What is your motivation behind starting a social media campaign?

Social media is all the buzz; it’s unavoidable whether you are at work or play.  It is extolled online by bloggers and web writers, and is ballyhooed in traditional learning environments like conferences and seminars.

Not only are we constantly being bombarded by social media, we are being sold on it.

Most of the information serves to hype the various platforms and to illustrate how ‘easy’ it is to get up and running.  This hype gets people eager to join in, or feeling like they should join in when they don’t want to.  A critical component has been left out.  The secret weapon behind a successful foray into social media lies in your answer to one question:

What are you trying to achieve?

Without asking this question first, it is easy to get overwhelmed and confused.  Multiple options, peer pressure and media hype can leave you stressed and unsure where or how to begin.  You may shut down at this point, or -worse- jump in feet-first, ending up frustrated and entangled in an unproductive task.

Once you know clearly what your goals are, building an effective social media strategy is almost formulaic – just follow the steps to get to your goal.  Social media is a tool to help you get where you’re going:  it is not an end in itself.

A social media campaign is strategically no different than a traditional marketing campaign: it all begins with specifically identifying what you want to accomplish.

You can’t hit a target you can’t see, and you can’t see a target you do not have. (Zig Ziglar)

This means that before you commit to a social media plan, you need to know what the success measures will be.

• Are you looking for more customers?
• Increased sales from existing customers?
• Are you looking to increase traffic to your website?  If so, why?
• Is it a branding exercise?  A public relations move?
• Are you trying to build credibility with prospects reached by your sales team?
• Are you trying to find strategic partners to work with?

Know what you want to accomplish, and then check out companies that have successfully done what you want to do, and see how they did it.  For example, Blenz Coffee has been extremely successful in getting great PR using social media.  They also use it to increase sales to existing customers and to find new customers.  Do a simple google search for ‘Blenz Social Media’ for some great examples of ways to get achieve business results.

But before you try to jump in, remember the question – what do you want to accomplish? And if you look at the best ways to accomplish your goal, is social media the right tool for your company?

Best Practices, Business Growth, Technology, Tips

SQUAWK?

Ever been ostrichized by insider jargon?  Then you’ll enjoy this fourth communication tip from Open Box.

Check out the earlier tips if you missed them:

Communication game: tip #1 (working miracles)

Communication game: tip #2 (what goes bump in the dark)

Communication game: tip #3 (what lurks in the seas)

Communication, Fun, Video Tips

Are you a spammer?

Most companies will answer ‘of course not!‘.  But are you aware of Bill C-28 and the implications it may have for your business – particularly your sales and marketing processes?  There are a lot of good articles online aboutmarketing compliance for email marketing and newsletters, but it’s important not to forget that your sales processes may be affected as well – certainly if you do cold calling to potential prospects.  Here is the skinny to help you avoid being an inadvertent spammer.

Who

Bill C-58 is specific to ‘commercial messages’ – according to some, this does not apply to other types of email messages that are purely transactional or provide information requested by the recipient or in follow-up to a transaction that has occured.  I would love to know if downloading a white paper or other document from a website is considered a transaction for these purposes – if so, the value of content downloads would be reinforced as part of a marketing program.

Basically any company that sends commercial messages needs to be aware of the regulations and evaluate the impact on their processes and how they will ensure compliance

Why

For example, When you are developing sales processes, do you have a cold-calling process where you then follow up by email?  If so, you want to be very aware of the new regulations coming in, and of the contents of Bill C-28.  The penalties are stiff.  Individuals can face fines of up to $1 million, while businesses face penalties of up to $10 million per violation.

What

If you use emails for prospecting, make sure that you either have consent (this can include such things as the prospect having given you their business card or email address, or having published their email address without a statement saying that they do not wish to received unsolicited commercial electronic messages) or that you have an existing business relationship with the customer.

You also need to ensure that your emails include contact information of the sender (including company name, contact name, address and phone number) and a clear and easy way to unsubscribe.

When

One of the key questions about Bill C-28 is when it will come into effect.  The deadline for comments on the draft legislation is September 7th, 2011.  The implementation will likely follow relatively quickly afterwards (i.e. late 2011 or early 2012).

How

Industry Canada has a Q & A page about Bill C-28 that outlines some common questions and answers, but it doesn’t have a lot of detail about how this affects your business.  Check it out for a basic grounding in what the bill covers.

You can find the Industry Canada draft regulations online to read all the details for yourself.

At Open Box, we have always done our best to follow best practices for all newsletters we send out, but after a review of these regulations, we are updating our signatures to include more detailed information (i.e. our address – we used to just have a link to our website), as well as ensuring that all emails to any type of prospect or new connection we have met include an ‘unsubscribe’ link that will flow through to our customer relationship systems.

Best Practices, Communication, Marketing