20% of those that originate from the social network in turn visiting the site they landed upon four or more times in a week. Among other social media sites, Digg traffic produced loyal users 16% of the time, while Twitter traffic was only good for 11% loyalty.

• Facebook Is the Most Valuable Source of Traffic (Mashable)
• Ford’s tips for social-media success (Social Media Smartblog)
• Survey: 75% of small businesses rejected social media (Reuters)
• Social Media: The Next Great Gateway for Content Discovery? (Nielsen)
• Social Media Marketing Guide, Directory, & Resources (SEOMoz)
• TweetMeme Analytics Show You How Retweets Spread on Twitter (Mashable)
• Do you think social media could be useful for every company? (Social Media Smartblog)
• Got Branding? (Neuromarketing)

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What do you do to deal with bad feedback on Twitter? Do you quit?

You don’t!

Yesterday I got an email from one of our clients, The Jumpitz. Saying they wanted to stop tweeting because some of their followers said that they were tweeting way too much and that most of the tweets were irrelevant to them.

Ouch!

Ironically we had just advised them to create a Twitter account for each of their cast members so they could personally engage with their fans on Twitter and one of the cast members, Jake, was told by one of the fans about the issue.

As we diagnosed the problem we found the Alltop Kids feed pushing content to their Twitter account. We immediately shut if off and deleted all the irrelevant stuff that was posted to twitter.

Back to normal right? Wrong!

I personally suggested they not cut off Twitter communications as this would only make things worse because it would be the equivalent of disappearing off the internet. Engaging with your ecosystem is imperative right now.

You need to be actively participating in your community and sometimes there will be some problems, especially when you’re testing different approaches.

All in all they didn’t shut down the account but there are some lessons to be learned for sure.

Lessons learned

• Don’t put a random feed behind your Twitter account. It’ll be a firehouse of content you can’t control!
• Don’t Tweet about just anything. Ask yourself: Does it add value? Is it interesting to them?
• Don’t ignore the feedback. Ignoring it will only make it worse. Apologize and say what happened. Be transparent and genuine, this means your just as human as everyone else. Adjust and do things right.

In what other ways do you deal with bad feedback?

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In an effort to answer the above question, Nielsen conducted some in-depth research – including an online panel survey of 1,800 participants fielded in August 2009.

The finding: people are increasingly using social media tools to make purchasing decisions.

Most people still use search engines to find things but in the future we will no longer search for products and services; rather they will find us via social media.

I see search engines as presenting us with a broad view of options but our decisions will ultimately be influenced by our peers.

Why? As we all know, people care more about what their friends think than what an algorithm does.

This is already happening on a very small scale and will increase with the adoption of social tools.

What does this mean to your business?

It means you should be an active participant in your ecosystem. As I mentioned before, focus most of your marketing efforts in creating relationships, bonding with your audience and giving the best possible brand experience.

If you don’t know where to start with social media, we wrote about a few good resources to get your foot in the door and craft a social media strategy. It also important that you treat this as a continuous business activity, social media isn’t a campaign; it’s a new way to do business.

UPDATE: Recent findings suggest Facebook is the most valuable source of traffic. From Mashable:

According to their findings, Facebook provides the most loyal visitors, with 20% of those that originate from the social network in turn visiting the site they landed upon four or more times in a week. Among other social media sites, Digg traffic produced loyal users 16% of the time, while Twitter traffic was only good for 11% loyalty.

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Growing Your Brand on Twitter: Strategies and Tactics From the Trenches from Parnassus Group on Vimeo.

Interesting panel at Twittercon moderated by Guy Kawasaki. Here are some highlights with some of my thoughts:

Quality or quantity of followers.

There are differing views around this topic, but it’s important to understand everyone has a different strategy (if any). In my professional opinion I think what matters most is the actual relationship you build with a close few. In essence ‘pick your poison’. What I mean by this is that you pick your talkers and other talkers will emerge, if you can influence a certain number of your followers then they can influence their followers.

Because unless you’re well known like Guy Kawasaki your tweets will be lost in an endless sea of digital thoughts.

How to Tweet and what to tweet about.

This is an often asked question and it’s hard to put a concrete answers behind it but it all boils down to asking yourself: Does it add value? Is interesting to them?

When to Tweet.

How often should you tweet? My suggestion, as often as you have something interesting to say. Like I mentioned everyone has a different strategy, maybe you want to spend more time in conversation and less on sharing information, depending on this circumstance match your behavior.

A strategy that was mentioned is to schedule a Tweet multiple times in a day. This is interesting because if you have a large number of followers most of them are not online at the same time and thus gives you an opportunity to reach people at different intervals.

Tools: Hootie, Su.pr, Twitterfeed

What apps to use.

Among the apps mentioned were Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Tweetie (for iPhone), Co-Tweet and the web interface.

In what other ways do you use Twitter for branding?

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