How do we brand ourselves as generalists?

June 1st, 2009

We don’t have a focus for our brand, we are generalists and want to stay that way. This is very different than our industry where everyone else focuses on a niche. How do we brand ourselves in this manner?
- professional services firm

There are lots of ways I could take this question, but since you have stated you WANT to stay a generalist for your industry, then here is my initial reaction to your question:  deliver a consistent, inspiring, and unique experience for your audience. Make your brand be about your style, your people and your processes, not a product attribute, service or industry theme.

Thanks to the Internet and rise in social media, you can have the luxury of being your brand. You have the ability to be your own voice and you alone can be the experience and base in which your brand thrives. Take the focus off of your industry norm and put it on the attributes of your processes and relationships – the key touchpoints your audience experiences. Make them great each and every time. Creating a brand that’s about your expeirence in delivering your service is just as strong as a niche offering.

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What’s My ROI On Twitter?

April 23rd, 2009

What kind of return on investment can I see with Twitter implementation?
- accountant

Measuring your return is one of the most overlooked aspects of a Twitter strategy (or any social media strategy, for that matter).  It’s very easy to fall into the trap of spending a ton of time fiddling around with Twitter.  After all:  it’s fun.  That’s why you need to spend your time in disciplined pursuit of your business objectives.  Defining those objectives is the first step to measuring your ROI.  Here are some possible goals you may have, and how to measure your success with each one.

1.) Driving website traffic.  This is the easiest goal to measure.  Check your server logs.  If you posts a tweet with a link to one of your pages, how many people visited that page in the next 24 hours?  Was that more or less than most other days? 

2.) Positioning yourself as an expert.  Establishing expertise is hard to measure on Twitter or anywhere else, but you do have some tools.  The number of people following you is a rudimentary metric of your perceived expertise.  The number of times you are retweeted can be a good indicator, since it demonstrates that people valued your content enough to pass it along to their followers.

3.) Industry research.  When you’re following your industry, your competition, or just mentions of your own brand, the measure of your success is going to be the information that you dig up.  What did you find?  How long would it have taken to find the same information on a traditional web search?  Would you have found it at all? Is the article date relevant to today? Most of Twitter’s information is very recent results.

4.)  Networking.  The metric here is how many people you meet and how well you can help each other.  (The geotargeting in Twitter’s search makes it very easy to find people locally that are talking about topics you want to comment on.)

5.) Finding clients.  Another very easy metric.  Just measure Twitter like any other lead source in your sales pipeline (and if you use Salesforce they have a Twitter tab in which to monitor your activity).  When you do a search for people that are experiencing the pain your product or service addresses, you can send them a tweet and think of them as a lead.  Go through your conversion funnel and just look at what the numbers are telling you.

That’s your return.  In all of these cases the investment is your time.  To be successful with Twitter you must allocate the time to it, but you should be careful not to go over that time.  Make a schedule and stick to it.  You’ll need to refine a schedule that makes sense to you, but a good place to start is 30-60 minutes a day.  Try that for a while and see what kind of return you’re getting.

Anyone getting a return on their Twitter investment that’s either more or less than they expected?

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How Do I Know If Social Networking Will Benefit My Business?

April 15th, 2009

I hear so much about social networking. How do I know if social networking will benefit my business and if so where do I start?
- property tax specialist

Social networking is receiving a lot of buzz these days.  The reason?  Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allow users to connect with each other to pass information and build relationships.  When things are clicking on all cylinders these sites allow you to develop your brand with a loyal group of followers.

It’s incredibly easy to get started, requiring very little time and zero money.  But there’s no point in investing even a little time if there isn’t some reason to expect a positive payoff.  So here are a few ways social networking can be used to benefit a business.  Do any of these sound like a fit for you?

1.) Position yourself as an expert.  You can make announcements about breaking news in your industry.  Share valuable tips.  You don’t always have to be generating your own content (although that’s a good idea).  You can share links to relevant articles, pictures, and videos that you find on the web.

2.) Broadcast your message.  Most news sites now post their top headlines on Twitter.  Far more quickly than you could visit the site, you can scan the headlines in Twitter to identify any stories that capture your interest.  You can do the same thing with your message.  Put out announcements on social networking sites when you launch a new product, sponsor a community event, or receive special recognition.

3.) Expand your network.  In face-to-face networking, you’re limited to building relationships with the people who are near you geographically.  The online nature of social networking let’s you connect with people who share your business interests regardless of where they are.

Even if one of these strategies appeals to you, that doesn’t automatically mean social networking is automatically a perfect fit.  You also need to weigh if you have the time to commit.  Ideally you should budget a little bit of time to spend on social networking every day, although you may still see benefits if you can only commit to an hour or two once or twice a week.

Perhaps the most important question to ask: are the people you want to connect with using social networking?  Think about your current customers, potential customers, vendors, and referral sources.  If they are into social networking, then it might be a very good way to stay in contact with them.

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