Find Bloggers and Readers – The moment that you know where the conversations and discussions are taking place you can establish your strategies and allocate your resources for best return of investment (ROI)

Let’s see, there are millions of users online, thousands of places where conversation may take place and over hundreds of categories to look for. The easiest way to mitigate the problem is to find a blogger. Why look for a blogger? A blogger knows what the market wants and will definitely know where the readers are. By observing a blogger on the same industry as you, you will have plenty of idea on how to create an active conversation between the reader and writer.
Like I said on the previous part of our techniques in social media marketing is listening where you have to know who is talking about you online and know where the conversations are coming from.
You see, when know where the most of the conversations about you are taking place you can easily allocate your resources which will results best ROI. Statistics say that the number of influencers online is constantly growing where more and more people publish their content online. Everyone just wants to be famous! Uploading informative video clips to YouTube and being on top of the Digg stories are just some of the good examples to take advantage of social media.

Before, online marketer’s mistake is that they are targeting more people believing it will result more conversion. But the percentage of non-converting prospects are very high unlike today where we target the right people, convert fast and saving time, money and effort.

Looking for the right blogger that talk about your product or company, you can easily monitor the progress of your brand reputation/popularity online. You can easily analyze where to move next and what to respond to people.

Set Business Goal to Target

We’ve already tackled on how to gather information from your online community by listening to their conversations. And I’m pretty sure you already know where your target market are staying online and what are their needs what they like and dislike.
Today we are going to talk about Goal. What will be your goal for social media? And how are you going to continue to grow from that point. A good start is to meet the team and explain why you have to pursue the same target goal. Measure your progress and make sure to know your starting point and your goal. Adjust goal depending on your progression and move forward to a higher level.

Common Business Goals to Look-up for Social Media Marketing

Brand Reputation
You can easily measure your progress if there is an continuous interaction between the company and the customers involved. Their feedbacks are the key for measuring the team’s performance and also making the strategy evolved for the better. Compute the ratio between positive and negative comments for they are very handy in analyzing your company’s brand popularity and reputation.

Brand Popularity
With social media marketing business’ products and services is more likely easy subject to be spread out to the public. Introduction of products to social media sites from real users can create an immense number of curious customer candidates. Any product that is new and worth talking about online is a wildfire and you will never know how far it can reach the public. Social media sites like Digg, Technorati and Stumbleupon are the main players for spreading a more detailed introduction of products and services online.

Increase share of voice
With the brand’s reputation and popularity in mind, you have to involve yourself in sharing more voice in the online conversation. You have to be consistent and useful also to other members to take you seriously. Many social media marketers are just continuously posting their contents and not really interacting with the people in the industry. You will notice that they have many reputation points on a social media site but lacks real person-to-person interaction.

There are millions of conversations online every day, from online forums, blogs, social networking sites and social media sites especially Facebook and Twitter who have over hundred million members and still counting. That being said, can you still analyze your conversation percentage and how do you do it?

Analyze Conversation Percentage
Do you know how many times your company or organization mentioned in the industry you are in? Are the people in your company spread the word through generic description or do they directly introduce the name of your products and services you provide?

Example:

Descriptive approach = Article about skin care treatment and natural skin care products.
Direct Introduction = Name of the product, its benefits, difference from other skin care products, etc.

If you and your company are using descriptive approach, you have to know the percentage of making sales from it and the same goes with direct product introduction. Knowing which one is should you be more focus on is very important. You and your team can spend more time on direct product and services introduction while minimizing the time spent on writing articles.
Another conversation online to look at is the feedback or comments of online community about your products. There will always be a comment from users and this is a good chance to monitor the comments ratio? Know the positive and negative comments ratio to shift your techniques on a level they will like.

Another good thing about analyzing conversations online is to check your competitors? What are the people’s comments about them? How are they reacting to the comments? And think if you can do better than your competitors.

You see, analyzing conversations online is the key to online communities trust. The more you share useful information the better. The quicker response to members comments the better. It reflects your seriousness about the business and care for the members as well. Understanding the ratio of conversations online, where it is coming from and watching how your competition are reacting to their comments are the simple things I can share to you on this post. Yes, it is simple but very effective measurement for social media marketing programs.

To be very effective social media marketer, one must possess good listening skills. Not necessarily literally though but to know what are people’s needs. One must have the ability to easily figure out what are the community interests.

Practice Listening Skills to Online Conversations
The traditional way of selling products started since old days of selling bread on the street and newspapers. Then changed when the telephone was invented and more dramatically when the television was introduced.

Today, the method on how to deliver the message about products and services to the audiences have evolved to the point that audiences know more about the product than the seller itself. They scour the internet about the people’s response to the product before they buy it. It’s not seller-product-buyer but buyer-internet-product-seller.
With this in mind there is no telling how the interests will be track. Then social media marketing was invented. Now businesses online have a way to know where to look, what to look and how to interpret the message from their prospect buyers.

Today is the age of social media marketing and like the previous age of telemarketing, the more effective the strategy to get the people’s attention the better. But remember that social media marketing is a two-way process. Get and receive process which is the very foundation of getting more connections (“clients”).

Let us see what information to collect online to know what strategies to use, saving your time and energy. With more knowledge about your target market you can easily set a goal and get ROI or Return of Investment.

Vital information you need to take note:

• Know who talks about you
• Know what they are talking about
• Know if their response to you is positive or negative
• Where are the conversations taking place
• Know what communities talk about you
• Study your competitors social media activities
• Know what people think about your competitors
• Know what content resonates with your audience
• Know if you can provide people’s needs
• Know what social media sites you are mostly being talked about
• Know the people "fire-starters" you need to connect with
• Know who are the big influencers in the community
• Know where are the opportunities and threats

Knowing what to do and where to do it can change your course dramatically when it comes to social media activities. Now that you have enough information you can easily and wisely allocate your resources to their use. You can also save time and energy now that you know what social sites you should be concentrating on. Listening is also part of the planning process to your social media marketing campaign. It is better to plan and set goals than shoot recklessly trying to be lucky online.

“There is no such thing as Lucky in social media marketing”

Personal vs. Business
Facebook and LinkedIn – We know that these two sites are critical for your business in terms of social media marketing. The problem is when you open your human side to your content. I can be confusing to the members when you mix your personal feelings to your business. Social networking sites can be easily controlled so keep your personal contents to your friends and relatives, and setup a Fan Page to connect with your clients.

Blog Not Found
Making a blog is not only for your convenience but for your clients as well. Your blog will be your central hub from other social media sites and social networking sites. You can still update your blog and relay the contents to Facebook, Digg and Twitter. Your blog will be the main connections to social networking sites and bookmarking sites. People will revolve and will recognize you because of your blog as well, earning their trust and getting more of their feedbacks.

Unchained
Keep your members, client connected by letting them know how to contact you in other social media platforms. Update them where they can catch you more often. For example, if most of your time you stay on LinkedIn then let them know. You might want to make sure your blog posts - your most valuable content - is being pulled into all sites where it's allowed so you can draw people back to your website.

Image Inconsistency
If you have been staying with social media sites, I am sure you know how Technorati’s icon looks like or stumbleupon right? They have been stored in our memory and just by seeing their icon we know who they are. For your company to achieve this, you must consistently use one image only. Design a really unique icon for your business and let it spread to your blog. Share it to photo sharing sites like flickr, imageshack, photobucket, etc. Images are like your badges, it can develop your internet persona so take a time to do this before anything else.

Survivor
You’re doing blogging, posting to twitter, bookmarking and photo sharing. All the things I listed above are being done by you or your team. But pushing your content to people without participating to conversations is a waste of time and energy. It’s a dead on the spot work without give and take process. You cannot call it social media marketing if you’re the only one who knows how it works. Like what they always say, it’s all about conversation, it builds the relationship between members, and it strengthens trust and confidence of people to do business with you.

Never use social media marketing if your motive is to fool the members. There are many cases where companies, not just companies but big ones tried to fool the people by using social media. Being fake is not good for anyone on the social web. Wal-Mart and Sony’s “All I want for Xmas is a PSP” scheme have all sink to the lower level in reputation and social media outlook. They used social media to think they can get away with it but it turns the other way around.

Maybe you’re thinking that it could also be part of their marketing techniques to be talk of the town. (Possible) But for us, we know that they made a mistake to think no one will notice. Why make a fake account, fake people to be notice when they are already famous?

With social media marketing you can learn new trends and techniques through give and take process. But other people want to do it their own way. Not listening to suggestions, comments or any feedback from other members. Why are they doing social media in the first place? IF you want to be more effective online, you have to know how to listen to the people around you. Know what they want, give them what they need.

Each social media sites have their own terms of services guidelines. Before you participate in any conversation, make sure you fully read the rules to avoid alienation by the community or be labeled as a spammer. You have to observe first, do they accept product introductions or not.

Social media marketing have changed the way people think. They search more information about a product before they buy. They changed how traditional selling online was made. Before there are telemarketers pushing the product to a potential client. Now it is different, you simply cannot force the people to buy or avail services online. They crave for more information and they seek feedback from previous customers, etc. Today, you have to provide people the information that can help convert them to sales.


The numbers of social media sites are continuously growing as well as their users. Many company’s marketing department are using social media sites for their business. But if their works are not linked together then all they do is a waste of time. They have to target the same market, offering the same product, meaning they have one planned attack. Not working together is inefficient and can create mixed messages for consumers that participate in more than one social media destination for the brand.

To make this post more positive I advice you to always remember the 8 C’s about social media and you wouldn’t be lost.

• Connections
• Conversation
• Content
• Control
• Community
• Consumer
• Creative
• Collaboration

These should not be very difficult to do if you find social media interesting. Like I always say on my articles and blogs, social media marketing should be interactive and fun.

There are many people who are using social media tools for the marketing campaigns to get in touch to thousands of people online. But what if all this effort is useless? What if getting the attention of many people is just another waste in the basket.

There is a big difference in getting the attention of the reader than motivating them to act. Granting that you have many visitors, do they act according to your plans? Of course not. No one really knows if they can get their readers to participate. But there is a way to increase that possibility.

There are many social media tools around the internet just waiting to be used. Their potential is so high that everyone is confused which ones are appropriate for their campaign. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the top three contenders in social media world. They have the most people involved and their features are quite unique and easy to use.

Some might not believe me but for me there is no secret weapon in doing social media marketing. Everything is served for the people and the internet is the buffet table waiting its dishes to be taken by the guests.

Even if you don’t use popular social media platforms such as the top three mentioned above. You can still be effective and popular online, with the right group or community, the right information and the right way to introduce your brand to the people.

It’s all in the mind of the weak if they’re worrying how social media marketing can be used for their business. They are on a complete different path so don’t think like them. Social media will never work if all you think is business, money, and fame.

Social media is about relationships, no matter how high your reputation points on a social media site, they will never be effective if all of these points are from forum posts, blog and article posts. Yes, forums, blogs and articles are also part of the job but relying on it alone is not or will never be efficient. You have to make it more personal, interact, and socialize with the community members. Build a lasting relationship with them and eventually you will earn their trust. Share conversations, not just post and leave then tomorrow post again, it doesn’t make any sense. Before you jump into social media marketing you should be crystal clear with your motives. What is your goal? I hope this tip will has given you an outlook on how to do social media marketing the right way.