How to Choose the Right Social Channels to Reach Your Customers by John Clark

The socialsphere continues to expand with new channels or new and improved features launching nearly every day. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google+… the list goes on.

For the user of these social networks, the question is how much time do you want to spend posting, tweeting, pinning, creating or following?

For businesses marketing to these users, the dilemma is how to optimize your marketing investment, content, and business impact by reaching the right prospective customers in the right channels.

But which channels are a must-have for your business?

The reality is it’s virtually impossible to do them all – or at least do them all well. And you shouldn’t try, frankly.

There are dominant channels for every industry and type of product or service. What you need to know is which channels are dominant for your market and focus your organization’s time and money on winning against the competition in those targeted channels.

In social media, it’s about quality, not just quantity. Doing two or three channels really well with consistent, highly engaging content that is reaching and interacting with your target audience is what will lead to conversion and customers.

5 Questions to Determine Your Dominant Social Channel(s)

If you’re not sure where to start, ask yourself these questions:

1. Where is your target buyer?
2. Where is your competition?
3. Is there an untapped opportunity?
4. How many channels can you do well, consistently?
5. Are there geographic differences you need to take into consideration? Channels, competitors, etc.

Let’s use a couple different competitive landscapes of companies to illustrate how you would choose the dominant channels for your organization. I’m using two groups I’ve set up:

1. A landscape of soda brands, and
2. A landscape of top cloud computing providers.

One of the first differences we notice among the tens of thousands of companies we track is whether the company is a business-to-consumer (B2C) or a business-to-business (B2B) player. As social media channels have matured and other niche players have entered the market, there has been some natural delineation across the B2C and B2B lines.

For example, LinkedIn is used primarily for business networking, job searches and highly-focused B2B advertising. Facebook and Instagram are more personal and consumer focused. And Twitter is an interesting hybrid with active usage by everyone from teenagers to famous athletes and actors to professionals, and companies using it to reach both consumers and businesses.

Who is Where Among the Top Soda Brands?

First, we attempted to choose soda brands that were standalone products versus big corporate names. In this landscape we included Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Faygo, Jones Soda, Mountain Dew, and Sprite. We intentionally did not add Coke (classic) or Pepsi, as Coca-Cola does not separate its massive corporate presence on social networks from its Coke product presence, so we would not be comparing apples to apples (or in this case bubbles to bubbles).

Pepsi Co actually does have separate Pepsi product social handles, as it does also for Diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and other specific brands. This product versus corporate branding is an interesting topic in itself that we’ll tackle in another blog.

In looking at the high level social matrix for this landscape, the soda brands have a consistent presence on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Another thing I have seen in B2C brands is a great use of images in their social media, especially when it comes to food and drinks, which drives stronger engagement. So, it’s not surprising to see Instagram topping this list.



Google+ and YouTube are interesting. Clearly most brands are attempting to add these to their list, but we’ll have to see how the engagement looks to see if that’s working for them.  And in terms of LinkedIn, this isn’t surprising, as these brands (other than Faygo and Jones Soda) are one brand of much larger organizations as noted above, and LinkedIn tends to be focused on company presences, not product.

As noted above, this is just one step – discovering where your competition plays. Next, you want to dig in a bit more beyond pure presence to see where these companies are truly delivering content and engaging versus just setting up a basic presence.

It’s About Engagement, Not Just Showing Up

Let’s start with Facebook.

The first thing that pops out to me is how some of the larger brands like Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi are not leading the Facebook popularity contest. Sprite is in the lead for Facebook Likes, followed by Dr Pepper in a close second, and Moutain Dew in third.



Dr. Pepper is also a top poster, averaging 1.5 posts per day. Jones Soda pops to the top for frequency as well, and again, Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke are the laggards. From this, I am expecting to see these two diet brands show off in some other social channel.



But as I noted above, quantity of likes and posts is fine, but more importantly is how many users then engage or share that content. When we look at this landscape’s total engagement, we finally see Diet Coke make an appearance. So the brand may be doing less than one post a day, but it is engaging with its followers. Dr. Pepper is clearly turning out to be the overall channel leader in Facebook across all key metrics.

Pepsi and Mountain Dew continuing to lead. Total engagement is the aggregate number of interactions (likes, comments, and shares) of posts on this company’s Facebook page during this time period.

 

 

 

Are the Same Brands Leading on Facebook and Twitter?

Diet Coke is clearly putting more investment in Twitter, coming in second for total followers (at 282,000+) behind leader Mountain Dew (with 363,000+), with Dr. Pepper hot on its heels (269,000+). Mountain Dew is also the most prolific on Twitter, tweeting more than 17 times on average per day.

Here, Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke again taste flag, with an overage .50 tweets per day. Mountain Dew also has a loyal following, with the highest total engagement, followed by Dr. Pepper and Diet Coke.



What about Instagram? Mountain Dew is putting emphasis on this channel as well, where it has the most followers of the group (nearly 65,000) and has the heaviest total average engagement per post, followed by Sprite, Diet Coke and Dr Pepper. If I was in this group, I would seriously evaluate what Mountain Dew is doing to grow its fan base and create great content that engages its followers.

Is Cloud Computing Hot in Social Media?

Now, let’s check out the cloud computing providers.

First, you’ll immediately notice a lot more white space in our charts. Twitter is clearly a must-have as is YouTube, but a real mixed bag for Facebook and LinkedIn, with Instagram barely showing up. This could signify an opportunity or could mean that the customers and influencers for cloud computing are focused on Twitter and YouTube, so emphasis needs to be there.



In digging through the data, Twitter is definitely the favorite of most of these providers, with healthy follower figures, heavy daily tweeting – Cisco averages 10+ tweets – and growing engagement across all primary players.

While all these companies are on YouTube, AWS and Rackspace are the only consistent ones bringing in significant numbers of followers (in the thousands) and high engagement levels.

These same two companies bubble to the top of Facebook, with the most likes and total engagement. Could this be because these two companies focus on public cloud and more on developers versus enterprise customers? This is just a speculation, but it goes back to answering the question of, “Where are your customers?”

While these are all cloud companies, their target market varies.

Time for You to Answer the Questions

Look at your own company’s social footprint, and then answer those five questions above and see where you should prioritize your social investment.

Just because a social network exists, doesn’t mean you have to be there. In the same light, if you are competing against a much bigger company or companies, pick the channels where you can have the most impact and engagement and invest to win.

Courtesy of Convince & Convert, LLC

2014 Social Media Predictions -- Hold On, It's Going to Get Bumpy! by Kim Garst

With 2013 in the books, I have to admit my thoughts have been racing towards what's in store for businesses in 2014. We have seen such phenomenal changes this year in the way businesses are using social media, largely due to factors like the increase in mobile and video usage, and the mainstream adoption of content marketing.

So what changes can we expect to see in social media in the next 12 months? What trends do businesses and brands need to pay attention to in order to keep up?

Here are my top 5 social media predictions for 2014!

1. It's About Show, Not Tell: Visual-Based Content Will Dominate

Given what we have seen so far in 2013, there is no doubt that the popularity and use of visual-based content on social media is going to continue to increase in 2014.

We know that posts that contain images or videos outperform those without when it comes to likes, shares, comments, and retweets. Failing to incorporate image-based media into your social media content strategy will mean losing out on huge amounts of potential engagement!
Just take a look at what we know from this year:

• Photos on Facebook receive 53 percent more likes than posts without.
• Tweets with images receive 18 percent more clicks than those without, 89 percent more favorites, and 150 percent more retweets.

Businesses will need to be creative in terms of incorporating images and videos into existing content, and coming up with fresh new ways of incorporating visual-based content into all aspects of their social strategy.

2. Instagram and Snapchat are Going to be Major Players And Businesses Will Use Them to Reach Their Audiences In Unique Ways

Some interesting current statistics for you about these platforms:

• In 2013, Instagram was the fast growing network with 150 million users and 40 million photos being uploaded each day.
• 71 percent of top brands are now on Instagram.
• Entanglement metrics on Instagram (likes and comments) have jumped 350 percent since last year.
• As of writing, Snapchat is the 4th most popular free iPhone app on the iTunes Charts.
• Snapchat is the 9th most popular iPhone app in terms of usage.

If you are not yet familiar with Snapchat (only 18.6 percent of iPhone users currently use the SnapChat app), here's a brief description: Snapchat is an app that can be used to send photos or videos that are only available to be viewed for a set amount of time (generally 1-10 seconds). Once time is up, the image or video is hidden from users and deleted from Snapchat's servers.

One of the most interesting uses of both SnapChat and Instagram that we should be keeping an eye on is for reaching consumers via coupons. While quite a few businesses are already taking advantage of Instagram for offering coupons, deals and discounts, it will be interesting to see what comes of Snapchat's 'exploding coupons'. These coupons will only be available to users for several seconds, giving a whole new meaning to the concept of 'flash sales'!

3. A Mobile Strategy Becomes Compulsory

With reports of mobile overtaking desktop usage somewhere between 2014/2015, businesses who want to keep up need to get serious about integrating mobile into all aspects of their business. Simply having a mobile-friendly website will not be enough.
Businesses will need to consider:

• How their website is accessible via mobile: responsive design, mobile-version, or app.
• How their overall marketing strategy works with mobile: With 84 percent of smartphone shoppers using their phones while in stores, businesses need to figure out how to integrate the virtual and 'real life' experiences of their customers (coupons, product reviews, mobile checkout systems, etc.).
• How their content strategy works with mobile: Offering short, actionable pieces of content to mobile-users, determining when their target market is accessing content via mobile (see infographic below), using segmentation to offer the right type of content to the right people, etc.

4. More Brands are Going to Get Serious About Social

While an estimated 93 percent of marketers already use social media for business, brands are going to need to take their social media marketing strategies to the next level. Smart businesses will increasingly realize that it's not enough to just have a presence on the major social networks. Getting serious about social means integrating it into every aspect of the business, not just marketing: from product development, to operations, to customer service and retention.

Company-wide support of social will become increasingly necessary to make sure social media tasks are carried out consistently, and in a way that aligns with overall business goals and values.
As digital analyst Brian Solis points out, "While creating a social brand is a necessary endeavor, building a social business is an investment..." While social brands are businesses that use social media as part of their marketing strategy, a truly social business is one that has integrated all aspects of their business with social.

A social business aligns every level of their business with social: in their systems, processes, and planning. A social business goes beyond using social media to simply communicate with customers, and involves every department and employee in their social media strategy.

5. Google Plus FINALLY Hits the Tipping Point

Google Plus just turned 2 years old. I read a report that pegs Google Plus's current active monthly users at 300 million people (up from 190 million in May). This clearly trounces Twitter's 230 million and makes Facebook the next logical target, but will it pass Facebook in 2014? No, but it will hit what I am calling the "tipping point" late in the year and be a solid threat to Facebook's dominance in 2015.

This is going to sound crazy, I know that, but to win long-term people must "love" Google Plus. I know it's a subjective emotion, but there certainly seems to be a strong connection between the success of a social media site and people's emotional connection to it. People "love" Facebook. People "love" Pinterest and Instagram. Right now people do not feel that connection with Google Plus. As subjective evidence, I asked 140+ small business owners, entrepreneurs and social media enthusiasts in my DIY Social Media Inner Circle secret Facebook group what they thought about Google Plus and not a single person said they "loved" or felt an emotional connection to the site, but they will!

If you follow me at all, you know I am a big Google Plus fan and have been from the beginning. I love the functionality, communities, "hangouts" and the fact that everyone can see all of my content on their business pages. One real game changer for Google Plus this next year will be the continued integration of social media content into its search ranking algorithm and the realization by more and more businesses that being active on Google Plus is cheaper than paying your SEO consultant. Also, Google is reportedly testing on-site advertising, the staple of Facebook's monetization strategy. These two alone will not win the battle though. The real reason Google Plus will win big in 2014 is because people will finally accept it as a great place to form connections, meet friends and share experiences in completely cool and captivating ways.

What predictions do you think are missing from the list above? What major changes do you see happening in the social media world this next year?




Courtesy of TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc